Doctor Who: "The Beast Below" [Spoilers]

[Shroom Man 777]

The story is set in a United Kingdom of the far future, relocated into space. The Doctor and Amy are confronted by new enemies, the Smilers.

SPACE BRITAIN! Well, though I might be watching this episode a bit later than you guys, here it is for y'all. I'm really, really super-duper eager to see more of the new Doctor in action, mangs. And... AMY!

So, it's showing in half an hour for you guys there? Lucky basterds.

PS:

Shroomy's first DW thread! AWESOMENG!

[NecronLord]

Shroomy's first DW thread! AWESOMENG!

Gah. And I had beast quotes in mind (Satan Pit, for one) too. Oh well.

[Shroom Man 777]

Feel free to edit it, mangs!

[Admiral Valdemar]

I shall be downloading an HD copy from now on, so won't be watching it originally live. I've finally accepted a later viewing for better quality is a good trade-off.

[Teebs]

I really enjoyed that. Admittedly the plot seemed to be quite standard Doctor Who, but the execution was spot on in my opinion.
Spoiler

I particularly liked the smiley faced automata, they were genuinely disturbing.

[Darth Nostril]

Digital tv on a 37" LCD is high def enough for me.

Also Star Whales!

[Crazedwraith]

Well I can't think of anything much to gripe about; the 'it's alive' revelation was pretty obvious but that's about it. It didn't feel overwhelmingly awesome either. So I'm pretty much sitting on the fence.

[Bounty]

Good concept, weak middle third, great conclusion. They could have skipped the gunplay and not lost much of the plot and the reveal didn't have the oomph I thought it'd have. Amy's reveal was genuinely well done and the emergency digestive system escape trick was awesome.

Also, the Doctor is setting himself apart. Shades of the old emo one but he's far more focused and old-timey.

As for the next week, the teaser at the tail end of the episode proper with the phone call was seven shades of brilliant, and the episode itself looks like it at least has good execution, but it'll need to pull out some really good twists not to feel like yet another stale rehash of a theme.

[Bedlam]

I think I prefer it to last week although despite the ethical dilema it generally felt emontially empty to me perhaps because appart from his one shouting spree the Matt Smith Doctor seemed to take most of it in his stride.

Several potentially quite scary moments, the child at the beginning. the giant mouth, the smilers, the half smilers but they weren't dwelt upon, just sort of skipped past.

Gernerally seemed quite rushed without giving you time to think about that is actually happening.

I liked Liz 10.

Overall I'd say 3.5

[Revy]

I voted 3. Meh. A black queen of Britain? About as much chance as having a female Doctor I reckon. Also his temper tantrum seemed really out of place. 'You had no right to try and protect me, so stfu you're going back home!' - hardly as bad as Rose almost destroying all of reality AND getting the Doctor eaten by creating a paradox, and yet he kept her around for ages.

And the big reveal ... that's it? With the whole forget button thing and Amy's message to herself, my imagination was conjuring up something blood curdling. Space Whale being cattle prodded to make the Discworld move. Hardly the kind of thing so awful you just have to press the forget button because you can't live with the knowledge, is it?

Love the 'Scotland got their own ship' because I'm Scottish myself, and I'm actually preferring Amy to the Doctor. I definitely prefer her to any of the previous nuWho companions. Except for the whole thing with her getting married, and the step after that that I've read in spoilers, just makes me groan.

Pretty average, anyway. Not too shabby but not eye scrapingly bad either. Really looking forward to the next episode.

[Captain Seafort]

A four for me. Plot overall was a three - decent but nothing special, but Smith's performance bumped it up one. A lot of his mannerisms reminded me very strongly of Troughton.

[Bounty]

Did anyone else notice the Star Wars-ish wipe near the end of the episode?

[Big Orange]

I must say it is Moffat's weakest screenplay yet and while RTD crassly laid on the deaths too thick in many stories, most of Moffat's stories having no proper deaths kinda kills the tension; I enjoyed the first half of the episode, but it pettered out halfway through. I give it a 3 (or a 5/10) due to the engaging performances and the setting of Starship UK (which strongly reminded me of Rapture from the BioShock franchise).

[Bedlam]

I voted 3. Meh. A black queen of Britain? About as much chance as having a female Doctor I reckon.

I think their might be a few dynasty changes in the next 1600 years or so, I thought her gun welding was great fun.

[El Moose Monstero]

I felt it started a bit weak, I liked some of the ideas, but the queen one didn't seem to work well - action-hero queen just didn't work for me, the character as well as the idea, though I liked (though could see coming) the queen being the one behind it in the end. I loved the starwhale reveal as who doesn't like starwhales? But I think a bit more about how intelligent the starwhales were would have been nice, even if it was just exposition crowbarred in somewhere, as that would have been more powerful, with the idea of torturing a great and definitely sentient lifeform vs. your own survival. The ending was great, I could forgive quite a lot, but not all, of the start and middle for the end, but on the whole, definitely a 3, with the end being a 5.

Oh, and the BBC talked through the middle 8...bastards!

[Eternal_Freedom]

A 4 for me. A good episode overall, and I'm really liking the back and forth between Amy and the Doctor. The smilers and the dudes in black robes were glossed over a little too much, and I'm not entirely sure about the Liz-10 character, just didn't fit with me, I was expecting some underground rebel protesting against the government. Also, they never really said what would happen if too many people pressed the "Protest" button.

Still, despite the flaws it rolled along quite wonderfully. Some truly excellent moments and some hilarious lines:

"Now, this isn't going to be big on dignity"

And the bit at the end with the phone call was brilliant. Its the prime minister. Which one? He says the British one. WHICH british one? LOLS

[mr friendly guy]

Gave it a 3 for me.

[Shroom Man 777]

Awww... that was a cute episode! Space Whale! And, man, I like how Amy stopped the Doctor from doing something horrible that he himself was pissed with. That was nice. I mean, it wasn't exactly super-awesome greased lightning, but it wasn't shit either and was perfectly fines. I gave it a 4!

Up next, DALEKS!

[Vympel]

Behold, the rebirth of the Dalek race. For the 5500th time in the last four seasons ...

[Crazy_Vasey]

I know it's getting ridiculous at this point but I'm a sucker for Daleks. Hopefully they'll at least get away from the 'they're back! OH NO! Oh, wait, now they're extinct again' cycle to make it a bit less ridiculous, but I know I'll go for it anyway even if they don't.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yeah, I really hope ot isn't another lot of Daleks who hid/fled from the Time War. Although from the teaser, it looks like a bunch of Daleks get found in Britain and then brainwashed into thinking they were invented by a scientist, then realise its all gone wobbly on them

I too am a sucker for Daleks, and I also hope they're back for good this time. It'll make it easier for them to return later

I honestly think that RTD killing off all the Daleks and Time Lords was a mistake. Too many possible episodes thrown away

[Netko]

Behold, the rebirth of the Dalek race. For the 5500th time in the last four seasons ...

You have to give them credit with at least putting the rebirth in a fun context of "Dalek Tommy and his SPAAACE Spitfire Squadrons of DOOM!!!" instead of the usual modern-day rehash that was done a gazillion times over.

As for this episode - its typical Doctor Who. I like that the new companion isn't an uneducated idiot like Rose or Donna, while at the same time not being the annoying TV scientist caricature like Martha. That she's easy on the eyes is a plus. So far, I like the Moffat reign - let's see where he'll take the franchise.

[El Moose Monstero]

I must say it is Moffat's weakest screenplay yet and while RTD crassly laid on the deaths too thick in many stories, most of Moffat's stories having no proper deaths kinda kills the tension; I enjoyed the first half of the episode, but it pettered out halfway through. I give it a 3 (or a 5/10) due to the engaging performances and the setting of Starship UK (which strongly reminded me of Rapture from the BioShock franchise).

I get that lots of death has become the norm, but to be honest, I didn't even notice that noone had died in the last two episodes, and certainly didn't miss it. In the context of the previous series, the 'everybody lives' ending of the gas mask episode was awesome, but the emphasis on the lack of death lost something by repetition in the library episodes. It wasn't registered in these two episodes, and wasn't made a big thing of, so if he can tell good Doctor Who stories without necessarily needing to rack up a bodycount, then I'm all for it.

It's not Midsomer Murders, after all. Besides, it's not as if there's ever really any tension anyway in a show where the assistant is guaranteed not to die and we get advanced warning whenever the main character is going to die and be reborn, and we know by and large, we're never going to see anyone other than the extended family and friends of the companion again.

On reflection, the main problem of this episode for me was that it doesn't really stand up when you stop and think about it - yes, they're torturing an innocent lifeform for their own ends, but it's hardly the worst thing we've ever seen anyone do, and you would think that there'd be a good number of the population on Starship UK who'd just shrug their shoulders and go 'fuck the whale, I want to live'.

Maybe some extra evil would have been better, like maybe the starwhales could reproduce by budding or something like that, and it's actually been space-whalers who've hunted the thing to the brink of extinction, so now we had the last one travelling through the universe to the sacred budding grounds, or whatever, to the space nursery, only to be 'intercepted' by humans and so miss the breeding window. Then we get humans torturing an intelligent being and actually directly causing its extinction by preventing it from breeding. Then we could still have the same reveal about the fact that the whale chose to give up its own chance to breed to save the human children. We could then have lost some of the action queen stuff in favour of some exposition about space whales and maybe some more impacts on the ship itself, like nightmares or actually hearing some form of the whale's screaming, but distorted, so it could only be recognised when the Doctor did his thing.

Also, did anyone see any buildings with northern names on them? I saw Devon, Surrey, Essex, and my sister *thinks* she may have seen Yorkshire, but wasn't sure.

[PREDATOR490]

3

Decent and Matt Smith seems to be more focussed at getting stuff done in typical Doctor fashion than Tennant's run. I am really starting to like Amy Pond and it would appear they are TRYING to make her more than the sum of her looks but not much to go on so far.
The fact she was running around in her nightie was just stupid though and the Doctor dosent tell her to get changed when he makes a point of it at the start, eh ?

The end disappointed me as well, I was hoping to see the Doctor follow through on his moral dilema but naturally they come out with the third option that bypasses it completely. I found the situation with Amy not wanting to tell the Doctor a bit wierd, she has only known the Doctor for a few hours at best so how would she know he would react badly to the truth of the situation ?
The Doctors attitude to Amy amused me as well,
'I'm the Timelord, I decide what I should know and you just stand there and look pretty lowly human. If you cant do that you go home'

I found the scene where it listed Amy's marriage status as 'not available' a rather unsubtle attempt at creating suspense which is also extremely stupid. It has all her other information but somehow dosent know her marriage status ?
No doubt it will be claimed its because ' it hasnt happened yet' or its in a 'state of temporal flux'. However that just reeks of complete bullshit given the history of Doctor Who's time traveling.

I'm definetely not liking that intro. The final aspect when the names appear is fine but watching the TARDIS fly about in thunder aimlessly is a bit ... pointless.

As for next week, Dalek Saucer, restoration of the Daleks and space Spitfires.
No doubt it will be all special effects but I'm not looking forward to the story thats going to come out of this. I cant see how Doctor Who is going to somehow manage to involve the Daleks in WW2 without bending over backwards to get rid of all the Daleks QUIETLY or bite the bullet and have the events impact on Earth history. The former just means the space Spitfires are going to disappear or be acquried by 'Torchwood' and the Daleks need to make a 'Temporal jump' etc.
Afterall, I presume they arent going to have a Dalek invasion in WW2 which would overwrite every single event including the Doctors own history with the Daleks ?

[Revy]

I found the scene where it listed Amy's marriage status as 'not available' a rather unsubtle attempt at creating suspense which is also extremely stupid. It has all her other information but somehow dosent know her marriage status ?
No doubt it will be claimed its because ' it hasnt happened yet' or its in a 'state of temporal flux'. However that just reeks of complete bullshit given the history of Doctor Who's time traveling.

Actually, that just made me realize something, though I could be thinking too much into it. When Amy realizes that she's in the far future, she thinks 'Oh god, I've been dead for years haven't I?'. The funny thing is though that the voting computer recognises her and determines her age, presumably based on her date of birth, and gives it as something like 1300 years old or something. That surely means that it has no record of a date of death, and I would have thought that being legally considered dead nulls your right to vote. Which might suggest that the UK has no record of her death despite her considering that she surely must be dead at this point in time. Might that suggest that when the time comes for her to leave the series, she won't simply be settling back down in her own time to live happily ever after?