Annoying Catchphrases

The Doctor has had a catch phrase or recurring idiosyncrasy off and on throughout the entire run, such as Two's recorder, Four's constant offer of jelly babies, or Three's scientifically impossible recurring suggestion to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow. I suspect this is a way of giving fans something else to differentiate the Doctors. In much the same way as Roger Moore's first outing as James Bond in Live and Let Die saw concerted efforts to distance him from Connery, such as different clothing and swapping the Vodka Martini for a bourbon, each Doctor has his own unique costume, Sonic and sometimes catchphrase. This gives the fans something to discuss when comparing these Doctors, and conveniently opens the door to merchandise licencing for sonic screwdriver toys and official bow-tie / fez combos.

This is a thing that exists.

It seems to me that recent seasons have made a big point of ensuring The Doctor has a catchphrase. "Allons-y" seemed particularly forced from the mouth of Ten. Its introduction in Army of Ghosts was awkward, and the fact that The Doctor made such a big deal about it and how he should say it more often speaks volumes. "Geronimo" for Eleven was slightly more tolerable, perhaps because, for me at least, it was a more familiar term that worked in the context it kept appearing.

Of all the recent Doctors though, Nine had the best "catchphrase" with Fantastic! When I say best here, I mean the most flexible. It is able to be worked into conversation relatively easily especially as most of the stuff The Doctor deals with can be described as fantastic. Allons-y and Geronimo on the other hand are limited by their rather contextually specific natures. Just check out this video:

Season 7 not shown

Nine uses "Fantastic" in a variety of situations and delivers it in a variety of different ways.  Some of them I would hesitate to include as examples of catchphrase use because they fit so naturally. You can also see that relative to the number of episodes they appeared in, Ten and Eleven pulled out their catch phrase far less than Nine did. I'm not sure if they actively eased off this or just found it difficult to work it in. They even gave Eleven a second catch phrase of "[Nouns] are cool." This one was far more annoying than Alons-y and Geronimo combined, requiring a lot of work to jamb into the script. But it sure gave the fandom something to work with.

A catch phrase is all well and good, but it's best if it is used sparingly and can be worked in naturally. As shown above, a general or flexible exclamation is best. Something like "Great Gallifrey!" could work well, as it would fit equally for shock, frustration, awe and numerous other emotions. Rather pessimistically though I expect Twelve to be spouting "Whoopty-doodle" or some other meme-friendly sound bite at semi-regular intervals.

Review - The Time Of The Doctor

Matt Smith bows out as The Doctor in this years much awaited Christmas Special, The Time Of The Doctor.

Christmas Special 2013 - The Time Of The Doctor

First up, a quick apology for the almost one month delay in getting this up, but my original no-fixes review went up a while ago on Geek-O-Rama.net and it really did take a lot of thought to figure out how to fix this one. But on to the review.

Oh my good God. I'm so glad I didn't watch this immediately, it would have spoiled my Christmas buzz. This was not only a total shambles of a story that packed in a whole bunch of unnecessary sexual innuendo, but it revisited almost every reference from Smith's tenure that annoys me. Ordinarily this is where I would say, "but it was all worth it for the twenty seconds of Peter Capaldi at the end", but seriously, it wasn't.

To start with, the relationship between The Doctor and Clara continues to be confused, with her confirmation she "fancied him" whilst bringing The Doctor in as a fake boyfriend despite him originally getting the wrong end of the stick and pretty much saying he'd be up for the real deal. I must say I am hoping for a dramatic reduction in this sort of thing with Capaldi as Twelve. It's just so boring.

The In-Who-Endos fly thick and fast in the opening minutes. I mean, what was the deal with the hologram clothes? The concept of being nude in church is an interesting one, being bare before God and so forth, but with no explanation, and in combination with Tasha Lem's alter-shaped bed, I'm left assuming that it's just there to poke fun at religion by sexualising it.

*Deftly avoids joke abut Holy of Holies*

It's not the first time I've sensed this kind of jab at organised religion in a Moffat story, either. Previous appearances such as The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone and A Good Man Goes To War saw The Church as largely Anglican, and the prominence of openly gay couple The Fat One and The Thin One was either a reference to the already evolving Anglican Church (female ministers etc) or just a cheap gay joke. With Moffat it's hard to tell. Now we see The Church as being somehow related to a very Catholic sounding Papal Mainframe.

We also saw a big slab of Hunka Hunka Burning Doc with The Doctor and Tasha Lem. Their sexual banter was so overt that I found myself waiting for the reveal that she was somehow a regenerated River Song. When did The Doctor have the time to develop this kind of long-term sexual relationship with a woman who wasn't River? It clearly wasn't as Eleven, so was Ten putting it about even more than we realised? It was all so unnecessary though. None of it added to the story one iota, and the flash of naked Matt Smith at the start seemed pure fan-service.

 

It was as if a million fan-girls cried out in pleasure.

Again, we have a case of Too Many Monsters, although it did seem to make some sense as to why they were there. I worried when the teaser came out because it was cut in a way that made it seem the whole thing was a set-up, much like the Pandorica plot-line. The teasers also had me face-palming at the return of the Silence, but again, in context they were relevant. I actually liked the idea that they were professional confessors, but after a second thought, It doesn't make much sense because half the point of confession is the act of confession, so even if you are getting some kind of post-hypnotic suggestion of penance, you're losing all the psychological benefits of confession by forgetting that you've actually done it. I was also quite upset for the Sontarins, who seem to have been relegated to comic relief. Don't get me wrong, Strax is a great character and pulls off comic relief well, but to make all Sontarins appear inept and stupid is a real shame.

 

One of the most fearsome military forces in the universe. No, seriously.

The episode just seemed a ham-fisted attempt to tie all of Eleven's season arcs into one grand overarching plot. Unfortunately instead of a mind-blowing climax to everything we've seen the past four years, all we got was a self-referential mish-mash with no real direction beyond tying up all of the loose ends. But you know what? Sometimes loose ends are a good thing. Case in point, the only thing that wasn't resolved was the return of Gallifrey. In a way I am looking forward to that being The Doctor's main objective moving forward. I hope it can be left unresolved for a long time, much like the holy scriptures in Monkey.

The whole thing just seemed to drag, and when I wasn't groaning because of some fresh innuendo or the reappearance of those thrice-damned Weeping Angels, I was checking to see how much longer it had to go. By the time we got to see the regeneration, I was over it. Capaldi's final line was a classic though.

 

Can you fly this thing?

I won't be rushing out to watch this one again.

4/10

Can we fix it?

I'm really struggling to see how we can fix this without a ground-up re-write. The entire episode seemed geared towards cramming in as many references to Eleven's tenure as possible, which sadly left little room for an actual story.

The bare bones of the episode, the Timelords calling through the crack, is a solid premise, but it just wasn't effectively played out. Many elements seem to have been included purely to fit with the existing prophesy, making for a rather jumbled scenario.

My main beef with the basic premise is the concept of the "Truth Field", which seems to me to be something an advanced race like the Timelords would have little trouble bypassing. I mean every man and his dog can recognize psychic paper now, so surely The Doctor wouldn't be susceptible to something like that. It seems to really only be there to fulfil the conditions of the prophesy. If it had to stay for that reason, at least have it that the Timelords knew The Doctor could still lie in a Truth Field but were using it to screen out "lesser" life forms.

And in the end, even though the Truth Field covers the bit of the prophesy that states, "when no living thing can speak falsely" it fails to address the next bit, specifically, "or fail to answer." The Doctor fails to answer for 300 years. Hell, he fails to answer at all, in the end. I really thought the prophesy was referring to the events of The Name of The Doctor where he was being forced to speak his name, and would have considered the matter resolved at that point.

The connection to The Silence could have been better too. Madame Kovarian should have featured, possibly as a subordinate to Tasha Lem who argues with her about how to handle the situation. Kovarian ultimately takes a group of followers and time travels to attempt to kill The Doctor. This removes the need for Lem's Faith Change, which felt really forced in.

The Papal Mainframe could also remain a neutral party maintaining the lockout of the planet, meaning the small incursions faced by The Doctor actually make sense as small groups penetrate the defenses. This also removes the need for the stupid human Daleks, which were an idiotic idea in Asylum of the Daleks, and completely unnecessary here.

With a tighter opening and none of the sexual innuendo, we can move to the actual siege quicker and then spend more time on the individual conflicts rather than an 80s style montage. This would lead up to the final battle after Lem is killed by the Daleks rather than assimilated.

It still wouldn't be great, but most of the major issues would be gone and it'd feel less forced. 

The (Insert Noun) of The Doctor

The BBC have released the full poster for the 2013 Christmas Special, The Time of The Doctor.

More like The Time to Get Some New Title Ideas, am I right?

Quite why we had to have an almost identical name to the 50th Anniversary Special and the Season 7 finale, I'll never know. Besides that bit of old news, it looks like they're slapping a bunch of big enemies together again in a Too Many Monsters extravaganza.

Why Angels? I'm so sick of them. They are totally played out as a monster. I had hoped after The Angels Take Manhattan we'd seen the last of them. That was pretty stupid, I suppose. And trotting The Silence out again? What's the point of that? They should have been done and dusted after The Wedding of River Song. Teasers have shown references to Trenzalor as well, another plot point that should have been left alone after it was resolved in The Name of the Doctor.

I'm trying not to draw too many conclusions from this poster and the few teasers, but I fear we're going to get a bit of a cluster-you-know-what here, and my expectations are currently rather low. The best scenario I can imagine sees most of these monsters appearing in some kind of nightmare dream sequence of The Doctor's.

In the end, I'm just hoping the few seconds of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor make it all worthwhile.

Review - The Day of the Doctor

Well there was a whole bunch of hype leading up to this momentous event. It could have gone either way, but I'm glad to say it lived up to the hype, and I very much enjoyed The Day of the Doctor.

The 50th anniversary Special - The Day of the Doctor

Starting with the original credits and a reference to both Coal Hill Secondary School and the I. M. Foreman scrapyard where we first encountered the TARDIS in An Unearthly Child, right from the off you can see we are set for a whole flood of references to the past 50 years of Doctor Who. We had a couple of references to Omega, a big scarf, some nice bits and bobs in the Black Archive, and to my great pleasure, a reversal of the polarity. Sure, it wasn't of the neutron flow, but obviously The Doctor has sharpened his physics knowledge in recent years.

Nostalgia ahoy!

The Moment was sort of interesting, but I'm still not sure how I feel about it choosing Rose/Bad Wolf as it's interface form. This essentially boils down to getting Billie Piper into the episode somehow, really, but that's fine. It would have been good to see the Interface shift a few times to take on other forms using file footage. Maybe just flicker between them at times, or when first settling on a form.

When Ten and Eleven get together the interplay between them is truly awesome. Matt Smith and David Tennent have a clear chemistry on screen that gives a wonderful energy to the episode. I was worried John Hurt's War Doctor would end up being all dour and sombre and kill the buzz, but he only made things better. I loved every second of Hurt's interplay with the other two Doctors. In a way he was an in-show avatar of me expressing confused bewilderment at where Doctor Who has ended up, commenting on everything from the age of the other Doctors to the use of the phrase "Timey wimey".

They're scientific instruments, not water pistols!

Despite making fun of many of the things that usually irk me, we still had a whopping great In-Who-Endo added when Ten and Eleven compared Sonic Screwdrivers. We had plenty of other bits of funny banter between them without resorting to a tired old dick joke, thanks very much.

Hur hur hur! Willies.

Some of the scene transitions seemed to be a bit weird. I recall one wipe came in far too soon, whilst Kate Stewart was still talking, which seemed a bit sloppy to me. That said, the morph effects on the Zygons were awesome. Really smooth and natural looking. The 3D paintings looked really cool too. I imagine seeing it in 3D would have been quite the treat at that point, but I feel it would have been wasted throughout most of the rest of the episode.

The episode did have some pretty glaring continuity issues though. I'm still struggling to see how this whole thing fits with the events of The End of Time. The Doctor is clearly now looking to find Gallifrey and restore it to the galaxy, but he was previously determined not to let the Time Lords return because they planned to destroy reality. Is the Time Lock the same thing as the Stasis Cube, or are Rassilon and the other Time Lord high council trapped somewhere else? Hopefully subsequent episodes that build on this story and fill in the gaps, because I am rather confused at the moment. I may have to re-watch The End of Time again and see if that helps. It would have been awesome if they got Timothy Dalton back in to play Rassilon though.

There were also some internal story issues with Elizabeth and the Zygons. She would have had to be remarkably quick thinking to be able to replace the Commander and subsequently find out all of the details of the Zygon's plans without arousing suspicion. Overall I found that to be a tad clumsy even with the offhand "they never considered I would survive" line. It was fun to see the gap in Ten's life just previous to The End of Time filled in there. Of course you have to feel bad for Liz because you know she's going to end up bitter and hateful towards The Doctor. I'm also left feeling The Doctor is a bit of a dick for following through with the wedding when he wasn't actually interested. And how is he able to tell Ood Sigma about it? Doesn't he forget? Either way, John Hurt made that little bit of Hunka hunka burning Doc tolerable.

Is there a lot of this in the future?

It does start to happen, yeah.

The Zygon plot was sort of left unresolved. I don't think it would have taken too much to make mention in the closing scenes of whatever resolution they came up with. It felt a little unfinished, or that Steven Moffat decided it wasn't important any more, as we'd moved on to resolving the Time War plot, which was far more interesting and important. In a way it was always just a secondary plot that provided the vehicle for plot exposition as well as the final solution, but it got so much screen time that I feel it deserved more of a resolution than it received.

Throwing Capaldi in there at the end was inspired. I only wish that was the first reveal of him in the role of Twelve. The fan reaction would have been insane, especially if it was just that short flash of his eyes. There would have been so much discussion about who it was. Such a missed opportunity.

Do you recognise these eyes?

Overall I'm excited about how things were left, even if I was a bit annoyed at throwing Tom Baker in there with a weak "reusing old faces" line. Seeking out and freeing Gallifrey is a great way to go, assuming the aforementioned plot confusion is addressed. Most excitingly it gives us an opportunity to resurrect a sorely wasted foe.

The Master is waiting!

10/10

Can we fix it?

No. All we need was a bit more exposition on some of the minor plot points and the removal of a rogue wang reference. It was a perfect homage to the 50 years, encapsulated in that epic final shot.

Anniversary poster revealed!

The BBC have just revealed the poster for the 75 minute 50th Anniversary special, named The Day of the Doctor.

John Hurt looks badass! I see exploding Daleks, bits of TARDIS and a Bad Wolf reference.

I'm freaking excited!

Time to regenerate?

So the rumours have been running thick and fast and the BBC has now announced that Matt Smith is going to be stepping down as The Doctor. We've known for a while he was looking to kick start a movie career in the US, but I thought we may have gotten another season out of him.

Matt Smith as The Eleventh Doctor

This has come on top of the announcement that Karen Gillan has signed on for the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Now that the US has been opened up as a major audience of Doctor Who, I think we can expect to see more actors using it to launch US careers. This could be a real problem.

Eccleston's single season tenure as The Doctor was problematic because it didn't give him enough time to solidify his version of The Doctor. Tennent and Smith have had around the same time as The Doctor, but I still feel Smith hasn't made his presence felt as much as he could have. Perhaps this is a symptom of Steven Moffat's focus on the companions over The Doctor himself.

As my mate Reece on Nerditis put it:

I feel he was never really given a fair chance, instantly hated by a section of the fan base that thought he was too young and increasingly sharing the animosity that fans have been feeling towards Steven Moffat, despite in my opinion him being a great actor and often the highlight of an episode.

Good luck Matt. You did a good job with what you were given.

Now can begin the speculation on who will be the new Who.