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So what do people make of the new series so far?


Just finished watching 'Smile' and I think it's a vast improvement over 'The Pilot'. What's really glaring is that 'The Pilot' is obviously meant as an introduction to Who for new viewers/reintroduction for returning viewers (playing on 'The Pilot' as a pun), but 'Smile' does a far better job of it and a better job of setting the series overarching plot arc (i.e. the whole vault the Doctor is guarding thing). The Monster of the Week was also better (compare what can only be described as Tardis transmission fluid in the first ep to the robots killing through care of the second), and there was a nice call back to previous episodes without hinging on you actually being familiar with them (for new viewers it's just be an off the hand remark that'd pass as world building while older viewers would recognise the refs as being to the Fourth Doctor serial 'The Ark in Space' and Eleventh Doctor episode 'The Beast Below').


As for the plot arc - any theories on what's inside? Obvious one would be the Master, but that's so obvious/easy that I hope it's not and something more interesting/unexpected is instead.

I actually kinda liked the first episode as well as the second. I mean they weren't "Caves of Androzani" or "Genesis of the Daleks" good but they also weren't "Kill the Moon" bad either. Capaldi was the only thing keeping me watching the show. I think he's a great Doctor but his run as Doctor has had some really terrible episodes. I nearly quit the show for good after the double-whammy of "Forest of the Night" and "Kill the Moon." Now that the show is making a noticeable attempt at improvement I really hate to see Capaldi go.

At this point it almost feels odd to get episodes where we meet the doctor from the companion's pov. Was laughing at the bits I recognized from Shada. I also feel that Capaldi is great as The Doctor, just a lot of the episodes just didn't go where I wanted them to. Mostly I started to hate Clara. I like Bill so far, hope she doesn't get an inflated ego like Clara did. And man "Smile" cool concept but massive oversight in
AI programming.

Agreed 'The Pilot' wasn't as bad as 'Kill the Moon' and other such stinkers, but for me it's firmly in the bottom half of episodes. And for me 'Smile' just makes TP worse as a lot of things TP was trying to do is handled better in Smile; e.g. we get a better showing of the Tardis travel capabilities by going to a different planet in the future in Smile than the quick erratic little hops in TP, the mystery of what's in the vault and why the Doctor has spent so long guarding it is more compelling in the few lines of dialogue in Smile than what was presented in TP and so on.


Random idea on what's in the vault, at the risk of it retreading ground from the Pandorica, what if it's the Doctor in there for some reason and he's guarding a future, evil version of himself? Would be one way of reintroducing the Valeyard. And come to think of it, has it been confirmed that John Simms is playing the Master rather than merely playing a character? Wouldn't be the first time that an old face has been reused (e.g. both Colin Baker and Capaldi played distinct characters before taking up the screwdriver, and the Moment reused Rose's appearance for an interface so there's precedent, plus by the Valeyard reusing the Master's appearance it'd play in the theme of the Master being a dark reflection of the Doctor).

Both stories have seemed fairly simple so far. Not bad, but nothing particularly exciting or new. Almost like a stock Dr. Who story in execution.

In smile it felt like it was missing a hook. Instead of there being some sort of serious ethical dilemma or inventive solution to a problem the Doctor just rolled in and overcame obstacles one by one until the adventure was resolved. Not something that's worth a re-watch at least.

For the vault? I think since the Time Lords are back, it would be great to see either some of those old villains return like Omega of the previously mentioned Valeyard. Or perhaps they could do something clever with the time war terrors that 10 had mentioned could be unleashed. The nightmare child or the could have been king.

They were simple, yes, but I think that may be a good thing. It often seemed to me that this show had gotten unnecessarily convoluted over the past few seasons.

IIRC from Trial of a Timelord, wasn't the Valeyard the incarnation of the Doctor from his final regeneration, the one that embodied all his negative traits? I'm just wondering how that all fits in with the Doc having been granted a new series of regenerations. This is kinda part of what I'm talking about when I say it's sorta become a little too convoluted. It might be interesting to revisit the character, or at least the idea of him. NuWho certainly doesn't shy away from mining the past for new story ideas or cameos.

Speaking of NuWho recycling, I missed the Shada parts. Which episode and where? I did like the brief shots of the Movellans we got. I always liked the "disco warrior" look they had.

I also like the new companion and, while I didn't hate Clara, I think I will probably like Bill much better.

Iirc all that's said of the Valeyard is that he was an abberation that cropped up between the twelfth regeneration and the Doctor's final incarnation, so possibly should have cropped up as a biproduct of Ten's regeneration into Eleven. No idea what effect the new cycle has had. But that aside, Trial of a Timelord ends with the Valeyard eluding capture, so there's not necessarily any need for them to go into detail beyond him being an evil facet/fracture of the Doctor that's independent of him.

So I didn't sit down to watch it when it was on BBC America, because I DVR'd it. Well, I go to play the recording later and grrrrr.....the channel was not coming through so I recorded nothing. I think I may try YouTube TV and get rid of my cable provider.

Dînadan wrote:The Monster of the Week was also better (compare what can only be described as Tardis transmission fluid in the first ep to the robots killing through care of the second),

To be honest, I actually liked Odogirl a bit better - the horror sensibility made it easier for me to look past the somewhat shaky logic behind her, and the eventual revelation of what was driving her hit home for me emotionally. The Emojibots were a nice idea, but their presentation was grounded enough that the more whimsical aspects of their design grated a little, and I didn't feel like the reveal of their motives or the resolution of the conflict were handled as deftly - in the face of all the other humans showing up, and acting pretty much like you'd expect humans to act, I had trouble accepting that some idiot built these things without thinking their programming through (or just giving them the ability to talk, like all the humans are doing). Plus, while the Pilot idea did draw on 'The Lodger', 'Smile' basically grafted its kill-through-kindness notion onto 'The Chase', and I felt the logic of the Mechanoids' imprisonment of Steven actually had more of a chilling edge to it than the dumbass reasoning of the Emojibots - 'emergent' or not, that they were able to manifest independent thought that so ill-fit the situation they were in speaks volumes about the ineptness of their designers (honestly my headcanon for making sense of the story is kind of veering towards the colonists having to prep their mission in a hurry, and buying their robot workforce no-questions-asked from some pseudoscience-following AI programmer more interested in aesthetics than reason). On a similar tack, while the Vardies were a cool concept, it was instantly ridiculous that only one patch of them ever emerged to attack the people standing in whole rooms made of them (and also, their emergence could have been handled more subtly than showing a big obvious chunk of wall dissolving into them, if 'they are the city' was supposed to be any kind of revelation).

Having just spent a whole paragraph slagging off the show, though, I am feeling good about it, because what really matters is the Doctor and the companion/s, and Capaldi continues to be terrific while Bill has me charmed already. So even if I had my issues with the episodes thus far (and honestly, I really did like 'The Pilot' a lot), I feel like any given episode is still going to hit a solid 7 out of 10 on the strength of them, and there could be an amazing one any moment.

Actually the colonists having to prep in a hurry is possibly cannon - the catastrophe that they fled from is implied to be the one that forced the U.K to hitch a ride on a Space whale to escape and the alleged cream of humanity to build a space station and put themselves in cryonic suspension to avoid, so it's plausible these guys were the lucky Brits that managed to scrounge whatever leftovers the rest of the world left behind so they didn't have to ride a space whale for a few millennia. Plus it explains why the colony ship was under the colony rather than arriving after it was built as the Doctor expected it would.

I suppose the difference between the two is the emojibots are ineptly built, which is believable (especially considering how much AI is a Crapshoot through all of sci-for history), whereas the oil stain monster is part of the group of aliens that Chuck has occasionally lamented as the 'Gene Roddenberry school of space monster'.

I think another problem with it is that, for me at least, we don't really get to know Heather or really see the bond she forms with Bill, so it's hard to care beyond the horror of anyone going through that and the whole reason for stalking Bill through space and time seems tenuous (to be honest it comes of as a bit patronising to those of us who are loners (or at least to this loner) as it's implying Bill's kindness was disproportionately important to her). I think if we had seen Heather as a bit part throughout the season as Bill's girlfriend (even if it was only a minute per episode or with the odd flashback), then It'd be easier to accept why the oil stain monster was stalking her and make the fate of Heather all the more horrific (and it'd give Bill inscentive to merge with it at the end before she chooses to let go of Heather).