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Doctor Who Series 11 |OT|- She’s Here, and It’s About Time
- Thread starter Dwebble
- Start date
How can you skip Father's Day, Gridlock (which is essential before watching Utopia), Partners in Crime, Planet of the Ood, Turn Left (again, essential for the finale)...?
These are all great great episodes. I mean, really great episodes. Also of canon value - Father's Day expands on fixed moments in time and sets up Rose's dad for his repeated appearances in season 2; Gridlock sets up YANA: Partners in Crime sets up Donna and Wilfred and Rose's return; Planet of the Ood is essential for Donna's character progression and sets up End of Time; and Turn Left is vital to Rose's return and is essential viewing for the finale.
But even then, great episodes the lot of them.
As someone that has fairly recently come into Doctor Who picking and choosing which ones to watch sounds like a horrible idea. Just watch the show. Seasons are usually short so it goes quickly.
THIS
You don't know which will be someone's favorite episode. Watch it all. Discover what you love or hate on your own.
My personal advice to anyone new is to definitely watch all of the new Who episodes. Don't skip around.
But definitely don't start on Series 1 with Eccleston. If I had started with that there's no way I'd be much of a fan now. That season wasn't bad to go back to, but it didn't excite me too much overall. Series 5 with Matt Smith is the perfect start.
But definitely don't start on Series 1 with Eccleston. If I had started with that there's no way I'd be much of a fan now. That season wasn't bad to go back to, but it didn't excite me too much overall. Series 5 with Matt Smith is the perfect start.
The more I think about it, the more the premiere kind of reminds me a bit of Torchwood. Not a bad episode of Torchwood, but not a great one (were there any great ones?) either.
Something about the tone, lighting and cinematography just felt less like Who and more like TW. Maybe that's just confirmation bias on my part though.
Hopefully the next couple episodes bring the TARDIS back and skew a little more toward adventure stories to balance out the "dark modernity plus aliens!" feel of the premiere.
Something about the tone, lighting and cinematography just felt less like Who and more like TW. Maybe that's just confirmation bias on my part though.
Hopefully the next couple episodes bring the TARDIS back and skew a little more toward adventure stories to balance out the "dark modernity plus aliens!" feel of the premiere.
Partners and Crime and Turn Left still, I didn't remember episodes like Gridlock being too critical and just thought they were really bad.
Anyone can absolutely skip episodes like Love and Monsters anyway.
I never watched Torchwood but it doesn't feel as big and melodramatic as the previous Moffat seasons and subdued
OP
OP
Gridlock is the best episode of Doctor Who ever produced, and anyone who tells you to skip it hasn't got your best interests at heart.
Don't skip any Doctor Who. If you're new, stick around for this coming series, and go back and fill your boots if you like it.
Don't skip any Doctor Who. If you're new, stick around for this coming series, and go back and fill your boots if you like it.
I've tried to give Gridlock a chance so many times. Beyond the speech at the end, though, I find it almost entirely skippable.
I liked Gridlock a lot better the second time.
There's a problem with media in general where I can get hung up on something not making sense and it takes me out of it, and then later it's made to make sense-- but it's too late for me to enjoy it. The premise of Gridlock was like that, but then there's a kind of explanation on the back half that makes it better (no spoilers). Knowing that the second time helped immensely. Still not top-tier, but it got it out of the bottom tier.
There's a problem with media in general where I can get hung up on something not making sense and it takes me out of it, and then later it's made to make sense-- but it's too late for me to enjoy it. The premise of Gridlock was like that, but then there's a kind of explanation on the back half that makes it better (no spoilers). Knowing that the second time helped immensely. Still not top-tier, but it got it out of the bottom tier.
OP
OP
The speech is almost the least of it. The writing, the themes, the world-building, all of it- it's astonishingly good.
Jodie was great, I was surprised by how much I seem to be on board with this, as Torchwood was terrible.
You can immediately tell there is a less saccharine feel to the presentation and I think that's what the series needs. It was also something different about the overall feel of the show in terms of how it was shot and atmosphere and everything; I'm not quite sure I can put my finger on it but I enjoyed the new look quite a bit. The story being subdued, if a little derivative of something like Predator, was pretty good.
I greatly miss Capaldi a lot and I think he got robbed by having some of the more average and forgettable scripts to work with but I'm quite excited for this new Direction for the first time in a while.
You can immediately tell there is a less saccharine feel to the presentation and I think that's what the series needs. It was also something different about the overall feel of the show in terms of how it was shot and atmosphere and everything; I'm not quite sure I can put my finger on it but I enjoyed the new look quite a bit. The story being subdued, if a little derivative of something like Predator, was pretty good.
I greatly miss Capaldi a lot and I think he got robbed by having some of the more average and forgettable scripts to work with but I'm quite excited for this new Direction for the first time in a while.
I don't believe in skipping bad episodes. Suffering is a fundamental part of being a Doctor Who fan.
OP
OP
I watched The Doctor's Daughter only last week. Fear Her is a joyous stroll in the park in comparison to that.
In the U.S. it's free on BBC America's website:
http://www.bbcamerica.com/shows/doc...son-11/episode-01-the-woman-who-fell-to-earth
It's even worse if you've seen Paperhouse, the genuinely interesting 1980s film that the episode lifted all its ideas from.
Welll this is wrong
I'd probably watch it before Sleep No More again
Yeah I could skip that dumb episode about abortion where the moon, which was a space dragon egg, was a clumsy metaphor for a fetus. It was just badly written and the ending was a giant slap in the face to the whole pro vs anti choice choice and a total waste of the audience time.
Thought Jodie was fun and I'm excited to see where she goes from here. Thought the episode was absolute trash and I am not sold at all on the three new companions. Not sure how useful guy who can't ride a bicycle at 30 will be.
Grandma was the only one I enjoyed so of course she ain't around anymore.
Grandma was the only one I enjoyed so of course she ain't around anymore.
I hated that episode and the moral dilemma especially when you realize from everyone else point of view it's the risk of billions of people over one life and no one knew about the convenient egg but the doctor
Plus it fails to be a good analogy on the abortion issue as the whole debate is giving woman choice over their body and that there is no easy answer to the debate. The episode undermines that by saying "Oh it doesn't matter the baby dragon will lay another egg thus fixing the whole problem."
That episode should have been cut or at the very least rewritten.
Honestly, I almost think that they could've pulled it off if they just had Clara's anger be more at the fact that he didn't tell her what was going on, rather than "you didn't respect me".
The whole episode and its central conflict WAS dumb and none of it needed to happen if the Doctor was just forthcoming about what was going on, and if Clara latched onto THAT as her reason for "dumping" Twelve it would've worked better.
Can we agree that Mark Gatiss is the worst? I hate his episodes so much. The only one I can enjoy is Cold War, because the Ice Warriors are cool, and even then it's not really good, just passable. But man, that one with the TV lady alien that kept screaming "FEEED MEEE", the one with the red leech thing in the old woman, Night Terrors and Sleep No More, the Robin Hood one... I know he's best friends with Moffatt but goddamn.
Of course!
Robot of Sherwood wasn't bad, and I legitimately like Cold War-- but he also is responsible for some of the worst episodes such as The Idiot's Lantern (which was maybe my least favorite of the RTD years, though Gods and Monsters is close). Give me "Fear Her" over that any day.
Damn I didn't notice that haha, sorry for the accidental pun
I liked Night Terrors and I think the concept of Sleep No More is good even if the execution was really bad. That said, yeah he is DW episodes have been quite poor overall.
I liked both of those, and Jenny is a genuinely fascinating creation.
Some people compared the Series 11 premiere episode to Torchwood, which I think it's fair. But there was something tongue-in-cheek about the interaction with Tim Shaw that reminded me of Class.
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I dreaded his name every time I saw it attached to a future episode.
I've enjoyed him as an actor, I've enjoyed his writing on other projects, but him writing Who was a baaaaad combo. Cold War is the only one I remember liking of his entire Who career.
I'd be very surprised of they don't find the Tardis by the end of either the next episode or episode 3.
100%. He wrote the only bad episode of Series 10 and it was perhaps the show's worst ever.
It's weird because his writing for Sherlock was good
And placing Robot of Sherwood between Into the Dalek and Listen didn't help.
This is the answer. Are you really a fan if you don't sit and grimace your way through Fear Her, Curse of the Black Spot, Forest of the Night, etc etc, even on a rewatch?
I've had some time to think about it, and I think the only strong feeling I have about this season right now is... Damn, I really miss Murray Gold's score. Getting rid of that really changes the tone of the show. The score's so... dull and muted, now.
I liked Cold War and Robots of Sherwood. But the Crimson Terror was pretty bad and Sleep No More is the only episode of Doctor Who to, ironically, put me to sleep.