Doctor Who 2010 finale

[theta_g]

River says this post has spoilers.

Comments

[theta_g]

The particular Daleks and such that we saw weren't shot dead; their creation or arrival was averted. I imagine the Pandorica was only restoring the Dalek to the state it was in when the Doctor was boxed

[theta_g]

'Think of me as a paradox in an anomaly, and get on with your tea.' -- Professor Chronotis

[blinovitch]

The Doctor didn't used to show us the entire universe himself; occasionally the camera wandered off and painted a picture bigger than he. Our regulars are very detailed but the rest of the universe has been held away from us in a sense. I think it limits the drama and scale that nuWho can attain.

Moffat's doing some world-building on the edges, at least. He seems to have staked out the 51st century as his own little playground.

[theta_g]

He's spun quite a bit out Robert Holmes' first passing references to Time Agents and the 51st century in 1977. Moffat didn't necessarily need to place anything in that period; that just happened to be the point where Magnus 'Weng-Chiang' Greel was threatening the fabric of spacetime.

[blinovitch]

The 51st century was also the origin of the Doctor and Susan, in the unaired pilot. I think it's become the default "future" for Moffat at least because it's so far off, there's no chance of the audience catching up to and surpassing events to come, as happened with so much of the original series.

[rob_t_firefly]

One of the things I generally didn't like about Who when I was a very young and impatient kid is when the story started, we'd often see people on some planet we've never seen before talking about whatever, evil dictator would do something evil, monster would kill someone, said people would talk about it for a while longer, etc. for 10-15 minutes before we got that first shot of the Doctor puttering about the console room or popping his head out of the TARDIS doors. I wanted them to hurry up and get to the Doctor and the TARDIS, dammit.

As I grew older and understood the plots I appreciated the establishing bits more, but with new Who I hadn't really noticed that we rarely if ever got much more than a quick pre-credits sequence of establishing material anymore. New Who seems in some ways to be precisely the Doctor Who 8-year-old me was craving more than present-day me does.

[theta_g]

Whatever mature themes and nods there may be to the rest of the family, the show always takes care not to alienate the 8-12 audience, since they still have a chance to scare them at that age and start the addiction of a lifetime :-)

I was 13 before Dad and I found Stones of Blood Part Four on PBS one weekday evening at 6. It was so imaginative I kept watching. I was only impatient at having to wait 24 or 72 hours after a cliffhanger!

[rob_t_firefly]

My local PBS used to show every episode of each story in a row, though the show stopping every 20-something minutes to show credits and then skip back two minutes confused me until some PBS host mentioned that in the UK people had to wait a whole week (!!!) between parts.