Series 5, Episode 13 - " The Big Bang "

GSPfan

Kharn wrote: »

Having watched the series, I have some reservations about what the future holds.

Moffat's writing isn't up to the job. At all.

There wasn't enough depth to any of this series I thought. When I saw that idiot James Corden that the BBC loves so much in The Lodger I thought "Is this what happened? BBC head office wants more creative control and wants the series to go one way and RTD wanted another and here is why we have what we have" which is a real shame.

River Song is a terribly written character and the less I see of her the better as far as I'm concerned. She coulda been really interesting in a Q from TNG sort of way, but I thought she was lame.

A Dalek begging for mercy from her, really? EPIC FAIL.

Even if they turned her into some super villian now, that'd be piss poor and boring. The best thing that character could do is die horribly and have the whole River and Doctor thing never happen. Shame really, Alex Kingston is a good actress.

Rory was on the road to being another Mickey for ages, but they eventually dragged him out of the gutter and that saved him somewhat as far as I'm concerned. He's a likeable character and there's potential to do a lot with him

especially now that he's an Auton.

The 11th Doctor I think is good and I really like the way Mat Smith plays him, gg on that.

I am completely in love with Amy Pond

"You may definitely kiss the bride!"

made me laugh a lot and I think sums her up quite well.

I do look forward to seeing what they do next season or special or whatever they're doing, but I don't think Matt Smith and Karen Gillan can keep carrying the show without some much improved writing.

There is no emoticon for what I am feeling about your Moffat opinion. :mad:

Shame on you on so many levels. Fez's are cool, bow ties are cool, and now apparently un-warrented criticism is cool. You've been hanging around Iguana too much!

angelll

I'm back! According to a guy on gallifrey base:

the doctor didn't make rory an auton. the alliance made rory and auton, without the cracks the alliance never existed. without the alliance rory was never an auton.

So rory is human

GSPfan

angelll wrote: »

I'm back! According to a guy on gallifrey base:


So rory is human

Can't believe people are confused about this issue.

ixoy

Kharn wrote: »

Having watched the series, I have some reservations about what the future holds.

Moffat's writing isn't up to the job. At all.

Do you think RTD's was somehow better? The man who gave us animals made of fat, turned the Doctor into a troll, and had aliens that fart?

Could not disagree more - just look at the amount of Hugos Moffat has won for his episodes!

Shiminay

Ah that's fair enough re: Rory, I thought I saw him saying that he was still made of plastic

I have no beef with the bow-tie or the fez. I just don't think the writing this season is up to scratch at all. I don't think RTD was the be all and end all of writing either though, but Moffat's storyline did nothing for me at all.

Manach

Kharn wrote: »

Ah that's fair enough re: Rory, I thought I saw him saying that he was still made of plastic

Pity - It would be useful for him to have a hand that turned into a laser pistol, nearly as good as an omnipotent sonic screwdriver.

monkeyfudge

It was ridiculously better than any of the RTD finales.

In the RTD ones it's all build up and the issue is resolved in about 2 or 3 minutes at the end.

This used the first episode to set up the problem and the second episode to resolve it. As a result it was far, far more satisfying.

Apolloyon

All righty...I've been holding this in since Saturday...

That was a brilliant finale!

Moffat got it all right! He focused on the characters rather than a splashy ending that that would be all CGI and no pathos. Kudos for geting the right balance.

So many good lines have been quoted already but how about: 'I wear a fez now!' or 'Congratulations Mr Pond'

So much good stuff! And a happy ending for both Rory and Amy!

Roll on the Christmas Special and Season 6 (32!):D

GSPfan

Apolloyon wrote: »

All righty...I've been holding this in since Saturday...

That was a brilliant finale!

Moffat got it all right! He focused on the characters rather than a splashy ending that that would be all CGI and no pathos. Kudos for geting the right balance.

So many good lines have been quoted already but how about: 'I wear a fez now!' or 'Congratulations Mr Pond'

So much good stuff! And a happy ending for both Rory and Amy!

Roll on the Christmas Special and Season 6 (32!):D

Thats the spirit. More of this guy I say!

K-9

Thought I'd post it here, as good a place as any:

pixelburp

K-9 wrote: »

Thought I'd post it here, as good a place as any:

Snap
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=66637258&postcount=22

jasonb

I have to say, I enjoyed it a lot, thought some of it was a little bit glossed over in places, but definitely good TV! Some great acting from Matt Smith too.

A couple of quick points / questions :

Did anyone notice the shout-out to The Princess Bride, with Amy being 'mostly dead' before she was put back in the Pandorica which I'm guessing ressurected her?

I still find Amy occasionally annoying. I know she was delighted to see the Doctor at the wedding, but both at the reception and in the Tardis later she was practically trying to jump him, on her wedding day, with her fiancé beside her! Rory deserves more!

Not too certain how River remembered to give Amy the book, I thought she, like everyone else, would forget the Doctor? I don't really mind too much though!

Anyone see the drawing beside Amelia's bed? It looked like a kid's drawing of Van Gogh's Sunflowers...

Looking forward to watching it again to get all the bits I missed...

J.

popebenny16

pixelburp wrote: »

Snap
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=66637258&postcount=22

tut tut, for i have a thread put up ages ago

Killer_banana

Been away for the past few days and almost killed me having to wait even longer than I originally thought to see this (yes I am extremely lame) but damn, it was worth it. Moffat's writing skills are just...wow. There were one or two bits where I got a little lost but I think I'll figure them out when I watch it again. Considering how much was fit into one episode it was explained pretty brilliantly. One or two loose ends but they'll be tied up in the next series or two. Moffat really wasn't messing when he said they'd have long story arcs. Love it! River's last words were pretty ominous. Alex and Matt have some really nice chemistry developing.

I could go on (and on and on) but I'll leave it at that. Can't believe I have to wait till Christmas to see the next episode. From the sounds of it though it isn't going to be set on earth, thank God!

Added stuff: So someone might have already said this, I don't know, I'm too tired to read every single post but I'm pretty sure the Doctor said that the TARDIS acting as an artificial sun gave the Earth a small bit longer to live than the rest of space and time hance the eye of the storm. It's a bit questionable but I think people analyse it too much. No matter what explanation was given it's such a complicated story that there would probably be some sort of hole to find it and also, it's a kids' show, storylines can only be so complicated, and this one was already very very complicated. Just my view anyway. again, sorry if someone has already said this,

Fringe

Great episode but I was disappointed with how the Doctor got out of the Pandorica. It was just too easy. After the last episode, I was really looking forward to how he'd get out. Instead, Moffat used the wibbley wobbley stuff again and that was it. Besides that, loved everything else.

Harmsden

Late to the game here, but I couldn't help notice someone criticizing the finale because its storytelling would be more suited to a show like Red Dwarf.

Maybe I'm living in a parallel universe, but is Red Dwarf not one of the greatest SF television shows of all time? Sure, it lost its way a bit, but underneath the comedy is some of the tightest SF writing you'll ever find on the box. It often beat Star Trek: The Next Generation to the punch, dealing with an idea or concept that would show up much later in the bigger-budgeted, glossier American competitor.

Red Dwarf rocks balls and ovaries. Is Moffat's writing similar? Perhaps, but that is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a bad thing.

As for his use of time paradoxes, it's consistent with a lot of his writing up to this point, not only that, but with a lot of time-travel writing. The Spanish movie 'Time Crimes' is probably the best example and best defense I can offer. Moving forward in time involves moving from point A to point B. Moving backwards in time involves moving from point B to point A, but the future has already happened, so you've probably already done that meaning there might be a point C and D sharing the same spaces as point A and B.

Long story short, point A, the 'original', will always get kind of... diluted.

phil1nj

Harmsden wrote: »

Late to the game here, but I couldn't help notice someone criticizing the finale because its storytelling would be more suited to a show like Red Dwarf.

Maybe I'm living in a parallel universe, but is Red Dwarf not one of the greatest SF television shows of all time? Sure, it lost its way a bit, but underneath the comedy is some of the tightest SF writing you'll ever find on the box. It often beat Star Trek: The Next Generation to the punch, dealing with an idea or concept that would show up much later in the bigger-budgeted, glossier American competitor.

Red Dwarf rocks balls and ovaries. Is Moffat's writing similar? Perhaps, but that is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a bad thing.

As for his use of time paradoxes, it's consistent with a lot of his writing up to this point, not only that, but with a lot of time-travel writing. The Spanish movie 'Time Crimes' is probably the best example and best defense I can offer. Moving forward in time involves moving from point A to point B. Moving backwards in time involves moving from point B to point A, but the future has already happened, so you've probably already done that meaning there might be a point C and D sharing the same spaces as point A and B.

Long story short, point A, the 'original', will always get kind of... diluted.

I mentioned the Red Dwarf series in an earlier post and my comments were in no way derogatory. My point was that Red Dwarf is first and foremost a comedy series where time travel has been used for comic effect BUT at least it is consistent with its own logic.

Moffat's use of a paradox to get The Doctor out of the Pandorica was a cheat as there is no logic that I can see. Any use of a paradox requires some sort of time travel device to kick off the time loop (any of the movies mentioned so far - Primer, Time Crimes, The Terminator movie Series, Harry Potter etc) all had some sort of time travel/time machine element contained within their resepective paradoxes to allow the paradox to happen in the first place. Even Moffat's episode "Blink" (which was used as a stick to beat me with earlier) had this time travel element sandwhiched in at the end when Sally Sparrow meets the 10th Doctor before he has experienced the events of the episode. But he still had access to the TARDIS which allowed (sort of) for the events to unfold as they did and still make sense.

In the Big Bang, this time travel element was not introduced until AFTER the Doctor was out of the Padorica (River's Vortex manipulator), once he had this, he then could continue time hoping to get the various elements in place to allow Rory to get him out of the Padorica.
Seems like Mr. Moffat likes to play a bit fast and loose with the "rules" of timey, wimey, wibbly, wobbly paradoxes. Which is fine (and it makes for entertaining episodes) but he'd better expect a bit of criticism when stuff just doesn't add up.

Sorry guys, but after multiple viewings of this episode (which did have some cracking parts to it) I just feel a wee bit cheated.

Now I'm off to smoke me a kipper!

Wibbs

Kharn wrote: »

Moffat's writing isn't up to the job. At all.

I think he's a good writer, very good at times, but more a technical writer. He's brilliant at the time travel, myriad threads coming together bit, of which blink was his high point. I'm not so sure of him as the overall producer, story arc creator and I find him hit and miss when it comes to emotional relationship stuff. The way he handled the dr/amy luuurve bit I found lacking and trite TBH. RTD had his duff moments, but I think he was far better at dealing with that. He also introduced the whole concept to the series, which I suspect if moffat had started the rejigged Who never would have.

There wasn't enough depth to any of this series I thought. When I saw that idiot James Corden that the BBC loves so much in The Lodger I thought "Is this what happened? BBC head office wants more creative control and wants the series to go one way and RTD wanted another and here is why we have what we have" which is a real shame.

Yea kinda felt the same tbh.

River Song is a terribly written character and the less I see of her the better as far as I'm concerned.

+1

She coulda been really interesting in a Q from TNG sort of way, but I thought she was lame.

A Dalek begging for mercy from her, really? EPIC FAIL.

yep talk about obvious.

Even if they turned her into some super villian now, that'd be piss poor and boring. The best thing that character could do is die horribly and have the whole River and Doctor thing never happen. Shame really, Alex Kingston is a good actress.

Yes she is, but like you I never got the attraction with the river song character at all. She acts more like his mother than a potential wife. Zero chemistry in the writing or acting

Rory was on the road to being another Mickey for ages, but they eventually dragged him out of the gutter and that saved him somewhat as far as I'm concerned. He's a likeable character and there's potential to do a lot with him

especially now that he's an Auton.

apparently he's not, but yea he's a likable character alright. TBH I like him the most in the current series.

The 11th Doctor I think is good and I really like the way Mat Smith plays him, gg on that.

He's defo gotten better for me alright. I'm not that pushed on his doctor as its written and he tends towards too many acting ticks, but he's grown on me somewhat.

I do look forward to seeing what they do next season or special or whatever they're doing, but I don't think Matt Smith and Karen Gillan can keep carrying the show without some much improved writing.

and direction I'd say too.

Shiminay

One thing that interests me is that Neil Gaiman is on board to write at least 1 episode of the next season. I'd love for them to let him write the arc and then bring in whoever to write the individual episodes - or how ever it is they write TV

norrie rugger

phil1nj wrote: »

In the Big Bang, this time travel element was not introduced until AFTER the Doctor was out of the Padorica (River's Vortex manipulator), once he had this, he then could continue time hoping to get the various elements in place to allow Rory to get him out of the Padorica.

Relative to the viewing aspect that you had.

If you watched the episode backwards you would get the kind of "logic" that you are seeing in Blink.

It is the same paradox just told a different way

phil1nj

norrie rugger wrote: »

Relative to the viewing aspect that you had.

If you watched the episode backwards you would get the kind of "logic" that you are seeing in Blink.

It is the same paradox just told a different way

Nope, sorry still don't get it. At some point, either watching the episode forwards or backwards (why you would want to do this is beyond me) it is never explained how the Doctor gets out of the Padorica to use the Vortex manipulator. Now this back and forth can go on all day long but if I'm just expected to believe that the Doctor can create a Paradox essentially out of thin air to suit his needs then it seriously detracts from the entire series so far. I mentioned before in an earlier post that the Master had to cannibalize and modify the TARDIS to put in place a much simpler paradox yet the Doctor seems to have been able to construct this one with nothing more than an Auton companion, the power of his mind and a sonic screwdriver .
Like I said, very fast and loose writing and a bit of a let down all in all.

Stark

phil1nj wrote: »

Nope, sorry still don't get it. At some point, either watching the episode forwards or backwards (why you would want to do this is beyond me) it is never explained how the Doctor gets out of the Padorica to use the Vortex manipulator. Now this back and forth can go on all day long but if I'm just expected to believe that the Doctor can create a Paradox essentially out of thin air to suit his needs then it seriously detracts from the entire series so far. I mentioned before in an earlier post that the Master had to cannibalize and modify the TARDIS to put in place a much simpler paradox yet the Doctor seems to have been able to construct this one with nothing more than an Auton companion, the power of his mind and a sonic screwdriver .
Like I said, very fast and loose writing and a bit of a let down all in all.

I concur. It was all well and good in "Time Crash", which was meant as a spoof and was cleverly done in "Blink", but here it was just lazy.

ixoy

phil1nj wrote: »

Now this back and forth can go on all day long but if I'm just expected to believe that the Doctor can create a Paradox essentially out of thin air to suit his needs then it seriously detracts from the entire series so far.

I'm hesistant ... but I kinda agree with this. Otherwise the Doctor could get out of all situations because... he had to get out of them in order to get out of them. It's a bit cheap. What would have been far more interesting is if the Doctor had escaped somehow, perhaps at the cost of his life, and altered the time line that way so that the alternate timeline could come into being where he did free himself.
It's far from the worst example of time travel paradoxes but it's been done cleverer both within the series ("Blink") and in other shows.

monkeyfudge

ixoy wrote: »

I'm hesistant ... but I kinda agree with this. Otherwise the Doctor could get out of all situations because... he had to get out of them in order to get out of them. It's a bit cheap. What would have been far more interesting is if the Doctor had escaped somehow, perhaps at the cost of his life, and altered the time line that way so that the alternate timeline could come into being where he did free himself.
It's far from the worst example of time travel paradoxes but it's been done cleverer both within the series ("Blink") and in other shows.

Yep. If somehow there was one of the cracks inside the Pardorica and he had to use that for time travel and that was what meant he wasn't able to stay on the right side of the cracks at the end, as that too was a bit vague.

Memnoch99

Loved it. Nice that everything wasnt answered and at least some plot lines are carried over to the next series. Didnt quite live up to the expectation, (he DID get out of the Pandorica a little too easily) but ended up a very good episode. The fez and Rorys ''I was Plastic/He was the stripper at my stag'' was very funny. While his love for the Fez is funny it does look stupid.

On a side note-how is the Doctor doesnt die straight away after being zapped by Daleks? Alright the Dalek in this is weakened but he hangs on for a while after getting zapped by the Dalek in Stolen Earth as well (if thats the right episode.)

Stark

Memnoch99 wrote: »

On a side note-how is the Doctor doesnt die straight away after being zapped by Daleks? Alright the Dalek in this is weakened but he hangs on for a while after getting zapped by the Dalek in Stolen Earth as well (if thats the right episode.)

I'm thinking the regeneration process starts as soon as he gets zapped. Like in "End of Time", where he hangs on for ages and ages and ages and ages and ages and "Hello Rose!" after getting irradiated.

pixelburp

Stark wrote: »

I'm thinking the regeneration process starts as soon as he gets zapped. Like in "End of Time", where he hangs on for ages and ages and ages and ages and ages and "Hello Rose!" after getting irradiated.

I think Time Lords have the power to control when / if their regeneration kicks in; The Master delibrately stopped himself from regenerating at the end of series 3 if I recall correctly. So presumably the Doctor just did the same.

Edinduberdeen

I've only started watching Dr Who this season properly, having seen just the odd episode here and there of the previous new series (serieses?), and I'd be constantly disappointed if I tried to make sense of any episode (in the last episode, for example, when young Amy is erased from time, not just now, but all of her history, everything she's done, is erased, shouldn't older Amy still be in the Pandorica? When the artifacts in the museum disappear, shouldn't their display cases also be gone, or even the whole museum? No stars in existence should have completely changed human history, but it seems to be almost the same world as ours. No sun, yet they still seem to measure time in years that are roughly equivalent to ours, etc...).
HAVING SAID THAT, I know not to try to make sense of it and really enjoy it that way. Otherwise it'd make my head explode. It's fun and quirky and I think the writers know not to take it too seriously, and it makes for some ridiculous, nonsensical, fantastic stories!

Cris Jones

I didn't think the last episode of the series was any good. Anti-climax.

protosByte

Really enjoyed this episode and the series as a whole. I stopped watching RTD's stuff after series 2 I think, but when I heard Moffat was picking up the reins I got back into it and I'm glad that I did.
I never saw any of the old series but I was addicted to the books as a kid - especially Terence Dicks stuff, and it seemed to me that this series really had the same ethos as the books.
The only issue I had with the series is that not enough people died ! In doctor who people are dying all over the place. It's a trademark thing. We need more death ..........

I can see some peoples problems with Deus Ex Machina in the last episode but it's time travel .... it's going to happen. I thought it was cleverly done. Much better than that dumb episode where the Doctor turned into a troll or something and was brought back by everyone shouting "Doctor" - That was the episode which finished me with RTD.

Looking forward to next season.