I don't know if any of you are watching the current season of Doctor Who, but here's my catch up review of last...
I don't know if any of you are watching the current season of Doctor Who, but here's my catch up review of last week's episode, "Oxygen". I will say that this episode may have my favorite line of any episode yet. It probably shouldn't be, but it was so well delivered.
Overall not a bad episode, but the ending is not in its favor. There's some good moments and some good character development, not all of which will be dissected below.
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1) I sense a gratuitous nerd/geek reference to Star Trek. Well, I mean, it was a straight up Star Trek reference. There's also a classic biblical quote that I always think of in terms of Handel's "Messiah".
2) A touching opening. That pretty much guarantees somebody is about to die. Ymmv.
3) Space zombies. Ok. (Shades of "Waters of Mars"?)
4) How many times have we been trapped on a space base and been unable to get back to the TARDIS? Let's see, there's "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit", "42" is on a space ship, not a base, but we're separated form the TARDIS again - in space! Ok, maybe not that often, but it feels like it's been done repeatedly.
5) And the contemporary commentary continues. It's a bit of well done to have the black woman be the one to react to the blue alien, although, honestly, if you've never seen or known about something significantly different you are almost guaranteed to at least be startled. But it goes a bit beyond that and when Bill says she's usually the one who gets the bigotry based on appearance the blue alien gets to wonder why, as if she wasn't the only human there who wasn't white.
5) Leading to my favorite line. When the blue alien (his name is Dahh-Ren) turns to Nardole and Nardole says, "Some of my best friends are bluish." Get it? Huh? It just gets slipped right in there and the look that the alien gives him is spot on.
6) Well, we are indicting corporate profit motives at the expense of humanity, aren't we. Notwithstanding the cautionary subtexts about technology ("smartsuits" that can decide to kill you). Whole big speech about capitalism. "We're fighting the suits!" That was a long episode for a short joke that kind of undercuts the anti-corporatism, but I'm sure it sounded super witty in the writers' room.
7) So there's a thing that's supposed to be the big reveal of this episode which I am really wondering about the science of, especially considering the longer history of Who (he's been in space briefly without a suit before). It's very hand-wavy and I'm having a hard time buying it as anything other than hey, what a cool plot device for some pointlessly long Moffat nonsense that could have been entirely skipped and nothing lost. Speaking of the vault ...
Overall not a bad episode, but the ending is not in its favor. There's some good moments and some good character development, not all of which will be dissected below.
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1) I sense a gratuitous nerd/geek reference to Star Trek. Well, I mean, it was a straight up Star Trek reference. There's also a classic biblical quote that I always think of in terms of Handel's "Messiah".
2) A touching opening. That pretty much guarantees somebody is about to die. Ymmv.
3) Space zombies. Ok. (Shades of "Waters of Mars"?)
4) How many times have we been trapped on a space base and been unable to get back to the TARDIS? Let's see, there's "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit", "42" is on a space ship, not a base, but we're separated form the TARDIS again - in space! Ok, maybe not that often, but it feels like it's been done repeatedly.
5) And the contemporary commentary continues. It's a bit of well done to have the black woman be the one to react to the blue alien, although, honestly, if you've never seen or known about something significantly different you are almost guaranteed to at least be startled. But it goes a bit beyond that and when Bill says she's usually the one who gets the bigotry based on appearance the blue alien gets to wonder why, as if she wasn't the only human there who wasn't white.
5) Leading to my favorite line. When the blue alien (his name is Dahh-Ren) turns to Nardole and Nardole says, "Some of my best friends are bluish." Get it? Huh? It just gets slipped right in there and the look that the alien gives him is spot on.
6) Well, we are indicting corporate profit motives at the expense of humanity, aren't we. Notwithstanding the cautionary subtexts about technology ("smartsuits" that can decide to kill you). Whole big speech about capitalism. "We're fighting the suits!" That was a long episode for a short joke that kind of undercuts the anti-corporatism, but I'm sure it sounded super witty in the writers' room.
7) So there's a thing that's supposed to be the big reveal of this episode which I am really wondering about the science of, especially considering the longer history of Who (he's been in space briefly without a suit before). It's very hand-wavy and I'm having a hard time buying it as anything other than hey, what a cool plot device for some pointlessly long Moffat nonsense that could have been entirely skipped and nothing lost. Speaking of the vault ...
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