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daibhidcSpooky!
Although not as spooky as it could have been - not the episode's fault, though. I know it's been said before but watching a spooky Doctor Who in April with the sun streaming through the window doesn't really work...
So it looks like the arc words this season are "25th November". What else would they be? Back in 2010 the most important date in the universe happened to be the broadcast date of the finale, now we're doing the same thing with added exta-diagetic resonance. ("Extra-diagetic" is a word I learnt from TARDIS Eruditorium. I hope I'm using it right.)
[ETA: Er, oops. 23rd November was the aniversary obviously so 25th November is just a random date...]
The ghost hunters were nicely realised, and I loved the Doctor geeking over their seventies equipment. For a while I suspected the ghost might be another Clara, and given the Doctor's comment that she's "not what [he] expected", I think so did he. (I'm convinced they're bound to bump into another one eventually, and suspect the TARDIS video system is foreshadowing this.) And interesting that Emma warns Clara off the Doctor.
A blue crystal from Metebelis 3! Love a blue crystal from Metebelis 3!
Criticism? Well, the slowing down of time seemed to get ignored once it was inconvenient to the plot (if it takes the whole history of Earth for Hila to take a few steps, why does the time seem to be more or less synchronised when the Doctor goes in?) And I wasn't especially convinced by the "two monsters that love each other" ending. It rather came out of nowhere, and it wasn't particularly clear why we never actually saw the one trapped in our universe. [ETA: Apparently, this is completely not the case. I've never seen the Observer in Fringe except when he's part of the plot either.] I mean, you've got a house filled with electronic gubbins searching for a ghost that's actually a woman in a pocket universe, you can't say "Oh, and there's a monster in there as well but no-one noticed" without a very good explanation. [ETA: This bit is still valid because it's about why they didn't see it, not why we didn't.]
Anyway, that aside I enjoyed it. Next week's looks good, too.
(ETA: Oh, and I found Emma's comment that Clara is a perfectly ordinary girl to be suspicious. Because there's nothing more unusual than perfectly ordinary, and given the description "pretty, clever, more frightened than she lets on", I've a worrying feeling we're going for the "designed to be the ideal Doctor Who companion" storyline that didn't work when they tried it with Sam in the EDAs, and that RTD wisely decided against doing with Rose. I hope I'm wrong.)
Although not as spooky as it could have been - not the episode's fault, though. I know it's been said before but watching a spooky Doctor Who in April with the sun streaming through the window doesn't really work...
So it looks like the arc words this season are "25th November". What else would they be? Back in 2010 the most important date in the universe happened to be the broadcast date of the finale, now we're doing the same thing with added exta-diagetic resonance. ("Extra-diagetic" is a word I learnt from TARDIS Eruditorium. I hope I'm using it right.)
[ETA: Er, oops. 23rd November was the aniversary obviously so 25th November is just a random date...]
The ghost hunters were nicely realised, and I loved the Doctor geeking over their seventies equipment. For a while I suspected the ghost might be another Clara, and given the Doctor's comment that she's "not what [he] expected", I think so did he. (I'm convinced they're bound to bump into another one eventually, and suspect the TARDIS video system is foreshadowing this.) And interesting that Emma warns Clara off the Doctor.
A blue crystal from Metebelis 3! Love a blue crystal from Metebelis 3!
Criticism? Well, the slowing down of time seemed to get ignored once it was inconvenient to the plot (if it takes the whole history of Earth for Hila to take a few steps, why does the time seem to be more or less synchronised when the Doctor goes in?) And I wasn't especially convinced by the "two monsters that love each other" ending. It rather came out of nowhere, and it wasn't particularly clear why we never actually saw the one trapped in our universe. [ETA: Apparently, this is completely not the case. I've never seen the Observer in Fringe except when he's part of the plot either.] I mean, you've got a house filled with electronic gubbins searching for a ghost that's actually a woman in a pocket universe, you can't say "Oh, and there's a monster in there as well but no-one noticed" without a very good explanation. [ETA: This bit is still valid because it's about why they didn't see it, not why we didn't.]
Anyway, that aside I enjoyed it. Next week's looks good, too.
(ETA: Oh, and I found Emma's comment that Clara is a perfectly ordinary girl to be suspicious. Because there's nothing more unusual than perfectly ordinary, and given the description "pretty, clever, more frightened than she lets on", I've a worrying feeling we're going for the "designed to be the ideal Doctor Who companion" storyline that didn't work when they tried it with Sam in the EDAs, and that RTD wisely decided against doing with Rose. I hope I'm wrong.)
no subject
Date: 2013-04-21 02:38 pm (UTC)I just assumed that synchronising the time frames was part of what the Doctor's collection of wires and flashy things was meant to achieve. Not much point going on an expedition into an echo dimension if the people standing by to haul you out are going to be dead of old age before you've taken three steps.
When you say "we never actually saw the one trapped in our universe", by "we" do you mean the characters? Because it was in nearly every scene for the first half of the episode. (Either I got less observant or it went into hiding after the Doctor went on his photo-safari. When the second monster showed up in the Doctor's photo collection, I assumed at first that there was only one monster that had somehow travelled from the house into the echo dimension or vice versa, which may have been what the writer intended me to think.)
That said, I found the resolution of the monsters' story sudden and unconvincing too. But I did enjoy the episode as a whole.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-24 02:10 pm (UTC)...
Okay, I'm going to go away, watch it again, and then maybe rewrite this entire post...