Keeping it short

[avevale_intelligencer]

Another spectacular return to form after last week's inspired silliness. Moffat, out of ideas, desperately scrapes the bottom of the barrel. Yet another take on the Monster You Can't See, which is obviously a big thing with him. A desperate grab at reclaiming some of the deserved success of Day Of by including three seconds of John Hurt. A chunk of time in the comfort zone of romantic comedy land. The triumphant return of that old sf standard, the Identical Descendant, for reasons passing understanding. Yet another absolutely final this-is-it-folks end of the universe, and not a Toclafane in sight. And an ending that will doubtless draw great praise from the tellyrati for the way it resolves absolutely nothing at all.

Good thing he didn't try for a plot on top of all that. Or, you know, anything new.

Comments

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

My feeling about the ep is that time is a piece of string that's normally straight, and we travel from one end to the other. but that the TARDIS crumples it up into a ball, and allows us to step across anywhere it's touching itself. (See also Beckett, Dr. Sam, Quantum Leap) That should about cover it.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Oh. So you think that, rather than a farrago of obviously recycled odds and ends roughly stitched together by a writer at the end of his tether to fill forty-five minutes, with no plot and no resolution apart from a bit of psychobabble, it was a bold experiment in non-linear narrative that I just didn't get 'cos I'm fick?

Well, well, you could be right.

I can see one way in which this could be a subtle foreshadowing of developments in the series arc. If a certain artifact turns out actually to be in the possession of a character who did not appear (in present form) in this episode, thus confirming one of the current fan theories about said character, then that will be one thing. (Though, of course, that would involve Clara having made at least one spectacularly embarrassing mistake.)

I'd still call it a fairly rotten episode, though, and the psychobabble was arrant piffle.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

No, no, NOT intended as a criticism of you. I was simply reminded of that view of time travel by all the self-timeline-crossing stuff in the ep.

Moffatt can't do serious, I think. When he tries for portentous, he gets bombastic; when he wants to be deep and gnostic, he gets heavy-handed. If he didn't have a great actor as his lead right now, he'd be receiving packages of rotten cabbages via next-day post for his feedback.

[aunty_marion]

I watched it tonight, on the repeat, 'cos I was out last night, and my immediate reaction at the end was: "That would have worked much better with no dialogue at all." Some sound effects, maybe, but preferably not too many, or background music, and a bit more light.

Then we really would have had to 'listen' to the 'story' being 'told'.

[michael cule (from livejournal.com)]

Twas a shaggy dog story, it was...

(Though I will say that it could easily have been the Toclafane banging on the door.)

So far I've not been that impressed. I keep wanting to like that people more and the actors aren't bad but there's nothing in the individual episodes nor the series arc (such as it is) to give them any traction.