Doctor Who - Bells of Saint John (SPOILERS)

[Kheldarson]

That speech was beautiful.

Too bad they tried to follow it up with the speech about the leaf. That really fell flat.

[smileyeagle1021]

Clara's speech about the leaf actually was really good... the Doctor's follow up on it... not so much... they should have just left it with Clara's speech about how it stood not just for what had been, but what should have been.

[cinema guy]

An Ice Warrior on a submarine.

It was pretty good, had a great cast - including David Warner! Clara was good - there is something odd about her being unsure about what she did in her spare time.

It didn't quite hit the tension level it needed - being trapped in a stranded submarine with an alien monster should be a tense episode. The deus ex machina ending was a bit lame too.

[Kheldarson]

I could understand Clara not having an answer (she was stressed and it through her for a loop. I can give you that), and I thought the tension was good but...

Dear Lord, Moffat, your ending sucked. The villain didn't learn his lesson (which seemed to be the point and no, I don't count showing mercy after being rescued...he should've shown mercy and THEN be rescued); Clara singing was fine, but, again, it should've been with the villain there; and the Doctor seemed largely ineffectual.

I liked the rest of the episode though.

[KhirasHY]

Moffat didn't write this one This one was by Mark Gatiss, though it was his best episode yet IMO. For reference, he wrote "The Idiot's Lantern" (the TV eats faces), and "Victory of the Daleks" (spitfires in spaaaaaaaace), so this is a marked improvement I did like how they dealt with the Ice Warriors, they made them look a lot better without changing too much. What a difference 39 years makes

On another note, anyone notice how utterly familiarly that doll was dressed? Who have we seen that dressed like that, I wonder? And hungry...like...the wolf?

I did at the HADS system being reactivated. You would think he would remember that the security systems of the TARDIS have always backfired in awful ways on him At least he had the good sense to mention that it seemed like a good idea at the time...

[smileyeagle1021]

I prefered Rings of Akheton to Cold War. This episode was good, but Rings of Akheton I think leveraged Matt Smith's better (give Matt Smith a really long and complicated speech and he'll knock it out of the park). And while the episode did have suspence, the Doctor never truly put himself on the line... yeah, he threatens to destroy them all, himself included, but we have seen in previous episodes (The God Complex to be specific) where he hints that he is ready for death.

eta- also, Rings of Akheton, the Doctor's speech to Mary is exactly the speech I needed to hear right now with my life.

[Moirae]

Feels like they're stretching this season. And I'm getting tired of Clara constantly looking at the doctor for approval. The first two times we saw her, she was self assured and strong. Now she's kind of a scaredy cat and seems to do things only because he expects them. Where's the bright light that we saw in those first two episodes?

[KabeRinnaul]

My issue this season has been with the poor pacing and consistently weak endings. And I think those can be laid at Moffat's feet, as he's head writer and executive producer. A great deal of the pacing problems seem to come from the fact that the show is simply trying to do too much.

Look at the latest, Hide, for example (whiting out spoilers as the thread has been doing).

The whole episode feels very choppy, with so many things happening at once, but so much time being spent on each. How much do we need? The haunting revealed to be a space-time anomaly of some sort, well, that much is expected. But in addition to the ghost hunt, we're also including an unresolved sexual tension plot with the researcher and his assistant, constantly chatting about the researcher's wartime history (no matter how much it's supposed to be a reflection on the Doctor - the issue never really came up beyond just throwing it out there, so that's just one more irrelevant plot thread), repeatedly hinting at a (main-universe, not pocket dimension) monster that only mattered for a minor and honestly rather cheesy reveal at the end, having everyone question the nature and honesty of everyone else, and taking a moment to work in a scene where Clara expresses basically the exact same doubts as Rose did back in "The End of the World" (s27e2).

On top of how busy all of that is, we not only have the basic conflict of resolving the nature of the ghost, which evolves naturally into rescuing the trapped time-traveler, but we also have the monsters in the mist, and the assertion that taking the TARDIS into the pocket dimension would trap it there, even though they then proceed to do exactly that, twice.

I think the episode could have been vastly improved had we just excluded the monsters entirely, let the conflict be the rescue and then the Doctor himself needing a rescue, and saved Clara's moment of doubt until the end when it wouldn't be a sudden break in story momentum. This has also been what seems like the third episode in a row to spend a lot of time setting up a conflict, only to try and wrap it all up in about five minutes.

I promise there's text in that big block of white there.

[cinema guy]

I agree. The endings have been weak and they have been trying to cram too much into 45minutes of show.

The Professor's wartime history was just thrown out there, no mystery, no development.

The whole revelation about the nature of the ghost seemed to be a giant leap in the dark.

And again the revelation about the monster was plucked out of thin air.

Oh, and the fixed points in time thing really did not seem to apply in this case. And in any case it is a nonsense in relation to other parts of the Who universe.

[Jay 2K Winger]

I definitely agree that this half-season is a lot weaker than previous ones. I almost wonder if Moffat has tapped out now that his "pet companions" (the Ponds) have been written out. The lack of a definite season arc hasn't helped, because that at least can get the fans talking. (Season 1 had "Bad Wolf." Season 2, "Torchwood." Season 3, "Mister Saxon." Season 4, the disappearing planets. The Ten Specials, "he will knock four times" and "your song is ending." Season 5, the cracks in the universe. Season 6, Lake Silencio and Eyepatch Lady/Madame Kovarian.

The closest thing Seaosn 7 had in the first half was the fact that the Doctor was not showing up in any databases. And in the second half, it's clear that the season's mystery is supposed to be who or what Clara is, but it's not been pulled off as well.

[Moirae]

That's a good point, Jay. Every season since the first with Chris Eccleston have all had some kind of subtle story arc that has left everyone thinking and guessing. This season hasn't. It's one separate episode after another, not something we're used to with Dr Who. Usually we have hints dropped in episode after episode, sometimes taking years to come to fruition.

[Jay 2K Winger]

I'm not even asking Moffat to club us over the head with arc foreshadowing. Davies was good with the subtlety of the arcs in his run. Moffat's arc foreshadowing has often come at the tail end of an episode. The cracks appearing in the walls where the TARDIS has been (or the best one being a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment when the clouds, clearing over the city in "Vampires in Venice," briefly form the crack), the children singing "Tick Tock Goes The Clock," or the Doctor looking at a screen showing information about Amy's pregnancy status or the information about Lake Silencio.

I liked the build-up of Madame Kovarian, because her appearances were midway through some episodes. The quasi-arcs that Season 7 has had thus far-- The Doctor's disappearance from records, and the mystery of who/what Clara is-- have not been handled as well, but I'm hoping that as we draw closer to the season finale, we'll get some info dropped that suddenly makes things more clear.

In other news, it appears that the Season 7 finale is titled (spoilered for those who don't want to know) ["The Name of The Doctor"]. Interesting thing to note, it's the 121st Dr. Who episode to use the naming convention of "The [X] of [Y]."

121. Which is 11 squared. [/Geek Moment]

[KhirasHY]

I will say I enjoyed Hide (I thought they did some fun stuff there) right up until the ending. I honestly would've been much happier if they had changed some things: (Spoilertext) Like having the "monster" be similar to the Paradox Gargoyles from Father's Day, things that pop into collapsing universes to eat the things that were there. Langoliers, of a sort. As is, the super fast resolution ending was the worst part of the episode.

Some things I did note though (more Spoilertext):

Clara is hinted at being an empath psychic I think: "Doctor, I'm not happy." She could've said anything like "scared" or "frightened", but instead she chose to say that. Could be important later on.

Kabe mentioned she said almost the same thing that Rose did back in a S2 episode...in thinking about it, she has more similarities to Rose than you may think. For instance, her father was nearly run over by a car...that had the same make, model, and color (different license plate) as the car that killed Rose's father in "Father's Day". There have been a lot of Rose references in each episode as well, either in lines ("Hungry like the wolf"), references (quoted lines, the doll in Cold War), and so on. We know she's coming back in the 50th anniversary episode, but maybe there's something more going on.

I am interested in what the TARDIS keeps doing with Clara...I don't think it dislikes her, but it is confused by her existence. Hopefully the next episode will help flesh that out a bit.

Also: "Doctor What?" "If you like..."

[smileyeagle1021]

My thoughts on the episode, obviously in white to avoid spoilers: They should have left out the bit about the monsters all together. The story about the lost time traveller was more than enough to complete the episode. I get it that the monsters added suspense in the noises they made and by having something chase them in the pocket universe, but I would have preferred almost it being left at, some things we just don't know, and we have to accept that. Yeah, I know, then people would complain about lazy writing, but lazy writing can work, after all, some of the best stories are the ones that leave you wondering. Instead we had them take 5 minutes that was desperately needed for the character development between the Doctor and Clara or between the empath and the scientest, can't remember their names right now to give us an answer to a question which at that point, we weren't asking anymore. end spoiler

[Jay 2K Winger]

I found this interesting theory about who/what Clara is.