Jenna-Louise Coleman

Leave a comment Posted on by Mata Doctor Who

Doctor Who 8×03: Robot of Sherwood Review

https://cdn.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/Doctor-Who-Robot-of-Sherwood-Poster.jpeg

Uh, what did we just watch? Anyone know what Gatiss was smoking when he penned ‘Robot of Sherwood’ and can we have some? I’m playing, but really it was a rather silly episode, wasn’t it? And it served to remind us that Doctor Who, at its core, is a children’s show. Where episodes like ‘Robot of Sherwood’ shouldn’t be so surprising. And yet, it was.

The Doctor lets Clara decide their next destination and with much fangirling she reveals that she really wants to meet the legendary hero himself- Robin Hood (played with much ha ha ha-ing by Tom Riley). They do and much slapstick humour is to be had, with a grating amount of fake laughter and much too merry men. I don’t know, I felt a bit like the Doctor myself the entire episode. Perhaps if I had a little more Clara in me I might have enjoyed the episode a bit more, but there seemed to be a forced atmosphere to it that I couldn’t shake. Was it the generous amount of sun in Nottingham? As the Doctor pointed out. Or the smile that didn’t reach Robin’s eyes? Or was it the irritating way he laughed, as Jess described, with a pause between each ha.

Perhaps it was the conflict between the two heroes. The man, the myth the legend… the Doctor or Robin Hood? Both rooted in their respective histories, from the page to the screen we’re all fine to accept them both in the show as ‘real’. Well at least Clara is, the Doctor -and by extension us- isn’t so sure. He spends the majority of the episode trying to expose Robin Hood as a fraudbot. Because he can’t possibly be real, that jawline and perfect teeth can’t exist. While it made for good (eh) banter, it grew ever so slightly tiresome by like the fourth round of pot-shots. All the while the Doctor was forbidding banter altogether. No banter from the Doctor? Sounds like a Tui Ad.

I agree, with Jess, that the storyline left a lot to be desired. A bit weak, saved only by the actors’ convictions to be their characters. Because what was even happening this episode? Seriously, The Sheriff of Nottingham is stealing gold to power a spaceship because he wants to fly to London and take over England with his robot army? Oh…kay. But this (is Doctor Who so what are you even complaining about?!) episode isn’t trying to bring the gravitas, not even a little bit. It’s slapstick and tongue-in-cheek humour with robots in a forest circa 1190AD-ish. They’ll take us back to the series-long arc soon enough, but for now enjoy a bit of the funny.

Next week they’re bringing the scary/creepy, you know how I love the scary/creepy!

Honourable Mentions:

- Them hair extensions tho’.

- History is a burden, stories can make us fly.

Leave a comment Posted on by Mata Doctor Who, UK TV

Second “Day of the Doctor” Trailer: Longer and WOWAWEEWA.

Not much to say except enjoy! The BBC released this earlier today, about 20 minutes ago on youtube haha. If you haven’t seen it, GET TO IT!

Oh and hahahahahahahahahaha stop it!

Leave a comment Posted on by Mata Doctor Who, TV Talk

Doctor Who 7×13 - The Name of the Doctor Review

Your name is a very important thing, as the Doctor points out ‘the name you choose is like a promise you make.’ The Doctor chose to be called the Doctor, he promised to save others, to heal. So at some point the Doctor broke that promise and was therefore not deserving of the name. Or at least a regeneration we didn’t know existed. A regeneration played by John Hurt, who we’ll have to wait until November 23rd to properly meet. (Excuse me while I go rewatch Merlin episodes.) However I’m getting ahead of myself here, let’s back up a bit.

When you are a time-traveler there is one place you must never go. One place in all of space and time you must never ever find yourself, your grave. Unfortunately that’s the one place the Doctor must go in order to save his friends, Vastra, Strax and Jenny, providing she’s still saveable at this point. The three people who cared for him during the ‘dark times’, after Amy and Rory’s departure, are in peril and being detained in the one place the Doctor should never go, Trenzalore. Why must he never go there?

On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked. A question that must never, ever be answered.

Doctor who? Who’s glad his name was never uttered aloud for us to hear? It was answered, by River, but no one heard. Oh sweet heavens, there would have been pandemonium otherwise, that or great disappointment. However there we are, against the TARDIS’ wish, on Trenzalore because the Great Intelligence (and his Whisper Men) can’t give it a break. We discover the Doctor’s Tomb within the dying TARDIS, that was beautiful despite leaking the essence that makes it bigger on the inside.

Before we get there, however, we had to go through the secret passageway, River Song’s ‘tombstone’.

Seeing River again was lovely. Saying goodbye was… difficult. The Doctor doesn’t like endings, we know this. Nor do we. So his goodbye to River was, well, bittersweet. Because it hurt, but it was perfect. I mean:

Making him say goodbye like he was coming back was the closest thing to a goodbye you can get with the Doctor. Although, I still believe this isn’t the last we’ll see of River. She’s mentally linked to Clara now. However how and what exactly that entails is… Spoilers. Damn it!

And the answer to the Impossible Girl finally rears its head. We finally understand who/what Clara is. It makes sense, just don’t try to delve too far into it. When the Great Intelligence decides to walk into the Doctor’s time stream and essentially rewrite the Doctor, undoing all the right the Doctor’s done it sets his time stream on fire and the only way to save it is for Clara to also jump into the Doctor’s time stream. In doing so she is torn into a million pieces by the winds of time, a million versions of herself, living and dying all over time and space. She becomes a million copies, echoes, of herself. This is how she becomes that impossible girl. River says that she wouldn’t be her anymore, however I like to think that it is all of her versions that make Clara who she is. She is, after all, the impossible girl. These versions of her are ingredients of Clara, spread out through time and space. She is soufflé girl because all of her echoes make her. ‘The soufflé isn’t the soufflé — the soufflé is the recipe.’

I don’t know where I am. I just know I’m running. Sometimes it’s like I’ve lived a thousand lives in a thousand places. I’m born, I live, I die. And always there’s the Doctor. Always I’m running to save the Doctor. Again and again and again. And he hardly ever hears me, but I’ve always been there. Right from the very beginning. Right from the day he started running.

So who, then. Is this version of the Doctor that doesn’t deserve the name? Who is he? We’ve seen a few theories thrown about here and there. The Valeyard. Ninth Doctor? A regeneration of himself that occurred just before or during the Time War to do the unspeakable in order to come out the other side, not unscathed but alive and psychologically damaged enough to bury the memory beneath the surface? We won’t know until the 50th Anniversary episode, where we will encounter David Tennant and Billie Piper reprising their roles as Ten and Rose and of course, John Hurt as… “The Doctor.“

And with that I leave you with the final scene, just in case you needed it. Who am I kidding? Of course you need it again.

Special Mentions:

- Strax, everything this Sontaren says deserves to be preserved in an archive of hilarity.

- ‘Those little Daleks.’ HAHAHAHAHA

- ‘What kind of idiot would try and steal a faulty TARDIS?’ This guy.

Care to theorise?

Leave a comment Posted on by Mata Doctor Who, TV Talk

Doctor Who 7×09 - Hide Review

Doctor Who 7x09 Hide
This might be my favourite episode of Doctor Who this year, granted there have only been a few episodes, with Cold War being my least. We’re given a genuinely scary premise at the start that, as with everything in Doctor Who, turns out to have a rational explanation in the end. Well, I say rational but what’s rational about a girl trapped in a pocket universe and a lonely monster? Oh, spoilers, by the way.

So in this episode we have a very large, very old manor and inside that manor we have Professor Alec Palmer and his companion- sorry, I mean assistant, Emma Grayling who is also an empathic psychic and they’re trying to contact a ghost. So it would only make sense for the Doctor and Clara to come a knockin’, right? Because it’s ‘Ghost time!’

The atmosphere, writing and acting were superb. In that first half there were moments where I thought ‘yeah that’s going to have a cameo in my nightmares tonight’ however there was enough banter between the Doctor and Clara, as well as the Professor and even with Emma, that I could relax and enjoy the Doctor looking like he was teaching steps to a dance when identifying the cold spot in the music room.

The idea of bravery is mentioned or referenced a bit more in this episode. Clara points out that the Professor’s purchase of an old creepy, abandoned and rumoured to be haunted, manor with his own money is incredibly brave. Clara’s bravery is tested more and more with each episode, although I will admit that it was stretched farther last week, this week it seemed a bit more, I don’t know, human? She disputes the Doctor’s assertion that she would want to wander around in search of a ghost. Understandable. And it seems that in order to pluck up the courage to go with him, Clara tells the Doctor to ‘dare’ her. Accepting a dare is something incredibly human, you do things when dared to because it’s a great motivator. And I couldn’t help but think ‘challenge accepted’ when the Doctor ‘dared’ Clara. Even if it was per her request.

‘Experience makes liars of us all.’ Rule number one, the Doctor lies. The entire trip to 1974 to see a ghost is actually a ruse for the Doctor to have Emma read Clara, to gage what the psychic might glean off the Impossible Girl. Nothing out of the ordinary, according to Emma, but does the Doctor believe her? He’s seen too much and knows too much, just like the Professor, to ever just upfront about himself. Emma tells Clara that he has a sliver of ice in his soul and it prompts her, spurned by seeing the birth of the earth to its death, to question whether he even cares about them, humans. Clara, you have no idea.

Clara’s turbulent relationship with the TARDIS is so far my favourite relationship. I mean, sassy TARDIS interface telling Clara she’s up herself (in a matter of speaking) was perhaps the best interaction between the TARDIS and a companion.

image

I’m glad they managed to resolve or put their differences aside to save the Doctor from being stuck in the pocket universe. But what those differences are still eludes us. What does the TARDIS have against her? The TARDIS knows she’s Impossible, but how and why? That’s the question of the season though, isn’t it? Who is she? It’s why the Doctor took this adventure to interrupt Professor Palmer and Emma’s paranormal investigations.

I reckon they would have eventually managed to help time-traveler Hila Tarcorian, somehow. The Doctor even pointed out that as blood relatives, however far down in the family tree Hila was from Emma and the Professor, their blood was what called to her in the first place.

I don’t know that I liked the Doctor turning the entire experience into a mere love story, I know love stories can be epic but I think turning this ‘ghost story’ into a love story may have detracted from the overall impact of the scare. Although it was nice having it end on a positive note. Also, referencing of the Doctor and Rose’s separation after series 2?

Special Mentions:

- ‘You grumpy old cow!’

- Nope. Nope nope nope.

- Warm feelings restored.
1 Comment Posted on by Mata Doctor Who, TV Talk

Doctor Who 7×08 Cold War Review

This week’s review will be in the style of a hard out gangsta.
Aye yo they’ve gone back in time to the Cold War. Awww shiiiit, historical adventure! We about to see what happens when white people on one side of the world with nukes and white people on the other side of the world with nukes point that shit at each other in a damn Mexican stand off. Okay, I failed, I can’t do it. (Edit: I hope someone picked up on the Psych ‘Mexican Stand Off’ joke. No? Sigh. Okay.)
This week the Doctor and Clara travel back to 1983 (five years before I was born btw) during the Cold War, under the sea and in a failing submarine with some Soviets and nuclear missiles! Oh what fun, and they were apparently trying to get to Vegas. Ah TARDIS, you’ve done it again and in that confusing beginning sequence things get cray and the TARDIS disappears. We later find out it’s because the Doctor had reset her Hostile Actions Displacement System making her relocate when shit hits the fan.
We had an old who monster make a reappearance, the martian Ice Warriors but just any Ice Warrior but the most badass one out Grand Marshall Skaldak who has to find out by a bunch of humans in a metal coffin fitted out with nuclear missiles that he’s been M.I.A for 5000 years. Now that is a nap if ever I heard of one. Skaldak might have been convinced to just let them go had some idiot with a cattle prod not been so trigger happy with it. And so Skaldak goes all die hard on them because it’s not like he’s got anything to lose. He talks about his daughter and how she’s probably dead by now and that’s what Clara uses to sort of reach him in the end when his peeps finally hear his distress call and come get him and he leaves without disarming the launch sequence. Clara sings, as the professor had tried to get her earlier to do, to diffuse the tension. Clara proves that she can take orders, be willing and ready to help out and that she’s brave while also being absolutely shit-scared. Well courage isn’t the absence of fear is it? It’s pushing through the fear.
Jess wasn’t feeling this week’s episode. I was going to ask why but then I got distracted, I forget why. Maybe it was a shiny object to the left of my screen or something on the TV. Maybe the episode was too watery for her liking? It gave her a sinking feeling? Sorry, I’ll stop.
I, myself, liked Clara’s human reaction to seeing the dead body of Soviet soldiers. The slightly morbid person in me was wondering why they weren’t showing us what Clara was seeing, and then rational me was shaking her head and saying ‘dude, it’s a children’s show.’ What did you guys think of the episode?

Were you immersed? Okay now I’ll stop.

Special Mentions:
- If you insist.

- Looks like the Doctor’s finally found a companion who knows the meaning of ‘don’t wander off!’
Leave a comment Posted on by Mata Doctor Who, TV Reviews, TV Talk

Doctor Who 7×07 The Rings of Akhaten Review

I needed some time to process my feelings for the episode. What can I say about The Rings of Akhaten? This episode has split the fandom in two, with half saying they weren’t very impressed and the other desperately trying to sway that half back into the ‘DOCTOR WHO CAN DO NO WRONG’ camp. At least according to Tumblr.

Now I’m not saying I didn’t like the episode, nor am I saying it was the best one out there. It was interesting, giving us a multitude of aliens that might have blown the prosthetics budget well out of the water for the rest of the season, but at the same time not giving us much at all.

I don’t know, it was the first ‘let’s go on an adventure’ episode for Clara and the Doctor and I thought it was going to be a lighthearted one. I suppose in some ways it was, it wasn’t too heavy on overarching story arc save for hints about Clara’s identity, as well as a dip into her past. However I know that with this show the one thing it is always abundant in, is feels. And that’s what a great show should always strive to achieve, right? Whether it’s laughter, anger or joy a great show will make you feel something. It’s what any great piece of art, or literature manages to do, that is to incite in you some sort of emotion.

The idea that these aliens would die if this ‘grandfather’ god were to wake up and swallow everything in it’s path so they try to keep it asleep by singing to it sounds simple enough. However the episode’s adventure storyline is rather unnecessarily complicated, with singing priests and young Queens and the gathering of everyone to watch and waking him up but no it’s not him it’s just his alarm clock! Although the moment where everyone joins together to sing in order to save their own asses, as well as help the Doctor out, was heart whelming.

And don’t get me started on Matt Smith’s delivery of his speech to the pumpkin god. If anyone had ever doubted his acting chops. Of course Clara, already in possession of the quality that all companions who travel with the Doctor have, won’t leave without helping in any way she can. Even if that means giving away her mother’s ring as a form of payment for a crappy space scooter.

Now, the good stuff, when we look out for subtle hints of what’s to come/the mystery behind Clara’s reincarnation/existence?

The Doctor’s followed her story from the beginning, well the start of her parents’ relationship. That started with a killer leaf, yeah the one that in the end saves the day because of the endless possibilities it symbolised, the countless outcomes of days Clara’s mother could have lived but did not because she died. When Clara realises he was there the day of her mother’s funeral she’s a bit taken aback, understandably. Interesting to note the date of Clara’s mother’s death, as a number of people have, as being related to the day Rose started traveling with the Doctor. Yes? No? Crackpot theory?

The TARDIS rejects her when she tries to get in with Mary to escape. It harkens back (teehee) to Captain Jack Harkness and the trouble he had with trying to get back into TARDIS that one time, oh my days, and they ended up at the end of the universe! Oh my day indeed or should I say, oh my stars?

Sound off with your own theories in the comments, don’t leave me hanging!

Special Mentions:

- The Doctor says he’s only got the Screwdriver when Clara points out that in all his years surely he’s got loads of things that have sentimental value. Rule number one, the Doctor lies. This guy just doesn’t want to give up any of his keepsakes of former companions. I mean, he still wears Amy’s glasses.

- Um, did anyone else think the huge god thing looked like a melting pumpkin? Just me? Okay.

- What’s up with the TARDIS not translating everything for us?

- Apologies for the delay- I have no excuse.

3 Comments Posted on by Mata Doctor Who, TV Reviews, TV Talk

Doctor Who 7×06 The Bells of St John Review

Of course! Makes sense. Complete and utter sense.
Except, the last time the phonebox rang? “Are you my my mummy?” (The Empty Child) Yeah, I was a little apprehensive. However it’s just Clara! Brillo-pots! Unfortunately, it would appear that Clara’s new incarnation (is incarnation the correct term here?) doesn’t have the faintest recollection of who the Doctor is.
That’s right! Doctor Who is back and boy are we excited! We’ve been speculating since Christmas about just how the Doctor was going to find Clara. His first two encounters with the woman twice dead were, well, fortuitous. At the end of the 2012 Christmas Special the Doctor vows to find her again and AHA, the expression not the band, there she is on the other side of the phone. The Doctor had withdrawn to a remote time and place trying to figure out what she meant, both in terms of her importance and her final message to him. A message that she’s managed to say both times he encountered her in the past. ‘Run you clever boy, and remember.’
This Clara is a little bit of Oswin Oswald the genius and a little bit of Clara the Governess, only she lives in the 21st century and knows little to nothing about computers. So how does that make her like Oswin, you ask? Well she’s still brilliant, to be sure, to be sure.
However her lack of computer knowledge is what lands her in trouble. Instead of clicking on the family’s Wi-Fi network she winds up clicking on the weird one that’s being used to suck people’s minds into the web.
First of all, burn. I’m going to go tweet that. Secondly-
When she’s pulled back/downloaded by the Doctor she returns with a genius level knowledge of computers again, implanted into her mind Matrix style.

Already I can see people drawing parallels between The Bells of St John and The Idiot’s Lantern from series 2. I can understand why, an alien lifeform using human technology as a way of feeding off humans? In TIL a man was pedaling cheapo television sets as a way of sucking the soul energy and faces off of victims, whereas we have an unknown entity using WI-Fi as a way of uploading people’s minds and trapping them so that it may feed off their intelligence. In both episodes, everyone’s faces appear on screens, trapped and trying to get out.

However, different times and different forms of technology. Also, interesting to note that through technology the entity ‘Great Intelligence’ (acting through their human vessel) was able to control peoples’ emotions and characteristics. Bit sad that when they were all reverted back to their ‘factory settings’ we discover that their vessel had been taken as a child and had lived her entire life under their influence.

I love that the Great Intelligence’s downfall are his(?) minions’ social media profiles. And perhaps that’s what I’ll take away from this episode. Not that Wi-Fi could possibly suck your mind in and feed off your intelligence/mind matter, but that you could literally be tracked down using the information you display on your social media profiles. Dangerous stuff. Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind. Heh, pun? No? Well, I hope the spoonheads get you. Yes I too saw the Information Drones from Silence in the Library. One of the best things about Doctor Who is how they references past monsters/characters/places and things. We should embrace this interconnectedness. I know I do. Remember when someone theorised that dancing was a euphemism for sexual activity?

Power to Clara who tells the Doctor to ‘come back tomorrow’ when ‘she might say yes’ rather than leave with him straight away. She’s a genius and is not willing to just immediately put her life aside to go off with a strange man in a box, even if this man’s the doctor. she’s the impossible girl (granted SHE doesn’t know that) and she will, evidently, do things on her terms.
Special Mentions:
- Clara calls the phonebox a snogging booth. Would that it were, would that it were.
- A fez, always makes you cooler. Always. Also great for collecting money when busking.
- C’mon, are you trying to kill us!?
- The woman in the shop, anyone? Who would know, let alone give, the doctor’s number to Clara? River? Hmm.. I don’t know. Someone, speculate with me!