Ummmmmmmmm....Army of Ghosts

[tencrush]

I didn't quite know what to make of that. I really liked it (OMG TEN/JACKIE companion stuffs = WIN!!!) and there was "YAY Hawt Mickey" going on, and Rose was clever, if only for about 4 minutes, and Yvonne was great, and Ten was hot as usual, and it had Cybermans and Daleks and still... It really didn't surprise me at all. It went just about the way I expected it to go, it was written the way I expected it to be written, and acted the way I expected it to be acted and there was just a little bit something bland about it I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Having said that, it was of the good. I think.
Despite her emo voiceover, I still don't think Rose dies, and still think that beginning shot is the parting money shot as well. The Jackie speech about Family>Alien Cock thing is really making me believe my own theorising on the Rose Goes Home front. She dies a bit, and then she gets fixed somehow, then she leaves him. (Jake is definitely a dead man, I'm putting my money on that one RIGHT NOW). JACKIE DOES NOT DIE, NO WAI.
So anyway, yeah, that's it. I don't have much else to say about it. I knew they were Daleks, I knew there were three of them. Is that why I'm not jumping up and down with glee???

Comments

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

i kind of wish i had not know about teh daleks mebbe?

[tencrush]

Yah, me too. It kind of made me go "It's a couple of Daleks" you know, as soon as I even saw the Ball Thing. Which kind of made me go "Meh."
So in that sense, maybe it would have been better as a surprise.

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

is it wrong that the sphere made me go "ah! that;s how romana survived for porn!"?

[tencrush]

No. That's kind of what I was thinking.

[th-esaurus.livejournal.com]

TEN/YVONNE FTW...???

[tencrush]

Yes, that too. It was kind of another Ten/AnyoneinthisepisodeapartfromRose kind of episode for me.

[th-esaurus.livejournal.com]

I thought he was going to lick the giant white wall. He didn't. I was sad.

[tencrush]

He's not going to lick anything else this season.
*emos*
It fucks up my oral count not that I'm keeping count with pictures and averages and such, no not at all.

[pontisbright.livejournal.com]

I have a similar sense of overall *shrug* about it - and I didn't know about the Daleks, so I don't think it can be just that. It was a bit...straightforward. And scene-settingy. And there was that bit when Yvonne needed some frizz-ease really badly, and I feel if your attention is on that sort of thing, possibly Rusty needs to be trying harder.

So not gonna die. Just no way at all.

[tencrush]

Hmmmm, that's what I had. There was something about it that was just a little bit, I don't know, predictable? In pace and scripting and acting and such. I wouldn't say formulaic, but then again, maybe I would. I can't quite put my finger on what it was it lacked for me.
(OMG the frizzy totally distrected me as well. I don't even know what was said in that scene.)

NOT DEAD, NO.

[pontisbright.livejournal.com]

I think the problem (as with much of this season) was that the good bits were all little silly throwaway irrelevances, like the Jackie banter, and the Actual Important Things were all, as you say, quite predictable and pedestrian. (Yeah, sorry: roomful of Cybermen = pedestrian. We have seen this before, yo. As we have the Daleks. I know the costumes are already made and all, but that is a dreadful justification for being so dull.)

It's like last week, when the single most memorable thing was a jar of fucking marmalade.

NOT DEAD EVEN AT ALL. (Apart from possibly very briefly.)

[tencrush]

*strokes chin and agrees with you*
There was something about them being captured by the Cybermen, and walking around with their hands up that just made me yawn a tiny amount. There was a bit of a lack of tension, maybe? I can see where RTD was trying to go with it, I think he was aiming for lighthearted investigative fun with the Ghostbusters stuff, leading into the darker Torchwood scenes, which IMHO just weren't quite dark enough for that to work. Also because, like you said, we've seen that Cyberman stuff before. And if the really tense stuff was supposed to come from the Daleks, well, there really weren't enough of them, because Russell's already given us thousands of them last season. I was like" "3? That ain't too bad."
This sort of thing isn't a problem when it's a beginning or mid-season episode like New Earth or Fear Her, it really doesn't bother me when the actual plot resolution is a bit predictable or Ex Machina or whatever, when the episode itself is just a bit of fun, and the important bits are actually between the lines. (I loved Fear Her, I can't stress or repeat that enough, it was a really well written emo thing of beauty. The alien thing was irrelevant, but that DIDN'T MATTER. Same thing with Love and Monsters, alien=crap, but not really that important in the scheme of things). But when it gets to this sort of finale thing, and you're actually more riveted by the marmalade type stuff than you are by the baddies, there's just something a bit off.

Marmalade is of the good, though. Don't be dissin' teh marmalade.

NOT DEAD IN THE SLIGHTEST. NO WAY JOSE.

[pontisbright.livejournal.com]

Yes: they have successfully made us think that 3 Daleks would be probably not all that much of a bother, really. The 'it's not an invasion, it's a victory' thing also removes all tension, because they have clearly established that the Doctor is now a man who has nothing whatsoever in his personal arsenal apart from a magic pointy pen-torch and a tendency to lick things - so yes, the human race is just screwed. No point fighting. (That's twice now he's just gone 'They're Cybermen, we're fucked, let's give up now.' I'm all for making your villains intimidating, but that's quite rubbish from a hero, isn't it? In the good old days he would at least have tried to engage them in some flirty banter.)

And now there are 2 supervillains, who will clearly duke it out and wipe each other out, thus continuing the utter irrelevance of the Doctor and his somewhat weedy skillz. I'd sort of hope we might get a moment of him thinking he ought to stop them from doing so, in an exciting 'Have I the right?'/it's Daleks v Gallifrey all over again, but they won't bother.

Love and Monsters I think is genuinely brilliant (even if there are some heinously awful elements in there). And Fear Her was a great script, with at last some ghost of the TCI Ten, but I loathed the way it looked, the kid actor dragged the whole thing down, and the end made me want to vomit.

I would've liked the marmalade even better if it had been jam.

VERY VERY ALIVE. NOT DEAD.

[tencrush]

Hmmm, yeah. What is it that he does, exactly? He's got an evil laserpointer, 'tis true, and a magick tongue. (though I do think he's doing OK on the flirty banter, he just doesn't do it with Cybermens, the metal thing does nothing for him, which at least tells us where his limits lie)

I think that's what bothered me about this ep, was the obviousness that it's not really going anywhere. FFS Rose fixed everything in PotW, and I'm kind of getting this whole coward feeling all over again. Though Ten does seem to be a bit better on the psychological warfare/fake out level. But I don't think he's going to fix this, again. They'll either kill each other, or Rose will Ex Machina something or someone else will do something noble and great. I don't want to dislike the Doctor, but he's still a bit of a pussy, even after regeneration. *sigh*

I loved Ten in Fear Her (God, I love it when he talks me to death, I really do), and I loved the whole lonely emo alien thing. The girl didn't really bother me too much, the ending was OTT, but somehow on a certain level even that worked for me, depsite its ubergayness. I hate marmalade, I really thought it was jam. *sigh again*

LIVING STILL, UNDEAD, YES.