Damn you Moffat is a tag now.

[tencrush]

Damn you Moffat, no, I just can't accept the decision "oh, Night Terrors was too dark, so let's just switch it with Black Spot and be on our merry way, we just need to bung on that Lake Silencio pic at the end and we'll be sorted." THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS.

For a start, the hugely forgettable Curse of the Black Spot was quite fun, but as far as people remembering the whole mirror/reflection/parallel worlds premise, I think you've screwed yourself and I'm getting the vague feeling that that premise might be important to us later on, yes? You can only show us so many people looking in so many mirrors before it becomes a bit of a giveaway. It would have been nice to have both the technobabble involved and the parallel world concept itself a little bit fresher in our minds by the time the end of the series rolls around. Not that I'm saying anything about how the series ends, obviously. No. (Also, the whole stowaway child in a barrel thing, that whole "I'm here now, you can't send me back" stuff, the captain staying with his child in a parallel world rather than go back to his "real" world without his son, all of that stuff would have worked a lot better here and you know it. Plus, we wouldn't have had to shoehorn captain Avery into A Good Man, when he was allegedly unable to leave the ship with his kid.)

BUT Night Terrors gives us way worse in the total absence of any emotional impact made on two of the three main characters when they are caught up in a story about a frightened young child who thinks he's being abandoned by his parents, the denoument of which involves his father accepting his child and declaring that he would never dream of abandoning him, even though he's a bit timey-wimey alien. And nobody bats an eyelid. Not Amy, not Rory, no-one. I'm one of the biggest Moffat fans around, but this was a SERIOUS lapse in judgement right here, dude. I hate it anyway when filler episodes seemingly forget about the plot arc that's been going on around them (Black Spot wouldn't have fared much beter in that respect, and Amy romping around in pirate gear when her kid is still more or less missing would probably have been equally jarring), but when the episode directly mirrors the plot arc and nobody notices? GAH!

DAMN YOU MOFFAT.

Apart from that I have very little to say about Night Terrors, it was A Bit Scary, the fix was way too sudden and large bits of it made very little sense, but Rory and the Doctor had some cracking lines and that makes up for so much in the way of shite on other levels. Apart maybe from that bit where we sideline the mother for the entire episode in order to indulge Gatiss' daddy-son issues yet again without Gatiss actually having to write, like, a yucky woman part. And I'll just pretend I didn't hear that "in the flesh" thing at the end. You could have dubbed over that one, dudes, the camera was on everyone's back. Oh well.

Comments

[radiant-pip.livejournal.com]

They did miss a few opportunities to tie it into the main arc a bit, so it was kind of flat there.

[tencrush]

I think it suffered, totally, from being in the wrong place, much like I now, thinking about it, think that Curse of the Black Spot would have been much better in this sequence. I'm going to rewatch that this week and see if it makes more sense and resonates better, which I reckon it will.

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think swapping the order was a really bad move that damaged both episodes: this one because it beggars belief that Amy and Rory don't react at all to the father-and-son drama, and the pirates episode because it ended up looking shoddily written/edited when it shouldn't have (admittedly this is just conjecture but I can't believe nobody noticed the pirate vanishing from the story despite being in a locked room with the main characters - so I'm guessing there was a scene about Melody that got pulled).

[tencrush]

Yeah, I heard there was one scene that mentioned Melody, so I assume it was that one. I haven't actually ever rewatched it, I'm going to tomorrow, but I have a suspicion Black Spot makes way more sense if you watch it in this position.

[satanassa.livejournal.com]

I wasn't terribly impressed with the child actor in the Night Terrors -- looked a bit blank all the time.
So what's the info -- the Black Spot ep and the Night Terrors ep got switched around in the schedule?
Also, can anyone explain what kind of aliens were involved -- who deposited that 'tensor' child in this couple's household? I didn't quite get that. And wouldn't the grandparents and friends wonder where the baby had come from? Or was the perception filter that massive?

[tencrush]

Moff decided at the last minute to switch Black Spot and Night Terrors around because he thought there were too many "dark" episodes in the first half of the season. They did some very quick editing and rejigging in order to get it to work, but I still think it shows massively that they're supposed to be the other way around.

I think the alien just travelled on its own and adapted to wherever it was needed. And I think the perception filter was that big, yeah, I think the Doctor said something about that, but I wasn't really listening.

[descrime.livejournal.com]

Seeing as I didn't like the pirate episode at all, I would have preferred this third. Though, the flesh becoming wood and returning to duplicating Amy would have been strange.

I thought the concept was good, but the execution of the idea was poor in several spots. And I absolutely hated at the end when the mom returns home and they lie to her and keep the kid's origins "just between us boys". Haha, why do women need to know the truth? They can just let the men handle everything important.

I sincerely hope next week Rory does not actually get to choose his wife's personality.

[tencrush]

I sincerely hope next week Rory does not actually get to choose his wife's personality.
I very much doubt that, but I reckon next week's will hold the vital clues for the finale, it's been about both Amy and Rory choosing things since Amy's Choice, or at least seeming to have to choose between one thing and another thing, both of which turn out to be essentially the same.

[meleth.livejournal.com]

My prediction: Rory will refuse to decide between the Amys, possibly even squeezing his eyes shut really hard to escape the Sophie's Choice, and then all of the Amys will merge back into one Amy, who conveniently manages to be the young hot one.

[tencrush]

In a roundabout way, I think you're right. It seems to involve Rory having to choose which timeline Amy should live out. But, like you say, much like Amy's Choice, I don't think it matters, essentially, which one he chooses, the outcome will be the same. I think whatever timey-wimey explanation this involves will be a setup for the finale and River's fate. The more I think about it, the more I suspect that River lives out two possible timelines, and the one where she is raised to kill the Doctor is the one where she ends up marrying the Doctor, whereas the one where she is returned to Amy and Rory is possibly the one where she ends up killing the Doctor? I don't know, this is starting to seem likely to me somehow, but it's probably rubbish.

[takenatwork.livejournal.com]

I've got to admit, I like a stand-alone episode to be exactly that, one you could take out or move around, so, for me, I didn't like the tick-tock rhyme at the end. I can see your point, with the arc they have in this series and a stand-alone story concerning a child, it was much harder to ignore the arc. I'm still excited for all the episodes though and want to see what Moffat does.