"It feels different this time..." - The new Doctor Who Thread

[Kirin]

The Horns of Nimon

Through some bit of cosmic misfortune, this is currently one of the few bits of classic Who I’ve seen. Several years ago my wife and I were lying on the couch (possibly sick or something) and noticed classic Who was on some free pre-scheduled streaming channel and caught like the back 2/3 of this arc. Definitely way the hell up there on the cheese scale, as well as the “not a whole lot actually happens other than running around” scale.

I cannot imagine being a Doctor Who fan - classic or nu - outside the UK and having to navigate the endless moving from platform to platform the series goes through seemingly every couple of months.

Yeah, I watched most of nu Who legit in the places it was on when I got to it (and wherever it was debuting for the more last couple doctors), but it’s gotten pretty ridiculous. After losing my job last year I set up a somewhat fiddle but effective universal torrent/stream service and thankfully most everything is findable on there (though the plethora of specials do occasionally make tracking things down in order a chore since it sometimes flummoxes the service’s automatic categorization algorithms).

 

[Kazin]

though the plethora of specials do occasionally make tracking things down in order a chore since it sometimes flummoxes the service’s automatic categorization algorithms

For whatever reason, when I was first watching the show, Netflix did not have any of the Tennant specials besides End of Time, so after I caught up (season 7 of Matt Smith), I discovered there was a few secret Tennant episodes I'd not seen before lol. Water of Mars, at least, was fun!

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Meglos
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
In this serial, the planet Tigella is in a crisis about their power source and, to many, God, the Dodecahedron. The Doctor is set to arrive to help deal with it but his journey is interrupted by the space villain Meglos, who traps the Doctor in a time loop. He arrives with a band of space brigands to trick the people (who are caught in a sort of uneasy and dissolving alliance between the religious and secular factions) by impersonating the Doctor (as well as possessing a random kidnapped human) and absconding with the Dodecahedron. The Doctor frees himself, which complicates Meglos plans and as the real Doctor tries to figure out what is happening, Meglos works to steal the Dodecahedron.

Eventually, Meglos is successful and leaves the planet for his home world. His plan is to unleash a weapon powered by the Dodecahedron in his barren home planet. The Doctor manages to convince the Tigellans that they've been had and arrive on Meglos homeworld, using their identical looks and behaviour to trick the pirates into destroying themselves. The human is freed, Meglos and the pirates are destroyed (well, perhaps Meglos is destroyed) and all seems well. But soon Romana informs the Doctor they are needed on Gallifrey.

Meglos is a weird story. There are times it seems to approach a better story, then suddenly backs off. I feel like maybe it was written with some bigger and more nuanced ideas and then was asked to be less good. It reminds me of hearing about how many times the outline of City of Death was re-written and this feels like if this got multiple drafts to work out the kinks, it actually could have been a fun story. This feels like maybe the THIRD time the Doctor gets to play the villain (does every Doctor get to play a villain in this series?) and Baker is actually bringing the heat as best he can. But it's really all sound and fury. Meglos is a weird visual but a completely nothing villain.

What does he want? I though maybe it was going to resurrect his dead people or revenge on Tigella? Nope. He's just some villain. He wants a super weapon. And it comes close to implying more interesting stuff. But then it suddenly backs off. Why does he hesitate when asked to praise a god? Is HE a god? Did his people die in the name of that god? Nope. I guess he's just vain. What about when, in an eerie little moment, Meglos in his sort-of real form quietly brings a woman to another room. I know that the show intentionally had Meglos be kind of a hands-off villain because the show doesn't want to scare kids by showing the Doctor doing violence. This actually is a little spookier than violence, somehow. But when he tries to convince this Tigellan to help him I thought, "oh he's going to reveal something about himself to make him more complex" but no. He's doing this impossible thing and I don't recall them ever explaining how.

The show also failed to have fun with two identical Doctors. They set themselves up for a narrative game that can be played a number of ways. Maybe keep the audience in the dark of which Doctor is which. Have the Doctor and audience arrive confused. Have the Doctor really on the backfoot. Put the VILLAIN on the backfoot. I love stories where we are looking at the villain's POV and the tension because we don't want them to win but in putting us in his place, we dread the moment they are caught. More shell game. More cat and mouse. There's the tiniest taste at the end but it feels like so much nothing. I don't hate Meglos. I think the time loop goes a little too long and weirdly does nothing with it's element of the weird fundamentalists (the priest almost kills the Doctor but die to save an innocent but this doesn't feel like it's "this character is complex" but more "this character will do whatever the writer needs in the moment") But I think Baker is doing what he can. And I like the pirate who wants the Doctor's coats. But... in an episode of Seinfeld, Elaine questions whether there's more to Newman than they think. To which Jerry exclaims "No. There's less." Meglos is very, very less.

Best cliffhanger: The first cliffhanger is pretty solid.

Next time: