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capri0mniAnd yet, after the Christmas Special, there's virtual silence?!
So I guess I'll have to start (if you want to get something done, be ready to do it yourself :::Rhubarb, Peas, and Carrots:::)
I want to squee!
I want to Grumble!
So this will be a Squumble!
Anyway, I'll get the grumble out of the way:
There were no closed captions on the Amazon Video Stream!
I'm privileged enough to be able to understand audio, but I've gotten so used to having closed captions that not being able to read and listen at the same time is as distracting to my brain as a vague itch between my shoulder blades that I cannot reach. So that actually subtracted from my enjoyment of the episode, and it's frustrating because I'm sure that all of the creative, talented people who actually had to work to create this story had nothing to do with it.
Also, the trailer had captions, so I had no reason to suspect that the actual episode would not. And I didn't find out the truth until after I had already bought it.
I suspect something sloppy and irrational, like not double-checking the copyright license (I'd come across the tidbit, somewhere, somewhen, that captions are licensed separately from the audio -- talk about Humbug!).
And that has me worried about all of Series 10...
Okay, now for the squee.
First: this Christmas Special is just proof that "The Husbands of River Song" was actually the first episode of a two-parter.
Second: In the negative reviews I've seen, the biggest complaint has consistently been that this episode was not Christmassy enough. But frankly -- I found that aspect refreshing. This was, after all, an entire series of Doctor Who in just under an hour, so a strong story that gives us some character development for the Doctor was more important to me than a bare scaffolding on which to hang yet more Christmas baubles. I think (I hope) that this story finally brought the Doctor around to grieving his losses and accepting them -- not just River Song, but also Clara -- and Amy and Rory, too,* so that Moffat can wrap up his last year with a "clean, emotional, slate."**
Third: Overall, the emotional tone of this episode was just sweet -- the Harmony Shoal aliens, notwithstanding. I mean, a superhero with a nanny alter-ego. Also, a superhero whose code of ethics includes not causing grievous harm or destroying a city block just to stop the bad guys (are you listening, Marvel?)
Fourth: I was pleasantly surprised by Nardole -- that he was allowed to be actually competent, and point out where the Doctor is wrong -- and have the Doctor admit that Nardole was right, at the end.
Fifth and Finally: This was a story with a second hero (besides the Doctor) And the Doctor acknowledged that they were both on the same side from the very beginning. Hip-Hip-Hooray!
*(Wasn't that contraption on the roof in New York City his last ditch attempt to get around the "Temporal Anomaly" that "he caused," in order to get a chance to see Amy again -- having an innocent child swallow the last, key, element sure was a clever way to get the Doctor to stop trying on that front).
**Now, I want to check the TARDIS interior again, to see if that scribbled-on chalkboard is still there (Was that a visual metaphor, all along?).
So I guess I'll have to start (if you want to get something done, be ready to do it yourself :::Rhubarb, Peas, and Carrots:::)
I want to squee!
I want to Grumble!
So this will be a Squumble!
Anyway, I'll get the grumble out of the way:
There were no closed captions on the Amazon Video Stream!
I'm privileged enough to be able to understand audio, but I've gotten so used to having closed captions that not being able to read and listen at the same time is as distracting to my brain as a vague itch between my shoulder blades that I cannot reach. So that actually subtracted from my enjoyment of the episode, and it's frustrating because I'm sure that all of the creative, talented people who actually had to work to create this story had nothing to do with it.
Also, the trailer had captions, so I had no reason to suspect that the actual episode would not. And I didn't find out the truth until after I had already bought it.
I suspect something sloppy and irrational, like not double-checking the copyright license (I'd come across the tidbit, somewhere, somewhen, that captions are licensed separately from the audio -- talk about Humbug!).
And that has me worried about all of Series 10...
Okay, now for the squee.
First: this Christmas Special is just proof that "The Husbands of River Song" was actually the first episode of a two-parter.
Second: In the negative reviews I've seen, the biggest complaint has consistently been that this episode was not Christmassy enough. But frankly -- I found that aspect refreshing. This was, after all, an entire series of Doctor Who in just under an hour, so a strong story that gives us some character development for the Doctor was more important to me than a bare scaffolding on which to hang yet more Christmas baubles. I think (I hope) that this story finally brought the Doctor around to grieving his losses and accepting them -- not just River Song, but also Clara -- and Amy and Rory, too,* so that Moffat can wrap up his last year with a "clean, emotional, slate."**
Third: Overall, the emotional tone of this episode was just sweet -- the Harmony Shoal aliens, notwithstanding. I mean, a superhero with a nanny alter-ego. Also, a superhero whose code of ethics includes not causing grievous harm or destroying a city block just to stop the bad guys (are you listening, Marvel?)
Fourth: I was pleasantly surprised by Nardole -- that he was allowed to be actually competent, and point out where the Doctor is wrong -- and have the Doctor admit that Nardole was right, at the end.
Fifth and Finally: This was a story with a second hero (besides the Doctor) And the Doctor acknowledged that they were both on the same side from the very beginning. Hip-Hip-Hooray!
*(Wasn't that contraption on the roof in New York City his last ditch attempt to get around the "Temporal Anomaly" that "he caused," in order to get a chance to see Amy again -- having an innocent child swallow the last, key, element sure was a clever way to get the Doctor to stop trying on that front).
**Now, I want to check the TARDIS interior again, to see if that scribbled-on chalkboard is still there (Was that a visual metaphor, all along?).
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Date: 2016-12-28 11:07 pm (UTC)The caption-lack is excruciating.
"clean, emotional, slate"?
How is this different than an emotional clean slate (except it needs two fewer commas)?
Also, did you old Who as well as new Who?
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Date: 2016-12-29 12:13 am (UTC)How is this different than an emotional clean slate (except it needs two fewer commas)?
It's what pops into my brain when my inner editor is taking a nap...
Also, did you old Who as well as new Who?
Yup! Four was my first... I had a "portable" TV by my bed when I was a teenager, and one morning in the wee hours, while suffering an asthma attack, I was flipping through the channels looking for something to distract me, so I could relax. I stumbled onto the broadcast by WWOR -- which was a commercial station (not PBS), and they broadcast in episodic format, too. So I was indeed distracted by this weird sci-fi, and flabbergasted by the cliffhanger.
So I naturally had to find it again. And after that, it was always one of my favorite shows. You know that poem in Monsters' Rhapsody, about Star Trek? Well, the Doctor had the same attitude toward monsters and guns that I did... so naturally, he was more my hero than Kirk or Picard would ever be...
I didn't become a dedicated "Fan," though, until well into the Wilderness years, after the TV Movie disappointment. I picked up a novelization from the library of a story I missed in broadcast, realized how much a hole Doctor Who had left behind in my psyche, and so I decided to seek out other fans on the Internet. ... Scrolling past the flame wars, I found threads on Rec.Arts.Drwho where a few people were having conversations about quantum physics possibilities, and periods in history that would make good fanfic, and realized I had found my people.
And then, I went back and researched the stories of all the Doctors before Four, so I could have something to say in conversation. And that's how I fell madly in love with Doctor Two. :-)
---
PS: And that's why I feel justified in my rage at RTD's tenure.
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Date: 2016-12-29 01:06 am (UTC)Wisconsin Public TV was showing them in true serial fashion at 11p in the late 70s -- a quick look at the TARDIS wiki leads me to believe I started out with the introduction of Leela in The Face of Evil during Tom Baker's run (Doctor FOUR).
I was well and truly mystified and entranced. Of course I couldn't hop online to get oriented, but I kept watching. I persevered through the transitions from Four to Five, but Six made me itch and I dropped out. (I weep even now remembering Logolopolis/Castrolvalva.)
Much later I saw some of the B&W versions. I remember some very silly para-Army business that brought to mind Monty Python.
I did see some of the Christopher Eccleston eps, and I really appreciated a Doctor non-U.
Another item for my retirement, I guess: get 'em all.
Are the Doctor Who books comfort-reads (like fanfics) or do some achieve really-new stories with actually-developed characters?
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Date: 2016-12-29 12:49 pm (UTC)Oh, my Dear... over the last 52+ years, there have been more non-TV Doctor Who media than there has been TV stories -- by at least a whole order of magnitude. Even when the show was not being aired through television, the universe, its characters and stories has continued unabated through several different novel ranges, comic books, audio dramas, short story collections, video games, hard-backed Annuals, and some media forms I'm probably forgetting. And, as with parallel universes, the logic, canon, and rules of physics vary ever so slightly with each.
So: yes, yes, and yes.
This reference guide site hasn't been updated in over three years -- the last story synopsis posted was the Christmas special four years ago. But just looking at all the different color coded titles for different media (Which is still being created afresh, even as I type this -- even for all the past Doctors), will show that "getting 'em all" is an impossible task:
http://www.drwhoguide.com/who.htm#1ST
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Date: 2016-12-29 03:35 pm (UTC)Can you recommend a particularly lovely starting point in the books?
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Date: 2016-12-29 03:41 pm (UTC)But I have listened to some of the early Big Finish (audio) productions, during the Wilderness Years.
With better writing, that's where Colin Baker has shone as the Sixth Doctor...
I may go back and get some more.
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Date: 2016-12-29 02:08 am (UTC)I hope with Moffat going that things won't change too much - I like optimistic DW - though bring on more alien planets and inhabitants, and enough with the Daleks already.
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Date: 2016-12-29 12:22 pm (UTC)Don't forget ableist! :::Grah!:::
and enough with the Daleks already.
Unfortunately, I think we're stuck with the Daleks for the foreseeable future. As I understand it, the copyright agreement with the Terry Nation estate says that either the Daleks have to appear at least once every series, or never again. I think Moffat got away with having an abandoned Dalek shell in the background for one episode -- "Wedding of River Song," maybe?
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Date: 2016-12-29 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-29 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-29 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-29 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-29 11:25 pm (UTC)Seriously, I am so 100% over people being Angry About Moffat and longing for the Glory Days of RTD. Not even at his worst has Moffat produced anything as vile as "Love and Monsters", let alone written three years' worth of episodes that made me actively hate the Doctor and feel sorry for all of his companions. (And none of that was Tennant's fault, either! I thought DT did the best that anyone could of making a silk purse out of some very sow-eared scripts, but there's only so much a good actor can do...)
Anyway, on a more positive note, I thought it a perfectly fine Christmas special and didn't miss the Christmassy angle one bit. Moffat has already written some extremely Christmassy specials in the past, there's only so much you can do without it starting to seem like parody...
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Date: 2016-12-30 12:45 am (UTC)But with RTD? That was the first time I've ever felt betrayed by an author, as if the sacred (and I do believe it is sacred) contract between author and audience had been violated.
I also suspect that Moffat feels the same way, because if you look through his tenure as exec. producer/head writer, you can see point-by-point where he'll take the same central premises that Rusty gave us, and turned each of them on their ear. And I think (hope) he did that in order to wash RTD's toxicity off of Doctor Who, so it will be "clean" for the next generations.
Now, I do grant that this can (and has) been taken too far at certain points (particularly Clara's story arc, and, to a lesser extent, River's). But I'd rather have several seasons of fumbled plot twists than decades of tainted storytelling ethics left to haunt Doctor Who through several generations.
...It's taken me a good bit of pondering to put my finger on just how RTD betrayed me, but I think it boils down to this:
He wrote the equivalent of emotional, voyeuristic, slasher porn -- making his characters suffer emotional torment for no other reason beyond titillation of the audience -- without any understanding, or healing, or growth that could come out it.
He mindwiped Donna Noble, for no other reason than making the Tenth Doctor feel angsty about it.
I will never forgive him for that. And don't get me started on how miserably he treated Mickey (you cannot tell me that's not racist).
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Date: 2016-12-30 12:58 am (UTC)I stuck with the show gamely all through Ten's run, however, mostly because I loved Martha and thought (or rather hoped, I suppose) that the Donna-Doctor relationship would work out better because she wasn't in love with him. And then RTD did THAT to Donna and I was So Very Done. I still haven't seen the last two Ten episodes (and I dearly wish I hadn't seen "The Waters of Mars" either, for that matter) and I can't imagine any reason I would want to.
And you're quite right about Moffat quietly or not-so-quietly undoing or otherwise countering all of RTD's most awful additions to the canon. It's one of the things I've liked best about his tenure.
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Date: 2016-12-30 12:02 pm (UTC)I just realized that, while I was on the edge of my seat during the episodes, as soon as the closing credits finished rolling, I was overcome with a feeling of emptiness and pointlessness (I think this was a clue to that emotional voyeurism I mentioned). And as early as episode three (The Unquiet Dead), the Googly eyes/Romantic overtones between the Doctor and his companion really turned me off.
Between that point, and Capaldi's debut, I stayed connected to the show (and the Doctor's story arc), through friends' spoiler reviews, and episode synopses posted online. It was only after Moffat announced that there would be no romance in the TARDIS during Twelve's tenure that I decided to risk coming back (I have since learned that asexuality is actually a thing, and I am probably on that spectrum).
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Date: 2016-12-30 05:34 pm (UTC)(Why do I not have a Twelve icon? Note to self: get on that.)
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Date: 2016-12-30 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-30 03:59 am (UTC)Man, even the way Ten left, moping about on his interminable goodbye, made me yell at him.
How can anyone call RTD's days glory days? Pessimistic, nasty, insulting to so many different people... I just hope Moffat's legacy continues.
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Date: 2016-12-30 11:48 am (UTC)Yup. And in such a smug, misogynistic, way, too.
Granted, as much as I cheered Moffat's systematic dismantling of Davies's perversions, I have to admit that in doing so, he had to create downright byzantine character arcs and motivations (River Song and Clara Oswald) that ended up collapsing under their own dramatic weight. It felt a bit like watching a friend get into an argument with an online bigot. Even though I agree with their position, sometimes you just have to walk away and start a new thread on a different topic altogether.
Still, I'm grateful that Moffat took the initiative and didn't let RTD's misanthropy stand.
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Date: 2016-12-30 05:30 pm (UTC)I wish the showrunners would get over the idea that they constantly have to be topping themselves and that every Doctor-Companion relationship has to be the Most Epic Love of All Time. If Twelve and Bill turn out to be good buddies who banter and bicker entertainingly and loyally look out for each other but are able to eventually part ways without a lot of angst and universe-unravelling shenanigans, I shall be greatly relieved.
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Date: 2016-12-30 06:30 pm (UTC)From the days of color, I think my favorite Doctor/Companion relationship was Four/Sarah Jane (also, I hate the way RTD wrote Sarah Jane in "School Reunion" -- just: that was not Sarah Jane at all).
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Date: 2016-12-30 10:39 pm (UTC)I'm also unsure about Me. Moffat created her, then made her able to survive the death of the universe (seemingly). She's basically another alien and the length of her life made her forget most of it and abraded her empathy. It was a horrible thing to do to anyone, and why would the Doctor even have a device like that about him? But that's a whole other discussion. :-)
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Date: 2016-12-30 11:19 pm (UTC)Yeah... That second "half" was totally unnecessary. "The Girl who Died" was complete and beautiful on its own. And anyway, living forever might have just as well have made her super compassionate.
And didn't the Doctor pull that McGuffin thing out of one of the heads of that episode's alien baddies? That was my understanding. He was using the technology they used to make themselves invincible to make her invincible.
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Date: 2016-12-31 08:22 pm (UTC)living forever might have just as well have made her super compassionate
True. Maybe travelling with Clara changed her, though there must have been other people, like the husband she had children with, who touched her.
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Date: 2016-12-31 09:57 pm (UTC)That was my impression at the time. But I haven't gone back to rewatch it.
Why didn't those guys survive to the end of the universe then?
Maybe they did? All we saw was that single point at the end of the Universe, where Me and the Doctor were. Maybe they were just somewhere else.
Or maybe, since they lived through siphoning off the life force of others, they died out when there were no other people left to conquer.
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Date: 2016-12-30 05:27 pm (UTC)(Honestly, I don't even know how anyone can think Ten/Rose, or even Nine/Rose, was any sort of healthy relationship, let alone a swoonily romantic one. I like Billie Piper as an actress and Rose as a character well enough; but she and the Doctor brought out the absolute worst in each other, except [surprise!] when Moffat was writing them.)
Also, as a Christian viewer, I found the whole "Lonely God" motif to be gross. And just when I'd almost convinced myself I was being hypersensitive, RTD had Ten assume a crucifix posture and be carried up into the air by robotic angels, which ... ugh.
Not the Doctor, basically. And definitely not MY Doctor.
Meanwhile, Eleven is now my favorite Doctor of all time, even displacing my long-adored Five (though only just). So uneven scripts and occasional annoying sex jokes aside (seriously, people, lay off with that), Moffat had to be doing something right.
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Date: 2016-12-30 07:13 pm (UTC)Yeah. Agreed (and I'm an atheist!).
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Date: 2016-12-30 10:44 pm (UTC)I've seen you in passing; I'm a friend of kerravonsen. :-)
Ugh seconded! Utterly tasteless and offensive. That whole lonely god thing was not just hubris but marinated in self-pity. "No one understands me; woe." Ugh, ugh, ugh. I was so glad to see him go, though he tried to linger. For a self-described fanboy, RTD didn't understand DW at all.
I love Eleven! Also Four, Five, and Twelve too. I've heard Two is pretty awesome, but I doubt I'll ever catch up on him or the other doctors apart from isolated eps.
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Date: 2016-12-30 11:14 pm (UTC)I also insisted that we wait between cliffhangers, to give him time to wonder and speculate about what would happen next.
And Dad got it immediately: "He's not the hero because he has any special powers, but just that he's lived so long, and has wisdom" [<--paraphrased from 20-ish years ago]
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Date: 2016-12-31 08:18 pm (UTC)I remember watching Five at the time (very delayed here in those days) and have got a couple of his CDs too. Six remains an unknown though I've met Colin Baker who was very funny about his stint (he bit his companion Peri on the bum for a dare, and she floored him. Report here
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Date: 2016-12-31 10:06 pm (UTC)Of all of them, Three is the biggest blank space for me. And yes, for his entire first season (and part of his second???) The Third Doctor had been banished to one time period on Earth, sans working TARDIS, as punishment for his breaking Timelord law and meddling. But they reunited him with Two (and One, briefly, despite Hartnell's dementia) for the Tenth Anniversary Special in 1973.
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Date: 2016-12-29 02:05 am (UTC)I thought the lights on top of the building for for a Christmas invasion (didn't the Doctor mention one?) though I like your thought. I like Nardole a lot and am glad that apparently we'll have more of him. We should have more alien companions.
Captions are increasingly necessary these days what with so many shows drowning dialogue with music, but I also find they distract me from the scene. Maybe I'm too visual.
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Date: 2016-12-29 12:16 pm (UTC)Oh, I hate that! Also: The trend toward: "let's make this extra ***dramatic*** by having the actors give this one crucial bit of plot info in a mumbled whisper!! Yes! Best direction, ever!"
but I also find they distract me from the scene. Maybe I'm too visual.
Could be. Although it could just be that I have had more practice; I've been turning on the captions by default every time I watch TV or video (whenever it's available) since 1990, when I was in grad school, and watching TV in the disabled students' association lounge.
I started out only using them when someone in the room with me wanted to study, so I'd mute the sound. Then I noticed that reading and listening at the same time made it easier to absorb the info-dumps of the evening news broadcasts (which doesn't have much going on visually, anyway, besides talking heads). Then I noticed how much they helped with Dramatic!Dialog... and I gradually got hooked.
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Date: 2016-12-29 07:55 pm (UTC)A lot of what we watch doesn't have them though and I only pick up on something I've missed when I read comments or reviews, e.g. that Nardole was emperor in Constantinople. Which amuses the hell out of me now I know it; I's watch that!
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Date: 2016-12-29 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-29 05:05 am (UTC)In the negative reviews I've seen (which admittedly are not many, since my circles have been quiet on the subject too), the biggest complaint has been that Grant's relationship with Lucy can be characterised as "if you hang around her being a nice guy for long enough she'll eventually realise she loves you", which is an idea with a troubled history.
It hadn't occurred to me that the contraption on the roof might be specifically an attempt to see Amy again - like Vilakins, I assumed that it was part of an alien-thwarting adventure that continued off-screen - but now that you mention it, it does fit neatly.
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Date: 2016-12-29 11:55 am (UTC)Well, that's true. :-/
Although, on the plus side, that does not seem to have been Grant's original ulterior motive -- until the Doctor started poking him about it, he seemed perfectly accepting of being the unrequited love (i.e. it seems like he took the job as her nanny because he cared about her and Jennifer, and wanted to be in their lives, without: maybe she'll stop being so blind about me, as often happens in rom-coms).
I assumed that it was part of an alien-thwarting adventure that continued off-screen - but now that you mention it, it does fit neatly.
Okay, I just went back and listened to that bit of dialog:
To be fair: I didn't catch the connection on my own, but rather after watching this reaction video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MrVvObunpB4 -- he picked up on it as soon as the Doctor said: "localized disruption here, in New York."
(and I admit, watching reactions of people who loved the episode tend to warm my own heart to it -- unless the people are liking it for reasons I disagree with)
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Date: 2016-12-29 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-29 08:18 pm (UTC)Grant: *Coughs"
Doctor: Do you have a cold?
Grant: I always get a cold at Christmas.
Doctor: Yeah. Me Too. Either that, or an alien invasion...
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Date: 2016-12-30 04:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-30 11:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-01 12:47 am (UTC)And I thought the superhero theme really worked, given the conscious meta-references to comic books etc. (i.e it wasn't just "Dr Who rips off Superman"). The squidgy toy as interrogation device was annoying, though -- if I'd been the Doctor, I'd just have thrown the stupid thing out of the window and snarled "How old do you think I am -- five years old?" :-p
I found Nardole totally puzzling, since I had no idea who he was supposed to be; I think he may have been a one-off character from some 'special' that I never watched (Comic Relief)?
I didn't enjoy Capaldi's introductory episode very much (too much silliness) but he is rapidly becoming one of my favourite Doctors; I was never very keen on Oswin/Oswald, I'm afraid, and never did work out what was supposed to be the big deal about the character (again, I have the feeling I may have missed a vital episode somewhere). I still miss Rory; more male companions, please! That was something else I appreciated about this episode, of course.
And I don't really think that the Doctor's companions *ought* to be made into characters central to the fate of the Universe, or the planet, or the galaxy; the series isn't 'supposed' to work that way, in my view. They're supposed to be ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, not world-changing entities who by some incredible coincidence just happen to be on the same planet as the Doctor. Although again, I didn't mind Rory ;-)
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Date: 2017-01-01 01:46 am (UTC)Rory was an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances -- in his case, the circumstance was "Married to the *special* one."
I did appreciate the way Amy and Rory left, though: choosing to be together, whenever that happened to be, and just living out an ordinary life.
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Date: 2017-01-03 03:15 am (UTC)Ah, thanks. I don't remember much about that episode at all, other than that River Song was married to some unpleasant king (the head of some unpleasant king?)
I was thinking of Rory as the Centurion -- I'd actually managed to forget all about Amy being the cause of the Doctor going to war, and all that :-( Although Melody Pond being River Song was quite neat (if a bit incestuous...)
I always thought of Amy and Rory as having been killed, because that's how it's shown from the viewer's perspective (character disappears and bang! there's a tombstone). But I suppose from their perspective, life went on as normal for a whole lifetime.
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Date: 2017-01-03 11:52 am (UTC)The tragedy, from the Doctor's perspective, was that there was so much temporal disturbance caused by his battles with the angels, that he would never be able to go back in time and visit them again whenever he missed them. So this was the closest thing he had to understanding death the way non-time traveling people do.
As I recall (from clips), the date on the tomb was somewhere around 1980s, which would mean that Amy and Rory were actually quite old when they died.
Chris Chibnail actually wrote an epilogue to "Angels Take Manhattan" that wraps up Amy's and Rory's peaceful post-Doctor life; it made it to the story board stage, but it was never filmed as part of the episode. The BBC did, however, adapt it as a video, narrated by Arthur Darvill, with the musical score, here: https://youtu.be/XWU6XL9xI4k
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Date: 2017-01-03 08:14 pm (UTC)So it's just that one specific slice of time and space that the Doctor can't get into, and that they happen to have been relocated in?
It seems a bit of a contrived hand-wave, given the amount of temporal chaos in the series as a whole (sending people back in time as a means of separating them forever doesn't make a lot of sense in the context of a protagonist who travels in time on a day-to-day basis), but presumably for some reason they didn't feel that 'Amy and Rory settle down, have children and live happily without the Doctor' would be acceptable to the fans otherwise :-p
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Date: 2017-01-03 09:23 pm (UTC)Like I've said (Somewhere), I stopped watching Doctor Who for myself halfway through Series One until Capaldi's debut in Series Eight, but continuing to "follow" the show, after a fashion, by way of spoiler reviews, clips posted online, and fandom debates.
I think (maybe) the ban of the Doctor from Manhattan-in-the-past may have been the result of some sort of temporal trap laid down by the Weeping Angels themselves.
I do prefer Moffat's writing than Davies's, on ethical grounds. But I totally agree with his critics' complaints that his plots have more twists (by several orders of magnitude) than is strictly necessary. ;-)