James

Dialogue's a bit try-hard, but not as Dick Van Dyke as it could be. Dismal storytelling in both art and script, though. Ignoring the unnamed, bearded fat guy* who materialises from thin air every other page, moving the narrative from Constantine talking to a second character to Constantine doing a monologue makes it look like the second and third pages are happening in flashback (there's a line about his morning paper, but it's easily glossed over and a clumsy fix).

Also - who the fuck is this Constantine guy? I guess Moore's Swamp Thing books are pretty popular, but this is still John's first proper appearance in a DCU book in, what, 15 years? 20? Give him a proper introduction. Just sticking the camera on him, letting him exposit and hoping the readers roll with it isn't enough. Especially when he's expositing about another character who hasn't made a proper DCU appearance in decades (and whose backstory is ludicrously complicated).

The exposition is a bit much, too. Why the fuzzy, slightly confusing allusion to Tefe's conception? If she's not a part of this story then it's just a pointless detail. If she is a part of this story then deal with it when you get there, not on the second page. It's like the two Doctor Who relaunches - the 2005 one had almost no backstory beyond a very rough framework and filled in the details over the next four years. The 1998 one started off with a long and rambling prologue that only made sense to people already intimate with the mythos. Guess which one was the massive hit and which one got axed?

I'll be getting it anyway, obviously. Damn you, Hellblazer wiki!

*Not Chas, not Chas, notChasnotChasnotChasnotChasnotChas...

Divergent, but occasionally intersecting, timelines* would also explain how Rory had never seen The Doctor dancing in the Laurel and Hardy film even though he'd seen it enough times with Amy to 'explain all the jokes'.

*Hypertime!

And Amy doing a Sarah Jane tribute when the Silence appear behind Spacegirl.

And doing a Dana Scully impression for the five minute preceding. Not a surprise given all the X-Files-appropriate stuff in the rest of the episode.

"trust no-one but me"

See?

"She's just dreaming". Who? The girl?

If the girl is Amy and Rory's time-head baby, and given that the TARDIS was everywhere at once at the end of last season, is it possible that the girl's dreams in the future are connecting to our reality in the past? In the same way that Amy's memories were able to pass through her head, into the crack in time and then into reality at the end of last season?

Talking of TARDISes, what does The Doctor recognise in the Silence's secret lair? What did he say? "Very Amon Road/Rose/Rhodes"

Aickman Road - the place where last season's The Lodger took place, and where The Doctor and James Corden encountered a lost/home-brewed TARDIS.

(Also - what's with the spoiler tags? Speculation isn't spoiler-worthy, surely, and the episode was simultaneously broadcast in the US and Australia, so it's not like anyone who reads this thread will have lacked opportunities to see it first.)

Eyepatch lady

.

the fact that we still don't have a clue what the Silence's motivation was

 

That's part of the season arc's mystery, so I'm not too bothered about that.

 

 

Don't you remember? Watch the episode again and record what you see.

Well The Doctor says that they want to run off and infect other planets in their TARDIS, which seems good enough. But we don't know why they were trying to breed a Time Girl. Unless it was, indeed, to pilot the TARDIS.

I didn't say it was catastrophic or that I had a serious problem with it, just that it was a bit contrived. Which I maintain that it was - that dialogue didn't ring true to me at all.

Seemed fine to me. Part of the standard 'You should have killed me when you had the chance' villainy dialogue pack.

the jawdroppingly shit resolution to last week's cliffhanger

I'm half and half on this. Amy missing her shot was a dirty cheat, but the time jump seemed reasonable - get to the next exciting bit of the story without wasting 15 minutes having The Doctor work out what the audience already knows (especially as the jump was played for further mystery).

the fact that we still don't have a clue what the Silence's motivation was

That's part of the season arc's mystery, so I'm not too bothered about that.

why they actually deserve to be mass-slaughtered

As someone else pointed out on another forum, the Doctor didn't arrange for them all to be killed, he just stopped them from operating in the open. The Silents have been shown to be extraordinarily nippy when need be (all that disappearing when you look around stuff) so there's no reason they couldn't have just run off after being spotted by a human. The moment they get out of their pursuer's line of sight they're in the clear.

Yeah, some will die but it's not like The Doctor hasn't killed aliens (or even committed genocide a few times...) before Moffatt got his hands on the programme.

the question of why they needed to wait thousands of years for humanity to build them a space suit when they apparently have a time machine at their disposal

Perhaps they can't actually pilot it? Perhaps it requires... a Time Girl?

a push-button solution that doesn't feel contrived

 

 

Oh, come on...I liked it well enough at the time, and thought it more-or-less worked in context (mainly because they didn't dwell on it for very long), but it was at least a bit contrived. Mister Lawrence Miles may well be an extremely silly internet arse these days, and he's clearly let his personal animosity for Moffat overwhelm his critical faculties to a faintly hilarious/faintly tragic degree, but his point about the resolution of the Silence invasion is not an entirely invalid one...

I don't agree with that at all. Well, okay - Barry Silent just happening to say the one perfect thing without prompting was a bit handy but I'll assume that Canton was all ready to manoeuvre him into saying something like that anyway and he just got lucky. My comments were more along the lines that once they had this fortuitous recording, the way in which it was deployed felt like a sensible use of established facts and plot elements, and not a convenient way to wrap up the story (unlike the magic levers at the end of Doomsday, or the 'reverse the polarity' business at the end of Children of Earth.

In any case, slagging Barry off like that is a bit much. Putting aside the fact that he'd lost so much gooey alien blood that he probably wasn't in much of a position to think clearly, there's no reason to think he ought to know what a camera phone is. The Silents are established as being a parasite race that can only direct, not create, so there's no reason why they should know what some out-of-time Earth tech is on sight, nor deduce its function (I'm assuming that the spare TARDIS and alien life support tech was taken from other alien species, which - considering the shit that Area 51 and Torchwood both managed to scrounge up over a hundred or so years - doesn't seem unreasonable).

As a side note, wasn't Canton awesome? It's a shame they probably can't afford to get Sheppard back...

Absolutely tremendous stuff - fabulously creepy throughout (particularly the orphanage scenes), a push-button solution that doesn't feel contrived, stellar performances from the guests, an ending that wraps up the bulk of the story while leaving two big threads dangling and some fantastic effects work.

I look forward to Mark explaining his 'meh' reaction.

Also: does the Tardis-jumping in the middle mean that Richard Nixon is a companion now?

Hey, it's a wiki. I'll correct your mistakes like you correct mine. :)

Do whatever you want, really - be conversational if you like. I'm not one of those wikipedia pedants.. As little or as much as you like. If, say, adding pics is a pain in the arse then I'll stick them in later. Any and all help appreciated!

So, who would you like to see writing JC's dialogue in the coming months/years...?

 

(I tried covering as many good and/or high-profile writers currently or recently working in the DCU)

Welcome back to the forum!

I voted Morrison (though I'd rather see him on the main title proper), Cornell (great writer, could see him having fun with the character), Simone (consistently excellent) and Rucka (would have loved a JC Gotham Central issue). Though in this ideal world there would be a Brit who'd check the Americans' dialogue before it went to press...

How's the wiki going, James?

 

Ever got any mileage out of those Dangerous Habits write-ups?

It was going well until I got a job. Currently I have very little free time, but I hope to get back to regularly updating the thing soon.

If anyone fancies joining in, of course, that would be even better. Some kind soul has been coming in and correcting my typos here and there. More of that kind of thing would be great.

Haven't put the DH write-ups on there yet. There's basically a massive gap between HB issue four and the start of the Milligan run. It's on the to-do list, but stuff like filling out the Chas, Cheryl and Tony biographies are more important, I think.

Dreadfully sad, though as mentioned there is some infinitesimally small comfort in knowing that she went out a star once more. Surprised how saddened I am by this news, actually.

it's at odds with almost every other example of time travel in the history of the show.

(Does the maths) That's less than 50 per cent, then? Sounds about right. Davies used it first, of course, with the Torchwood reveal. And then with Mr Saxon. And then with the tie in Smith and Jones. All of that was before Moffat rolled out Blink. Not sure there's much mileage at all in complaining that the time travel in Moffat's Who lacks consistency. Has it ever been consistent?

Anyway, I thought it was a rather sweet and joyful way of getting around the cliffhanger, presented in an imaginative and fun way. The writing even draws attention to how silly it is. Yes, I can see why someone might feel a bit cheated, but I'd rather that than a more mundane explanation. 'Ooh, he pressed a thing on the screwdriver!'/Rory pilots the Tardis and saves him/whatever? Nah, give me ludicrous mop-and-fez timey wimey gumph any day.

I'm not wildly thrilled by the promise of Walliams either, but since almost every other bit of Doctor Who casting to have initially concerned me since 2005 has worked out just fine, I'm not getting too worked up about it. To the best of my recollection, Peter Kay is the only big-name guest star to date who's seriously let the side down.

You're giving props to Trigger? Or is that overstating the phrase 'big name'?

My expectation is that River will die, but we will continue to meet her from her past.

That's already happened! She died in Silence in the Library.

Fantastic stuff, but you knew that already. Consistently surprising. Odd to see the chav leader from that Spaced episode as one of the ancient vampires though.

I don't think they did a good job in getting over the hump of George's father being able to recognise what his son was since he was meant to be a supernatural being himself - the approach was obvious but they still managed to mess up the delivery - looking at that first scene between them in context there's nothing to show that George is even hinting that he might be gay.

Strongly disagree - all the dialogue between the two was laced with innuendo, to the point that I thought it was going to have a 'Dad, I'm...' 'Gay, I know,' punchline. Then the remark from George about supernaturals being able to detect one another threw me off-guard. A clever bit of writing as far as I'm concerned.

Less clever - for me, at least - was George's dad playing along with his son's 'delusion'... to what end? To get him to talk to his mother? Maybe. Still seemed a bit of an odd decision for a largely decent chap to make.

Aaaaanyway, latest episode was brilliant. A mini masterclass in tension and pacing. Hope they have the balls to stick with the 'outing the vampires' idea. I imagine the copper will be back as a newly minted vamp, which is a shame because I really liked her as a human. Fingers crossed that Nina's okay, too.

Direction was excellent - we haven't had as many memorable shots this season as we did the last one, but the tracking shot across the murdered cops and the fading pull-back as the detective was killed were solid. Liked Herrick's return through the swing doors, too, though that was mostly because of the performance. Wonder if the writer's a fan of Miracleman?

I'll be interested to hear what you think of the later episodes of Jekyll. I was very disappointed with it myself.

(And why can't the slob be bothered with a tie? Carr and Mitchell are both making an effort...)

Granddad! I thought you were dead...

Yes, although I do wonder whether - assuming that Herrick is or was genuinely amnesiac - the whole 'killed by a werewolf/coming back with no memory of his atrocities' thing is on Mitchell's cards now too, as a way to wipe his karmic slate clean.

Nina is my favourite genre character in years. 'I didn't agree because, you know, if we're really going to execute an amnesiac psychiatric patient like we're the governor of shitting Texas or something then we should all have a vote.'

Mitchell continues to be a completely unlikeable, self-absorbed [over-used word] but that's fine because we're clearly not supposed to agree with pretty much anything he does.

Got to say that I much preferred the less episodic, darker tone of last series but they're still doing a decent job with the dramatic elements this time around. It does have that slightly odd sense of trying to squeeze 13 episodes' worth of character development into just eight, but it never bothered me as much as it did some other people.

Garth Ennis must be happy with the constant changing of producers and formats. He gets a kickback each time, right?

A rather lovely - and utterly enormous - infographic guide to Doctor Who: http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5001/5355526489_154ce8cb07_o.jpg

His much-derided season finales all have rather more to do with Our Earth Thing Called Narrative Logic than do 'The Pandorica Opens' or 'A Christmas Carol'

Really? I think they're roughly equivalent on the nonsene-o-meter. 'Amy's brain is connected to the cracks -> She's able to access memories of things that should no longer have existed -> ??? -> They come back into existence!' is on the same level as 'The Master is psychically controlling the Earth's population -> Martha makes people think of The Doctor at the same time -> ??? -> He's restored and given magical floating powers!'

And from what I can remember there wasn't anything wrong with the narrative of the Christmas Carol so long as you could accept flying fish and storms that could be calmed by sound.

it features the worst cliffhanger in the entire history of the show.

Is that the one where The Doctor dangles himself off a cliff for no reason?

Good death scene though.

Oh well. I'll weep into the porcelain shoulder of Jessica from True Blood.

Annie latching onto Mitchell is completely consistent with her past relationships - hopefully third time will be the charm and she'll learn some degree of independence (in series one or two they said that she was only still around because of the flat and her relationship with Mitchell and George - did her shutting the door change that?).

Yes. And I want her! I might not have fallen in love with her first but I fell in love with her better.

Yes, I meant to commend the shift back to a more episodic format, though I suspect that sex dungeon vamp and the fight club lot will be back before the season's out. Hopefully in the same episode because the contrast in personalities would be entertaining.

Actually, there's another thing that's pleased me a bit about this series: we're finally seeing more variety in our vamps now they're not all moving exclusively in Herrick's circle. I still loathe the lot of them, but the shades of black are appreciated.