wtf, if I had a dollar for every time rtd has sent tennant's doctor to live a domestic life as a happy ending I would only have 2 dollars but it's incredibly fucking weird that I would have 2 dollars
On the other hand I think the character development makes sense- we have the emotionally open and vulnerable 14 who's clearly been dealing with a lot of unprocessed trauma getting to process it and live out their life meanwhile 15 lives life with a renewed sense of wonder and vigor and it /does/ explain why this old face came back but also I don't know, and it wraps up the lingering thread of ten/rose but also it feels... Cheap somehow. Unearned? Like it's a handwavy way to deal with continuing the extremely well laid out "you've been running through all these devastating things and have never stopped" threads, and intellectually I understand but emotionally doesn't sit well for me. on a meta level I can accept (and actually enjoy) the emotional plot thread of tennants doctor (I don't want to go vs allonsy) and donna getting the Happy Ending, but the actual happenings of how we got there are a bit puzzling
Other plot bits: the doctors offer to the toymaster to be celestial was very s3 the master, the dance was also very master & the scissors sisters, and the visualisation was very eeaio. What is the whole cosmic horror of the toymaker, really?
"But rescuing me makes him so happy"
I keep getting distracted by how the background is distorted instead of focusing on the plot
Rtd is still Bad at endings, I can't believe we waited 15(?) years to learn the metacrisis can be solved through "just let it go" ?????
The rest of this is actually a pretty good episode, we have Stakes, we have a tension that builds, we have rtds penchant for making the entire family go on the adventure together, tennant and tate who are still my favourite dw pair after all these years, this is a return to form for dw!!!!!
I was warned by everyone on twt saying that the ending was upsetting and they'd be split but truly I wasn't expecting that sequence of events to be so specifically Upsetting in that way!!!!!! The last 15 minutes was so!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I experienced a full body emotion of crying. The way it builds towards positivity and it just comes crashing down so fast wtf
Also I saw everyone talking about religious trauma and Now I Understand Why, and the point of e3 where Aziraphale can't move past rigid morality and believing heaven is good and rules are good. It's wild how it ends by just naming the themes of Communication and Morality. Also Crowley's reaction to being told he can go back to heaven and be an angel,, I just,,,,,
This show is /so/ much
in an alternate branched timeline, there exists a version of this show where it was a loki focused character study, not like it is here, a bunch of barely linked plot happenings with a sprinkle of character
The romcom episode of the season!!
The editing feels more lively in this episode compared to e11, because here they can cut to reactions & strategy discussions from the rest. The games themselves are half-half on interestingness: nine man morris was easy enough to follow, hexagon is too difficult to even attempt. The joyous reunion and hangout was probably the most interesting part, which really speaks to how this show invested all its interestingness in the emotional drama and not in the games themselves
I feel very frustrated watching because
1) they lost dongjae who understands how to play 2) the games seem to be won via a lot of mistakes/misunderstandings from the others like the chain of misunderstandings that led to the leak 3) aside from dongjae who won the first match via the skill of knowing how to play social deduction games the rest don't seem to display much skills at playing games 4) kwaktube/joonbin keeps talking up a big game like saying he's willing to betray anyone but he doesn't have the skills to turn the game around & when it does happen he Feels Bad about it which is all very just desserts 5) the youtubers/dongjoo alliance keep trying to manipulate seungkwan to do their dirty work & if you want there to be dirty work, then do the work yourself, especially in this show where the emotional repurcussions are so high & you already know seungkwan hated having to push back the other team in main match 2 (this came up in a yt review of the episode). In short I find this cast very frustrating
I want an omelette too. Also that fixing the table scene
ooh we're back! in today's episode, aziraphale even more overtly trusts crowley
The old married couple vibes & crowley creating the heavens!!!
"fighting! I should have done it" is maybe the more realistic theme song
a show that focuses quite a lot on the emotional and alliance building aspect of these games, rather than skills at the games themselves. ymmv
The seewon and seokjin/ escape room story is more interesting lol.
Why /does/ the game only respond to seungkwan. Were there secret clues in the rest of the show (besides nine men morris
Less frustrating than the previous episode, possibly because the majority alliance is falling apart, due to dongjoo distrusting orbit, & seokjin openly voicing his concerns. kwaktube has spent every main match saying "I made a mistake" (with other people paying for it) so it's really frustrating to see that he's one of the main characters. Seungkwan, you can be braver!!, I believe in you
Tbh from gameplay perspective, I wonder if it would be possible to actually play the games prioritising /all/ players surviving
Rewatch (2): this cold open stands out in this whole season because it sounds like it was written to be acted and not out of a page of a book
-"I won't be forgiven / not ever / part of a demon's job description " > compare s2e6, aziraphale's I forgive you
- aziraphale's speech really does sound like he's killed children, whereas crowley has always been for the children
- the hopeful note when aziraphale says "go off together?" Only to be once again stifled by his sense of strict morality
a soft solution to a thorny theological question. they're still realllly cute
The straight up musical din filming this episode must have been lol
wow the assassination scene is shot in such a cool way
It's so fun watching them fix their choreo
"you ate the porridge because you didn't want to die"
Also surprised to see the aftermath of a death of an infant actually addressed
when 14 cast that salt at the edge of the universe and (potentially) let in things he shouldn't have, he also changed the tone of the show - from sort of handwavy science fiction all the way to fairy tale inspired goblins eating babies. The logic of this episode is all fairy tales. I struggle to articulate why I could accept the line in salt but I find baby eating goblins straining the suspension of disbelief too much. I think it's the mix of languages going on - the adventure is all fairy tales happening on a pirate ship in the air and where ropes are a language but the encounter of Ruby and the doctor predicting a proposal's success is just too modern and grounded.
Things that really worked for me: Ruby getting a full and detailed family life (aka, the rtd), the foundling emotional thread & how Ruby and the doctor made completely opposite choices wrt finding out who the birth parent is
14 is shaping up to be a heightened, more emotionally intense version of 10's run. /so/ good.
The Acting in this episode! The emotions! The dealing with the fallout and implications of it all! The doctor is still killing half the universe (but a whole lot more openly emotional now) and Donna is still his friend who's worried about him and his confidant.
being a bottle episode (albeit a very very expensive one this time) it also reminded me a little of midnight but much more intense
This show..... Sigh
Ruth's acting is so stiff especially after becoming the doctor (? and it feels really hard to buy she's the doctor, if she is) the companions saying theyre family is so unjustified... Jodie's tenure feels so wasted istg. Jack turning up unexpectedly was really surprising but the way it's written feels like a loss of tension, rather than more excitement
the writing of this show is so dubious. Where are the emotional stakes! This is dw, the whole of humanity is /always/ under threat, if you don't make us care about specific humans it doesn't exactly matter. the companions & their families are too thin for us to care.
The master just seems inexplicable, which, I guess is a little in line for him, but the whole problem of why he's both desperate for the doctor's attention about gallifrey & yet wants to kill her lol.
Also... the doctors gender. By casting a woman, they want a nb doctor made explicit. but 10's "well just us girls" in fires of pompeii which is just accepted by the priestesses & passes without comment vs 13's "marvellous apparating man, I mean, lady" where the doctor seems more fixated on performing the right gender than the audience does, doesn't really match up to the lack of care the doctor has used with performing their gender previously
here the sequence of events is fine but the execution of all the details falls short and it really lacks that certain spark that turns a show from serviceable to great
This is only a 6 because of the Acting in this, which was good, and this episode actually invests most of its run time in the emotions of the character, which is the only important thing given the outcome
The key issue with this show is that very obviously, from the beginning, they were trying to get to the ending where lokis glorious purpose was sacrificing himself (throne ascension!) for other people, but what's critical to make that final piece work is why and how did he arrive to that emotional state. The show never actually shows us how he comes to learn these moments (except maybe, a little, in this episode), so the big character and self sacrifice moment is completely lost. Are these people even friends, aside from loki and slyvie and loki and mobius and maybe ob. It's intended to be a big character study show, but it did not spend enough time studying the character. Why, exactly is he so intent on preserving free will/the branches etc
Glancing at the reports of where hiddleston improvised/changed lines in season finales (!!) to make the emotional logic of the character work(!!), it feels like he's the only one who understood the character arc, because the writers of this show certainly did not.
This writers spent all their time on exposition and trying to Make Things Happen in The Plot, but none of the day to day happenings even make logical progression sense. Like what is ravonna even doing, the liz carr/tva rebellion plot - it's so underdeveloped I could not explain to anyone else what's going on
This series (and to some extent, loki, the mcu character) is a awful waste of acting talent and I wish tom hiddleston and ke huy quan a very "get some better written roles"
The character stuff has shades of interestingness but the plot sequence is terrible, nonsensical and writing a comment as to specifically why feels like even more of a waste
After complaining my way through the last season I'm back for more (???) happy ke huy quan is employed but he's Wasted in this role
I'm calling him Charles from now on. He seems like a Charles
