h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Enjoyed the latest episode enough to not bother looking for the usually blatant plot holes. Not a great fan of Ms Hawes, but the rest of the supporting cast were unusually good.

My thoughts about the Capaldi close was that it was delivered in a slightly Matt Smith cadence. This could just be about re-integrating the past personalities, or it may be more.

I wonder if each copy of his phone number he hands out is a potential new story too.

"Well, that was nowhere near as scary as expected.

I'm not sure I enjoyed it all that much. I'm probably missing something really obvious but to me it didn't even really make much sense. I was willing to accept the existence of whatever was under the blanket but that seemed to be negated by what Clara said at the end. And how could she have left him with the soldier, wouldn't that create some kind of paradox or something? Even with my "some things just have to be taken on trust" attitude to watching, it didn't seem to hang together. "

I watched Listen out of sequence, so I read this thread today. I found the episode scary because it is one of my fears, about the dark - when I was very young, I used to think there was something (that could well have been a dalek) at the top of the stairs, so I had to run past the stairs at night in case it started trying to get me... These days I struggle to persuade myself to go to bed, and worry about the noises of the house, and I also sometimes at night feel a sensation that reminds me of when my late partner used to ruffle my hair at the back of my neck so I found the episode good because of the factors relating to that...

I agree with your assessment of the episode as a whole, though, deb - I was confused by the soldier at the end, too, although I forgot about the blanket thing until I read this thread as I watched the episode in two pieces.

I thoroughly enjoyed Saturday's episode. The danger seemed incidental to the interactions between the Doctor, Clara & Danny. I really feel like I'm "getting" Peter Capaldi's Doctor now, which is a relief because it felt like I was going to lose interest completely for a while there.

Deb

He was *really* grumpy in this episode. Really, coming dangerously close to actively dislikeable. In fact, I am not sure whether I have seen Capaldi's Doctor do anything properly likeable except the obvious plot stuff of saving the day.

Surely 'nice' can get a little bland? I quite like the grumpy Doctor, and was delighted to see that the big baddy of the episode looked just like the old Ref Bot from 'Robot Wars'.

The plot thickens with the Missy afterlife/promised land thingy - now we see someone there who hadn't even met the Doctor.

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Scientifically, that was a load of old codswallop. An object can't just gain a huge amount of mass from nowhere. A massive life-form surely can't come into being solo, out of nowhere, and have a fully rounded life-cycle right off the bat. The speed it was moving and throwing off debris, when viewed from earth, was way beyond the possible when you consider how much mass it was having to accelerate. Mono-cellular life-forms can't grow anywhere near that big because they don't have the circulatory systems to move nutrients around and keep themselves alive. We *know* (or are pretty sure) where the moon came from, when it came there, and more-or-less what it's made of, and it isn't aliens. Oh, and judging the opinions of the planet by seeing which of them respond when the communications network has been almost entirely destroyed? I was shouting at my monitor.
However, the argument at the end very nearly saved it. The Doctor was acting like a [expletive self-censored], and if he had a kind of reasoning to the worst parts of it, and she was right to call him on it. She also responded with heart, in a way that re-affirmed her humanity. I *do* think he is a bit lost, and trying outlandish things as a result, like a drowning man thrashing and floundering to try to bring themselves to the surface, even though they aren't sure which direction that is. It was a great scene.

I think they were just going for atmospheric. I assumed the gaining mass bit was just so they could excuse walking around normally. But yes, there were plot holes - the doesn't orbit all around the in 40 minutes, the moon's origins are also explained in Doctor Who as being what made the Silurians go into hibernation (although that has later been amended to be the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs) and I won't mention the web-producing motion-sensing single-cell s.

It was still quite tense, but not in the same league as 'The Waters of Mars'.

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Yes the Moon is not an egg. The Moon is goddess, wife of Sun.

I definitely enjoyed yesterday's episode, though. Silly, true, and shocking - and now we not only have to try and work out who 'Missy' is, there's a mysterious 'Gus' too - are they related?

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I was watching QI last night and it was mentioned that we don't know where the moon came from. It tied in so well with that episode, and I did think, ah well that's because it's really an egg

I enjoyed this week's too. I thought they glossed over last week's falling out a bit, but it probably would have been messy to try and fit it in. I also thought Clara's abrupt change of heart was a bit...well, abrupt. But I thought the Doctor explained his attitude of apparent indifference to the deaths quite well.

Deb

The only think that I didn't like about the abrupt change of heart is that it means she's going to be lying to Mr Pink, and that means there'll be more angst later. A bit fed up with angst at the moment.

The episode was good though, there weren't *quite* as many huge, gaping scientific holes (although a proper scientist can probably tell me a few smaller ones).

I have a theory that the Doctor knows that people aren't dying 'properly', as it were, but he can't tell anyone (in the same way that he lied to Clara because he couldn't let Gus know). That might explain his lack of empathy when people die - although I'm quite content with a slightly more long-term-view Doctor who sees the bigger picture rather than the right here and now.

IMO the sudden change of heart means she's doomed. She will probably die in the next episode or, at the very least, be permanently prevented from travelling with the Doctor again, under unpleasant circumstances.

A few other things about the ep:
1. They forgot to credit Leiji Matsumoto for his big part in the screenplay. It was cutting the 'referencing/tribute' a bit thick, for me.
2. Is it just me, or did Clara explicitly reference the Bechdel Test, before proceeding to fail it from then on?
3. "Are you my mummy?" Nice one . Also, it seems to me that one of the voices in his conversation with himself near the start was an impression of Tom Baker.

There were a couple of other things, but those are the ones that spring to mind.

Plus, wasn't there's jelly babies?

Ah yes. Doooooomed. Could be.

I don't think the Tom Baker voice was an impression. I think it was cobbled together from a couple of Baker's actual lines; can't put my finger on it but what was said seems familiar, plus it was a bit *too* good to be an impression.

Well, that was really rather good. Not sure about the logic the aliens' abilities ran on, which seemed a bit vague and geared to the plot requirements rather than anything more concretely thought out... but I was generally happy to let that pass. In the meantime, there was some cracking special effects work, and it's always nice to see Clara taking centre stage and kicking ass in her own way.
Also, turns out I was wrong about her being doomed this episode. Maybe she'll be alright after all... or maybe it will just take a bit longer than I thought.

"it's always nice to see Clara taking centre stage"

Well, I guess you must be really enjoying this season as it seems to be more often Clara's Occasional Adventures in Time and Space rather than Doctor Who.

Liked it. I don't even feel the need to sit back and pick holes; I could actually suspend my disbelief this time, and just enjoy it.

The one with the trees. It all sort of looked OK to start with, but ended up not really holding together.

You'd probably do best forgetting about it, and listen to Foxes having a sing, with glorious accompanying Dr Who pictures: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLR6cP1_Q8

I really liked this episode, although it requires a real shift in mindset. We were solidly in the territory of faery mythology here, and if you looked at it that way, it was a rather lovely example. The folkloric feel was all over the thing. I am pretty sure that the girl's name, Maeve Arden, is no coincidence: it's a classically Celtic, old-fashioned kind of name.
As science fiction, it doesn't hold up for a second, but as fantasy transposed into a modern setting, it's the very quintessence of what those kind of stories were about. Nature, the wild, the unknown: more powerful than you can possibly understand, and inclined to muck around with your life (especially if you don't keep to the arbitrary rules seemingly picked out of the air)... _but_ not necessarily actually malign.

Okay, I have to admit, I wasn't expecting that, and yet it makes a reasonable amount of sense when she explained it.
It doesn't answer how they are doing it though, to my mind, especially given that some of the dead people we have seen turn up in her domain were in the far future and a long way from Earth.