Kerr Avon
Master Member
And as soon as he knows there are some large life signs he gets someone who's instinct is to shoot it? That's hardly like the Doctor. The Doctor was very out of sorts in that episode.
New Doctor Who Series Discussion *Spoilers*
- Thread starter silverskyes402
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And as soon as he knows there are some large life signs he gets someone who's instinct is to shoot it? That's hardly like the Doctor. The Doctor was very out of sorts in that episode.
I know I'm not the same kind of guy as the Doctor but I'd have made the same choice! :lol
cboath
Master Member
I'm with you.
If I have to board a strange spaceship to keep it from plummeting at the earth and thereby destroyed because I detect 'large' life signs on board - i want someone with me who knows how to defend himself from large creatures. My hope would be I don't have to kill or hurt them, but, i'm not going to make myself 'large life signal food' in order to try and save them either. CYA 101
If I have to board a strange spaceship to keep it from plummeting at the earth and thereby destroyed because I detect 'large' life signs on board - i want someone with me who knows how to defend himself from large creatures. My hope would be I don't have to kill or hurt them, but, i'm not going to make myself 'large life signal food' in order to try and save them either. CYA 101
Angelus Lupus
Sr Member
Random thought: How come we never saw Rory's dad Brian at the wedding?
'Cause he wasn't cast yet.
Let's just assume he was at a different table and not seen in the shots they used.
Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go
Just so happened that's when the doctor showed up
During the speeches? Rory's dad was a jerk! :lol
A Town Called Mercy - liked it. Definitely exploring the themes we all talked about in this thread - the doc as a killer. I gotta say, I'm very impressed with the production value so far this season. They are stretching the $$ a long way. Make-up on the cyborg was top notch.
Kerr Avon
Master Member
Yup, the Doctor being out of sorts* taken further to the point even Amy points out that he's not acting like he normally does. No Doctor I know would toss a guy out of town to be executed, and when the guy tries to come back, the Doctor sticks a gun in his face. Never. So is it from the Doctor not having a companion between these long gaps without Amy and Rory? Or is it more? I'm wondering if we're getting into the Valeyard territory here or not. Probably not quite that, but certainly a darker, lot less forgiving Doctor. As he said, all the mercy he's given to his foes in the past has generally come back to bite him. Like the Batman who never kills the Joker, the Joker always comes back and murders even more.
* See signature.
I think Ben Browder was essentially wasted in this episode. I liked the Gunslinger though.
* See signature.
I think Ben Browder was essentially wasted in this episode. I liked the Gunslinger though.
Straker
Sr Member
I'm sorry the dodgy morals on this one turned me off completely. The Doctor getting royally pissed and telling Amy that he was going to think of the victims first then having Amy preach morals at the Doctor until he relents just so we can have the sheriff get added to a body count of victims because of the Doctor's mercy...it was heavy handed and gross. That BS about the guy there blowing himself up at the end being "honorable" was absolute rubbish. It wasn't honorable it was cowardice. He couldn't stand to face justice at the hands of another that he wronged so he killed himself and that's honorable? BS! The town sheriff acting like just because this stranger gave them some consideration with curing a disease and giving them electricity to ease his conscience means he is a good man? BS! Suddenly anyone is forgiven for committing acts of atrocity as long as they act NICE after? Imagine if they did that with people like BTK or Jeffery Dahmer? Damn I'm glad this isn't how the real world works. I was seriously waiting for someone in that lynch mob to point out that they didn't need to KILL the Doctor to throw the danger out, just needed to kneecap him. 9_9 I also loved the line about the town turning on itself. Wow that was terrible. I seen a town turning against you, and your companions for protecting a guy who didn't want to face his justice, his DESERVED justice, and because of that a town will slowly die, oh but, I guess if you weren't directly involved directly in the war that doctor committed those crimes in so it's different and you're free to impose your standards of morality on the situation. So let's help the guy that is the target get off planet, in the process endangering every person in town by making a bunch of them targets with those tattoo's as they run around. That way, the cause of the problem goes elsewhere and you don't have to deal with it??? WHAT? You remove the symptoms but not the cause? Oh but it's OK, the coward kills himself so nothing is really resolved in this horrifying moral comedy. Actually in a way, he DID act more "honorable" than the Doctor in that HE ended it in SOME fashion and not THE Doctor who only did the equivalent of throwing gun powder on a dying fire. I'm done. I am done now. I really hoped this sort of crap would be over with Moffat but this questionable "morality" high minded crap has killed it for me. We came across this sort of "morality" in Season 1 when that one Slitheen was going to be taken back to face capital punishment but we were supposed to feel bad for the genocidal maniac that was going to BLOW UP THE EARTH so she could SURF THE SHOCKWAVE HOME and that it was wrong for her to face trial on her own planet and face punishment even though she and her family were genocidal maniacs. I didn't like that bullcrap THEN either and I certainly don't like variations of it now. In many ways, it's evil. More evil in certain aspects than the criminal in the first place. I'm done. If the message is that peoples past actions mean nothing and as long as they're nice they should be given a second chance and never actually answer for their actions then I'm done with this show. They can take this"morality" and swivel on it.
DuneMuadDib
Sr Member
According to the Doctor he was 1100ish at the end of "Wedding" and now he's 100ish years older. The indication seems to be that he's not been spending much time with the Ponds since the wedding, so he may have been going mostly solo for 100 years. That's plenty of time in my view for him to lose his moral compass.
Remember back in "Runaway Bride" after having just barely lost Rose he was round the bend enough for Donna, who had just met him, to observe that he needs someone around to ground him and humanize him. After losing Donna later during the Specials Ten was slipping more and more (cough, Time-lord Victorious) as he spent more time without a constant companion. Taken as a whole, I think that his harder edge over the past two episodes is consistent and logical.
Hope he gets his head on straight though. I got fed up with Ten's "no second chances" attitude and going WAY overboard punishing the Family of Blood, so seeing Eleven become a dick as well concerns me.
Also, 1200ish now? I assume he's still lying about his age, or mistaken, since Nine claimed to be younger than Seven did. In my head anyway I just tack an extra 236 years onto whatever number he gives, on the assumption that "900 years of time and space" meant how long since he stole the TARDIS, and he went with Rose's misunderstanding. Just my $0.02 there
And yes, I was disappointed with Ben's part. He's got some built-in Sci-Fi cred, surely he could have been better utilized. Still nice to see him, and playing someone other than Crichton or SG-Crichton.
Straker, wanted to read your post, but I can't get through walls of text like that. Paragraphs, buddy.
phez
Sr Member
I thought the episode was pretty good. It shows the Doctor for more of a person (although a Time Lord) who does not always have the definitive moral high ground (if there is any).
It looked like the Doctor played back the video records of the experiments that the cyborg doctor had conducted on people. He was absolutally apaled that someone could do something like that and came back to the town still very disturbed by the experience. Amy had not actually seen the video and was viewing the situation from a more level headed standpoint.
This season seems to put the Doctor into more of these highly emotionally charged situations (just plain horrible people) with very little time to think it through before reacting. Maybe this season is building up to the reason that the Silents fear the Doctor so much (We really don't know how old he was when the Silence started to fear him but we do know that we have not seen the incident in the forest talked about in the Daemons Run episode). Perhaps once Amy and Rory are not around to act as a moral compass the Doctor steps over the line at some point.
It looked like the Doctor played back the video records of the experiments that the cyborg doctor had conducted on people. He was absolutally apaled that someone could do something like that and came back to the town still very disturbed by the experience. Amy had not actually seen the video and was viewing the situation from a more level headed standpoint.
This season seems to put the Doctor into more of these highly emotionally charged situations (just plain horrible people) with very little time to think it through before reacting. Maybe this season is building up to the reason that the Silents fear the Doctor so much (We really don't know how old he was when the Silence started to fear him but we do know that we have not seen the incident in the forest talked about in the Daemons Run episode). Perhaps once Amy and Rory are not around to act as a moral compass the Doctor steps over the line at some point.
So...what's everyone's theories on the lightbulbs this series?
The lightbulbs around Amy's mirror flickered, Brian and Rory were changing a lightbulb, and now flickering lightbulbs in this episode? (Also the Doctor changed the bulb in the top of the TARDIS in Pond Life)
What are they reacting to that we don't know about?
One theory I had last night was that Solomon is a member of the race that was being hunted last night. He had a face scar, so my theory is that he removed his facial mark to prevent himself from being identified. Not sure how that would affect things beyond having someone who has experienced the war we just heard about from the doc.
...could be interesting since the good money seems to be on him returning somehow.
-Nick
The lightbulbs around Amy's mirror flickered, Brian and Rory were changing a lightbulb, and now flickering lightbulbs in this episode? (Also the Doctor changed the bulb in the top of the TARDIS in Pond Life)
What are they reacting to that we don't know about?
One theory I had last night was that Solomon is a member of the race that was being hunted last night. He had a face scar, so my theory is that he removed his facial mark to prevent himself from being identified. Not sure how that would affect things beyond having someone who has experienced the war we just heard about from the doc.
...could be interesting since the good money seems to be on him returning somehow.
-Nick
Goodwolf
Sr Member
Last night's show seemed to really bring up questions on the nature of justice vs. revenge.
Kahler Jex did some horrible things, no questions there. In his attempt to somewhat atone for his sins, he helped out Mercy with early electricity and preventing the disease outbreak from decimating the population. The question then becomes for each viewer, does the good he has done outweigh the bad? And how would you even quantify such a decision?
Also, at the end he willingly kills himself, knowing (or at least believing) that he was going to his version of Hell and having to face the justice there. I found that very in line with some of the ancient concepts of Justice, like throwing oneself on one's sword, or other forms of ritual suicide, like seppuku.
I think that some people got mad because he didn't die "properly," as in being executed. I'm not a big fan of the State having power of life and death. It leads to such weird situations as "Get his man medical care, heal his wounds, guard him from harming himself so we can give him a proper execution." If the desire or perceived justice is Death, then what does it matter the manner? Dead is dead, after all.
Kahler Jex did some horrible things, no questions there. In his attempt to somewhat atone for his sins, he helped out Mercy with early electricity and preventing the disease outbreak from decimating the population. The question then becomes for each viewer, does the good he has done outweigh the bad? And how would you even quantify such a decision?
Also, at the end he willingly kills himself, knowing (or at least believing) that he was going to his version of Hell and having to face the justice there. I found that very in line with some of the ancient concepts of Justice, like throwing oneself on one's sword, or other forms of ritual suicide, like seppuku.
I think that some people got mad because he didn't die "properly," as in being executed. I'm not a big fan of the State having power of life and death. It leads to such weird situations as "Get his man medical care, heal his wounds, guard him from harming himself so we can give him a proper execution." If the desire or perceived justice is Death, then what does it matter the manner? Dead is dead, after all.
timelordjedi777
Sr Member
I think that it is getting closer to the time when the Valeyard emerges. It is supposed to be around his 11th regeneration so that would be now. I would really like to see them go this route and stick with continuity
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