Doctor Who (may contain SPOILERS for current episodes)

"42" has always been a favorite of mine and, yes, this reminded me of it, too. It worked well enough and gave Jodie Whittaker a lot of chances to shine. "On the bright side, I now feel very well informed" (paraphrasing here) may have been one of my favorite lines of hers so far.

But four episodes in, they're really showing the struggle of giving everybody something to do, don't they?

As an aside, I picked up the 1st issue of Titan's DW series with Thirteen and I'm very impressed with how well the dialogue "sounds" like it came from their respective actors (especially Whittaker).

OK, that was a pretty strong gut punch of an episode tonight...

Just watched the latest ep and I need to have a cup of tea and a moment to gather myself. In non-spoilery comments -- beautiful scenery and wonderful music.

I quite liked "Demons of the Punjab". The demons seemed a bit superfluous to the story; they aren't demons but (reformed) assassins that have decided to spend their time witnessing the passing of people who die alone. To do this, they must have some kind of time travel technology, but at no point do they mention the Doctor's technology or who she is. The other point I would take issue with is that the person who dies isn't alone. There's the person who did the deed and the Doctor & co watching, plus a few others. Nobody else in the story seems aware enough to ask who the doctor and his companions are and how they got there, and why they are wearing funny clothes (particularly Yaz).

Apart from that - one of the better episodes in this series.

RichardGarfinkle said:

I think the title is deliberately misleading. We're meant to think that the aliens are the demons, but really it's some of the humans.

Click to expand...

And, I thought, 'demons' in the sense of 'the demons of her past came back to haunt her'. Yaz and her family, certainly.

Keithy said:

I quite liked "Demons of the Punjab". The demons seemed a bit superfluous to the story; they aren't demons but (reformed) assassins that have decided to spend their time witnessing the passing of people who die alone. To do this, they must have some kind of time travel technology, but at no point do they mention the Doctor's technology or who she is.

Click to expand...

I assumed that the aliens were added for those viewers who preferred 'Dr. Who and Monster' episodes, and who would be turned off by too many straight historical episodes. It's like the showrunners are trying to balance it out.

Keithy said:

The other point I would take issue with is that the person who dies isn't alone. There's the person who did the deed and the Doctor & co watching, plus a few others.

Click to expand...

Possibly, without the Doctor's affecting things, the person would have died alone?

Keithy said:

Nobody else in the story seems aware enough to ask who the doctor and his companions are and how they got there, and why they are wearing funny clothes (particularly Yaz).

Click to expand...

It's a small village in the boonies of northern India/soon to be the Punjab?
Possibly, confronted with weird strangers with English accents, obscure purposes and funny clothes, they just shrugged and wrote it off as 'some weird British activity'?
Don't ask questions, or they may want some sort of taxes or fees to be paid.

Keithy said:

Apart from that - one of the better episodes in this series.

Click to expand...

It was a good one, I hope there are more like this.

I think it knocked the top spot from "Rosa" for me. I hope they get Patel to do more scripts.

frimble3 said:

It's a small village in the boonies of northern India/soon to be the Punjab?
Possibly, confronted with weird strangers with English accents, obscure purposes and funny clothes, they just shrugged and wrote it off as 'some weird British activity'?
Don't ask questions, or they may want some sort of taxes or fees to be paid.

Click to expand...

Hmm, the worst problem being Yaz. She's clearly of Punjabi descent, yet does not turn up wearing typical Punjabi dress. I don't think the Punjabis would automatically take her as British, simply because there were few British Punjabis at that time, and would not be expected to turn up in 1947 in the Punjab. So why aren't they mentioning her funny accent and funnier clothes?

Keithy said:

Hmm, the worst problem being Yaz. She's clearly of Punjabi descent, yet does not turn up wearing typical Punjabi dress. I don't think the Punjabis would automatically take her as British, simply because there were few British Punjabis at that time, and would not be expected to turn up in 1947 in the Punjab. So why aren't they mentioning her funny accent and funnier clothes?

Click to expand...

Why aren't the locals surprised that the Doctor and her companions are all speaking perfect Urdu or Punjabi? The TARDIS takes care of it.

Keithy said:

Hmm, the worst problem being Yaz. She's clearly of Punjabi descent, yet does not turn up wearing typical Punjabi dress. I don't think the Punjabis would automatically take her as British, simply because there were few British Punjabis at that time, and would not be expected to turn up in 1947 in the Punjab. So why aren't they mentioning her funny accent and funnier clothes?

Click to expand...

I imagine that between the wedding, Partition, demons, and strange English people speaking the local language, Yaz dressing funny would be put down to her aping the English. (I think it would have thrown them if she had said she was a police officer.)

Helix said:

Why aren't the locals surprised that the Doctor and her companions are all speaking perfect Urdu or Punjabi? The TARDIS takes care of it.

Click to expand...

This. It would likely seem stranger to them that two white English people, and their black associate were all speaking the local language fluently.

One of the very first lines of dialogue with Prem has him mentioning that "your Punjabi's alright", so personally I read that as them all having slightly odd-sounding accents to him, because the TARDIS's translation circuits work a bit like Google Translate in my head. So it made sense that Yaz would be seen as British-Pubjabi because the translation is stilted, her grammar is wonky, and her Sheffield accents is coming through strong.

That's me projecting my thoughts onto it, though, since the line could definitely be read as the TARDIS translating them impressively well.

Keithy said:

Nobody else in the story seems aware enough to ask who the doctor and his companions are and how they got there, and why they are wearing funny clothes (particularly Yaz).

Click to expand...

Well, it would be a little late in the series now to start having characters wonder about that.

Article on how the ratings are doing since Whittaker started...

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/doctor...ARxn-U7Smz1CiEbNObeNGUyj3HwVk3Wrn-STvZPJOY7gQ

RedRajah said:

Article on how the ratings are doing since Whittaker started...

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/doctor...ARxn-U7Smz1CiEbNObeNGUyj3HwVk3Wrn-STvZPJOY7gQ

Click to expand...

Excellent news! I have to confess, my secret fear was that they'd go down the 'jokey Doctor' route, and end up with a female Doctor being some sort of intergalactic/time-travelling manic pixie dreamgirl.
This Doctor has been just the way I like them. (I skipped the 'spider' episode because, well, spiders.)

Nice little swerve in tonight's episode, plot-wise, surprising (and pleasing) even my jaded curmudgeon of a hubby.

*SPOILERS AHEAD. I have a lot of thoughts about this one! It's very relevant to my dayjob so it turns out I have feelings!*

Loved last night's episode--properly gripping stuff, even with how hammy some of the build-ups to poor doomed loveable characters kicking the bucket were. This definitely falls into the 'overthinking it' bucket, but I was surprised by the end-of-episode message that automation is pretty great and capable of developing a conscience, while humans are dickheads. I couldn't get a real handle on what 'point' the episode wanted to make, which is fair because it might not have wanted to make one.

But still, if the point is that automation is good.... then eh, 10% employment rate and massive lack of jobs doesn't sound great to me.
If the point is that humans are shitty....nah, the vast majority of humans in the episode were fantastic apart from fuckin' Charlie, the knob.

I dunno, this one felt like it leant more on the 'Let's be scary and twisty' side of sci-fi rather than the 'I have something to express about the world' side of sci-fi, and I was really hoping for more of the latter. I saw a lot of people talking about how the episode shows the evils of the Amazon warehouses, and... I didn't really see that from this episode at all?


Anyway, as I said, absolutely loved it and had a great time watching. Was very sad that the lovely lassie didn't get brought back at the end though. When the Doctor explained how the System knew Charlie loved her and engineered the situation to try and make him change his mind, I was really hoping for a final twist of 'and the System teleported her away and made it look like she exploded!' when the reality was no, the System engineered the situation *and* let her die, conscience be damned. That felt super contradictory to me.

also hey system would it have killed you to print on the packing slip 'HELP ME. ALSO DON'T POP THE BUBBLES I HAVE INCLUDED WITH THIS FEZ'. We almost had a very short season there, hah.

And I know this is MEGA nitpicky for sci-fi where human goop happens all the time... but dang, it felt weird for people to be so chill while looking at liquidised human beings. I know they have to play it lightly for the audience, but I woulda been throwing my guts up.

(Also why were they even liquidised? I thought the bomb evaporated them, or at least turned them into ash? That whole liquidisation vat was a weird moment y'all.)

Thank you for posting that, because my local Dr. Who channel (Space) replaced a new Dr. Who with the 'Iron Man' movie. Which I didn't like when it first aired. I will get a second chance at Who later in the week. Let's hope for better luck then.

Hmm, about "It takes you away". All I can say is I will not look at frogs in quite the same way after watching it. But it was odd... and not that bad really.

Dangit...why is there no action figure for Graham yet?!