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So I watched Doomsday on BBC Three once again this evening (spoilers)
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Plotholes anyone?
- We saw no Cybermen go through the rift
- No explanation why the TARDIS didn't go through it
- No Daleks managed to knock into The Doctor or Rose when they were holding on
- The Cybermen just lifted off the ground, stopped, then started to move again, we didn't see them go anywhere near the big white wall of doom
- Pete Tyler catching Rose and stopping, even finding time to hit the switch to go back without getting sucked in.
- Daleks who emergency temporal shifted never moved to the rift, they just stayed in mid air.
- We saw no Cybermen go through the rift
- No explanation why the TARDIS didn't go through it
- No Daleks managed to knock into The Doctor or Rose when they were holding on
- The Cybermen just lifted off the ground, stopped, then started to move again, we didn't see them go anywhere near the big white wall of doom
- Pete Tyler catching Rose and stopping, even finding time to hit the switch to go back without getting sucked in.
- Daleks who emergency temporal shifted never moved to the rift, they just stayed in mid air.
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Comments
— limb movement is difficult to get right in 3d computer model design. I'll bet the Cybermen models weren't good enough to be shown up close;
— probably the inside of the Tardis anchored the outside. Or something;
— probably a convection current pulling them towards the centre of the corridor;
— same thing;
— Pete Tyler is magic; and
— w.r.t. the Tardis too, maybe some aspect of travelling through the time vortex is prone to shake off the void stuff? Or, ummm, attract other stuff that causes the void stuff not to stick?
EDIT: it'd be wrong not to acknowledge that the episodes that are all dumb spectacle tend to score much higher audience appreciation than the ones that dedicated fans praise. So, if necessary, think of it as the cost of remaining on the air.
So technically...according to that theory Love and Monsters should have had a very high appreciation index...no???? Funnily enough, it is has one of the lowest and hated by most "dedicated fans"....whatever that is..
And actually, even in internet polls which have "dedicated fans" posting, many of those "dumb spectaculars" rate higher than the loud minority voice may lead us to believe.
Or it could be that onlys because some may not like a story, doesn't mean others won't...and as for plot holes....one can find them anywhere. Even in the ones that "dedicated fans" praise....take Blink...
Why did the weeping Angel throw that piece of stone or whatever at Sally in the first place, when all they do afterwards is quietly creep up on people and send them back in time?
How did the Angels know that Sally would lead them to the "Box"
Since when did the Tardis have a DVD slot?
What exactly is a timey wimey detector?
Explain Timey Wimey...
The Angels don't move when they are looked at, surely at some point there would be some sort of animal/rodent going about that would look at the Angels...and if animal effect doesn't work, why isn't that explianed?
How do the angels make the light go on and off, and if they can control that surely they can turn the whole blooming thing off in the first place?
In terms of spacetial awareness, isn't it a bit strange that where Sally and Larry end up is exactly in the middle of the Angels after the Tardis leaves them behind?
So many places the Angels could have got Sally...but luckily enough they didn't, and what a coincident that she heard that guy in the shop saying why doesn't any one go to the police.
So yes basically....you can take the P out of any story you want....and RTD's stories have no more of a "magical" ending than "fan" favourites do.
As for the plot holes of Doomsday...
The Cybermen intially came into the world as shadows....which people mistook as Ghosts....so in the same way they dematerialised...and the Daleks hadn't...so they were being pulled
Unlike the Daleks who were all up in the sky....the Tardis was in a room...it could be that it did get pulled, but ended up getting banged against a wall or ceiling...who knows....we didn't see it happen...so got no explanation....and the previous Parallel world story and Journey's end suggests that the Tardis doesn't seem to like the parallel world. So maybe it fought that extra bit in Doomsday.
It was a wide room...so the central pull may have kept them in the centre.... even Rose starts heading towards the centre when she is pulled....
As for the Peter Tylar stuff...well that seemed to be done for dramatics....so each moment was caught on camera as such...so it could have been happning much faster than what we were shown....even when Rose was being pulled towrds the void...we saw at least three times the reaction of Rose as she was being pulled, and that of the Doctor too...
Again...its more about the real time thing....plus we only saw Dalek Caan do the ETS...not the other three...so how long exactly they were in the air when the Daleks were starting to be pulled in is anyones guess....
You can still class those things as plot holes....but they can easily be filled with some sort of answer by "dedicated Fans";)
What you say is perfectly valid, apart from one thing: it involves a Stephen Moffat Everybody Lives Magical Ending™, therefore no one is supposed to point out the plot holes that exist in this story.
Indeed any story from A Christmas Carole to Henry 5th has plot holes if you go looking for them. So don't, just....don't.
ps - Doomsday is also one of the most popular episodes on this site according to the episode poll of the time, so lets not reinvent history and pretend it wasn't popular with the "dedicated fans" eh?;)
Oh yes...good point....I apologise to the dedicated fans for the blasphemy:o:D
How would L&M count as spectable, dumb or not? It's a pretty low-key episode in terms of action and effects.
BTW, I assume the TARDIS got its DVD slot between the McCoy and Eccleston eras, since that's when they were invented.
:yawn:
True...its not a spectable episode...pretty low key...but the point I was trying to make was that TEDR suggesting that dumb spectable with magical endings end up getting higher AI compared fan favorites which supposedly then are not dumb spectables, have no plot holes, and no magical endings...and yet Love and Monsters doesn't fit into any of those...its low key, hated by the wider audience and "fans"... so basically it is an episode that defies that theory. Library two parter for example is very highly appreciated by "fans" and high AI. Again something that defies the logic of that theory (plot holes you see;)) Basically what TEDR is trying to suggest that the wider audience are dumb them selves so give higher appreciation to stories that are dumb too...maybe he/she also believes that when the audience agree with their (fans) opinion...then they are not dumb and just like what "dedicated fans" like. Nothing to do with the fact that people have different choices and can like different stories for different reasons...
As for the DVD slot....your probably right.....but it would have been a question raised by many others if it had been an RTD episode...just like I have seen people talk about how and why the Doctor would carry a spare mobile battery that sloted so well in Rose's phone;)
Actually I would consider that as you being a Dedicated Doctor Who fan!!!!!!:D:D Money well spent!!!:D
Only if you think that Love and Monsters was all dumb spectacle. And I don't think you'll find anyone to agree with that.
I think you also fail to understand the difference between a magical ending and an ending with a plot hole. The former relies on something like a new, unstated power or fact suddenly overriding everything that has gone before, whereas the latter is a seemingly logical solution that subsequently falls apart on closer inspection.
So, in Blink, we've established that angels are locked when visible, we know that the Tardis can go from visible to invisible and that the angels want the Tardis. The solution is therefore to get them all looking at the Tardis and have it disappear. Yes, there are plot holes, the most obvious being that lightbulbs don't actually last forever, but there's nothing magical about it.
Conversely, in Doomsday it's established that things steeped in void stuff will be pulled in when the void is opened. Then, to make a nice ending, Pete appears and isn't pulled in. He somehow manages to hold something that is being pulled in with neither of them being pulled in. The established rules are directly contradicted. And that's on top of the other reasonable stuff like there being no way he could have known to appear.
Try flipping it the other way. If the angels got the Tardis and cleared off, someone might say "the Doctor should have just got it to dematerialise while they were all looking at it, they would have ended up looking at each other", to which most people would then say "oh, yes, that's a good idea".
If Rose had slipped into the void, someone might say "Pete could have just appeared and caught her and zapped her back to his reality". To which most people would immediately say "don't be stupid, how would he know to do that?"
It's about suspension of disbelief. But television is a visual medium and the majority of people just want pretty things on their TV — they haven't the time or the interest to pay that much attention to some science fiction pumped out on a Saturday night. In character terms, the post-monster-resolution ending is fantastic. That's the stuff RTD is brilliant with, and something I fear Moffatt is going to be absolutely rubbish at.
Like I said, it defies what you were trying to say....as does the Library two parter...what I mean is that there really is no connection between what episodes are going to highly appreciated by the audience and what are by "dedicated fans" as you put it (and that is what I feel offended about, this definition of "fans", not that you think Doomsday is garbage)
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But the same "magic logic can be placed with the light bulb scenario....okay we were told that the Angels are quantum locked....but at what point were we told that they could control electricity? It was just done for drama sake, and was every effective...probably the most scariest bit of the story. It did its job.
Same goes for the whole Pete Tylar thing...like I said it could be explained away by the fact that it was done quicker than it showed...and if it is anything its a plot hole...not a magical ending.....because we saw how easily and quickly they went from one world to another, so him coming into our universe was still very much in the established rules....how quckily he actually did it is the question....but the whole thing was shown scene by scene almost for dramatic purpose only. So no magical ending...no more than the Angels all of a sudden being able to conrol the light bulb...for example if I looked at the light or pointed at it, and it turned off....some may say it was magic;)
Moff too like RTD goes for that dramatic look type solutions...for example, the Doctor using a horse to jump through a mirror, and all of a sudden time window is broken, but luckily after the Doctor is completely through, and then luckily the fireplace still some how works with a tap of the screwdriver even though the fireplace isn't where it was the first time round, something about the link being physical (another quick timey wimey explanation). The Doctor Dances....we know nanogenes change and fix people, but since when did they take an email up grade with just simple waggling of hands? And then the Library two parter...to this day I still have no idea how and what River exactly did....how did she download what, and how did it survive or restore people when she herself exploded??? Don't get me wrong, I actually don't hate any of those things...but for some reason people/fans seem to prefer it more than RTD's similar approaches of plot holed and magical endings...oh well never mind...their perogative
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I don't fully agree with that...except for the library two parter...the post monster endings of Moffats have been great too character wise...especailly the Empty Child two Parter, and I love the scene where Sally decides to go off with Larry...the only time where I feel Sally really stands out from the likes of Rose and Martha. And the Girl in the Fireplace, where the Doctor never finds out why the cloakwork droids were chasing reinette and we as the audience do...is beautiful.
actually we're not.
eta: Crazzy explained it better than me, as usual, so no point in leaving my explanation in but yes, at least two, possibly three, of the SM stories feature a "magical ending".
Theres nothing wrong with that, btw, regardless of who writes it, but the point is there should be an acknowledgement that this is not something specific to RTD's writing style at all.
so any volenteers to change a light bulb in a celler lol
You had three hundred quid for Christmas? Wow. Will your family adopt me please? (What are you watching at the moment, Mikky?)
Nice explanation of all the plot holes, Crazzy.
I loved Doomsday for the shock of Rose being pulled into the timerift thingie. The scenes with Yvonne being converted were the most horrifying, nasty thing that DW has ever done (off the top of the head, anyway), mand it was lovely to see glorious Jackie involved in the story properly. The pt.1 cliffhanger was immense. Other than that, it just underlined my theory that Cybermen choose crap scripts.
My favorite two elements of the series 2 finale are actually much smaller moments, the scene where Ten cracks the glass to demonstrate what is about to happen a few minutes down the line and the scene with Rose and Ten on the opposite sides of the wall. No words, just powerful imagery.
I do agree that Yvonne's last scene was brilliant though. The other great moment was the chat between The Cybermen and Daleks...super fun!:)
No, you're misrepresenting what I said and therefore making it impossible to have a conversation. I made a comment that relates to, and only to, the following two categories of episode:
Not by any stretch of the imagination could you argue that what I said originally related to Love and Monsters. It is not all dumb spectacle and it certainly isn't a fan favourite. Imputing it, or other episodes that don't match those definitions into my statement is not what I was trying to say, it's what you choose to read into it, entirely from your own imagination.
Re: my feeling about RTD's typical series finale endings, I think the words I've been looking for are deux ex machina.
The single most over used and often misapplied term in fandom? Not sure why you would need to be looking for it, since it's used all over the blooming place!;)
"a plot device where a previously intractable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved, usually with the contrived introduction of either characters, abilities, or objects not mentioned before within the storyline."
The series 3 finale I'll give you to some extent, though actually the solution is to be found in the plot and story arch, though isn't very well explained. Doesn't apply elsewhere though.
Could be my inability to spell it?
Are you sure? I'd throw it at, at least, Eccleston's finale, and Journey's End. crazzyaz7 is starting to win me over on Doomsday.
I'd say no because the Vortex is shown to have powers in Boom Town and Rose knows that it can accessed from that episode