[garbage456]

were they all blown up apart from Rory Dad ?

[The Gatherer]

And why were they there in the first place?

[thorr]

Yep - good job too, if you look closely, the first on the left was the master, then the rani, the monk, mr klemutot, davros and capt jack!

[CD93]

Originally Posted by thorr

Yep - good job too, if you look closely, the first on the left was the master, then the rani, the monk, mr klemutot, davros and capt jack!

Poppycock!

You missed Sally Sparrow to the far right. Sign of the angels approaching.

[SillyBillyGoat]

Originally Posted by CD93

Poppycock!

You missed Sally Sparrow to the far right. Sign of the angels approaching.

Sally is the Rani, haven't you been watching?

[kyllerbuzcut]

Yeah I thought it was a bit crap they just left them there to die.that was another unexplainable point in this episode, which had a few. Some very good bits though, almost like a tribute to the pond s before they go, and the brigs daughter was good. but episode let down by things like this. Why did the bad guys even need the bodies? I'm just hoping those baddies will be back at some point to explain their wicked plan. It's almost like this episode needs a whole other episode to go along with it just to explain a few things.
Like why was it just an automated ship
Why not just kill everyone with the heart attack cubes straight away, if humans were to be wiped out. There would be no point observing them etc if you already decided to exterminated them all.
What exactly is the magic power of the cubes that can instantly revive dead people, who then just stand up and brush themselves off and continue walking down the street.
If the cubes did"only"give everyone a "mild"heart attack then again why not just kill everyone, and really everyone not just a random 1/3 of earth. And of out was a mild heart attack then why was everyone lying still like they were dead.


To many unexplained holes

[So 3008]

Yep there was deffo people still the ship when it blew up; after they got Brain to safety nobody seemed to care about the others, I don't even think there was a throw away line about why they couldn't be saved either.

Of course it wasn't even explained what the people were doing on the ship in the first place.

[Sophie ~Oohie~]

Originally Posted by thorr

Yep - good job too, if you look closely, the first on the left was the master, then the rani, the monk, mr klemutot, davros and capt jack!

Who's he?

[ea91]

Lol oh dear. Chibnall just went off and wrote a great script completely forgetting it needs to make any sense.

Yeah, we'll just have a random space thingy show up at Rory's hospital of all places and take some people hostage while just giving others heart attacks - using cubes. Anyways, back to giving Amy and Rory a backstory...

[mikey_hamster]

Originally Posted by ea91

Lol oh dear. Chibnall just went off and wrote a great script completely forgetting it needs to make any sense.

Yeah, we'll just have a random space thingy show up at Rory's hospital of all places and take some people hostage while just giving others heart attacks - using cubes. Anyways, back to giving Amy and Rory a backstory...

The most annoying thing is, it wouldnt have been hard to have it make sense with a few lines of dialogue here and there!.

[rionia]

Originally Posted by mikey_hamster

The most annoying thing is, it wouldnt have been hard to have it make sense with a few lines of dialogue here and there!.

Maybe there were originally lines in the script that got edited out for various reasons

[mikey_hamster]

Originally Posted by rionia

Maybe there were originally lines in the script that got edited out for various reasons

Then someone needs a smacked wrist!

[Whovian1109]

I thought they were trans-dimensional anchors, there to establish a clear link between the two dimensions. But I could be completely wrong and it was poorly explained in the ep, but it didn't really bother me

[johnnysaucepn]

Originally Posted by mikey_hamster

The most annoying thing is, it wouldnt have been hard to have it make sense with a few lines of dialogue here and there!.

I haven't dug into the main discussion thread, so bear with me. But I agree it's frustrating - the idea of a race using millions of tiny probes, each testing different aspects of human society in order to learn our weaknesses? Great idea. Waiting a year to figure out something that they should have already known given that they already know all about humans? Bad execution.

It's liking taking a PhD in entomology just to throw salt on slugs!

[Ethel_Fred]

Originally Posted by johnnysaucepn

It's liking taking a PhD in entomology just to throw salt on slugs!

It assumes that you already know to throw salt on slugs. It's also a poor solution if you intend to kill all slugs

[abercrombie]

We all felt that it was more like a Sarah Jane episode than Dr. Who

[nanscombe]

Er, didn't the Doctor actually tell Amy and Rory to get the other people off the ship?

[Mystical123]

I thought they were there as part of the Shakri's plan to find out everything possible about humans and particularly their weaknesses in order to easily defeat them (which the Doctor explicitly said was their aim) - they were in a sense scientific experiments. Hence the scene where the alien porters kidnapped the man from his hospital bed, and also hence why the portal was in a hospital in the first place - full of people weakened by something or other.

I also thought the people weren't saved by the Doctor because they couldn't be saved - they were already dead as they'd been tested/experimented on. Rory's dad wasn't because he wasn't weakened like the others were and had already been scanned by the cube.

The alien porters seemed to just be servants/drones, and they took Rory's dad just because he got in the way and was asking questions - the same way companions often get kidnapped!

Sure, all of that is implication, and entirely my own opinion, but it is possible to give a not too random explanation without having to rely on there being lines of dialogue in the script - it's not all about what is said, after all.

[nanscombe]

They weren't killed.

About 33 minutes in, Doctor to Amy:

Get them out of here. Now.

[nebogipfel]

Fair enough. It'll have to do. I'll watch again and see if any of these things were spat out by characters at breakneck speed in a mumble. . It's a visual medium- a brief clip of the Ponds etc doing some of the things we either have to assume or catch from bursts of dialogue might have been satisfying. (ie rescuing experiment survivors)

The time they spent showing the Doctor pratting about with creosote could have been sacrificed for such things.

I still liked the episode.

[The Terminator]

I guess some people just don't pay attention. Which is no great crime, but it's poor form to then whinge about things not making sense when you haven't bothered to take everything in.

[nebogipfel]

Originally Posted by The Terminator

I guess some people just don't pay attention. Which is no great crime, but it's poor form to then whinge about things not making sense when you haven't bothered to take everything in.

Or perhaps took most of the things in but didn't find it satisfying (always a danger when the audience is left to assume.)

It is all too easy to mishear a line such as "Get them out of here , now" (Get him out of here, now"???). The experimenting was what the boxes were doing. So the need for them to also do traditional alien kidnap+experiment on top of that was perhaps a little redundant to this story. Brian wasn't snooping. He was looking for the store cupboard. It wasn't obvious they captured him to stop him revealing secrets. It seems they just opportunistically grabbed him for an experiment. I'll watch again and see if it was glaringly obvious. As I said above - using teleVISION to actually show the story can often be a good substitute for dialogue. They spent a fair amount of time showing the Doctor try to occupy his time (football etc), when the message had already been got across - he was bored. We knew. They had already shown that he was. They make choices during writing and also editing. Sometimes the balance isn't perfect. It's not always the fault of the audience.

But I'll have to watch again to see if I just plain wasn't paying attention (I thought I was. Maybe I was distracted at crucial times. Maybe the use of "wave sonic, make bad thing go away" reduced the goodwill people may otherwise have had for the other niggles?

[CD93]

In this case it was a valid question. No effort was put in to show Amy and Rory getting everyone out in such a short space of time. One of the drawbacks of The Power of Three's short resolution.

[johnnysaucepn]

Originally Posted by Ethel_Fred

It assumes that you already know to throw salt on slugs. It's also a poor solution if you intend to kill all slugs

Didn't the Shakri have their instructions to wipe out the humans at the source because of their pervasiveness in the future? So them, or the Tally, or whoever is behind the instructions, must have had experience of humans already.

If they knew enough about humans to be able to send probes in and know they'd be accepted and cherished, then surely they would know that you can just blow a human's head off with a laser?

[Granny McSmith]

Originally Posted by CD93

In this case it was a valid question. No effort was put in to show Amy and Rory getting everyone out in such a short space of time. One of the drawbacks of The Power of Three's short resolution.

They only had to push the comatose people through the portal, and then leave Brian to revive them with the smelling salts, all taking place while the Doctor was having his little chat with the Shakri.

What did people think they were doing while they were gone, having a fag in the corridor?

I am so, so sorry, but I was told last year and the year before that everything was clearly explained, and/or I should fill in the gaps myself. Now the boot is on the other foot. As far as I can see, it was clearly eplained, and the gaps were easy to fill in!