The script was ALL OVER THE SHOP in places but the visuals and the brilliance of the cast saved it. The beautiful Christina Cole should be worshipped, she's like a goddess, and she can act. It's a shame the witches themselves were like pantomime CBBC villains though.

The Tennant/Agyeman partnership works so well. David really owns the role now, it took him a full series to properly wrest it from the greatness of Christopher Eccleston I think.

I only caught the first fifteen minutes of this episode, but (and i'm gay) Martha Jones is one of the most beautiful people I have ever seen on my TV screen. The chemistry between her and DT is something that can't be faked.

Tried not to read any spoilers, but with the shambles of Torchwood last series, is there an equally shameful Mr. Saxon reference in this episode??!?

To me she looked a bit like Jan Ravens and I'm thinking that the Dr meeting the Queen will be picked up in one of the books or similar unless there is another Elizabethan episode scheduled for the DT years

I too thought that Shakespeare knew a bit too much about the Dr and Martha's situation to just be a plain Genius

That's actually a very old technique.
I remember a programme showing how it was done from an old black and white film from the 1920s or 1930s I think. I believe it was a film about the great Chicago fire of 1897.

Pretty much the same technique, Just use different film of the same group of people several times and paste the different film sequences into one main film sequence of the location in different places to make it appear like a lot of people at the scene.
No CGI needed.

Although here in Doctor Who it was different in that the camera was moving if I remember correctly.

I think the first person to explore chaos theory was Jacques Hadamard in 1898. But yes, in general, chaos theory only became widely known and researched when computers became powerfull enough to do the calculations required.
I think it was an in an early weather simulator that they noticed very small changes could produce large deviations in the eventualy outcome.

Yes but 'The Butterfly Effect' was taken from Ray Bradbury's story to coin a term by Chaos Theorists.

And in another question to The Doctor Martha also referred to 'The Grandfather Paradox' which is also a commonly used time travel term.

I think it was really good to hear Martha asking these questions.
It genuinely feels as though the Doctor Who writing team really are trying to be a bit more considerate about details to make it fit more nicely together and ensure it makes some kind of logical sense. Like last week's episode appeared to be thoughtful about it's own logic.
It just makes things so much better and things tend not to jump out you so much because they don't make sense in the story.

They've even clarified that Doctor Who follows the same time travel rules as the film 'Back to the Future'. Which is going to make things a lot simpler to understand in the future.

I thought this was a funny quote from the wiki page about The Butterfly Effect....

Now that's irony.
Last edited by Alrightmate : 08-04-2007 at 06:09

I think the actaul term 'Butterfly effect' was first used by reseachers in chaos theory after Edward Lorenz in 1963 alluded to the flapping of a 'seagulls wings'. Subsequently changed to butterfly. (maybe from a fan of Ray's )

http://www.answers.com/topic/butterfly-effect-2
Last edited by metafis : 08-04-2007 at 06:03

No...I just linked you to the wiki page and several other people have said that it's Ray Bradbury's story where they drew the term from. The research with seagulls wings in 1963 was just a reason to invent the term..

Ray Bradbury wrote a time travel story about the effects of killing a butterfly in the past, and then subsequently affecting the future.

It's this which Chaos Theory refers to.
They just use The Butterfly Effect as a term of reference because it demonstrates Chaos Theory when the butterfly flaps it's wings.
They went back and used Ray Bradbury's time travel story as a good example. He originated the explanation of the consequences of the effect...Chaos Theorists just used the example as an appropraite one where the label of Chaos Theory could be applied to it.

They coined the term, but it's directly originated from Ray Bradbury's story where they just used a handy term to describe the situation in Ray Bradbury's story.
Last edited by Alrightmate : 08-04-2007 at 06:26

yes Im agreeing with you!...Lorenz used the term 'seagulls wings' and I alluded that maybe a researcher, who was a fan of Rays changed it to 'butterfly'. I said when the term was first used by chaos theorists, I agree The term was first coined by Ray.
Last edited by metafis : 08-04-2007 at 06:26

Oh I see. It appears we were speaking at crossed purposes.

It is a term used to illustrate Chaos Theory, but it's more widely known as a term used to specifically describe a particular kind of time travel phenomena.
A bit like one of the several different time travel paradoxes.

There is a dr who book called 'the domino effect'. As I undestand it, the domino effect is linear.
so, If a butterfly flaps its wings, in 'domino effect' theory, its possible that 1000 years later, this might cause another butterfly to become momentarily unstable, due to the slight difference in air flow.
whereas if the actaul butterfly effect applied, 1000 years later, a huge hurricane might, in theory, develop as a culmative result of the slight change in air flow 1000 years before.

sorry,,going off topic a bit!

back to the show.
I rated it as 'very good'. Really enjoyed it and loved all the one liners as well

I just luuuurve a detailed analysis

Even luuuurvlier when someone goes to the trouble of setting up a DS account purely for the purpose of posting such a review. This obviously meant a great deal to Mr Bear.

Except that was Rose using the psychic paper at Torchwood. Do we really believe that she would have broken off in the middle of a battle with Daleks and Cybermen to say, "Oh, by the way, your psychic paper doesn't work on a bloke downstairs," especially when said bloke had already become Dalek-fodder? Thus the Doctor would not be aware, and it would be the first time it failed - for him.

overnights for The Shakespeare Code are 6.8 million for those interested.

This is the second time the Eternals (from Tom Baker story "Enlightment") have been mentioned in the new series (the ones who banished the Carronites) and RTD mentioned them as been involved in a time war in the 2006 Dr Who Annual.

Maybe they will turn up proper at some point?
Last edited by Dave1979 : 08-04-2007 at 10:12

I thought it was terrible. The first time in the 'new' series when I have actually felt like I was watching a children's programme.

Where to start? Well, those witches were just embarrassing - here was a chance to do something innovative with the old stereotype, but instead they just raided a primary school dressing up box. The Shakespearean elements seemed to have been gleaned from an afternoon reading 'My First Big Book of Shakespeare' - the references to his plays and sonnets were all over the shop in relation to their known chronology and the way in which Shakespeare worked. To take three of many examples, 'Love's Labour's Won' was performed many times, the Sonnets were written much earlier, and Hamlet already existed as a play by then. And doesn't Gareth Roberts know that Shakespeare was an actor as much as he was a playwright? No need to summon him onto the stage for a curtain call - he would already have been there.

The depiction of the Elizabethan era was also lame in the extreme, both in terms of the language used and the design. Everything was so bright and clean - very much an eight year old's view of the past.

Finally, to the plot. If this episode had been written by RTD, there would have been at least 97 posts complaining about gaping plot holes by now. This was real back of a fag packet stuff. What are the carrionites and what were they doing there? Why are they called carrionites? How are they vanquished by Shakespeare reciting a few lines of poorly written poetry that would have embarrassed William Rees McGonagall? Why were the three 'leaders' trapped in their crystal rather than being sucked into the vortex? And so on. For me, this episode made the plotting of 'Smith and Jones' look like War and Peace.

The one person who came out of this with any credit for me was Freema Agyeman who, given that she only had a series of poor puns to work with, is making an excellent job of Martha Jones. Which makes it even more of a pity that the makers seem to want to remind us of Rose at every opportunity.

According to DWC, they claim to have spent some time getting the chronology right. Perhaps they only used wiki!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet

K

I’m in complete agreement with Chris Davies as I was woefully disappointed with last night’s episode of Doctor Who.

It’s really starting to feel like more of a show that is aimed at a much younger audience and, for me, the fresh inventiveness of the series with Christopher Ecclestone has now all but disappeared.
I do think David Tennant is an excellent Doctor and I really hope I change my mind by the end of this current series, but certainly at the moment I’m finding it increasingly harder to watch with each episode.

Nothing is really known about the play as far as i know? I've looked at 2 sources that tell me only that it is a lost play and that for many years it was believed to be an alternate name for another play.

Hamlet is beleived to have been first performed in 1600, a year after this episode. It seems to fit in quite nicely with Shakespeare saying he wanted to write other things at the end and mentioning 'Hamnet'. I can't comment on the Sonnets but you have to appreciate that the chronology Shakespeare's life is always argued about and historians don't know enough to give exact details. IMHO, thats wnough to give the writers a bit of artistic license.

Is it widely known that he performed at everyone of his plays? Then you must be some amazing historian!

Oh come on! It looked fantastic and was dirty (buckets of crap flying out of windows etc), the people looked dirty and their were rotting teeth everywhere. For a saturday prime time show and a single episode, everyone must have worked themselves stupid to pull this one off!

Since when do we have to know why a race is called something?

Sorry to argue with you a bit, but i knew some of your facts were wrong"
Last edited by jamesp26 : 08-04-2007 at 10:38

Also the Doctor says "Once more into the breech dear friend" from King Henry V and I'm sure I heard a reference to the Tempest and "What is't a spirit?"

I really loved this one. I thought it was terrififc fun, and had some nice layering in terms of stuff for kids (the Harry Potter mentions) and stuff for adults that the kids wouldn't get (the "57 academics just punched the air" comment made me laugh out loud).

I thought the Rose mentions weren't over done at all, and were quite an important part of the story for Martha. And I am quickly getting to like Martha an awful lot.

I am glad they covered the issue of race in this one. I think there have been quite a few threads set up here in Digital Spy asking how a black companion might be accepted in the past. Its good that they have covered it without dwelling on it.

I also like the fact that the Doctor met Queen Elizabeth and discovered that at some point in his own future (and her past) they meet/met and he obviously really p*sses her off! One for next year I assume . . .

Good stuff all in all. My only criticism is that last week's 'Next Time' trailer really didn't do this story justice.

Can you imagine the bitch fight if Rose and Martha ever met.

I watched this with my wife and ten year old grandaughter. All three of us really enjoyed it (we liked episode 1 too). Freema has settled into the role really quickly. I must say didn't like Ecclestone at all in season 1 and it took a while for Tennant to grow on me. Before this season started I went back and watched season 1& 2 and the specials and from being a sceptic I am a born again DW fan. Don't know if anyone has mentioned it, but the picture quality last night was unbeleivable good. Although the resolution wasn't as good it was on a par with High-Def. Anybody else think so.

Excellent episode. The sets were fantastic. Good story and good acting.