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zeborah(But doesn't post her notes for almost a week.)
Because those episodes were good, and I wanted to figure out how he done it.
"I know it's in my mind, but something's got inside!" --It helps to have a cute little girl who can act. And that's a great line for a girl who can actually sound convincingly afraid.
I don't like the flashback; though I admit starting with the girl is much more effective than starting with The Library would have been, and given this, not flashing back you'd lose the proper introduction to the Problem of the Week. Dilemma.
"Spoilers." ... "I try to keep you away from major plot developments..."
1,000,000,000,000 lifeforms could be cockroaches, no? Or bookworms. I don't see what's creepy about that in particular. One might be concerned for the books, but...
"It can't be the books, can it? I mean, the books can't be alive." <suspenseful music> Lovely misdirection.
The statue scene is brilliant. It packs in so many public library issues along with the plot and the Doctor/Donna sideplay, in such a short time. And "Arg slarg snick" is perfect three-word creepiness.
"A cry for help -- with a kiss." ASCII doesn't do justice to Donna's tone of voice. Nice subtle foreshadowing; I didn't notice it properly until the second viewing.
And the flashback catches up with the present. The girl is lovely. Intercutting Library/girl ramps up tension, and it's done very naturally with the sonic screwdriver and its effects.
"Hands!" "Shadow." Another bit which crams culture shock, character by-play, and serious suspense/tension in a very short space. Then "Reminder:" we have another source of tension -- which is anticlimax. And I love River. I bet the fangirls will hate her but only because she's absolutely perfect for the part.
"I'm a time traveller. I point and laugh at archaeologists."
"If you understand me look very very scared."
--Brilliant one-liners also help.
And rapid character development: Miss Evangelista; Other Dave; Proper Dave. Lux is a bit more blah, and Anita's developed a bit later than the others. But still: much in short space.
A remake of the Time Traveller's Wife is mildly bold; yet it's inevitable in its own way too, and nicely done.
More intercutting. "Dad!" "In a moment sweetie." --Nice misdirection, as if he hears the phone ringing. The Doctor is gorgeously baffled faced with the girl.
The remote: the hesitation in opening the shutter part; the suspense when she presses the "Record" button: lovely merge of sf with the reality of a kid who knows she's not allowed to press those keys.
Miss Evangelista is clearly going to become an important character and save the day with some quality independent of traditional intelligence. --Oh, wait, no, she isn't.
Well-written denial from her colleagues. All the reactions of the characters very realistic. Short infodump re the neural thingammy, but made real with the anecdote of grandfather and his shoelaces. "The nice woman" is a bit cloying but then "What I said before..." Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. "Icecream. Icecream. Icecream."
"What's in that book?" "Spoilers." Recurring motifs are nice.
"There's the real world and there's the world of nightmares." ... "The real world is a lie." Nice switcharoo, and did I mention that girl can act?
Donna is a bit slow with the timetravel thing. And River is a bit slow with the vital skill of saying "No, no, you didn't die horribly, you lived a long and happy life, it's just that timetravel happens, y'know?" Or maybe her sad look meant, "Oh, you poor stupid woman who doesn't understand timetravel."
"The dust in sunbeams" is nice; "Normally they live on roadkill" is doubly nice: mingling creepiness with humour doubles the creepiness.
Has anyone ever counted how often the Doctor says "Run"?
"Donna, let me explain!" Is it just Tennant who's started sending his companions to safety at the first sign of danger? Does seem a recurring character motif. Not belaboured, which I like.
(I really hope this library is in powersave mode: how anyone would find, let alone read a book in this light level is a mystery.)
I forget exactly where I worked out what River was to the Doctor (initially I thought she was a future Companion) but it was probably around about the screwdriver. Again, another thing that's not belaboured (I don't think it's ever even *stated*) but is nonetheless very clear.
"Donna Noble has left the library." "Hey, who turned out the lights?" "Donna Noble has been saved." "Doctor, what are we going to do?" "Hey, who turned out the lights?" Mildly cheesy but gor blimey it's effective. I'd been meaning to save part 2 for another evening, but...
--Moffat's used that escape route before, in The Doctor Dances. At least he didn't use it to get out of the cliffhanger that time. And it was foreshadowed this time. A bit weak, but... well, there are other cliffhangers after all.
Using the remote for intercutting is brilliant. Especially when it finds a non-Library channel: but wait!
Doctor Moon is deeply ambiguous; a nice quiet line of suspense beneath the more heavy-handed stuff.
The scene montage of life carrying on is tremendously effective. More subtle foreshadowing about Moon.
Oh thank God she didn't kiss him.
And as usual the Doctor covers his emotions with manicness and talk of hairdryers. (I somehow failed to catch "It's a Doctor Moon" here the first time around.)
"I'm about to die, it's not an over-reaction." We haven't seen a lot of character development from Anita (the first time I saw part 1 I thought she was a guy until this point!), but here we get it in short sharp strokes.
The remote again. And "Where's the face?" evoking the statues: not a line of dialogue wasted.
The Doctor is a bit slow about what books are made of. Also the doors, as previously noted, are made of wood...
"We should go. Doctor!" More subtle suspense-building.
Repeated kids and a photoshopped face: cheap but, combined with Evangelista's cold newfound intellect, effective.
Never clear why the girl didn't want Evangelista to tell.
"This isn't my real body? But I've been dieting!" So very Donna.
Evangelista is... cold. "Brilliant and unloved." Bitter.
"Shut up!" <click> "Daddy! No!" The girl is losing it, and acting just like a child would act, and her anger/terror is wonderfully painful to watch.
At last I notice the Doctor Moon thing.
Alarms ringing always hypes suspense. Also big music, though here it's not really Big Music.
--Okay, there is a bit of Big Music in the "Mummy promises never to close her eyes again." Almost justified though: poor Mummy. :-(
It's a bit late to make Lux a real person. His motives are revealed, yes, but... he's still a plot device. The weakest character in the episode, I think. (Odd that they gave the girl a father but not a mother...)
"over 4000 living minds chattering away inside her head -- it must be like being, well, me." -- Double-time plot development and character development, and true to form the Doctor covers his emotion with manic state.
Anita's lengthening shadows would be creepier if the lighting people had avoided having all the other shadows lengthen too...
"Why'd you even have handcuffs?" "Spoilers." <splork>
...<wipes away a tear>
"Of course you're real."
<wipes away another tear>
(Apparently libraries of the 51st century have a dress code, and it is black.)
"Look at that, he did it." Cut to Doctor handcuffed to pipe. Ouch. I'm a literary masochist: I like it when authors make me hurt.
At first I was disappointed that we didn't see the scene where (someone? who? I wanted to know!) finds the Doctor and uncuffs him. But in retrospect it's probably for the best: it would be too hard to do that right.
Argh, the irony with Lee was a bit too much. Hmm, possibly because he wasn't a person as much as he was a stutter. Granted if he'd been developed more then we wouldn't have so easily believed he was a computer sim. But that could be powerful too: develop him so we believe he's real, then reveal that he's actually a sim. Personally I'd prefer to stop there; but if you did want to make him be real after all, we'd have the emotional connection to him.
"Spoilers, right?" A lovely sentence to end on. A closing monologue, because Steven Moffat likes closing monologues. But wait, there's more!
...Which would have been better without the monologue continuing. And gah, does she have to be wearing glowy angelic white? "For heaven's sake." Indeed. Moffat, "that impossible man", occasionally does give in to the sledgehammer effect.
<fingers snap> I really would have liked to end on that. (Though it's a shame it had to be the same action that opened that guy's head up in that other episode. Couldn't it have been voice activated instead? "Hi, honey, I'm home!" Or... something? Eh, I guess not.)
Especially because "Everybody lives" is far too reminiscent of The Doctor Dances again. Playing to one's strengths is good; repeating oneself is not.
Though "Sweet dreams, everyone" wasn't too bad.
Because those episodes were good, and I wanted to figure out how he done it.
"I know it's in my mind, but something's got inside!" --It helps to have a cute little girl who can act. And that's a great line for a girl who can actually sound convincingly afraid.
I don't like the flashback; though I admit starting with the girl is much more effective than starting with The Library would have been, and given this, not flashing back you'd lose the proper introduction to the Problem of the Week. Dilemma.
"Spoilers." ... "I try to keep you away from major plot developments..."
1,000,000,000,000 lifeforms could be cockroaches, no? Or bookworms. I don't see what's creepy about that in particular. One might be concerned for the books, but...
"It can't be the books, can it? I mean, the books can't be alive." <suspenseful music> Lovely misdirection.
The statue scene is brilliant. It packs in so many public library issues along with the plot and the Doctor/Donna sideplay, in such a short time. And "Arg slarg snick" is perfect three-word creepiness.
"A cry for help -- with a kiss." ASCII doesn't do justice to Donna's tone of voice. Nice subtle foreshadowing; I didn't notice it properly until the second viewing.
And the flashback catches up with the present. The girl is lovely. Intercutting Library/girl ramps up tension, and it's done very naturally with the sonic screwdriver and its effects.
"Hands!" "Shadow." Another bit which crams culture shock, character by-play, and serious suspense/tension in a very short space. Then "Reminder:" we have another source of tension -- which is anticlimax. And I love River. I bet the fangirls will hate her but only because she's absolutely perfect for the part.
"I'm a time traveller. I point and laugh at archaeologists."
"If you understand me look very very scared."
--Brilliant one-liners also help.
And rapid character development: Miss Evangelista; Other Dave; Proper Dave. Lux is a bit more blah, and Anita's developed a bit later than the others. But still: much in short space.
A remake of the Time Traveller's Wife is mildly bold; yet it's inevitable in its own way too, and nicely done.
More intercutting. "Dad!" "In a moment sweetie." --Nice misdirection, as if he hears the phone ringing. The Doctor is gorgeously baffled faced with the girl.
The remote: the hesitation in opening the shutter part; the suspense when she presses the "Record" button: lovely merge of sf with the reality of a kid who knows she's not allowed to press those keys.
Miss Evangelista is clearly going to become an important character and save the day with some quality independent of traditional intelligence. --Oh, wait, no, she isn't.
Well-written denial from her colleagues. All the reactions of the characters very realistic. Short infodump re the neural thingammy, but made real with the anecdote of grandfather and his shoelaces. "The nice woman" is a bit cloying but then "What I said before..." Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. "Icecream. Icecream. Icecream."
"What's in that book?" "Spoilers." Recurring motifs are nice.
"There's the real world and there's the world of nightmares." ... "The real world is a lie." Nice switcharoo, and did I mention that girl can act?
Donna is a bit slow with the timetravel thing. And River is a bit slow with the vital skill of saying "No, no, you didn't die horribly, you lived a long and happy life, it's just that timetravel happens, y'know?" Or maybe her sad look meant, "Oh, you poor stupid woman who doesn't understand timetravel."
"The dust in sunbeams" is nice; "Normally they live on roadkill" is doubly nice: mingling creepiness with humour doubles the creepiness.
Has anyone ever counted how often the Doctor says "Run"?
"Donna, let me explain!" Is it just Tennant who's started sending his companions to safety at the first sign of danger? Does seem a recurring character motif. Not belaboured, which I like.
(I really hope this library is in powersave mode: how anyone would find, let alone read a book in this light level is a mystery.)
I forget exactly where I worked out what River was to the Doctor (initially I thought she was a future Companion) but it was probably around about the screwdriver. Again, another thing that's not belaboured (I don't think it's ever even *stated*) but is nonetheless very clear.
"Donna Noble has left the library." "Hey, who turned out the lights?" "Donna Noble has been saved." "Doctor, what are we going to do?" "Hey, who turned out the lights?" Mildly cheesy but gor blimey it's effective. I'd been meaning to save part 2 for another evening, but...
--Moffat's used that escape route before, in The Doctor Dances. At least he didn't use it to get out of the cliffhanger that time. And it was foreshadowed this time. A bit weak, but... well, there are other cliffhangers after all.
Using the remote for intercutting is brilliant. Especially when it finds a non-Library channel: but wait!
Doctor Moon is deeply ambiguous; a nice quiet line of suspense beneath the more heavy-handed stuff.
The scene montage of life carrying on is tremendously effective. More subtle foreshadowing about Moon.
Oh thank God she didn't kiss him.
And as usual the Doctor covers his emotions with manicness and talk of hairdryers. (I somehow failed to catch "It's a Doctor Moon" here the first time around.)
"I'm about to die, it's not an over-reaction." We haven't seen a lot of character development from Anita (the first time I saw part 1 I thought she was a guy until this point!), but here we get it in short sharp strokes.
The remote again. And "Where's the face?" evoking the statues: not a line of dialogue wasted.
The Doctor is a bit slow about what books are made of. Also the doors, as previously noted, are made of wood...
"We should go. Doctor!" More subtle suspense-building.
Repeated kids and a photoshopped face: cheap but, combined with Evangelista's cold newfound intellect, effective.
Never clear why the girl didn't want Evangelista to tell.
"This isn't my real body? But I've been dieting!" So very Donna.
Evangelista is... cold. "Brilliant and unloved." Bitter.
"Shut up!" <click> "Daddy! No!" The girl is losing it, and acting just like a child would act, and her anger/terror is wonderfully painful to watch.
At last I notice the Doctor Moon thing.
Alarms ringing always hypes suspense. Also big music, though here it's not really Big Music.
--Okay, there is a bit of Big Music in the "Mummy promises never to close her eyes again." Almost justified though: poor Mummy. :-(
It's a bit late to make Lux a real person. His motives are revealed, yes, but... he's still a plot device. The weakest character in the episode, I think. (Odd that they gave the girl a father but not a mother...)
"over 4000 living minds chattering away inside her head -- it must be like being, well, me." -- Double-time plot development and character development, and true to form the Doctor covers his emotion with manic state.
Anita's lengthening shadows would be creepier if the lighting people had avoided having all the other shadows lengthen too...
"Why'd you even have handcuffs?" "Spoilers." <splork>
...<wipes away a tear>
"Of course you're real."
<wipes away another tear>
(Apparently libraries of the 51st century have a dress code, and it is black.)
"Look at that, he did it." Cut to Doctor handcuffed to pipe. Ouch. I'm a literary masochist: I like it when authors make me hurt.
At first I was disappointed that we didn't see the scene where (someone? who? I wanted to know!) finds the Doctor and uncuffs him. But in retrospect it's probably for the best: it would be too hard to do that right.
Argh, the irony with Lee was a bit too much. Hmm, possibly because he wasn't a person as much as he was a stutter. Granted if he'd been developed more then we wouldn't have so easily believed he was a computer sim. But that could be powerful too: develop him so we believe he's real, then reveal that he's actually a sim. Personally I'd prefer to stop there; but if you did want to make him be real after all, we'd have the emotional connection to him.
"Spoilers, right?" A lovely sentence to end on. A closing monologue, because Steven Moffat likes closing monologues. But wait, there's more!
...Which would have been better without the monologue continuing. And gah, does she have to be wearing glowy angelic white? "For heaven's sake." Indeed. Moffat, "that impossible man", occasionally does give in to the sledgehammer effect.
<fingers snap> I really would have liked to end on that. (Though it's a shame it had to be the same action that opened that guy's head up in that other episode. Couldn't it have been voice activated instead? "Hi, honey, I'm home!" Or... something? Eh, I guess not.)
Especially because "Everybody lives" is far too reminiscent of The Doctor Dances again. Playing to one's strengths is good; repeating oneself is not.
Though "Sweet dreams, everyone" wasn't too bad.
