The War Machines episode 3 discussion:
R = Ronelyn
Sp = Spoo
M = MisterMother
H = Historian
K = Ketina
Sc = Schmallturm
Cz = Cz
R: Well, Ben was good.
Sp: I’m sorry, I’d comment, but I can’t see the screen for all this fog.
M: Look out sir! It might knock over some more boxes!
H: So, I’m going to be uncharacteristically negative here.
<Applause from the group>
H: But, except for the first third, which was awesome, that was some of the worst directed episodes of Doctor Who we’ve seen yet. You just couldn’t tell what the heck was going on.
K: I thought the sound was screwed up for most of it.
M: Because there were no shooting noises?
K: Yeah.
H: If we’d gotten better direction we might have understood that the War Machine’s smoke was jamming the guns. As it was, we were just seeing them pull the trigger and it looked like we just weren’t getting the sound or getting the muzzle flash.
K: It looked like they were playing with toy guns.
R: We were.
Sc: I was wondering if the BBC couldn’t afford blanks. I think you can’t let the screen writer off for this episode. There was an awful lot of “now I will talk to nobody to explain what was going on.”
R: There was not only Professor Exposition, there was Lt. Exposition, Captain Exposition, Lord Exposition, Assistant Professor Exposition.
Sp: And that one guy who actually said that the guns were jammed.
R: Yeah, that was Sgt. Exposition.
K: I could tell that the guns were jammed about three times, but other times they were just playing with toys.
H: I got the idea pretty quickly that it must be what they were going for, but it wasn’t immediately visual obvious.
M: It would have helped if they got actors that had actually fired guns before. If a gun is jammed, you don’t just keep pulling the trigger. There’s a clear jam, and they weren’t attempting to do that at all.
Sp: So, on a brighter note, Pop-Eye and Eye-Candy there… their interaction was fine.
H: Ben and Polly.
Sp: Yes.
M: You were referring to her elaborate eye makeup when you mean eye candy, right?
Cz: She was eye candy. She was staring at me with that blank look on her face, and I was staring at her in the same manner.
Sc: If they hypnotized people all the time, why didn’t they hypnotize Ben?
H: I think he actually had to encounter Wotan himself.
Cz: I thought someone else got hypnotized without going near it. Didn’t that happen to Dodo?
H: No, she was the first one near Wotan.
Cz: Whoah! This episode didn’t have Dodo in it! Is the sexy chick going to be back forever?
H: I don’t know
K: Yes you do…
H: Right now she was sent back to Wotan. We’ll have to see what’s going to happen.
Sp: Sent back to Wotan for… punishment. <eyebrow wiggle>
M: Sometimes it seems like Wotan was communicating to his minions telepathically, and sometimes it seems that he didn’t. It was weird. It seems like they couldn’t communicate with him.
Sp: And then what’s up with the fog? Sometimes it stuns them. Sometimes it kills them. Sometimes it sets boxes on fire and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it jams guns.
Cz: I thought the machine’s presence was jamming the guns.
H: It’s just completely unclear.
M: It’s got one of those thingy fields.
Sp: Powered by plot.
R: <machine noises>
Sp: And I really loved that the Doctor was cool and professional enough to let the plot come to him. Don’t get involved with all this box smashing stuff… wait for the minion to come to him.
M: Then he can stride slowly forward into action.
Cz: His head held high. And funny shoes. And funny pants. That didn’t match the cape.
H: You’re just noticing this now? He’s been wearing those types of pants for three years.
Cz: Really? They didn’t go with the cape.
M: The cape and the hat. He was in full battle garb.
K: Wasn’t the last time we saw the hat was in the Unearthly Child.
H: He wore it then, but we’ve seen it a few times since.
K: Hard to tell with all these recons what we’ve “seen.”
H: We’ve actually seen it since then. Anyway, backtracking a bit… I want to get positive about the episode now…
Sp: I’m positive I couldn’t see a flipping thing.
H: I thought the part with Ben and Polly was well written and well acted.
Cz: Specifically the part when he was grabbing her.
H: It wasn’t that bad, was it? He didn’t get to second base there…
Cz: He did! He totally did! I was there!
K: I’m glad you enjoyed it so much.
Sp: But no, that subplot was actually pretty good.
H: And the rest of the episode felt like padding.
Everyone: Yes!
M: We saw it go through the same wall of crates four times.
H: And again, the battle sequence was just almost completely unintelligible.
K: Almost?
M: We did know that a fight was going on.
R: It took me a while to realize that more guys were there than just the army. It was like a big kaki slap fight.
Sc: I’m curious what the BCC censorship was for this. Fighting a Dalek is one thing, but this is humans verses humans in the modern world.
M: That’s a good point. In modern ratings they have a distinction between violence and sci-fi violence. There’s a difference seeing someone shot by a laser blaster than with an assault rifle.
H: The problem is, I can speak to where the show would be going over the next couple of years, but this might be the first time we’ve actually encountered modern day army type violence. So I’m not sure.
M: The soldiers aren’t usually shooting at people.
H: But there are other shows in the same time period where they did. So it’s hard to tell.
Sp: Awful lot of shooting going on in a warehouse full of explosives.
H: There wasn’t that much actual shooting.
Sc: In fact, there was no actual shooting!
Sp: But there was GAS! It was all gas. Gas that sets boxes on fire, but didn’t set the other boxes with the explosives on fire. Can they tune the gas? Can then calibrate the gas?
M: It’s sonic gas.
K: No, we don’t get the sonic stuff until later.
Sp: Is there a spectrum of gas?
R: The gas was also jamming the explosives.
<general applause.>
H: That was almost as logical as we can go. Very nice.
R: That’s the best I got tonight.
Cz: How come robots only get one eye? Daleks only get one eye. That computer thing only gets one eye. That robot thing only gets one flashlight.
M: That’s all they need.
K: Because Odin only has one eye.
M: I did catch that in the first episode.
Cz: Does that mean the computer is wise?
K: I think that’s the intention.
H: Final thoughts?
M: Balughplaaaa…
R: The gas has also jammed Mr. Mother.
M: I thought the Doctor was really good in this episode. He just wasn’t in it enough. And we didn’t mention the sound track STAB and the pan to the post office tower.
R: Dramatic chipmunk postal tower! Okay, it’s really a prairie dog, but you get the point.
<The Internet distracts us for a bit>
Sc: So, I thought it was kind of interesting that the minister, Sir Charles, he’s sort of stupid and slow and the Doctor is in agreement with Ben, he’s on the side of the kids. This is the first time in the modern world that we’ve seen the Doctor in the modern world and he’s in the anti-establishment figure.
H: But he’s an anti-establishment figure who gets along with the establishment. He can completely insinuate himself with Sir Charles, yet he still feels like an anti-establishment figure.
Sp: In fact you could say that he is an antidisestablishmentarianism.
K: That was MEAN! Making me type that awful word! (but at least I knew how to spell it)
<general laughter>
Cz: As far as I’m concerned, the episode consisted of Pop-Eye and Eye Candy having a wonderful conversation, and Pop-Eye running home to the Doctor dramatically, and then the Doctor dramatically going “okay son!” and then standing up to the camera. Dramatically.
H: Was it because the battle didn’t make sense?
Cz: It didn’t happen. They walked in, backed up, backed up more, backed up even more, but the Doctor didn’t backup at all.
Sp: My final thought is consumed in fog.
R: From the beginning of the episode there was that moment when hip-hop doctor Science is standing in front of the War Machine with his crew, I’m thinking “That’s the worst Euro-trash band I’ve ever seen.”
M: We also failed to comment on his bifurcated mustache. It wasn’t parted in the middle.
R: And was I the only one that figured in order to save money they were actually having them clean out BBC props? “Tote that prop bale. Lift that prop barrel.”
Sc: I actually didn’t think that.
<machine noises from the crowd.>
K: I give up.
H: This was actually kind of a disappointing episode in an otherwise really quite good story. Again, the beginning was great, and the very last moment was great, but that was it.
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