The Moonbase episode 3 discussion:
Sp: So apparently dying Cybermen sound like Curly from the Three Stooges. And the.. what did Ben call it? The Polly-cocktail would have melted the bottles it was put in.
K: That was my line!
M: The misogyny was unfortunate but it’s nice that they have strong heroic gay characters.
H: The whole point of that exchange was Ben was accusing Jamie of posturing for Polly, and Ben was jealous of Jamie because Ben’s clearly had a thing for Polly since the War Machines.
M: <half seriously> Yes, but that was clearly replaced when Jamie showed up.
R: “I’m honestly not sure which skirt I should chase.”
H: Moving on.
R: Quickly.
M: Family show! Family show!
H: These are my favorite Cybermen voices. As much as I thought the Tenth Planet voices were cool, they were a little hard to understand, but they felt right.
Several People: A LITTLE hard to understand?
M: There were a couple of lines I missed completely. I agree they were cool, but too hard to follow.
H: Certainly better than the stuff we got in the 70’s and 80’s. “Excellent!”
MS: Well, actually that would start me saying “Evacuate! Evacuate!”
H: Why are you saying it would get you started with “Evacuate!”
R: Daleks say “Exterminate!”
MS: Well there was one Dalek story when they said “Evacuate!” when they were blowing up a Dalek base. And they were like “Evacuate” but then it blew up. So unfortunate for the Daleks.
H: So did you like the Cybermen, MiniSpoo?
MS: <Cyber voice> Of course I did. Cyberman!
H: Okay.
Sp: <stomps around room like a Cyberman.>
P: I’m kind of surprised at the backbone of these ten men that they’re going to let the planet be destroyed because of their lack of action.
M: They’re French. <Mr. Mother is French, so he can apparently get away with saying that.>
H: Well, they’re scientists, not military men.
P: They have family.
H: That is true, they talked about families in the last episode.
R: They may have family, but they went all of the way to the moon to get away from them.
Sp: So, the Cyberman looks at the Doctor and says “You are known to us” so why did they let him free to twiddle knobs? The next thing they should have done was “bang!”
H: First of all, I love the Doctor’s line back. “And I you.” It was so quick and quiet. The only explanation that I have for that, in the only other Cybermen story that we’ve seen the Doctor is just standing around warning everyone. But to be completely honest, anyone who recognizes the Doctor in this type of situation should just shoot him.
<Discussion of more recent Doctor Who stories that I will not relay here. Trapped in boxes, and laws of cause and effect, lava pit, etc.>
Sp: I do think that the second wave of Cybermen would have been more effective with moving pictures. The recon tried, but it didn’t work well.
M: But it was such a dramatic pose. The Cybermen version of a war memorial or something.
H: I think, actually, where the recon didn’t work was with Roger on the surface. He’s looking around and suddenly the Cybermen is suppose to sneak up behind him, but they just cut to a still of the Cybermen.
M: And an awkward shot of Ben’s posterior in a space suit.
Sp: Space suit wedgie!
MS: No, we shouldn’t put that in.
K: He’s grown up so quickly!
P: Tight fitting space suit, yes.
<tee hee>
K: Music. Did it attack, or was it effective?
P: It was great. Better than the last two episodes.
H: I think that the Cybermen theme was actually really cool. And it’s a distinct theme.
R: I did have a bit of a problem with the alternating between “The frozen silence of space” and “I’m chasing you across to the moon – dun dun dun dun” and then back to “I’m operating an airlock in the frozen silence of space.” Just a quibble about how they used the soundtrack.
H: I actually thought that was kind of cool.
P: Me too.
K: It bother me, Ronelyn.
Sp: I would be overkill if they gave Ben in the airlock a theme too. “I’m chasing you across the moon- dun dun dun dun. I’m opening an airlock – do dododo do dodo.”
R: Also, that Cyberman was obviously Bobo the short-bus Cyberman.
P: Why did his gun not work, and why didn’t he know?
R: Because he’s Bobo.
M: He was basically the Cyberman version of Invader Zim and they didn’t want to give him a real gun.
H: It does make more sense than “our guns don’t work in space.”
P: Big points to Ben for knowing the strategy to knowing to throw the liquid in the vacuum of space.
H: It’s like his lines were meant for someone else.
R: It was supposed to be The Doctor?
H: Yeah, a bunch of lines got shuffled around because Jamie was added to the cast. Which is essentially why in the first two episodes he was comatose. But by episode three they needed him up and moving, so in order to give everybody something to do, they gave some of the Doctor’s lines to Ben.
Sp: I thought Ben and Polly just simultaneously “leveled.” “I’m going to put a point in the scientific method and intelligence.”
M: But this brings up my biggest quibble with the entire episode. Polly came up with the idea that let them fight the Cybermen, but they had to make it about makeup instead of just letting her have a good idea. And Ben had to make it useful.
Sp: Rather than have her remember her high school chemistry.
SG: In ’67 is relatively amazing that they let her be that intelligence.
R: Or have her say “is it that stuff they use in nail polish remover? Acetone, right?”
H: It wouldn’t have stuck out as much of like a sore thumb if the conversation had been between Polly and The Doctor instead of Polly and Ben.
K: More college chemistry than high school chemistry really. That formula would have made more toxic fumes than actually melt plastic. Independent of being stored in plastic bottles, of course.
SG: At least she gets her intelligence past the “it’s men’s work” line.
H: Once again Polly refuses to get stuck in that. She’s back to being assertive.
M: Unlike the previous episode where she was getting them coffee.
H: This is definitely pre-Women’s Lib. But thankfully we’re a little closer to Polly of the Highlanders than Polly of the Underwater Menace.
P: So strategy wise I am perplexed why they need the men.
M: The gravity.
H: That was a great scene with the Doctor thinking to himself. I think that’s the second time they’ve done that sort of thing.
P: So the weakness is that they need the men in order to operate the machines.
H: Apparently. That seems to be it.
P: So I just still don’t understand why they just don’t simply revolt or remove the atmosphere right at the start.
K: Removing the atmosphere isn’t going to stop the Cybermen, they don’t need it.
P: But they need the people to operate to need the atmosphere.
H: But clearly the controlled men don’t need the atmosphere, because they were walking around the surface.
P: It’s a lapse in the episode’s realism to physics. They needed an undamaged brain.
M: Two words, suspension of disbelief.
Several People: That’s three words.
M: I know.
<laughter>
Sp: I have a way out for the “why not sacrifice themselves” issue. The Cybermen can operate the machines, but they need the pesky humans to do it quickly. If they don’t have the humans do it, they can’t do it themselves quickly enough before more humans arrive.
M: But the point Photobug was trying to make was that, if the Cybermen are going to destroy the earth, why aren’t the scientists on the moon doing everything they can to stop the Cybermen?
K: Because they didn’t know they were going to kill everyone on earth at the very beginning, and they were at gun point and would get shot before they could do anything.
M: They had the Cybermen significantly outnumbered. They still could have overwhelmed them.
SG: They’re not military trained, it’s not intuitive to fight that way. That’s why you have to train the military. When you are put in that stressful situation you tend to go into shock first. You either run, or stay still until you know if you’ll get shot first. More people shut down first.
H: It’s kind of what Hobson did.
K: And Hobson just faced the horror of Bob getting killed.
R: Bob, space nerd!
H: And Bob is the first person in this story to actually died. All the other people who had apparently died had actually been taken and converted. Seeing a guy getting killed right in front of him could have contributed to Hobson not being able to cope.
K: Or maybe it’s JUST A FAMILY SHOW! 😛
R: “Suicide is never the answer, kids.”
Sp: Speaking of suicide, final thoughts?
MS: Actually, in Halo suicide is actually one of my choices. I want to be having myself be killed instead of having them having the honor of killing.
<Some discussion of Halo tactics.>
H: See, suicide is sometimes the answer kids. Cz, do you have a final thought?
Cz: In your little monkey dreams.
H: Okay. Moving on.
P: Okay, the story moved nicely through this episode. We started out with a single Cyberman getting a jump on them, and ended up getting a full wave of Cybermen coming. We also have a strategy of defeating the Cybermen by using acetone. This is another episode where it would have really added to see the full moving pictures, especially given there appeared to be a decent chase scene here. I think the flaws in this story were not enough to derail the story. There’s good observation of the Doctor determining strategies – radiation and sonic control kind of things.
K: What is it with Doctor Who and sonics?
P: It was well acted and well written, which is why I want to see the moving pictures.
H: Me too.
P: Plus the sound effects, soundtrack, voices. It was all around outstanding. I did like this episode.
M: <makes sleepy Cyberman sounds>
Sp: Woo woo wooooo!
M: <Cyber voice> It was very action-y. The Doctor did not-ta doooo anything-ga.
Sp: I have nothing more to add – Photobug has used all the words.
K: Yet I’m still typing.
M: Nothing to say?
Sp: <Cyber voice> Throat cancer kills, kids.
MS: Hey, why are they always killing kids?
<laughter>
R: “So, Cybermen, how did you sneak aboard our space station?”
M: <Cyber voice> We made a hole.
R: “Dashed clever!”
H: How about the Cyber sneering “Clever, clever, clever.”
R: I couldn’t figure out if he was congratulating himself…
H: It was because Hobson figured it out.
K: It sounded like the Cyberman was being sarcastic, yet he has no emotions.
R: <Tenth Planet Cyber voice> Sarcasm is the one emo-tion we kept.
P: You don’t have to be smart to be sarcastic. Look at me.
H: Do you have more?
R: <Cyber voice> No, that was pretty much it. Liked the episode, but… It was good. Better than “Cats.”
Several People: I’m going to see it again, and again.
K: I want to look up the actual chemical concoction that they made and find out what it would really do. But that’s the chemist in me still back there somewhere.
P: Two words…
K: No, I’m just curious from a chemistry perspective.
R: I think Polly actually had the balls to commit suicide for everybody. “Let’s all mix these things together… hahaha we win… does this smell like toxic fumes to you?… glerk.”
H: Two words – Awe some.
K: That joke is just getting old, man.
H: So, one thing that didn’t make it into this discussion yet, was how similar how this setup is to the Tenth Planet. It’s a base under siege story, but unlike the Tenth Planet, this story is much better put together. There is a tremendous number of similarities, and it’s clear that they wanted to do a Cybermen story just like the last Cybermen story. But I think this is much better written with better characterization. We don’t have the crazy general that slowly goes insane. We have a leader who’s generally competent and feels like he could be leading a scientific installation. We’ll see if they can keep this up next week and if it ends as well as it’s been going.
MS: <dramatic> Dun dun dun!
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