The Savages episode 4 discussion:
Sp = Spoo
H = Historian
P = Photobug
K = Ketina
Cz = Cz
M= MisterMother
A = Altair
E = Ezio
Sp: Well, that was out of nowhere.
H: You thought so?
P: I did.
Sp: Who would really have expected Steven to be left behind.
K: Well, I did. But that’s because I knew he wasn’t in the next story.
Sp: Cheater.
H: I thought it was interesting. This is the first time we get the Doctor practically saying “This is what you are meant for, boy.” Like he’s been mentoring him this entire time.
Cz: NA NEEE NAAAA
Sp: Basically, yeah. Anyway, that bit was out of nowhere. But I have a hard time arguing about it, since it was such a solid story overall. And, by the way, I WAS RIGHT! Ha!! Jano was really motivated by self sacrifice and not trying to take the power of the machine for himself. Wah ha!
M: Did they really use light years as a measure of time?
Sp: Yeah, it’s a half a parsec.
M: What was all the “we were waiting for you” thing about expecting the Doctor?
H: They’d been following him on their screens following his journey’s through time and space.
A: They watched the BBC.
M: There was one surreal moment of “attack of soundtrack” when they were running into the cave and I expected to see the Coyote chasing the Road Runner. But, other than that, great story.
H: This episode was particularly good. The story wasn’t always good, but this episode was excellent. And I loved seeing a the little film clips.
M: It’s like someone was smart enough to say “What What? Steven’s leaving! Grab the camera!”
K: And it’s always Steven. Some kind of Steven fan has got the camcorder.
H: It’s sometimes Dodo too. And there was the point in one of the film clips where the Doctor has that great line “Doesn’t it give you great pleasure to smash something evil?”
M: He had a lot of good lines in this episode. Like “Next time ask me for my wisdom, instead of sticking me in an oven and cooking it out of me.”
H: Yeah, these were really well written scripts, on the whole.
R: Yeah. Except for Exorse. So, Exorse shows up, is supposedly this big badass, gets knocked on the head, sits there, and supposedly get moral lesson, but then doesn’t.
H: Yes he does.
R: I’m pretty sure he tells them that Jano is coming back.
K: No, they asked him if he’d seen Jano, and he said NO.
R: I got confused. There were lots of people running around with the bad cheese hats. “No, I outrank you because I have six steak fries instead of five.”
Sp: The pace was awesome. The cutting back and forth between Jano’s camp and the Savages, it was really good. I don’t think I’ve seen that relatively fast edit back and forth between sides of a fight before.
R: I was kind of amused when the grand council came in the door, and then basically stood there looking like a bunch of Basque waiters.
H: We’ll pay you to be here, but not to say anything.
M: I think what Spoo is pointing out, is that, while it’s taken a long time, they’ve finally transitioned between the language of stage and the language of film or television.
H: And, of course, at the end, we get the final destruction of “Senta’s Workshop.”
Sp: But he’s retreated to the “Island of Misfit Toys” where he will launch a bold counter attack.
K: They did mention earlier that they were on an island. So there COULD be another island somewhere… maybe.
Sp: And somewhere a set designer was crying his eyes out. “You’ve only got one take. Do it right, you…. Savages.”
E: I imagine that was a fun shoot. “Yeah, we get to destroy stuff!” “Okay, folks, for this next scene you get to smash everything.”
K: It was like the end of the Daleks all over again.
H: It’s one of the problems. This was a fine episode, so there’s not much to say.
K: Yet, I bet we’ll still manage five pages of discussion.
E: Well, when you have more to criticize then you can say a whole bunch of stuff.
H: There were bits that were a little ragged, but overall this story, and especially this last episode, was really solid.
P: One, there really wasn’t any funny.
Sp: NANEENA!
P: On purpose!
E: Well, when they were smashing stuff. That was pretty amusing.
M: It was more witty this time, instead of outright funny.
P: I kind of expected the guy who took in the Doctor’s brain / thoughts to go crazy. While they sort of had and did not have a gun, I can see why this light gun was allowed to stay. It was more like a wasp sprayer than a rifle.
H: This is actually one of the very few stories where no one dies.
K: One of only three or four, prior to the series reboot.
H: From what I am led to understand, Edal is only knocked out at the end and taken away. So, final thoughts?
Cz: Naneeeenah!
E: Well, I’m just jumping back in. But it kind of still made sense at the end, so it was easy for me to piece together. I thought it was really good.
K: Ezio is a reader turned viewer, by the way. Coolness.
A: Steven’s hair was pretty awesome.
Sp: Yeah!
M: I agree. Steven did have fantastic hair.
A: I really liked the exit scene a lot, and it was really enhanced by the film footage.
Sp: Props to the recon folks. They lucked out and got some really good footage for exactly the right moments to enhance the dramatic bits.
H: And matched the footage quite well to the soundtrack.
R: Although there was one somewhat amusing matching moment where they took some of the live action footage of the Doctor, and it almost was like “Well, this is either the footage from this scene or the scene” so they used it once, and that was a pretty good match, and then they used it again later and that was also a pretty good match. Hum, I can see your problem.
K: You sure they were the same scene?
R: Yeah, it was actually the same film footage.
Sp: That reminds me, huge, huge props to the actor who played Jano. Again. Because, as a reminder, that was an IMPRESSION of William Hartnell that the actor was doing. That was not William Hartnell being dubbed over Jano.
H: An actor that is so awesome that we will not see him once, not twice, but three times over the course of the span of Doctor Who. Not the project, but the full span.
Cz: I didn’t like what’s his face when I first saw him. And now he’s gone and I feel nothing.
H: I think she means Steven. Do you mean Steven?
Cz: Yes, of course I do. YEAH, I mean Steven!
R: A planet where men evolved from men? Unpossible!
P: What if on some other planet, the women sent all the men here?
H: We saw at least one woman from the city, Flower, and one woman from the Savages, Naneena.
Cz: When was this made?
H: 1966?
Cz: When was the Twilightzone made?
H: Earlier.
Cz: Seriously?
H: Yeah, in the early 60’s. But I don’t know if it had been aired in England yet.
Cz: Because we’ve been watching the old Twilight Zones, and I’m like “Hey, an actual full storyline in one episode, and I don’t have to wait a whole week for the next part.”
Sp: And everybody over the age of 25 is aiming waves of disdain to Cz. Soooo sorry that we couldn’t tweet these episodes to you.
H: It’s a different kind of story telling.
Cz: I thought everything in black and white was bad. If Doctor Who was in the Twilight Zone format of one story an episode, it would be SO MUCH better.
H: Again, it’s a different kind of story telling. And often it’s more complex. Twilight Zone is about ideas. There’s a lot of cool plots, but it’s mostly about ideas.
Cz: If Twilight Zone and Doctor Who could have babies it would be like the BEST outcome.
K: And this is why we have five pages of episode discussion.
<and off screen Spoo strangles Cz>
M: Sad.
H: You’re sad about Steven leaving.
M: Yeah. Peter Perves was cool.
R: You hate to see him leave, but you love to watch him go.
M: Now, I didn’t say that.
H: I always felt that Steven was underrated as a companion.
M: He was fun.
K: I will also miss Steven. When do we loose Dodo? Why didn’t Dodo stay and run the new world instead of Steven?
H: Would you really want to live in a world run by Dodo?
P: Yeah, it’s supposed to be an improvement, that’s why.
H: Okay, I think we’re done.
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