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Good things

I really liked this episode as well. I'll need to rewatch them if I'm to decide if they're real classics, but I've very much enjoyed all the episodes this season, (except parts of the first), and really look forward to the next one.

Notable moments:

* "Are you my mummy?"
* Military officers kiss. It reminded me so much of Colonel Jack O'Neill and Captain Sam Carter.
* The firey sky
* "Son-tar ha"!
* "No, no, no, it's not an atmos system! Atmos stands for..."
* Kudos to Saraphale, who was right that the gas was for a good reason.
* Doctor asking Donna to save everyone, "I wouldn't ask, but..." "You HAVE three fingers" "Oh, yeah."
* Doctor giving the Sontarans one last chance.

Neutral comments

* Donna's mother is so Donna's Donna

* The Sontarans could also do with not some "sending lone guards to stand with their backs to enemies with no radio contact" training, but it was so awesome for Donna I won't argue.

* Now will people believe in aliens? People often say "won't believe in X until I see it written in fire across the sky". Well, now they have. That sky beats stupid hovering Dalek columns hollow, surely everyone must have seen it? :) (That's not a criticism: I don't think the show could handle the doublethink any better than it does, but it's still amusing.)

Nitpicks

I tried to keep these to a minimum, I really did.

* See, look, you can smash the window. Actually, I think (1) there is a fundamental problem here, you are not *supposed* to think you can, you're supposed to be surprised by Mum's ingenuity, but this is achieved by giving the impression that deadlock is a magic forcefield, when in many other situations that would be the correct inference (2) in actual fact, they just drew out the climax last time too long for the "help! car!" crisis to work, but that was just a minor cinematographic problem, you can see what was _meant_ to happen.

* Who's got the gigantic evil evil-spaceship-destroying laser from Torchwood in the first christmas ep? Why don't they use that on the evil spaceship?

* Blah, blah, repent, blah, sacrifice life, blah. OK, kudos to the boy genius. But come on, how dumb are you, of course they're going to betray you. I think it would have been a mcuh more exciting story if he went off to become Sontaran (and either the Sontarans accepted him, or not). Sontar-ha!

* And the students didn't add up. It's natural that he messes up controlling them at the last minute and they walk out (though none stay to help save the world). But if he didn't have sufficient charismatic control, how did he get them jogging? And isn't it sad none stayed to comfort him?

* Why did the doctor do all that mugging to Donna in the vidphone? Didn't he just want her to sit tight until they moved her into a storage area? Couldn't he have done so reassuringly, even if he couldn't just phone her? For that matter, why didn't she ring directory enquiries (and ask for either ATMOS factory, Martha or UNIT)?

* Blah, blah, environmental message, blah. Rub it in much? No-one uses their cars, yay! Because they're all (a) scared of them and (b) smashed them up to get out.

Date: 2008-05-05 12:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rochvelleth.livejournal.com
Who's got the gigantic evil evil-spaceship-destroying laser from Torchwood in the first christmas ep? Why don't they use that on the evil spaceship?

Apparently the laser they used to blast the Sontarans from the Valiant is a scaled-down version of that very laser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_vehicles#Valiant) - so UNIT sort of have it. But I've no idea why they couldn't use it on the ship... (especially when they were considering going nuclear on it instead).

P.S. Shame about the window-smashing...