Doctor Who SE04 EP09: Forest of the Dead (spoilers)

[Fast Learner]

I also thought it was great.

 

[Felon]

I'm going to dispense with the spoiler tags, as the thread itself is designated as a spoiler, and having to highlight text makes it a needless hassle for folks to read.

I enjoyed the episode, but I thought the ending was a bit of a cheat. Davies loves the cheat in the third act, but Moffat hasn't until this bit. We had a discussion here a few weeks back regarding "The Doctor's Daughter" and the worth of the individual being cheapened by attempting to replace them with a replica. Here, the Doctor does just that. He uploads a bunch of data ghosts, and the message delivered to the viewer is that "nobody dies". Well, that's BS. The individuals are dead. Their brains were devoured. The Doctor just created a bunch of Max Headrooms. Heck, what we're shown of the data ghosts prior to that indicates that they're crappy copies.

And how do the shadows manage to "look the Doctor up"? After just barely learning to communicate, the swarm of communal predators suddently developed multilingual literacy and opposable thumbs?

 

[Felon]

And now, back to annoying spoiler tags since the subject concerns a future episode...

I’ve heard something interesting about the season finale…

Spoiler

…that in addition to Jack Harkness, Rose Tyler, Dr. Martha Jones it also features Davros.

Spoiler

That would be cool. I enjoyed Genesis of the Daleks as it was more of a grown-up episode, akin to what Terry Nation was writing for Blake's 7. Davros was a nice change from crappy paper-mache and rubber-diving-suit monsters. It was a villlain that the Doctor could match wits with, rather than some B-move bug-eyed creature he had to away from (indeed, Davros specifically seems designed to be ill-suited to chase anyone). Even the Master was sort of a cartoonish Hannah-Barbera-style dastard--evil laugh, twirling moustache and all.

Of course, I can see where folks who watched the show as a ten-year-old kid would only recall being bored with a storyline that was more of a psychodrama than monster mash, and have fond memories of the lumbering rubber-suite monsters.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

The Doctor just created a bunch of Max Headrooms. Heck, what we're shown of the data ghosts prior to that indicates that they're crappy copies.

The other folks may or may not be data ghosts (now that we know the Doctor's modified screwdriver was set up to get River's info, it may also have been doing the same for the others), but I'd assume the Doctor at least is capable of creating something that will get someone's memory engrams in toto and preserving them so that they could be uploaded into the Library computers.

For one thing, the Doctor has who knows how long to prepare for this moment (its his future), and that was obviously a modified Sonic Screwdriver and not just the regular deal he usually carries. He is certainly smart enough, and has access to enough technology throughout time and space that he could arrange for River's engrams to be the real deal.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

And how do the shadows manage to "look the Doctor up"? After just barely learning to communicate, the swarm of communal predators suddently developed multilingual literacy and opposable thumbs?

I wondered the same thing, but finally decided that they weren't actually looking him up but just decided that he was too dang intimidating and backed the heck off.

 

[horacethegrey]

Spoiler

Of course, I can see where folks who watched the show as a ten-year-old kid would only recall being bored with a storyline that was more of a psychodrama than monster mash, and have fond memories of the lumbering rubber-suite monsters.

Spoiler

I watched Genesis as an adult, and that didn't stop me from thinking it was the most boring piece of television that I'd seen. The dialog was awful, the pacing maddeningly slow, the plot plodding and dare I say it totally predictable, and the acting was forced and cheesy even for Doctor Who. Terry Nation of course wanted to make the Daleks an allegory to the Nazis, but he does all this with the subtlety of a brick. He hammers this point home repeatedly that it almost feels like preaching, which is never cool in my book.

Dude, don't try to generalize stuff like that. I only became a Doctor Who fan as an adult, and as such I have no nostalgia to color my judgement. And I'm sure this is true for others as well.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

I remember the speech about "releasing the disease" from Genesis as being pretty good, but I've not seen it in years and years. Davros was just over used and lost his drama and menace after being defeated 148 times.

 

[Felon]

Dude, don't try to generalize stuff like that.

I can only point out that your own over-the-top emoting smacks of the same kind of generalization you accuse me of. You went on passionately about how terrible the character in question is without qualifying your opinion. Not that I even addressed you personally to begin with, but you certainly left the matter open for folks to fill in the blanks as to why you so loathe the character.

As it stands, you basically seem to be saying that monotone waste bins with plungers affixed to them are effective adversaries, but this villain is lame because...well, he's just lame, apparently. "Awful dialogue"? What great dialogue ever came out of a Dalek? Wish I could grock you on this one, but it just seems like a bizarre stance.

I only became a Doctor Who fan as an adult, and as such I have no nostalgia to color my judgement. And I'm sure this is true for others as well.

See, that's generalization. How can you be "sure" of what's true for others?

 

[Felon]

I remember the speech about "releasing the disease" from Genesis as being pretty good, but I've not seen it in years and years. Davros was just over used and lost his drama and menace after being defeated 148 times.

Was he? I only recall him in two or three stories. Wikipedia has him appearing five times between 1975 and '88.

The soliloquy about releasing the virus was a classic. The character really pondered the question, which seems to me to render the answer more evil than the Master just making with a saturnine grin and glibly saying "my dear Doctor, of course I would destroy all life--if it would make me master of the universe! (evil laugh optional)"

 

[Felon]

The other folks may or may not be data ghosts (now that we know the Doctor's modified screwdriver was set up to get River's info, it may also have been doing the same for the others), but I'd assume the Doctor at least is capable of creating something that will get someone's memory engrams in toto and preserving them so that they could be uploaded into the Library computers.

Well, that sounds logical, but the mind is as much a result of chemicals residing in the brain as it is electrical impulses, so without extracting the brian itself, in the end the best you can do is make a copy.

 

[Jubilee]

With regards to the ghost copies of people in the computer - I think that part of the problem with the girl-with-the-scary face when she was in there with everybody was that the computer resources were strained to the limit keeping everyone else sane and running smoothly in the computer. The dreamscape of the computer world seemed definately to be a resource management issue (and the computer didn't have enough memory to handle returning everyone - hence River Song's sacrifice). So when there were only 5 data ghosts (one of which we can reasonably say was a _very_ good copy thanks to the doctor), the computer could devote the resources to fix the problems with the "incomplete" copies.

I also got the feeling that the data ghosts were there as much (or more) for the benefit of the computer-child than for the other peoples' continued existance. At the end, River Song was reading to the child & two other children in that bedroom.

I also thought at first that he was going to upload River Song and then download her into a "new" body - but then I realized that the computer had kept all the living peoples' bodies "safe" in transit between teleportation points, but River Song had no such body to reconstitute, so she couldn't be brought back physically.

/ali