I've always known what a Deus Ex Machina is and the leaf is not one, it was explained her father kept it and in The Bells of Saint John we can see that she still had it in her book. In the beginning of The Rings of Akhaten we learn it's history and what the "first page" comment she did in Bells of Saint John ment.

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The definition of Deus Ex Machina (literally meaning "God out of a Machine") is an artificial or improbable device that suddenly (and usually out of the blue) resolves a problem.  It has absolutely nothing to do with the size of the object!  If that were the case, things like Achilles' Heel, a self-destruct button on a spaceship, or the proton torpedo that blows up the Death Star would all be Deus Ex Machina. 

As Lucas pointed out, the leaf was introduced in the previous episode and its uniqueness, for want of a better word, was clearly explained at the beginning of the episode, so you can't say it appeared out of nowhere.  Also, as I said before, there's a perfectly logical explanation as to how the leaf could defeat the sun-deity-parasite-whatever. 

Same with the Bells of St. John.  We see the Doctor tinkering with a Spoonhead the whole night at Clara's house, so it's reasonable to assume he found out a way to hack it so he could remote-control it to get it into the Shard.  The writers most likely intended the reveal of the Doctor-Spoonhead in the Shard to be a plot twist or surprise, so it might have seemed abrupt, but it still isn't Deus Ex Machina because there's a perfectly plausible explanation as to how that could have worked and there is nothing artificial, improbable or illogical about it.

As for the sun... was it ever even remotely indicated that the sun was too hot to sustain life, or that there was no atmosphere?  Just because the parasite thing looked like a sun doesn't mean it was as hot as our sun.  And, as I explained before, there would be enough gravity to have an atmosphere around it.  No offence, Carousel, but it seems rather narrow-minded to assume that every alien world would be very similar to Earth.  Also, Doctor Who is a children's/family show... of course it's going to cater to children.  I actually in a way liked the singing/fear of performing aspect of the episode since it's probably something many children (and possibly also quite a few adults) can relate to.

Clearly dislike the recent developments in Doctor Who.  It seems to me that, if all you do is get annoyed by perceived plot holes/mistakes and get little no enjoyment from watching this show, it's a waste of time and you'd be better off not watching in the first place.

Last edited by Mr Vertigo (April 10, 2013 (03:11pm))

But if the leaf was introduced earlier and shown to have a big history, then it's not a Deus Ex Machina that it is brought up again and using that history to defeat the memory eating parasite... it's so obvious I'm starting to believe you are playing stupid

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AT LAST !!!!

Moffit lets someone elses script through and we get.........

A really good Doctor Who episode just like they used to be. I won't post spoilers here but it was really good. This is what we should have more of.

It was great to see one of the old Doctor Who aliens return in a good way.

(Liked all the aliens in the last episode, but what were they thinking about with that stupid barking dog language !) Got to agree with lots of the previous post re the last episode it was another stinker.

But tonights episode was good. Apart from the Tardis disappearing act which was a little weak, they could have come up with a better way to render the Tardis off limits.

But as a whole I thought it was a good episode.

I thought that was a very nicely done episode, except the Tardis disappearing act would make Houdini roll over in his grave. 

Other than that I though the ending was a bit... scrambled?  This whole "Oh, the Tardis is in the South Pole" thing didn't work for me.  I also thought that their was an awful lot of just sitting around in this episode...

Recently, I've been doing more constructive things during my Saturday nights - but I've decided to take time off my 'hectic' schedule to marathon all the episodes I've missed so far (I know: I'm a madman)

Episode 2

If Doctor Who has devolved into 'How Not To Structure An Episode', then this is the Parrot Sketch. This episode decided to ignore actually setting stuff up beforehand, so when all the stupid stuff happened - rather than going "Oh, well remember that one bit of dialogue..." it instead doesn't say anything at the start, then when the stupid thing happens it says: "Right, these guys want the girl because that guy in make-up is actually Rolf Harris..."

Whilst I appreciate that you've finally realised your not very good at exposition, Doctor Who; just explaining as things happen isn't going to help matters. This is appalling scriptwriting, and considering how low the bar is - that's pretty bad. A story is not a guided tour...ITS A STORY! TELL IT!!

The drawn-out ending was just vomit-inducing. The nauseating whimsicalness of singing children always provokes my gag-reflex anyway - but this was the final speech from Blade Runner (even nicking direct quotes from it) as directed by Christopher Columbus. Not to mention that solving a problem though the power of song is more sickening and cliché than solving a problem though the power of love (another cliché that Stephen Moffat has chained up in his basement)

I know this is a BBC production, but the set-design sucks. Maybe its the way its lit, or the fact that this whole episode was clearly shot on a sound-stage - but it looks really fake, particularly the market. I know the old Doctor Who episodes looked awful, but recently I've been impressed with how cinematic the episodes are starting to look...until now. That shake effect just looked atrocious. It looked like they hadn't even bothered to shake the camera, but just added the effect in post. Star Trek The Next Generation looked more convincing where the ship shook and you expect camera to cut to a judging panel scoring all the prat-falls.

One last thing on this episode: I love how they shell out for a motorbike and leave the TARDIS behind. Hello? Its been established that the TARDIS can fly - why didn't you use that? Or travel ahead of the girl and block the doorway? Still - at least its obvious from the start that this motorbike can fly...

Horrid episode. I couldn't have pressed the 'Stop' button hard enough.

Episode 3

It seems as though Moffat has ran out of classic sci-fi to plagiarise, so he keeps having to steal from different genres. That, or he thinks what Doctor Who has always needed is an extended tribute to Das Boot.

But, you know - I'm actually starting to see the fun of this. I've long accepted that I don't think Doctor Who will ever be as good as it used to (which, in retrospect, was quite a low bar), so, if an episode can pull of a fan-fiction like quality of the TARDIS suddenly busting in on a very serious scene of a classic movie (like the end of 12 Angry Men) then at least its doing something other than sucking.

Wait...its a Soviet submarine? Well, I can't complain. I like 'The Girl in the Fireplace' despite the fact no-one speaks with a French accent (though I always laugh when she says "...and we are French!" as if to remind us that this is supposed to be France), and I'm honestly glad no-one whacked out a hilariously cheesy Russian accent.

OK - I kind of liked this episode. I actually cared about what was happening and I understood everything that was going on. The exposition was nicely woven into the narrative, and the pace flowed well. It reminded me of how every episode of Doctor Who used to be structured.

There were some flaws. My biggest problem with this episode is that its basically 'Dalek' only with a different classic monster and in a different enclosed environment - right down to a scene where the monster is in chains and the female companion speaks to him. Also, its kind of an Alien rip-off. In fact, if the set wasn't constantly wetting itself the submarine would look exactly like the interior of the ship in Alien.

Maybe I like this episode because I watched it right after Episode 2 - which sucked. In fact, I should do this more often. Its like if you watch Batman and Robin before Avatar, then Avatar looks like The Seventh Seal in comparison.

Episode 4

Wow. This one was OK too. Not outstanding - but again, it was paced and executed like an RTD-era episode. Its a shame that our filler episodes are way better than the key episodes.

There were some stupid things. I hate how the TARDIS is sentient. It was stupid when they turned it into a middle-aged woman (I would actually say that episode was the worst ever. Yes: worse than 'Love and Monsters') and its stupid that through a projected hologram 'she' can talk. So imagine my jubilation when I discovered that next episode is all about the TARDIS being 'alive'.

Overall: Its a shame that Clara is basically Amy Pond 2.0, since she could be interesting. It seems Moffat likes his women to always have bizarre time-and-space-related issues with them that the Doctor SHOULD be dealing with rather than dragging them through time and space (the most hilarious being when the Doctor realises that Amy has amnesia and ends the episode vowing to sort her out. Cut to the next episode where they're mincing about in Venice hunting vampires) All she needs is an annoying boyfriend who gets kidnapped/killed all the time and its like nothing ever changed.

You know, two OK episodes and a bad one really isn't a terrible scoop. I'm pleasantly surprised - I was expecting after the incredibly mediocre 1st episode that things were going to stay the same, but like 99.9999999% of everything in the world - I was wrong.

Last edited by Max Butcher (April 22, 2013 (09:49am))

i really liked Hide

it was a lot of fun

yeah i dunno that's all i have to say about it

it was a fun episode

There is nothing wrong watching something expecting it to be good only to be disappointed. I watch Doctor Who the same way I follow the music charts; because every once in a while there is actually something of worth there that proves to me the charts are still worth following despite mostly being poopy.

Plus, I'm English - and we English love complaining.

Now: I've never really had much problem with Matt Smiths acting. I used to have a problem with him acting like an elderly eccentric - which looked weird considering considering Smith is so young. If you want to see a good example of an younger actor playing an older role and it looking more funny, watch every single vaguely comedic role Stephen Fry played during the 80's and 90's. If you want to see it just looking awkward, watch some of the early Smith episodes.

I'm not sure if it was just me taking time warming to the character, or just bad writing - but it also took over a series before the show seemed to get his character right. This was sort of the case with David Tennant, and also with Christopher Eccleston. In fact, its probably the case with every Doctor. None of the writers really know what the new Doctor is like yet, and so we get either a blank slate or various versions until the character suddenly clicks (this is the reason why I wanted at least one more series with Christopher Eccleston, because his character never really clicked and I wanted it to because Eccleston has an intensity the later Doctors lacked. Listen to how he promises to blast "every last stinking Dalek out of the sky" and listen to how happy he sounds that no-one ended up dying at the end of 'The Doctor Dances'. WHY DIDN'T YOU SIGN ON FOR ANOTHER SERIES CHIRS!?! WHY??!?!)

I've always wanted to see a really grumpy, sarcastic Doctor - kind of like the first Doctor. Wouldn't it be so refreshing? Rather than a friendly Doctor greeting everyone with a boyish fashion, this Doctor just goes "Ghosts do not exist. You are an otherwise talented man who is wasting his time in a ghastly decorated house that definitely doesn't have WiFi. And you can't sense emotions - your just really stupid. Sorry, didn't introduce myself; I'm the The Doctor, or as the Zarbillian Extars call me: The Voice of Common Sense" He could go through a nice character arc where he actually opens up to his companion, beginning as a bitter old man who gradually reveals more and more of his backstory and is pushed emotionally until he completely sheds his grumpy demeanour - at which point he would have to swiftly die in a heroic fashion so he doesn't get boring.

Its a shame we're never going to see a female Doctor, because its just far too risky a move. I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but if it doesn't work then the show would probably take a while to recover...plus everyone would look a bit sexist if she wasn't well received - even if its because she's just really badly written and not because she has an X chromosome.

Last edited by Max Butcher (April 23, 2013 (02:23pm))

@FlyingMinfig The 11th Doctor is incredibly fractured, he jumps from one emotion to the next, like a child, without a clean transition. Matt Smith's Doctor is a bully in sense that he's incredibly physical and sprays angry threats at his enemies, whilst that is fundamentally what the Doctor would never do. Over the course of the whole show, its been emphasized that the Doctor has somewhat always relied on his wits scare his foes, not guns or brute force. The 11th Doctor doesn't really have such qualities, especially with his physicality, for example, pushing, shoving and dragging Khaler Jex (I believe that was his name) down the Main Street in a Town Called Mercy. No. Stahp. There are many more examples, and I find it perfectly just to call him a bully of sorts.

Second, he tries to emulate an eccentric older person, yet he's really young, and he just appears to be a try hard. I should rephrase, an try hard eccentric child, because he'll soon suddenly switch back into another of his modes.

Whilst I'm not particularily positive *cough understatement cough* with the Matt Smith era, it seems you've ignored the fact that over past few pages I haven't completely critisized everything, I even stated that I enjoyed an episode or two. And as you don't seem to have been reading properly, I've expressed hope for the future of Doctor Who after the 50th anniversary. While I've been increasingly disappointed with Moffat (who wrote many of the highlight episodes of the RTD era) and Doctor Who in general, I live in hope that after the 50th, they'll (Matt+Moffat) take the chance to leave. So please stop telling me to stop watching Doctor Who, just because I don't enjoy getting spoon fed silly storylines. Please, go ahead, and tell me how and when I stated that Doctor Who should be like Game of Thrones? Please explain, when did I ever complain about Doctor Who not being like Game of Thrones?

@Max Butcher Again, I almost completely agree.

Last edited by Carousel (April 23, 2013 (02:58pm))