Previously on 'The Invasion' so many rapey implications. And So. Much. Touching.
THEY NEVER STOP. It's exhausting. But adorable. There are also some immensely creepy wiggly things in the coffins that our Boys found when they were looking for our Girls.
And I'm really digging the character interaction between our Villains and our Boys and both groups individually. In fact, I really feel like the alien Villains is supplemental to the human interaction, and this would be a really good serial even without the imminent threat of alien invasion hanging over us.
I will never get over the face melting (literally) introduction Two has.
You know, once you've seen the live action
Doctor Who these animated reconstructions just aren't very good any more. I've seen better animation in Flash. Actually, given the prevalence of ponies on the entire internet I think we've all seen better Flash animation.
But what I think's going to be a major problem with this episode is the audio quality. Now given this was recorded off the tellybox in 1968 I should be lucky there's anything at all, but it's echoey and faded. Maybe it'll get better later on, but I doubt it. I am so glad I always enable subtitles on everything I watch.
Huh. I don't get it. In the closing seconds of ep. 3 I saw Jamie get
into the coffin, but now the animation implies he kneeling down and looking into it while the Doctor peers through the barely open carriage doors. Shouldn't be this confused ten seconds into an episode. Especially when the first minute or so the last minute of the previous episode.
So I'm assuming Jamie's just clambered out of the occupied coffin in the opening seconds of this episode. It's easier for my brain. Naturally, finding a wiggly worm type thing in a supposedly empty coffin is rather disturbing. Guess what Jamie's reaction is.
Go on. Three guesses and the first two don't count.
If you guessed
'touch or otherwise cling onto the Doctor' you were correct. Discounting the thirty-three second introduction (yes I watched from the beginning again to get the exact length) we are thirty-four seconds into the episode. I wonder, if I screencapped this episode once every minute, how many of these caps would feature Jamie and the Doctor touching . . .
Either way, I'll 'excuse' this touch as motivated by being really creeped out rather than anything else. Of course this does mean that Jamie sees the Doctor as a form of security which is entirely true. So Jamie worriedly informs the Doctor of the wiggly thingy and the Doctor has this to say "Alive? Jamie, the darkness plays funny tricks with the imagination."
One: something obviously wiggling about cannot be put down to the imagination.
Two: if, as it was in ep. 3 Jamie was inside the coffin when he saw the wiggly thing
he would have felt it move. If, as it was earlier this ep. it was fairly light meaning
it was not dark enough to do such a thing.
Three: this is Jamie!
Luckily the Doctor is swayed by my third point because upon hearing Jamie's film assertion that he really did see something in the dark sir, honest, the Doctor decides they need to have a looksee. Sadly at this point Random Guard orders some dude to "[g]et those two girls over to the main administration building!"
Yes ladies and gentlemen. The plot of the last two episodes has arrived. This probably distracted the Boys from the overall plot as I suspect the wiggly thing in the coffin (WTIC for short) was a kidnapped person going off to be turned into a cyberman.
Damn. This really
is 'Rise of the Cybermen'/'The Age of Steel' isn't it? Let me just Wikipedia the writer . . . TOM MACRAE!
Damnit man! I want to call you a hack for ripping off 'The Invasion' but you also wrote 'The Girl Who Waited' which I really enjoyed!
Extremely Quick Comparison of 'Rise of the Cybermen'/'The Age of Steel' to 'The Invasion': While I acknowledge that Tom MacRae was limited to ninety minutes split into two episodes and thus didn't have enough time to develop things as fully as one hundred and ninety minutes split into eight episodes can.
And yet in
just the three episodes I've seen I find the villains to have a deeper characterisation, better motivation (although PPP can be easily compared to (damnit, to TVTropes) Lumic's assistant. You know, the one who listened to 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' while converting homeless people. PPP just revels more in his violent side.) and the episode just gels much better on a character/thematic point.
(I swear. If it turns out that there's something in the Not-Microsoft tech that brainwashes people into 'willingly' becoming Cybermen I will scream.)
I mean, Lumic chose to become a Cyberman because he was afraid of death, Frollo is assisting the Cybermen because their way of life are his ideals at their most extreme. Lumic sold out Earth to live longer, Frollo is selling out Earth
because he believes people are better off living the way he does.
Also, I found the two-parter to be more concerned with Rose's daddy issues. Putting aside my intense . . . dislike . . . of Rose I still found it a bit redundant seeing as we already covered Rose's daddy issues in 'Father's Day' (which I considered a fairly good episode) in an episode
entirely devoted to said issues. To then spend a further ninety minutes revolving around this just
bored me silly. AND I LIKE CHARACTERISATION AND CHARACTER DRIVEN PLOTS!
I will admit that I did like the fact the MacRae turned Rose into a real bitch by making her a dog. I sincerely hope MacRae did that because he too
really disliked Rose and not because it was a 'funny joke'. And admittedly, I preferred the Mickey/Rickey subplot as it was actually emotional and trod new ground (relatively speaking) and fleshed out his character in a meaningful way.
Oh I'm so proud of me! I managed to fairly compare two virtually identical serials without my Rose Vitriol spewing all over the place! Hell, I managed to mostly avoid mentioning her at all!
Back to 'The Invasion' though. Our Boys are going to follow the Girls into the admin building (wasn't that where they just were though? Oh I don't know).
Cut to the office! Animated!PPP looks nothing like real!PPP. Either way, no guesses as to what's going on here - Frollo's reprimanding PPP once again because he still can't find our Boys. I think Frollo's taking sadistic glee in the fact that he can keep rubbing PPP's face in his unintelligence.
I'd
maybe feel sorry for him, but then he says "It's not my fault. If you'd let me take care of him in the first place, or followed the orders of our allies - "
And guess what happens? A retread of our previous 'I don't follow orders, I give them' speech. "Orders? Me, Packer? I've told them and I'll tell you. I give roders, not take them. [ . . . ] The invasion's under my control, and when our purpose has been achieved, I shall still be in control." I kind of doubt that. You're one old dude.
PPP: "You can't fight them!" Okay. He definitely knows what the Cybermen are, so why was he so doubtful of space travellers?
F: "Packer." [I will never not love the way Frollo says PPP's name] "Why do you think I kept that old fool Watkins alive?" Perverse sexual lust? Because he's a really good scientist and your business is Anything Electronic? Because you're evil?
PPP: "Well to work on his machine of course?"
F: "And why did you think I wanted him to do that?" OH MY GOD! Is this seriously going to be telling me the plot? And the machine - the Cerebraton Whatsit?
EMOTIONS! HA! Frollo's going to do what Smithy did in 'Closing Time' and overload the Cybermen?! If this is what is going on . . .
PPP: "Well, you . . . I don't know." PPP, the way you say 'I don't know' is so adorable. He's so
baffled! Either way, I think it's safe to say I know more than PPP does.
F: "Our allies appear to find the Professor's machine somewhat disturbing, so much so, in fact, that when they first saw the prototype they ordered us to destroy it and all similar machines."
PPP: "You mean they're frightened of it?" Inside Frollo's mind:
*headdesk*
Cannot be that stupid . . .
Don't worry Frollo, I had that same reaction. I mean, why
else would they want to destroy a machine?! It's just human tech and the Cybermen are superior in that area, so really they wouldn't want something destroyed
unless there was potential to harm them.
F: "Hmm." Frollo has got to be regretting hiring PPP. "The teaching power of the machine didn't worry them, but when I generated some emotional pulses" Oh I sure something pulsed all right (sorry) "I'm convinced Packer, that emotion could be used to destroy them." Oh, I AM GOOD. Even if I had the help of
Nu Who. Either way, Frollo's trying to pull one over
on the entire Cyberfleet (or possibly the entire species). Oh my he has some balls.
PPP expresses doubts about this plan, as any reasonable person would but Frollo says they're playing for some big stakes. F: "Do you wish to be totally converted hmmm? Would you prefer to be one of them? Completely inhuman? [ . . . ] That's what will happen if they take over. We will cease to be human." Then what are you after? "So, we must use their force and their might and then discard them."
This guy's reading the minds of the Cult of Skaro from 'Army of Ghosts'/'Doomsday'. Use 'em, abuse 'em and discard 'em. And the best part? Frollo seems to have an escape plan in case things go belly up. "The Doctor." Well, more specifically, his TARDIS. Not that they call it that mind you.
F: "The two young ladies have arrived, I hope [ . . . ] When they're safely tucked away, we'll flush out our clever Doctor."
Then all of a sudden PPP's down at the jeep watching the Zoe!Coffin be unloaded with our Boys looking on from some cover. The Girls are being taken to the tenth floor of the central block. Now Boys, you know where the Girls are, you have a radio transceiver, the helichopter with Cpt. Jimmy is relatively close. In fact, it's right overhead.
DO. THE. MATH! (In Touching News, the Boys aren't touching although they are lurking rather close together. I'm surprised neither's taken advantage of the situation)
Oh wow.
Epic face fail. That is straight up uncanny valley there my birds. (Oh Lord, I was just uploading that pic and I got lost. Not because I've got lots of
Doctor Who screencaps or anything, but because I was
instinctively looking for a pic of Jamie and the Doctor touching. What is this new pairing doing to my brain?) And while I assumed it was the Doctor saying "call [the Brig's lot] up for help" it was
Jamie.
My impetuous Jamie is being
logical. Because he probably knows they're outnumbered.
You won't believe what the Doctor says. "No, no, not yet. We've got to rescue the girls first." Tell me Doctor, do you have some kind of Honour thing going on like a Klingon or an Aiel? Because you didn't exactly make a
vow to rescue the Girls solo or anything. You want to rescue the girls, this should be your priority.
Re: Doctor Who thread II: "I should have a hat like that." [SPOILERS]
Originally Posted by V'icternus
Bathatar!
Reply With Quote