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S12.E08: The Haunting of Villa Diodati


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I'm not even going to read anyone's comments until I comment myself.

I thoroughly enjoyed this ep-- from beginning to end. And no crazy quick resolution at the end that didn't make sense! 

Loved the dude playing Byron. Love the chick playing Mary Shelly! In fact I loved everyone. They were all so cute!

Graham saying -- food? There's never food! (Paraphrasing here) haha!  Oh and the house that kept shifting was pretty cool.

So.. the lone Cyberman that Jack warned about. Hm? Looks crazy cool! and I love those impossible kind choices like The Doctor had to make. (Reminds me of Children Of The Earth where Jack had to make an impossible choice -- bittersweet y'all!

Anyway this is an episode I will watch again.

Edited by taanja
Mary Shelly not Marty Shelly
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The thing that gets me... the Doctor has thwarted the Cybermen plenty of times before, and forewarned is forearmed, particularly when you can go back in time and stack the deck in your favor Bill & Ted style. So it's not as if she has definitely doomed the future of Earth by saving Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816. The Lone Cyberman could easily travel to whatever future era he has designs on and find out that events have been set in motion for centuries to neutralize any threat he represents. Eleven was certainly able to pull that sort of trick on more than one occasion.

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Sure. Jack only knows from his pov not to give the cybermen what he wants. He's also not one to just put it all on the Doctor either. She took a calculated risk and didn't call the cybermen's bluff. It's just that it's going to take some major work at this point. 

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13 hours ago, Eulipian 5k said:

Heh, I'm not one for scatological humor, but ingestion and excretion is one of the required characteristics of any living being so,:

  • there must be toilets near the jacuzzi on the TARDIS, right?

Yes, there are toilets. In one episode Bill asked the doctor where they were, then Nardole appeared and told her that, um, perhaps she'd want to wait a bit before she went in.

 

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This is at least the 3rd episode this season that we’ve seen 13 use her telepathic ability (Spyfall Part 2 and Orphan 55 are the other ones I can remember). Am I right in thinking we didn’t see her use the ability at all in Series 11?

How 13 was a desired receptacle for the Cyberium will hopefully be a plot point in the finale. I wonder why it exited her so easily though. Maybe because she’s a Time Lord?

Even though this was a start off for the finale, it still felt like a complete story

I have to confess, I didn’t actually like the look of the Doctor’s waistcoat (or vest to Americans). She just looked awkwardly half-dressed with just her undershirt underneath. I think it would have looked better if she was fully dressed in period clothing

Edited by DanaK
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2 hours ago, DanaK said:

This is at least the 3rd episode this season that we’ve seen 13 use her telepathic ability (Spyfall Part 2 and Orphan 55 are the other ones I can remember). Am I right in thinking we didn’t see her use the ability at all in Series 11?

 

She used it in Fugitive of the Judoon to show Gat what happened to Gallifrey. 

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14 minutes ago, Sakura12 said:

I like that the Doctor is using her powers more than just being a super genius. It makes her feel more Alien. 

 

It seems once the Doctor opened up a bit to her companions about who and what she is, she seems to be more comfortable openly showing her powers, at least with things like the telepathy. She also referred to herself as a Time Lord twice in this episode. She was really hiding herself from her companions last season

Edited by DanaK
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Was Byron flirting with the Doctor? OK, he totally would, he was rather notorious for his affairs.

Has Graham never heard of a chamber pot? Bathrooms (and even flushing toilets) had existed since the 16th Century, but Graham should at least be aware of the concept.

Did this night really take place on June 18th (1816)? That would not only make it the one year anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, it's also my birthday (well, it would be, I'm not that old)!

So the Cyber-McGuffin allowed Shelley to turn the Villa into The Matrix*? Though I did like that the twisted geography of the villa was actually only in their minds (and how sleepwalking helped!).

Did like Ryan saying that sacrificing One Man to save Millions is easy choice (at least in theory, harder to actually follow through with in practice) - and "Mrs" Doctor arguing against that. The Doctor has always been somebody who believes individuals are important and should not be sacrificed for the good of "the many" - he/she doesn't always succeed, but would always choose to save one person, even if that endangered the many.

On ‎2‎/‎16‎/‎2020 at 9:06 PM, Joe Hellandback said:

The Cyberman. 

7. Which I called correctly as the inspiration for Frankenstein.

8. Great look for the 'lone Cyberman', a little bit Borg, to hear his emotion was just disturbing. 

The Cybermen and the Borg both drew their inspiration from Frankenstein (and loved the reference - even if it's not in the Mary Shelley novel - of how the Cyberman drew his power from lightning). Of course, now we get that Frankenstein drew its inspiration from the Cybermen... but that's just everyday Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey-ness!

On ‎2‎/‎17‎/‎2020 at 6:34 PM, futurechemist said:

Did people really dance-gossip back in that era?  Or walk a lap around a room while chatting?

I'm sure they did - people don't change that much.

On ‎2‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 2:44 AM, truther said:

Though really, who tries to crash a small private party emptyhanded?    I had a very hard time believing our friends would have been accepted the way they were.  If they had at least shown up with a case of fine Italian wine or something I could have bought it.

Laudanum would probably be more era appropriate, though I understand the BBC not wanting to endorse (now) illegal drugs.

* By which I mean "The Matrix Data Banks" (on Gallifrey), naturally. Keanu who?

Edited by John Potts
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About 2/3 of the way into this episode on Sunday night my BBC America channel tried to cram too many commercials in and got the audio all out of sync. I watched it all the way through but missed a lot of the dialog. I finally got a chance to rewatch today...and when the Lone Cyberman announced "I am inevitable" I yelled "I am Iron Man!" at my tv.

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1 hour ago, NeenerNeener said:

About 2/3 of the way into this episode on Sunday night my BBC America channel tried to cram too many commercials in and got the audio all out of sync. I watched it all the way through but missed a lot of the dialog. I finally got a chance to rewatch today...and when the Lone Cyberman announced "I am inevitable" I yelled "I am Iron Man!" at my tv.

Fortunately, that hasn’t happened to me to that extant, though some episodes have had brief audio dropouts. I had one brief one in this episode, when Mary confronted the Cyberman, but the closed caption still caught the dialog. 

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On 2/18/2020 at 9:38 AM, DanaK said:

Apparently Nick Briggs voiced the Cyberman

It appears I was mistaken about this. It seems it was the actor playing the Cyberman who used his own voice (with some vocal effects added in)

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I don’t get why The Doctor thought that the death of Shelley would completely change the future of earth.  Most of the population of earth had not known anything or very little about him.  Many people have died along the way in other episodes and everything was fine.  I would think taking that chance would be worth it to save so many.  Up to that point, I enjoyed the episode.

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14 minutes ago, Pattycake2 said:

I don’t get why The Doctor thought that the death of Shelley would completely change the future of earth

I think it's just the Butterfly effect: the effects of removing one man are incalculable in the long run. Or to put it another way: Save the poet, Save the world!

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2 hours ago, Pattycake2 said:

I don’t get why The Doctor thought that the death of Shelley would completely change the future of earth.  Most of the population of earth had not known anything or very little about him.  Many people have died along the way in other episodes and everything was fine.  I would think taking that chance would be worth it to save so many.  Up to that point, I enjoyed the episode.

But they were influenced by people greatly influenced by him, including the non-violent movement. On the latter, Shelley influenced Tolstoy, who influenced Ghandi, who influenced King

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On 2/24/2020 at 1:02 PM, DanaK said:

Ratings catch-up:

Overnights: 3.86 million viewers, rank: 7th for the night

7-Day: 5.073 million viewers, rank: 31st for the week

28-day numbers: 5.56 million viewers

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