S10.E04: Knock Knock

[Tara Ariano]

Quote

A sinister landloard shows Bill and her friends a seemingly perfect house-share, but things are not as perfect as they seem.

[ApathyMonger]

The big exposition scene at the end went on a bit too long, but I enjoyed that a lot.

The "everyone's brought back to life" ending was a bit convenient, but I hope we see Bill's housemates again. I don't know the others but I've liked Mandeep Dhillon since Some Girls.

Edited May 6, 2017 by ApathyMonger

[alrightokay]

I liked David Suchet a lot--he was super-creepy in the beginning and then did a great job changing his whole demeanor (without it being too sudden) when his character's true identity was revealed.  I wasn't as interested in Bill's housemates, though; I wanted more Bill-Doctor interaction. It was intriguing that Bill called the Doctor her "grandfather," when the other students already recognized him as the Doctor who lectures at the university.  (I really really don't want Bill to turn out to be Susan; just let her be a normal human being, Moffat!)

I've seen people say that this series feels very "RTD-like", and I really felt it during this episode, with the pop culture references (Little Mix); there was even a Harriet Jones mention!

[AudienceofOne]

Overall I enjoyed it. But then I got to the end and realised that nothing was explained. So, there was that.

The idea of a 'something's in the creepy old house' story where it turned out to be the house itself that was the monster was a nice inversion even if they never told us what the bugs were or where they came from or why they made Eliza wood or how they were able to extract everybody's cellular energy but then put the students back together at the end.

2 hours ago, ApathyMonger said:

The "everyone's brought back to life" ending was a bit convenient, but I hope we see Bill's housemates again. 

I could have done without the consequence-free 'everybody lives' scenario, although I guess this relegates this incident to 'weird student housing incident'. I do kind of like the idea that this was the alien version of a crappy house and a bad landlord. If the bugs were alien. That was never explained.

One thing I do like about how this season has been set up is that when we have random "Bill is back on Earth" episodes, they're not random at all because the Doctor has a reason to be here. This is kind of like the UNIT years where the Doctor was living on Earth. It's a nice break and a nice change of pace.

[Lokiberry]

I don't think Bill could be Susan because that would mean either her mother or father was the Doctor's child (or Jenny, I  guess), and I don't see them going there. It's possible, I suppose,  if they want to go Extra!Special!Timey-Wimey. We're expecting Twelve to regenerate, but maybe Bill does too, and she regenerates into CAF. Then, Twelve sends her off with  the First Doctor, who's supposed to be in the Christmas special. Of course, Bill likes girls, and Susan left the Doctor to marry a man. No, wait, Bill said she mostly likes girls, so there's some wiggle room.

Anyway, I think they're probably just screwing around with us.

I liked David Suchet, but I wasn't really into the plot. They didn't develop the roommates enough for me to get invested in them. It had some interesting ideas, and I always enjoy Bill and the Doctor interacting, but for me this was the weakest episode so far.

For anybody who hasn't read the link I posted in the All Seasons thread, Harry, the guy the Doctor was running around with, was supposed to be Classic Who companion Harry Sullivan's grandson but they cut the line referencing him. Here's the link to the story:

http://www.doctorwho.tv/whats-new/article/doctor-who-series-10-knock-knock-character-is-classic-companion-s-grandson

[truther]

6 hours ago, ApathyMonger said:

The "everyone's brought back to life" ending was a bit convenient, but I hope we see Bill's housemates again. I don't know the others but I've liked Mandeep Dhillon since Some Girls.

Actually, once the ending became obvious I was hoping they were going to bring everyone back to life.  It would have been cool to have a final scene, Close Encounters-style, with six people from 1957, 1977, and 1997 suddenly re-appearing in the present.  

[Lantern7]

I think the episode was written on a dare. "Haunted house? We can do that! What else ya got?!?" "Wood lice." "Like in Frontios? Sure! Can you make it more challenging?"

It was a good episode, even with the CGI lice and the horror that the landlord was keeping alive. Do British kids usually pool together money to share a house? It felt a lot like The Real World, minus the alcohol. And horrific alien lice.

I think I know who/what the Doctor is keeping in the vault, but it might be related to a casting spoiler from last month. Nardole gets little to do, but it looks like he'll see action next week.

[Popples]

1 hour ago, truther said:

Actually, once the ending became obvious I was hoping they were going to bring everyone back to life.  It would have been cool to have a final scene, Close Encounters-style, with six people from 1957, 1977, and 1997 suddenly re-appearing in the present.  

I totally thought that's where they were going, having all the missing people show up. It would have been interesting to see their reactions.

18 minutes ago, Lantern7 said:

It was a good episode, even with the CGI lice and the horror that the landlord was keeping alive. Do British kids usually pool together money to share a house? It felt a lot like The Real World, minus the alcohol. And horrific alien lice.

Share houses are common in the UK.

[HouseofBeck]

For just a moment, I had flashes back to The Young Ones. :)

I loved this episode. David Suchet--such a marvelous actor. Seeming so otherworldly at first, all the way down to wiping his tears away just like a little boy; captivating. A delightfully thrilling, sinister, slightly old-fashioned haunted-house ep.

[benteen]

Another really good episode of Doctor Who.  I'm really enjoying this series.  I agree this season has the feel of the Unit years with the Doctor mostly Earth-bound.

My mom was a big fan of Poirot and Suche's work on it and I can see why.  He was terrific and I enjoyed the haunted house.  Nice twist with him being the son.  More good stuff between the Doctor and Bill and I'm glad Bill is a regular person who has friends and a life outside the TARDIS.

[Llywela]

7 hours ago, Lokiberry said:

For anybody who hasn't read the link I posted in the All Seasons thread, Harry, the guy the Doctor was running around with, was supposed to be Classic Who companion Harry Sullivan's grandson but they cut the line referencing him. Here's the link to the story:

http://www.doctorwho.tv/whats-new/article/doctor-who-series-10-knock-knock-character-is-classic-companion-s-grandson

That might have been what the writer intended, but if it wasn't stated on-screen it isn't canon - which is just as well, since Harry is already dead in-universe (we know that from the Sarah Jane Adventures) and therefore is unlikely to be travelling around China with anyone! Plus, it would be really out of character for Harry to steal a bit of the Great Wall (unless it happened by accident), and it always annoys me when Classic companions are referenced in OOC ways just for a cheap joke. (I haven't forgiven Moffat yet for claiming that Harry was responsible for the tortuous Zygon-killing gas the other season, a horrendously OOC reference, which just proves that these writers might know a lot of Classic trivia but don't understand the Classic companions at all)

9 hours ago, alrightokay said:

I liked David Suchet a lot--he was super-creepy in the beginning and then did a great job changing his whole demeanor (without it being too sudden) when his character's true identity was revealed.  I wasn't as interested in Bill's housemates, though; I wanted more Bill-Doctor interaction. It was intriguing that Bill called the Doctor her "grandfather," when the other students already recognized him as the Doctor who lectures at the university.  (I really really don't want Bill to turn out to be Susan; just let her be a normal human being, Moffat!)

Bill isn't going to turn out to be Susan, there's no way she could be. It really annoys me that Moffat has got us all conditioned to expect implausible twists like that, which detracts from our enjoyment of the story and characters.

7 hours ago, AudienceofOne said:

Overall I enjoyed it. But then I got to the end and realised that nothing was explained. So, there was that.

The idea of a 'something's in the creepy old house' story where it turned out to be the house itself that was the monster was a nice inversion even if they never told us what the bugs were or where they came from or why they made Eliza wood or how they were able to extract everybody's cellular energy but then put the students back together at the end.

I could have done without the consequence-free 'everybody lives' scenario, although I guess this relegates this incident to 'weird student housing incident'. I do kind of like the idea that this was the alien version of a crappy house and a bad landlord. If the bugs were alien. That was never explained.

One thing I do like about how this season has been set up is that when we have random "Bill is back on Earth" episodes, they're not random at all because the Doctor has a reason to be here. This is kind of like the UNIT years where the Doctor was living on Earth. It's a nice break and a nice change of pace.

I agree! The thing about the magic bugs really wasn't resolved at all, was it - the house dissolved (taking with it all the worldly possession of those six students), but what happened to the magic bugs after that? Are they still out there, somewhere? What happens if someone else finds and makes use of them? And how could Eliza re-make the five people who'd been absorbed?

The concept of Bill's very sudden house share was the weakest part of the episode, for me. There was no build-up to it, last we heard Bill was content living with her foster mother (and wasn't an official student anyway, I know the Doctor decided to coach her, but I thought that was unofficial) and now she's suddenly house-hunting with a bunch of other students. Which, that's very normal for students after their first year, I've lived in similar house shares myself - but the unexpectedly available mansion that none of them thought about twice, after being randomly approached in the street? Yeah, my suspension of disbelief struggled with that. It was entertainingly creepy after that, though, and I do appreciate that the Doctor actually has a built-in reason for hanging around Earth this time, his interest in Bill primarily a way of passing the time, after spending so long as Clara's whipped puppy dog.

Edited May 7, 2017 by Llywela

[paulvdb]

10 hours ago, alrightokay said:

It was intriguing that Bill called the Doctor her "grandfather," when the other students already recognized him as the Doctor who lectures at the university.  (I really really don't want Bill to turn out to be Susan; just let her be a normal human being, Moffat!)

The other students may have known him, but the Doctor who lectures at the university would not be expected to help a random student move into her new house. Calling him her grandfather was just to explain why he helped Bill move in.

Edited May 7, 2017 by paulvdb

[ZoqFotPik]

5 hours ago, Lantern7 said:

Do British kids usually pool together money to share a house?

I'm not in the UK, but that was very common when I was in college.

2 hours ago, Llywela said:

And how could Eliza re-make the five people who'd been absorbed?

My explanation is that she was like the Sarlacc and would digest the people slowly over the 20 years. Since they had only been absorbed a day at most, the process had barely started. 

[wayne67]

10 minutes ago, ZoqFotPik said:

I'm not in the UK, but that was very common when I was in college.

My explanation is that she was like the Sarlacc and would digest the people slowly over the 20 years. Since they had only been absorbed a day at most, the process had barely started. 

Yeah the bugs were really confusing. I mean why did the son use humans instead of practically any other more freely available life forms like pigs, sheep, cows, rats or other random animals. You'd think people going missing would attract more attention than you'd want as the keeper of a wood mother monster. 

Also mother jumped quickly from "see the world" to "time to end it all". Kind of jarring. I was left wondering about all their stuff being eaten? destroyed?

Why did the bugs killing Wood Mother mean the house falling apart, weren't they siphoning energy to the Wood Mother? So after her death, they'd have more resources to use to maintain the house... 

This episode was entertaining but sort of weak plot wise and also character wise. Bill saw her friends/randoms die in front of her and was only mildly surprised by it after the big deal about that dead orphan last week. Has she become immune to grief so quickly ? 

Shouldn't those other characters been a little bit more traumatized by all the bugs eating them? 

Arggh... Oh well at least there was no weird time tangly paradoxes to unravel... 

[ZoqFotPik]

Wanted to add, based on the way the piano player perked up to the idea of young people being eaten, that's definitely Missy in the vault.

[Ceindreadh]

2 hours ago, wayne67 said:

This episode was entertaining but sort of weak plot wise and also character wise. Bill saw her friends/randoms die in front of her and was only mildly surprised by it after the big deal about that dead orphan last week. Has she become immune to grief so quickly ? 

Shouldn't those other characters been a little bit more traumatized by all the bugs eating them? 

Arggh... Oh well at least there was no weird time tangly paradoxes to unravel... 

There wasn't really a lot of time for Bill to mourn her friends because the danger was still present. When the orphan died there was no immediate threat to Bill and the Doctor, but after the first person was taken by the bugs, Bill was too busy running for her life to grieve. 

 

Re the house share "what do other people do?"  Well mostly, they either double up on rooms or they split into smaller groups. Three bed houses are a lot easier to come by than six beds. 

[clack]

Someone -- the director, the writer, the actor, all three-- really messed up with Bill's reactions to seeing her friends apparently experience horrific deaths, unless Bill is meant to be a psychopath. 

A minute after seeing the last of her friends getting eaten alive by bugs, and Bill is grinning at fireworks? Yikes.

[wayne67]

1 hour ago, Ceindreadh said:

There wasn't really a lot of time for Bill to mourn her friends because the danger was still present. When the orphan died there was no immediate threat to Bill and the Doctor, but after the first person was taken by the bugs, Bill was too busy running for her life to grieve. 

I wasn't expecting like a dramatic outburst or her to burst into tears but a word of profanity, a tear, a prolonged "NooOoo", something to indicate she lost someone she knew. Evidently she knew her at least a little in order to live with her and 4 other people so I was expecting something a little more than we got with the orphan child, since she actually knew this one at least a day. In the room she was like "she's gone" as if delivering a status report which is to be expected with the Doctor's delivery, he's used to randoms dying around him but she seemed fairly unaffected by the loss of 5 of her acquaintances/friends in a span of 10 or 20 minutes and their subsequent resurrection/revival. 

It isn't a big deal, we can probably just fanwank it as shock in show or lazy writing out of show. 

The tone of the episode was somewhat off. The other characters were not scared then panicky scared then simply confused after their resurrection. It all seemed somewhat underwhelming. 

Oh well, it was a reasonably entertaining episode which makes it better than most of the last 2 seasons. Hopefully next episode Nardole gets more to do than to scold the Doctor for not honoring his oath. 

[John Potts]

OK, while in general I do prefer the "They weren't evil, just misunderstood" type of monster, I'm hoping that we'll get some good old fashioned, "Exterminate everything that isn't us!" monsters at some point. But I did like the portrayal of student life which seemed genuine (even the sexual inter-relationships amongst the students seemed plausible, whatever the Daily Mail might like to believe) and the way Bill kept trying to get the Doctor to leave (and objected to being called Granpa!). Did like the "Hidden in plain sight" reveal that the Landlord couldn't possibly be the father of Wooden Woman, given everything else they knew. Didn't quite understand why he didn't say he was living in the old tower, which wouldn't be unreasonable (and was presumably true - he just didn't mention his mother was too).

16 hours ago, alrightokay said:

this series feels very "RTD-like", and I really felt it during this episode, with the pop culture references (Little Mix); there was even a Harriet Jones mention!

I was actually trying to work out where the Who-verse diverged from the real one by listening to the Prime Ministers the Doctor mentioned - I think he mentioned Tony Blair (and Alec Douglas Hume?) as well as Harriet Jones. Presumably it was Tony Blair killed in The Aliens of London, if that was the case.

 

4 hours ago, ZoqFotPik said:

My explanation is that she was like the Sarlacc and would digest the people slowly over the 20 years

That would be my Fanwank, too.

1 hour ago, Ceindreadh said:

Re the house share "what do other people do?"  Well mostly, they either double up on rooms or they split into smaller groups. Three bed houses are a lot easier to come by than six beds.

Actually, I lived in a 6 person house share in the 90s (just after leaving university, admittedly).

[Primetimer]

It's time to rank the new companion’s new companions.

View the full article

[HouseofBeck]

I'll have to watch it again. My impression was that Bill only knew perhaps one of her new roommates in passing, and was eager to jump into this new-to-her common way of living like a real uni student. I interpreted her reactions to their deaths, especially the one in front of her, as a combo of compounded shock and, "Oh, shit, and then there was one and that's me." Time to react later, get your feet off the floor now! --and so forth.

[Starchild]

2 hours ago, PreviouslyTV said:

It's time to rank the new companion’s new companions.

View the full article

Personally I preferred Harry to Paul. I do wonder if the next companion might be drawn from this pool.

I don't know if Bill will still be a companion in the next series, but if the next Doctor is female, I expect they will have a male companion. Because gods forbid nuWho has a same-gender dynamic in their two leads. After all, if the Doctor doesn't have grey hair there MUST be the possibility of romance. [insert rolling eyes here]

[LiveenLetLive]

I got a laugh out of the whole "he is my grandfather" schtick ("why not Father?") LOL it worked on 2 levels: as a call back to original WHO and a tip to we grumblers (yes me) that insist that Capaldi is too damn old haha! As for the story, I never put much store by Dr Who plots, I thought that the episode was sufficiently creepy and for me, that is good enough.

[Mabinogia]

1 hour ago, HouseofBeck said:

I interpreted her reactions to their deaths, especially the one in front of her, as a combo of compounded shock and, "Oh, shit, and then there was one and that's me." Time to react later, get your feet off the floor now! --and so forth.

yeah, Bill strikes me as a very fast learner. The Doctor explained the concept of not having time to grieve because lives are still in danger and I think she realized that freaking out was going to get her killed. It's one of the things I actually like about Bill. She isn't repeating the same mistakes over and over.

I enjoyed the episode while watching it but yeah, there are a lot of plot holes in this one. The biggest being, what happened with the wood lice? Did they die? eat themselves out of existence? or just lay dormant waiting for someone to rebuild on that particular plot of land, if they are stuck on that spot that is?

I did like the story of a little boy who was losing his mommy, seems like there was no father so she was all he had, going to extreme's to keep her with him. He never entirely grew up and he made her his whole life. Tragic. But she wasn't really living, just alive. He couldn't see it. All good stuff but I feel it was held back by the wood lice idea which, while it gave us some visual moments, was kind of hard to make sense of.

[ganesh]

I knew plenty of people in college across different universities in different states that shared a house too, like 4-8 people. I always rented apartments, but one of them was fairly large with 5 people. 

It's not clear to me if Bill is actually in college or not. Because the Doctor noticed her in class and said she wasn't a student, and she talked about making the fries. So I thought she was just working at the restaurant. 

[ratgirlagogo]

17 minutes ago, ganesh said:

I knew plenty of people in college across different universities in different states that shared a house too, like 4-8 people.

I lived in several different collective houses over the years, two of them when I was in college, the rest after.  The largest  was a brownstone in Brooklyn with ten or so people (and our nonstop visitors).  On the other hand I also lived briefly here and there in places that were as bad or worse than the places shown in the beginning. In NYC  I knew more than one person who was living in a closet that was being rented out as a room.

19 hours ago, Lokiberry said:

For anybody who hasn't read the link I posted in the All Seasons thread, Harry, the guy the Doctor was running around with, was supposed to be Classic Who companion Harry Sullivan's grandson but they cut the line referencing him

 

11 hours ago, Llywela said:

That might have been what the writer intended, but if it wasn't stated on-screen it isn't canon - which is just as well, since Harry is already dead in-universe (we know that from the Sarah Jane Adventures) and therefore is unlikely to be travelling around China with anyone! Plus, it would be really out of character for Harry to steal a bit of the Great Wall (unless it happened by accident), and it always annoys me when Classic companions are referenced in OOC ways just for a cheap joke. (I haven't forgiven Moffat yet for claiming that Harry was responsible for the tortuous Zygon-killing gas the other season, a horrendously OOC reference, which just proves that these writers might know a lot of Classic trivia but don't understand the Classic companions at all)

They're doing so much of this referential stuff in this season (Twelve is Bill's "grandfather", picture of Susan on his desk) that it's even harder to see why they would be concerned about character continuity.  I like Twelve and Bill together a lot so I'm not sure how interested I am about adding Bill's housemates to the mix.  

15 hours ago, truther said:

Actually, once the ending became obvious I was hoping they were going to bring everyone back to life.  It would have been cool to have a final scene, Close Encounters-style, with six people from 1957, 1977, and 1997 suddenly re-appearing in the present.

Yes, that disappointed me also.

[Starchild]

12 hours ago, Llywela said:

That might have been what the writer intended, but if it wasn't stated on-screen it isn't canon - which is just as well, since Harry is already dead in-universe (we know that from the Sarah Jane Adventures) and therefore is unlikely to be travelling around China with anyone! Plus, it would be really out of character for Harry to steal a bit of the Great Wall (unless it happened by accident), and it always annoys me when Classic companions are referenced in OOC ways just for a cheap joke. (I haven't forgiven Moffat yet for claiming that Harry was responsible for the tortuous Zygon-killing gas the other season, a horrendously OOC reference, which just proves that these writers might know a lot of Classic trivia but don't understand the Classic companions at all)

For what it's worth, the story said that Sullivan was Harry's other grandfather, not the one who went to China with his boyfriend and stole bits of the wall.

[Mabinogia]

47 minutes ago, ganesh said:

It's not clear to me if Bill is actually in college or not. Because the Doctor noticed her in class and said she wasn't a student, and she talked about making the fries. So I thought she was just working at the restaurant. 

I am currently fanwanking, since the show can't be bothered to explain things, that after starting to spend time with the Doctor, Bill has decided to enroll, at least part time, in school proper. I think, in ep one, she was not a student, but an employee who hung out in classes she found interesting. But it would make sense that meeting the Doctor has given her the confidence to finally become a real student. Of course, none of this has been made clear in the show so who knows.

[ganesh]

I can buy that. I didn't know if I actually missed something said on the show. 

[Llywela]

7 hours ago, Ceindreadh said:

Re the house share "what do other people do?"  Well mostly, they either double up on rooms or they split into smaller groups. Three bed houses are a lot easier to come by than six beds. 

Yeah, in student towns in these parts (I'm in Wales), student landlords buy up old houses and convert them to cram in as many bedrooms as possible - it isn't uncommon to have six or event eight students crammed into tiny rooms in a single house.

3 hours ago, HouseofBeck said:

I'll have to watch it again. My impression was that Bill only knew perhaps one of her new roommates in passing, and was eager to jump into this new-to-her common way of living like a real uni student. I interpreted her reactions to their deaths, especially the one in front of her, as a combo of compounded shock and, "Oh, shit, and then there was one and that's me." Time to react later, get your feet off the floor now! --and so forth.

Yeah, me too. They were mostly strangers to her, and since the danger was very real and present, there was very little opportunity for grief.

3 hours ago, Starchild said:

Personally I preferred Harry to Paul. I do wonder if the next companion might be drawn from this pool.

I doubt we'll see any of this group of friends again, to be honest - and since the new showrunner reportedly wants a clean slate for his era, it seems very unlikely he'll pick a companion from among a group of random extras in an episode written by someone else!

1 hour ago, Mabinogia said:

I enjoyed the episode while watching it but yeah, there are a lot of plot holes in this one. The biggest being, what happened with the wood lice? Did they die? eat themselves out of existence? or just lay dormant waiting for someone to rebuild on that particular plot of land, if they are stuck on that spot that is?

I did like the story of a little boy who was losing his mommy, seems like there was no father so she was all he had, going to extreme's to keep her with him. He never entirely grew up and he made her his whole life. Tragic. But she wasn't really living, just alive. He couldn't see it. All good stuff but I feel it was held back by the wood lice idea which, while it gave us some visual moments, was kind of hard to make sense of.

My biggest question is how the landlord and his mother lived all those years. He didn't seem to leave the house, so how did they pay bills, acquire supplies, etc? I mean, Eliza was being sustained by the woodlice, but presumably her son had to eat somehow!

19 minutes ago, Starchild said:

For what it's worth, the story said that Sullivan was Harry's other grandfather, not the one who went to China with his boyfriend and stole bits of the wall.

Ah, that sounds more like it. I really couldn't picture straight-laced Harry Sullivan stealing bits off the Great Wall of China. There's still the issue of him being dead already in-universe, though. And somehow I can't picture public schoolboy Harry with a Brummie grandson, although I suppose stranger things have happened!

[ZoqFotPik]

42 minutes ago, Llywela said:

My biggest question is how the landlord and his mother lived all those years. He didn't seem to leave the house, so how did they pay bills, acquire supplies, etc? I mean, Eliza was being sustained by the woodlice, but presumably her son had to eat somehow!

Old money? I imagine even in the 50s a house like that in London? would still cost millions of Pounds. We only see the guy over a period of two days, so it's also possible he had some kind of job.

[John Potts]

1 hour ago, ZoqFotPik said:

Old money? I imagine even in the 50s a house like that in London? would still cost millions of Pounds

Pretty sure it's meant to be Bristol (one of the buildings two weeks back had "University of Bristol" on the front) - which is odd, because it was filmed in Cardiff which has its own University. I only remember that because Bristol was where I went to University. Also, housing in Brizzle is pretty expensive anyway, if not quite at the same level as London housing.

[Cthulhudrew]

9 hours ago, clack said:

Someone -- the director, the writer, the actor, all three-- really messed up with Bill's reactions to seeing her friends apparently experience horrific deaths, unless Bill is meant to be a psychopath. 

A minute after seeing the last of her friends getting eaten alive by bugs, and Bill is grinning at fireworks? Yikes.

That's pretty much the way I feel about Bill's reactions to everything. I think the actress would probably do really well in a strictly comedic story, but her facial expressions are so constantly over the top and inappropriate to the situations in Who that I think she was completely miscast. I cannot find anything very interesting or likeable about her as a companion, and it is really causing me to lose interest in this season (along with the horrible- and family friendly consequence-free- stories).

1 hour ago, John Potts said:

Pretty sure it's meant to be Bristol (one of the buildings two weeks back had "University of Bristol" on the front) - which is odd, because it was filmed in Cardiff which has its own University. I only remember that because Bristol was where I went to University. Also, housing in Brizzle is pretty expensive anyway, if not quite at the same level as London housing.

I thought I recall one of the housemates mentioning they were in Scotland, oddly enough.

[jhlipton]

20 hours ago, truther said:

Actually, once the ending became obvious I was hoping they were going to bring everyone back to life.  It would have been cool to have a final scene, Close Encounters-style, with six people from 1957, 1977, and 1997 suddenly re-appearing in the present.  

Add me to the list of people who expected and wanted this.

8 minutes ago, Cthulhudrew said:

I thought I recall one of the housemates mentioning they were in Scotland, oddly enough.

One of the roomies said, after hearing there was no cell reception "Might as well be in Scotland", or something equally disparaging.

[call me ishmael]

I think that this is one of those episodes where atmosphere is everything--if you actually start thinking about it you are in big trouble.  There is the money question although I agree that it was probably inherited since where was the father, then we have the fact that the house apparently dissolved because the space lice no longer had to save the mother (but where did they go?), the mother was apparently able to control the lice but they were keeping her alive and she didn't know why, and why would a house made of stone as well as wood dissolve anyway?  

Then of course there is the vault.  Apparently it is a prison but now we learn that the Doctor opens it all the time which would mean--I think--that the being inside could get out of it during those times but doesn't even try.  There was another recap of the episode that included some speculation on that that I will treat as a spoiler even though it is only speculation because it claims to be based on something;

Spoiler

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/05/06/doctor-who-knock-knock-review

[Mabinogia]

Have they said that whoever is in the vault is necessarily a prisoner? Maybe it is someone in hiding, and the person he made the promise to, and the promise is to protect them? It just seemed very odd that he is unafraid to open the door and go on in if the person is a prisoner, unless they are also tied up. whoever/whatever it is, I'm intrigued at the moment to find out more.

[call me ishmael]

3 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

Have they said that whoever is in the vault is necessarily a prisoner? Maybe it is someone in hiding, and the person he made the promise to, and the promise is to protect them? It just seemed very odd that he is unafraid to open the door and go on in if the person is a prisoner, unless they are also tied up. whoever/whatever it is, I'm intrigued at the moment to find out more.

No I don't think so.  But Nardole certainly seems to think that it is someone or something that shouldn't be let out.  And they don't seem to be protecting rather than confining.  But that may just be me.

[ForReal]

20 hours ago, Llywela said:

The concept of Bill's very sudden house share was the weakest part of the episode, for me. There was no build-up to it, last we heard Bill was content living with her foster mother (and wasn't an official student anyway, I know the Doctor decided to coach her, but I thought that was unofficial) and now she's suddenly house-hunting with a bunch of other students. Which, that's very normal for students after their first year, I've lived in similar house shares myself - but the unexpectedly available mansion that none of them thought about twice, after being randomly approached in the street? Yeah, my suspension of disbelief struggled with that. 

I don't know, if you hang with the Doctor and he expresses reservations about your new living arrangements, I would think you would listen instead of rush him out the door. My suspension of disbelief really struggled with that!

[tennisgurl]

I always like a good haunted house story, and I thought this was a nice take on it. It was spooky, but not all THAT spooky, and I enjoyed The Doctor as Bills embarrassing grandpa who is still trying to be hip with the kids. I feel like such an idiot for not realizing the creepy landlord was David Suchet until the episode was half over! He was a really great one episode baddie, a good combination of creepy and little boy lost. I felt bad about him losing his mom, and being basically emotionally trapped as a little boy trying to save his mom, but I can only have so much sympathy for a guy who has willingly been killing people for years.

I was alright with Bills roommates all coming back to life, we didn't get to know them very well, but they seemed nice enough, and it would suck for Bill to lose her roommates right after losing her crush to yet another alien creature. I would have liked to see more of a reaction to her roomies all being (seemingly) killed, but I guess she was trying to compartmentalize, as the danger was still present, or she wasn't really sure they were dead, and still thought they could be saved. I know she didn't know most of them very well, but she at least knew them long enough to search for multiple places together, and liked them enough to move in with them. We probably wont see them again, but I would be alright if they popped up every now and then to connect Bill more to her Earth life.

I have no idea what those bugs were, how they got here, how they work, or why they were turning the mom into immortal wood with bad memories, but it didn't bother me that much. I would have liked more of an origin for the bugs, but sometimes weird stuff just happens in Who land.

I'm really enjoying the season so far!

[Mabinogia]

8 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

or she wasn't really sure they were dead, and still thought they could be saved.

If so, she turned out to be right about that lol

[darkestboy]

I liked it a little more than the last two episodes.

Bill's housemates could've done with more fleshing out but they were engaging enough that their near deaths were effective.

Harry stood out the most from them all.

Landlord and his mother, good main plot, excellent performance from David Suchet who played off Peter Capaldi well too. Woodlice creatures were nasty enough.

Bill likes Little Mix. Okay, so do I a little. Twelve's reaction was funny.

Nardole and his cameos. At least we're closer to an answer re Vault though, 8/10

[Gummo]

Like way too many Moffatt-headed episodes, great set-up with an absolutely stupid payoff.

Tolkien wrote an essay in which he explained the difference between good fantasy and bad fantasy (applies equally well to sf):  In good fantasy, the 'rules' of the fantasy universe are laid down clearly at the beginning and can't be violated; that way, the ending can't be a 'cheat.' In bad fantasy, anything can happen anytime with the explanation 'because it's fantasy', so you end up with no dramatic tension at all because the story can be wrapped up anytime with a wave of the hand.

This was bad fantasy. 40 minutes of fun, spooky build-up, one great twist (he's her son, not her father!), and then a wave of the hand, and poof! everything's okay. Unlike earlier, well-written Who where the explanation was built into the story all along, this was just a deus ex machina shoved at us at the last second -- Mommy controls the bugs because ... she's mommy, that's why! 

Moffatt can't leave this series soon enough for me.

[ganesh]

I really don't care either way about the vault. Just having the Doctor go on some adventures with Bill is entertaining enough for me. The series doesn't need Something Going On all the time. 

[truther]

1 hour ago, Gummo said:

Like way too many Moffatt-headed episodes, great set-up with an absolutely stupid payoff.

Tolkien wrote an essay in which he explained the difference between good fantasy and bad fantasy (applies equally well to sf):  In good fantasy, the 'rules' of the fantasy universe are laid down clearly at the beginning and can't be violated; that way, the ending can't be a 'cheat.' In bad fantasy, anything can happen anytime with the explanation 'because it's fantasy', so you end up with no dramatic tension at all because the story can be wrapped up anytime with a wave of the hand.

This was bad fantasy. 40 minutes of fun, spooky build-up, one great twist (he's her son, not her father!), and then a wave of the hand, and poof! everything's okay. Unlike earlier, well-written Who where the explanation was built into the story all along, this was just a deus ex machina shoved at us at the last second -- Mommy controls the bugs because ... she's mommy, that's why! 

Moffatt can't leave this series soon enough for me.

This is exactly why "Kill the Moon" was so bad (IMO).  If the premise is that destroying the Moon will wreak havoc on Earth, because of mass and gravity and physics and all that jazz, then you cannot, by definition, have the ending you have in that episode because it violates all those laws.  You can have whatever ending you want to imagine but it must make sense within the construct of the show.  

That goes to my problem with this episode (which I really liked, btw).  I agree that it repeats Moffatt's basic problem of a consequence-free storyline.  Cool setup, great tension, but silly ending.  Lots of people have remarked on Bill's strange reactions and I agree that they illustrate the Moffatt-era problem of everything being forgotten as soon as it happens.  Your friends are being eaten alive by a house?  Hey, whatever!  Fireworks!  This Doctor guy thinks you're in trouble?  The same Doctor who saved you from your crush after she'd been turned into a water zombie, and from homicidal nano-technology, and from a giant underwater monster in the River Thames?  Hey, he's just old!  This is me time!  

Bill's behavior in this ep doesn't really make sense in the larger context of what we've seen because it's not meant to.  The scene about the dead orphan last week was there because we apparently needed A Confrontation.  But then it's over and forgotten and we move on like nothing's happened.  And Bill's in a creepy, dangerous situation she doesn't understand and it's like that's never happened before, either.  Because it essentially hasn't.  And the episode is wrapped up in a tidy little bow because we like it that way and let's go the pub!  That's S.O.P. for this show.  

[Mabinogia]

Love the Tolkien because it is so true. And yeah, this ep was great up till the big finale scene. It just didn't make sense. Why was the son controlling them in the first place? At what point did he manage to convince his mom she was his daughter? When they were the same age? Why did they eat the house?

But I did love everything up until the end. The house was suitably spooky, the landlord was epically spooky. The Doctor was perfectly curious. Bill was adorably annoyed by his not going away. The roommates were interesting enough to care about but not get too worked up over. But what a horrible ending. Not so much the idea behind it but the execution.

I love the idea of a little boy stumbling upon a way to save his dying mother then getting so wrapped up in saving her he loses sight of his humanity and starts luring people to their death. I guess the wood lice were the part that didn't work.

[that one guy]

On 5/6/2017 at 9:49 PM, Lantern7 said:

Do British kids usually pool together money to share a house?

Can't speak for British kids, but I did this in the US in the 90s. I'd imagine all kinds of young people are doing this now, wages haven't really kept up with housing prices even here, and in the UK it's worse.

I'm enjoying Doctor Who again! So far this season, the monsters have been weak or rehashed, but the character stuff is much better. 

Is it a coincidence that the bugs arrived 70 years ago, the same time frame as the Doctor and his mysterious vault? A story point that I don't like, by the way. He's been there since 1947? Through all the UNIT stuff, all of his interactions with Coal Hill in the 60s, 80s, 00s and teens? And nobody noticed, except all the students, among whom he's a legend, but with no name? That's just goofy. I was okay with it when I thought he'd been popping in to lecture over the years, but it strains credibility that he's actually been living there. 

Still, it's a definite improvement over the past couple years. I'm not really pro- or anti-Moffat, Eleven is my favorite, and Twelve my least favorite. Knock Knock is going to end up being one of my favorites, though, just for "That was the plan. Infodump, then busk." That's pretty much always my plan, so...
 

[AudienceofOne]

5 hours ago, Gummo said:

Mommy controls the bugs because ... she's mommy, that's why! 

Moffatt can't leave this series soon enough for me.

*cough* Magical womb! *cough*

[John Potts]

5 hours ago, truther said:

Lots of people have remarked on Bill's strange reactions and I agree that they illustrate the Moffatt-era problem of everything being forgotten as soon as it happens.

I guess we're meant to see Bill as going, "Well, that was exciting, but now back to mundane reality." Of course, that would be easier to believe if her first interaction with aliens didn't happen at home!

5 hours ago, that one guy said:

He's been there since 1947? Through all the UNIT stuff, all of his interactions with Coal Hill in the 60s, 80s, 00s and teens? And nobody noticed, except all the students, among whom he's a legend, but with no name?

 I presume he does have a name (probably John Smith), he's just the sort of academic that insists on being known by his title. And now I'm wondering if Moffat is going to answer the question, "Why is John Smith such a common name?" with "They're ALL different iterations of the Doctor!"

[ganesh]

He could also just "go on sabbatical" and disappear for a bunch of time too. 

[Llywela]

13 hours ago, that one guy said:

Is it a coincidence that the bugs arrived 70 years ago, the same time frame as the Doctor and his mysterious vault? A story point that I don't like, by the way. He's been there since 1947? Through all the UNIT stuff, all of his interactions with Coal Hill in the 60s, 80s, 00s and teens? And nobody noticed, except all the students, among whom he's a legend, but with no name? That's just goofy. I was okay with it when I thought he'd been popping in to lecture over the years, but it strains credibility that he's actually been living there.

 

That reminds me of something else I noticed about the episode. We were told there was a very clear pattern of people being lured into the house and then disappearing every 20 years. The 20 year cycle was stressed, right? But the episode then turned around and told us that this had been going on for 70 years. That doesn't fit, 20 doesn't go into 70! So either there was an early feed after the first 10 years and it settled into a 20 year pattern thereafter, or there was a 30 year gap somewhere. The sums don't add up, the gap wasn't explained, and that threw me out of the story a little.

8 hours ago, John Potts said:

 I presume he does have a name (probably John Smith), he's just the sort of academic that insists on being known by his title. And now I'm wondering if Moffat is going to answer the question, "Why is John Smith such a common name?" with "They're ALL different iterations of the Doctor!"

Oh, flipping heck, don't give him ideas!