So far did 3 rewatches and it just so clear once you see the bigger picture.
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Then you deal with how dependent we can become on technology. Something that has plague us as a society as well. How many times have you heard stories of people following their gps blindly just to drive into a house, water or wrong way down a road. Now we have self driving cars, smart houses and even virtual reality taking over the lives of many.
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Returning to my first impression after a rewatch has made revalue some things. Admittedly I think I didnât fully process when I wrote this, I am still not quite sure on the tonal shifts we had but honestly, no, this is easily one of my favorites this Season. The Commentary is a lot to unpack, I wonât lie, i didnât properly pick it up until the Scene where Lindy was trying to hide from the slug creatures and some of the comments she made towards the Doctor. I didnât like her before that moment, because she really felt like a spoiled rich kid (which she was) but I have to say big praise to her actress. She did an amazing job with the Material she got given and in general, as I said in my first impression, I was already impressed by the Production and I still stand by it. I think I would be a broken recorder, but turnoftheearth already made some great points in terms of the commentary. I will say I am happy about how it turned it out, itâs rich and shows how well-done this script was written. Signs that something was off were plenty. To that I donât have much to add because frankly they summarized it up perfectly! I will say I also really like how much commentary there is in terms of social media bubbles. I feel like this Part is quite underrated in my eyes and I am sure I wont do it justice, but moments like when Lindy instead of asking if her Mother is dead, asks if she is gone to the sky are quite chilling.
Overall this one was stellar. Great Performances (dare I say some of the best we have gotten in this Series), great Direction with an overall one of RTDâs most interesting scripts so far. One thing I already mentioned was how happy I am with RTD trying something new and not relying too much on the old hitters, not everything works for me (in general not everything worked for me in RTD1) but I am glad to see that he is doing different stuff with Who.
Another point that turnoftheearth mentioned was the Music, yeah no this was easily Murray Golds best Score in a while, easily his best of RTD2
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Thought Iâd also add, in great news for Pride Month, that Pete MacHale played Gothic Paul, and is the showâs first trans male actor 
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Okay rewatching it knowing theyâre racist I see it clearly now, especially that last scene with the Doctor. Donât know how I missed it tbh, I was so confused as to why they didnât want the Doctorâs help and that theyâre racist just didnât cross my mind.
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Planning on rewatching in a bit, but I have to say, thereâs something about this season that feels very classic who/big finish to me
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That surely is Doctor Who in a nutshell though. The beauty of the show - and one of itâs unique âselling pointsâ - is surely the fact that the tone/genre can shift from story to story or even from episode to episode in the classic series (something like The Stones of Blood or The Myth Makers for example) have shifts in tone, some quite jarring.
The lack of a âconsistentâ tone is one of the things I love about the show.
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Fascinating reading the comments on this story, particularly the subtle hints towards the racism that I missed but seem so obvious in retrospect. Definitely some commentary on unconscious bias because it didnât occur to me once that the entire population of Finetime was white - and it makes me feel uncomfortable - just as it should!
I actually really like the idea of a Doctor Who story where we find out weâve been rooting for a âvillainâ all along. When Lindy pushed Ricky under the bus, it was genuinely shocking - added to by what was a pretty gratuitous death for him. I know my brain filled in the blanks but the direction was very clever in making us understand precisely where that dot went to kill him!
But the added nasty icing on the cake was the realisation that these people who survived were worse than just vacuous social media-obsessed rich kidsâŚ
Lots of lovely touches - Lindyâs inability to walk without arrows, sidestepping bodies, Ruby and the Doctor being in the same room.
If I had any criticism it would be that weâve only recently had an âAIâ gone bad story with Boom to then have Dot revealed to be the âmindâ behind the monsters. I also have a couple of unanswered questions about how/why the slugs wiped out the homeworld - was everyone obsessed with their bubbles back home too?
And as much as Iâm intrigued by the Susan Twist mystery, it does seem a bit unlike RTD to quite so blatantly plonk âshe was the ambulanceâ into the script although I do wonder if this âcommented onâ mystery is there to divert attention away from Mrs Flood and Rubyâs background which are bubbling along much more subtley.
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Quite enjoyable really 
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Yeah thatâs the one thing stopping this from being a perfect episode for me.
I honestly thought, when he tried to contact the home world, that weâd find out they sent the slugs or something. Or even a natural predator from the wild area. Anything would have been better than another AI monster. Especially as if it was AI all along, and the dots can kill, why the slugs!? And why kill the parents?
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The more I think of the ending the more astonished I am. Ncuti completely sells every aspect of that scene, and it puts âNever cruel or cowardlyâ at the forefront of who the character is. Because despite who they are, what they think of him and how they treat him, he also understands and sees a society of young people warped by their elders. Never given any opportunity to be anything apart from what they are. Doesnât that remind you of a certain society of nigh-immortals? Itâs in EU canon, but Gallifreyan society is extremely racist at many points in his history.
So itâs so important that he asks them again, even after they reject him so virulently. Because he has had more chances than they have to grow. His TARDIS can take them all, and even though theyâre a society of vapid racists who donât care for him at all, in 15âs position it would still be cruel to leave them to die. Some might argue even cowardly. This is the person who has tried to redeem Davros, the Master. He doesnât care who you are if he thinks he can save you. And then, when you think that heâs going to harden into contempt at the first rejection, he shows you that no, this is what The Doctor is. Itâs a hand out across divides you didnât think were possible. But itâs also a big ugly look at the world, because isnât it believable? I donât buy anyone who thinks that this is going too far in its indictment of modern social media influenced narcissism. Itâs such a bold move to not let him win. This is the modern Caves of Androzani moment, and I really hope that we see it have a lasting impact on the show.
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I think this is a much stronger AI episode than Boom though, which in comparison almost felt a little half-baked. The idea that the Dot has learned to hate them, that makes so much sense but also functions in a narrative way, because weâre basically in the position of the Dot through so much of the episode, and what do we do by the end? We learn to hate Lindy.
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Yes, I suppose so. The slugs are the good guys in the end.
So are all the parents on the home world racists too? And all the poorer people who couldnât afford to send their kids to the moon? Every living person on the planet was killed by slugs (in alphabetical order! Must have taken a while 
).
Iâm just being nitpicky. It was an incredible episode. I canât wait to watch it again!
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Iâm going to give the boring Doylist explanation on the slugs. (Awesome creature design by the way )
The slugs are a part of the social commentary of the story: âLook what people donât see when their eyes are glued to their phonesâ
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In that case, one of these days Iâm gonna get slugged 
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I think itâs because the season is so short that I am finding it especially jarring. Itâs just impossible to figure out what the show is supposed to be now.
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Thinking more on this, Iâm feeling increasingly positive on it.
Iâll have to give a rewatch some time.
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Watched it this evening. Was good. I might even have some coherent thoughts about it tomorrow. I found it very affecting.
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What was it ever supposed to be? An adventure in space and time. It is still that to its very core. Beyond that? Iâm not sure itâs every tried to be much else has it? Each story leans in one particular direction depending on what the writer wants to say but sometimes its also just about Steven Moffat saying to RTD - what about it the Doctor steps on a landmine and canât move for an entire episode? The adventure comes first.
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