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I mean tbh, that doesn’t faze me cause he is literally killing people. He’s clearly the bad guy

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I know but his teammates didn’t care as either

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Watching “The Ghost Monument”.

Such a visually gorgeous episode :slightly_smiling_face:
And that Segun Akinola soundtrack is just beautiful.

i-really-like-it-jodie-whittaker

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Wanted to watch some more. Bit over halfway through “Rosa” just now :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hope you enjoy the rest of the series!! Its been nice seeing a few more ppl get into Class lately here! Please do share your thoughts in the thread if you’d like! I can defo recommend the audios :wink: (as always.. :sob:)

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I’ll check it out!

there’s like five hundred stories currently on my to do list but I’m sure I’ll get to them some time…

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Literally my reaction when I was watching for the first time asw. Don’t worry though, they move onto other people’s trauma later in the series :D

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Yayyyy trauma!

Also, welcome! Feel free to introduce yourself over in the introductions

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The Angels Take Manhatten

It’s an odd one, this. There’s much I love (and, overall, it is a strong story) but some elements that frustrate. OK, let’s get to it:

I really do not like the Statue of Liberty angel. I mean why, Steven? WHY? It’s there purely because Moffat thought “Oh, wouldn’t it be cool if the Statue of Liberty was a weeping angel?” No. No, it wouldn’t.

More generally, this was definitely a case of diminishing returns as far as the angels were concerned. They aren’t anywhere near as menacing here as in either Blink or The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone. They still work, but are dminished (given the Statue of Liberty angel, there’s irony for you). It’ll take Flux before the Angels become the force that we know and fear once more.

However,…

The cherubs are magnificent, as is the conceit that the Angels can take the form of other statues (alluded to in Blink but seen here). Whilst the Liberty Angel is a step too far, the smaller statues are perfect.

The use of the Melody Malone book is excellent and really adds to the sense of threat. I love the idea that possibilities become certainties when read. It’s suitably Moffat.

Finally, as Amy and Rory’s exit story, it’s magnificent. From the foreshadowing, to their jump from Winter Quay, further still to Rory being snatched away just as it looked like they had won, and then Amy’s terrible decision… wonderful, tragic and strangely beautiful. Extraordinary performances all and particularly so for Matt Smith.

On balance, a flawed story to be sure but one that flirts with greatness and often achieves it.

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I agree with you about the Statue of Liberty , but I basically think the exact opposite about pretty much everything else you wrote here :wink:

I just don’t get this one, if it wasn’t for The Rings of Akhaten I would say this is his worst performance ever (including the terrible Morbius movie)

But we all have different tastes and that is always great :blush:

The very worst bit about that story though is the ripping out of the page of that book! It almost physically pains me to watch that :grimacing::winking_face_with_tongue:

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It just goes to show. Different people pick up on different things. I stand by what I wrote from my perspective (I thought Smith did a fantastic job in that scene) yet I fully respect your contrasting feelings about the same. To be fair, you love Flux, the writing of Malcolm Hulke and the majesty of the Pertwee era, so we agree on a great many things. :grin:

I’ll tell you something we both agree on here, mind. That page tearing. I am in complete agreement. Vandalism against books always hurts. Moreover, the Doctor always strikes me as someone who loves books. Page tearing? It’s a straight up “Nope” from me.

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This we will definitely always agree on :grin:

My e-book reader makes a “dog ear” when I make a bookmark on a page, and I absolutely hate that :joy:
(Also I can never remember the name of “dog ears” in English - it’s Donkey Ears in Danish (Æselører) :wink:)

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I agree. This seems criminal. One of the best things about e-readers (and I love mine) is that “pages” stay pristine. Why artificially replicate what is basically a form of damage?

But, then, maybe we are just… weird?

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I love dog ears AND donkey ears, but only on dogs and donkeys respectively. :grin: :k9:

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Time to switch to another one, then! The creator of that one clearly hates books!

I can’t stand dog ears on books!

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Its the same in German! (Eselsohr)

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I’m going painfully slow so , still watching the Daleks Master Plan. The Monk showed up! :confetti_ball:

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And funnily enough, there’s no animal in the Finnish equivalent. It’s simply “earmark” (“korvamerkki”).

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Should’ve been a two-parter. But yes, I also really like this story.

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I finally decided to touch the rest of Season 11 after The Time Warrior, so I watched Invasion of the Dinosaurs. People seem to really like this one and like… it’s not bad but… I don’t really get it.

Now I like the first episode quite a bit (it even works better in black-and-white, it makes it more eerie), the themes of environmentalism, fascism and supremacy are good, Sarah Jane is very smart (mostly) and takes initiative so that’s cool. Benton has some fun moments too.

But I have several issues with this story and I think number one has to be the pacing. This story can sometimes really, really drag and the fact that it’s 6 parts makes that worse. I think this is what killed my enjoyment. The dinosaurs themselves, yeah they don’t look great which isn’t strange for Classic Who but that’s not the problem, the problem is when you have a number of longer shots of the dinosaurs barely doing anything. Then there’s other scenes that feel like padding like the chase between the Doctor and General Finch’s forces, and Sarah getting recaptured. I know getting imprisoned, escaping and being caught again happens quite a bit in Classic Who but here it feels particularly like padding.

In this example, Sarah cleverly escaping the fake spaceship only to immediately fall for General Finch’s lying and getting recaptured, did the story actually move? Well, she does later start to convince the people on the fake ship that it is fake, starting with Mark, but the space in-between is basically pointless. And it makes Sarah, who was smart enough to work out that Prof. Whitaker could be behind the situation as well as the theory of them using these supposed underground bases for their energy source, look completely stupid for trusting Finch. Finch is not only acting rather shady (and we as the audience are ahead of Sarah, knowing he’s a bad guy) but he was dismissive when Sarah first met him too. The fact that she doesn’t even suspect him just boggles my mind.

Another part that I find very contrived is that Three gets a call from Whitaker (who is the number 1 suspect in this case) and goes along with what the guy says. Sure, it’s not obvious to Three that Whitaker is a villain, but he should be suspicious of him so the fact that he easily walks into the Professor’s trap feels like it doesn’t make sense.

Mike Yates’ betrayal is shocking, but I don’t get why he even does this. Maybe I am missing context from previous stories with him that I haven’t seen, but I just found that this heel turn came from nowhere. I think he is acted well as a villain though and he comes across as properly convinced that he’s doing the right thing, so that’s a positive next to the negative.

I will say that the final episode does wrap things up quite well though and some of the stuff I didn’t understand initially like the fake spaceship and why the bad guys were even doing what they were doing became clearer to me. I really liked Three being cheeky to convince Sarah to continue traveling with him (and she does seem to actually want to do that, she’s just playing a bit hard-to-get) and before that, his confrontation of the Minister and the other conspirators over their “golden age” as well as him commenting on the fact that they had one thing right about humanity’s effect on the planet’s health.

So yeah, I don’t know, I felt a bit bored and at times frustrated with this one even if the story just taken on its own is good. Maybe it’s the pacing or some of the stuff that I saw as contrived that really just prevented me from feeling too engaged with Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Maybe I should have taken a longer break at the halfway point before continuing. I just didn’t vibe with it all too well.

6/10.

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