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Finished The Face of Evil.

While I have very mixed thoughts on the story itself, I absolutely loved Leela and really want more from her.

So now I’m starting The Robots of Death, a story I’ve wanted to watch since I first got into Doctor Who

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These opening model shots are really good!

And the Vocs - so cool!!!

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Robots of Death is so good, a really wonderful story!

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Four explaining the TARDIS to Leela is one of the best TARDIS explanation scenes ever

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I adore this story! I think the costumes and world building are fantastic and I love Leela :star_struck:

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Robots of Death is the best :star_struck:

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@sircarolyn, why oh why am I not surprised? :thinking:

That said, you are :100:% correct. Gold star :star:

Cannot fault your observation here. :wink:

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I do think Praxeus is underrated, but sadly I think Can You Hear Me? is correctly rated, this is not a very good episode of Doctor Who. Not that there is nothing to like here, far from it, I actually really like the first half hour, as the fam separates and we get some nice business for each of them, The Doctor pursuing strange energy in ancient Aleppo while the fam are all plagued by nightmarish visions. The problem is that this episode wants to do two completely opposing stories at the same time: it wants to be the outright scariest episode of the season, or at least Ian Gelder’s immortal Freddy Krueger seems to be offering that as a possibility, but this also wants to be a character-heavy hangout episode, downtime to check in with everyone before the big finale sequence, it wants to be Midnight and Boom Town at the same time, which is probably not possible.

So we get a bit of this story about the immortals and their plan, then they are pretty quickly dispatched after scaring a single child, and we get ten more minutes of character at the end, which makes this feel very lop-sided; with another draft it might have been possible to get all that character business at the end to happen as part of the nightmares so there’s much less wrap-up to do, and the villains’ defeat can be the actual climax (and so that there is time to explain even with a single sentence how they have become trapped again; I can infer my own reasons, but hey, why not say it out loud?).

I also still have no idea why it’s called Can You Hear Me? Does Rakaya actually say that to Graham? She definitely says Can You See It?, but I missed it if she says the actual phrase. I do like all the extra texture for the fam, especially Yaz and Ryan’s friend Tibo, I get what they are going for with the cancer scene but it does just sort of hang there weirdly. I didn’t love this when it aired and have not yet warmed to it. 2.5/5

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While I love this episode (mostly due to personal preferences haha), I think a novelisation would be very good for it, giving the story the space it needs. A 50-minute episode maybe isn’t enough for all the ideas here.

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That is a PRIME candidate for a novelization, you could do so much with the immortals’ back story, and each of the fam’s side plots could be given so much more depth, more time in Aleppo, I totally agree. There’s so many things I like a lot in it, but I don’t like the final edit very much.

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I mean, I just really want them to novelise all of Modern Who lol

(BBC, if you’re reading tI’d happily write the Capaldis and Whittakers)his,

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Yeah, I didn’t really vibe with this one, but I think that is mostly down to personal taste.
The detached fingers was interesting but immortal ‘all-powerful’ gods aren’t what I want in Doctor Who, and I think they were defeated to easily.
Aleppo is a really cool setting, but I wished more of the story could have been there.
I did love the Doctor in this, talking to herself because the fam weren’t there, and I also loved her scene with Graham at the end, and Yaz’s bit with the coin and policewoman.

I agree that a novelisation could definitely do more with the story @DontBlink! Thirteen needs more novelisations from other seasons, this would be a great one to do

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Some of her best moments - is it any wonder I love her?

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She makes any episode more enjoyable for me :star_struck:

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Oh, definitely some of her best moments in this, I love her talking to herself, and squaring up against Zellin, there is no Jodie episode that goes lower than a certain rating threshold for me because how can I rate it low, Jodie is in it and she is 100% brilliant!

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It’s silly but this fictional character genuinely means so much to me

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I have nothing to say for myself :squinting_face_with_tongue: It is both a great story and has whatever this is going on

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Not silly in the least! She captured something very special in her performance of this character, something as intangible as hope. It was such a dark time across the globe when she was The Doctor, and it is again, and while I legitimately love every actor to play the part, she had a special x factor of hope and joy and science and possibility that I connected to right away, and 13 can also be grumpy and sad and taciturn, she’s just like me for real haha, a hero worth having!

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the thigh touch is so :heart_eyes::heart_eyes::heart_eyes:

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I’ll let you imagine what I’m thinking :flushed_face::flushed_face:

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