Doctor Who's The Girl Who Died ships in nasty Vikings floating atop a time-bending tidal wave Readers please note: THIS IS A POST-UK BROADCAST REVIEW – THERE WILL BE SPOILERS! Kelly says: Ah yes, we've reached that part of the series where the Doctor goes to battle with some ancient warmongers – and this time, it's Vikings. He may not be in the mood for them, but I sure am. And finally, we have someone who is …
Yes. It was annoying that Dr Who stuck with the historically inaccurate cultural stereotype of the viking horned helmets but they're hardly the first show to do so and the viking's headgear was pretty much irrelevant as far as the plot was concerned. However the electric eels were a crucial part of the plot without them there was no electricity to win the Doctor's battle with the Mire.
More to the point, why were the eels in barrels and not hovercraft?
Seriously, if you're going to nitpick, at least go for something historically verifiable!
And voltage, current, ability to make so much wire in a short space of time, shorting, earthing, not to mention the complete disregard for proper Part P certification for the setup which didn't even have a fusebox! It's a disgrace and as soon as the regulations are made in a couple of thousand years time I will be the first to raise the complaint.
ability to make so much wire in a short space of time
The wire was stripped from the spacesuit. I expect it fed power to the heating elements, so there would be a lot of it in a mesh throughout the suit's cloth.
But, yeah, eels. And electromagnetic anvils capable of dehelmeting armour. Hmm.
> VIÐ:KLÆÐAST:HORN:EKKI
Having trouble with my translation here, this appears to be something along the lines of "again, me so not horny"?
Or possibly "Something something oranges something" which is normally a fairly good backstop when stuck though in this context I'd probably question the 'oranges' bit. Noting also that so far at least two people are pretending to be less ignorant than wot I is.
for clarification, for the less norse/icelandic inclined as i:
SAY-THOU:AGAIN
WE:WEAREST:HORNS:NOT
tho i was simplifying from full icelandic grammar to make it more "runey" [not that one]
[boring factoid addendum: i started learning icelandic years ago after a discussion with my then girlfriend about "text speak" - i said how i didn't mind "tho" - and when you look at the etymology, with good cause, old english used "þo" ... i began to learn old english - as i get obsessed by trains of thought like that, but then decided icelandic (who use "þó" for though) was a more useful direction since were i live we have a lot of viking links, like our parliament "thing" ]
>... who cheered when the Sonic Sunglasses were snapped in half?
> And then booed when it turns out they still bloody worked?!
> Still, apart from that (and the stupid horned helmets) it wasn't a bad episode :-/
Hah - they missed an opportunity with the sunglasses: after the Doctor had wittered on about them being 6m years more advanced (or whatever it was) the viking should have tied to snap them and found it impossible. Then tried to hack them in half with his sword only to have the sword break!
This one was a kid's entertainment episode - particularly with the electric eels and magnetically levitating anvils[1] - so unbreakable sunglasses would fit right in.
[1] Hands-up who thought they were going to drop on the now helmet-less aliens? Yep me too.
Vikings did not wear winged helmets.
The original premise of Dr Who was to teach children about history in an entertaining way.
I think, as usual, that the BBC has failed to fulfil its remit.
I think - as someone else has pointed out - that they did it because it would be expected. Anyway, kids these days (and I have four of them) learn a heck of a lot of history from the Horrible Histories books and (particularly) the TV shows. My two eldest, who watched Doctor Who last night, were more concerned about the slightly dodgy CGI than the horned or winged helmets which they knew were probably anachronistic but really didn't care about.
Mind you, one of them has transcribed the words to the HH Kings and Queens song and stuck them on the wall of the outside loo so we can all learn something useful while "otherwise engaged".
M.
> The original premise of Dr Who was to teach children about history in an entertaining way.
>
> I think, as usual, that the BBC has failed to fulfil its remit.
You're about 52 years late for that particular whinge, the whole educational bit went out of the window when someone terrorised Carole Ann Ford with a sink plunger and the Daleks turned up.
After the last 2 x 2 part'ers, this was a slap in the face for the more serious Who fans amongst us. I am used to the comedic moments/ramblings but they took it to new heights in this episode. Doctor Who is not a fucking comedy (although many will say it is actually but it's not intentional)!
Throwing in the Benny Hill theme whilst threatening to use interstellar social media to bully the aliens with was the last straw.
This has turned into Reddit/Twitter appeasing nonsense where every moment of the show is about rhubarb rubbing showing how 'clever' they can be with plot arcs.
Don't get me wrong. I still watch and enjoy the show when it is written coherently and as a quirky science fiction 'fun' family show. But it really pushes some aspects too far sometimes. Lexx did dark sci-fi comedy better and Red Dwarf just did outright comedy a LOT better. The writers keep switching from sad to humorous with gay abandon barely giving any time to actually allow it to sink in or associate any emotional context to the characters (and with that infernal soundtrack intruding LOUDLY every minute DROWNING out the fast paced dialogue it needed subtitles enabled to understand what the hell was being said).
The show is full of some great idea's ruined by idiotic script writers. I shall still be here for next weeks episode though as I have nothing better to do on a Saturday night.
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I stopped watching Dr Who when the infantile idiot took over from David Tennant. I tried this episode on the offchance things had improved, but found it much the same. It seems to have become very American in format - an interesting idea ruined by a puerile, facetious implementation. I will not bother again.
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