Reggie

"Corn" is British for wheat. They call our corn "maize", or Indian corn.

It caused a bit of a stir in WWII, when the British ordered a shipload of "corn", and got, not proper wheat, but maize (mere cattle feed). They thought they were being disrespected, but it was just a problem in translation. Or, as W.C. put it, "two countries, seperated by a common language".

lancer1993

But doesn't everyone in the universe speak English

Maybe they just didn't want to have subtitles, is there a presidence(sp) for this?

Isn't the English language a weird thing, yes I know what maize is but why isn't wheat just called wheat?

indigo sunrise

This is exactly how I feel. I admit that I still have a hard time liking River - but that's just because she is being thrown at us SO much. Everything now leads back to her, it's as if the whole show is about finding out who exactly she is now. I actually had started to like her a lot in the beginning of this season, but now I find myself getting annoyed with her again.

I don't really have much else to say. I did like this episode, but I wasn't blown away by it. I'm glad it wasn't all that much about WWII in the end.

Tomorrow's skies

Pretty much the first DW I saw "live" so I'm a little confused about what's going on; mostly not sure if I should take the retcons as in-universe or as intentional perception changers

scififan2009

I guess I'm just a little sad that Melody/River is no longer a mystery.

I knew Steven Moffat couldn't keep us guessing forever. But it's a little less fun now that we know everything.

lancer1993

Well we don't know everything, the question now is how will they stop the events we saw at the start of the season?

Reggie

If River already killed him when a child, why is she still trying to kill him in this episode? Once is enough, surely...

lancer1993: Isn't the English language a weird thing, yes I know what maize is but why isn't wheat just called wheat?

Actually, "corn" means seed; the wheat part is implied. There's also barleycorn, which is barley, and peppercorns, which are (black) pepper seeds. Corns on your foot are like little seeds. It's because when the Norman French invaded England, both languages added together, giving a large vocabulary with subtle shades of meaning.

Mrs.Almeida

Well, there were the German Daleks and that old lady in the series 3 finale with Martha in Germany. They did not include any subtitles there either.
I cannot quite remember what they actually said in this episode's scene but it wasn't anything important really. They little people inside the robot (or whatever it was) could have told us what they were doing.

It just annoys me, even though it is such a small thing

Raonaild

I quite liked this ep, but it wasn't quite what I expected. I thought it would be the second part of a two-parter, but it didn't seem very connected to the previous ep.

Where did the Doctor go between the two eps anyway? I expected he would find River, I think he said something about knowing where to look at the end of the last ep, but at the beginning he seemed not to have done anything since they last saw him (other than change his coat). Will we find out later that he did something in that time that he just hasn't told anyone yet?

It's was pretty obvious as soon as Mels showed up that she was the key to this ep. Even if she hadn't been called Melody, whenever a new character suddenly appears who happens to be the best friend of two major characters but has never been mentioned before, you know something's up.

The bit where the TARDIS voice interface took the appearance of young Amelia, and the Doctor closed his eyes and he heard, "Fish fingers and custard" reminded me a lot of Flesh and Stone where the tables were turned and FutureDoctor spoke to Amy when her eyes were closed. I wonder if there will be some future significance to that moment.

I was okay with Melody/River in this episode actually. I liked the bit where she thought that River Song was some other person that the Doctor kept going on about. I have a feeling that the whole marriage thing is a big misunderstanding, almost a running joke between them - Past Doctor thinks he may marry River Song in the future because she knows him too well, and Past River/Melody thinks River Song is someone the Doctor is close to (and may be married to). So up until now the Doctor has been under the impression that he may marry River in the future but doesn't know for sure, but now maybe the tables have turned and it's River who thinks she may marry him but doesn't know for sure.

I'm guessing though that that moment where the Doctor is dying and whispers to River/Melody is where she learns his real name. Perhaps when he's dying is the "only time" he would tell someone something like that. The Doctor tells her it's a message for River (and Melody at that point thinks it's someone else), and when he tells her she says something like, "Well, I think she would know that already."

lancer1993

@Reggie - thanks for the English lesson, it is amazing how much English is actually taken from other languages. Personally I still think they should have called it wheat or what ever grain it was, corn is just going to bug me like the German thing

I think they should have had it in German with English (or what every) subtitles, I hate when they do have another language and no subtitles, no matter how few a line it is.

I think it was an inside joke since they normally don't have a break he had the summer off. Who know maybe it will be reveled in the fullness of time, and the next 5 eps.

Michlo

I did not care for this episode at all.

I know it is supposed to be a kids show but sometimes it seems a tad too convoluted for kids so that's my excuse for still watching and wondering about the following. heh.

This was HITLER! He should never have been portrayed in a kids show for a start. They also made him rather pathetic, really diminishing the true horror of the suffering he caused.

And this was HITLER! Where were all his guards? Where were all the soldiers, nazis, bodyguards? A great box comes crashing through the windows and nobody comes to see if he is all right? Pathetic.

I've liked River Song but agree that we may be seeing a bit too much of her and implanting a "new" character/version of her is really pushing it. And since when has a Time Lord been able to control their regeneration power in order to give it to others? Regeneration has always been out of their control.

Finally, the voice controlled interaction with the TARDIS. We've already met the essence of the TARDIS and she was fun and batty, not just a bloody computer with narrowly defined responses. That made no sense at all.

Ugh, my first post here and all I could do was rant. I've not watched last night's episode yet but I hope it was a lot better.

Cheers.

indigo sunrise

Welcome to the board!

(Sadly) I agree with everything you've said.

Michlo

Thank you, Valerie.

Raonaild

There's a rather infamous scene from the Fourth Doctor years where Romana not only picks the appearance of which body she'll regenerate into, she tries a few different bodies on before making that decision. She wasn't even dying, it was all very matter-of-fact.

And if you just want to stick to New Who, some funky things have happened besides just regular regeneration ... Ten was able to make his hand grow back in The Christmas Invasion, and then there was the whole Doctor's hand, Doctor 10.5 and Doctor Donna business.

I would have had a problem with this IF suddently the TARDIS was able to talk like it did in The Doctor's Wife, but it wasn't. It was more a way to control the TARDIS just by talking to it. But it didn't have the TARDIS' personality, he was basically just talking to a computer program. I think the Doctor created it recently, and he was surprised that it worked. He probably got the idea after meeting his TARDIS. It's kinda sad really, as though he wanted to talk to her so badly that he added this feature, even knowing that he still wouldn't be communicating with her really.

comment

Can I ask something? In this ep we could see how Melody met the Doctor...but in SE6EP01 she said I was an impressionable young girl...

She was a hit(wo)man... ok brainwashed one...but how could she be impressionable?

And I don't think so the Doctor 'knows every last thing about her', or yes?

Somebody help! I'm confused