S7E7: The Bells of St. John (SPOILERS)

Wes Crayon wrote:

Gahhh, you guys still aren't comprehending how downloading and uploading work. These things involve copying information -- not moving it -- such that the deleting of the information (whether in the human brain or from the Shard hard drives) would require an extra step. And at least given what we were told in the episode, there doesn't seem to be any reason for that extra step. It was stupid and poorly thought out and I'm kinda shocked you guys aren't jumping all over it.

Yep, it should have been called a transference or something like that but that would have ruined the wi-fi/computer gag that was his main idea for the plot. This reminds me of the Star Trek transporter debate that said the original crewman killed and what beams down is a duplicate.

Eh, I reckon that the GI method of mindrobbing is much more sophisticated than how humans download computer files. It's still a problematic scenario regarding the bodies, but I've given much more outlandish & vaguely defined sci-fi tech the benefit of the doubt.

Wes Crayon wrote:

It was stupid and poorly thought out and I'm kinda shocked you guys aren't jumping all over it.

I've seen episodes involving Rock Monsters that drink blood and a Medieval society that maintains the ability and knowledge to make highly advanced robotic automatons. To say nothing of a Monster that lives in a Star, Sapient Trees, Space Rhinos that are also Police Men, and Pepper Pots that have no concept of a "Inside Voice". Oh, and a race of ancient aliens who utilize what appears to be Magic that despite thousands of years of silent observation of the Human Species cannot comprehend - and thus are foiled by - the concept of Self-Sacrifice and Love.

I'm not all that bothered by mobile waystations that appearently download souls. I've seen weirder.

Ronpur wrote:

Yep, it should have been called a transference or something like that but that would have ruined the wi-fi/computer gag that was his main idea for the plot. This reminds me of the Star Trek transporter debate that said the original crewman killed and what beams down is a duplicate.

Haha, exactly! Though I give Star Trek a pass because they (probably?) didn't understand how the transporting would have to work at the time, and now it's sort of become a defining feature of the franchise. If the TARDIS weren't relying on idea of the Time Vortex for its travel capabilities and instead used more problematic means (the Time Vortex might as well be magic), I'd give that a pass too. But yes, you're exactly right -- Moffat based the entire episode on a gag that doesn't work on a really basic level. I hate lazy, ill-conceived stuff like that.

Evil Monkey Pope wrote:

Eh, I reckon that the GI method of mindrobbing is much more sophisticated than how humans download computer files. It's still a problematic scenario regarding the bodies, but I've given much more outlandish & vaguely defined sci-fi tech the benefit of the doubt.

It'd have to be decidedly inferior, insofar as it relied upon the premise of "downloading" but necessarily destroyed the original information. The bodies thing, on the other hand, I thought was really easily explained -- without minds, the bodies die (and pretty quickly). So it wasn't exactly that those people had no bodies to go to; it was that you can't upload a mind to a dead body. Sort of like trying to upload a file to a computer that's completely turned off (as opposed to being in some power-saving mode) and can't be activated remotely. Or, more properly, trying to upload a file to a broken computer that will never boot up again.

Rust wrote:

I've seen episodes involving Rock Monsters that drink blood and a Medieval society that maintains the ability and knowledge to make highly advanced robotic automatons. To say nothing of a Monster that lives in a Star, Sapient Trees, Space Rhinos that are also Police Men, and Pepper Pots that have no concept of a "Inside Voice". Oh, and a race of ancient aliens who utilize what appears to be Magic that despite thousands of years of silent observation of the Human Species cannot comprehend - and thus are foiled by - the concept of Self-Sacrifice and Love.

I'm not all that bothered by mobile waystations that appearently download souls. I've seen weirder.

And we could continue the list, I'm sure!

Weird isn't my issue -- yes, we've all seen weirder (and much, much cooler). This wasn't weird at all. Heck, if it had explicitly been using magic to download souls to the Internet, well... it would have been a different show entirely (and I want to say I've seen something like that; there was that Buffy episode where Moloch got into the Internet but I want to say there was something even closer), but I would probably have found it to be interesting (unless it was poorly executed). What this episode did was, as Ronpur said, take a gag that didn't work and base an entire episode on it. I wouldn't be surprised if Moffat admitted he wrote it around that Twitter joke. (Btw, is Twitter some exclusive thing in the UK? Because, here, one could not know jack about the Internet or computers and still make that joke. Most people in these days of finger-swiping and user-coddling apps and operating systems don't know much about computers, but they still tweet like birdies on dewy spring mornings.)

Wes Crayon wrote:

Haha, exactly! Though I give Star Trek a pass because they (probably?) didn't understand how the transporting would have to work at the time, and now it's sort of become a defining feature of the franchise.

Coincidentally, Transporters were used as a way to save money, since they couldn't afford to constantly be shooting a Shuttle landing shots.

Quote :

Weird isn't my issue -- yes, we've all seen weirder (and much, much cooler). This wasn't weird at all.... What this episode did was, as Ronpur said, take a gag that didn't work and base an entire episode on it.

I thought it worked well enough. It's not all that different from what happened to Oswin in Asylum of the Daleks - they "downloaded" her wholesale into a Dalek body.

...

Coincidentally, that seems to be a running theme in the Clara episodes. Downloading. The Dalek Body in Asylum. The Ice Nanny in The Snowmen (Creating a Snow Copy of her, right down to her voice). And now the Shard.

It's funny that the Shard is a real building with a ridiculously ominous sci-fi appropriate name.

Rust wrote:

I thought it worked well enough. It's not all that different from what happened to Oswin in Asylum of the Daleks - they "downloaded" her wholesale into a Dalek body.

It's been a while since I saw that one -- and I wasn't that keen on it, so I only watched it the once -- but didn't that episode involve physically converting people into Daleks? I assumed it was like in that Sixth Doctor serial rather than downloading information. And even if it wasn't, no problems there -- again, it's not the copying of information that's the problem in this particular serial, but the deleting of the original source material and when there's no apparent reason for it. The Daleks always have a reason for deleting people, and that reason is EXTERMINATE.

So, I was watching Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, and I noticed 'Spoon People'. The Kiosks that talked to the Doctor and Donna had a decidedly 'Spoon' shape on their back. However, unlike this episode, it was the 'Spoon' part we saw first, then the face. This episode was the other way around. I don't have the tools, but I would love to see a side by side comparison of the scenes, to show just how similar the 'Spoon Heads' are.

bret- interesting thought really...
just saw silence and the spoons heads look very similar....