tardis_stowaway | I guess they can't all be written by Neil Gaiman

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: Janelle Monae, The ArchAndroid

Entry tags:

I guess they can't all be written by Neil Gaiman

I don't know if I'd call that a bad episode, but it wasn't as good as it could (and probably should) have been. Color me mildly disappointed. (What color is disappointed anyway?)

The interplay between the two Elevens was brilliant. I loved the Flesh Doctor trying to assimilate the memories of his past regenerations, including reversing the polarity of the neutron flow and offering jelly babies. I predicted that the two Doctors had switched places pretty much as soon as Amy started being quite so horrible to what she thought was the duplicate. From a storytelling perspective, that was ASKING for her to have to eat her words later. Also, I think if the Doctors hadn't been concealing their split that original!Eleven would have called her out much more emphatically. Interestingly, Eleven seemed much more accepting of flesh!Eleven than Ten was of Ten II at the end of JE. I wonder if that's a personality difference between Ten and Eleven or if the Doctor thinks the Flesh is a faithful copy of him but Ten II was somehow polluted by the human aspect of the human-Time Lord metacrisis.

In addition to the Doctor switch, I also called that the two Jens who confronted Rory were both Flesh. While I like feeling smart, predicting two important plot twists in the episode suggests that it was a little too predictable in some respects. (The season arc development at the end was an exception.) However, in ways that it should have been more predictable, like how a given character might react, it fell down the opposite way. Was it just me or was the characterization of the factory workers rather inconsistent between this week and last week? Flesh!Jen's turn toward violence and the leader's (can't recall her name) turn toward compassion seemed a bit too sudden and complete for me to believe, but maybe my memory of The Rebel Flesh is faulty. It wasn't exactly a super memorable ep. I liked that the survivors were a mix of original humans and gangers, though I wish we'd had at least one set of a human and identical ganger survive so they would actually have to deal with the consequences of two people who want to fit into the same life.

Back on the topic of things I liked: the interaction between the Doctor and Rory in this episode had some interesting moments. I loved that when the Doctor was trying to make Rory listen to him he called him "Roranicus Pond." Hee! (Is it official that Rory has changed his name to Pond or is that just a running joke?) I found it fascinating that at the end, when the Doctor asked Rory to step away from Amy while she clung to him, Rory obeyed the Doctor. Usually Rory's loyalty lies with Amy above everything else in the universe. The Doctor has just essentially called Amy a Ganger, and it's not like stepping away from Amy is actually hurting her, but I still think that action speaks volumes about how much Rory now trusts the Doctor. (Speaking of Rory, I wish we'd seen some more explicit mention of the fact that Rory remembers being in the situation of feeling human but not technically being human. Oh well. His attitude was enough to suggest it to fans.)

I am really not keen on the fact that one of the themes of this whole two-parter was admitting the personhood of the people made of Flesh, but the Doctor turned around and melted Ganger Amy. What?! I hope next episode has a very clear explanation of how the life of original!Amy or their ability to find her absolutely depended on getting rid of the Ganger, because otherwise that was really horrifying and hypocritical.

I am so happy that this series doesn't appear to be a dream existing only in Amy's head! Thank you Moffat for avoiding that lame trope. I'm intrigued by the news that the Amy we've seen all series is a fake. I suppose she must have been taken when the team was separated between Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon since she was already seeing Eyepatch Woman while looking for the girl in the orphanage full of Silents, before the Silents kidnapped her.

The final scene with Amy waking up captive in a strange place and very pregnant was deeply horrifying. However, I don't feel that it's out of bounds for what's acceptable depending on what we see learn next week regarding (a) whose baby she's carrying, (b) if not Rory's, how it got in there, (c) what happens during the birth, and (d) how quickly we see Amy regain her agency as more than a womb and a damsel in distress. I'm still not happy that we have to deal with a pregnancy storyline in the first place, but if it must happen then this is at least interesting so far.

Hey, Rory didn't die in this episode, did he? I guess Amy dissolving into a puddle of goop fulfilled the Pond Death Quota.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I have mixed feelings about it too, but I hope it grows on me. That said, for me even a weaker DW episode beats most other shows.

(BTW, I LOVE your use of the phrase "Pond Death Quota")

for me even a weaker DW episode beats most other shows.

Very true! I believe in holding the show to the high standard it's shown itself capable of, but perspective is important. It's like chocolate: even the lower quality versions are still tasty.

I am really not keen on the fact that one of the themes of this whole two-parter was admitting the personhood of the people made of Flesh, but the Doctor turned around and melted Ganger Amy. What?! I hope next episode has a very clear explanation of how the life of original!Amy or their ability to find her absolutely depended on getting rid of the Ganger, because otherwise that was really horrifying and hypocritical.

I assumed the Amy on the TARDIS wasn't a full human ganger, but rather like remote control Flesh being controlling by pregnant!Amy (in virtual reality or a dream) elsewhere, and so it was more like killing off an avatar, or destroying a remote control car, than like killing the other gangers, who were full people. Otherwise why would ganger!Amy have been seeing the things and feeling the things from the other Amy's life? The eyepatch woman and the contractions? The other gangers and their respective humans didn't share any senses or anything. So I took the doctor melting her to simply be his way of sending her back to her actual body in time for labor? He said he was doing something like "cutting off the signal", so I assume that's the signal from real-Amy to her fake-body (like the signal from the Nestene consciousness to the shop-window dummies).

He could have explained to her more where she would wake up and how fucking horrifying it would be, though. He was just sort of cryptic about it, and her situation is traumatizing enough without him being all dark and cryptic to her just before she wakes up in a tiny white coffin nine months pregnant and in labor, having been unaware the whole time of her situation. I mean, fuck. I think that might be the most horrifying thing I've ever seen on this show. And I'm not actually sure why he had to cut the signal off right away. Couldn't he have followed it to where she was really sleeping first?

The ending bothered me a lot, lol. I have issues with any series ignoring the bodily autonomy of characters, especially female ones, and knowing Moffat and his history, I don't actually trust him to handle the way that Amy's body has been used against her will and without her knowledge very well at all. Especially if it turns out that the people who are holding her are the ones to have impregnated her, against her will (I really, really hope this doesn't wind up being the case!), which is straight up a form of rape and sexual assault, and I'm sure will not be treated as such.

It could still be handled in a decent way in the next episode, but unless Amy gets her autonomy back, like, instantly, I really doubt it. And I'm worried they're going to gloss over the horror of her situation by simply going "Look! Adorable baby!" and having that make everything that happened to her better somehow.

I JUST HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS.

But I still fucking love this show, though, lol. And will totally admit that I was caught off guard going WHAT WHAT BUT HOW. MY MIND. OMG MY MIND.

And that's always fun.

Especially if it turns out that the people who are holding her are the ones to have impregnated her, against her will (I really, really hope this doesn't wind up being the case!), which is straight up a form of rape and sexual assault, and I'm sure will not be treated as such.

I don't think this is going to end up being the case. It's too dark for DW, and anyway, Amy tells the Doctor she's pregnant in "The Impossible Astronaut," which is presumably before she's been taken (I'm with

tardis_stowaway in thinking it must've happened between TIA and DotM). So she was already pregnant when she was taken.

Which will be a lot better than a completely forced pregnancy, but still pretty bad (IMO, YMMV). I think I probably consider pregnancy as an ongoing consent type thing, and similar to Dollhouse where it's a problem to take away a person's ability to take away their consent to sex (or anything else), I feel like it's a problem to take away a person's ability to take away their consent to pregnancy, by making them think they aren't pregnant when they are.

We don't know what Amy would have chosen with the pregnancy before, because she wasn't given a chance to properly deal with it. And I think she probably would have chosen to continue it, but still, it feels like that choice was taken away from her.

Plus I think I'm just not getting over the idea of how horrifying it would be to, without knowing you've been pregnant, wake up nine months pregnant, in labor, in a little coffin. I want to be a mother one day more than almost anyone I know, and I still think that just crosses all kinds of boundaries that go beyond mere kidnapping even if she was pregnant prior to being kidnapped.

It's not the worst thing ever, plenty of scifi/fantasy series have dealt with pregnancy equally badly (in fact, I'm having a pretty much impossible time coming up with a series that handled it well). But that doesn't mean it doesn't make me uncomfortable.

I think she'll probably have been pregnant before, and that it's Rory's. Which does help a lot. But doesn't help completely. Not really.

It makes me uncomfortable too, but it also isn't as though the show the endorsing it in any way. I think it's important to look at not only what is portrayed, but also how it's portrayed. The horror of this is exactly what you've said, that Amy has had no say and no knowledge of anything that is going on with her body, and we are meant to be horrified by it. I remember speaking with a much older professor once, about a story in which a woman wakes up pregnant and doesn't remember how it happened, about how this was the nightmare in the days before abortion was legal. It is meant to be a nightmare.

So yes, I do see where you're coming from, but the jury is still out on this, in my opinion. I don't expect Moffat to take it where Whedon would, which would like be an explicit (albeit perhaps ham-handed) commentary on the female body and its agency, but I also trust him to have given it some thought.

Oh, for a series that handled pregnancy well: The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold.

I get that the ganger the Doctor melted was being remotely controlled by "real" Amy, like the factory gangers were supposed to be, rather than a person with an independent existence, like they were after the storm. The Doctor's action was certainly more excusable than if he'd killed a duplicate with its own separate consciousness. However, one of the things I took away from the episode was that the system of treating the gangers as disposable was inherently problematic. The gangers mostly worried about being destroyed once they were separate, but they also seemed angry about the way connected gangers had been killed so heedlessly. They experienced the sensation of death, and the flesh as a whole seemed conscious and unhappy about that.

At the very least, as you point out, the Doctor should have treated Amy better by giving her some information about what he was doing and whatever he knew about the living hell where she was about to wake up. Labor is painful enough (from what I hear) that to have it sprung upon Amy unexpectedly, alone, without a choice or even knowledge of whether the lump in her belly is an ordinary baby or some alien larva that will rip her open as it comes out, basically counts as torture. I'm with you in questioning why Amy's consciousness had to go endure that before they were able to rescue her body.

I think the last minutes of this episode treated the situation with the appropriate "oh shit, this is bad" attitude, but I definitely don't trust Moffat to follow this through to the end without fail. We'll see. It's possible that he'll handle the story with thoughtfulness and respect! However, given the way the ending of Forest of the Dead was like "River may be an echo of her former self trapped in a fake computer world forever, but everything is great now because now Donna's imaginary children are now her imaginary children, and children are what all women really want," I'm worried.

YOUR MANY FEELINGS, I SHARE QUITE A FEW OF THEM.

I actually rewatched "The Rebel Flesh" yesterday before watching "The Almost People" and didn't find any characterization inconsistencies. I really quite liked Cleaves and the way she and her ganger interacted with each other. She reminded me of Adelaide Brooke in "Waters of Mars."

I'm actually quite fond of these episodes. I've rewatched both them now, and I think they will end up ranking among my favorite not-written-by-Moffat episodes. I've become very wary about two parters not written by Moff recently (Silurians FTL), but this actually delivered on just about everything I wanted it to (except, as many people have pointed out, on Rory actually acknowledging why he had such empathy for the flesh).

I agree with

timemachineyeah that Amy's ganger is not a ganger-turned-human the way the gangers on the island were, but rather a remote controlled avatar; Amy's mind was in her avatar, while her body is lying back wherever. When the Doctor dissolved the avatar, her mind snapped back. The jury remains out on this storyline, though it is weird, I will definitely give you that. I don't think the people holding her are the ones who impregnated her, since she told the Doctor she was pregnant presumably before she was taken (I agree that must've happened between "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon"). My guess is that the baby is Rory's, but there are those who wish to use it for Nefarious Purposes; on the other hand . . . we still have a kid who can regenerate and we don't know how that happened.

But I trust Moffat. I have never quite understood where people's gender issues come from with him, to be honest. I'm a card-carrying feminist (or would be if we had cards), and I think Moffat is about five times better than most TV writers when it comes to issues of gender and sexuality (including possibly Joss Whedon, who jumped the shark so badly with Dollhouse and the S8 comics that I want to shake him).

I have never quite understood where people's gender issues come from with him, to be honest.

"There’s this issue you’re not allowed to discuss: that women are needy. Men can go for longer, more happily, without women. That’s the truth. We don’t, as little boys, play at being married - we try to avoid it for as long as possible. Meanwhile women are out there hunting for husbands."

- Steven Moffat

He's said similar things in DW Confidentials and such. He just tends to be really gender essentialist in interviews to me (saying "Like all boys do" "That's how little girls are") and when he does write a relatively well-rounded or interesting female character, in interviews about that character I start to get the feeling that that was a happy accident that resulted from him trying to write the perfect girlfriend for himself, a sort of fantasy woman that he doesn't believe could really exist, but damn wouldn't she be hot?

I don't make apologies for Joss Whedon (ugh, Dollhouse, ugh ugh ugh), but at least you get the feeling Whedon is considering the sociological role gender politics play in his characters' lives, and then he just stumbles and gets in wrong, but he was trying (which ISN'T AN EXCUSE). With Moffat I sort of feel the other way. Like when his women come out of the writing fully written and interesting, that's the accident. Whedon tries to do an interesting story about objectification and consent and winds up with Dollhouse (UGHUGHUGH), Moffat tries to make the nerdy version of a pin-up doll (with smarts!) and accidentally gets Sally Sparrow who by pure coincidence also appeals to his female viewers.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, and so maybe a bit unfair, but it's just always how I've felt about him. Since Coupling, which is adorable, but when you look at it long enough, the heart behind the goofy gender stereotypes seems to come from the fact that Moffat is a really good writer, and the actors play it well, but he was still playing the goofy gender stereotypes completely straight.

IMO.

YMMV.

I'm not saying you shouldn't love Moffat! Love who you like. It's just, if you were curious why people have trust issues with him, I think that's why.

Yeah, the man's a jackass on occasion. Don't even get me started on his behavior at cons (which is really between him and his wife, I suppose). This is why I don't read interviews with him. But I really am a Wastsonian at heart, so in the end I go mostly off of what he has written, and that tends to be some of the most BAMF female characters on television. Or even when they aren't BAMF, they are, like Sally Sparrow, well-rounded individuals who don't go about making the Doctor the be-all and end-all of their existence. < /poorly disguised critique of RTD >

I dunno. Is it better to try hard and get it wrong or stumble onto the right thing by accident? I'm really not sure. But I would guess that there are a lot more people watching the show than reading the interviews. (Which is not to say that either is particularly good. I would love to have someone with Whedon's intentions and Moffat's skill at execution, I'm just not sure that writer exists.)

I really quite liked Cleaves and the way she and her ganger interacted with each other.

I liked her in "The Almost People," which was what puzzled me. My memory of her from Rebel Flesh was the way she destroyed the attempts at compromise by charging in with the shock device and insisting that the gangers were monsters who needed to die. Probably my memory is skipping over nuances in both eps, but it's not bothering me quite enough to bother rewatching any time soon. TBH I found these eps a little dull in terms of pacing, visuals, and largely non-memorable characters, but that's just me. Clearly your mileage varied, and I'm glad you enjoyed!

I get that the ganger the Doctor melted was being remotely controlled by "real" Amy, like the factory gangers were supposed to be, rather than a person with an independent existence, like they were after the storm. The Doctor's action was certainly more excusable than if he'd killed a duplicate with its own separate consciousness. However, one of the things I took away from the episode was that the system of treating the gangers as disposable was inherently problematic. The gangers mostly worried about being destroyed once they were separate, but they also seemed angry about the way connected gangers had been killed so heedlessly.

Your point that Amy seems to have been kidnapped when already pregnant is good and reassuring. We'll see where the storyline goes.

I trust Moffat to tell an entertaining story with snappy dialog and creative use of time travel and other science fiction tropes, and I trust him to handle the Doctor Who franchise with love. I trust him to create a sense of wonder. I do NOT trust him on issues of gender, for reasons

timemachineyeah stated well, to which I add only Sherlock.

You're right Moffat has created some really excellent female characters! However, sometimes he then turns around and undermines them. Witness River Song, professional badass of great awesomeness. She's got her own career, her own capacity for time travel, her own ability to deal with problems, and in general a life where the Doctor is pivotal but not everything. Great! Then Moffat gives her a line about how having the Doctor not recognize her will be worse than dying. *headdesk*

It's probably a good thing we feminists don't try to carry actual cards, because I think there would be lots of disagreement about what they'd say and who would get one. :) Also, I'm curious about your reaction to Dollhouse. Did you watch lots of it and still feel that it failed at feminism, or were you sufficiently squicked by the premise or unhappy with the first handful of episodes that you never watched much of it? If the first, then you're certainly entitled to your opinion, and I agree the show had some serious flaws. If you never watched much, however, you might reconsider. Dollhouse got MUCH better as it went along (with certain exceptions). Also, here's an essay I bookmarked about why it's great feminist TV.

However, I will totally join you in throwing the BtVS S8 comics out a window. UGH.

Long comment is long! Sorry. I like discussions like this with people whose opinions I respect. :)

She's got her own career, her own capacity for time travel, her own ability to deal with problems, and in general a life where the Doctor is pivotal but not everything. Great! Then Moffat gives her a line about how having the Doctor not recognize her will be worse than dying. *headdesk*

This is where the characters' relationship really matters to the interpretation.

If someone were to say something similar about a friend or acquaintance they are attracted to, then, yes, it's a little over the top.

OTOH, if the person who is saying this has been in a long-term partnership (which is what the storyline is leading us to assume), then not being recognized, even when there is a reason that you can anticipate, is agony. To draw a real world corollary - River's situation is like a spouse of someone with worsening dementia. He has a glimmer of recognition that she was once important to him, but can't say why; she suspects someday there won't be even that.

Of course River's grief about the Doctor knowing her less and eventually not at all makes sense. I'd be surprised if she wasn't dreading that day, not to mention upset at her coldness. However, the declaring that it would be worse than dying seemed a bit melodramatic for River.

When Rose stood at Bad Wolf Bay and declared "this is the story of how I died," that made sense for the character. She was very young (maybe 20 at that point) and in love, a combination leading to dramatic exaggeration. Even more importantly, meeting the Doctor was the first meaningful good thing to happen in her life. She made herself a worthwhile life by working at Pete's World Torchwood, but that was later. (Plus, she was literally listed as dead in her home universe.)

River, in contrast, seemed to have her own life in between the Doctor's appearances. That's part of the character's appeal to me. (Though I guess at this point she's in prison, and however easily she escapes that must be a drag.) She's not young and given to overstatement. Thus, however much she might love the Doctor, I found it disappointing when Moffat had her declare that without the recognition of her man she'd be better off dead.

Question, what if River had been a lesbian and the partner she was speaking of was her woman, and not her man? Would that be any different?

Well, it would it somewhat less attributable to Moffat's sexism issues. However, it still wouldn't fit with how I see River and her relationship with the Doctor (I'm imagining a female Doctor in this hypothetical, because making it another character is adding a whole new variable).

The ideas I'd formed about her seem not to be the direction the show is actually going. *sigh*

I can see how that would make sense.
Do you mind if I ask you a somewhat personal question?
Are you hard wired to love anyone in such a way that they are in at least one sense, your world? Or have you ever loved anyone that way?

I ask because I think that's probably the heart of something like this. What the individual doing the perceiving has experienced personally, and how we are wired in general.

And of course I have mad love for a woman who can be everything River is, and still turn around and give her whole heart/soul to the person she loves (regardless of gender). But then, that's the way I'm wired... to think that Love is the most important thing in all the universe.

I know there's a lot of controversy about Dollhouse, which I admit I just could not get into, so I didn't watch very much of it. At some point I really should watch the rest of it.

WRT River Song, have you read

elisi's meta on the topic? I think it still works even several episodes later. It's fabulous and you should read it, but here's the relevant bit:

River’s adventures with the Doctor get cut off when he’s killed. From the scene in the diner when they compare diaries we see that they are literally on the same page - and then he’s killed, which only leaves a younger!Doctor for her to interact with. Plus, all her adventures with other Doctors (Twelve, Thirteen...) no longer exist/have never existed. (Hence the sudden tragicness to her story, and the literal ‘going in opposite directions' shift. In Moffat's Who, if something doesn’t make sense, it’s like that on purpose.)

So, River’s fatalism is [partly] due to having been ‘re-written’.

My reaction to that scene between River and Rory, which I actually found quite moving, was, "But wait - that's not how it works for the two of them! They don't meet in reverse order, it's way more timey wimey than that!" And in fact, unless Moff tends to joss his own writing, we know from "Forest of the Dead" that the Doctor who takes her to the singing towers and cries because he knows she has to go to the Library is fully aware of who and what she is (whatever that may be). But perhaps that event doesn't exist now in her timeline. It doesn't seem as though it'd happened yet for the Doctor who died.

Anyway, my point is that I think that time in this current series is in serious flux, so I'm withholding judgment on River's characterization at least until such time as we find out who she is (which will be next week!). Very often with Moff those moments make more sense in retrospect than they do at the time.

Anyway - long comment is long again!

See, I don't know that I would say feeling like she was going to die the day she lost the man she loved makes her any less then a woman. I don't see it so much as "I need a man" as "I need the love of my life."... some people are like that. The love of our life happens to be the most important thing in our life, and if we were to lose that person it would be devastating.

OMG, I just realised I'vve hijacked your journal with long personal ramblings about gender politics.

SORRY.

I WILL SHUT UP IF YOU LIKE.

Also, I gave the impression that I don't like Moffat, when actually I think he's a really good writer.

So.

Yeah.

SORRY.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I guess they can't all be written by Neil Gaiman

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject