tardis_stowaway (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tardis_stowaway) wrote2011-05-29 02:24 am
tardis_stowaway) wrote2011-05-29 02:24 am
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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.
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
no subject
The ideas I'd formed about her seem not to be the direction the show is actually going. *sigh*
no subject
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.