tardis_stowaway (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tardis_stowaway) wrote2008-05-02 11:16 pm
tardis_stowaway) wrote2008-05-02 11:16 pm
Entry tags:
Crime and Fire
Two awesome things:
1) I have a summer job! I'll be running the junior ranger program at the state park down the road. I'm pleased to have a source of income and something up my alley to do while my normal job is on summer break.
2) The first two episodes of S4! I watch at the sci-fi channel pace, so I haven't seen any of the others, but let me take this chance to squeal a bit about Fires of Pompeii and Partners in Crime.
1) I have a summer job! I'll be running the junior ranger program at the state park down the road. I'm pleased to have a source of income and something up my alley to do while my normal job is on summer break.
2) The first two episodes of S4! I watch at the sci-fi channel pace, so I haven't seen any of the others, but let me take this chance to squeal a bit about Fires of Pompeii and Partners in Crime.
Partners in Time: Hilarious! The early part where the Doctor and Donna kept just barely missing each other was so cute. Speaking of cute, who would ever have thought that little creatures made of living fat could make me go awwww. The mime conversation had me in stitches. (Has anybody attempted to read lips and transcribe what they're trying to say?) Donna's "you're not mating with me, sunshine!" is a wonderful omen for S4 as opposed to S3.
Donna seems to have had a bit of a personality transplant since The Runaway Bride. She's much less shrieky and and abrasive, which is very good because I couldn't have taken a whole season of that. In fact, the new Donna is rather awesome. I suppose that some people are unusually high-strung right around their wedding, so perhaps this is actually closer to her baseline personality with the benefit of additional soul searching. She had time to process the impact of the Doctor's visit without the overwhelming experience of continuing travel with him, and it not only sparked her wanderlust but opened her eyes to people beyond herself. In TRB she was very much "me, me, me," but in S4 so far she's showing tons of empathy. I especially love how her first travel request was to show her grandpa that she'd found her magical blue box. That need to share her joy right away is not something we saw from Rose or Martha.
One last thing about that episode: Roooose! Unexpected enigmatic vanishing Rose! Huzzah!
Fires of Pompeii: Take that, S3! This is the Doctor we know and love. He's got plenty of angst about the Time War and (though it's not very open) about losing Rose, but it's not impairing his ability to see and appreciate his companion or deal with the situation facing him in an ethical manner. He's even sticking inappropriate things in his mouth again!
There were tons of great moments in this episode. I don't catch many classic Who references, but the TARDIS as modern art reference to City of Death made me squeal at an astonishingly loud volume. The water pistol and Donna's reaction were fabulous. (Although since the water could hurt their foe would that water pistol violate his preference to avoid guns?) The "I am Spartacus!" moment made me giggle. I loved the sulky teenager making his forced apology to the household gods. I also really liked the exploration of the TARDIS translation with the running joke about speaking Celtic (extra Companion points to Donna for asking thoughtful questions and, when the Doctor wasn't forthcoming, finding out for herself.) It was neat to see the Romans' failure to understand "volcano," since I've often wondered what the TARDIS does when a language it's translating to simply doesn't have appropriate words.
The connections to past and future were interesting. S1 references abound. At the end of S3, the Doctor lost Gallifrey all over again when the Master died. Therefore he's got to repeat some of the steps he went through after the war.There's the mention of the Shadow Proclamation (second of the season: do we have a Bad Wolf here? It seems likely.) Though I saw neither hide nor hair of Jack, the Doctor echoed his Volcano Day phrase. There's the question of the morality of allowing someone to die to save history that was raised in Father's Day. (Why could the Doctor save this family but not Pete? First, I think that in the Whoniverse the perspective of the person who observes and acts impacts how much time can handle. Time is fluid and history subject to change except when a person from the future brings the set timeline leading up to their day. Rose couldn't save her father safely because his death was so important to her personal timeline. There's a lot of years between this Roman family and Donna, and their impact was presumably not world-changing enough to echo as far as her. Time could absorb the blow of their survival. Furthermore, in Father's Day Time was unusually vulnerable because there were two sets of Rose & Doctor close by, so the unexpected survival of Pete did more damage than it would have otherwise.)
The scene where the Doctor and Donna blow the volcano is an obvious allusion to the Delta wave switch in PotW. It broke my heart a bit that this time he pushed the switch. Yes, it was the right thing to do. That's unquestionable. Obviously Pompeii was a reasonable price to pay to save Earth, just as Gallifrey was a reasonable price to pay to save the universe. That doesn't mean that those deaths aren't going to trouble his soul. (And what of Donna? I adore her for standing with the Doctor and helping him to do the right thing, but will those 20,000 lives she earlier fought to save weigh on her? She saved far more lives, but emotions don't work on numbers.)
Reminder to anyone kind enough to comment: these are the only to S4 episodes I have seen. Pretty please don't spoil me! Violators will be tossed into the volcano.
Donna seems to have had a bit of a personality transplant since The Runaway Bride. She's much less shrieky and and abrasive, which is very good because I couldn't have taken a whole season of that. In fact, the new Donna is rather awesome. I suppose that some people are unusually high-strung right around their wedding, so perhaps this is actually closer to her baseline personality with the benefit of additional soul searching. She had time to process the impact of the Doctor's visit without the overwhelming experience of continuing travel with him, and it not only sparked her wanderlust but opened her eyes to people beyond herself. In TRB she was very much "me, me, me," but in S4 so far she's showing tons of empathy. I especially love how her first travel request was to show her grandpa that she'd found her magical blue box. That need to share her joy right away is not something we saw from Rose or Martha.
One last thing about that episode: Roooose! Unexpected enigmatic vanishing Rose! Huzzah!
Fires of Pompeii: Take that, S3! This is the Doctor we know and love. He's got plenty of angst about the Time War and (though it's not very open) about losing Rose, but it's not impairing his ability to see and appreciate his companion or deal with the situation facing him in an ethical manner. He's even sticking inappropriate things in his mouth again!
There were tons of great moments in this episode. I don't catch many classic Who references, but the TARDIS as modern art reference to City of Death made me squeal at an astonishingly loud volume. The water pistol and Donna's reaction were fabulous. (Although since the water could hurt their foe would that water pistol violate his preference to avoid guns?) The "I am Spartacus!" moment made me giggle. I loved the sulky teenager making his forced apology to the household gods. I also really liked the exploration of the TARDIS translation with the running joke about speaking Celtic (extra Companion points to Donna for asking thoughtful questions and, when the Doctor wasn't forthcoming, finding out for herself.) It was neat to see the Romans' failure to understand "volcano," since I've often wondered what the TARDIS does when a language it's translating to simply doesn't have appropriate words.
The connections to past and future were interesting. S1 references abound. At the end of S3, the Doctor lost Gallifrey all over again when the Master died. Therefore he's got to repeat some of the steps he went through after the war.There's the mention of the Shadow Proclamation (second of the season: do we have a Bad Wolf here? It seems likely.) Though I saw neither hide nor hair of Jack, the Doctor echoed his Volcano Day phrase. There's the question of the morality of allowing someone to die to save history that was raised in Father's Day. (Why could the Doctor save this family but not Pete? First, I think that in the Whoniverse the perspective of the person who observes and acts impacts how much time can handle. Time is fluid and history subject to change except when a person from the future brings the set timeline leading up to their day. Rose couldn't save her father safely because his death was so important to her personal timeline. There's a lot of years between this Roman family and Donna, and their impact was presumably not world-changing enough to echo as far as her. Time could absorb the blow of their survival. Furthermore, in Father's Day Time was unusually vulnerable because there were two sets of Rose & Doctor close by, so the unexpected survival of Pete did more damage than it would have otherwise.)
The scene where the Doctor and Donna blow the volcano is an obvious allusion to the Delta wave switch in PotW. It broke my heart a bit that this time he pushed the switch. Yes, it was the right thing to do. That's unquestionable. Obviously Pompeii was a reasonable price to pay to save Earth, just as Gallifrey was a reasonable price to pay to save the universe. That doesn't mean that those deaths aren't going to trouble his soul. (And what of Donna? I adore her for standing with the Doctor and helping him to do the right thing, but will those 20,000 lives she earlier fought to save weigh on her? She saved far more lives, but emotions don't work on numbers.)
Reminder to anyone kind enough to comment: these are the only to S4 episodes I have seen. Pretty please don't spoil me! Violators will be tossed into the volcano.