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Catching up on Doctor Who
Dec. 26th, 2015 02:19 pmI have a lot of thoughts about Doctor Who, y'all. I'd let myself fall very behind this season, but I watched Sleep No More and Face the Raven a few nights ago, then Heaven Sent, Hell Bent, and The Husbands of River Song all in a Christmas binge with my family. Here are some very general spoiler-free thoughts outside a cut first, then episode-specific thoughts. These are largely without reading anyone else's reactions, since I couldn't read them at the time without spoilers and I no longer remember which of y'all have been posting about Doctor Who.
Overall, I think this season has been tremendously good, easily the best since series 5 and perhaps the best since Moffat took over as showrunner. Not every episode has been perfect, but there have been more really strong ones than weakish ones and none at all I want to bury in a hole and never dig up. I've enjoyed the format of having almost entirely two-parters. It allowed deeper development of supporting characters, more worldbuilding, and richer stories. Peter Capaldi is outstanding as the Doctor, and I feel like the writers have a much better handle on his Doctor this series than last. Clara is still probably my least favorite main New Who companion in terms of who I identify with or want to travel beside, but I think her character arc in S9 was fascinating, and I think Jenna Coleman is wonderful in the role.
Sleep No More
Disappointing. I really like that they tried something different with the found footage concept, and the atmosphere was effectively creepy. However the monsters were SO nonsensical (carnivorous sleep dust monsters?? really???) and not terribly well executed, and the plot just didn't make a ton of sense. I did like that most all of the guest cast were POC, but sadly the script didn't give the actors enough character development to work with. There were some interesting worldbuilding elements, but those bits of interest and the cool episode title (from Macbeth) just felt wasted on the weak and weird (in a bad way) plot. I often like Mark Gatiss as a Doctor Who writer, but this was one of the weaker points in the season.
Face the Raven
The Doctor and Clara investigate a murder in Diagon Alley For Aliens and run intoArya Stark Ashildr Lady Me; things don't go as planned. I wish that Sleep No More hadn't existed so this could have been a two-parter. I love stories of hidden magic cities within a real city, especially when that city is London (see Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, the aforementioned Diagon Alley, Kate Griffin's Matthew Swift books, and more), and I thought this one was neat but needed a little bit more both about how it works and character development for its residents. We had two recurring guest characters, Lady Me and Rigsy, though it took me most of the episode to place where we'd seen Rigsy before (Flatline, which was a great episode but quite a while ago). Lady Me, meanwhile, seems to have bitten off a bit more than she can chew in trying to keep this powderkeg of an alien community at peace with each other and the surrounding humans, having some sort of contract with the raven spirit thing, and then having made a deal to entrap the Doctor with the mysterious powers whose identity we learn next episode. I really like that she's allowed to be morally ambiguous. She has more concern for others than she did when we saw her as a highwayman, but that doesn't mean she follows the ethical code we mortals or the Doctor might wish she had, and she certainly doesn't align herself with the characters we viewers are used to rooting for. She's an antagonist for sure, but not a villain like the Master.
But I'm avoiding the most significant parts of the episode. Clara died, two episodes before I expected her exit. It was surprising and upsetting. It wasn't even a death saving the world, but an attempt to save one person that turned out to be a mistake based on acting without full information. It could have felt pointless and anger-inducing. However, Clara's risktaking all season, her cleverness, and occasional sneakiness made this death feel like a natural possibility based on her character, and her courage in the face of doom and her insistence on reminding the Doctor to be his best self and avoid revenge made her death feel worthy of a long-serving companion. Then the Doctor got kidnapped by teleport, and basically everything is awful.
I would like to point out that Lady Me edited the memories of humans using retcon, a drug developed by Torchwood. This suggests that she followed the Doctor's suggestion to look up Captain Jack Harkness. What happened when the two immortals met? Is there fanfic????
Heaven Sent
This episode was really damn good. It works because Peter Capaldi is such a strong actor that his performance can carry the show alone. The episode is a carefully crafted puzzle-box (literally) that pulled me in to the Doctor's dread, confusion, frustration, and anger. (I haven't generally been a fan of Moffat as DW showrunner, but when he's in good form he can be one hell of a good scriptwriter, and this was a top notch script.) The monster wasn't all that scary in itself, but Capaldi's reactions were enough to make me willing to accept it as a threat. I'd guessed from the moment we saw the injured hand operating the teleport at the start that the hand likely belonged to the Doctor, but I'd assumed he was caught in a time loop and would get out through some clever timey-wimeyness. The revelation of what was really going on shocked and horrified me, as it was intended to, and I never would have predicted until the montage of deep time passing that the Doctor would literally punch his way out of a problem.
It was a small moment, but the one thing I strongly disliked about this episode was the Doctor confessing that he ran away from Gallifrey because he was scared. That is fundamentally different from the way I see the Doctor and the previously established canon, and it's not a change I like. I believe the Doctor is genuinely scared of dying, but I think his deepest motivation for leaving Gallifrey and becoming what he is, underneath all the sadness of what he's lost over the centuries, more central to his hearts than his fear of death, deeper even than the desire to help others, is restlessness at routine expectations and joy in exploring the unknown. The TARDIS stole him because she wanted to see the universe, and he stole her for the same reason. To suggest otherwise makes the whole show darker and smaller. So that was a frustrating moment, but everything else was darkly excellent.
Hell Bent
I have profoundly mixed feelings about this episode. There were parts that made me transcendentally happy and parts that made me want to grumble or even shout.
I didn't much like the earlier parts of the episode focusing on Time Lord politics, their reactions to having the Doctor back, or their prophecies about the Hybrid. I've written before that I thought undoing the Time War's destruction of Gallifrey was a bad storytelling decision, and one of the many reasons for that opinion is that the Time Lords on Gallifrey just aren't that interesting IMHO. Sadly, this episode supported my point. I don't care about the Doctor angrily eating soup outside that stupid recurring barn. I don't understand how the Time Lords are hiding out near the end of time but also apparently were communicating with 21st century earth in order to entrap the Doctor (wouldn't TARDIS-ing back and forth alert the Doctor and whoever else they're avoiding to Gallifrey's location?), but I don't really care to try to figure it out. The whole scene in the cloisters did not come across as mysterious or dangerous. One part I did like about the sojourn on Gallifrey was that we had a Time Lord regenerating onscreen change gender and race. Nice to have something else to wave in the face of those who think the Doctor should always be a white dude.
The plot between Clara and the Doctor, on the other hand, was fascinating. Given the fact that they'd killed Clara off with two episodes to go, I wasn't entirely surprised that the show found an excuse to bring her back onscreen. The Doctor strays very close to Time Lord Victorious territory in his refusal to accept Clara's death, and as worrisome as that always is to see I think it was very believable for how he would respond. I found all the Time Lord's nonsense about a Hybrid prophecy to be pretty annoying, though I did enjoy some of the argument between the Doctor and Lady Me about who was meant by it. (I simultaneously laughed and shouted at the screen when I realized they were going to throw the "Doctor is half human" notion, among the most mocked parts of the highly mockable TV movie, into the mix.) I'm not clear from just one watching whether we got a final answer about whether they Hybrid is Lady Me, the Doctor, or the combination of the Doctor and Clara, but whatever. I was pleased to unexpectedly run into Lady Me at the end of time, though I am somewhat dubious of the ability of someone who can be killed by sufficient injury to actually survive all those billions of years on the slow path. Also, were the Toclafane hanging around outside her lair there at the end of time?
I was SO ANGRY when it looked like we were going to have a repeat of Donna's Unconsenting Memory Wipe exit from the TARDIS. From a Watsonian perspective, I don't think the Doctor has ever done anything that made me angrier than stealing Donna's memories while she begged him not to. From a Doylist perspective, I am semi-okay with RTD's decision to write that because it was part of a larger arc of the Doctor going too far in imposing his will, an arc that was paid off in The Waters of Mars, but we didn't need to go all the way down that road again. This time, I was overjoyed that Clara put into words why that stealing of agency, even to save her life, was a problem. Man, sometimes Moffat's tendency to undo (literally or symbolically) the things he didn't like about RTD's era really rubs me the wrong way (see previously link about why Gallifrey should have stayed gone), but this one time it pleased me so much. Also, this feels like for once the Moff actually paid attention to some of the things that people have criticized about his past writing of women and did better. I am pleasantly shocked. But why can't they go and FIX THE ACTUAL DONNA NOBLE instead of merely redoing that situation with someone different and a different outcome? :`(
I don't really understand why the Doctor forgetting Clara does anything to heal the damage to time caused by her walking around when she should be dead (does it? or is she just gradually splintering the time stream by refusing to go face the raven yet?), and the diner frame story annoyed me a little bit because the Doctor seeking after a person whose personal details he can't remember puts Clara back a little bit in Impossible Girl quest object territory. However, while he might be viewing her as a quest, she is clearly allowed to have her own agenda. Undead Clara and ImmortalArya Ashildr Lady Me flying off for their own adventures in a TARDIS they only sort of know how to pilot is the stuff of fanfic, and it's GLORIOUS! I do worry that they are a Team TARDIS of highly questionable judgment in addition to the aforementioned possibility that Clara might be destroying time itself with her existence, but I am okay with that moral ambiguity. Also, Moffat has an ongoing tendency to pull back from the most serious consequences by not letting death stick; I think it's a bad writing habit, and I do find it frustrating that the show undid Clara's death. But her final exit from the show was just so pleasing to me that I can only muster up a limited amount of annoyance.
Maybe they can track down Donna based on the Doctor's reference to having had to wipe a friend's memory before, figure out a way to restore her memory (surely Me has been around long enough to know some telepaths who can help), and travel with her on their TARDIS. Yes, that could work nicely.
Husbands of River Song
Partway through this episode my dad asked me how I was feeling about it. I told him that it was a tale full of sound and silliness, signifying nothing. I did think it improved near the end, from River's rant about how the Doctor didn't come for her onwards. The scene at the restaurant was well done. However, while I felt that this episode handled River a fair amount better than the majority of her stories, my feelings for her overall character arc remain somewhere between indifference and actual annoyance, and the plot with the head-stealing cyborg thing was just a lot of nonsense, and not even especially entertaining nonsense. I did enjoy the Doctor's irritation at River's inability to recognize him. I didn't hate this episode, but it gets a yawn and slight eyeroll.
I've just realized that if we're getting a new companion next series and there hasn't been casting news yet, it's going to be a LONG time until more Doctor Who. That hiatus will weigh on me, since I'm feeling more engaged with the show than I have in years.
Overall, I think this season has been tremendously good, easily the best since series 5 and perhaps the best since Moffat took over as showrunner. Not every episode has been perfect, but there have been more really strong ones than weakish ones and none at all I want to bury in a hole and never dig up. I've enjoyed the format of having almost entirely two-parters. It allowed deeper development of supporting characters, more worldbuilding, and richer stories. Peter Capaldi is outstanding as the Doctor, and I feel like the writers have a much better handle on his Doctor this series than last. Clara is still probably my least favorite main New Who companion in terms of who I identify with or want to travel beside, but I think her character arc in S9 was fascinating, and I think Jenna Coleman is wonderful in the role.
Disappointing. I really like that they tried something different with the found footage concept, and the atmosphere was effectively creepy. However the monsters were SO nonsensical (carnivorous sleep dust monsters?? really???) and not terribly well executed, and the plot just didn't make a ton of sense. I did like that most all of the guest cast were POC, but sadly the script didn't give the actors enough character development to work with. There were some interesting worldbuilding elements, but those bits of interest and the cool episode title (from Macbeth) just felt wasted on the weak and weird (in a bad way) plot. I often like Mark Gatiss as a Doctor Who writer, but this was one of the weaker points in the season.
The Doctor and Clara investigate a murder in Diagon Alley For Aliens and run into
But I'm avoiding the most significant parts of the episode. Clara died, two episodes before I expected her exit. It was surprising and upsetting. It wasn't even a death saving the world, but an attempt to save one person that turned out to be a mistake based on acting without full information. It could have felt pointless and anger-inducing. However, Clara's risktaking all season, her cleverness, and occasional sneakiness made this death feel like a natural possibility based on her character, and her courage in the face of doom and her insistence on reminding the Doctor to be his best self and avoid revenge made her death feel worthy of a long-serving companion. Then the Doctor got kidnapped by teleport, and basically everything is awful.
I would like to point out that Lady Me edited the memories of humans using retcon, a drug developed by Torchwood. This suggests that she followed the Doctor's suggestion to look up Captain Jack Harkness. What happened when the two immortals met? Is there fanfic????
This episode was really damn good. It works because Peter Capaldi is such a strong actor that his performance can carry the show alone. The episode is a carefully crafted puzzle-box (literally) that pulled me in to the Doctor's dread, confusion, frustration, and anger. (I haven't generally been a fan of Moffat as DW showrunner, but when he's in good form he can be one hell of a good scriptwriter, and this was a top notch script.) The monster wasn't all that scary in itself, but Capaldi's reactions were enough to make me willing to accept it as a threat. I'd guessed from the moment we saw the injured hand operating the teleport at the start that the hand likely belonged to the Doctor, but I'd assumed he was caught in a time loop and would get out through some clever timey-wimeyness. The revelation of what was really going on shocked and horrified me, as it was intended to, and I never would have predicted until the montage of deep time passing that the Doctor would literally punch his way out of a problem.
It was a small moment, but the one thing I strongly disliked about this episode was the Doctor confessing that he ran away from Gallifrey because he was scared. That is fundamentally different from the way I see the Doctor and the previously established canon, and it's not a change I like. I believe the Doctor is genuinely scared of dying, but I think his deepest motivation for leaving Gallifrey and becoming what he is, underneath all the sadness of what he's lost over the centuries, more central to his hearts than his fear of death, deeper even than the desire to help others, is restlessness at routine expectations and joy in exploring the unknown. The TARDIS stole him because she wanted to see the universe, and he stole her for the same reason. To suggest otherwise makes the whole show darker and smaller. So that was a frustrating moment, but everything else was darkly excellent.
I have profoundly mixed feelings about this episode. There were parts that made me transcendentally happy and parts that made me want to grumble or even shout.
I didn't much like the earlier parts of the episode focusing on Time Lord politics, their reactions to having the Doctor back, or their prophecies about the Hybrid. I've written before that I thought undoing the Time War's destruction of Gallifrey was a bad storytelling decision, and one of the many reasons for that opinion is that the Time Lords on Gallifrey just aren't that interesting IMHO. Sadly, this episode supported my point. I don't care about the Doctor angrily eating soup outside that stupid recurring barn. I don't understand how the Time Lords are hiding out near the end of time but also apparently were communicating with 21st century earth in order to entrap the Doctor (wouldn't TARDIS-ing back and forth alert the Doctor and whoever else they're avoiding to Gallifrey's location?), but I don't really care to try to figure it out. The whole scene in the cloisters did not come across as mysterious or dangerous. One part I did like about the sojourn on Gallifrey was that we had a Time Lord regenerating onscreen change gender and race. Nice to have something else to wave in the face of those who think the Doctor should always be a white dude.
The plot between Clara and the Doctor, on the other hand, was fascinating. Given the fact that they'd killed Clara off with two episodes to go, I wasn't entirely surprised that the show found an excuse to bring her back onscreen. The Doctor strays very close to Time Lord Victorious territory in his refusal to accept Clara's death, and as worrisome as that always is to see I think it was very believable for how he would respond. I found all the Time Lord's nonsense about a Hybrid prophecy to be pretty annoying, though I did enjoy some of the argument between the Doctor and Lady Me about who was meant by it. (I simultaneously laughed and shouted at the screen when I realized they were going to throw the "Doctor is half human" notion, among the most mocked parts of the highly mockable TV movie, into the mix.) I'm not clear from just one watching whether we got a final answer about whether they Hybrid is Lady Me, the Doctor, or the combination of the Doctor and Clara, but whatever. I was pleased to unexpectedly run into Lady Me at the end of time, though I am somewhat dubious of the ability of someone who can be killed by sufficient injury to actually survive all those billions of years on the slow path. Also, were the Toclafane hanging around outside her lair there at the end of time?
I was SO ANGRY when it looked like we were going to have a repeat of Donna's Unconsenting Memory Wipe exit from the TARDIS. From a Watsonian perspective, I don't think the Doctor has ever done anything that made me angrier than stealing Donna's memories while she begged him not to. From a Doylist perspective, I am semi-okay with RTD's decision to write that because it was part of a larger arc of the Doctor going too far in imposing his will, an arc that was paid off in The Waters of Mars, but we didn't need to go all the way down that road again. This time, I was overjoyed that Clara put into words why that stealing of agency, even to save her life, was a problem. Man, sometimes Moffat's tendency to undo (literally or symbolically) the things he didn't like about RTD's era really rubs me the wrong way (see previously link about why Gallifrey should have stayed gone), but this one time it pleased me so much. Also, this feels like for once the Moff actually paid attention to some of the things that people have criticized about his past writing of women and did better. I am pleasantly shocked. But why can't they go and FIX THE ACTUAL DONNA NOBLE instead of merely redoing that situation with someone different and a different outcome? :`(
I don't really understand why the Doctor forgetting Clara does anything to heal the damage to time caused by her walking around when she should be dead (does it? or is she just gradually splintering the time stream by refusing to go face the raven yet?), and the diner frame story annoyed me a little bit because the Doctor seeking after a person whose personal details he can't remember puts Clara back a little bit in Impossible Girl quest object territory. However, while he might be viewing her as a quest, she is clearly allowed to have her own agenda. Undead Clara and Immortal
Maybe they can track down Donna based on the Doctor's reference to having had to wipe a friend's memory before, figure out a way to restore her memory (surely Me has been around long enough to know some telepaths who can help), and travel with her on their TARDIS. Yes, that could work nicely.
Partway through this episode my dad asked me how I was feeling about it. I told him that it was a tale full of sound and silliness, signifying nothing. I did think it improved near the end, from River's rant about how the Doctor didn't come for her onwards. The scene at the restaurant was well done. However, while I felt that this episode handled River a fair amount better than the majority of her stories, my feelings for her overall character arc remain somewhere between indifference and actual annoyance, and the plot with the head-stealing cyborg thing was just a lot of nonsense, and not even especially entertaining nonsense. I did enjoy the Doctor's irritation at River's inability to recognize him. I didn't hate this episode, but it gets a yawn and slight eyeroll.
I've just realized that if we're getting a new companion next series and there hasn't been casting news yet, it's going to be a LONG time until more Doctor Who. That hiatus will weigh on me, since I'm feeling more engaged with the show than I have in years.
Spreading the Love for Fanworks
Oct. 2nd, 2015 03:07 pmAfter seeing it on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
andrea_deer's journal, I've just signed up for a fannish festival/challenge/event/thing that I think is a great idea.
Rectober aims to have people posting recs for all sorts of fanworks during the month of October. I love sharing the delight of my favorite fanworks with friends and hopefully sending some loving feedback to the creators. I hope some of y'all will join in, because I'd love to see what you recommend.
If you participate, you get to choose how much you want to post. Some people are setting daily posting goals, while others are only committing to two posts the whole month. For myself, I'm setting a goal of seven rec posts over the month of October. That's about twice a week with one built-in skip. I may try for more if the posts go quickly, but seven seems like about the maximum that I can reasonably promise.
I'm probably going to do themed rec posts with a mix of fic and vids. I'm still trying to work out what those themes will be, but some candidates include:
-Excellent Ensembles
-This Broke Me Into Tiny Pieces, Please Share My Pain
-Golden Oldies (fics/vids more than 4-5 years old...obviously fandom goes back much farther than that, but since I started bookmarking fic in 2007 this is a good cut-off)
-Three (or More) Cheers for Poly Ships
-Avoid Beverages Or Risk Keyboard Destruction (crack/humor/general silliness)
-Long Reads Worth the Time Investment
-Fanworks Other Than Fic and Vids (meta, fan art, crafts, fanmixes, etc.)
-Awesome Ladies Being Awesome (focus on one or more female characters saving the day...this may have too much overlap with what I'd rec for everything else)
-Fairy Tales & Fantasy
-Crossovers of Great Win
-This Doesn't Fit My Other Categories But It's Too Awesome To Ignore
Obviously this is more than seven categories, so I'm either going to whittle it down, make some rec posts include one or more categories, or just make more posts. Feel free to comment if there are some of these categories you're especially interested in seeing or if you want to suggest others.
I hope some of you will join me in making LJ lively with the celebration of fannish creativity this month! Click the banner if you want to officially sign up.
Meanwhile, the good news is that Doctor Who is getting a spin-off. The bad news is that this spin-off is NOT about Madame Vastra and Jenny as Victorian interspecies lesbians who fight crime accompanied by sidekick Strax and a pack of plucky street urchins. It's also not flashback/prequel Doctor Who starring Paul McGann. It's not a revitalization of Torchwood, or any other form of spin-off that fans have been asking for. Instead, the spin-off is about teens at Coal Hill School dealing with aliens/monsters, with no mention of characters from previous shows appearing. I will certainly give it a try, but this just feels like a missed opportunity.
andrea_deer's journal, I've just signed up for a fannish festival/challenge/event/thing that I think is a great idea.Rectober aims to have people posting recs for all sorts of fanworks during the month of October. I love sharing the delight of my favorite fanworks with friends and hopefully sending some loving feedback to the creators. I hope some of y'all will join in, because I'd love to see what you recommend.
If you participate, you get to choose how much you want to post. Some people are setting daily posting goals, while others are only committing to two posts the whole month. For myself, I'm setting a goal of seven rec posts over the month of October. That's about twice a week with one built-in skip. I may try for more if the posts go quickly, but seven seems like about the maximum that I can reasonably promise.
I'm probably going to do themed rec posts with a mix of fic and vids. I'm still trying to work out what those themes will be, but some candidates include:
-Excellent Ensembles
-This Broke Me Into Tiny Pieces, Please Share My Pain
-Golden Oldies (fics/vids more than 4-5 years old...obviously fandom goes back much farther than that, but since I started bookmarking fic in 2007 this is a good cut-off)
-Three (or More) Cheers for Poly Ships
-Avoid Beverages Or Risk Keyboard Destruction (crack/humor/general silliness)
-Long Reads Worth the Time Investment
-Fanworks Other Than Fic and Vids (meta, fan art, crafts, fanmixes, etc.)
-Awesome Ladies Being Awesome (focus on one or more female characters saving the day...this may have too much overlap with what I'd rec for everything else)
-Fairy Tales & Fantasy
-Crossovers of Great Win
-This Doesn't Fit My Other Categories But It's Too Awesome To Ignore
Obviously this is more than seven categories, so I'm either going to whittle it down, make some rec posts include one or more categories, or just make more posts. Feel free to comment if there are some of these categories you're especially interested in seeing or if you want to suggest others.
I hope some of you will join me in making LJ lively with the celebration of fannish creativity this month! Click the banner if you want to officially sign up.
Meanwhile, the good news is that Doctor Who is getting a spin-off. The bad news is that this spin-off is NOT about Madame Vastra and Jenny as Victorian interspecies lesbians who fight crime accompanied by sidekick Strax and a pack of plucky street urchins. It's also not flashback/prequel Doctor Who starring Paul McGann. It's not a revitalization of Torchwood, or any other form of spin-off that fans have been asking for. Instead, the spin-off is about teens at Coal Hill School dealing with aliens/monsters, with no mention of characters from previous shows appearing. I will certainly give it a try, but this just feels like a missed opportunity.
Magic and Monsters of Doctor Who
Sep. 25th, 2015 05:52 pmFirst, there's a fun multifandom ficathon going on write now.
You should all head over to check out the fascinating prompts and maybe fill some or leave some of your own.
While over there, I accidentally a Bad Wolf Rose ficlet. (Predictable, I know. I am a one-and-a-half trick pony regarding fanfic.) It's rather darker than my usual take on the Bad Wolf theme, and also unbeta-ed and written in second person, so enter at your own risk. But hey, I wrote something!
Second, I watched the Doctor Who S9 opener, "The Magician's Apprentice" and actually liked it a good deal. The opener was marvelously creepy. While it had a lot going on, it lacked the "throw everything in the pot whether it goes together or not" quality of some of Moffat's episodes.
While over there, I accidentally a Bad Wolf Rose ficlet. (Predictable, I know. I am a one-and-a-half trick pony regarding fanfic.) It's rather darker than my usual take on the Bad Wolf theme, and also unbeta-ed and written in second person, so enter at your own risk. But hey, I wrote something!
Second, I watched the Doctor Who S9 opener, "The Magician's Apprentice" and actually liked it a good deal. The opener was marvelously creepy. While it had a lot going on, it lacked the "throw everything in the pot whether it goes together or not" quality of some of Moffat's episodes.
Peter Capaldi and Michelle Gomez are just so good in their roles. I can't decide if the failure to explain HOW the Master survived is wonderful or maddening, but I'm mostly on the side of wonderful. An explanation would just have been meaningless fantasy-technobabble anyway. I loved the little glimpse of Four in "Genesis of the Daleks." The "axe" fight and early introduction of the word "dude" amused me. Of course a lot will depend on the resolution this week. Moffat's frequent failure to allow lasting consequences could really mess up the themes of accountability and long-term grudges that the first episode set up.
Shipping Songs
Dec. 14th, 2014 01:06 pmMeme time! This one is swiped from the_redjay: at the moment, what songs remind you of your OTPs? Since usually one of the first signs that I'm going to intensely ship a couple is that I start mentally compiling a playlist, I couldn't resist this meme. I'm forcing myself to stick to one song per ship. Links go to some way to listen to the song, either on YouTube or a website with streaming player. For each, I'm including some lyrics that exemplify why I think this song suits this ship.
Doctor Who
Doctor/Rose/Jack-"Forces of the Unseen," Cloud Cult. (This song is begging for a "Parting of the Ways"-centric fanvid.)
Doctor/Rose- "Run," Snow Patrol (This was so hard to choose! I have approximately a zillon songs that make me think of Doctor/Rose, some specific to Nine or Ten or TenToo, some associated with particular fics. "Run" is perhaps my favorite for their relationship as a whole.)
There's the weak and the strong
And the many stars that guide us
We have some of them inside usSherlock
Sherlock/John/Mary- "Little Talks," Of Monsters and Men (This song even mentions an empty house.)
Sherlock/John- "Save Me," Aimee Mann
Natasha/Clint- "Chasing Twisters," Delta Rae
Willow/Tara- "Blood and Fire," Indigo Girls (This is a S6 Willow/Tara song. Also, it's amusing that the peaks of my obsessions with BtVS and the Indigo Girls happened at the same period of high school and early college, so that I have a lot of Indigo Girls songs mentally associated with various characters and plotlines of this show.)
the_redjay: at the moment, what songs remind you of your OTPs? Since usually one of the first signs that I'm going to intensely ship a couple is that I start mentally compiling a playlist, I couldn't resist this meme. I'm forcing myself to stick to one song per ship. Links go to some way to listen to the song, either on YouTube or a website with streaming player. For each, I'm including some lyrics that exemplify why I think this song suits this ship. Doctor Who
Doctor/Rose/Jack-"Forces of the Unseen," Cloud Cult. (This song is begging for a "Parting of the Ways"-centric fanvid.)
It's not impossible, you'll see.
You've never been inside my head:
Ten billion burning suns and belief in a strength that can raise the dead.
It's the warmth when you're next to me.
It's the bright white light of a fevered dream.
It's the storm in your eyes.
It's in the roots of the tree:
The underestimated power of the forces of the unseen.
You've never been inside my head:
Ten billion burning suns and belief in a strength that can raise the dead.
It's the warmth when you're next to me.
It's the bright white light of a fevered dream.
It's the storm in your eyes.
It's in the roots of the tree:
The underestimated power of the forces of the unseen.
Doctor/Rose- "Run," Snow Patrol (This was so hard to choose! I have approximately a zillon songs that make me think of Doctor/Rose, some specific to Nine or Ten or TenToo, some associated with particular fics. "Run" is perhaps my favorite for their relationship as a whole.)
Louder, louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say...
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say...
Doctor/Jack- "The Mercy of the Fallen," Dar Williams (Yeah, I wrote a Doctor/Jack fic that shares this song's title.)
There's the weak and the strong
And the many stars that guide us
We have some of them inside us
Sherlock/John/Mary- "Little Talks," Of Monsters and Men (This song even mentions an empty house.)
'Cause though the truth may vary
This ship will carry
our bodies safe to shore
This ship will carry
our bodies safe to shore
Sherlock/John- "Save Me," Aimee Mann
But can you save me?
Come on and save me...
If you could save me,
From the ranks of the freaks,
Who suspect they could never love anyone.
Come on and save me...
If you could save me,
From the ranks of the freaks,
Who suspect they could never love anyone.
I'm feeling better ever since you know me
I was a lonely soul but that's the old me
It's been a long time coming since I've seen your face
I've been everywhere and back trying to replace
Everything that I broke 'til my feet went numb
Praying like a fool just shot the gun
I was a lonely soul but that's the old me
It's been a long time coming since I've seen your face
I've been everywhere and back trying to replace
Everything that I broke 'til my feet went numb
Praying like a fool just shot the gun
Natasha/Clint- "Chasing Twisters," Delta Rae
So kiss me now
This whiskey on my breath
Feel the lives that I have taken
What little soul that I have left.
And oh, my god
I'll take you to the grave
The only love I've ever known
The only soul I've ever saved.
This whiskey on my breath
Feel the lives that I have taken
What little soul that I have left.
And oh, my god
I'll take you to the grave
The only love I've ever known
The only soul I've ever saved.
And I guess that's how you started
Like a pinprick to my heart
But at this point you rush right through me
And I start to drown
And there's not enough room
In this world for my pain
Signals cross and love gets lost
And time passed makes it plain
Of all my demon spirits
I need you the most
Like a pinprick to my heart
But at this point you rush right through me
And I start to drown
And there's not enough room
In this world for my pain
Signals cross and love gets lost
And time passed makes it plain
Of all my demon spirits
I need you the most
Willow/Tara- "Blood and Fire," Indigo Girls (This is a S6 Willow/Tara song. Also, it's amusing that the peaks of my obsessions with BtVS and the Indigo Girls happened at the same period of high school and early college, so that I have a lot of Indigo Girls songs mentally associated with various characters and plotlines of this show.)
You have spent nights, thinking of me
Missing my arms, but you needed to leave.
Leaving the cuts, leaving my burns,
Hoping I'd learn.
Blood and Fire
Are too much for these restless arms to hold.
And my nights of desire are calling me,
Back to your fold.
Missing my arms, but you needed to leave.
Leaving the cuts, leaving my burns,
Hoping I'd learn.
Blood and Fire
Are too much for these restless arms to hold.
And my nights of desire are calling me,
Back to your fold.
X-Files
Mulder/Scully - "Head Over Feet," Alanis Morissette (Ah, my first OTP! Back in high school I made an actual casette mixed tape to express my feelings about their UST and ultimate true love. This is one of the songs that was on there.)
Mulder/Scully - "Head Over Feet," Alanis Morissette (Ah, my first OTP! Back in high school I made an actual casette mixed tape to express my feelings about their UST and ultimate true love. This is one of the songs that was on there.)
You're the best listener that I've ever met
You're my best friend
Best friend with benefits
What took me so long?
You're my best friend
Best friend with benefits
What took me so long?
Robot of Sherwood
Sep. 7th, 2014 11:52 pmI haven't enjoyed an episode of Doctor Who this much in a long while.
This was not exactly a super deep or plot-important episode, but I thought it was a thoroughly fun romp with some good character moments. I continue to really enjoy Peter Capaldi as the Doctor, and Clara feels more like a person this series than last series. Here is my disorganized bullet-point list of thoughts about "Robot of Sherwood":
-The Doctor and Robin Hood spent most of the episode bickering, including while handcuffed together. Am I the only one who came out of this episode shipping Twelve/Robin Hood? Because that is classic Belligerent Sexual Tension behavior IMHO. (Warning: link goes to TV tropes.)
-The Doctor flat out admits that he uses getting captured as a strategy. No one is surprised. This series, Clara is proving talented at using this strategy to extract information. I also love how pleased she was about admitting that she lied to the Sheriff.
-The plot for this episode was silly bordering on nonsensical, but that really wasn't the point. Fire a golden arrow at the spaceship to make sure it gets to orbit and doesn't explode too low? Sure, why not. I'll take this sort of consciously goofy thing any day over a story that tries to be driven by an intricate plot but is actually full of holes to anyone who bothers to think about it for more than 30 seconds. (**coughmoffatcough**)
-Twelve was so certain that Robin Hood wasn't a real person, and yet managed to land exactly where Robin was at a key moment in his personal timeline. Sexy must have really wanted to make her hubby eat his words.
-Apparently Robin's minstrel was played by Mark Gatiss's husband Ian Hallard. (Also, I enjoyed the Monty Python references with that character.)
-The Doctor fenced against Robin Hood with a spoon. This is so very typical of the man whose primary technical gadget is a screwdriver.
-I very much enjoyed the swashbuckling nature of the fights and action. Robin stuck a dagger into a tapestry and slid down. He and the Sheriff rode ropes up to fight on a beam above the vat of liquid gold, because why the hell not. Then Robin copied the Doctor's moves from earlier to send the Sheriff off the beam into the gold, which was a nice touch. It's all gloriously over the top.
-LOLing forever at the Doctor using trick arrows to cheat at the archery competition and being so proud of the fact that he'll be the last to starve to death in their cell. The Doctor's competitive streak seems to be strong in this incarnation.
-I liked the points made in Tor.com's review of this episode that Twelve's loud disbelief in the reality of Robin Hood is a pointed departure from Eleven, who was often framed as a fairytale (both by Moffat and in the Doctor's own self-conception.) Eleven did not always do right by his loved ones despite or sometimes because of his heroic posturing. Twelve has consciously distanced himself from being a fairytale or even a hero. And yet he discusses with Robin (and sadly I can't remember which one of them said what off the top of my head) that sometimes the legend of a hero can be good for people, even if the person behind the legend is not so pure and perfect and doesn't even think of himself as a hero. Story has been one of the recurring themes in Moffat-era DW (it's one of the few aspects I do like about this era), and I think it's been a long while since we've had an episode handle it as well as this one.
-I hope next year's Gallifrey One is full of lots of cosplay of medieval Clara, Robin Hood, and spoon-wielding Twelve.
-So far I have been liking series 8 decently well. It's less awfully manic, Peter Capaldi's take on the Doctor is a breath of fresh air, and Clara has grown more of a personality. I am highly dubious about the "promised land" arc, but it's too early to really judge that.
-I should probably acquire a Twelve icon.
This was not exactly a super deep or plot-important episode, but I thought it was a thoroughly fun romp with some good character moments. I continue to really enjoy Peter Capaldi as the Doctor, and Clara feels more like a person this series than last series. Here is my disorganized bullet-point list of thoughts about "Robot of Sherwood":
-The Doctor flat out admits that he uses getting captured as a strategy. No one is surprised. This series, Clara is proving talented at using this strategy to extract information. I also love how pleased she was about admitting that she lied to the Sheriff.
-The plot for this episode was silly bordering on nonsensical, but that really wasn't the point. Fire a golden arrow at the spaceship to make sure it gets to orbit and doesn't explode too low? Sure, why not. I'll take this sort of consciously goofy thing any day over a story that tries to be driven by an intricate plot but is actually full of holes to anyone who bothers to think about it for more than 30 seconds. (**coughmoffatcough**)
-Twelve was so certain that Robin Hood wasn't a real person, and yet managed to land exactly where Robin was at a key moment in his personal timeline. Sexy must have really wanted to make her hubby eat his words.
-Apparently Robin's minstrel was played by Mark Gatiss's husband Ian Hallard. (Also, I enjoyed the Monty Python references with that character.)
-The Doctor fenced against Robin Hood with a spoon. This is so very typical of the man whose primary technical gadget is a screwdriver.
-I very much enjoyed the swashbuckling nature of the fights and action. Robin stuck a dagger into a tapestry and slid down. He and the Sheriff rode ropes up to fight on a beam above the vat of liquid gold, because why the hell not. Then Robin copied the Doctor's moves from earlier to send the Sheriff off the beam into the gold, which was a nice touch. It's all gloriously over the top.
-LOLing forever at the Doctor using trick arrows to cheat at the archery competition and being so proud of the fact that he'll be the last to starve to death in their cell. The Doctor's competitive streak seems to be strong in this incarnation.
-I liked the points made in Tor.com's review of this episode that Twelve's loud disbelief in the reality of Robin Hood is a pointed departure from Eleven, who was often framed as a fairytale (both by Moffat and in the Doctor's own self-conception.) Eleven did not always do right by his loved ones despite or sometimes because of his heroic posturing. Twelve has consciously distanced himself from being a fairytale or even a hero. And yet he discusses with Robin (and sadly I can't remember which one of them said what off the top of my head) that sometimes the legend of a hero can be good for people, even if the person behind the legend is not so pure and perfect and doesn't even think of himself as a hero. Story has been one of the recurring themes in Moffat-era DW (it's one of the few aspects I do like about this era), and I think it's been a long while since we've had an episode handle it as well as this one.
-I hope next year's Gallifrey One is full of lots of cosplay of medieval Clara, Robin Hood, and spoon-wielding Twelve.
-So far I have been liking series 8 decently well. It's less awfully manic, Peter Capaldi's take on the Doctor is a breath of fresh air, and Clara has grown more of a personality. I am highly dubious about the "promised land" arc, but it's too early to really judge that.
-I should probably acquire a Twelve icon.
Doctor Who, "Deep Breath"
Aug. 25th, 2014 12:56 pmWe have a new Doctor! A new start! Alas, it seems like my disconnect from recent Doctor Who was due to showrunner more than actor playing the Doctor, and that hasn't changed. Still, this was an okay episode with some things I very much enjoyed in this episode in addition to the things that I disliked.
The Good
-Peter Capaldi as the Doctor. He is every bit as good as I'd hoped.One thing I'm especially excited about is that he can bring the Oncoming Storm with all the ferocity and gravitas that aspect of the Doctor demands. Matt Smith brought a lot of wonderful things to his portrayal of the Doctor, but I never really found his Oncoming Storm to be convincing. When he shouted, he sounded more petulant than frightening. (Eleven could be very scary, but he was scariest in cold and quiet ways, like outright lying to his companions, or when seemingly jolly and triumphant, like transforming every human who watched the moon landing into a killer.) Eyebrows and insults to humans are both things I'm glad to have from the Doctor. I will be interested to see him when he's not still rattled by regeneration, because scaring random tramps for no good reason may be taking things a little too far.
-Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax automatically double the awesome of any episode they are in. I was especially excited when they mentioned the Paternoster Irregulars being out on the case. We didn't see these irregulars, but I'm going to go ahead and assume it's a gang of street urchins. IT WOULD BE SO NATURAL TO GIVE VASTRA AND JENNY A SPINOFF AIMED AT KIDS. I also love that when appropriate they actually call the police to help them deal with stuff.
-The pacing of the episode was much less irritatingly manic than a lot of the recent era of Doctor Who. It felt like an appropriate amount of story for the time allotted, not trying to cram in an incredibly convoluted plot (not to mention every possible cheap joke) into too small a time. That was such a relief!
-The moment in the restaurant when they realize that the other diners are all automatons was intensely creepy and cool.
-While it was clearly one of those things that Moffat wrote because he thought it would be neat rather than because it made sense, I did rather like the dinosaur appearing in Victorian London and then spitting out the TARDIS.
-Scottish Doctor gets to complain about things and naturally gravitates towards Glasgow.
The Bad
-Why the hell is Clara, supposedly the one companion who has known the Doctor in EVERY SINGLE ONE of his lives, so thrown by his regeneration? My impression was that she remembered at least aspects of that whole saving the Doctor across many lives thing. Her panic makes no sense. Like, I can understand being deeply sad that the Doctor she knows from her real, original life is gone, but this degree of doubt and fear is super inconsistent with her character. If Moffat felt the need for an audience surrogate to express viewers' distress and confusion at the Doctor's change, well, we never saw Vastra and Jenny interact with any Doctor besides Eleven, so they haven't personally experienced a regeneration. Let Jenny be the one who's doubtful and upset on behalf of the audience! Or just trust that your audience is aware of how this regeneration thing works.
-On the subject of inconsistent and weird Clara characterization, the Doctor basically called her an egomaniac childish game-player, and other than maaaaaybe being childish I can't really see how that describes her. Maybe because the episodes with Modern Clara focused so much on her Impossible Girl status that they never really bothered to develop all that much of a personality for her beyond Generic Plucky Companion. Or possibly the fault is with me for missing the signs that she's an egomaniac childish game-player because lately I've been so meh about current Doctor Who that I don't think I've watched any of Clara's episodes more than once. With no disrespect to Jenna Coleman (who does a pretty good job with what she's given), I honestly don't care about Clara. And that's a very bad thing for the show when it can't make me give a rat's ass one way or the other about the companion.
-Vastra and Jenny are married, but we still only watch them lock lips for a contrived sharing oxygen moment? Moffat, if you are trying to do better about representation, it isn't working.
-Moffat sure loves recycling his ideas, doesn't he? Here we have the need to refrain from a basic biological function so monsters can't get you (previously blinking, now breathing) and the clockwork droids from The Girl in the Fireplace. I was seriously dubious about the whole "hold your breath and the robots think you're one of them!" thing, when the people were showing so many other signs of not being robots. It doesn't make a lick of logical sense, but it does make a sort of nightmare-sense, so I'm not too annoyed at that. However, I wasn't a fan of the clockwork droids being reused in this way. They were great the first time, but I thought they made less sense in this context. Like, there are all sorts of materials they could have used in Victorian London that would have been a hell of a lot easier than setting up a fake restaurant to trap humans. (Context in which reusing the clockwork droids could have been cool: start off on a fully-functioning 51st-century spaceship with all the humans aboard very proud of their new clockwork-biological-digital hybrid technology. The Doctor shows up informs them that this technology is a terrible idea, but nobody listens until sure enough something goes wrong and the droids start picking off the crew one by one in some creepy space-horror.)
-"You can't see me, can you? You look at me and you can't see me. Do you have any idea what that's like?" Hey Doctor, remember all that time you looked at Clara and saw her Dalek and Victorian doppelgangers, seeing the mystery but not really her, Clara Oswald the real 21st-century woman? I think she knows very well what that's like, you ass.
-They killed the dinosaur. :( :( :(
Things About Which I Have Conflicting or Undecided Feelings
-The phone call from Eleven. I didn't know that was coming, and even as someone who was happy to see him regenerate it still hit in the feels. However, I also think it was unnecessary emotional manipulation.
-The mystery woman who appeared with the revived droid captain at the end. I didn't catch it from the show, but apparently she's called Missy. Missy could be short for Mistress, which could mean that she's the newest regeneration of the Master. While I would kinda prefer to leave the Master character alone for a while longer, I could potentially get behind the Master as Evil Mary Poppins (especially if they make it clear that the Master always thought of the Doctor in a boyfriend way, even before regenerating female). If she turns out to be a regeneration of River Song I will throw things. Mostly I think I'd be glad if she's a new character.
-At the very end, the Doctor suggests that he and Clara go out for chips or coffee. She tells him that he's buying, but he claims that he doesn't have any money. This is a very clear callback to Nine and Rose's conversation in "The End of the World," a moment I absolutely loved. I can't decide how I feel about it being used here. It hits me in the feels, and is a nice reminder that some things about the Doctor stay constant even across many regenerations. On the other hand, part of me wants Moffat to keep his grubby typing fingers off of the era when I consistently loved Doctor Who, to build his own characters and not just manipulate the audience's heartstrings with what came before. Mostly, it makes me want to rewatch Nine and Rose.
In conclusion, RIP dinosaur.
The Good
-Peter Capaldi as the Doctor. He is every bit as good as I'd hoped.
-Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax automatically double the awesome of any episode they are in. I was especially excited when they mentioned the Paternoster Irregulars being out on the case. We didn't see these irregulars, but I'm going to go ahead and assume it's a gang of street urchins. IT WOULD BE SO NATURAL TO GIVE VASTRA AND JENNY A SPINOFF AIMED AT KIDS. I also love that when appropriate they actually call the police to help them deal with stuff.
-The pacing of the episode was much less irritatingly manic than a lot of the recent era of Doctor Who. It felt like an appropriate amount of story for the time allotted, not trying to cram in an incredibly convoluted plot (not to mention every possible cheap joke) into too small a time. That was such a relief!
-The moment in the restaurant when they realize that the other diners are all automatons was intensely creepy and cool.
-While it was clearly one of those things that Moffat wrote because he thought it would be neat rather than because it made sense, I did rather like the dinosaur appearing in Victorian London and then spitting out the TARDIS.
-Scottish Doctor gets to complain about things and naturally gravitates towards Glasgow.
-Why the hell is Clara, supposedly the one companion who has known the Doctor in EVERY SINGLE ONE of his lives, so thrown by his regeneration? My impression was that she remembered at least aspects of that whole saving the Doctor across many lives thing. Her panic makes no sense. Like, I can understand being deeply sad that the Doctor she knows from her real, original life is gone, but this degree of doubt and fear is super inconsistent with her character. If Moffat felt the need for an audience surrogate to express viewers' distress and confusion at the Doctor's change, well, we never saw Vastra and Jenny interact with any Doctor besides Eleven, so they haven't personally experienced a regeneration. Let Jenny be the one who's doubtful and upset on behalf of the audience! Or just trust that your audience is aware of how this regeneration thing works.
-On the subject of inconsistent and weird Clara characterization, the Doctor basically called her an egomaniac childish game-player, and other than maaaaaybe being childish I can't really see how that describes her. Maybe because the episodes with Modern Clara focused so much on her Impossible Girl status that they never really bothered to develop all that much of a personality for her beyond Generic Plucky Companion. Or possibly the fault is with me for missing the signs that she's an egomaniac childish game-player because lately I've been so meh about current Doctor Who that I don't think I've watched any of Clara's episodes more than once. With no disrespect to Jenna Coleman (who does a pretty good job with what she's given), I honestly don't care about Clara. And that's a very bad thing for the show when it can't make me give a rat's ass one way or the other about the companion.
-Vastra and Jenny are married, but we still only watch them lock lips for a contrived sharing oxygen moment? Moffat, if you are trying to do better about representation, it isn't working.
-Moffat sure loves recycling his ideas, doesn't he? Here we have the need to refrain from a basic biological function so monsters can't get you (previously blinking, now breathing) and the clockwork droids from The Girl in the Fireplace. I was seriously dubious about the whole "hold your breath and the robots think you're one of them!" thing, when the people were showing so many other signs of not being robots. It doesn't make a lick of logical sense, but it does make a sort of nightmare-sense, so I'm not too annoyed at that. However, I wasn't a fan of the clockwork droids being reused in this way. They were great the first time, but I thought they made less sense in this context. Like, there are all sorts of materials they could have used in Victorian London that would have been a hell of a lot easier than setting up a fake restaurant to trap humans. (Context in which reusing the clockwork droids could have been cool: start off on a fully-functioning 51st-century spaceship with all the humans aboard very proud of their new clockwork-biological-digital hybrid technology. The Doctor shows up informs them that this technology is a terrible idea, but nobody listens until sure enough something goes wrong and the droids start picking off the crew one by one in some creepy space-horror.)
-"You can't see me, can you? You look at me and you can't see me. Do you have any idea what that's like?" Hey Doctor, remember all that time you looked at Clara and saw her Dalek and Victorian doppelgangers, seeing the mystery but not really her, Clara Oswald the real 21st-century woman? I think she knows very well what that's like, you ass.
-They killed the dinosaur. :( :( :(
-The phone call from Eleven. I didn't know that was coming, and even as someone who was happy to see him regenerate it still hit in the feels. However, I also think it was unnecessary emotional manipulation.
-The mystery woman who appeared with the revived droid captain at the end. I didn't catch it from the show, but apparently she's called Missy. Missy could be short for Mistress, which could mean that she's the newest regeneration of the Master. While I would kinda prefer to leave the Master character alone for a while longer, I could potentially get behind the Master as Evil Mary Poppins (especially if they make it clear that the Master always thought of the Doctor in a boyfriend way, even before regenerating female). If she turns out to be a regeneration of River Song I will throw things. Mostly I think I'd be glad if she's a new character.
-At the very end, the Doctor suggests that he and Clara go out for chips or coffee. She tells him that he's buying, but he claims that he doesn't have any money. This is a very clear callback to Nine and Rose's conversation in "The End of the World," a moment I absolutely loved. I can't decide how I feel about it being used here. It hits me in the feels, and is a nice reminder that some things about the Doctor stay constant even across many regenerations. On the other hand, part of me wants Moffat to keep his grubby typing fingers off of the era when I consistently loved Doctor Who, to build his own characters and not just manipulate the audience's heartstrings with what came before. Mostly, it makes me want to rewatch Nine and Rose.
In conclusion, RIP dinosaur.
The Time of the Doctor reaction post
Dec. 26th, 2013 01:50 amI am apparently Grumpy Fan in relation to Doctor Who. While there were definitely some things I enjoyed, if you are looking for unadulterated squee you might want to scroll past.
Sadly, "The Time of the Doctor" carries on the tradition from "The End of Time" of sending off a popular Doctor with an overstuffed wreck of a final episode. I wish Moffat had stripped off some of the confusing excess plot to give the episode a stronger emotional core.
On the one hand, I was glad to see several of the unresolved plot holes from Eleven's era finally given a bit more explanation (the crack in the universe, the exploding TARDIS, "silence will fall when the question is asked," etc.), but I sort of feel like it was too much for one episode to handle. Certainly there was no reason to have Daleks AND Silence AND Weeping Angels AND Cybermen AND Sontarans there. This ep fixed some plot holes, but created new ones: if the Doctor didn't actually die on Trenzalore, where did the giant TARDIS-grave in "The Name of the Doctor" come from? Also, I am a bit annoyed that Moffat created the War Doctor and decided to count the metacrisis as a regeneration to manufacture the danger of this being the Doctor's last life, but then this episode was the first we heard of it. In "The Impossible Astronaut" he got shot once and apparently started to regenerate until he was immediately shot again. Where did that attempted regeneration come from?
The Day of the Doctor: so Gallifrey isn't destroyed, but it's lost and who knows when/if we'll ever see it again?
The Time of the Doctor: O HAI GUISE GALLIFREY HERE WITH A JOKE FOR YOU. KNOCK KNOCK. WHO'S THERE? DOCTOR WHO? HA HA GET IT? SERIOUSLY GUISE LET US OUT SO WE CAN RESTART THE TIEM WAR AND BURN DOWN THE UNIVERSE. KTHX. OH BTW, HERE ARE SOME BONUS REGENERATIONS WE THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE. MERRY CHRISTMAS.
(I have no idea why the Time Lords speak in capslock LOLspeak. I also have no idea why appealing to their love of the Doctor worked to get him a new regeneration cycle in the episode, because most of the Time Lords think the Doctor should go fuck himself.)
Eleven lived for like 200 years while trying to run away from his supposed death in series 6 and didn't appear to age a bit. Here, Eleven spent 300 years on Trenzalore and aged tremendously. Why so uneven? Maybe it was not having the TARDIS with him that caused so much aging? I don't think Nine or Ten would have survived being stuck for three centuries in one small town on one planet with sanity intact. I'm somewhat surprised that Eleven did. I did like all the children's drawings he kept in his living space in the town.
Good to see Clara having a life beyond the Doctor, even if none of her family members had more than one personality trait apiece. This didn't need to be a Clara-centric episode, but it would be nice if her family reappeared and got deepened during Clara's tenure as a companion. I was NOT HAPPY about Clara blurting out that she traveled with the Doctor because she fancied him under the truth field. That was not at all the vibe I got from modern!Clara in S7. She didn't fully trust him for quite some time, and even when she trusted him I always got the impression that she thought of him as a weird platonic friend, sort of an odd combination of mentor and someone who needs looking after, not a hot guy she wanted to bang. Other than that, I thought the truth field was interesting both as a plot device and joke source. (Unlike the nudity jokes, which I mostly found really unfunny.)
I have seen some people speculating that the priestess lady (Tasha) may actually be a previously unknown regeneration of River Song, which would make the fact that she uses so many of the same character tropes more excusable (yet another woman who has power but is head over heels lustful for the Doctor).
One of my favorite moments of the episode was when the Doctor whipped off his wig to reveal the shaved head underneath. I knew that Matt Smith was wearing a wig for most of the filming of this after having shaved his head for a different role, but I was never expecting it to be lampshaded like that. The wig gave Eleven one last piece of ridiculous headgear before the end!
I was unsurprised that Karen Gillian got a cameo, but I thought it was a really sweet touch. Aww, Amy. That was pretty obviously a different child standing in for wee!Amelia, but I suppose the original is probably looking too different by now.
The Doctor's regenerations are getting bigger every time in New Who. Nine glowed, but didn't mess up anything other than his ability to stay conscious when regenerating into Ten. Ten set fire to the TARDIS control room and made his poor wife crash when he changed to Eleven. Eleven blasted an entire Dalek fleet out of the sky with his regeneration energy. I dread to think what will blow up when it's Twelve's turn.
Overall, while I think Matt Smith is immensely talented and has brought a lot to the role, I'm not really sad to see him go. Even as I appreciate Matt Smith as an actor and a person, Eleven's just never been my Doctor. (Most of that is the writing, and sadly the showrunner isn't changing, but perhaps the new Doctor will be written differently enough to hook me a bit more.) Eleven's had a big three seasons, with a lot of crap episodes but also some true gold, and now it's time for a change.
Hooray for eyebrows!
On the one hand, I was glad to see several of the unresolved plot holes from Eleven's era finally given a bit more explanation (the crack in the universe, the exploding TARDIS, "silence will fall when the question is asked," etc.), but I sort of feel like it was too much for one episode to handle. Certainly there was no reason to have Daleks AND Silence AND Weeping Angels AND Cybermen AND Sontarans there. This ep fixed some plot holes, but created new ones: if the Doctor didn't actually die on Trenzalore, where did the giant TARDIS-grave in "The Name of the Doctor" come from? Also, I am a bit annoyed that Moffat created the War Doctor and decided to count the metacrisis as a regeneration to manufacture the danger of this being the Doctor's last life, but then this episode was the first we heard of it. In "The Impossible Astronaut" he got shot once and apparently started to regenerate until he was immediately shot again. Where did that attempted regeneration come from?
The Day of the Doctor: so Gallifrey isn't destroyed, but it's lost and who knows when/if we'll ever see it again?
The Time of the Doctor: O HAI GUISE GALLIFREY HERE WITH A JOKE FOR YOU. KNOCK KNOCK. WHO'S THERE? DOCTOR WHO? HA HA GET IT? SERIOUSLY GUISE LET US OUT SO WE CAN RESTART THE TIEM WAR AND BURN DOWN THE UNIVERSE. KTHX. OH BTW, HERE ARE SOME BONUS REGENERATIONS WE THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE. MERRY CHRISTMAS.
(I have no idea why the Time Lords speak in capslock LOLspeak. I also have no idea why appealing to their love of the Doctor worked to get him a new regeneration cycle in the episode, because most of the Time Lords think the Doctor should go fuck himself.)
Eleven lived for like 200 years while trying to run away from his supposed death in series 6 and didn't appear to age a bit. Here, Eleven spent 300 years on Trenzalore and aged tremendously. Why so uneven? Maybe it was not having the TARDIS with him that caused so much aging? I don't think Nine or Ten would have survived being stuck for three centuries in one small town on one planet with sanity intact. I'm somewhat surprised that Eleven did. I did like all the children's drawings he kept in his living space in the town.
Good to see Clara having a life beyond the Doctor, even if none of her family members had more than one personality trait apiece. This didn't need to be a Clara-centric episode, but it would be nice if her family reappeared and got deepened during Clara's tenure as a companion. I was NOT HAPPY about Clara blurting out that she traveled with the Doctor because she fancied him under the truth field. That was not at all the vibe I got from modern!Clara in S7. She didn't fully trust him for quite some time, and even when she trusted him I always got the impression that she thought of him as a weird platonic friend, sort of an odd combination of mentor and someone who needs looking after, not a hot guy she wanted to bang. Other than that, I thought the truth field was interesting both as a plot device and joke source. (Unlike the nudity jokes, which I mostly found really unfunny.)
I have seen some people speculating that the priestess lady (Tasha) may actually be a previously unknown regeneration of River Song, which would make the fact that she uses so many of the same character tropes more excusable (yet another woman who has power but is head over heels lustful for the Doctor).
One of my favorite moments of the episode was when the Doctor whipped off his wig to reveal the shaved head underneath. I knew that Matt Smith was wearing a wig for most of the filming of this after having shaved his head for a different role, but I was never expecting it to be lampshaded like that. The wig gave Eleven one last piece of ridiculous headgear before the end!
I was unsurprised that Karen Gillian got a cameo, but I thought it was a really sweet touch. Aww, Amy. That was pretty obviously a different child standing in for wee!Amelia, but I suppose the original is probably looking too different by now.
The Doctor's regenerations are getting bigger every time in New Who. Nine glowed, but didn't mess up anything other than his ability to stay conscious when regenerating into Ten. Ten set fire to the TARDIS control room and made his poor wife crash when he changed to Eleven. Eleven blasted an entire Dalek fleet out of the sky with his regeneration energy. I dread to think what will blow up when it's Twelve's turn.
Overall, while I think Matt Smith is immensely talented and has brought a lot to the role, I'm not really sad to see him go. Even as I appreciate Matt Smith as an actor and a person, Eleven's just never been my Doctor. (Most of that is the writing, and sadly the showrunner isn't changing, but perhaps the new Doctor will be written differently enough to hook me a bit more.) Eleven's had a big three seasons, with a lot of crap episodes but also some true gold, and now it's time for a change.
Hooray for eyebrows!
On the Importance of the Loss of Gallifrey
Dec. 1st, 2013 02:36 pmJust before the 50th anniversary special last week, I re-watched a few of Clara's episodes to remind myself of the recent plot arcs, and I also watched "School Reunion" from S2 because it's among my favorite Ten and Rose episodes and because of the theme of connecting this show's past and future. In "School Reunion," there's an exchange that I found relevant to "The Day of the Doctor." This is from when Mr. Finch, the Krillitane leader, is trying to tempt the Doctor to share the power they hope to gain with the magical equation thing.
THE DOCTOR: I could save everyone...
MR FINCH: Yes.
THE DOCTOR: I could stop the war...
SARAH JANE: No. The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss -- they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it's a world, or a relationship... everything has its time. And everything ends.
The pain of the Time War and the loss of his people have defined the post-2005 Doctor as much as his (still vast) happiness at traveling the universe and love for those who travel with him. Now, "The Day of the Doctor" tells us that Gallifrey was never destroyed (or irretrievably time locked, or whatever) at all, just temporarily hidden. I'd like to explain why I think this huge change to the Doctor's past and future is a mistake.
Obviously other people will have different perspectives on this. I've read some great meta by people who loved this way of resolving the Time War. I can see the appeal of that view (especially from those who are originally Classic Who fans who see this as a return to the proper order of the universe), but these are my feelings.
A brief note: "The End of Time" already established that Gallifrey wasn't actually blown up but time-locked. However, because the Doctor referred to himself as the last of his kind and considered Gallifrey beyond retrieval, it was effectively destroyed. So sometimes I refer to the pre-DotD continuity as featuring the destruction of Gallifrey, even if TEoT tells us that destruction wasn't technically what happened.
-The Day of the Doctor's version of the Time War actually undermines Doctor Who' anti-violence message. This point is a little counterintuitive (isn't less genocide better?), but hear me out. With the previous understanding of the Time War, the message was that the biggest war imaginable could only end in mutual annihilation. War corrupts whole societies. It is a force of pure destruction, and EVERYONE inevitably loses. War has no real winners, only damaged survivors. In "The Day of the Doctor," the Daleks were still destroyed but the Time Lords were saved: a victory. Am I the only one thinking of a previous instance where the Doctor decided to save certain people whose deaths should have been fixed and declared himself victorious?
-Related to that, I have a problem with the fact that "The Day of the Doctor" didn't even pause to suggest that the annihilation of the Daleks might not be something to unequivocally celebrate. Of course the Daleks are evil, and there wasn't exactly much room for reasoning or negotiation in this scenario, nor an obvious way to contain them short of killing. But still, the Doctor has refused to destroy the Dalek race before. I would expect at least a hint of regret that billions of thinking beings were wiped away. I find it troubling that now genocide (even of Daleks) is portrayed as a handy and potentially glorious path to victory.
-Doctor Who is a fundamentally hopeful show, where time and time again the Doctor is faced with a choice between tragic alternatives but instead comes up with a third way to save everyone. It's one of the things I love about the show. However, I think the show's formula works better with the destruction of Gallifrey as part of the backstory as a time when hope died. It raises the stakes for every other story if the audience knows that the Doctor can fail, that there came a day in the past when the only choice was between unfathomable violence and certain doom for the entire universe and even the Doctor could not find a third way. Of course the Doctor has other failures, but I think the loss of Gallifrey is especially important. The Time War is the dark cloud that accentuates all the show's other silver linings. "Everybody lives" is not quite so enormous if it's not qualified by "just this once."
-The Doctor has the potential to be really, really scary. He is the thing that frightens the monsters, the Oncoming Storm. Part of why armies back away from him is that the smart monsters know exactly what he is capable of when pushed. The Doctor is deeply moral, but it is a choice that he must make and re-make every time. By saying that he never could or would do something as drastic as destroying Gallifrey, you take away some of the weight from all the other times he chooses to reign in his power. I think the Doctor's potential for darkness is fascinating. It certainly shouldn't be emphasized too deeply, because again, this is a hopeful show about someone who is truly good, but it is an important that the Doctor and everyone around him know what he can do.
-It was the wrong time to undo the loss of Gallifrey. If the 75th (or even possibly the 60th) anniversary wanted to make a big change, I might feel like enough time had passed to make it a little more appropriate. If the Bad Wolf had brought back Gallifrey in "Parting of the Ways," it might have felt like a natural culmination of S1's storyline. But not now. Not only eight years after the Time War became a thing, but after three series of Moffat largely ignoring it.
-While watching "The Day of the Doctor," I was briefly terrified that the show was about to banish all of New Who from the continuity. It avoided that pitfall by having the Doctor still believe that he destroyed Gallifrey, so series 1-7 still work. However, I feel like having the Doctor mourn and agonize over something that didn't actually happen makes all of those deep emotions feel a little cheapened. I hate that whenever I go back to watch Nine and Ten (or the very few episodes of Eleven that mention it), the fact that the Doctor didn't actually push the button will always be in the back of my mind. It means that the Doctors I care most about have built much of their life around a lie.
-My Doctor is Nine, and my second favorite is Ten. I very much like Classic Who, but for me it always feels like a prequel to the real story. The Time War is a vital part of the origin story of my Doctor. Undoing the loss of Gallifrey is not quite as drastic as if Batman were to discover that his parents were actually alive and in witness protection, but it's certainly along those lines. I also feel like much (not all) of Classic Who is a children's show that many adults also enjoyed, while most of New Who is a grownup show that also appeals to children. The Time War is part of what made that important distinction.
-I haven't seen that many of the Classic Who stories set on Gallifrey, but the few I have were frankly dull. Ditching Gallifrey freed New Who from all that tedium and potentially confusing continuity. While I would be excited to see Romana, the Master, and the Rani again, honestly I think bringing back the other Time Lords is a bad idea from a storytelling perspective.
-If the Doctor can retroactively remove the single worst thing in his past, it makes him less of a real person. We humans almost all have something in our past from which we struggle to move on: someone we've lost, something we're guilty about, a miserable time or terrible experience we'd like to forget. We get better slowly, and sometimes things happen that bring it all back and force us to confront the pain again. We find joy in time, and we don't think about the bad thing so often, but it is always part of us. The Doctor has been making that journey of recovery, but it wasn't done. There isn't a done for anyone except Steven Moffat's Doctor. Removing the loss of Gallifrey in an instant is a far less interesting and relatable story than watching the Doctor deal with it over many years and never quite completely.
Criticizing a piece of writing is easier than creating it. I also wanted to share two ideas for what could have been done with a 50th anniversary special that I would have found more satisfying than what actually happened.
1) As a potential fundamentally different premise for the special, I would have loved to have seen something like a less hopeless version of The Boy Who Killed Time, wherein the TARDIS or Time as a whole is damaged and different times start bleeding together, allowing Clara and Eleven to see and interact with anyone who has ever been on the TARDIS. This would be an excuse for appearances by lots of previous Doctors and companions, especially if you inserted some technobabble about time fields leading to rapid aging or something to excuse the fact that the classic actors look older. There is even recent precedent for people seeing past and future versions of themselves inside the TARDIS in "Journey to the Heart of the TARDIS." It could have been resolved with working together by all the versions of the Doctor, potentially with the TARDIS taking the form of Bad Wolf Rose or even Idris to participate in her own rescue. It would have been fantastic and a more honest tribute to the whole 50-year history of the show.
2) As a minor change to the existing special that would still leave Gallifrey destroyed but inject a bit of hope into the wreckage of the Time War, instead of having all the Doctors work together to freeze and remove Gallifrey, I would have preferred if they had each landed a TARDIS somewhere on Gallifrey and rescued some of the people before the button got pushed to destroy it. As Donna insisted to the Doctor in "The Fires of Pompeii," even if you can't say everyone, at least save someone. There would probably be a time limit, so they couldn't save anywhere close to everyone. They could land inside the Academy and other schools, major population centers, refugee camps, or wherever a lot of Gallifreyans who weren't the High Council were gathered, and just take in as many people as could be persuaded into the TARDIS doors in ten minutes or something. If the War Doctor stayed out of it so he could push the button but every other incarnation who appeared in TDotD rescued 100 people, that would be 1,200, enough genetic diversity to make the long-term continuation of the species plausible. Even if they averaged just 10 rescues, that would be 120, which is 118 more than there have been at any other time in New Who.
The planet of Gallifrey with all its infrastructure and tradition would still be gone, and the Doctor would still carry the guilt for the deaths of billions, so most of what made the Time War such an important thing for the story would remain. That pain and loss would still define the Doctor. However, he would no longer be the last of the Time Lords, so it would still be a joyous and enormous thing to do for the anniversary. You could have an excuse for the return of Romana or any other specific Time Lords you wanted. I would be much more interested in the Time Lords if they were having to reinvent themselves as a diaspora without a homeworld. Previous regenerations would have to drop off their cargo of Gallifreyans wherever they landed and immediately forget, so S8 could still have an element of searching for the lost people of Gallifrey scattered across time and space. It could have been great.
But it is not to be. Everything has its time, and everything ends. That apparently includes the version of Doctor Who that I have thus far found the most fascinating. I'm disappointed about that. Still, the show goes on, and I am sure there will still be worthwhile stories going forward.
THE DOCTOR: I could save everyone...
MR FINCH: Yes.
THE DOCTOR: I could stop the war...
SARAH JANE: No. The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss -- they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it's a world, or a relationship... everything has its time. And everything ends.
Obviously other people will have different perspectives on this. I've read some great meta by people who loved this way of resolving the Time War. I can see the appeal of that view (especially from those who are originally Classic Who fans who see this as a return to the proper order of the universe), but these are my feelings.
A brief note: "The End of Time" already established that Gallifrey wasn't actually blown up but time-locked. However, because the Doctor referred to himself as the last of his kind and considered Gallifrey beyond retrieval, it was effectively destroyed. So sometimes I refer to the pre-DotD continuity as featuring the destruction of Gallifrey, even if TEoT tells us that destruction wasn't technically what happened.
-The Day of the Doctor's version of the Time War actually undermines Doctor Who' anti-violence message. This point is a little counterintuitive (isn't less genocide better?), but hear me out. With the previous understanding of the Time War, the message was that the biggest war imaginable could only end in mutual annihilation. War corrupts whole societies. It is a force of pure destruction, and EVERYONE inevitably loses. War has no real winners, only damaged survivors. In "The Day of the Doctor," the Daleks were still destroyed but the Time Lords were saved: a victory. Am I the only one thinking of a previous instance where the Doctor decided to save certain people whose deaths should have been fixed and declared himself victorious?
-Related to that, I have a problem with the fact that "The Day of the Doctor" didn't even pause to suggest that the annihilation of the Daleks might not be something to unequivocally celebrate. Of course the Daleks are evil, and there wasn't exactly much room for reasoning or negotiation in this scenario, nor an obvious way to contain them short of killing. But still, the Doctor has refused to destroy the Dalek race before. I would expect at least a hint of regret that billions of thinking beings were wiped away. I find it troubling that now genocide (even of Daleks) is portrayed as a handy and potentially glorious path to victory.
-Doctor Who is a fundamentally hopeful show, where time and time again the Doctor is faced with a choice between tragic alternatives but instead comes up with a third way to save everyone. It's one of the things I love about the show. However, I think the show's formula works better with the destruction of Gallifrey as part of the backstory as a time when hope died. It raises the stakes for every other story if the audience knows that the Doctor can fail, that there came a day in the past when the only choice was between unfathomable violence and certain doom for the entire universe and even the Doctor could not find a third way. Of course the Doctor has other failures, but I think the loss of Gallifrey is especially important. The Time War is the dark cloud that accentuates all the show's other silver linings. "Everybody lives" is not quite so enormous if it's not qualified by "just this once."
-The Doctor has the potential to be really, really scary. He is the thing that frightens the monsters, the Oncoming Storm. Part of why armies back away from him is that the smart monsters know exactly what he is capable of when pushed. The Doctor is deeply moral, but it is a choice that he must make and re-make every time. By saying that he never could or would do something as drastic as destroying Gallifrey, you take away some of the weight from all the other times he chooses to reign in his power. I think the Doctor's potential for darkness is fascinating. It certainly shouldn't be emphasized too deeply, because again, this is a hopeful show about someone who is truly good, but it is an important that the Doctor and everyone around him know what he can do.
-It was the wrong time to undo the loss of Gallifrey. If the 75th (or even possibly the 60th) anniversary wanted to make a big change, I might feel like enough time had passed to make it a little more appropriate. If the Bad Wolf had brought back Gallifrey in "Parting of the Ways," it might have felt like a natural culmination of S1's storyline. But not now. Not only eight years after the Time War became a thing, but after three series of Moffat largely ignoring it.
-While watching "The Day of the Doctor," I was briefly terrified that the show was about to banish all of New Who from the continuity. It avoided that pitfall by having the Doctor still believe that he destroyed Gallifrey, so series 1-7 still work. However, I feel like having the Doctor mourn and agonize over something that didn't actually happen makes all of those deep emotions feel a little cheapened. I hate that whenever I go back to watch Nine and Ten (or the very few episodes of Eleven that mention it), the fact that the Doctor didn't actually push the button will always be in the back of my mind. It means that the Doctors I care most about have built much of their life around a lie.
-My Doctor is Nine, and my second favorite is Ten. I very much like Classic Who, but for me it always feels like a prequel to the real story. The Time War is a vital part of the origin story of my Doctor. Undoing the loss of Gallifrey is not quite as drastic as if Batman were to discover that his parents were actually alive and in witness protection, but it's certainly along those lines. I also feel like much (not all) of Classic Who is a children's show that many adults also enjoyed, while most of New Who is a grownup show that also appeals to children. The Time War is part of what made that important distinction.
-I haven't seen that many of the Classic Who stories set on Gallifrey, but the few I have were frankly dull. Ditching Gallifrey freed New Who from all that tedium and potentially confusing continuity. While I would be excited to see Romana, the Master, and the Rani again, honestly I think bringing back the other Time Lords is a bad idea from a storytelling perspective.
-If the Doctor can retroactively remove the single worst thing in his past, it makes him less of a real person. We humans almost all have something in our past from which we struggle to move on: someone we've lost, something we're guilty about, a miserable time or terrible experience we'd like to forget. We get better slowly, and sometimes things happen that bring it all back and force us to confront the pain again. We find joy in time, and we don't think about the bad thing so often, but it is always part of us. The Doctor has been making that journey of recovery, but it wasn't done. There isn't a done for anyone except Steven Moffat's Doctor. Removing the loss of Gallifrey in an instant is a far less interesting and relatable story than watching the Doctor deal with it over many years and never quite completely.
Criticizing a piece of writing is easier than creating it. I also wanted to share two ideas for what could have been done with a 50th anniversary special that I would have found more satisfying than what actually happened.
2) As a minor change to the existing special that would still leave Gallifrey destroyed but inject a bit of hope into the wreckage of the Time War, instead of having all the Doctors work together to freeze and remove Gallifrey, I would have preferred if they had each landed a TARDIS somewhere on Gallifrey and rescued some of the people before the button got pushed to destroy it. As Donna insisted to the Doctor in "The Fires of Pompeii," even if you can't say everyone, at least save someone. There would probably be a time limit, so they couldn't save anywhere close to everyone. They could land inside the Academy and other schools, major population centers, refugee camps, or wherever a lot of Gallifreyans who weren't the High Council were gathered, and just take in as many people as could be persuaded into the TARDIS doors in ten minutes or something. If the War Doctor stayed out of it so he could push the button but every other incarnation who appeared in TDotD rescued 100 people, that would be 1,200, enough genetic diversity to make the long-term continuation of the species plausible. Even if they averaged just 10 rescues, that would be 120, which is 118 more than there have been at any other time in New Who.
The planet of Gallifrey with all its infrastructure and tradition would still be gone, and the Doctor would still carry the guilt for the deaths of billions, so most of what made the Time War such an important thing for the story would remain. That pain and loss would still define the Doctor. However, he would no longer be the last of the Time Lords, so it would still be a joyous and enormous thing to do for the anniversary. You could have an excuse for the return of Romana or any other specific Time Lords you wanted. I would be much more interested in the Time Lords if they were having to reinvent themselves as a diaspora without a homeworld. Previous regenerations would have to drop off their cargo of Gallifreyans wherever they landed and immediately forget, so S8 could still have an element of searching for the lost people of Gallifrey scattered across time and space. It could have been great.
But it is not to be. Everything has its time, and everything ends. That apparently includes the version of Doctor Who that I have thus far found the most fascinating. I'm disappointed about that. Still, the show goes on, and I am sure there will still be worthwhile stories going forward.
The Day of the Doctor Reaction
Nov. 27th, 2013 05:53 pmI'm somewhat late to the reaction party due to traveling and now staying with family, but I want to post my thoughts about The Day of the Doctor.
The quick version is that while I really enjoyed the episode, finding it funny, moving, and well acted, I still really wish Moffat had found a different story to tell.
I'm going to talk about the episode as it stands first, with lots of but not exclusively squee, and get into the reasons I wish for a different story at the end. Opening with the original-original title sequence was the perfect beginning. Going to the same school as in The Unearthly Child was also a really nice choice, although it is somewhat random that Clara is now suddenly a teacher. (How did she and the Doctor get out of the time stream cave or wherever they were at the end of The Name of the Doctor? Did they remember to retrieve Vastra, Jenny, and Strax from Trenzalore?) I liked the shot of Clara riding her motorcycle straight into the TARDIS.
Tennant and Smith were so much fun playing off of each other as the Doctors. (I cackled when Ten sees Eleven's sonic and says "Compensating?" My thoughts too, Ten!) I've never heard the term "sand shoes" before. Is that something people call Converse-type shoes? It seems like Converse would be a really lousy choice to wear on sand because the little vent holes on the side would lead to a ton of sand in your shoes really quickly! But I digress. While I am often tired of Moffat's endlessly repeated hat jokes, I did really enjoy all of the throwing of the fez through the time portal things. The War Doctor got some good lines as the grumpy grandpa voice of the classic Doctors. I was amused at all three Doctors placed in a room, coming up with all sorts of intricate technical solutions to get out instead of just trying the door. (I also enjoyed how the tactic of early incarnations starting the calculations so they are ready by Eleven's time was introduced here and then reused later in the episode. Nice plotting there.)
Kate Lethbridge-Stewart is excellent, and I was super excited to see her again. I appreciated that science girl Osgood was a continuation of the tradition of having ardent Doctor fanboys/girls in UNIT (which we earlier saw in Malcolm in The Planet of the Dead). Hooray for the Four scarf! I liked Osgood for being an avatar for the fangirls, but I do really wish that when the Zygon decided to taunt her Moffat had found some other words to put in its mouth besides feeling jealous of her pretty sister. Are we really going to perpetuate the stereotypes that (a) geeks are unattractive and insecure about it, and (b) all girls really just want to be pretty? *sigh* While I was not pleased with the way Queen Elizabeth I was portrayed as lovesick in an adolescent sort of way, I did like it when she took out her Zygon duplicate and then successfully impersonated it to the other Zygons. (On the topic of Zygons, I was amused that the first one we encountered was posing as the horse.)
The concept of a weapon of mass destruction with a mind and a conscience was SUPER FASCINATING, and I loved Billie Piper's performance as the Moment. She is just so great. I really liked that the Bad Wolf rippled back through time to help the Doctor with this end of the Time War in addition to that time on the Game Station. I was deeply relieved that the War Doctor had to forget her, so that Nine's relationship with Rose was just as it seemed (the Doctor falling for an ordinary Earth shopgirl), not turning her into a Clara-like Moffat mystery girl who is more plot device than person. Despite all of that I liked about Billie's role, it broke my heart that Ten didn't even get to interact with or even SEE Rose's likeness. This was better than the worst-case "clingy girlfriend" scenarios I'd worried over when the casting was revealed and I thought about how Moffat might write Rose Tyler. Still, I wish we'd gotten one last chance to see David and Billie acting together. I missed some lines in the scene where everyone was in the gallery together near the end because I'd just realized that Ten and Eleven wouldn't get any interactions with the Bad Wolf girl and my brain went all white noise for a few moments. Oh well.
I enjoyed the aspects of the episode that paid tribute to the show's history. The brief moment in the coral-struts console room caused my loudest squee of the episode, though the brief glimpse of Peter Capaldi came a close second. And what a joy to see the montage of all the Doctors for the Time War sequence! The Tom Baker scene was lovely. I'm not sure it made much sense, but it was just really sweet. I'm glad to see that at least one of the classic Doctor actors got some screen time. The name-check of Captain Jack Harkness also pleased me, though not as much as actual onscreen Captain Jack would have done.
I definitely enjoyed the experience of watching episode. The plot was much less of a hot mess than a lot of Moffat's episodes for the past two series. The look and special effects were lovely. So if you take the general outline of the plot as a given, this was very good. But I think it was a mistake to tell this story.
I mentioned in my discussion of "The Night of the Doctor" that I thought the Time War was best left entirely offscreen, and nothing in this special changed my mind about that. Scenes of Gallifreyans running and screaming while stuff burns and a couple Daleks roll past do so much less to convey the scope and horror of this war than, for example, Nine's reaction to discovering the survival of a single Dalek. I also mentioned that I disliked the concept of the War Doctor, and that opinion stands. John Hurt gave an excellent performance, but I really wish they'd persuaded either McGann or Eccleston to play the part of the Doctor who fought the War.
And then there was the climax, the saving of Gallifrey. If that scene had happened in a fanfic, I would be clapping my hands in delight, but I think it was a mistake for canon. I have a LOT of thoughts about this topic, and this entry is already long enough that I think I'll make a second post to discuss why I think that Gallifrey should have stayed lost. The very condensed version is that I think having the Doctor be the last of the Time Lords is part of why, as much as I really do like Classic Who, I find New Who to be more interesting. I think the Time War is the big dark cloud that makes every time the Doctor earns a silver lining so much more meaningful. I hate that all the grief and guilt we watched him live through over that now feels cheapened because he was operating under a delusion. (The End of Time already made things weirder, but at least there the bottom line was that even if Gallifrey wasn't actually blown to bits it was irretrievably gone.) I understand why other people are glad of this change, especially those who are old school Who fans. Fair enough. I'm glad you're happy. I'm glad the Doctor is happy. But I think from a storytelling perspective Gallifrey should have stayed lost.
I am turning into one of those crotchety fans who always complains that the show was better Back In My Day. Still, as often as I vehemently disagree with Moffat's decisions as showrunner, I am still deeply in love with this concept of a man who changes his face, his magical blue box, and the brave women and men who choose to see the universe with them. Ups and downs are going to happen in a show that goes on this long. Even if there never again comes a Team TARDIS I love quite as much as Nine, Rose, and Jack or Ten and Donna, I love knowing that they were part of a story that goes on and on. Who knows what the future will bring? Maybe for the 60th anniversary Eccleston will agree to guest star.
And in the mean time, there is always The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, which is practically perfect in every way. If you have somehow missed this magical half hour of RPF written by Peter Davison, starring Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and cameos by bazillions of others both expected and surprising, go watch it right now. You'll be glad you did.
I'm going to talk about the episode as it stands first, with lots of but not exclusively squee, and get into the reasons I wish for a different story at the end. Opening with the original-original title sequence was the perfect beginning. Going to the same school as in The Unearthly Child was also a really nice choice, although it is somewhat random that Clara is now suddenly a teacher. (How did she and the Doctor get out of the time stream cave or wherever they were at the end of The Name of the Doctor? Did they remember to retrieve Vastra, Jenny, and Strax from Trenzalore?) I liked the shot of Clara riding her motorcycle straight into the TARDIS.
Tennant and Smith were so much fun playing off of each other as the Doctors. (I cackled when Ten sees Eleven's sonic and says "Compensating?" My thoughts too, Ten!) I've never heard the term "sand shoes" before. Is that something people call Converse-type shoes? It seems like Converse would be a really lousy choice to wear on sand because the little vent holes on the side would lead to a ton of sand in your shoes really quickly! But I digress. While I am often tired of Moffat's endlessly repeated hat jokes, I did really enjoy all of the throwing of the fez through the time portal things. The War Doctor got some good lines as the grumpy grandpa voice of the classic Doctors. I was amused at all three Doctors placed in a room, coming up with all sorts of intricate technical solutions to get out instead of just trying the door. (I also enjoyed how the tactic of early incarnations starting the calculations so they are ready by Eleven's time was introduced here and then reused later in the episode. Nice plotting there.)
Kate Lethbridge-Stewart is excellent, and I was super excited to see her again. I appreciated that science girl Osgood was a continuation of the tradition of having ardent Doctor fanboys/girls in UNIT (which we earlier saw in Malcolm in The Planet of the Dead). Hooray for the Four scarf! I liked Osgood for being an avatar for the fangirls, but I do really wish that when the Zygon decided to taunt her Moffat had found some other words to put in its mouth besides feeling jealous of her pretty sister. Are we really going to perpetuate the stereotypes that (a) geeks are unattractive and insecure about it, and (b) all girls really just want to be pretty? *sigh* While I was not pleased with the way Queen Elizabeth I was portrayed as lovesick in an adolescent sort of way, I did like it when she took out her Zygon duplicate and then successfully impersonated it to the other Zygons. (On the topic of Zygons, I was amused that the first one we encountered was posing as the horse.)
The concept of a weapon of mass destruction with a mind and a conscience was SUPER FASCINATING, and I loved Billie Piper's performance as the Moment. She is just so great. I really liked that the Bad Wolf rippled back through time to help the Doctor with this end of the Time War in addition to that time on the Game Station. I was deeply relieved that the War Doctor had to forget her, so that Nine's relationship with Rose was just as it seemed (the Doctor falling for an ordinary Earth shopgirl), not turning her into a Clara-like Moffat mystery girl who is more plot device than person. Despite all of that I liked about Billie's role, it broke my heart that Ten didn't even get to interact with or even SEE Rose's likeness. This was better than the worst-case "clingy girlfriend" scenarios I'd worried over when the casting was revealed and I thought about how Moffat might write Rose Tyler. Still, I wish we'd gotten one last chance to see David and Billie acting together. I missed some lines in the scene where everyone was in the gallery together near the end because I'd just realized that Ten and Eleven wouldn't get any interactions with the Bad Wolf girl and my brain went all white noise for a few moments. Oh well.
I enjoyed the aspects of the episode that paid tribute to the show's history. The brief moment in the coral-struts console room caused my loudest squee of the episode, though the brief glimpse of Peter Capaldi came a close second. And what a joy to see the montage of all the Doctors for the Time War sequence! The Tom Baker scene was lovely. I'm not sure it made much sense, but it was just really sweet. I'm glad to see that at least one of the classic Doctor actors got some screen time. The name-check of Captain Jack Harkness also pleased me, though not as much as actual onscreen Captain Jack would have done.
I definitely enjoyed the experience of watching episode. The plot was much less of a hot mess than a lot of Moffat's episodes for the past two series. The look and special effects were lovely. So if you take the general outline of the plot as a given, this was very good. But I think it was a mistake to tell this story.
I mentioned in my discussion of "The Night of the Doctor" that I thought the Time War was best left entirely offscreen, and nothing in this special changed my mind about that. Scenes of Gallifreyans running and screaming while stuff burns and a couple Daleks roll past do so much less to convey the scope and horror of this war than, for example, Nine's reaction to discovering the survival of a single Dalek. I also mentioned that I disliked the concept of the War Doctor, and that opinion stands. John Hurt gave an excellent performance, but I really wish they'd persuaded either McGann or Eccleston to play the part of the Doctor who fought the War.
And then there was the climax, the saving of Gallifrey. If that scene had happened in a fanfic, I would be clapping my hands in delight, but I think it was a mistake for canon. I have a LOT of thoughts about this topic, and this entry is already long enough that I think I'll make a second post to discuss why I think that Gallifrey should have stayed lost. The very condensed version is that I think having the Doctor be the last of the Time Lords is part of why, as much as I really do like Classic Who, I find New Who to be more interesting. I think the Time War is the big dark cloud that makes every time the Doctor earns a silver lining so much more meaningful. I hate that all the grief and guilt we watched him live through over that now feels cheapened because he was operating under a delusion. (The End of Time already made things weirder, but at least there the bottom line was that even if Gallifrey wasn't actually blown to bits it was irretrievably gone.) I understand why other people are glad of this change, especially those who are old school Who fans. Fair enough. I'm glad you're happy. I'm glad the Doctor is happy. But I think from a storytelling perspective Gallifrey should have stayed lost.
I am turning into one of those crotchety fans who always complains that the show was better Back In My Day. Still, as often as I vehemently disagree with Moffat's decisions as showrunner, I am still deeply in love with this concept of a man who changes his face, his magical blue box, and the brave women and men who choose to see the universe with them. Ups and downs are going to happen in a show that goes on this long. Even if there never again comes a Team TARDIS I love quite as much as Nine, Rose, and Jack or Ten and Donna, I love knowing that they were part of a story that goes on and on. Who knows what the future will bring? Maybe for the 60th anniversary Eccleston will agree to guest star.
And in the mean time, there is always The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, which is practically perfect in every way. If you have somehow missed this magical half hour of RPF written by Peter Davison, starring Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and cameos by bazillions of others both expected and surprising, go watch it right now. You'll be glad you did.
The Night of the Doctor
Nov. 15th, 2013 12:32 amAlmost all of y'all have probably seen this, but if you haven't, you should REALLY watch "The Night of the Doctor," the mini-episode prequel to the 50th anniversary special. (If you are working phenomenally hard to avoid spoilers and haven't watched the trailer or anything, save this mini-episode until just before you watch the main episode. However, I suspect you would have a really hard time existing in fandom without getting spoiled for this, so I would recommend watching now.) It is important.
Here you go:
I have intense squee about mini-episode for itself, even as I am not pleased with certain things that it means for the arc of the show as a whole.( Spoilers for The Night of the Doctor and uninformed speculation about the anniversary special )
Here you go:
I have intense squee about mini-episode for itself, even as I am not pleased with certain things that it means for the arc of the show as a whole.( Spoilers for The Night of the Doctor and uninformed speculation about the anniversary special )
Requisite Doctor Who casting reaction post
Aug. 5th, 2013 02:07 amWe've got a new Doctor in the house.
( My thoughts on the casting spoiler (you probably have already heard the name, but I'm using a cut anyway) )
( My thoughts on the casting spoiler (you probably have already heard the name, but I'm using a cut anyway) )
This is actual news from the real BBC and it's not April 1st. This is real.
TEN (or 10.2) and ROSE!!!!!!!! In a new episode! Airing this November! I'm stuck in exclamation point mode because I'm just that excited!!!!!!!
Please don't fuck this up, Moffat.
Rather than just retyping DAVID TENNANT AND BILLIE PIPER over and over in increasingly large and bold type, here is a selection of gifs to attempt to convey my joy.
( gifspam cut to spare your flist )
Friending meme promotion
Dec. 9th, 2012 02:41 amFor anyone else who feels that new friends are a good thing, especially since LJ has been a little quiet lately, I direct you to the Doctor Who friending meme that eve11 is currently hosting.
eve11 is currently hosting. Angels Take Manhattan
Oct. 6th, 2012 03:13 pmThat was better than a lot of recent episodes written by Moffat, but it still had some problems. I give it one thumb mostly up.
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( Spoilers for 7x05 )
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( Spoilers for 7x05 )
Doctor Who S7 Thoughts
Sep. 29th, 2012 03:01 pmI haven't yet seen 7x05, but I have thoughts about Doctor Who series 7 so far! I'm enjoying it more than S6, although Moffat's episode was my least favorite by far.
( Asylum of the Daleks )
( Dinosaurs on a Spaceship )
( A Town Called Mercy )
( The Power of Three )
great stuff from around the internet
Oct. 31st, 2011 12:36 amThis post exists to link to some things that have been linked a ton of other places, but they are so worth seeing that I want to do my part to ensure that the entire internet sees them.
First, the latest post on Hyperbole and a Half, Adventures in Depression, is insightful and sad in addition to having the usual Hyperbole and a Half humor. Large parts rang so true it felt like the blog had been posted from inside my head.
Next, on a happier note, the two greatest things on YouTube, at least if you are a Doctor Who fan. If you haven't seen them yet, prepare to squee:
WHO WANTS TO JOIN ME FOR A FANDOM GROUP HUG NOW?
I love how David Tennant just looks so excited to be doing the goofy marching dance in every single shot of the 500 Miles video.
First, the latest post on Hyperbole and a Half, Adventures in Depression, is insightful and sad in addition to having the usual Hyperbole and a Half humor. Large parts rang so true it felt like the blog had been posted from inside my head.
Next, on a happier note, the two greatest things on YouTube, at least if you are a Doctor Who fan. If you haven't seen them yet, prepare to squee:
WHO WANTS TO JOIN ME FOR A FANDOM GROUP HUG NOW?
I love how David Tennant just looks so excited to be doing the goofy marching dance in every single shot of the 500 Miles video.
The Wedding of River Song
Oct. 2nd, 2011 02:59 amThere were a lot of things I liked about "The Wedding of River Song" and some things I loved, and overall I enjoyed it. However, I don't feel that it managed to salvage some of the messy, frustrating plot arcs of S6 as a whole, and it didn't speak to me emotionally as strongly as previous New Who finales.
( spoilers! )
( spoilers! )
I am somewhat baffled by the almost universally positive reviews I'm seeing for "Closing Time" so far, because I wasn't a fan.
( Spoilers for Doctor Who 6x12 )
( Spoilers for Doctor Who 6x12 )
Stuff of Legends
Sep. 18th, 2011 02:39 pmAfter yesterday's Doctor Who made me think of The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, I stayed up far too late rewatching them. I'd forgotten how utterly fantastic those episodes are. (BTW, there's no deep meta thoughts here, just me gushing a bit. ) The guest characters are all real people I care about (especially Ida and the captain). The building atmosphere of menace works really well. The combination of the gritty sanctuary base and the ominous beauty of the black hole is visually impressive. The music is some of my favorite from all of Doctor Who. If it comes up on my itunes, I'm instantly back there, staring up at the black hole and contemplating the horrors of ancient evil and mortgages.
And of course, there's Ten and Rose. I love them so much. Tennant is great in both his quiet moments of contemplating a life without his TARDIS and his grandiose shouting at Satan. The seeds of crazypants!Ten are there in his urge to fall at the pit, but it makes perfect sense in context. Rose is great when she tries to make friends with the Ood, and even more magnificent when she starts ordering around all the personnel on the base to make sure they survive and find the Doctor. "Oh, she knows" is a lousy substitute for saying something, but she does know, and anyone with eyes and/or ears knows as well.
Yeah, the plot of Satan in a hole is kind of overblown, and I caught two incidents of screams audible in a vacuum (science fail!), but this is Doctor Who we're talking about. None of that distracts from the joy of watching characters I adore face down danger and come through.
In summary, dvd technology is great. Doctor Who goes on, and I love getting fresh adventures (even those weeks it makes me shout at the screen), but I am so grateful to be able to revisit the era of the show that had an unmatched pull on my heart: the Doctor and Rose Tyler, stuff of legends.
And of course, there's Ten and Rose. I love them so much. Tennant is great in both his quiet moments of contemplating a life without his TARDIS and his grandiose shouting at Satan. The seeds of crazypants!Ten are there in his urge to fall at the pit, but it makes perfect sense in context. Rose is great when she tries to make friends with the Ood, and even more magnificent when she starts ordering around all the personnel on the base to make sure they survive and find the Doctor. "Oh, she knows" is a lousy substitute for saying something, but she does know, and anyone with eyes and/or ears knows as well.
Yeah, the plot of Satan in a hole is kind of overblown, and I caught two incidents of screams audible in a vacuum (science fail!), but this is Doctor Who we're talking about. None of that distracts from the joy of watching characters I adore face down danger and come through.
In summary, dvd technology is great. Doctor Who goes on, and I love getting fresh adventures (even those weeks it makes me shout at the screen), but I am so grateful to be able to revisit the era of the show that had an unmatched pull on my heart: the Doctor and Rose Tyler, stuff of legends.
