Thank You, Who. I Was Very Stressed, And That Was Just The Viewing Experience I Needed Right Now.
OK, I have things to say about the Who finale. Probably enough things that I won't remember all of them, but let's see what I've got...
Well, first of all, the plot was a bit cracktastic, but it was still infinitely less cracktastic than the Master's last cracktastic plan, so, hey that's good enough for me.
I still think that the "am I a good man?" and the soldier stuff scattered throughout the season was terribly clunky, but I do have to say that I am very happy with the payoff. Particularly the "good man" stuff. On many levels. For one, I am a complete sucker for the theme of the Doctor and Master as dark mirrors of each other, and this one delivered that in spades. In particular, there's a beautiful symmetry here with their previous couple of encounters. There, we had the Doctor repeatedly entreating the Master to join him and to become like him, to get satisfaction out of seeing the universe rather than ruling it. And here, of course, we have the Master attempting to convince the Doctor to be more like her, or to admit that he is like her. Not for the first time, of course, but in a very big, very significant way. And it really highlights what, for me, is the real fascination and tragedy of these two characters: they really are a hell of a lot alike, except for that one difference in philosophy that neither of them will ever convince the other to abandon, and which means they will never again be able to be friends, no matter how powerful the connection between them remains. I admit, it's easy to critique the Master as a character, especially in the new series (or, really, anything after Delgado). And, intellectually, I cannot disagree that in some ways the Master is pretty silly. And yet, I eat this stuff up with a spoon. I really do. And it's incredibly well-done here.
I also like the reaffirmation of the Doctor as, well, I gotta use the D&D term: "Chaotic Good." I've always thought -- and Ten certainly gave us some glimpses of this -- that the reason the Doctor doesn't fall to the dark side is precisely because of the random, haphazard nature of his do-gooding. He's not the person to raise an army and go on a crusade, determined to bring his vision of good to the universe in an organized way, by means of force, if necessary. That would be terrifying. It may perhaps, just occasionally, be tempting for him. But it's not him. For which we can all be grateful. Anyway, I was rather delighted to see my own philosophizing about his character right there up on the screen being all explicitly canon and stuff. Always fun!
Less fun, but very moving: Danny. Oh, Danny. I may have sniffled a bit. Or a lot. Poor guy. He really, really did deserve better than Clara treated him, but I love that he got to prove that, in so many ways. *sniffle* I'm... less certain how I feel about Cyber!Brig at the end there. I can't quite determine if I'm more choked up or creeped out. But I may have saluted my television. (And, aww, how good to see him not being forgotten. Especially when, earlier this season, so many of us where shouting, "Did you forget about the Brig?!")
Anyway, I'm glad Kate lived, 'cause I like her, but this was still a very dark episode, between the zombie Cybermen and Missy cheerfully embracing her hobby of killing everyone the Doctor cares about who is not her. (I was going to say, maybe she should get together with OUaT's Regina for therapy to address that "I keep killing people, but somehow it's just not making anyone like me!" issue. Except then I thought, no, that'd be a bad idea. The Master would just be bad for Regina's recovery from evil addiction, rather than Regina helping the Master get started on one.)
And, oh, god, the ending. MASTER, YOU ARE A GODDAMNED BASTARD! Oh, Doctor. God, he was breaking my freakin' heart. Him and Clara both, each trying to preserve the other's happiness by lying about their own. *sniffle* *big, big sniffle*
My thoughts may be getting more disconnected from here on. But...
Of course the Master isn't really dead. The Master is never really dead. But I'm very, very much hoping we haven't seen the last of this particular version. Michelle Gomez is fantastic in the part, and I would be very happy if she returned on a regular basis.
The Mary Poppins bit was cute, but a little on the nose. I found the moment where I couldn't help yelling, "There's a Cyberman on the wing of the plane! A Cyberman!" more amusing. But that may just be me.
By the way, thinking back on "The End of Time" and that little "Come run away with me, I'll help you be less evil, we can see the universe together, you could be so beautiful!" speech, Missy's talk earlier in the season about the Doctor being her boyfriend and loving her so much... Yeah, that's not all just coming out of The Master's crazy little mind. At all. It's warped, yes. But it's got a basis. And this, by the way, is another reason why the suddenly-there's-kissing-when-it's-het thing doesn't bother me too much: it feels very much of a piece with what came before, when they were both male, rather than a sudden, "Ooh, she's a woman! We can throw in some sexual tension now!"
Magnificent moment for Clara, pretending to be the Doctor. Props to her, because there was a tiny fraction of a second in there where she almost had me wondering! And a lovely callback it was, too, to her "being" the Doctor in "Flatline." There really are a lot of things from across this season that come together very nicely here.
So, that stuff Clara was saying about the Doctor's backstory... All true, do you think? Certainly all the stuff we already know about was. So until proven otherwise, I'm inclined to believe it's all accurate. So, what does that tell us that we didn't already know? Well, there's "married four times, all deceased," though it's hard to know exactly what to make of that. Presumably it includes River, but does it include random off-screen comedy weddings to... What was it, Elizabeth I and Marilyn Monroe? Hard to say. I think the only other new nugget of info lies in the fact that she refers to "children" and "grandchildren," raising the canonical number of each from "at least one" to "at least two." (Presumably, anyway, as she mentions Jenny separately and appears not to be including her in the count.) The "missing, presumed dead" part was something I'd already very much assumed. By the way, where do you think Clara got all this backstory from? Did he actually tell her about it? Was it in that big Time War History book where she saw his name? Did she learn it in her various intrusions into his timeline? Does she actually remember those, or not? Because I was figuring on not. (Also, did anybody but me flash back on Lady Peinforte threatening to tell the Cybermen all the Doctor's secrets and the Cybermen not actually caring? No? Just me?)
Also, I always knew the fact that I'd somehow managed to memorize the galactic co-ordinates of Gallifrey would pay off someday. Specifically, by allowing me to gasp a little and go, "You mean, it's back where it was?" before the Mistress clarified on that point. Happy April Fool's to me and the Doctor!
So, do you think it actually was the Doctor's birthday? I kind of like to think so, by some translation of the Gallifreyan calendar. That just makes it all the more messed-up. And I like my Doctor/Master relations messed up.
I feel like I should say something about the ending, but all I can think is: What, is Santa Claus going to bring the Doctor and Clara a sudden lack of angst and tragedy in their stockings? That would be a pretty good trick!
Well, first of all, the plot was a bit cracktastic, but it was still infinitely less cracktastic than the Master's last cracktastic plan, so, hey that's good enough for me.
I still think that the "am I a good man?" and the soldier stuff scattered throughout the season was terribly clunky, but I do have to say that I am very happy with the payoff. Particularly the "good man" stuff. On many levels. For one, I am a complete sucker for the theme of the Doctor and Master as dark mirrors of each other, and this one delivered that in spades. In particular, there's a beautiful symmetry here with their previous couple of encounters. There, we had the Doctor repeatedly entreating the Master to join him and to become like him, to get satisfaction out of seeing the universe rather than ruling it. And here, of course, we have the Master attempting to convince the Doctor to be more like her, or to admit that he is like her. Not for the first time, of course, but in a very big, very significant way. And it really highlights what, for me, is the real fascination and tragedy of these two characters: they really are a hell of a lot alike, except for that one difference in philosophy that neither of them will ever convince the other to abandon, and which means they will never again be able to be friends, no matter how powerful the connection between them remains. I admit, it's easy to critique the Master as a character, especially in the new series (or, really, anything after Delgado). And, intellectually, I cannot disagree that in some ways the Master is pretty silly. And yet, I eat this stuff up with a spoon. I really do. And it's incredibly well-done here.
I also like the reaffirmation of the Doctor as, well, I gotta use the D&D term: "Chaotic Good." I've always thought -- and Ten certainly gave us some glimpses of this -- that the reason the Doctor doesn't fall to the dark side is precisely because of the random, haphazard nature of his do-gooding. He's not the person to raise an army and go on a crusade, determined to bring his vision of good to the universe in an organized way, by means of force, if necessary. That would be terrifying. It may perhaps, just occasionally, be tempting for him. But it's not him. For which we can all be grateful. Anyway, I was rather delighted to see my own philosophizing about his character right there up on the screen being all explicitly canon and stuff. Always fun!
Less fun, but very moving: Danny. Oh, Danny. I may have sniffled a bit. Or a lot. Poor guy. He really, really did deserve better than Clara treated him, but I love that he got to prove that, in so many ways. *sniffle* I'm... less certain how I feel about Cyber!Brig at the end there. I can't quite determine if I'm more choked up or creeped out. But I may have saluted my television. (And, aww, how good to see him not being forgotten. Especially when, earlier this season, so many of us where shouting, "Did you forget about the Brig?!")
Anyway, I'm glad Kate lived, 'cause I like her, but this was still a very dark episode, between the zombie Cybermen and Missy cheerfully embracing her hobby of killing everyone the Doctor cares about who is not her. (I was going to say, maybe she should get together with OUaT's Regina for therapy to address that "I keep killing people, but somehow it's just not making anyone like me!" issue. Except then I thought, no, that'd be a bad idea. The Master would just be bad for Regina's recovery from evil addiction, rather than Regina helping the Master get started on one.)
And, oh, god, the ending. MASTER, YOU ARE A GODDAMNED BASTARD! Oh, Doctor. God, he was breaking my freakin' heart. Him and Clara both, each trying to preserve the other's happiness by lying about their own. *sniffle* *big, big sniffle*
My thoughts may be getting more disconnected from here on. But...
Of course the Master isn't really dead. The Master is never really dead. But I'm very, very much hoping we haven't seen the last of this particular version. Michelle Gomez is fantastic in the part, and I would be very happy if she returned on a regular basis.
The Mary Poppins bit was cute, but a little on the nose. I found the moment where I couldn't help yelling, "There's a Cyberman on the wing of the plane! A Cyberman!" more amusing. But that may just be me.
By the way, thinking back on "The End of Time" and that little "Come run away with me, I'll help you be less evil, we can see the universe together, you could be so beautiful!" speech, Missy's talk earlier in the season about the Doctor being her boyfriend and loving her so much... Yeah, that's not all just coming out of The Master's crazy little mind. At all. It's warped, yes. But it's got a basis. And this, by the way, is another reason why the suddenly-there's-kissing-when-it's-het thing doesn't bother me too much: it feels very much of a piece with what came before, when they were both male, rather than a sudden, "Ooh, she's a woman! We can throw in some sexual tension now!"
Magnificent moment for Clara, pretending to be the Doctor. Props to her, because there was a tiny fraction of a second in there where she almost had me wondering! And a lovely callback it was, too, to her "being" the Doctor in "Flatline." There really are a lot of things from across this season that come together very nicely here.
So, that stuff Clara was saying about the Doctor's backstory... All true, do you think? Certainly all the stuff we already know about was. So until proven otherwise, I'm inclined to believe it's all accurate. So, what does that tell us that we didn't already know? Well, there's "married four times, all deceased," though it's hard to know exactly what to make of that. Presumably it includes River, but does it include random off-screen comedy weddings to... What was it, Elizabeth I and Marilyn Monroe? Hard to say. I think the only other new nugget of info lies in the fact that she refers to "children" and "grandchildren," raising the canonical number of each from "at least one" to "at least two." (Presumably, anyway, as she mentions Jenny separately and appears not to be including her in the count.) The "missing, presumed dead" part was something I'd already very much assumed. By the way, where do you think Clara got all this backstory from? Did he actually tell her about it? Was it in that big Time War History book where she saw his name? Did she learn it in her various intrusions into his timeline? Does she actually remember those, or not? Because I was figuring on not. (Also, did anybody but me flash back on Lady Peinforte threatening to tell the Cybermen all the Doctor's secrets and the Cybermen not actually caring? No? Just me?)
Also, I always knew the fact that I'd somehow managed to memorize the galactic co-ordinates of Gallifrey would pay off someday. Specifically, by allowing me to gasp a little and go, "You mean, it's back where it was?" before the Mistress clarified on that point. Happy April Fool's to me and the Doctor!
So, do you think it actually was the Doctor's birthday? I kind of like to think so, by some translation of the Gallifreyan calendar. That just makes it all the more messed-up. And I like my Doctor/Master relations messed up.
I feel like I should say something about the ending, but all I can think is: What, is Santa Claus going to bring the Doctor and Clara a sudden lack of angst and tragedy in their stockings? That would be a pretty good trick!