Pining for the Fjords

[astrogirl2]

How is it possible that there's only one Doctor Who episode left this season? Well, let's not think about that now. Let's think about this week's episode instead!

Comments

[anonymous]

I have to say, I wasn’t as thrown by the story’s weirdness as you were. It just seemed like the typical Who bizarreness for the first two thirds of the episode, which then turns into a remake of The Three Doctors. After all, we have a creature trapped in a universe which it has control over but from which it can never escape; and like Omega, it wants company, but the Solitract is more benign, sensibly lacking his agenda of universal domination. Again like Omega, it wants the Doctor to stay in its universe, only to have that universe blow up on it (maybe). As for the frog, well, that’s like Arc of Infinity, with Omega taking on Five’s appearance (you could argue that it’s not as ridiculous as deciding to look like a frog, I suppose).

The grandmother thing does contradict the whole stuff about him being an orphan, but I can come up with some headcanon to make sense of it. Like, the Doctor as a kid originally lived halfway up a mountain with his family (his dad, his seven grandmothers, and the auntie with two heads mentioned in Vincent And The Doctor. There may well be others I’m forgetting), occasionally visiting that hermit. Then, some or all of his family are killed for some reason, he gets sent to the orphanage, and eventually manages to get into the academy, become a Time Lord, and raise a family. Then he goes on the run with Susan, and that’s where we come in. I’m more bothered by how contradicts both Impossible Planet / Satan Pit and The Curse of Fenric about what existed before the creation of the universe. I wonder why Ten was so adamant that nothing existed before then, given that that both this story and Curse of Fenric show that he must know that’s not true.

I agree that Erick’s behaviour was deeply weird, although it’s possible that the creature had some sort of psychic contact with him, which was doing bad things to his brain. Or he might simply be mentally ill. Either way, he was a terrible dad, and probably needs psychological help. (Sudden thought: Ryan was projecting his issues by suggesting Erick had run out on Hanne, and she disliked him for it, but he was more or less right wasn’t he? Even if Erick was going to come back for her.)

So Thirteen seems to like eating dirt, and not just because it supposedly helps her find out where Team Tardis are. And we all thought Ten’s habit of licking things in order to analyse them was gross. And it makes the fish custard look positively mundane…

Diona the Lurker

[astrogirl2]

You know, reflecting back on it (um, no mirror-based pun intended!), it probably really isn't much more surreal than much of Who, and considerably less so than some. (At least up until you get to the frog.) But I think something about the way it's filmed makes it feel stranger and more off-kilter to me. Like you never quite get a feel for exactly what genre you're in, and thus never quite get a good handle on what the story is and where it's going. Which is not bad thing, as far as I'm concerned. I think it made it much more interesting than it might have been otherwise.

The "Three Doctors" echos aren't something that had occurred to me, though!

For what it's worth we don't even know for a fact that he was an orphan. It's a reasonable conclusion to draw from what we saw, but we really don't know very much at all about the nature of that place he was living in, why he was there, or who might or might not have been there with him. So it's hard to even know what needs to be reconciled! The idea that his family were killed somehow and he was sent there is certainly a viable hypothesis, but it's really all a big, well, question mark.

The contradiction between there being something vs nothing before the creation of our universe didn't bother me at all. If only because that story is clearly a legend, and she's telling it, apparently, as she heard it. Just because it has a basis in fact doesn't mean every detail is true, and there being nothing at all before the beginning of our universe may really just be a simplification, anyway. Understandable enough in a tale told to children.

The fact that Ryan was basically right about Hanne's dad abandoning her occurred to me almost immediately. And perhaps this is another example of the Doctor fixing the immediate problem but not the circumstances surrounding it, in not dong anything about what is a genuinely disturbing case of child neglect. I'd like the idea that he was under the influence of mind-affecting forces when he came up with that idea, but if that were the case, we really should have been given some kind of indication of it.

I more than half suspect that the Doctor's dirt eating wasn't actually telling her all of that stuff, and she was just weirdly enjoying it. :)

[anonymous]

This season comes across as a reaction to the Doctor’s previous depiction in NuWho as a universe-affecting, godly force; instead of storylines about how his personal problems affect the cosmos, we get ones where she mostly fixes more small-scale things which she has no personal stake in, and moves on. Which is fine in itself, but takes things too far; we get stories like Arachnids In The UK, where she could’ve, and should’ve, taken down Jack Robinson, but does nothing. It’s an odd approach, and it’s hard to believe the production team didn’t see the problems with this; but here we are.

Diona the Lurker

[astrogirl2]

Yeah, I agree with all of this. I think there's a correct balance there, and we haven't quite achieved it.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

The Doctor tasting dirt made me think of Due South!

[astrogirl2]

One of these days, I must actually watch that. :)