Five Things Make A Post! (Cookie Monster, SHAZAM & The Spoiler, Fringe, Doctor Who, My Job)

[beccatoria]

1. OH MY GOD YOU GUYS THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER! It's slightly more amazing if you are familiar with Tom Waits, but it's still awesome, regardless:

Click to view

I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO UNSEE IT. I love Tom Waits, but from now on, it will always be Cookie Monster singing

Comments

[skipthedemon]

My sympathy on the looking for a job front.

I'm still not sure about what River remembers, and yeah, that's a stumbling block, but here's my take on a couple of things:

1) On her killing not the Doctor - she did. In Let's Kill Hitler, she did, and while she 'fixed' that, I can completely see her having a shit ton of guilt about it. Just like Amy has guilt about killing Madam K in a whole other timeline that didn't stick. The intent to kill was still there. That's part of why she was so childishly stubborn in the finale I think. She'd given so much up to fix that wrong act and for what? To be used again, because of Madam K's spite. And I think that was part if not all of the reason she was forced into the suit. Madam K was offended her creation tried to assert her own will.

2) The not dying alone thing. When the Doctor handed the messages over the Tesselacta, he didn't have a plan. He was accepting his death, I think, and he was honestly reporting to Churchhill what he was thinking when he handed over the envelopes. I gathered he came up with the way out only after that extra bit of help was offered by the captain. And then he goes forward with the messages because well, he knows they have to be sent to complete the loop.

[beccatoria]

Yay, thanks for your take! :)

1) Yeah, I definitely get that that is going to be a point that River has a lot of feelings about and a lot of guilt. That said, she makes it up to him and saves him in a way that is pretty spectacularly selfless and involves her giving up all her future lives in exchange for his, and she then goes on to live her life, get her PhD, etc., without any kind of urge to hand herself in and serve life for his death. That's the stumbling block for me - not so much the guilt at having "killed" him (which I grant, we could assign her lines in the Angels episodes to recalling their first encounter, not Lake Silencio, though I still think it feels slightly off, it's less so), but the way she's then happy to spend potentially the rest of her life in prison for a crime she didn't commit. I know she breaks out whenever she likes, and I love that, but I always kind of felt she stayed out of some obligation to at least partially do things "by the rules". I guess we'll eventually find out the truth behind her promise to stay in jail - as referenced in the season opener, but as things stand, that's what bugs me. River ends up losing all her future regenerations and potentially most of her current life to prison, for a crime she didn't commit and it feels weird to retcon her amenity to prison as atonement to the Let's Kill Hitler death because, well, that was years ago from her perspective. I guess what I'm saying is, I accept everything you're talking about, right down to her insistence on trying to save the Doctor on this occasion, but unfortunately, it doesn't address why I feel it's so weird she's happy to then be shipped off to Stormcage. There's something awesome about her serving time for a crime she genuinely committed and feels culpable for in this madcap fashion, but without further explication, in the current circumstances, it just feels off. It feels wrong of the Doctor to leave her there.

3) I agree that you're right he came up with the plan after meeting the Tesselecta. But again, that's very early in the episode, and even if he's forced to invite the Ponds to complete the loop, all the stuff in the Alternate Universe, when it's supposed to be deep and angsty and meaningful - when he's marrying River in order to convince her to kill him - all that feels hollow emotionally because he's lying to them and knows it's not real. He spends the vast majority of the episode as the Tesselecta and rewatching most of the emotional scenes with that in mind diminishes rather than improves them.

And I guess that's the core of it. It's not that you can't explain it, it's not that it's the suckiest thing that ever came on my telly (hell, I still prefer season six of Doctor who to most of RTD's run), it's not that further stories might not make it cooler in retrospect, it's that at the moment, rewatching knowing the ending makes everything...less awesome not more awesome. Too many instances of people lying during moments that were better when they were sincere. That kind of thing. It's why I say it's when I think about it too much that it starts to unravel.

Either way I hope that makes sense and thank you for taking the time to give your thoughts. :)