Doctor Who 9x5 Instant Reaction Post
Hi, everybody! Just finished watching Doctor Who, "The Girl Who Died".
The death of the Sonic Sunglasses was very funny. I wondered if that was the last we'd see of them, but from the previews it looks like they're back in one piece next week. Oh well. I loved them in their first story, but I don't think they work as a semi-permanent replacement for the Screwdriver. They're too jokey, and the joke is in danger of getting run into the ground now.
All I can think of when I see Maisie Williams is how much she looks like my brother's girlfriend. Well, to be more precise, what my brother's girlfriend looked like 15 or so years ago. But the resemblance is still astonishing. When I showed the Kidlet that promo pic of Maisie on the Tardis set, she noticed it too, she said "That looks just like Mom!" Her mom didn't, and seemed to think we were both crazy.
The main body of the story was a fun little romp. People are going to complain that it was too silly, electric eels don't really work that way, but who knows, maybe they do in the Whoniverse. It wasn't as credibility-stretching as, say, last season's "Robot of Sherwood". And the way they win is fun. Weaponized Youtube, heh.
And then we take a sudden hard left turn into wrestling with the ethics of time travel. _Interesting_. I liked the moral dilemma, liked the callbacks to "Deep Breath" and "Fires of Pompeii" (though I wonder if newer fans and so-called Casual Viewers were confused), loved Capaldi's acting in those scenes.
But I have some problems with the solution. I mean, obviously it's _meant_ to be problematic, you're _meant_ to be worrying about whether the Doctor really did the right thing, I get that, but I have problems with it beyond that. The show has always, _always_ taken the view that, while living for a very long time is fine, the pursuit of literal immortality is a very bad idea. Unlike the Sonic Screwdriver, that principle really is one of the things you _can't_ change without changing the whole identity of the show. And now the Doctor is casually handing out "functional immortality" to cute Viking girls? Would he really ever do that to someone on purpose? Really?
But all that is presumably going to be dealt with in the next episode, so I guess it doesn't really qualify as a flaw in the episode (yet). What I have more of a problem with is the existence of the immortality chip in the first place. The Mire don't seem like the kind of race to have that level of power; they're basically in the same class as the Judoon, big dumb guys in heavy armor. If these idiots have achieved near-immortality, then immortality is _cheap_. Anybody could do it. And too-easy immortality has the potential to undermine the storytelling in a lot of ways. So, yeah, this is a real problem.
Still, I enjoyed the episode a lot and I'm looking forward to finding out what happens next.
This entry was originally posted at http://c-carol.dreamwidth.org/45550.html. Please comment wherever.
The death of the Sonic Sunglasses was very funny. I wondered if that was the last we'd see of them, but from the previews it looks like they're back in one piece next week. Oh well. I loved them in their first story, but I don't think they work as a semi-permanent replacement for the Screwdriver. They're too jokey, and the joke is in danger of getting run into the ground now.
All I can think of when I see Maisie Williams is how much she looks like my brother's girlfriend. Well, to be more precise, what my brother's girlfriend looked like 15 or so years ago. But the resemblance is still astonishing. When I showed the Kidlet that promo pic of Maisie on the Tardis set, she noticed it too, she said "That looks just like Mom!" Her mom didn't, and seemed to think we were both crazy.
The main body of the story was a fun little romp. People are going to complain that it was too silly, electric eels don't really work that way, but who knows, maybe they do in the Whoniverse. It wasn't as credibility-stretching as, say, last season's "Robot of Sherwood". And the way they win is fun. Weaponized Youtube, heh.
And then we take a sudden hard left turn into wrestling with the ethics of time travel. _Interesting_. I liked the moral dilemma, liked the callbacks to "Deep Breath" and "Fires of Pompeii" (though I wonder if newer fans and so-called Casual Viewers were confused), loved Capaldi's acting in those scenes.
But I have some problems with the solution. I mean, obviously it's _meant_ to be problematic, you're _meant_ to be worrying about whether the Doctor really did the right thing, I get that, but I have problems with it beyond that. The show has always, _always_ taken the view that, while living for a very long time is fine, the pursuit of literal immortality is a very bad idea. Unlike the Sonic Screwdriver, that principle really is one of the things you _can't_ change without changing the whole identity of the show. And now the Doctor is casually handing out "functional immortality" to cute Viking girls? Would he really ever do that to someone on purpose? Really?
But all that is presumably going to be dealt with in the next episode, so I guess it doesn't really qualify as a flaw in the episode (yet). What I have more of a problem with is the existence of the immortality chip in the first place. The Mire don't seem like the kind of race to have that level of power; they're basically in the same class as the Judoon, big dumb guys in heavy armor. If these idiots have achieved near-immortality, then immortality is _cheap_. Anybody could do it. And too-easy immortality has the potential to undermine the storytelling in a lot of ways. So, yeah, this is a real problem.
Still, I enjoyed the episode a lot and I'm looking forward to finding out what happens next.
This entry was originally posted at http://c-carol.dreamwidth.org/45550.html. Please comment wherever.