Why I like the Gigantosauress
The Gigantosauress is what I'm calling the giant dinosaur from "Deep Breath" - literally 'gigantic lizard lady.' Because that's what she is. Seriously she's huge. Some unattested species of Theropod from the Silurian era - or rather, from the era of the Silurians, which, as has been discussed elsewhere, is very much a different thing. Alternatively, she's so big because of her somewhat ... intimate relationship with the TARDIS's dimensional stabilizers. Like so many great ladies of Doctor Who, the Gigantosauress enters our story by hitching a ride with the TARDIS, more or less by accident. That is to say, she gets it stuck in her throat. (Tyrannosaurs will eat anything after all, and she's probably a Tyrannosaur of some kind). So. We've got a giant dinosaur stomping around Victorian London, to everyone's consternation, not least her own.
The first thing I like about the dinosaur is just plain Rule of Cool. Dinosaurs are awesome. Inherently. And it's a pretty great way for our heroes to enter the story. The TARDIS may have been being eaten by dinosaurs - five verbs, one sentence I'm so indescribably happy I got to type. It also shows us immediately that everything is not quite working properly yet. Newly regenerated Doctor, new kinds of ridiculous trouble to get himself into. But then...they deal with the dinosaur not at all. This is not a story about a dinosaur stomping around Victorian London. The Gigantosauress is not the problem. The problem, really, is the Doctor's regeneration and how everyone is dealing with it, himself included. Also there are killer robots. But the dinosaur is literally just along for the ride, poor thing. Vastra gets her contained almost immediately, and gets to dealing with more pressing issues. Which means we've got a whomping great dinosaur hanging out in the Thames being... scenery. A background sight gag. Which is fantastic.
The gigantosauress goes from being just generally awesome to actually brilliant in how she serves to showcase the new Doctor's developing persona. The Twelfth Doctor is being played as "more alien," and in this episode (and particularly in the context of his post-regenerative brain-crazies) this manifests primarily in terms of category formation. Everyone's category formation starts in the same place - ME vs NOT ME, and we see this in how the very first description he gives of Clara is "the not-me one." That's what's important. But carrying that distinction through, that makes everybody else Aliens, and most of them Earthlings in particular. A useful category of Not-Me when you happen to be on the Earth. So, Jenny, Clara, Vastra, the horse, and the dinosaur are all just "Earthlings." Some of them are green reptilian earthlings, some of them are brownish mamalian earthlings; some of them are shorter-than-me earthlings, some of them are much-much-taller-than-me earthlings. Not only does the narrative treat the dinosaur as a creature rather than a monster, the Doctor treats her as just another Earthling. This is played for laughs, when he clarifies that he's not flirting with her, for drama when he promises to get her home again, and for actual genius when he asks: "have there been any other murders like this?" It's a perspective-shifting line. It's not weird sci-fi or tragedy or giant dinosaurs - it's just perfectly ordinary crime. And it shows us how a very alien Doctor can think about things differently, and how important and valuable that can be.
But I also like the dinosaur in herself, in the...tragedy of her story. The most beautiful moment in the episode for me was the "dinosaur translation" speech (which, of course, also hold's a mirror to the Doctor, just like absolutely everything else in the episode). As a rule, I dislike the "I speak X" conceit, but this scene is beautiful. The dinosaur, in the distance, bellowing out her loneliness and confusion, juxtaposed with the Doctor, not yet himself and mostly asleep, translating or echoing or both:
"I am alone.
The world which shook at my feet, and the trees, and the sky, have gone, and I am alone now, alone.
The wind bites now, and the world is grey, and I am alone. Can’t see me. Doesn’t see me.
Can’t. See me."
This got to me in a big way. A big way. There's a Ray Bradbury story that my middle school science teacher read to us called "the Fog Horn" which is all about exactly the same feeling that this passage conjures up. (I read once that there's a welsh word Hiraeth which translates roughly to "longing" but...more than that. That's what this is.) It speaks to the romantic sturm-und-drang-y part of my soul. Here's a bit from the story (which I HIGHLY recommend).
"A cry came across a million years of water and mist. A cry so anguished and alone it shuddered
in my head and my body. The monster cried out at the tower. The Fog Horn blew. The monster roared again. The Fog Horn blew. The monster opened its great toothed mouth and the sound that came from it was the sound of the Fog Horn itself. Lonely and vast and far away. The sound of isolation, a viewless sea, a cold night, apartness. That was the sound."
It's this same sense of longing and connection. "The sadness of eternity and the briefness of life." The call out "towards the place where you bury yourself in sleep and sea memories of a world where there were thousands like yourself, but now you're alone, all alone in a world that's not made for you, a world where you have to hide." It's about the dinosaur, and it's about the Doctor, who's just gotten a new lease on life, regenerations he was never supposed to have, but knows he will never reach the promised land. And I just want to quote the whole entire story here because it's perfect and this scene is perfect and the giant dinosaur is perfect and beautiful and lonely and ancient and waaaay too big and a dinosaur. I need to stop or I'm gonna start flailing. But it's one of the few scenes in the show which really gives you that sense of eternity which nevertheless underruns the the entire thing. And it shows you exactly where we're starting with this new Doctor. The dinosaur reminds him who he is and what he's about.
Which makes it all the more tragic and powerful that his interaction with the dinosaur is a failure in every important way. It's a brutal reminder that he can't save everyone, and that even his completely innocent mistakes hurt people and end in tragedy. Women in Refrigerators loses a decent amount of its problematicity when you do it with a giant dinosaur. I'm not sure it loses all of it, but that's a question for another day, and it's certainly extremely effective.
I really did just love everything about the Gigantosauress (although, as ever, I don't ship it). Especially the fact that from the previews it looked like she'd be just awful. Excellent use of bait and switch. Also, excellent use of a giant dinosaur. Not that there are a whole lot of really bad uses of a giant dinosaur.
Guys I really love dinosaurs.
The first thing I like about the dinosaur is just plain Rule of Cool. Dinosaurs are awesome. Inherently. And it's a pretty great way for our heroes to enter the story. The TARDIS may have been being eaten by dinosaurs - five verbs, one sentence I'm so indescribably happy I got to type. It also shows us immediately that everything is not quite working properly yet. Newly regenerated Doctor, new kinds of ridiculous trouble to get himself into. But then...they deal with the dinosaur not at all. This is not a story about a dinosaur stomping around Victorian London. The Gigantosauress is not the problem. The problem, really, is the Doctor's regeneration and how everyone is dealing with it, himself included. Also there are killer robots. But the dinosaur is literally just along for the ride, poor thing. Vastra gets her contained almost immediately, and gets to dealing with more pressing issues. Which means we've got a whomping great dinosaur hanging out in the Thames being... scenery. A background sight gag. Which is fantastic.
The gigantosauress goes from being just generally awesome to actually brilliant in how she serves to showcase the new Doctor's developing persona. The Twelfth Doctor is being played as "more alien," and in this episode (and particularly in the context of his post-regenerative brain-crazies) this manifests primarily in terms of category formation. Everyone's category formation starts in the same place - ME vs NOT ME, and we see this in how the very first description he gives of Clara is "the not-me one." That's what's important. But carrying that distinction through, that makes everybody else Aliens, and most of them Earthlings in particular. A useful category of Not-Me when you happen to be on the Earth. So, Jenny, Clara, Vastra, the horse, and the dinosaur are all just "Earthlings." Some of them are green reptilian earthlings, some of them are brownish mamalian earthlings; some of them are shorter-than-me earthlings, some of them are much-much-taller-than-me earthlings. Not only does the narrative treat the dinosaur as a creature rather than a monster, the Doctor treats her as just another Earthling. This is played for laughs, when he clarifies that he's not flirting with her, for drama when he promises to get her home again, and for actual genius when he asks: "have there been any other murders like this?" It's a perspective-shifting line. It's not weird sci-fi or tragedy or giant dinosaurs - it's just perfectly ordinary crime. And it shows us how a very alien Doctor can think about things differently, and how important and valuable that can be.
But I also like the dinosaur in herself, in the...tragedy of her story. The most beautiful moment in the episode for me was the "dinosaur translation" speech (which, of course, also hold's a mirror to the Doctor, just like absolutely everything else in the episode). As a rule, I dislike the "I speak X" conceit, but this scene is beautiful. The dinosaur, in the distance, bellowing out her loneliness and confusion, juxtaposed with the Doctor, not yet himself and mostly asleep, translating or echoing or both:
"I am alone.
The world which shook at my feet, and the trees, and the sky, have gone, and I am alone now, alone.
The wind bites now, and the world is grey, and I am alone. Can’t see me. Doesn’t see me.
Can’t. See me."
This got to me in a big way. A big way. There's a Ray Bradbury story that my middle school science teacher read to us called "the Fog Horn" which is all about exactly the same feeling that this passage conjures up. (I read once that there's a welsh word Hiraeth which translates roughly to "longing" but...more than that. That's what this is.) It speaks to the romantic sturm-und-drang-y part of my soul. Here's a bit from the story (which I HIGHLY recommend).
"A cry came across a million years of water and mist. A cry so anguished and alone it shuddered
in my head and my body. The monster cried out at the tower. The Fog Horn blew. The monster roared again. The Fog Horn blew. The monster opened its great toothed mouth and the sound that came from it was the sound of the Fog Horn itself. Lonely and vast and far away. The sound of isolation, a viewless sea, a cold night, apartness. That was the sound."
It's this same sense of longing and connection. "The sadness of eternity and the briefness of life." The call out "towards the place where you bury yourself in sleep and sea memories of a world where there were thousands like yourself, but now you're alone, all alone in a world that's not made for you, a world where you have to hide." It's about the dinosaur, and it's about the Doctor, who's just gotten a new lease on life, regenerations he was never supposed to have, but knows he will never reach the promised land. And I just want to quote the whole entire story here because it's perfect and this scene is perfect and the giant dinosaur is perfect and beautiful and lonely and ancient and waaaay too big and a dinosaur. I need to stop or I'm gonna start flailing. But it's one of the few scenes in the show which really gives you that sense of eternity which nevertheless underruns the the entire thing. And it shows you exactly where we're starting with this new Doctor. The dinosaur reminds him who he is and what he's about.
Which makes it all the more tragic and powerful that his interaction with the dinosaur is a failure in every important way. It's a brutal reminder that he can't save everyone, and that even his completely innocent mistakes hurt people and end in tragedy. Women in Refrigerators loses a decent amount of its problematicity when you do it with a giant dinosaur. I'm not sure it loses all of it, but that's a question for another day, and it's certainly extremely effective.
I really did just love everything about the Gigantosauress (although, as ever, I don't ship it). Especially the fact that from the previews it looked like she'd be just awful. Excellent use of bait and switch. Also, excellent use of a giant dinosaur. Not that there are a whole lot of really bad uses of a giant dinosaur.
Guys I really love dinosaurs.