Dr. Who Season 4: How I lost my heart to Donna Noble
So I'm finally back from vacation and ready to dive back into fandom starting with Dr. Who. [I went to Portland, OR and had marvelous time at all the Pride events. In general, it was awesome to go to a big city (or at least, Portland is a big city to me) and experience the joys of public transportation. No, I'm not kidding. It was awesome to be
( Read more... )
I did like Turn Left, but later reading about some of the weird Orientalism vibes fans were picking up on took away from the episode for me. I wasn't a huge fan of the Sontaran episodes (although Martha and Donna = BAMFs), and Journey's End just kind of embarrasses me. LOL. So it's probably just a matter of personal taste; I know plenty of people who think series 4 is RTD's best, mostly owing to the chemistry between DT and Catherine.
"I guess it comes down to Donna found some guts when she didn't think she had any, while River has that *I was always going to be awesome* vibe about her."
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. I think that River just really fits into my preferred archetype as a character, and Donna doesn't, although I can recognize her awesomeness. We're always seeing examples of insecure women who gain confidence over the course of the narrative in media, so while I respect Donna's journey I don't really see it as particularly revolutionary for the show (I don't know how much you've seen of series 1-3, but the other two companions were also "redeemed" by the Doctor; Rose was an underemployed, non-college attending, teenage shopgirl before her travels with the Doctor gave her maturity, and while Martha was more put-together she also was presented as being utterly infatuated with the Doctor and the escape he offered from her mundane life and dysfunctional family.) To me, River is something entirely new; a female character who actually has a one-up on the Doctor. She doesn't need him to help her discover her potential; she's found it already. (Although how much that's true will be apparent as we learn more about her identity). And that's really appealing to me.
"I can't imagine Moffat doing to her what RTD did to Donna.
He already did that to River by sticking her in the library forever. I mean, immortality yet stuck in one place forever is almost as bad as erasing Donna's memories."
Haha, you got me there. Although I didn't have as much of a problem with the computer thing as other people did, mainly because I saw it as a metaphorical ascendance to a sort of "heaven," which is certainly what they seemed to be trying to convey with the white color of her dress. I'm mostly able to ignore the problematic aspects of River's end because as far as I'm concerned, she can regenerate. She could have lived hundreds of years before the library. So I'm able to enjoy her adventures without thinking too much about the library, especially because I think River is a very important character on the show and there may be more to her "death" than what we saw in s4.
It's weird because I had a massive crush on Ten when I first watched his episodes, but now I can barely stand him. LOL. The specials left a bad taste in my mouth, and he just grates on me. But I looove Eleven. He's just so weird and alien and endearing. And I love him with River.
I also really like Amy a lot, even without River. She seems to get some hostility from fandom, but I find her to be a fascinating character with all her abandonment issues and her sexual confidence and the fact that she's not really a nurturing type or even "nice" all the time. Plus, I think Karen Gillan is lovely and a great actress. I also love Rory, mainly for the role reversal in his relationship with Amy. Plus, I just find him very endearing.
Reply
Re Amy and fandom:It seems to me that DW Fandom is a little misogynistic. I know that Donna is pretty much universally praised now, but I get the feeling that wasn't always the case. And just surfing around the net, it seems like River gets a lot of flack and poor Martha gets shit from every one.
Reply
I agree that the DW fandom seems misogynistic in pockets and just generally dysfunctional. I think a certain amount of insanity is natural in a show with such a huge canon and so many different schools of opinion, but there was no excuse for the vitriol shown against River and Amy. The latest gross thing is that Karen Gillan was apparently found naked in her hotel in a possibly skeevy scenario, and a bunch of gamer boys in the fandom were talking about how much it sucked they couldn't be there. Which is so objectifying and sexist, because we don't know what happened to her but it doesn't sound like a situation Karen wanted to be in. Ugh. At least people at the Doctor Who community were generally calling them out on it.
Reply
Re KG: I thought the source on the hotel story was the Daily Mail aka the Daily Fail. Anyways, I once read a thread on a popular sci-fi message board where CT was a horrible companion because she wasn't the usual "model" companion and Martha was an okay companion because she was pretty to look at and that is why we could forgive her infatuation with the Doctor (Like Seriously, guys, Martha was great! and she left the Doctor's broke ass on her own.)
Reply
Reply
"Turn Left" is kind of the wild card here, because it shows some really fantastic sacrifice and initiative on Donna's part, *without* the Doctor. But I think that may have been the exception rather than the rule throughout the season; through most of the episodes, she seemed to need the Doctor to give her that "push." But I could be forgetting things; it's been a while since I watched s4.
Reply
Re the exception to the rule: She stops him from killing himself in "Runaway Bride;" Her decision to not join him and later to join him is her own (I mean, technically you could argue that he opened this new world to her and that would be considered a push, but I felt like she had a lot of agency when she made those decisions)
I don't know, though, because I guess in a way, by the very fact that she is a companion, she cannot escaped being pushed by the Doctor (i.e. describing "pushed" as putting someone in a scenario (bright shiny new worlds with danger and running) and then seeing how they then react). The examples of saving the family in Pompeii or taking equal responsibility for the decision to blow the volcano, hitting the Sontaran in the back of the neck, saving the day in the Agatha Christie episode, Turn Left are examples of her being awesome in response to a "push"/situation, a "push"/situation that was created by traveling with the Doctor.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment