Doctor Who thinkiness
I stopped watching Dr. Who after the first episode of the second season, because I missed Christopher Eccleston, and his loss allowed me to get distracted by other shiny. I finally got around to picking it back up.
(I picked it back up because I am procrastinating watching the last three seasons of SG1. I *really* don't want to watch past SG1 season 7. There is a meta post coming about why, I think)
-I did not think I would ever like Tennant as the Doctor. I was so wrong. I mean, I was right in that Eccleston brought something to the Doctor that Tennant just can't- his wild intensity. Seriously. Do you remember "everybody lives"? "The oncoming storm"? The man blazed with intensity. It was like watching a fucking supernova. I had to shield my eyes. He just blazed, and it was so fucking hot I could hardly stand it. I believed that the Daleks were terrified of Nine. I won't believe that of Ten for a moment. He doesn't burn in the same way, and I miss that dreadfully.
Compare that, though, to both the sheer joy and the vulnerability of Ten. What a completely different character! When he tries to be intense and scary I kind of chuckle a little, but when he tells Rose that she can spend the rest of her life with him, but he can't spend the rest of his with her? When he describes the burnt orange sky and glowing mountains to Martha? I just... I can't even... *flaily hands* How can I not love him?
-I do not find Tennant all that hot. Okay, fine, when he puts on those glasses I immediately go insane with the desire to throw him down and do obscene things to him, but that is because I have a wild fetish for awesome glasses. It's not proper lust, it's envy, which is different (I can't afford all the awesome glasses I want, not at $300-$400 a pop for lenses). But I just can't get all that hot or bothered by his glasses-less face, and I actually found Eccleston hotter, in his own oddball but intense way.
-I think Mickey is a phenomenal, wonderful, surprising character. I love the agency he was given at the very beginning to choose not to go with the Doctor, and how that really did come from his own personality and his own motivations instead of just plot necessity, and I love that he was allowed to be frightened without being condemned as cowardly - this especially- and I love how he saw Rose fall in love with the Doctor and was allowed to be sad but wasn't destroyed or devastated, and I love his evolution as a character and I love the ending of his story. He snuck up on me in a big way.
-Billie Piper sure is pretty, isn't she? Also, what is up with the raccoon eye-makeup? I notice Gwen in Torchwood gets the same eyelashes-attacked-by-a-tarantula treatment. Is this some kind of British cultural/class marker I don't know about? Because it's ugly and I wish they would stop. Piper deserves better than that.
-Losing Rose made me cry so damned hard. Really. We're talking Supernatural-induced levels of horrible emo sobbing. I loved her as a character so much. And it was exactly the kind of bittersweet ending I kink on- where she's lost everything,
and yet at the same time she still has a family and a life and a world and a future and she has to come up with some way to go on. She's been through this huge, life changing thing that has divided everything in her universe into "before" and "after," and how the hell do you rebuild your life after losing that? How do you pick up and become this entirely new person, when everything you rebuilt yourself around is taken away forever?
-There is a trope sometimes identified as Walking The Earth which speaks to me personally about as strongly as anything ever possibly can. I have meta in me about this trope (as it relates to Supernatural, Firefly, the Stargate shows, and many different books, and me personally and shit) and what it says about found family and roots and home and self-definition. Doctor Who may be the most perfect SF example I've ever seen. This hits me where I live in a big way.
-In "The Runaway Bride" Donna is just about the god-awfully annoying character ever put to screen, and I have such a hate-on for her it isn't even funny. I know the reasons people love her later, and I imagine that I'll be impressed later, but for now? Hate, hate, hate.
-Martha kicks all forms of ass, of course. But here's the thing- doesn't she come off, just a little, like she was designed to be the perfect companion? With her logical thinking and adventuresome attitude and sheer sense of wonder and everything she says to the Doctor when she stands with him on that balcony on the moon? I mean, major self-identification/self-insertion character for me, because that is exactly how I would feel and I exactly how I would hope I would react. Nevertheless, the result is that I don't like her as a character in the same way that I liked Rose. Because Martha seems to be the perfect companion, whereas Rose was just Rose, just perfectly and completely herself. Does that make any sense? It's also why I'll ship Ten/Rose all to high heaven but couldn't ship Ten/Martha even if the show pushed me that way- because she's just designed to be so perfect for him, but he loved Rose for her.
-The moment in the Shakespeare episode when Shakespeare flirts with the Doctor and the Doctor says, "And fifty-seven academics just punched the air"? WINS.
-I don't have an embarrassment squick when it is the characters who are getting embarrassed. But I do admit that there are large sections of exposition on this show that I just can't listen to because I am so utterly humiliated-by-proxy for the writers who have to write such dreadful dreck. Really, as SF, their plots are made of fail. This is obviously a case of me not being very good at loving something for the cheese, whereas I am quite good indeed at loving something despite the cheese.
Was that all? Yeah, I think as of mid-season 3, that was all.
(I picked it back up because I am procrastinating watching the last three seasons of SG1. I *really* don't want to watch past SG1 season 7. There is a meta post coming about why, I think)
-I did not think I would ever like Tennant as the Doctor. I was so wrong. I mean, I was right in that Eccleston brought something to the Doctor that Tennant just can't- his wild intensity. Seriously. Do you remember "everybody lives"? "The oncoming storm"? The man blazed with intensity. It was like watching a fucking supernova. I had to shield my eyes. He just blazed, and it was so fucking hot I could hardly stand it. I believed that the Daleks were terrified of Nine. I won't believe that of Ten for a moment. He doesn't burn in the same way, and I miss that dreadfully.
Compare that, though, to both the sheer joy and the vulnerability of Ten. What a completely different character! When he tries to be intense and scary I kind of chuckle a little, but when he tells Rose that she can spend the rest of her life with him, but he can't spend the rest of his with her? When he describes the burnt orange sky and glowing mountains to Martha? I just... I can't even... *flaily hands* How can I not love him?
-I do not find Tennant all that hot. Okay, fine, when he puts on those glasses I immediately go insane with the desire to throw him down and do obscene things to him, but that is because I have a wild fetish for awesome glasses. It's not proper lust, it's envy, which is different (I can't afford all the awesome glasses I want, not at $300-$400 a pop for lenses). But I just can't get all that hot or bothered by his glasses-less face, and I actually found Eccleston hotter, in his own oddball but intense way.
-I think Mickey is a phenomenal, wonderful, surprising character. I love the agency he was given at the very beginning to choose not to go with the Doctor, and how that really did come from his own personality and his own motivations instead of just plot necessity, and I love that he was allowed to be frightened without being condemned as cowardly - this especially- and I love how he saw Rose fall in love with the Doctor and was allowed to be sad but wasn't destroyed or devastated, and I love his evolution as a character and I love the ending of his story. He snuck up on me in a big way.
-Billie Piper sure is pretty, isn't she? Also, what is up with the raccoon eye-makeup? I notice Gwen in Torchwood gets the same eyelashes-attacked-by-a-tarantula treatment. Is this some kind of British cultural/class marker I don't know about? Because it's ugly and I wish they would stop. Piper deserves better than that.
-Losing Rose made me cry so damned hard. Really. We're talking Supernatural-induced levels of horrible emo sobbing. I loved her as a character so much. And it was exactly the kind of bittersweet ending I kink on- where she's lost everything,
and yet at the same time she still has a family and a life and a world and a future and she has to come up with some way to go on. She's been through this huge, life changing thing that has divided everything in her universe into "before" and "after," and how the hell do you rebuild your life after losing that? How do you pick up and become this entirely new person, when everything you rebuilt yourself around is taken away forever?
-There is a trope sometimes identified as Walking The Earth which speaks to me personally about as strongly as anything ever possibly can. I have meta in me about this trope (as it relates to Supernatural, Firefly, the Stargate shows, and many different books, and me personally and shit) and what it says about found family and roots and home and self-definition. Doctor Who may be the most perfect SF example I've ever seen. This hits me where I live in a big way.
-In "The Runaway Bride" Donna is just about the god-awfully annoying character ever put to screen, and I have such a hate-on for her it isn't even funny. I know the reasons people love her later, and I imagine that I'll be impressed later, but for now? Hate, hate, hate.
-Martha kicks all forms of ass, of course. But here's the thing- doesn't she come off, just a little, like she was designed to be the perfect companion? With her logical thinking and adventuresome attitude and sheer sense of wonder and everything she says to the Doctor when she stands with him on that balcony on the moon? I mean, major self-identification/self-insertion character for me, because that is exactly how I would feel and I exactly how I would hope I would react. Nevertheless, the result is that I don't like her as a character in the same way that I liked Rose. Because Martha seems to be the perfect companion, whereas Rose was just Rose, just perfectly and completely herself. Does that make any sense? It's also why I'll ship Ten/Rose all to high heaven but couldn't ship Ten/Martha even if the show pushed me that way- because she's just designed to be so perfect for him, but he loved Rose for her.
-The moment in the Shakespeare episode when Shakespeare flirts with the Doctor and the Doctor says, "And fifty-seven academics just punched the air"? WINS.
-I don't have an embarrassment squick when it is the characters who are getting embarrassed. But I do admit that there are large sections of exposition on this show that I just can't listen to because I am so utterly humiliated-by-proxy for the writers who have to write such dreadful dreck. Really, as SF, their plots are made of fail. This is obviously a case of me not being very good at loving something for the cheese, whereas I am quite good indeed at loving something despite the cheese.
Was that all? Yeah, I think as of mid-season 3, that was all.