DW 5.02. The Beast Below.
First of all: Yes, this was a *scary* episode - certainly for children! VERY scary, because the 8 y.o. came into our bedroom in the middle of the night because she couldn't sleep. THANK YOU Moffat, mission accomplished. (::grumblegrumblegrumble::)
But onto the ep. Test Card Girl in the lift was excellent, and set the tone beautifully with her little rhyme. A truth, hidden and wrapped up in a little story...
Now I have loved Floating!Amy ever since I first saw the press release trailer, and it was wonderful to see the scene 'properly' as it were. It's just such a wonderful idea, and not something we've seen before. :) And I also like the Doctor's description of Starship UK:
"It's not just a country, it's an idea. Living and laughing and shopping..."
And then we get the most brilliant scene - the Doctor explaining to Amy the whole 'We only observe', and Amy (lovely meta moment) watching the little girl and saying that not interfering must be hard... and then sees the Doctor on the screen. If I've ever seen a better encapsulation of the character, and his lovely contradictions, I can't remember it! :) (Show don't tell ftw!!!)
Lots of lovely little moments there btw - Amy being in her nightie (as they remarked in he Confidential, it's all very Wendy - running off with Peter Pan the day before her wedding, the day before she 'grows up'), and the Doctor checking the water (I actually wondered about engine vibrations! *feels clever*).
Love Eleven's odd lines, and how he delivers them: "Checking all the water in this area. There's an escaped fish." (He doesn't have the ~flourish~ that Ten had, where you'd know that it was a silly line to cover some curious insight or peculiarity - with Eleven you're more worried that this guy is *actually* bonkers.)
Then he sends Amy off (love how he falls into old patterns immediately), and especially love his answer to her 'And what are you going to do?'
"What I always do - stay out of trouble. Badly."
Anyway, then the important bit:
Amy: "You never interfere in the affairs of other people or planets - unless there's children crying."
Doctor: "Yes."
::hearts the Doctor::
Also, must take a moment to note the sign above the tent hiding the whale tendrils:
Magpie Electricals!!!
(It's like a game. Any other oddites that I missed?)
Also *need* to mention the fact that Scotland wanted its own ship! Hee! ("Good for them!")
I like the fact that the wedding thing is brought up, that it's something Amy is obviously thinking about a lot.
And then we get the Last of the Timelords:
Amy: "So there's other Timelords, yeah?"
Doctor: "No. There were, but there aren't- Just me now. Long story. It was a bad day. Bad stuff happened. And you know what, I'd love to forget it, every last bit of it, but I don't, ever."
All of The End of Time (/Time War), lurking right there, under the surface... (Like when she asks if he's a parent, and he doesn't answer. And all I can hear in my head is his thoughts: 'Yes I was a parent. But I just killed everyone. Again.') He's less manic than Ten, and better at dealing I think... but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Jumping to the funny stuff, because (as I mentioned before) he has the most fantastic lines (& delivery):
"Say weeeee!"
"The next word is kinda the scary word, you might want to take a moment, get yourself in a calm place, go 'Ommmm'. [pause] We're in a mouth. On the plus side, roomy!"
"Right then, this isn't going to be big on dignity."
Which brings us to LIZ TEN!!!
Love all her 'passed down stories' (esp the whole thing with Queen Elizabeth I!!! Canon, yeah! And 'hair of an idiot') - but the best line was without a doubt:
"I'm the bloody Queen, mate! Basically, I rule!"
Damn straight!
I loved her from the top of her cape to the soles of her boots, and she just *owned* every scene she was in. Very regal, and very self assured, and was absolutely expecting the Doctor to help, because she told him to. Also, she was gorgeous.
*fangirls*
And then the Doctor figures it all out...
"Oh Amy. We should never have come here."
(Wondered about that on first viewing. On the second - oh.)
'The Tower' (/dungeon) was great (both in idea and execution, the show should *totally* go for stuff like that at every opportunity). Of course there were some callbacks to Planet of the Ood, what with the big brain, and the cry (/song) inaudible to humans - but the underlying facts were as different as could be. 42nd Century humans presumed the Ood to want to serve... Starship Uk presumed they had to imprison the starwhale to get it to work for them. Also of course, the Ood were a luxury, a byproduct of a wealthy society - here people's lives depend on the imprisonment of an innocent, which makes for a very different moral conundrum.
Basically it showed a different focus - not the monstrousness of humanity, but the 'kindness of strangers' as it were.
And the whole thing culminates in what might be my favourite things so far - the Doctor's anger:
Doctor: "You took it upon yourself to save me from that [decision]. That was wrong. You don't ever decide what I need to know!"
Amy: "I'm sorry."
Doctor: "Oh I don't care. When I'm done here, you're going home."
Amy: "One mistake!"
Doctor: "Yeah I know. You're only human."
Which leads to his summary of the situation and:
"Nobody talk to me! Nobody human has anything to say to me today!"
What I love so very, very much about this isn't just the explosion, or how we see the past rear its ugly head, or the pain of being caught in an impossible choice - it's the way it's done, and what it tells us about Eleven. I always thought that Matt's Doctor might be an old man in a young man's body, and I'm so, so happy to see that I was right. Because he is *old* - old in a very different way to Ten. Ten's personality was bright and youthful and brilliant - very dashing and bold. Eleven comes across as cantankerous and rather bossy when he's angry. (I've not watched enough of One to know if he's bossy in the same way. Is he?)
And just generally there is a sort of measured (and simultaneously broken up) way to how he speaks - like he has too many thoughts and is trying to choose between them and jumps from one to the other, and it all makes perfect sense in his head.
(I'm lacking the right words to be honest, and someone else has probably captured what I'm trying to say so I won't try anymore.)
And then Amy has her shiny, bright moment, and I love it to *distraction*... Not just because she acts on her insight and stops the Doctor, but because the story uses her very unique history to maximum effect. She was that upset child that he came to help. (He took her seriously, he fixed the crack!) As they said in the Confidential, she knows him better than he knows himself (so many echoes of Reinette - 'I've known him my whole life!') And I think it helps her to see 'behind the face' as it were - he was her childhood hero, and ageless because of that. Like Santa. I love that she can take the tiny bits of information she's been given and piece them together:
Amy: "Amazing, don't you think - the starwhale. All that pain, and misery, and loneliness - and it just made it kind."
Doctor: "But you couldn't have known how it'd react."
Amy: "You couldn't. But I've seen it before. Very old, and very kind, and the very, very last of its kind. Sound a bit familiar?"
I love it on too many levels to count. But let me have a go at a few...
First of all, I can't think of a better gift for the Doctor than this - for Amy to hold up a mirror, saying: 'This is what I see when I look at you.'
Not a hero, not a lonely god, not a friend (as such, not yet anyway) - just a kind, old (magical) man, who helps because he can't bear to see children crying. 'This is who you are'. And, for someone still trying to find out who he is, that is incredible.
And actually, it reminds me a bit of this quote from 'The Curse of Fatal Death', and says a lot about how Moffat sees the Doctor - that childlike wonder:
'Doctor, listen to me. You can't die, you're too... You're too nice. Too brave, too kind and far, far too silly. You're like Father Christmas! The Wizard of Oz! Scooby Doo! And I love you very much. And we all need you and you simply cannot die!'
[...]
'He was never cruel and never cowardly, and it'll never be safe to be scared again.'
(The 'never cruel' is of course a tricky line that can't quite be used in New Who... But it ties in beautifully with 'And then I have to get a new name!' Oh *Doctor*.)
Also I love the fact that it echoes the Family of Blood's 'He was being kind', but turning it on its head, as it were, coming at it from the other side - coming from someone who understands kindness.
Fimally (for now) it's a nice counterbalance to last ep's 'definition': 'I'm the Doctor. Basically - run!' (which showed him to us from River's POV pretty much). And if we combine the two, we have nicely complete picture of Eleven, a new description - like we had Latimer's description of Ten back in S3 (fire and ice and rage...). A bit more fragmented, but for now it works very well, and I'm sure he'll settle more into himself as the weeks go by! :)
But I must wrap up, and will end on Amy's almost-confession:
Amy: "Have you ever run away from something cause you were scared or not ready or just because you could?"
Doctor: "Once - a long time ago."
Amy: "What happened?"
Doctor: "... hello?"
...
I like that she's very conflicted, and isn't quite sure what she's doing. I don't think she sees the Doctor in a romantic light at all, but as her way of not-growing-up yet. Of catching up on the parts of her childhood that she missed out on. I like her very, very much, and look forward to seeing how she fares in WW2! :)
(Review/squee/rambling/meta for ep 1 here in case anyone's interested.)
But onto the ep. Test Card Girl in the lift was excellent, and set the tone beautifully with her little rhyme. A truth, hidden and wrapped up in a little story...
Now I have loved Floating!Amy ever since I first saw the press release trailer, and it was wonderful to see the scene 'properly' as it were. It's just such a wonderful idea, and not something we've seen before. :) And I also like the Doctor's description of Starship UK:
"It's not just a country, it's an idea. Living and laughing and shopping..."
And then we get the most brilliant scene - the Doctor explaining to Amy the whole 'We only observe', and Amy (lovely meta moment) watching the little girl and saying that not interfering must be hard... and then sees the Doctor on the screen. If I've ever seen a better encapsulation of the character, and his lovely contradictions, I can't remember it! :) (Show don't tell ftw!!!)
Lots of lovely little moments there btw - Amy being in her nightie (as they remarked in he Confidential, it's all very Wendy - running off with Peter Pan the day before her wedding, the day before she 'grows up'), and the Doctor checking the water (I actually wondered about engine vibrations! *feels clever*).
Love Eleven's odd lines, and how he delivers them: "Checking all the water in this area. There's an escaped fish." (He doesn't have the ~flourish~ that Ten had, where you'd know that it was a silly line to cover some curious insight or peculiarity - with Eleven you're more worried that this guy is *actually* bonkers.)
Then he sends Amy off (love how he falls into old patterns immediately), and especially love his answer to her 'And what are you going to do?'
"What I always do - stay out of trouble. Badly."
Anyway, then the important bit:
Amy: "You never interfere in the affairs of other people or planets - unless there's children crying."
Doctor: "Yes."
::hearts the Doctor::
Also, must take a moment to note the sign above the tent hiding the whale tendrils:
Magpie Electricals!!!
(It's like a game. Any other oddites that I missed?)
Also *need* to mention the fact that Scotland wanted its own ship! Hee! ("Good for them!")
I like the fact that the wedding thing is brought up, that it's something Amy is obviously thinking about a lot.
And then we get the Last of the Timelords:
Amy: "So there's other Timelords, yeah?"
Doctor: "No. There were, but there aren't- Just me now. Long story. It was a bad day. Bad stuff happened. And you know what, I'd love to forget it, every last bit of it, but I don't, ever."
All of The End of Time (/Time War), lurking right there, under the surface... (Like when she asks if he's a parent, and he doesn't answer. And all I can hear in my head is his thoughts: 'Yes I was a parent. But I just killed everyone. Again.') He's less manic than Ten, and better at dealing I think... but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Jumping to the funny stuff, because (as I mentioned before) he has the most fantastic lines (& delivery):
"Say weeeee!"
"The next word is kinda the scary word, you might want to take a moment, get yourself in a calm place, go 'Ommmm'. [pause] We're in a mouth. On the plus side, roomy!"
"Right then, this isn't going to be big on dignity."
Which brings us to LIZ TEN!!!
Love all her 'passed down stories' (esp the whole thing with Queen Elizabeth I!!! Canon, yeah! And 'hair of an idiot') - but the best line was without a doubt:
"I'm the bloody Queen, mate! Basically, I rule!"
Damn straight!
I loved her from the top of her cape to the soles of her boots, and she just *owned* every scene she was in. Very regal, and very self assured, and was absolutely expecting the Doctor to help, because she told him to. Also, she was gorgeous.
*fangirls*
And then the Doctor figures it all out...
"Oh Amy. We should never have come here."
(Wondered about that on first viewing. On the second - oh.)
'The Tower' (/dungeon) was great (both in idea and execution, the show should *totally* go for stuff like that at every opportunity). Of course there were some callbacks to Planet of the Ood, what with the big brain, and the cry (/song) inaudible to humans - but the underlying facts were as different as could be. 42nd Century humans presumed the Ood to want to serve... Starship Uk presumed they had to imprison the starwhale to get it to work for them. Also of course, the Ood were a luxury, a byproduct of a wealthy society - here people's lives depend on the imprisonment of an innocent, which makes for a very different moral conundrum.
Basically it showed a different focus - not the monstrousness of humanity, but the 'kindness of strangers' as it were.
And the whole thing culminates in what might be my favourite things so far - the Doctor's anger:
Doctor: "You took it upon yourself to save me from that [decision]. That was wrong. You don't ever decide what I need to know!"
Amy: "I'm sorry."
Doctor: "Oh I don't care. When I'm done here, you're going home."
Amy: "One mistake!"
Doctor: "Yeah I know. You're only human."
Which leads to his summary of the situation and:
"Nobody talk to me! Nobody human has anything to say to me today!"
What I love so very, very much about this isn't just the explosion, or how we see the past rear its ugly head, or the pain of being caught in an impossible choice - it's the way it's done, and what it tells us about Eleven. I always thought that Matt's Doctor might be an old man in a young man's body, and I'm so, so happy to see that I was right. Because he is *old* - old in a very different way to Ten. Ten's personality was bright and youthful and brilliant - very dashing and bold. Eleven comes across as cantankerous and rather bossy when he's angry. (I've not watched enough of One to know if he's bossy in the same way. Is he?)
And just generally there is a sort of measured (and simultaneously broken up) way to how he speaks - like he has too many thoughts and is trying to choose between them and jumps from one to the other, and it all makes perfect sense in his head.
(I'm lacking the right words to be honest, and someone else has probably captured what I'm trying to say so I won't try anymore.)
And then Amy has her shiny, bright moment, and I love it to *distraction*... Not just because she acts on her insight and stops the Doctor, but because the story uses her very unique history to maximum effect. She was that upset child that he came to help. (He took her seriously, he fixed the crack!) As they said in the Confidential, she knows him better than he knows himself (so many echoes of Reinette - 'I've known him my whole life!') And I think it helps her to see 'behind the face' as it were - he was her childhood hero, and ageless because of that. Like Santa. I love that she can take the tiny bits of information she's been given and piece them together:
Amy: "Amazing, don't you think - the starwhale. All that pain, and misery, and loneliness - and it just made it kind."
Doctor: "But you couldn't have known how it'd react."
Amy: "You couldn't. But I've seen it before. Very old, and very kind, and the very, very last of its kind. Sound a bit familiar?"
I love it on too many levels to count. But let me have a go at a few...
First of all, I can't think of a better gift for the Doctor than this - for Amy to hold up a mirror, saying: 'This is what I see when I look at you.'
Not a hero, not a lonely god, not a friend (as such, not yet anyway) - just a kind, old (magical) man, who helps because he can't bear to see children crying. 'This is who you are'. And, for someone still trying to find out who he is, that is incredible.
And actually, it reminds me a bit of this quote from 'The Curse of Fatal Death', and says a lot about how Moffat sees the Doctor - that childlike wonder:
'Doctor, listen to me. You can't die, you're too... You're too nice. Too brave, too kind and far, far too silly. You're like Father Christmas! The Wizard of Oz! Scooby Doo! And I love you very much. And we all need you and you simply cannot die!'
[...]
'He was never cruel and never cowardly, and it'll never be safe to be scared again.'
(The 'never cruel' is of course a tricky line that can't quite be used in New Who... But it ties in beautifully with 'And then I have to get a new name!' Oh *Doctor*.)
Also I love the fact that it echoes the Family of Blood's 'He was being kind', but turning it on its head, as it were, coming at it from the other side - coming from someone who understands kindness.
Fimally (for now) it's a nice counterbalance to last ep's 'definition': 'I'm the Doctor. Basically - run!' (which showed him to us from River's POV pretty much). And if we combine the two, we have nicely complete picture of Eleven, a new description - like we had Latimer's description of Ten back in S3 (fire and ice and rage...). A bit more fragmented, but for now it works very well, and I'm sure he'll settle more into himself as the weeks go by! :)
But I must wrap up, and will end on Amy's almost-confession:
Amy: "Have you ever run away from something cause you were scared or not ready or just because you could?"
Doctor: "Once - a long time ago."
Amy: "What happened?"
Doctor: "... hello?"
...
I like that she's very conflicted, and isn't quite sure what she's doing. I don't think she sees the Doctor in a romantic light at all, but as her way of not-growing-up yet. Of catching up on the parts of her childhood that she missed out on. I like her very, very much, and look forward to seeing how she fares in WW2! :)
(Review/squee/rambling/meta for ep 1 here in case anyone's interested.)