Doctor Who Spoilers
So we're about half way through the season, and frankly I'm feeling vaguely unsettled.
When I was watching Eleventh Hour, I joked about Amy being a bit damaged in the head. I figure the Blue Glare of Understanding would sort her out and she'd become more stable. If anything, the episodes since have peeled away her layers of charm to show just how bad the damage is, and it's all getting a bit creepy.
It's not as though Amy doesn't know what human emotion is supposed to look like. Take her defusing Bracewell, the Dalek created scientist by reminding him of human emotion. At the time, it looked like she suceeded where the the Doctor failed because, well, she's human and he isn't. But knowing what we now know about how Amy sees interacting with men, it's starting to look less like empathy and more like manipulation.
And now I guess it's time to talk about the time she...oh gods. Amy jumped on the Doctor, that's clear, but I'm aware that people have decribed it as everything from "a bit of a snog" to "attempted rape". Which speaks volumes about how our culture needs to get a grip on rape culture, but that's not the point. And yes, if the sexes were reversed there'd be plenty of angry letters to the Radio Times, no doubt about it. What makes it worse is that the viewer colludes with Amy at first- the first few seconds are hilariously funny. Then you realise that the Doctor's actually a bit scared as well as baffled, and she's still trying to physically overpower him, and suddenly it's Not Cool.
The Doctor's reaction was to go fetch Rory and send them off to Venice. Which would have been cute, if Amy hadn't then kept Rory at a distance as a brother-figure. He has to win a duel against a vampire swordman before Amy will kiss him. Yup, they're supposed to be on the cusp of getting married, and he has to earn a kiss from her. I think this was supposed to be painted as a partial reconciliation, but it shows how unhealthy the power dynamic is with Amy and Rory- it's all on Amy's terms, and Rory has to wait for whatever scraps she throws at him.
Hell, ten minutes later Amy actually, explicitly jokes about this. "I've got my spaceship, I've got my boys, my work here is done!" Sure, she was probably kidding, but the "boys" ruefully agreed it was true. Hmm, smell that objectification!
This latest episode, Amy's Choice, brought a new perspective to it all for me. Amy is bored out of her skull, in fact she considers getting pregnant the nearest she has for entertainment. Not having or raising a child, getting pregnant. In fact, at no point does she show any kind of emotional attachment to the contents of that bump. Granted, there's an evens chance that it's All Just A Dream, but even when committing suicide, Amy doesn't even pause to think "sorry, bump!"
Er, actually, that's a good point. Amy seems to be remarkably bad at saying sorry, and by the end of this episode she does have a certain amount of apologising to do. A charitable interpretation is that she's too reserved to cough up the s-word, but alternatively you could equally argue that she doesn't necessarily see that she's done anything wrong.
What's the point of this mini-essay? This season has been full of little warnings- Prisoner Zero in Amy's spare room, the Daleks in the War Cabinet bunker, the Dream Lord in the Doctor's unconscious. There's cuckoos in the nest, and it's just possible the the scariest, most manipulative and most self-centred cuckoo is the red-haired girl that's currently nestled in the TARDIS.
When I was watching Eleventh Hour, I joked about Amy being a bit damaged in the head. I figure the Blue Glare of Understanding would sort her out and she'd become more stable. If anything, the episodes since have peeled away her layers of charm to show just how bad the damage is, and it's all getting a bit creepy.
It's not as though Amy doesn't know what human emotion is supposed to look like. Take her defusing Bracewell, the Dalek created scientist by reminding him of human emotion. At the time, it looked like she suceeded where the the Doctor failed because, well, she's human and he isn't. But knowing what we now know about how Amy sees interacting with men, it's starting to look less like empathy and more like manipulation.
And now I guess it's time to talk about the time she...oh gods. Amy jumped on the Doctor, that's clear, but I'm aware that people have decribed it as everything from "a bit of a snog" to "attempted rape". Which speaks volumes about how our culture needs to get a grip on rape culture, but that's not the point. And yes, if the sexes were reversed there'd be plenty of angry letters to the Radio Times, no doubt about it. What makes it worse is that the viewer colludes with Amy at first- the first few seconds are hilariously funny. Then you realise that the Doctor's actually a bit scared as well as baffled, and she's still trying to physically overpower him, and suddenly it's Not Cool.
The Doctor's reaction was to go fetch Rory and send them off to Venice. Which would have been cute, if Amy hadn't then kept Rory at a distance as a brother-figure. He has to win a duel against a vampire swordman before Amy will kiss him. Yup, they're supposed to be on the cusp of getting married, and he has to earn a kiss from her. I think this was supposed to be painted as a partial reconciliation, but it shows how unhealthy the power dynamic is with Amy and Rory- it's all on Amy's terms, and Rory has to wait for whatever scraps she throws at him.
Hell, ten minutes later Amy actually, explicitly jokes about this. "I've got my spaceship, I've got my boys, my work here is done!" Sure, she was probably kidding, but the "boys" ruefully agreed it was true. Hmm, smell that objectification!
This latest episode, Amy's Choice, brought a new perspective to it all for me. Amy is bored out of her skull, in fact she considers getting pregnant the nearest she has for entertainment. Not having or raising a child, getting pregnant. In fact, at no point does she show any kind of emotional attachment to the contents of that bump. Granted, there's an evens chance that it's All Just A Dream, but even when committing suicide, Amy doesn't even pause to think "sorry, bump!"
Er, actually, that's a good point. Amy seems to be remarkably bad at saying sorry, and by the end of this episode she does have a certain amount of apologising to do. A charitable interpretation is that she's too reserved to cough up the s-word, but alternatively you could equally argue that she doesn't necessarily see that she's done anything wrong.
What's the point of this mini-essay? This season has been full of little warnings- Prisoner Zero in Amy's spare room, the Daleks in the War Cabinet bunker, the Dream Lord in the Doctor's unconscious. There's cuckoos in the nest, and it's just possible the the scariest, most manipulative and most self-centred cuckoo is the red-haired girl that's currently nestled in the TARDIS.