and even though what's been has passed
"Oh boy, it is just too damn hot right now. Great time not to have an air conditioner installed. Great times. Right so, I watched that Doctor Who show back on Saturday night."
So I wrote that, and the first parts of this upcoming lj-cut, over the past week when it was outlandishly humid and it was difficult enough to like, exist in my apartment, let alone think enough to type out any sort of thoughts. But now I can't sleep...and it's nicely, Bay-Area-ly cool, and I can write to my heart's content.
I think I burst out laughing hysterically, shouting, "WHAT?! WHAT!? WHAT!?" at that cliffhanger. But it was more out of delight, really, delight at being shocked. I'd paused and gone back a great handful of times during the episode, really, everything was so fast paced and insane(-rer) that my brain just shorted out every so often. So by the end...WHAT?! And laughter.
But let's address the end first. From what I understand, the Gangers only 'separated' and became 'real' when the solar tsunami occurred. Before that, the Gangers and the Real could not be conscious simultaneously. Eleven's Ganger was created because right after said solar tsunami shocked the Flesh, he stuck his hand into it and scanned it, felt it scanning him. And the Flesh said, yes please, I'll make myself one of those. But when the Flesh was working properly, the only way the Real could become conscious was to sever the connection between it and its Ganger.
So at the end, when Eleven sonic'd Ganger!Amy, he was merely severing the connection, and doing it so he could find Amy, the Amy who was unconscious and feeding this Ganger with her mind, her heart, and her soul. I don't know how he knew that the Amy he'd been traveling with was a Ganger, or the details of her pregnancy, but I suspect we'll find that out on Saturday. Along with how the Doctor knew about the Flesh, and why he wanted to find it in its early stages. Instead of this being the Sontaran origin story I thought it might be (though I think there's still something to be said for that), this parter was the origin of a question: when, why, and by whom was Amy taken?
I keep thinking about what I pointed out in my thoughts on Day of the Moon -- there are two scenes we didn't really see the conclusion to. The end of The Impossible Astronaut, and the little girl busting out of the spacesuit/Amy getting taken by the Silence. Not to mention the time Amy spent in the nursery, looking around; how long was she in there and what did she see that she forgot? That was a lot of tally marks she had on, all over her face and arms while just having stayed in one room. In any case, I'm thinking all that Rory heard from her recorder thing, that was all from the white containment room she's been hidden in. She did seem to have some sort of time perception problem when she woke up in custody of the Silence, thinking she'd just gotten there and she'd been there for days...Urgh. It's all a little too befuddling, there is a lot of time missing (like the 3 months between TIA/DOTM) and things forgotten that it could have been any time that she was taken. Though I doubt it could have been pre-The Big Bang, because wouldn't that have set her back as she was supposed to be?
There's also been a lot of chance for separation, the Doctor sending Amy and Rory on their honeymoons, then dropping them off home (and not contacting them for another 3 months, though that was 200-year-plus Doctor), then wanting to send them home after they got the invitations, then wanting to send them home for some fish and chips...all of this, I know, is going to fit in somewhere, and I am just so damn anxious to find out what it is. Of course not that we're going to find out everything yet, anyhow. MOFFAT!
In any case. I really loved that this two-parter took what I thought might turn into a retread of the Silurian "Bitches Be Crazy" nonsense, and let it be what it always was, a conflict of identity and value. None of them can truly be the villain (except for Jen, I guess, she went a little off the deep end) because they are fighting themselves. Not an evil version of themselves, literally, exactly themselves. I loved Cleaves (and once again, Matt Smith + Raquel Cassidy = Magic) and I loved her strength juxtaposed with her sad resignation at the impossibility of fighting oneself, and one's fate. And I loved Jimmy, and his love for his son, and the Doctor tricking him into a moment of humanity. A bit sad that Marshall Lancaster didn't get as much to do but well, you can't have it all can you.
You know what I really loved? The Doctor, and his double. I knew there would be something with the shoes as signifier. I also figured they'd switched at some point, for some reason. I didn't guess, however, that they'd been switched the whole time. That opens so many cans of so many beans. It means that the Doctor who attacked Amy was the Real Doctor. (But whatever, of course, it was the Flesh crying out through the Doctor.) It means that the Doctor that Amy told she'd seen his death was the Real Doctor. (It only occurred to me a few weeks ago that perhaps the main reason Amy's been almost on the verge of telling him she saw him get shot is because the Silent she met in the bathroom with Joy told her that she must tell the Doctor what he must not know. Subliminal influencing, or whatever they called it in DOTM.) Of course, that will probably not be addressed for a while (I'm sure he's a bit distracted trying to find Real Amy) or at all, because it's possible he was distracted by the Flesh's crying out in his mind. But I loved that both Doctors played with the concept of a Real Doctor and a Ganger Doctor, and the characters of such, and that when he saw that he was treated differently as the Ganger Doctor, the Real Doctor began to act differently.
And he did all that to find out about the Flesh, and about how to deal with the fact that the Amy in the TARDIS was a Ganger. I still think (hope) that the Ganger!Doctor is alive somehow (they didn't add that line in for nothing) and that it's Ganger!Doctor we see, 200 years in the future, and that perhaps it's Ganger Doctor who goes to Easter Island with River and helps Brian the Fish with her. That would certainly solve a lot of problems of showing all the adventures that River and the Doctor will have/have had/oh my god the TARDIS is right, tenses are so very hard. Steven Moffat said something about the Doctor who is killed in The Impossible Astronaut being very much the Doctor, and being very much dead. There were similar lines about Gangers being very much the people they'd replicated. Interesting...
Oh, and also, I still hope it's River in the space suit who kills him. Speaking of River, oh my GODDAMN I can't wait for A Good Man Goes To War, which, as of the time that I am finishing this post (too many days after I started it), is due to air in the UK in about 12 hours. However that also means that I will have to deal with the awful cliffhanger that will not be solved until the autumn. Imagine if The Pandorica Opens hadn't been solved in a week? Imagine if ANY of the cliffhangers had lasted longer than two weeks? I am not going to be happy. I'll probably spend the summer rewatching these first seven eps a lot (while intending to start and finish other series) and generally tearing out my hair. Wonderful. My only comfort is that it will be summer, which means I will probably never be in and/or unoccupied enough to start worrying about cliffhangers. So there's that!
Finally, I keep seeing mentioned that the episode called Flesh and Stone took place largely in a Treeborg forest, and that the episode in which River was introduced was called Forest of the Dead and adding all that up with "The only water in the forest is the river," and Ponds and Rivers and WHAT THE HELL, MOFFAT, MY BRAIN IS STARTING TO CRY.
STOP IT MATT SMITH YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED
Seriously sometimes I don't even remember what life was like before, when I thought he was kind of weird looking.
#cangetit
So I wrote that, and the first parts of this upcoming lj-cut, over the past week when it was outlandishly humid and it was difficult enough to like, exist in my apartment, let alone think enough to type out any sort of thoughts. But now I can't sleep...and it's nicely, Bay-Area-ly cool, and I can write to my heart's content.
I think I burst out laughing hysterically, shouting, "WHAT?! WHAT!? WHAT!?" at that cliffhanger. But it was more out of delight, really, delight at being shocked. I'd paused and gone back a great handful of times during the episode, really, everything was so fast paced and insane(-rer) that my brain just shorted out every so often. So by the end...WHAT?! And laughter.
But let's address the end first. From what I understand, the Gangers only 'separated' and became 'real' when the solar tsunami occurred. Before that, the Gangers and the Real could not be conscious simultaneously. Eleven's Ganger was created because right after said solar tsunami shocked the Flesh, he stuck his hand into it and scanned it, felt it scanning him. And the Flesh said, yes please, I'll make myself one of those. But when the Flesh was working properly, the only way the Real could become conscious was to sever the connection between it and its Ganger.
So at the end, when Eleven sonic'd Ganger!Amy, he was merely severing the connection, and doing it so he could find Amy, the Amy who was unconscious and feeding this Ganger with her mind, her heart, and her soul. I don't know how he knew that the Amy he'd been traveling with was a Ganger, or the details of her pregnancy, but I suspect we'll find that out on Saturday. Along with how the Doctor knew about the Flesh, and why he wanted to find it in its early stages. Instead of this being the Sontaran origin story I thought it might be (though I think there's still something to be said for that), this parter was the origin of a question: when, why, and by whom was Amy taken?
I keep thinking about what I pointed out in my thoughts on Day of the Moon -- there are two scenes we didn't really see the conclusion to. The end of The Impossible Astronaut, and the little girl busting out of the spacesuit/Amy getting taken by the Silence. Not to mention the time Amy spent in the nursery, looking around; how long was she in there and what did she see that she forgot? That was a lot of tally marks she had on, all over her face and arms while just having stayed in one room. In any case, I'm thinking all that Rory heard from her recorder thing, that was all from the white containment room she's been hidden in. She did seem to have some sort of time perception problem when she woke up in custody of the Silence, thinking she'd just gotten there and she'd been there for days...Urgh. It's all a little too befuddling, there is a lot of time missing (like the 3 months between TIA/DOTM) and things forgotten that it could have been any time that she was taken. Though I doubt it could have been pre-The Big Bang, because wouldn't that have set her back as she was supposed to be?
There's also been a lot of chance for separation, the Doctor sending Amy and Rory on their honeymoons, then dropping them off home (and not contacting them for another 3 months, though that was 200-year-plus Doctor), then wanting to send them home after they got the invitations, then wanting to send them home for some fish and chips...all of this, I know, is going to fit in somewhere, and I am just so damn anxious to find out what it is. Of course not that we're going to find out everything yet, anyhow. MOFFAT!
In any case. I really loved that this two-parter took what I thought might turn into a retread of the Silurian "Bitches Be Crazy" nonsense, and let it be what it always was, a conflict of identity and value. None of them can truly be the villain (except for Jen, I guess, she went a little off the deep end) because they are fighting themselves. Not an evil version of themselves, literally, exactly themselves. I loved Cleaves (and once again, Matt Smith + Raquel Cassidy = Magic) and I loved her strength juxtaposed with her sad resignation at the impossibility of fighting oneself, and one's fate. And I loved Jimmy, and his love for his son, and the Doctor tricking him into a moment of humanity. A bit sad that Marshall Lancaster didn't get as much to do but well, you can't have it all can you.
You know what I really loved? The Doctor, and his double. I knew there would be something with the shoes as signifier. I also figured they'd switched at some point, for some reason. I didn't guess, however, that they'd been switched the whole time. That opens so many cans of so many beans. It means that the Doctor who attacked Amy was the Real Doctor. (But whatever, of course, it was the Flesh crying out through the Doctor.) It means that the Doctor that Amy told she'd seen his death was the Real Doctor. (It only occurred to me a few weeks ago that perhaps the main reason Amy's been almost on the verge of telling him she saw him get shot is because the Silent she met in the bathroom with Joy told her that she must tell the Doctor what he must not know. Subliminal influencing, or whatever they called it in DOTM.) Of course, that will probably not be addressed for a while (I'm sure he's a bit distracted trying to find Real Amy) or at all, because it's possible he was distracted by the Flesh's crying out in his mind. But I loved that both Doctors played with the concept of a Real Doctor and a Ganger Doctor, and the characters of such, and that when he saw that he was treated differently as the Ganger Doctor, the Real Doctor began to act differently.
And he did all that to find out about the Flesh, and about how to deal with the fact that the Amy in the TARDIS was a Ganger. I still think (hope) that the Ganger!Doctor is alive somehow (they didn't add that line in for nothing) and that it's Ganger!Doctor we see, 200 years in the future, and that perhaps it's Ganger Doctor who goes to Easter Island with River and helps Brian the Fish with her. That would certainly solve a lot of problems of showing all the adventures that River and the Doctor will have/have had/oh my god the TARDIS is right, tenses are so very hard. Steven Moffat said something about the Doctor who is killed in The Impossible Astronaut being very much the Doctor, and being very much dead. There were similar lines about Gangers being very much the people they'd replicated. Interesting...
Oh, and also, I still hope it's River in the space suit who kills him. Speaking of River, oh my GODDAMN I can't wait for A Good Man Goes To War, which, as of the time that I am finishing this post (too many days after I started it), is due to air in the UK in about 12 hours. However that also means that I will have to deal with the awful cliffhanger that will not be solved until the autumn. Imagine if The Pandorica Opens hadn't been solved in a week? Imagine if ANY of the cliffhangers had lasted longer than two weeks? I am not going to be happy. I'll probably spend the summer rewatching these first seven eps a lot (while intending to start and finish other series) and generally tearing out my hair. Wonderful. My only comfort is that it will be summer, which means I will probably never be in and/or unoccupied enough to start worrying about cliffhangers. So there's that!
Finally, I keep seeing mentioned that the episode called Flesh and Stone took place largely in a Treeborg forest, and that the episode in which River was introduced was called Forest of the Dead and adding all that up with "The only water in the forest is the river," and Ponds and Rivers and WHAT THE HELL, MOFFAT, MY BRAIN IS STARTING TO CRY.
STOP IT MATT SMITH YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED
Seriously sometimes I don't even remember what life was like before, when I thought he was kind of weird looking.
#cangetit