"Out of Joint" Commentary: Deep Space Ninth Doctor
In which River contemplates fairy tale tropes, dinosaurs are discussed and accents are admired:
River lay back on her bed, feet propped high on the wall, thinking. Mostly out loud.
I just liked that image. Note that this is the only narrative in this segment. In certain circumstances, pure dialogue can be far more vivid than dialogue interspersed with actions and descriptions and such. This is one such case. River's not moving, just free-associating and sorting through all the ideas in her head.
“Red Riding Hood, Big Bad Wolf. No, I’ve exhausted that option. A different trope may be useful. Is she a princess? No, a princess loses her mother, not her father. Not a princess, not a damsel in distress.
“Rose, rose, rose--Beauty and the Beast. Father takes a rose, Beast takes Beauty, Beauty’s love changes Beast into a man. Has possibilities.
Part of River's problem is that she's focused on all the wrong stories. She dismisses princesses, so Briar Rose doesn't even occur to her. Sleeping Beauty doesn't fit in most ways, and as River's looking for an exact match, she misses it. But she does come up with some things that fit.
“Golden hair. Goldilocks. Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Three bears, three pigs. Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. Aha! Correlation via integer. Prime number plus one makes even number. Except for two. Very important. I think I’m onto something. An analogy. Goldilocks is to the Three Bears as Big Bad Wolf is to the Three Little Pigs. Goldilocks devours porridge, Big Bad Wolf devours pigs. Devourers, both. Therefore, Goldilocks is the Big Bad Wolf.
Didja follow all that?
“That accounts for the plus one. Rose is the plus one. But what of the three? I only count two.
“Pig with straw, pig with wood, pig with stone. Hmm. No, doesn’t work. Try the other--Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Baby Bear. Perhaps have a Papa Bear . . . oh, Mama Bear!
That would be the TARDIS.
Now it makes sense. Heh. Thought I was going crazy for a minute there.
Had to put in that little touch.
We have the three, and we have the plus one. The analogy works, the equation balances.
“But the wolf burns.”
I liked ending on that note. Just chilling enough to give this little segment a bit of a jolt.
***
“I love the way they talk,” said Rose. “It’s adorable!”
Ah, Rose--you're so darling!
“I’ve always liked the Rim dialect from this century,” said Jack. “There’s a poetry to it.”
Rose, Jack and the Doctor were alone on the TARDIS, as the crew of Serenity had knocked off for the shipboard night. Jack and the Doctor continued their repairs while Rose kept them company.
“Did you learn anything interesting or useful in the cockpit?” asked the Doctor, who was down one level from Rose and Jack.
“Depends on what you consider useful,” said Jack. “Wash gave me a tour of the ship’s control systems. Looks like he and Kaylee have been doing some souping-up, which, hey, I can respect. Other than that, though, it’s a pretty standard 26th-century transport ship. Perfect for doing legitimate business and a little crime on the side. Which they do.”
“They’re criminals?” asked Rose, brow furrowing.
Rose still has a bit of that black-and-white mentality. She likes the crew of Serenity, so they must be good. But criminals are bad. So she gets a touch of cognitive dissonance.
“It’s the only way to survive out here, hon. These people don’t want to work for the Alliance, and strictly legitimate business isn’t gonna be lucrative enough to keep this ship off the ground.” Jack pushed the panel he was working on back into place. “So they do a little smuggling here, an illegal salvage there, the odd bit of theft--nothing unusual for these parts.”
Jack, of course, knows the score. He's aware of the nuances of these times and how old Browncoats have to make their way in the world.
“I’d have guessed as much,” said the Doctor. “Anything else?”
“Well, the Ankylosaurus and the Triceratops had a falling out over the Stegosaurus, the Brachiosaur is desperately in love with the Diplodocus, who won’t give him the time of day, the T-Rex continues to scheme for world domination while the Dienonychus and the Velociraptors plot his downfall, and the Pterosaurs just want to party,” said Jack.
Wash gave him the lowdown on Primordial Eastenders.
“Sorry you asked yet?” Rose asked the Doctor.
“Very.” The Doctor pulled himself up onto the grate. “Jack, I’d like to make restoring power to the computers our top priority. I want to start analyzing the telepathic signal River picked up on. Belowdecks can wait.”
“How can you analyze a telepathic signal?” asked Jack.
“Ship’s telepathic,” said Rose.
“Well, I know that, but--”
“But nothing. Rose is right,” said the Doctor. “My mind now has a copy of the signal that I took from River’s mind. That’s enough for the TARDIS.”
“It really worries you, doesn’t it?” asked Jack.
“Very much so. The kind of technology it would take to send a signal like that doesn’t belong in this century or even this sector of the galaxy. So, we’ve either got anachronistic technology at work, or alien technology,” explained the Doctor. “Something’s interfering here. And given what’s been done to River Tam’s brain, I can’t think of any good that would come of it.”
At this point, his instincts tell him that what's been done to River involved technology that shouldn't have been in the hands it was. More than that, though, he knows that advanced technology in the hands of the people who did this to River could be disastrous.
***
“I love the way they talk. It’s so cute!” gushed Kaylee.
Ah, Kaylee, you're so darling! I like pulling stuff like this.
Serenity’s crew had gathered around the dinner table for one more meeting before bedtime. Mal gave Kaylee a fond look.
“Cute as they may be, bao bei, we still have a mystery on our hands,” he said. “More’n one, it looks like.”
“Did the Doctor say anything else about the signal he said River picked up on?” asked Zoë.
“Just said he’d analyze it when he got his computers back. Seeing as Serenity knows zip-squat from telepathy, I can’t think we have too many options but to carry on as before. We land on Angel tomorrow morning, finish the job and hopefully get paid and not shot,” said Mal. “Find out anything interesting about Captain Jack?”
No matter what weirdness is going on, Mal keeps one foot in the real world. It's one of his greatest strengths. Finish the job and worry about the weird stuff when you get a break.
“He likes Serenity,” said Wash. “I’d appreciate it if he stopped talking like she’s a museum piece, though.”
“He says he’s from the 51st century,” said Zoë.
“Yet he’s not un-knowledgeable about dinosaurs,” added Wash.
I loved the mental images of Wash, Jack and the dinos so much that I finally wrote them a scene near the end. Cute cubed!
“Says he was a Time Agent,” Zoë went on. “Some sort of paramilitary group, I gathered. That goes with what you and I thought, Sir.”
“I’ve noticed that he and the Doctor both move very well,” put in Inara.
“Jack likes to dance.” River had appeared in the doorway, and the grin on her face was downright naughty. “Really likes to dance.”
Luckily, no one else gets the implication.
Her presence sparked the memory of what she’d said concerning the Doctor and Rose. Book spoke up.
“I must say, Rose seems extremely fond of the Doctor,” he said. “She told me about some of her adventures with him. They were alone on that ship of his for months before they picked up Captain Jack, and she says she’s not been frightened of him but for once, when they ran across one of them that slaughtered the Doctor’s people. Said she’d never seen him so scared or angry.”
To my mind, this is the truth. Rose wasn't afraid of the Doctor, not from the start. Oh, he had his moments when he scared her, especially in "Rose," but she wasn't afraid of him. Not until she saw the true darkness inside him in "Dalek."
“Can’t say I blame him for that,” said Mal. He thought perhaps that was what he’d recognized in the Doctor--someone else who’d been on the losing side of a war.
“I’ve been watching them as well,” said Inara. “Rose trusts the Doctor completely, and he’s in love with her. He needs her.”
“For what?” asked Zoë.
Inara gave a slight shrug. “I don’t know. But he does. He both desires and needs her. As for Rose, I’d say she’s more than a little in love with him, but I don’t believe they’re lovers.”
Is it just me, or does Inara remind anyone of Counselor Troi right here?
“They ain’t,” said Kaylee. “Captain Jack thinks they ought to be sharin’ bed. ‘Course, he wants to be in it, too. Anyways, he says the Doctor’s holding back ‘cause he thinks he doesn’t deserve her or somethin’, and ain’t that just stupid? She should be the one makin’ the decision of whether or not he’s worthy of her, and if they want each other, why should anything in the ‘verse stop ‘em from beddin’ down? It’s just dumb, is what it is!” She’d worked up quite the head of steam. Simon very carefully kept his eyes on the table.
Kaylee's over-identifying juuuust a bit.
“Well, I don’t know about anything else,” said Mal before the silence could get too awkward, “but I don’t believe he’d do harm to Rose any more’n I’d do to Kaylee. Don’t mean he’s not dangerous, of course, but one could say the same about quite a few on this ship.”
“He is dangerous,” said River quietly. “Captain Jack is dangerous. The Doctor is dangerous. But she’s the most dangerous of all. Huai de lang.” She glared around the room accusingly. “She’ll burn for him, and nothing can withstand her flame. You don’t see it. He doesn’t see it. No one expects the girl. No one ever expects the girl!” She practically shouted the last word before whipping around and stalking out of the room.
The Chinese, of course, means "Bad Wolf." River's clarifying her position here: that the Doctor's dangerous to Rose only in that his influence will turn her into something even more dangerous. A bit gets lost in the translation from her brain to others' ears, though. Plus, I just liked the sentence "No one ever expects the girl." 'Cause they don't. Right, Master?
Mal rubbed his forehead. “Sweet dreams, everyone.”
Poor Mal. His headache just refuses to go away.
River lay back on her bed, feet propped high on the wall, thinking. Mostly out loud.
I just liked that image. Note that this is the only narrative in this segment. In certain circumstances, pure dialogue can be far more vivid than dialogue interspersed with actions and descriptions and such. This is one such case. River's not moving, just free-associating and sorting through all the ideas in her head.
“Red Riding Hood, Big Bad Wolf. No, I’ve exhausted that option. A different trope may be useful. Is she a princess? No, a princess loses her mother, not her father. Not a princess, not a damsel in distress.
“Rose, rose, rose--Beauty and the Beast. Father takes a rose, Beast takes Beauty, Beauty’s love changes Beast into a man. Has possibilities.
Part of River's problem is that she's focused on all the wrong stories. She dismisses princesses, so Briar Rose doesn't even occur to her. Sleeping Beauty doesn't fit in most ways, and as River's looking for an exact match, she misses it. But she does come up with some things that fit.
“Golden hair. Goldilocks. Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Three bears, three pigs. Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. Aha! Correlation via integer. Prime number plus one makes even number. Except for two. Very important. I think I’m onto something. An analogy. Goldilocks is to the Three Bears as Big Bad Wolf is to the Three Little Pigs. Goldilocks devours porridge, Big Bad Wolf devours pigs. Devourers, both. Therefore, Goldilocks is the Big Bad Wolf.
Didja follow all that?
“That accounts for the plus one. Rose is the plus one. But what of the three? I only count two.
“Pig with straw, pig with wood, pig with stone. Hmm. No, doesn’t work. Try the other--Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Baby Bear. Perhaps have a Papa Bear . . . oh, Mama Bear!
That would be the TARDIS.
Now it makes sense. Heh. Thought I was going crazy for a minute there.
Had to put in that little touch.
We have the three, and we have the plus one. The analogy works, the equation balances.
“But the wolf burns.”
I liked ending on that note. Just chilling enough to give this little segment a bit of a jolt.
***
“I love the way they talk,” said Rose. “It’s adorable!”
Ah, Rose--you're so darling!
“I’ve always liked the Rim dialect from this century,” said Jack. “There’s a poetry to it.”
Rose, Jack and the Doctor were alone on the TARDIS, as the crew of Serenity had knocked off for the shipboard night. Jack and the Doctor continued their repairs while Rose kept them company.
“Did you learn anything interesting or useful in the cockpit?” asked the Doctor, who was down one level from Rose and Jack.
“Depends on what you consider useful,” said Jack. “Wash gave me a tour of the ship’s control systems. Looks like he and Kaylee have been doing some souping-up, which, hey, I can respect. Other than that, though, it’s a pretty standard 26th-century transport ship. Perfect for doing legitimate business and a little crime on the side. Which they do.”
“They’re criminals?” asked Rose, brow furrowing.
Rose still has a bit of that black-and-white mentality. She likes the crew of Serenity, so they must be good. But criminals are bad. So she gets a touch of cognitive dissonance.
“It’s the only way to survive out here, hon. These people don’t want to work for the Alliance, and strictly legitimate business isn’t gonna be lucrative enough to keep this ship off the ground.” Jack pushed the panel he was working on back into place. “So they do a little smuggling here, an illegal salvage there, the odd bit of theft--nothing unusual for these parts.”
Jack, of course, knows the score. He's aware of the nuances of these times and how old Browncoats have to make their way in the world.
“I’d have guessed as much,” said the Doctor. “Anything else?”
“Well, the Ankylosaurus and the Triceratops had a falling out over the Stegosaurus, the Brachiosaur is desperately in love with the Diplodocus, who won’t give him the time of day, the T-Rex continues to scheme for world domination while the Dienonychus and the Velociraptors plot his downfall, and the Pterosaurs just want to party,” said Jack.
Wash gave him the lowdown on Primordial Eastenders.
“Sorry you asked yet?” Rose asked the Doctor.
“Very.” The Doctor pulled himself up onto the grate. “Jack, I’d like to make restoring power to the computers our top priority. I want to start analyzing the telepathic signal River picked up on. Belowdecks can wait.”
“How can you analyze a telepathic signal?” asked Jack.
“Ship’s telepathic,” said Rose.
“Well, I know that, but--”
“But nothing. Rose is right,” said the Doctor. “My mind now has a copy of the signal that I took from River’s mind. That’s enough for the TARDIS.”
“It really worries you, doesn’t it?” asked Jack.
“Very much so. The kind of technology it would take to send a signal like that doesn’t belong in this century or even this sector of the galaxy. So, we’ve either got anachronistic technology at work, or alien technology,” explained the Doctor. “Something’s interfering here. And given what’s been done to River Tam’s brain, I can’t think of any good that would come of it.”
At this point, his instincts tell him that what's been done to River involved technology that shouldn't have been in the hands it was. More than that, though, he knows that advanced technology in the hands of the people who did this to River could be disastrous.
***
“I love the way they talk. It’s so cute!” gushed Kaylee.
Ah, Kaylee, you're so darling! I like pulling stuff like this.
Serenity’s crew had gathered around the dinner table for one more meeting before bedtime. Mal gave Kaylee a fond look.
“Cute as they may be, bao bei, we still have a mystery on our hands,” he said. “More’n one, it looks like.”
“Did the Doctor say anything else about the signal he said River picked up on?” asked Zoë.
“Just said he’d analyze it when he got his computers back. Seeing as Serenity knows zip-squat from telepathy, I can’t think we have too many options but to carry on as before. We land on Angel tomorrow morning, finish the job and hopefully get paid and not shot,” said Mal. “Find out anything interesting about Captain Jack?”
No matter what weirdness is going on, Mal keeps one foot in the real world. It's one of his greatest strengths. Finish the job and worry about the weird stuff when you get a break.
“He likes Serenity,” said Wash. “I’d appreciate it if he stopped talking like she’s a museum piece, though.”
“He says he’s from the 51st century,” said Zoë.
“Yet he’s not un-knowledgeable about dinosaurs,” added Wash.
I loved the mental images of Wash, Jack and the dinos so much that I finally wrote them a scene near the end. Cute cubed!
“Says he was a Time Agent,” Zoë went on. “Some sort of paramilitary group, I gathered. That goes with what you and I thought, Sir.”
“I’ve noticed that he and the Doctor both move very well,” put in Inara.
“Jack likes to dance.” River had appeared in the doorway, and the grin on her face was downright naughty. “Really likes to dance.”
Luckily, no one else gets the implication.
Her presence sparked the memory of what she’d said concerning the Doctor and Rose. Book spoke up.
“I must say, Rose seems extremely fond of the Doctor,” he said. “She told me about some of her adventures with him. They were alone on that ship of his for months before they picked up Captain Jack, and she says she’s not been frightened of him but for once, when they ran across one of them that slaughtered the Doctor’s people. Said she’d never seen him so scared or angry.”
To my mind, this is the truth. Rose wasn't afraid of the Doctor, not from the start. Oh, he had his moments when he scared her, especially in "Rose," but she wasn't afraid of him. Not until she saw the true darkness inside him in "Dalek."
“Can’t say I blame him for that,” said Mal. He thought perhaps that was what he’d recognized in the Doctor--someone else who’d been on the losing side of a war.
“I’ve been watching them as well,” said Inara. “Rose trusts the Doctor completely, and he’s in love with her. He needs her.”
“For what?” asked Zoë.
Inara gave a slight shrug. “I don’t know. But he does. He both desires and needs her. As for Rose, I’d say she’s more than a little in love with him, but I don’t believe they’re lovers.”
Is it just me, or does Inara remind anyone of Counselor Troi right here?
“They ain’t,” said Kaylee. “Captain Jack thinks they ought to be sharin’ bed. ‘Course, he wants to be in it, too. Anyways, he says the Doctor’s holding back ‘cause he thinks he doesn’t deserve her or somethin’, and ain’t that just stupid? She should be the one makin’ the decision of whether or not he’s worthy of her, and if they want each other, why should anything in the ‘verse stop ‘em from beddin’ down? It’s just dumb, is what it is!” She’d worked up quite the head of steam. Simon very carefully kept his eyes on the table.
Kaylee's over-identifying juuuust a bit.
“Well, I don’t know about anything else,” said Mal before the silence could get too awkward, “but I don’t believe he’d do harm to Rose any more’n I’d do to Kaylee. Don’t mean he’s not dangerous, of course, but one could say the same about quite a few on this ship.”
“He is dangerous,” said River quietly. “Captain Jack is dangerous. The Doctor is dangerous. But she’s the most dangerous of all. Huai de lang.” She glared around the room accusingly. “She’ll burn for him, and nothing can withstand her flame. You don’t see it. He doesn’t see it. No one expects the girl. No one ever expects the girl!” She practically shouted the last word before whipping around and stalking out of the room.
The Chinese, of course, means "Bad Wolf." River's clarifying her position here: that the Doctor's dangerous to Rose only in that his influence will turn her into something even more dangerous. A bit gets lost in the translation from her brain to others' ears, though. Plus, I just liked the sentence "No one ever expects the girl." 'Cause they don't. Right, Master?
Mal rubbed his forehead. “Sweet dreams, everyone.”
Poor Mal. His headache just refuses to go away.