Guess it must be that time of year again..
There's something about Eurovision that demands you sit through the entire damn thing, come hell or high water (or truly dreadful Swedish songs up first), even if something like Tell No One is on the other side, dammit... Oh well, it hasn't been too awful all round this year (thanks apparently to the semis weeding out the dross earlier).
Blue were quite an unusual choice for us, but hey, they have a Euro profile already from way back when, so maybe that will count for something... Bless 'em, they did try, and pretty much pulled it off - although I'm not sure what was going on with the sound? They can sing (you could just about hear them) so why they were being drowned out by the production, I have no idea... And it would be a terribly entertaining evening if Ireland won again. Shades of Father Ted's My Little Horse, but lordy, I do have a terrible soft spot for the sainted stylings of Jedward bouncing around inside a giant red glitter cannon by the look of things. Bless.
Eeep! we got 12 points on the second vote announcement! that's..actually quite cool! And after the 4th we're heading the board, woohoo! can't last of course, but what the hey!
Aaaand... eleventh. Post-jedward. How fitting...
Earlier, of course, we had the long, long awaited foray of a certain Mr Gaiman into writing Who. Not that we weren't supposed to have had this last year, I think, but it fits into the mood this year quite well, without changing too much (although I will admit to being slightly upset at the thought of losing the Tardis swimming pool, dammit!).
Sooooo.. 'The Doctor's Wife'. Which had moments of real fabulousness, and was more than a little heartrending at times, even if I'm not convinced it worked entirely as a whole... I wasn't sitting there glued to the screen for chunks of it unfortunately. I wasn't exactly gripped by Amy and Rory running up and down corridors due to the fact I can barely bloody remember what the last incarnation of the Tardis looked like (It didn't matter enough in the grand scheme of things what the control room looked like, honestly.)
What I did love was the obvious heart of the ep - Idris/Tardis and her attempts to verbalise things she'd never had to worry about before - "what is that word?", and it turned out to be... Alive.
"hello, doctor." "My thief." *swoon* Yeah, that hella worked, I will say.
It looked absolutely gorgeous, there was more than enough Gaiman!quirk (which is usually dark, deep and yet wonderfully silly) to keep me very happy. And it was very sweet, if not entirely gripping... it just didn't necessarily feel like it was shown at the right moment in the show's history, maybe.
Just to digress, slightly... The trouble with it all was that we've spent the past 2 years being teased about whatever the hell River is/was/will turn out to be, and mentioning her was obviously strictly off limits in this ep (aside from the possible cryptic forest mention). So while the ep title was obviously relevant (and ohhh, the doc crying was appropriately heartrending), this has muddied the already pretty darn opaque waters a little more. Examine the damn themes in some kinda context, pretty please? It's a little obvious (and therefore less likely to be true) at this point to say that River will turn out to be his wife (and looking more and more complicated as to how that would actually work if they're running with this new retro-conned idea of them moving in opposite directions, which still isn't going to make any more sense logistically however much they go on about it.... ho hum.). And while it's lovely to see his relationship with his ship go all metaphysical, without the context of what's happening with River, it all feels a bit hollow.
After all, the River thing is big... it's been a massive new direction for the show to go in; to choose that path after years of the whole Rose saga and romance not really being an option for the doc because he was an alien alien. Who just happened to look like us. Which was fine, if they were consistent with it - and Nine definitely was consistent. He was a genuinely scary warrior-monk type most of the time. RTD kept meddling with the concept a little - Ten was a lot more 'human' in that regard, although his little obsession with Reinette always looked more like a case of him being fixated on a shiny toy than any real relationship.
And then of course, Ten lost Rose (and *gulp* burned up a star just to say goodbye), and gained annoying lovesick puppy Martha (at which point I stopped watching, except for Family of Blood and Blink, cos they were awesome exceptions to that season), and got to be human for a while, and possibly would have married a nice girl if nobody had reminded him otherwise, ho hum. And then we dumped Martha, and, blissfully, gained Donna, who ended up being able to hold her own so that we realised that platonic companions were the way of the future again, after all that (the ep title 'Partners in Crime' really summed up the whole of season 4 so beautifully). And then River showed up, whispered secrets in his ear, and 'died' knowing that he really had no idea who she was at that point (just as Donna and her fake (but nice) husband also forgot each other existed.) Ack, 'Silence in the Library' was just freaking harsh. Damn you, Moffatt!
And then RTD rounded the whole thing off by creating an actual human copy of the doctor.. who got Rose, because we weren't to be denied that happy-ish (if slightly weird) ending. (ignoring the fact that Rose was clearly aware that he wasn't her doctor, cue heartrending goodbye yet again. Of course, we also had to lose Donna, because that's the way it rolled (and really, her's was the most freaking cruel fate I have ever seen on this show. It just ripped my heart out.)
Have I digressed enough yet?
Now we have Eleven, who's a curious creature - he just seems to totally accept the concept of River and predestination and finds it apparently all deliciously interesting (also, she is very good at helping save the world/universe/day. Why not just keep her around?!) . How bad River is/has been/will be, which preoccupies her so very much, doesn't necessarily seem to bother him - or is it that it's never mentioned directly to him? It's as though he's run up against an immovable object, and absolutely accepts that there's no point trying to avoid it... except, of course, the immovable object is fate/predestiny, rather than River herself. He's always known River isn't necessarily permanent, since she kinda sacrificed herself the first time he met her (and he has apparently just returned the favour).
Blue were quite an unusual choice for us, but hey, they have a Euro profile already from way back when, so maybe that will count for something... Bless 'em, they did try, and pretty much pulled it off - although I'm not sure what was going on with the sound? They can sing (you could just about hear them) so why they were being drowned out by the production, I have no idea... And it would be a terribly entertaining evening if Ireland won again. Shades of Father Ted's My Little Horse, but lordy, I do have a terrible soft spot for the sainted stylings of Jedward bouncing around inside a giant red glitter cannon by the look of things. Bless.
Eeep! we got 12 points on the second vote announcement! that's..actually quite cool! And after the 4th we're heading the board, woohoo! can't last of course, but what the hey!
Aaaand... eleventh. Post-jedward. How fitting...
Earlier, of course, we had the long, long awaited foray of a certain Mr Gaiman into writing Who. Not that we weren't supposed to have had this last year, I think, but it fits into the mood this year quite well, without changing too much (although I will admit to being slightly upset at the thought of losing the Tardis swimming pool, dammit!).
Sooooo.. 'The Doctor's Wife'. Which had moments of real fabulousness, and was more than a little heartrending at times, even if I'm not convinced it worked entirely as a whole... I wasn't sitting there glued to the screen for chunks of it unfortunately. I wasn't exactly gripped by Amy and Rory running up and down corridors due to the fact I can barely bloody remember what the last incarnation of the Tardis looked like (It didn't matter enough in the grand scheme of things what the control room looked like, honestly.)
What I did love was the obvious heart of the ep - Idris/Tardis and her attempts to verbalise things she'd never had to worry about before - "what is that word?", and it turned out to be... Alive.
"hello, doctor." "My thief." *swoon* Yeah, that hella worked, I will say.
It looked absolutely gorgeous, there was more than enough Gaiman!quirk (which is usually dark, deep and yet wonderfully silly) to keep me very happy. And it was very sweet, if not entirely gripping... it just didn't necessarily feel like it was shown at the right moment in the show's history, maybe.
Just to digress, slightly... The trouble with it all was that we've spent the past 2 years being teased about whatever the hell River is/was/will turn out to be, and mentioning her was obviously strictly off limits in this ep (aside from the possible cryptic forest mention). So while the ep title was obviously relevant (and ohhh, the doc crying was appropriately heartrending), this has muddied the already pretty darn opaque waters a little more. Examine the damn themes in some kinda context, pretty please? It's a little obvious (and therefore less likely to be true) at this point to say that River will turn out to be his wife (and looking more and more complicated as to how that would actually work if they're running with this new retro-conned idea of them moving in opposite directions, which still isn't going to make any more sense logistically however much they go on about it.... ho hum.). And while it's lovely to see his relationship with his ship go all metaphysical, without the context of what's happening with River, it all feels a bit hollow.
After all, the River thing is big... it's been a massive new direction for the show to go in; to choose that path after years of the whole Rose saga and romance not really being an option for the doc because he was an alien alien. Who just happened to look like us. Which was fine, if they were consistent with it - and Nine definitely was consistent. He was a genuinely scary warrior-monk type most of the time. RTD kept meddling with the concept a little - Ten was a lot more 'human' in that regard, although his little obsession with Reinette always looked more like a case of him being fixated on a shiny toy than any real relationship.
And then of course, Ten lost Rose (and *gulp* burned up a star just to say goodbye), and gained annoying lovesick puppy Martha (at which point I stopped watching, except for Family of Blood and Blink, cos they were awesome exceptions to that season), and got to be human for a while, and possibly would have married a nice girl if nobody had reminded him otherwise, ho hum. And then we dumped Martha, and, blissfully, gained Donna, who ended up being able to hold her own so that we realised that platonic companions were the way of the future again, after all that (the ep title 'Partners in Crime' really summed up the whole of season 4 so beautifully). And then River showed up, whispered secrets in his ear, and 'died' knowing that he really had no idea who she was at that point (just as Donna and her fake (but nice) husband also forgot each other existed.) Ack, 'Silence in the Library' was just freaking harsh. Damn you, Moffatt!
And then RTD rounded the whole thing off by creating an actual human copy of the doctor.. who got Rose, because we weren't to be denied that happy-ish (if slightly weird) ending. (ignoring the fact that Rose was clearly aware that he wasn't her doctor, cue heartrending goodbye yet again. Of course, we also had to lose Donna, because that's the way it rolled (and really, her's was the most freaking cruel fate I have ever seen on this show. It just ripped my heart out.)
Have I digressed enough yet?
Now we have Eleven, who's a curious creature - he just seems to totally accept the concept of River and predestination and finds it apparently all deliciously interesting (also, she is very good at helping save the world/universe/day. Why not just keep her around?!) . How bad River is/has been/will be, which preoccupies her so very much, doesn't necessarily seem to bother him - or is it that it's never mentioned directly to him? It's as though he's run up against an immovable object, and absolutely accepts that there's no point trying to avoid it... except, of course, the immovable object is fate/predestiny, rather than River herself. He's always known River isn't necessarily permanent, since she kinda sacrificed herself the first time he met her (and he has apparently just returned the favour).