Pirates of Dark Water... [SPOILERS! FOR DOCTOR WHO SERIES 8, EPISODE 11]
...was a fairly whacked-out cartoon they used to show on Children's BBC back in the early 90s. It was about this alien planet (I assume) where there was, well, a lot of ocean. A bit like Earthsea or somewhere. And pirates. And "dark water", which was like this Lovecraftian abomination from the Beyond, one part oil slick one part The Blob, which was slowly eating said planet and generally interfering with the kewl adventures of the various pirates. Oh, and there was some likely young Chosen One looking for lost amulets or something in order to fulfil his Destiny, and possibly do something about the dark water. It was actually better than I've probably just made it sound.
That, however, has little or nothing to do with this week's episode of New Doctor Who...
It is a truth universally acknowledged (well, that might be overstating it a tad) that you cannot truly know yourself until you have been put under some sort of existential pressure. It is only in the moment of crisis, this somewhat overdramatic take on human nature posits, that somebody fully understands who they are and the things of which they are capable. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that I experienced such a moment a few minutes from the end of Dark Water...
I don't think I realised just what a raving, irrational fanboy I am (or, to put it more positively, just how deeply invested I am in certain aspects of Doctor Who lore) until the build-up to Missy's big "reveal", when I convinced myself that the fairly heavily-touted theory that she was in fact a biologically female incarnation of the Master ("Mistress", geddit?) was far too obvious actually to be true. "I'm the Time Lady you abandoned," she said, or words to that effect, "the one you left for dead." And of course, my fannish proclivities being what they are, this immediately convinced me that she was talking about being Romana and either some bastardised School Reunion-esque revision of the actual circumstances of her departure from the Doctor in E-Space at the end of Warriors' Gate or a reference to Whatever Actually Happened in the Time War. In fact I have a sneaking suspicion that Moffat is too much of a big old fanboy himself not to have intended that as a bit of a red herring for those fans who might pick on it. And, well, to be honest this was not, from my point of view at that moment, a welcome development.
By this point in the story, of course, Missy had been revealed to be a) in some way in league with the Cybermen, b) somehow running some sort of macabre scam involving uploading the "souls" of the dying into a fake afterlife inside some sort of Gallifreyan portable hard drive and c) had just disintegrated in cold blood her possibly unwitting accomplice in said scam after going through some rather drawn-out and somewhat sadistic pre-mortem shtick with the poor bastard presumably in order to make the impending cold-blooded disintegrating a bit more enjoyable from her point of view. Without wanting to go around passing value judgments or anything, the sort of behaviour some might describe as a bit..."evil".
I'd already decided, in connection to the EDA novels, that I'm not really a big fan of the concept of "evil Romana" or even "misguided and a bit misunderstood" Romana, although I don't think "misguided and a bit misunderstood" really covers cold-blooded disintegrations. Until presented with the prospect of actually getting "evil Romana" as a character in the actual series, though, I don't think I knew just how strongly I felt about this. My heart was in my mouth; I was muttering expletives at the television and indeed at Steven Moffat (who was of course sitting watching it with me as he does every Saturday night), questioning not only his parentage but also what he might get up to with said parents, and, for the space of about thirty seconds or so, generally having a bit of a meltdown. My main thought, insofar as I had any rational thoughts in those moments, was that I was never going to be able to watch this show again after this, which would be a bit of a drag as I'd been really enjoying Capaldi-Who and Series 8 up until that point.
And then it turned out she was "only" the Master, and never have I been more grateful while watching Saturday evening television. I can sympathise with those of you who, for various reasons, might not be happy with the way the story panned out, but I'd be lying if I said that it was for me anything other than a blessed relief, right then, at that point in time and space.
So, I learned that about myself, anyway. Everything else about the story seemed rather tame by comparison. Some thoughts, though, for what they're worth:
1. Yeah, female Master. The thing everybody has been saying was going to be this series' big twist since about March...turned out to be this series' big twist. And yet in the actual reveal, me being silly about Romana aside, was almost as shocking as any of the more surprising options might have been. Moffat has done this before, if I remember correctly. Well played, sir, well played, and I didn't mean any of that stuff about you or your parents, okay?
2. Regarding twists, something of a counterexample was provided by the "reveal" of the Cybermen, which was ruined completely by the fact that we've known there were going to be Cybermen in this story for ages now. If that fact hadn't been publicised beforehand, then that bit where the lift doors closed and the logos on them formed the pair of Cyber-eyes would have been on the same barnstorming level as the bit in Utopia where Professor Yana is revealed to have a rather distinctive pocket-watch. Alas... I don't really see how it could have been avoided in the age of social media, given that they were filming on location in central London, but in that moment I shared Moffat's evident white-hot rage at the whole idea of spoilers and those who spoil.
3. So, female Master (again). I don't really feel that strongly either way on the issue; I don't think the gender of the actor should be an issue (and that goes for the Doctor too, imho) and we've already had it established in The Doctor's Wife that Time Lords can and do change their physical gender at regeneration. I did shake my head disapprovingly at some fans wondering just how the Master could have survived the ending of The End of Time - it's the Master, for Rassilon's sake! If I could survive the ending of The End of Time, so could s/he! Ditto for the rather amusing instances pointed out by
nonelvis of some fans who had clearly never seen any Master stories ever (including The End of Time!) wondering why the Doctor's diabolical archenemy would want to give him a big wet kiss with tongues and such. No, really.
4. The kiss. This is the point upon which I tend to share the misgivings of some of those who have expressed misgivings on the subject of "Missy". It was just a joke, really, but would they have done the same joke with a male Master? I'm not sure that they would, to be honest. And the script even wrung an extra bit of "humour" out of Clara's obvious discomfort at the suggestion that she might be getting snogged next. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing - I think the Doctor/Master "thing" works best as a subtext because, well, whatever face you put on it the Master is an absolutely terrible person at the best of times and there would be all sorts of unfortunate implications involved in making him overtly in love/lust/whatever with the Doctor (although I suspect the Master, being the Master, doesn't really feel anything that the vast majority of people might recognise as straightforward romantic/sexual desire). I can't say I share the worry of some that this is a way of having the Doctor be able to reciprocate the Master's feelings without it being "too gay" for whoever they imagine on the production team might have a problem with same-sex relationships, because I think by this point in their association and after all the things his "best enemy" has done, the Doctor showing any emotion towards the Master/Mistress more positive than dull horror/pity/sadness would be somewhat unbelievable. To me, anyway.
5. What about Clara, eh? That was some strong stuff, there, and another knock-it-out-of-the-park performance from Jenna Coleman, who has been clocking up quite a few of those this series. One thing I would say is that while I appreciate that death comes out of the blue quite often in real life, and that people react to its unexpected occurrence in all sorts of ways - and indeed that the episode was deliberately seeking to highlight this truth by having Danny's death at the start be so matter-of-fact and abrupt, followed by Clara's resulting break...I think it might have been dramatically more believable (as opposed to realistic) to have him die at the end of the previous episode and then opened this one with Clara's emotional reaction to it. It would all feel a bit less sudden (although of course it was probably meant to feel sudden), although I am not a television writer, so what would I know?
6. Danny. People have mixed feelings about him, I know, with some seeing him as the victim of the Doctor's prejudice and others clocking him as a potential domestic abuser (and some, I am fairly sure, holding both views at the same time). I think the thing about Danny, as was possibly the case with Amy back in Series 5, is that I'm not really sure we're meant to like him unreservedly. I think some of his negative traits are meant to be just that, and we're meant to relate to them as we will, as well as understanding that there are reasons why he is the way he is, mainly relating to his experiences as a soldier. And that past trauma isn't an excuse for some of his more controlling, selfish behaviour but it is a reason nevertheless, just as some of Amy's less likeable traits in her early stories were formed by her own childhood traumas resulting from her early encounter with the Doctor. I really liked the bit showing Danny's experience in what looked like Afghanistan - it was a great, and perhaps too rare, example of show-not-tell storytelling in Doctor Who. What he had done was never actually stated, but the situation and his thoughts and feelings about it were nevertheless explained with crystal clarity via the visuals and the performance. Deceptively unobtrusive but nevertheless classy filmmaking, there.
7. Darkness. Lord, but this series is getting into some heavy stuff, isn't it? And I don't just mean in a "gritty n' edgy, hot air balloons made of human skin" way, but, you know, heavy stuff; the inevitability of death, the uncomfortable nooks and crannies of human nature, that kind of thing. It perhaps explains the unprecedentedly late timeslots Series 8 has been going out in, and maybe as I said in my last reaction post, Moffat's awareness that a large part of his audience has grown up with the new series and is ready now for stronger meat. The thing is, it has for the most part been done with the sort of cynical black humour (and cavalier disregard for taste or the sensibilities of the more wee kiddies) Robert Holmes would have been tickled by, perhaps embodied in this episode by Seb and his exchanges with Danny. Want to know my unpopular opinion of the week? I'd quite like to see the actor who plays Seb have a go as the Master; he's ace.
8. Crackpot theory. Okay, this is a bit unlikely, but I was struck on my Sunday re-watch (when I wasn't going through existential turmoil and trying to kick the telly in during the last scene) by the thought that maybe the Master/Mistress reveal really is a bit too obvious. Two bits: Missy says to the Doctor that she has two hearts "and both of them are yours," or something very similar. And in the last episode when she appeared (which I am blanking on atm), I'm pretty sure she referred to "Clara, my Clara," just as the Doctor did in the volcano "dream sequence" with the keys...
Yeah. She's actually the female Valeyard, or at any rate an evil female future incarnation of the Doctor, and just pretending to be the Master to make the "real reveal" even more shocking when it comes in the next episode.
And the fans who have been actively urging Moffat to cast a female Doctor will be as furious with him as I was last Saturday. At least you'll know I know how you feel.
Anyway, that's enough from me. Let's wait until Saturday and then you can all watch me trying to eat those last words there. ;)
This entry has also been posted at http://jjpor.dreamwidth.org/211769.html. Please feel free to comment either here or there.
That, however, has little or nothing to do with this week's episode of New Doctor Who...
It is a truth universally acknowledged (well, that might be overstating it a tad) that you cannot truly know yourself until you have been put under some sort of existential pressure. It is only in the moment of crisis, this somewhat overdramatic take on human nature posits, that somebody fully understands who they are and the things of which they are capable. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say that I experienced such a moment a few minutes from the end of Dark Water...
I don't think I realised just what a raving, irrational fanboy I am (or, to put it more positively, just how deeply invested I am in certain aspects of Doctor Who lore) until the build-up to Missy's big "reveal", when I convinced myself that the fairly heavily-touted theory that she was in fact a biologically female incarnation of the Master ("Mistress", geddit?) was far too obvious actually to be true. "I'm the Time Lady you abandoned," she said, or words to that effect, "the one you left for dead." And of course, my fannish proclivities being what they are, this immediately convinced me that she was talking about being Romana and either some bastardised School Reunion-esque revision of the actual circumstances of her departure from the Doctor in E-Space at the end of Warriors' Gate or a reference to Whatever Actually Happened in the Time War. In fact I have a sneaking suspicion that Moffat is too much of a big old fanboy himself not to have intended that as a bit of a red herring for those fans who might pick on it. And, well, to be honest this was not, from my point of view at that moment, a welcome development.
By this point in the story, of course, Missy had been revealed to be a) in some way in league with the Cybermen, b) somehow running some sort of macabre scam involving uploading the "souls" of the dying into a fake afterlife inside some sort of Gallifreyan portable hard drive and c) had just disintegrated in cold blood her possibly unwitting accomplice in said scam after going through some rather drawn-out and somewhat sadistic pre-mortem shtick with the poor bastard presumably in order to make the impending cold-blooded disintegrating a bit more enjoyable from her point of view. Without wanting to go around passing value judgments or anything, the sort of behaviour some might describe as a bit..."evil".
I'd already decided, in connection to the EDA novels, that I'm not really a big fan of the concept of "evil Romana" or even "misguided and a bit misunderstood" Romana, although I don't think "misguided and a bit misunderstood" really covers cold-blooded disintegrations. Until presented with the prospect of actually getting "evil Romana" as a character in the actual series, though, I don't think I knew just how strongly I felt about this. My heart was in my mouth; I was muttering expletives at the television and indeed at Steven Moffat (who was of course sitting watching it with me as he does every Saturday night), questioning not only his parentage but also what he might get up to with said parents, and, for the space of about thirty seconds or so, generally having a bit of a meltdown. My main thought, insofar as I had any rational thoughts in those moments, was that I was never going to be able to watch this show again after this, which would be a bit of a drag as I'd been really enjoying Capaldi-Who and Series 8 up until that point.
And then it turned out she was "only" the Master, and never have I been more grateful while watching Saturday evening television. I can sympathise with those of you who, for various reasons, might not be happy with the way the story panned out, but I'd be lying if I said that it was for me anything other than a blessed relief, right then, at that point in time and space.
So, I learned that about myself, anyway. Everything else about the story seemed rather tame by comparison. Some thoughts, though, for what they're worth:
1. Yeah, female Master. The thing everybody has been saying was going to be this series' big twist since about March...turned out to be this series' big twist. And yet in the actual reveal, me being silly about Romana aside, was almost as shocking as any of the more surprising options might have been. Moffat has done this before, if I remember correctly. Well played, sir, well played, and I didn't mean any of that stuff about you or your parents, okay?
2. Regarding twists, something of a counterexample was provided by the "reveal" of the Cybermen, which was ruined completely by the fact that we've known there were going to be Cybermen in this story for ages now. If that fact hadn't been publicised beforehand, then that bit where the lift doors closed and the logos on them formed the pair of Cyber-eyes would have been on the same barnstorming level as the bit in Utopia where Professor Yana is revealed to have a rather distinctive pocket-watch. Alas... I don't really see how it could have been avoided in the age of social media, given that they were filming on location in central London, but in that moment I shared Moffat's evident white-hot rage at the whole idea of spoilers and those who spoil.
3. So, female Master (again). I don't really feel that strongly either way on the issue; I don't think the gender of the actor should be an issue (and that goes for the Doctor too, imho) and we've already had it established in The Doctor's Wife that Time Lords can and do change their physical gender at regeneration. I did shake my head disapprovingly at some fans wondering just how the Master could have survived the ending of The End of Time - it's the Master, for Rassilon's sake! If I could survive the ending of The End of Time, so could s/he! Ditto for the rather amusing instances pointed out by
nonelvis of some fans who had clearly never seen any Master stories ever (including The End of Time!) wondering why the Doctor's diabolical archenemy would want to give him a big wet kiss with tongues and such. No, really.
4. The kiss. This is the point upon which I tend to share the misgivings of some of those who have expressed misgivings on the subject of "Missy". It was just a joke, really, but would they have done the same joke with a male Master? I'm not sure that they would, to be honest. And the script even wrung an extra bit of "humour" out of Clara's obvious discomfort at the suggestion that she might be getting snogged next. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing - I think the Doctor/Master "thing" works best as a subtext because, well, whatever face you put on it the Master is an absolutely terrible person at the best of times and there would be all sorts of unfortunate implications involved in making him overtly in love/lust/whatever with the Doctor (although I suspect the Master, being the Master, doesn't really feel anything that the vast majority of people might recognise as straightforward romantic/sexual desire). I can't say I share the worry of some that this is a way of having the Doctor be able to reciprocate the Master's feelings without it being "too gay" for whoever they imagine on the production team might have a problem with same-sex relationships, because I think by this point in their association and after all the things his "best enemy" has done, the Doctor showing any emotion towards the Master/Mistress more positive than dull horror/pity/sadness would be somewhat unbelievable. To me, anyway.
5. What about Clara, eh? That was some strong stuff, there, and another knock-it-out-of-the-park performance from Jenna Coleman, who has been clocking up quite a few of those this series. One thing I would say is that while I appreciate that death comes out of the blue quite often in real life, and that people react to its unexpected occurrence in all sorts of ways - and indeed that the episode was deliberately seeking to highlight this truth by having Danny's death at the start be so matter-of-fact and abrupt, followed by Clara's resulting break...I think it might have been dramatically more believable (as opposed to realistic) to have him die at the end of the previous episode and then opened this one with Clara's emotional reaction to it. It would all feel a bit less sudden (although of course it was probably meant to feel sudden), although I am not a television writer, so what would I know?
6. Danny. People have mixed feelings about him, I know, with some seeing him as the victim of the Doctor's prejudice and others clocking him as a potential domestic abuser (and some, I am fairly sure, holding both views at the same time). I think the thing about Danny, as was possibly the case with Amy back in Series 5, is that I'm not really sure we're meant to like him unreservedly. I think some of his negative traits are meant to be just that, and we're meant to relate to them as we will, as well as understanding that there are reasons why he is the way he is, mainly relating to his experiences as a soldier. And that past trauma isn't an excuse for some of his more controlling, selfish behaviour but it is a reason nevertheless, just as some of Amy's less likeable traits in her early stories were formed by her own childhood traumas resulting from her early encounter with the Doctor. I really liked the bit showing Danny's experience in what looked like Afghanistan - it was a great, and perhaps too rare, example of show-not-tell storytelling in Doctor Who. What he had done was never actually stated, but the situation and his thoughts and feelings about it were nevertheless explained with crystal clarity via the visuals and the performance. Deceptively unobtrusive but nevertheless classy filmmaking, there.
7. Darkness. Lord, but this series is getting into some heavy stuff, isn't it? And I don't just mean in a "gritty n' edgy, hot air balloons made of human skin" way, but, you know, heavy stuff; the inevitability of death, the uncomfortable nooks and crannies of human nature, that kind of thing. It perhaps explains the unprecedentedly late timeslots Series 8 has been going out in, and maybe as I said in my last reaction post, Moffat's awareness that a large part of his audience has grown up with the new series and is ready now for stronger meat. The thing is, it has for the most part been done with the sort of cynical black humour (and cavalier disregard for taste or the sensibilities of the more wee kiddies) Robert Holmes would have been tickled by, perhaps embodied in this episode by Seb and his exchanges with Danny. Want to know my unpopular opinion of the week? I'd quite like to see the actor who plays Seb have a go as the Master; he's ace.
8. Crackpot theory. Okay, this is a bit unlikely, but I was struck on my Sunday re-watch (when I wasn't going through existential turmoil and trying to kick the telly in during the last scene) by the thought that maybe the Master/Mistress reveal really is a bit too obvious. Two bits: Missy says to the Doctor that she has two hearts "and both of them are yours," or something very similar. And in the last episode when she appeared (which I am blanking on atm), I'm pretty sure she referred to "Clara, my Clara," just as the Doctor did in the volcano "dream sequence" with the keys...
Yeah. She's actually the female Valeyard, or at any rate an evil female future incarnation of the Doctor, and just pretending to be the Master to make the "real reveal" even more shocking when it comes in the next episode.
And the fans who have been actively urging Moffat to cast a female Doctor will be as furious with him as I was last Saturday. At least you'll know I know how you feel.
Anyway, that's enough from me. Let's wait until Saturday and then you can all watch me trying to eat those last words there. ;)
This entry has also been posted at http://jjpor.dreamwidth.org/211769.html. Please feel free to comment either here or there.