Doctor Who not so thinky thoughts
So, here are my thoughts on the latest double-ep:
IMO, that was Stephen Moffat in a slump, and I'm oddly reassured by this fact, because it was still a thoroughly entertaining, often touching, well thought-out adventure. No one can keep bringing brilliance time after time, and if his dry spells only amount to rehashed plot points and lines from the better eps, I'm sure I can cope.
Not that this is the worst he has done. I'm hard pressed to think of an episode of anything he's done that can be called bad - the end of Interface, sure, with the clapping, that was cringe-worthy. But this isn't the end of Interface, this is The Week and Pizza; solid, but unremarkable. (Sorry about the Press Gang geek-out. No wait, actually I'm not. Go watch the show, you ignorami.)
Browsing people's LJs, I've seen time and time again the complaint re: Miss Evangelista that "Moffat thinks women can only be pretty OR intelligent, not both!" Which makes me hot and cold with anger, because if anything, Moffat fetischizes intelligent women. Generally speaking, he writes the female characters as smarter, stronger and saner than the men - but I guess anything that supports the idea of "Moffat the sexist" will be accepted as Truth no matter how idiotic it is. (I find it rather ironic that Joss the feminist is so much worse with his female chars than Moff the sexist.)
And yeah, I take this a bit personally, because when I was harassed in school for being too smart, Lynda Day was one of the characters who taught me that intelligent girls can be strong and let their voice be heard, that they can be gorgeous and have desirable, popular boyfriends totally devoted to them, because once you've had your taste of an intelligent girl you can't be satisfied with bimbos, no matter how much easier it would be.
...Besides, it's not as if poor Miss Evangelista is very popular even when she's pretty. Apart from Lux, who's an ass, and Donna, who pities her, everyone treats Miss Evangelista like fungus. Show me a single person who genuinely loves her!
Though I do take issue with the idea that a woman has to be both gorgeous and intelligent to be loved. :-)
Anyway, enough with that rant. I loved when the Doctor told the Vashta Nerada to look him up. Though I didn't find them very scary villains, I thought they were interesting, and one of the most interesting things was that a swarm of basically instinctual creatures had more common sense than most DW villains. :-)
Apart from that scene, the second half of the story wasn't really the Doctor's at all. The most vital moments came from other people: River's sacrifice had me crying, and I loved how the Doctor said "Time can be rewritten" and she replied with, "Not those times. Not one line. Don’t you dare." Meep! Donna's virtual life was very touching and well played on CT's part, and if it was a bit conventional, I think that's partly Charlotte's fault, partly that Donna really does strike me as a motherly type. (Yes, she wants to have adventures in space forever. What, that's mutually exclusive or something? Go tell Sarah Jane, then.) Other pivotal moments, of course, was everything involving CAL. I felt that the ending was Charlotte's happy ending rather than River's, which means that I'm mostly okay with it - I don't want Charlotte to be all alone in her head. It still creeped me out to see River read bedtime stories to Donna's imaginary kids, though. Charlotte and the team are mostly real, but the kids are entirely fantasy, and recycled fantasy as well.
Btw, the bit about the entire library being accessible in CAL, does that just mean for reading, or can you live in every book? Because if you can, I totally want that afterlife too. :-)
I liked that Lee was real, and though I would have liked it even better if he'd been a woman IRL as was apparently the case in the first draft, I do realize that it would not translate well from text to screen - even with big honking clues as to his/her identity, half of the audience probably wouldn't get it. I totally want that fic, though. Give me?
Donna still feels very Doomed. I hope she's not and that they find a good, non-angsty reason to write her out. Though I do sometimes get the feeling RTD finds it very very hard to figure out a reason why anyone would want to leave the Doctor.
Which brings me to the companion role. So far, Moffat's not very good with companions. He was a bit better with FotD - Donna got a proper story - but still not very good. But I'm starting to wonder if perhaps this is not more Old Who than RTD's attitude is. I've only seen about 25 eps of Old Who, and in some of them the companions get a lot to do (Castrovalva), but there are also quite a lot where they're sidelined while the guest stars do the important stuff (The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Caves of Androzani). And so far, I have seen no Old Who companion get the treatment that's par for the course for New Who, with recurring family members, visits home, angsty backstory eps (for Rose - and, well, Jack, now that he has his own show) etc. Coming to think of it, while SJA has lots of family/home stuff, we learn precious little about Sarah Jane's life around and before the time of Old Who.
So in a way, sidelining the companions is tradition. A crappy tradition, and I hope Moff gets over it and fills the TARDIS with two or three companions who get lots of stuff to do, but if he doesn't, I guess I'll blame his childhood. :-)
IMO, that was Stephen Moffat in a slump, and I'm oddly reassured by this fact, because it was still a thoroughly entertaining, often touching, well thought-out adventure. No one can keep bringing brilliance time after time, and if his dry spells only amount to rehashed plot points and lines from the better eps, I'm sure I can cope.
Not that this is the worst he has done. I'm hard pressed to think of an episode of anything he's done that can be called bad - the end of Interface, sure, with the clapping, that was cringe-worthy. But this isn't the end of Interface, this is The Week and Pizza; solid, but unremarkable. (Sorry about the Press Gang geek-out. No wait, actually I'm not. Go watch the show, you ignorami.)
Browsing people's LJs, I've seen time and time again the complaint re: Miss Evangelista that "Moffat thinks women can only be pretty OR intelligent, not both!" Which makes me hot and cold with anger, because if anything, Moffat fetischizes intelligent women. Generally speaking, he writes the female characters as smarter, stronger and saner than the men - but I guess anything that supports the idea of "Moffat the sexist" will be accepted as Truth no matter how idiotic it is. (I find it rather ironic that Joss the feminist is so much worse with his female chars than Moff the sexist.)
And yeah, I take this a bit personally, because when I was harassed in school for being too smart, Lynda Day was one of the characters who taught me that intelligent girls can be strong and let their voice be heard, that they can be gorgeous and have desirable, popular boyfriends totally devoted to them, because once you've had your taste of an intelligent girl you can't be satisfied with bimbos, no matter how much easier it would be.
...Besides, it's not as if poor Miss Evangelista is very popular even when she's pretty. Apart from Lux, who's an ass, and Donna, who pities her, everyone treats Miss Evangelista like fungus. Show me a single person who genuinely loves her!
Though I do take issue with the idea that a woman has to be both gorgeous and intelligent to be loved. :-)
Anyway, enough with that rant. I loved when the Doctor told the Vashta Nerada to look him up. Though I didn't find them very scary villains, I thought they were interesting, and one of the most interesting things was that a swarm of basically instinctual creatures had more common sense than most DW villains. :-)
Apart from that scene, the second half of the story wasn't really the Doctor's at all. The most vital moments came from other people: River's sacrifice had me crying, and I loved how the Doctor said "Time can be rewritten" and she replied with, "Not those times. Not one line. Don’t you dare." Meep! Donna's virtual life was very touching and well played on CT's part, and if it was a bit conventional, I think that's partly Charlotte's fault, partly that Donna really does strike me as a motherly type. (Yes, she wants to have adventures in space forever. What, that's mutually exclusive or something? Go tell Sarah Jane, then.) Other pivotal moments, of course, was everything involving CAL. I felt that the ending was Charlotte's happy ending rather than River's, which means that I'm mostly okay with it - I don't want Charlotte to be all alone in her head. It still creeped me out to see River read bedtime stories to Donna's imaginary kids, though. Charlotte and the team are mostly real, but the kids are entirely fantasy, and recycled fantasy as well.
Btw, the bit about the entire library being accessible in CAL, does that just mean for reading, or can you live in every book? Because if you can, I totally want that afterlife too. :-)
I liked that Lee was real, and though I would have liked it even better if he'd been a woman IRL as was apparently the case in the first draft, I do realize that it would not translate well from text to screen - even with big honking clues as to his/her identity, half of the audience probably wouldn't get it. I totally want that fic, though. Give me?
Donna still feels very Doomed. I hope she's not and that they find a good, non-angsty reason to write her out. Though I do sometimes get the feeling RTD finds it very very hard to figure out a reason why anyone would want to leave the Doctor.
Which brings me to the companion role. So far, Moffat's not very good with companions. He was a bit better with FotD - Donna got a proper story - but still not very good. But I'm starting to wonder if perhaps this is not more Old Who than RTD's attitude is. I've only seen about 25 eps of Old Who, and in some of them the companions get a lot to do (Castrovalva), but there are also quite a lot where they're sidelined while the guest stars do the important stuff (The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Caves of Androzani). And so far, I have seen no Old Who companion get the treatment that's par for the course for New Who, with recurring family members, visits home, angsty backstory eps (for Rose - and, well, Jack, now that he has his own show) etc. Coming to think of it, while SJA has lots of family/home stuff, we learn precious little about Sarah Jane's life around and before the time of Old Who.
So in a way, sidelining the companions is tradition. A crappy tradition, and I hope Moff gets over it and fills the TARDIS with two or three companions who get lots of stuff to do, but if he doesn't, I guess I'll blame his childhood. :-)