In which I prove, once again, that I am not a "true" Doctor Who fan
I liked Voyage of the Damned more than The Next Doctor. I didn't think that The Next Doctor was bad by any means-- I rather enjoyed it-- but I enjoyed the epic disaster thing more. Mind you, something like that wouldn't have fit in very well as a post-Journey's End story-- this one needed to be entertaining while not being too spectacular, and that's exactly what it did.
I really liked the opening sequence involving Morrisey!Doctor and Ten. I particularly like the way that Morrisey played his Doctor as a little too over the top, deliberately over-acting in order to contrast himself with the real Doctor, until he rediscovers his own identity as Jackson, at which point his acting suddenly becomes believable and touching.
I also thought it was great that Davies picked up on the theme of memory and identity, which really defined S4 of Doctor Who (and, indeed, S2 of Torchwood)-- that moment when Morrisey!Doctor talks about what the loss of memory has done to him made me shiver-- BUT, I don't think it went quite far enough. Although this ep did have to be careful not to get too emo, I really would have liked a moment where the Doctor himself acknowledged what he had taken from Donna, but his line, "They forget me" ascribes agency to Donna that she did not have-- Donna, like Zoe and Jamie before her, was forced to forget, she didn't choose it. And I say this as someone who actually has a great deal of sympathy for what the Doctor did there-- after Davros had just been taunting him about all the people who'd died because they'd known him, I think it would have been highly out of character for the Doctor not to save Donna's life at that point. I actually have a really hard time seeing what he did as outright wrong-- even though intellectually I know I should be disgusted with him, I can't help but think that I would have done the same thing in his situation. But at the same time, I do think that the Doctor does need to acknowledge what he did, and indeed that it might not have been the right thing to do, and he'll never do that if he goes around pretending that he played no agential role in her forgetting.
Lack of acknowledgement also bothered me greatly in terms of the way that gender was represented in this story. Miss Hartigan had so much potential to act as a powerful critique of Victorian patriarchy-- as a woman, her only option was to be a slave or to become evil, but none of this works, because the Doctor never acknowledges that Miss Hartigan was in a probelmatic position to begin with-- in fact, he's more than happy for Rosita to take on the wife/mother role. And all this could have been countered by one little line in which he says to Jackson that treating people like slaves rather than human beings can cause them to lose their humanity, so let's not do that in the future, eh?
Of course, this had a whole other level of creepiness insofar as race is concerned too-- go read purple_pen's thoughts on the matter. Unfortunately, I think that the treatment of race and gender here means that I can't watch this episode without being slightly uncomfortable, much as I mostly enjoyed it.
To finish on a positive note, however-- all ten Doctors! *squee*
I really liked the opening sequence involving Morrisey!Doctor and Ten. I particularly like the way that Morrisey played his Doctor as a little too over the top, deliberately over-acting in order to contrast himself with the real Doctor, until he rediscovers his own identity as Jackson, at which point his acting suddenly becomes believable and touching.
I also thought it was great that Davies picked up on the theme of memory and identity, which really defined S4 of Doctor Who (and, indeed, S2 of Torchwood)-- that moment when Morrisey!Doctor talks about what the loss of memory has done to him made me shiver-- BUT, I don't think it went quite far enough. Although this ep did have to be careful not to get too emo, I really would have liked a moment where the Doctor himself acknowledged what he had taken from Donna, but his line, "They forget me" ascribes agency to Donna that she did not have-- Donna, like Zoe and Jamie before her, was forced to forget, she didn't choose it. And I say this as someone who actually has a great deal of sympathy for what the Doctor did there-- after Davros had just been taunting him about all the people who'd died because they'd known him, I think it would have been highly out of character for the Doctor not to save Donna's life at that point. I actually have a really hard time seeing what he did as outright wrong-- even though intellectually I know I should be disgusted with him, I can't help but think that I would have done the same thing in his situation. But at the same time, I do think that the Doctor does need to acknowledge what he did, and indeed that it might not have been the right thing to do, and he'll never do that if he goes around pretending that he played no agential role in her forgetting.
Lack of acknowledgement also bothered me greatly in terms of the way that gender was represented in this story. Miss Hartigan had so much potential to act as a powerful critique of Victorian patriarchy-- as a woman, her only option was to be a slave or to become evil, but none of this works, because the Doctor never acknowledges that Miss Hartigan was in a probelmatic position to begin with-- in fact, he's more than happy for Rosita to take on the wife/mother role. And all this could have been countered by one little line in which he says to Jackson that treating people like slaves rather than human beings can cause them to lose their humanity, so let's not do that in the future, eh?
Of course, this had a whole other level of creepiness insofar as race is concerned too-- go read purple_pen's thoughts on the matter. Unfortunately, I think that the treatment of race and gender here means that I can't watch this episode without being slightly uncomfortable, much as I mostly enjoyed it.
To finish on a positive note, however-- all ten Doctors! *squee*