Five thoughts after watching "The Almost People"
1) Ohemeffgee, my eyelids. You know what hurts so bad it will make you cry? Salt in a soft-tissue wound. You know how you can get salt in a soft-tissue wound? Crying. You know how I got my soft-tissue wounds to begin with? Salty tears cracked open partially-healed eyelid rashes. The end of this episode transformed me into a *literal* perpetual tear-factory. Thank the long-dead god there weren't any toasters in my room at the time*.
(I have just looked in a mirror, and I am starting to think I might actually be an almost person. I'm strangely okay with that.)
2) Like any good Whovian fangirl, I always get a kick out of The Doctor interacting with himself, but might I suggest we give the gimmick a rest for now? At least until 2013 or so?
3) I knew what The Doctor and The Doctorganger had done with the shoes the instant Amy said the line about "There could only be one" or whatever it was. I feel like Moffat has been pulling out all the cryptic enigmatic bullcrap stops to the point where I don't even really care about the series-long mysteries, whereas the other writers have been leveling things out by being a little bit obvious and heavy-handed in their stories (see also the twist in Gaiman's episode).
ANYway, I don't mind that I saw through the ploy, because it gave me that much more time to revel in how just amazingly wonderfully fanTAStic The Doctor can be. I love this character so much it hurts (literally. My Doctor love has caused physical pain on more than one occasion over the years; the eyelid thing is just the latest variation on a theme)
4) I do not, however, love the penultimate scene in this episode. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it kinda went against everything in the previous 90 minutes or so, as well as most of the past 48 years. I was already iffy about splurting the Big Bad, but then they threw in THAT, as well...
5) The story itself, though, divorced from the scenes connecting it to the rest of the series, was just CLASSIC Who goodness. I never would have guessed these two episodes were written by the same guy as "Fear Her"...not that "Fear Her" is a bad episode, just...it doesn't have the quite the emotional resonance or sci-fi ethics angle that made these episodes so great.
Bonus thought) As thickly-accented and rapid-fire as Ten was, I don't believe I ever had to resort to subtitles to figure out what he was saying**. I had to do it twice in this episode because The Doctor, Amy, and Cleaves were all a bit indecipherable at times.
* I am sorry, everyone. Through a bizarre series of events, I ended up watching Starship 2.5 times in less than a week.
** Not for my benefit, at least. There were certainly times I used them so other people could understand him.
(I have just looked in a mirror, and I am starting to think I might actually be an almost person. I'm strangely okay with that.)
2) Like any good Whovian fangirl, I always get a kick out of The Doctor interacting with himself, but might I suggest we give the gimmick a rest for now? At least until 2013 or so?
3) I knew what The Doctor and The Doctorganger had done with the shoes the instant Amy said the line about "There could only be one" or whatever it was. I feel like Moffat has been pulling out all the cryptic enigmatic bullcrap stops to the point where I don't even really care about the series-long mysteries, whereas the other writers have been leveling things out by being a little bit obvious and heavy-handed in their stories (see also the twist in Gaiman's episode).
ANYway, I don't mind that I saw through the ploy, because it gave me that much more time to revel in how just amazingly wonderfully fanTAStic The Doctor can be. I love this character so much it hurts (literally. My Doctor love has caused physical pain on more than one occasion over the years; the eyelid thing is just the latest variation on a theme)
4) I do not, however, love the penultimate scene in this episode. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it kinda went against everything in the previous 90 minutes or so, as well as most of the past 48 years. I was already iffy about splurting the Big Bad, but then they threw in THAT, as well...
5) The story itself, though, divorced from the scenes connecting it to the rest of the series, was just CLASSIC Who goodness. I never would have guessed these two episodes were written by the same guy as "Fear Her"...not that "Fear Her" is a bad episode, just...it doesn't have the quite the emotional resonance or sci-fi ethics angle that made these episodes so great.
Bonus thought) As thickly-accented and rapid-fire as Ten was, I don't believe I ever had to resort to subtitles to figure out what he was saying**. I had to do it twice in this episode because The Doctor, Amy, and Cleaves were all a bit indecipherable at times.
* I am sorry, everyone. Through a bizarre series of events, I ended up watching Starship 2.5 times in less than a week.
** Not for my benefit, at least. There were certainly times I used them so other people could understand him.