Raggedy Man, I remember you - Doctor Who obsession in five easy steps
AAAAH DOCTOR WHO SEASON FIVE. MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF STARS.
So, okay. Like I was saying in my last entry, for me Doctor Who only has two speeds, amazing and horrible. But as it turns out -- with no judgment to anybody's personal Doctor/showrunner preferences, of course -- it was the most recent season and the 11th Doctor that broke through my cheesiness barrier and left me in a state of overwhelming squee and love for the show. Just... everyone. Eleventy is such a big ball of *delight* and adorkableness and River is astoundingly badass and Amy is clever and breaks my heart all the time and Rory is RORY and spent an entire episode stuck in this T-shirt once. THEY ARE MY PRECIOUS OT4. The seasonal arc is a giant fairy tale about childhood and memory and imaginary friends who come to life and time paradoxes that make no sense when you think about them but they just work because it's MAGIC, and it's just. so. lovely.
Anyway, if anybody out there is like me and you're on the ehhhhh brink of checking it out, I'm gonna make one of those "These Are the Episodes To Watch" lists so you can start there. :) This is partially adapted from the list chaila43 gave me, although I've watched the rest of season five since then. (And um, bought the DVD. Ahem.)
Bolded are the must-see ones that form the arc of the season and make the most sense together, though the finale did an impressive job putting a callback to ALL the episodes in it.
Italicized are the ones that are more "filler"-ish and you can skip them without missing anything, but if you do find yourself getting sucked into the show, feel free to not skip them because they're very enjoyable.
5x01: The Eleventh Hour -- Intro to Eleventy and Amy and the new-showrunner reboot, basically. It sets up a lot of plotty and thematic stuff while also having a solid and relatively non-embarrassing Monster of the Week. Forget the silly CGI opening and it's all very charming.
(In between these is The Beast Below, which I have a lot of ~thoughts~ about, both yay and eh, but it's not a must-see right away.)
5x04-5: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone -- This is a two-parter and it's where the controversial ~*~River Song~*~ and her bag of awesome show up. (Backstory from the previous season: she has a very close and mysterious relationship with the Doctor in his future/her past. It's very Time Traveller's Wife. Possibly literally.) Anyway, even apart from her it's good stuff and important later, plus has a few genuinely creepy moments.
5x07: Amy's Choice -- This is not one that *anybody* recommended to me, but I have a personal affection for it because it was one of the first episodes I happened to see and enjoy. It's a solid, character-driven storyline with funny moments, and I'm thisclose to bolding it just because I think it matters a lot to sell Amy/Rory as a ship (I LOVE THEM, HE CUT OFF HIS PONYTAIL, DAWWW) before, uh, events happen. I'm guessing people had concerns with this episode because of the ~fake love triangle~ aspect, where Amy is presented as needing to choose between the Doctor and Rory on a literal level, or on a more metaphorical level, a life of Fun Times and Adventure vs. "growing up" and settling into married life/motherhood. But I can handwave all that because anything problematic about it is *completely* undone by how the rest of the season turned out. It's a legit emotional conflict and also a huge lie and red herring, even just in this episode.
(Between these are the Hungry Earth/Cold Blood two-parter, which I go back and forth on italicizing? Not *awful* but not great either. It explores that can-humans-and-an-alien-species-learn-to-coexist-without-genociding-each-other theme that I enjoy so much, and while I have one or two big issues with how it was resolved, it could've been worse. Also, it features a one-off character who looks alarmingly like Felicia Day (she's not) and reminds me of Jean Barolay, so ♥ It can easily be skipped over, as long as you find out about the Major Event that happens at the very end, pretty much unrelated to the rest of the ep.)
5x10: Vincent and the Doctor -- A standalone wherein there is Vincent van Gogh and it's totally heartbreaking and awesome. I'm bolding this with the caveat that you actually *can* ignore most of it, it's standard monster-fighting Who fare, but then the ending -- the Starry Night scene, and the museum, and the ending -- is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen on TV. Just... I have yet to watch the last 15 minutes of this episode without crying.
(Between these is The Lodger. At the risk of italicizing EVERYTHING except that one shitty vampire episode, I'll just say this is a lighthearted filler ep with lots of Eleven being silly and funny, and lots of people like it. I like it too! But I swapped it out for Amy's Choice, because I'm weird.)
5x12-13: The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang -- The two-part season finale which features a bajillion callbacks to other episodes and blows up the universe and makes so much sense in crazy fairytale logic. FLAWLESS. STUNNING. I LOVE IT. EVEN THE STUPID DALEKS DO NOT RUIN IT.
P.S. Who fans, I would love further recommendations on episodes to watch from earlier seasons! (I mean, seasons 1-4. I'm not really interested in going back to the classic series.) Watching a few random ones VERY quickly broke my illusion that I was just gonna be able to mainline the whole series and enjoy all of them.
Here are some of the ones I've hit already: "Blink" (LOVE), "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead" (Also really really good!), "The Girl in the Fireplace" (meh), "The Waters of Mars" (unexpectedly pretty awesome and reminded me of this vid), and "Journey's End" (ACTIVELY PISSED ME OFF MULTIPLE TIMES, WHY DID I EVEN). So yeah. Netflix streaming! Have I missed any other standout ones?
Edit: Oh yeah, and obviously I'm watching the new season, but I'm very low on thoughts about it until I see more? Just crossing my fingers it's good. As always, there was stuff in the premiere I loved to pieces and stuff that made me cringe a little, but I'm looking forward to more.
So, okay. Like I was saying in my last entry, for me Doctor Who only has two speeds, amazing and horrible. But as it turns out -- with no judgment to anybody's personal Doctor/showrunner preferences, of course -- it was the most recent season and the 11th Doctor that broke through my cheesiness barrier and left me in a state of overwhelming squee and love for the show. Just... everyone. Eleventy is such a big ball of *delight* and adorkableness and River is astoundingly badass and Amy is clever and breaks my heart all the time and Rory is RORY and spent an entire episode stuck in this T-shirt once. THEY ARE MY PRECIOUS OT4. The seasonal arc is a giant fairy tale about childhood and memory and imaginary friends who come to life and time paradoxes that make no sense when you think about them but they just work because it's MAGIC, and it's just. so. lovely.
Anyway, if anybody out there is like me and you're on the ehhhhh brink of checking it out, I'm gonna make one of those "These Are the Episodes To Watch" lists so you can start there. :) This is partially adapted from the list chaila43 gave me, although I've watched the rest of season five since then. (And um, bought the DVD. Ahem.)
Bolded are the must-see ones that form the arc of the season and make the most sense together, though the finale did an impressive job putting a callback to ALL the episodes in it.
Italicized are the ones that are more "filler"-ish and you can skip them without missing anything, but if you do find yourself getting sucked into the show, feel free to not skip them because they're very enjoyable.
5x01: The Eleventh Hour -- Intro to Eleventy and Amy and the new-showrunner reboot, basically. It sets up a lot of plotty and thematic stuff while also having a solid and relatively non-embarrassing Monster of the Week. Forget the silly CGI opening and it's all very charming.
(In between these is The Beast Below, which I have a lot of ~thoughts~ about, both yay and eh, but it's not a must-see right away.)
5x04-5: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone -- This is a two-parter and it's where the controversial ~*~River Song~*~ and her bag of awesome show up. (Backstory from the previous season: she has a very close and mysterious relationship with the Doctor in his future/her past. It's very Time Traveller's Wife. Possibly literally.) Anyway, even apart from her it's good stuff and important later, plus has a few genuinely creepy moments.
5x07: Amy's Choice -- This is not one that *anybody* recommended to me, but I have a personal affection for it because it was one of the first episodes I happened to see and enjoy. It's a solid, character-driven storyline with funny moments, and I'm thisclose to bolding it just because I think it matters a lot to sell Amy/Rory as a ship (I LOVE THEM, HE CUT OFF HIS PONYTAIL, DAWWW) before, uh, events happen. I'm guessing people had concerns with this episode because of the ~fake love triangle~ aspect, where Amy is presented as needing to choose between the Doctor and Rory on a literal level, or on a more metaphorical level, a life of Fun Times and Adventure vs. "growing up" and settling into married life/motherhood. But I can handwave all that because anything problematic about it is *completely* undone by how the rest of the season turned out. It's a legit emotional conflict and also a huge lie and red herring, even just in this episode.
(Between these are the Hungry Earth/Cold Blood two-parter, which I go back and forth on italicizing? Not *awful* but not great either. It explores that can-humans-and-an-alien-species-learn-to-coexist-without-genociding-each-other theme that I enjoy so much, and while I have one or two big issues with how it was resolved, it could've been worse. Also, it features a one-off character who looks alarmingly like Felicia Day (she's not) and reminds me of Jean Barolay, so ♥ It can easily be skipped over, as long as you find out about the Major Event that happens at the very end, pretty much unrelated to the rest of the ep.)
5x10: Vincent and the Doctor -- A standalone wherein there is Vincent van Gogh and it's totally heartbreaking and awesome. I'm bolding this with the caveat that you actually *can* ignore most of it, it's standard monster-fighting Who fare, but then the ending -- the Starry Night scene, and the museum, and the ending -- is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen on TV. Just... I have yet to watch the last 15 minutes of this episode without crying.
(Between these is The Lodger. At the risk of italicizing EVERYTHING except that one shitty vampire episode, I'll just say this is a lighthearted filler ep with lots of Eleven being silly and funny, and lots of people like it. I like it too! But I swapped it out for Amy's Choice, because I'm weird.)
5x12-13: The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang -- The two-part season finale which features a bajillion callbacks to other episodes and blows up the universe and makes so much sense in crazy fairytale logic. FLAWLESS. STUNNING. I LOVE IT. EVEN THE STUPID DALEKS DO NOT RUIN IT.
P.S. Who fans, I would love further recommendations on episodes to watch from earlier seasons! (I mean, seasons 1-4. I'm not really interested in going back to the classic series.) Watching a few random ones VERY quickly broke my illusion that I was just gonna be able to mainline the whole series and enjoy all of them.
Here are some of the ones I've hit already: "Blink" (LOVE), "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead" (Also really really good!), "The Girl in the Fireplace" (meh), "The Waters of Mars" (unexpectedly pretty awesome and reminded me of this vid), and "Journey's End" (ACTIVELY PISSED ME OFF MULTIPLE TIMES, WHY DID I EVEN). So yeah. Netflix streaming! Have I missed any other standout ones?
Edit: Oh yeah, and obviously I'm watching the new season, but I'm very low on thoughts about it until I see more? Just crossing my fingers it's good. As always, there was stuff in the premiere I loved to pieces and stuff that made me cringe a little, but I'm looking forward to more.