I'm thinking of Nine's "coward or killer" scene and how it contrasts with Ten's first actions after regeneration - setting himself up as Earth's champion and fighting a sword duel. Regenerating was supposed to heal the Doctor of his guilt, but Ten seems to have forgotten all the Ninth Doctor's humility as well.
I wanted to cheer at that "coward or killer" line. I know that, in a way, he let the Earth die and the Daleks get away, but he'd already tried it once and it didn't work, so why try the same thing and expect a different outcome - that's the definition of madness, is it not? This way, he dies, but he saves his soul, and I loved that.
It's really those actions in TCI that set me against Ten, even before Tennant became more wild-eyed with the acting (it's really New Earth where he becomes unbearable). The swordfight was just lame, because he wasn't convincing; he's got no physical power, or grace either. It's weird, Eccleston looks like he ought to be gangly, but he's quite graceful - I suppose it comes of being an athlete; whereas Tennant looks like he ought to be ottery, at least, and sleek, but he's extremely awkward (I hate the sexism of this phrase, but it's true - he runs like a girl). Then there's the whole Harriet thing, which bothers me on all sorts of levels. The only thing I like about it was that it was daring plotting, although looking back on it, it seems like the beginning of sloppy plotting.
I don't know that Nine was humble so much as he had a sense of proportion and balance. I like that in a hero. I was just chatting with a friend who loves romantic heroes and the way they get obsessed about romantic ideals...and I couldn't help thinking, "Isn't that what got us into Iraq?"
I loved Leela! I don't remember Tegan very well and am not up to Five in my rewatch.
Jack's brainhole! Somehow I'd forgotten all about that. I don't watch Torchwood so I have no idea if we ever found out what happened to him.
No. And TW has pretty much put me off Jack, I have to say. I have to go back and recapture my Jack-love from S1. I didn't want to like him, actually, and didn't until Boom Town. It was the way he fit into the chemistry that made me like him. Common sense and all experience would say that he would ruin that magic between Nine and Rose, but he definitely didn't.
Eagerly awaiting your take on it, though!
I have to work out all the parameters myself. It's a time-bender, of course, having taken place during the Time War. Do you want to be spoiled? It might be nice to try to work out the outline with someone else, but if you want to wait, too, that makes perfect sense!
he's just as good at being vulnerable. The part in Father's Day when the Doctor takes off his leather jacket always stands out to me... it's just so shocking, somehow, to see him without the "armor."
I know - he looks almost naked - more naked than he does when he's stripped down for torture in Dalek. It's a fascinating insight into the depth of his acting. Speaking of looking vulnerable, have you ever seen Second Coming? There's a moment, right before he and Judith are about to have sex, and he pulls his sweatshirt over his head, then goes all 14. It's quite remarkable. He's so awkward, so small, with all these utterly natural mannerisms that are hard to describe, complex, but utterly convincing.
Tennant's emo and/or shouting just look so shallow in comparison.
Well, yes. There was a post recently on doctorwho, a poll on who was more screwed up, Nine or Ten, and I thought, "How do you answer that?" Nine is a real character who has a real psychology and carries a great deal of damage, guilt, and nobility. Ten is...an emo-boy cartoon. He's more dangerous, not because he's powerful, but because he's careless or a malicious twit. I know a lot of the fangirls are "ooh, he's all dark and damaged," and while I can see why they think so given the writing, in the acting, it's just laughable.
And I do love the teacher-hero, and stories in which it's more about doing right than being right. Yes. I think that's why Nine is my favourite Doctor. A lot of it is just that CE is the best actor to play the role, but since my list then continues Troughton, McGann, Hartnell, I think there's a definite pattern of quality of acting and lack of grandstanding.
As for the Time War story... I've been thinking about this since S1, and I think coming on the end of "Relict", I'll be in a place to do it. The basic idea is that Nine, Jack, and Rose are in a stable, loving relationship, and the Doctor wants to help Jack fix the hole in his memory, but first he wants to find out what it is. As he traces the damage back, he realizes that it's tied up with the Time War. I'm putting the next part in white so that you can read or not! Jack first runs into Eight as a Time Agent, starts following him, ends up fighting in the Time War, sees Eight/Nine through regeneration, thinks he sees Nine killed in the final battle, then runs across him one last time for a passionate reunion - except that it's "present!Nine". I haven't quite figured out yet whether or not Jack knows this, but he knows he's going to lose him again and asks the Doctor to take the two years of knowing him out of him because it hurts too much to remember. The Doctor knows he has to, to preserve the timeline (although I need to nuance this). But the main idea is that instead of the hole in his brain being because of something malicious, it's because of love.
No problem - you happened to hit me in the middle of my "catching up on LJ" period of the day, so the response is unusually swift!
I can highly recommend Netflix. My three top recs would be Revengers Tragedy, Second Coming, and Othello. In fact, Second Coming is very cheap for a mini-series, and if you like his acting at all, it's worth having. It's definitely one of his best performances, and for all those who swoon over Tennant playing John Smith, Eccleston goes one further - he's playing a dim video clerk who just also happens to be the son of God. Oh, Steve is heartbreaking - he's so sweet, and yet you utterly understand why his friends might want to strangle him sometimes. Lesley Sharp can also go toe to toe (and even more impressively, nose-to-nose) with him and not get blown away. Billie Piper does it by ducking and weaving, Lesley Sharp just digs in her heels and shouts back. Revengers Tragedy is my favourite film, a very Nine-like performance, but I think SC and Othello are better performances. Another of my favourites, Hearts and Minds, is not available on DVD, to my utter astonishment.
I still haven't worked out all of the bends and twists of the Time War story yet. I'm thinking about several things - perhaps Jack really doesn't even like Eight (beyond, hey, pretty); when does the Doctor regenerate? It might be a nice surprise to have him regenerate early into a soldier - so that he's literally born to press the button, meaning that his existence is literally dust to dust, ashes to ashes. (I've left some loopholes in "Relict" for that.) It's possible, too, that he's with Jack in the immediate aftermath but pushes him away... It's still quite vague, but the intersection of Time War, Time Agency, and Jack's missing memory seem too tempting not to play with it.
Right, I remember seeing that on your LJ. Is it for work? Grad school? Congrats on finishing, btw! That's quite a hurdle to get over.
If you're in Germany, check Amazon. Amazon.co.uk has a Netflix-like rental program, and it looks like Amazon.de does as well. There may be a better service, but at least there's that. And you can usually get Second Coming relatively cheap on Amazon through their marketplace merchants (I buy a lot of DVDs, and I find that's the best way to go). The other two do occasionally pop up fairly cheap, it's a bit like roulette because they're so much rarer.
I was a German minor and do a lot of reading in German, but a few years back, I went to a symposium in Salzburg and actually had to use German for the first time. I actually understood far more than I thought I would, it was the forming of sentences that was difficult.
I could see a young, gung-ho Jack finding Eight a bit passive. I don't think he'll hate him, by any means, I just think he might not respond to him the way he does to Nine. There's something of the beta-dog about Jack. The men he's seemed to respond to most (Nine, real!CJH) are just that much more alpha than he is; he seems to like to push his own alpha-ness, but then when he gets their attention, climb down and submit just that little bit. Like the "I've got a plan" moment in Boom Town or the way that he pushes CJH to make a move, then assumes the slightly more passive position (CJH leads in the dancing, Jack waits to be kissed, etc.). He could even love Eight and then go "phwaor" when he regenerates as Nine (trying very hard to avoid the "imprinting" trope that disgusts me!).
I love translating. I think it's more creative than people think. Oddly, my favourite language to translate is Russian, which is my weakest one. But I think it's the "solving the problem" aspect. I was always really fond of algebra for the same reason!
since I'm a German citizen, Germany was the obvious answer.
Ah, yes - well, that does help! I have dual residency in the US and the UK. My next trip is to Oslo, however! I've never been to Scandinavia. I kind of wish it were in summer or winter just for the extremes of light, but it's in September, so near the equinox. :(
Salzburg is really beautiful!
And surprisingly small. I walked from one end to the other in an afternoon, even on a bad foot (long story, mostly fixed now!). It was lovely. I was most intrigued by the houses built into the mountain. It's a cool idea - what I couldn't figure out was the ones which only had half a window. It's not like it was a landslide that half-covered them. They couldn't design the windows with better proportions? But I did enjoy my visit. And since I was there about Mozart, well... it was the place to be!
Austrian accents are so cute.
They're certainly comprehensible. The only person I had real trouble with that entire week was a woman from Leipzig. Could not understand a word she said that wasn't directly related to music.
What's the "imprinting" trope? That the Doctor regenerates based on who's around or something similar?
Some fans were all asquee with the idea that Ten regenerated as a "pretty boy" (gag) because that's what Rose really wanted (gag, again). I don't understand why they find that appealing! It means that Nine felt so inadequate that he shaped himself into that...twit because he thought that was what Rose wanted and not him. And if she was thrilled by it, it makes Rose into a shallow, simpering idiot. For me, part of her growth in S1 was that when she finally fell in love, it was with someone miles away from the weak pretty boys to which she seemed to gravitate. Blech. Just hate that idea in all its permutations. It's like the old "love potion" idea. I just can't buy into a great love (Tristan & Isolde come to mind) just because they drank a love potion. I have a hard enough time with Romeo & Juliet's "love at first sight". I can believe at chemistry at first sight (goodness knows we were hit full-blast with that with Rose and Nine), but I want a relationship to develop past that, which definitely happened in S1. S2 was just a plateau.
I wanted to cheer at that "coward or killer" line. I know that, in a way, he let the Earth die and the Daleks get away, but he'd already tried it once and it didn't work, so why try the same thing and expect a different outcome - that's the definition of madness, is it not? This way, he dies, but he saves his soul, and I loved that.
It's really those actions in TCI that set me against Ten, even before Tennant became more wild-eyed with the acting (it's really New Earth where he becomes unbearable). The swordfight was just lame, because he wasn't convincing; he's got no physical power, or grace either. It's weird, Eccleston looks like he ought to be gangly, but he's quite graceful - I suppose it comes of being an athlete; whereas Tennant looks like he ought to be ottery, at least, and sleek, but he's extremely awkward (I hate the sexism of this phrase, but it's true - he runs like a girl). Then there's the whole Harriet thing, which bothers me on all sorts of levels. The only thing I like about it was that it was daring plotting, although looking back on it, it seems like the beginning of sloppy plotting.
I don't know that Nine was humble so much as he had a sense of proportion and balance. I like that in a hero. I was just chatting with a friend who loves romantic heroes and the way they get obsessed about romantic ideals...and I couldn't help thinking, "Isn't that what got us into Iraq?"
I loved Leela! I don't remember Tegan very well and am not up to Five in my rewatch.
Jack's brainhole! Somehow I'd forgotten all about that. I don't watch Torchwood so I have no idea if we ever found out what happened to him.
No. And TW has pretty much put me off Jack, I have to say. I have to go back and recapture my Jack-love from S1. I didn't want to like him, actually, and didn't until Boom Town. It was the way he fit into the chemistry that made me like him. Common sense and all experience would say that he would ruin that magic between Nine and Rose, but he definitely didn't.
Eagerly awaiting your take on it, though!
I have to work out all the parameters myself. It's a time-bender, of course, having taken place during the Time War. Do you want to be spoiled? It might be nice to try to work out the outline with someone else, but if you want to wait, too, that makes perfect sense!
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(The comment has been removed)
I know - he looks almost naked - more naked than he does when he's stripped down for torture in Dalek. It's a fascinating insight into the depth of his acting. Speaking of looking vulnerable, have you ever seen Second Coming? There's a moment, right before he and Judith are about to have sex, and he pulls his sweatshirt over his head, then goes all 14. It's quite remarkable. He's so awkward, so small, with all these utterly natural mannerisms that are hard to describe, complex, but utterly convincing.
Tennant's emo and/or shouting just look so shallow in comparison.
Well, yes. There was a post recently on doctorwho, a poll on who was more screwed up, Nine or Ten, and I thought, "How do you answer that?" Nine is a real character who has a real psychology and carries a great deal of damage, guilt, and nobility. Ten is...an emo-boy cartoon. He's more dangerous, not because he's powerful, but because he's careless or a malicious twit. I know a lot of the fangirls are "ooh, he's all dark and damaged," and while I can see why they think so given the writing, in the acting, it's just laughable.
And I do love the teacher-hero, and stories in which it's more about doing right than being right. Yes. I think that's why Nine is my favourite Doctor. A lot of it is just that CE is the best actor to play the role, but since my list then continues Troughton, McGann, Hartnell, I think there's a definite pattern of quality of acting and lack of grandstanding.
As for the Time War story... I've been thinking about this since S1, and I think coming on the end of "Relict", I'll be in a place to do it. The basic idea is that Nine, Jack, and Rose are in a stable, loving relationship, and the Doctor wants to help Jack fix the hole in his memory, but first he wants to find out what it is. As he traces the damage back, he realizes that it's tied up with the Time War. I'm putting the next part in white so that you can read or not! Jack first runs into Eight as a Time Agent, starts following him, ends up fighting in the Time War, sees Eight/Nine through regeneration, thinks he sees Nine killed in the final battle, then runs across him one last time for a passionate reunion - except that it's "present!Nine". I haven't quite figured out yet whether or not Jack knows this, but he knows he's going to lose him again and asks the Doctor to take the two years of knowing him out of him because it hurts too much to remember. The Doctor knows he has to, to preserve the timeline (although I need to nuance this). But the main idea is that instead of the hole in his brain being because of something malicious, it's because of love.
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
No problem - you happened to hit me in the middle of my "catching up on LJ" period of the day, so the response is unusually swift!
I can highly recommend Netflix. My three top recs would be Revengers Tragedy, Second Coming, and Othello. In fact, Second Coming is very cheap for a mini-series, and if you like his acting at all, it's worth having. It's definitely one of his best performances, and for all those who swoon over Tennant playing John Smith, Eccleston goes one further - he's playing a dim video clerk who just also happens to be the son of God. Oh, Steve is heartbreaking - he's so sweet, and yet you utterly understand why his friends might want to strangle him sometimes. Lesley Sharp can also go toe to toe (and even more impressively, nose-to-nose) with him and not get blown away. Billie Piper does it by ducking and weaving, Lesley Sharp just digs in her heels and shouts back. Revengers Tragedy is my favourite film, a very Nine-like performance, but I think SC and Othello are better performances. Another of my favourites, Hearts and Minds, is not available on DVD, to my utter astonishment.
I still haven't worked out all of the bends and twists of the Time War story yet. I'm thinking about several things - perhaps Jack really doesn't even like Eight (beyond, hey, pretty); when does the Doctor regenerate? It might be a nice surprise to have him regenerate early into a soldier - so that he's literally born to press the button, meaning that his existence is literally dust to dust, ashes to ashes. (I've left some loopholes in "Relict" for that.) It's possible, too, that he's with Jack in the immediate aftermath but pushes him away... It's still quite vague, but the intersection of Time War, Time Agency, and Jack's missing memory seem too tempting not to play with it.
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
Right, I remember seeing that on your LJ. Is it for work? Grad school? Congrats on finishing, btw! That's quite a hurdle to get over.
If you're in Germany, check Amazon. Amazon.co.uk has a Netflix-like rental program, and it looks like Amazon.de does as well. There may be a better service, but at least there's that. And you can usually get Second Coming relatively cheap on Amazon through their marketplace merchants (I buy a lot of DVDs, and I find that's the best way to go). The other two do occasionally pop up fairly cheap, it's a bit like roulette because they're so much rarer.
I was a German minor and do a lot of reading in German, but a few years back, I went to a symposium in Salzburg and actually had to use German for the first time. I actually understood far more than I thought I would, it was the forming of sentences that was difficult.
I could see a young, gung-ho Jack finding Eight a bit passive. I don't think he'll hate him, by any means, I just think he might not respond to him the way he does to Nine. There's something of the beta-dog about Jack. The men he's seemed to respond to most (Nine, real!CJH) are just that much more alpha than he is; he seems to like to push his own alpha-ness, but then when he gets their attention, climb down and submit just that little bit. Like the "I've got a plan" moment in Boom Town or the way that he pushes CJH to make a move, then assumes the slightly more passive position (CJH leads in the dancing, Jack waits to be kissed, etc.). He could even love Eight and then go "phwaor" when he regenerates as Nine (trying very hard to avoid the "imprinting" trope that disgusts me!).
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
since I'm a German citizen, Germany was the obvious answer.
Ah, yes - well, that does help! I have dual residency in the US and the UK. My next trip is to Oslo, however! I've never been to Scandinavia. I kind of wish it were in summer or winter just for the extremes of light, but it's in September, so near the equinox. :(
Salzburg is really beautiful!
And surprisingly small. I walked from one end to the other in an afternoon, even on a bad foot (long story, mostly fixed now!). It was lovely. I was most intrigued by the houses built into the mountain. It's a cool idea - what I couldn't figure out was the ones which only had half a window. It's not like it was a landslide that half-covered them. They couldn't design the windows with better proportions? But I did enjoy my visit. And since I was there about Mozart, well... it was the place to be!
Austrian accents are so cute.
They're certainly comprehensible. The only person I had real trouble with that entire week was a woman from Leipzig. Could not understand a word she said that wasn't directly related to music.
What's the "imprinting" trope? That the Doctor regenerates based on who's around or something similar?
Some fans were all asquee with the idea that Ten regenerated as a "pretty boy" (gag) because that's what Rose really wanted (gag, again). I don't understand why they find that appealing! It means that Nine felt so inadequate that he shaped himself into that...twit because he thought that was what Rose wanted and not him. And if she was thrilled by it, it makes Rose into a shallow, simpering idiot. For me, part of her growth in S1 was that when she finally fell in love, it was with someone miles away from the weak pretty boys to which she seemed to gravitate. Blech. Just hate that idea in all its permutations. It's like the old "love potion" idea. I just can't buy into a great love (Tristan & Isolde come to mind) just because they drank a love potion. I have a hard enough time with Romeo & Juliet's "love at first sight". I can believe at chemistry at first sight (goodness knows we were hit full-blast with that with Rose and Nine), but I want a relationship to develop past that, which definitely happened in S1. S2 was just a plateau.
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