it's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. (adventures in doctor who)
As some of you know, I have been trying to catch Doctor Who enthusiasm, on and off, for literally years, SO THIS IS A VERY EXCITING POST FOR ME TO WRITE. I tried to somewhat organize the squee, but seriously, abandon linearity, all ye who enter here. S4 is where I fall in love with it and watch the whole thing, but there are spoilers for most of the big arcs of S3 and the finale of S2 as well. DON'T TELL ME ANYTHING ABOUT S5 OR 6 I already know more than I want to!
an awful lot of running - overall thoughts
I completely love the unabashedly, gleefully geeky feel of the show. It's not just that knowledge is cool. It's that curiosity - being excited about learning - that's awesome.
I always kind of perk up a little when the Doctor goes off on the science/magic interplay. The line where he lectures the witch on how her voodoo doll is a DNA replicator, for example. OTOH, I like that the show is taking the chance to make a statement that the world can be explained; on the other hand, the TARDIS is magic, for all intents and purposes. The timey-wimey explanation isn't any more quantum physics than a Hellmouth is geology. And that's cool, that it's trying to shift the cultural paradigm into "these are things you can explain! Everything can be explained!" rather than taking things on faith. Except we still are taking things on faith, we believe Ten when he says it's a ball of timey-wimeyness. So all it really does is shift the authority who's not to be questioned from God to, uh, an all-powerful all-knowing alien who takes the form of a white dude and has power over all other creatures. What if God was one of us? Just a stranger on the bus? He'd probably wear kooky glasses and twitch for a while. "SKIENCE!!!11!!" is not actually a magic word. (See what I did there?)
I have been a little spoiled. I knew to pay attention to River Song when she showed up (<3), and to pick up on the motif of mind manipulation - from the way Donna's mother's emotional abuse has clearly damaged her sense of herself, with the Ood's labotomies and her asking both to hear and forget the Ood's song, and then of course with Dr. Mood, and the villains of both Midnight and Turn Left.
S4 is far and away the best. Somewhere mid-S3, it finds exactly the right blend of embracing the camp (oh, the delicious camp) and drawing out the gorgeously unsubtle metaphors of each episode, and then S4 feels like a thematic whole as well as a collection of fantastic episodes. I even love the music the best there - I'd liked the kid's show orchestral score as well, but the notes behind the stolen earth arc quite literally rock. The end there is a five-episode love letter from Davies to the franchise, and it's well-earned, I loved every minute.
a doctor of what, exactly? thoughts on Ten
I know Ten is contentious and I kind of see why, but I like his oddball self. I mean, he's wacky in that way the Doctor should be, but that comes with the alienation that makes him be emo and kind of a dick. I get it; it all fits. He's alien in exactly the right way. I like the survival instinct that pokes through even as John Smith - WHY CAN'T I STAY, ugh. I was skeptical, having seen Ten called out by name more than a few times in Man Pain posts - and not for no reason - I love him. It's not the Man Pain that bothers me, it's just angst, some of which is down to his own failings and some of which really is that the one constant seems to be that the universe is cruel, which does work for me. And we all know I love me some crazy eyes.
I particularly love that psht, he ran away, are you crazy? His avoidance of violence isn't some warrior code thing, it just makes sense to him. I love him because he is not going to let five people die because some idiot let his pride get in the way! It's not that he is selfish or spineless - he's willing to sacrifice himself, he just doesn't have a martyr complex. My irritation at the way goodness and courage is defined by "willingness to fling oneself on the sword NO MATTER HOW CLEARLY POINTLESS" knows no bounds, and so I really love the emphasis on this character that is smart enough to look for and find another way without apologizing for it. It's emphatically not cowardice or selfishness - he gives up literally all the time in the universe, for the sake of a human in the twilight of his own life, when there was no other option. The Doctor is the least Gryffindory protagonist I've seen in a while - he is the consummate Ravenclaw; in fact, I demand a genderfuck crossover where Rowena Ravenclaw is the Doctor. MAKE IT SO.
The Doctor is a tragic figure, really - he can have experiences, he can technically change when he regenerates, but he can't grow. Each iteration of the Doctor can go any when, but it means his own timeline is just an eternal knot, until he loses his self completely. He's known by a title, not a name, and a hollow one at that, he's had plenty of opportunity to become an actual doctor if he'd wanted. How could he even really know he's nine hundred years old? Years are a quantitative measurement of our earth around our sun. He's a personality housing an idea - the Doctor is to the Companions as the TARDIS is to him. Their dedication to him is about trust and hope, in something good and bigger than themselves, about something they need and so create.
Even setting aside Journey's End - and I think it goes without saying that I'm with you all on that - I do see the problems that people have with him. I think every problem all comes from the exact same issue, which is the particular set of consequences when everyone involved in the show is too infatuated with a character or idea to even consider the possibility that the viewer might need to be sold on something or other. It's a mixed bag. Tennant's gleeful love of the Doctor shines though every moment and it makes me want to leap up on the TARDIS console and dance for joy. But at the same time - why would Rose rather die than leave him for a safe life with her family? BECAUSE THE DOCTOR, that's why. Why will I care more about Ten's Epic Sadface than whatever tragedy is actually happening around him? BECAUSE HE'S THE DOCTOR, DAMMIT. Why are Martha's actions boxed into being all about some stupid unrequited crush, rather than her own curiosity and pro-activity and ambition? BECAUSE HE'S THE DOCTOR, DUH. It's not that big an issue for me because I do quite like him, but I acknowledge the storytelling problem.
But oh, God, that exit might be self-indulgent but it wrung out my heart all the same. He'll do the honorable sacrifice for an old man, and he knows it's his honor, but damned if he won't win me over entirely by stumbling around whining about it for twenty minutes first. I don't want to go.
Also those black plastic glasses are The Sex. WELL PLAYED, DOCTOR.
makin' music with my friends: the Companions
So I've been skimming past Who discussions as much as possible, and so I'm not sure who to credit this idea to? I think angearia. But one of you has said that DW is really the companions' story, and I think that's my favorite way to look at the narrative so far. The Doctor himself can't grow, but Rose can see the world. Martha can become a doctor. Donna can build up her confidence. It's all about them.
I thought it would never end: Rose Tyler
Rose is such a BAMF. I did skip a lot of her episodes, but I'm looking forward to watching them now. Rose, I think, convinced herself that she wanted the Doctor when really, what she wanted was to be him. When she got what she ostensibly wanted, her very own pet Ten, she was repulsed, because he didn't come with the life of time'n'space-faring adventure. She didn't want to stay with her family because that was a safe, calm, boring life, and what she wanted was to be a badass time traveler in her own right, and dammit, she did. I hope she and human!Ten are running their own Torchwood unit in their reality, having all sorts of pants-shitting-terrifying fun.
give me something to believe: Martha Jones and me
Martha Jones saved the world. Martha Jones harnessed the god of the machine; she saved the world with her story, and her wonderful badass faith and hope and thought; not prayer, as the master says, because prayer happens in supplication. This is the reverse - this is a god given mercy by a human. She saved the world, even though she lost her illusions about it (if she ever had them at all), and then she picked right back up and went to work doing what she could. Because someone has to stay. I get choked up every time she shows up in S4.
She saves the world with her story, because she keeps on telling it.
but I'm a temp! I'm not even that! Donna, the Noblest of them all
To everyone's resounding lack of surprise, Donna Noble is my absolute favorite. Her first episode is so poignant. She's just trying so hard to bend her fierce, fabulous self into this mold where women put their lives on hold until a man validates them, and so she actively pursues this loser who was using her and couldn't wait to unleash his resentment on her. Such a sharp eye for how body fascism plays out for people - she's alternating between disbelief and her righteous FUCK YOU rage when he drops the f-bomb, and her face crumples; she was all wonderfully on show all that time because she was doing that thing where she's trying to distract everyone from her insecurity about what she is all over, all the time. All that effort, and he just punctures her hope that he saw anything else but that. And it's such an easy tool for user-schmucks to deploy against women.
Midnight was the perfect episode not to have her in - not because Tate was off filming the Donna-fulness of Turn Left, but because she is righteous and blunt and there's no way she wouldn't break the paranoia spell. Because she does make the world better by shouting at it. Also making out with her seems to cure cyanide poisoning, which sounds handy. J'ADORE, DONNA.
Donna is all about the mind nearly as much as the Doctor is. The companions so far all have very high levels of different types of intelligence - Rose is resourceful and quick-thinking in a street-smart way; Jack is brilliant at reading people and showing back what they want to see, a walking, flirting, coat-swirling piece of psychic paper himself; Martha is an ambitious doer, with that immediately, pragmatically useful knowledge of the human body; Donna is a huge book geek. Even her supertemp skills, by the way - because what she's really describing there are librarian skills, the process of thinking in a way which allows her to access whatever knowledge she needs. She can meld with the Doctor because they are perfectly complimentary - he can experience everything; she can see the whole picture and hone in on what she needs from it. AND THAT IS WHY SHE CAN SAVE REALITY DONNA HOW ARE YOU SO EPIC.
The mind-wipe is a pretty egregious storytelling choice. I mean, story-wise, there's no reason they couldn't have resolved the metacrisis by taking out the Time Lordiness whatever. Moreover, that'd be at least arguably fair - Doctor-Donna swallows the Doctor's identity, it's still his mind and he gets a say in how it's used as much as she gets a say in hers. I could understand that, and I think she would more than anyone. It makes sense only from the perspective of the Doctor's experience during that episode. He's afraid Davros is right about him, that he takes the people around him and makes them into the worst of himself; he saw his own actions laid before him like Dalek Khan and decided to destroy her.
But, well, that's the problem, isn't it? Because by doing this, he is making Donna into a tool of his own will, and the story is making her a reflection of him, and nothing more. Though, I don't think that's how he sees it, I think he thinks this is a mark of faith in her, that no matter what her experiences, Donna Noble can't help but be that wonderful self she was with him. I'm not excusing it, but I do think his perspective is consistent.
I'll admit to clinging to a little hope, though, that future seasons will deal with this eventually. If this season and the one before made any one worldbuilding detail clear, it's that mindwiping in the Whoniverse is a pretty surface-level deal. Both Donna and Doctor-Donna are still in there.
I was only saying hello!
I flailed with joy each and every time Captain Jack strode in, and I was not disappointed. That wily bastard, provoking the Daleks into letting him play dead. He's an uber-charming psychotic jackass, acting out to get the Doctor's attention and esteem, and I loved every minute of him.
So, at the beginning, I was thinking the Doctor was ace, and just responding to the cues from the companions who were attracted to him in whatever ways his weird read on them would let him think was appropriate.
But.
You're a fixed point. You're a fact. You were never intended to happen. You're my anchor; I can change everything and everyone that has ever existed for me but you, and that disgusts me, but even with the entire universe at my disposal you're still the only one I call for help. Cats and kittens, this is a ship of the best kind.
if I told you, your hearts would break - (some of) the villains
Naturally I want my very own pet Dalek. EX. TER. MINATE. EX. TER. MINATE!!! LAAAAAAAAAAAWL. They're like funny Cylons!
Blink only engaged me intellectually, not really emotionally (and I'm pretty startle-able). That said, I see what all the hype was about, and the Weeping Angels are the ur-example of a Who one-shot villain. I loved the exploration of fear itself, how as soon as you face it and try to understand it, it loses its power - but you absolutely can't stay in that holding pattern forever, or it will become all you are.
I love the fuck out of the Master. I love how the creepiness of the Doctor's hold over people, and especially the companion bond, gets taken to its logical conclusion with the Archangel program. And the Master and the Doctor are Damon and Stefan. Can I say that? They are. The power they have isn't the power of, I could kill you. It's the power of, I could kill me. I love you so much that I will die JUST TO FUCK WITH YOU. (With the added benefit of not pounding me right in the massive incest squick, so. #committed multishipper) And so the Master dies, and the Doctor loses. And again, this is as much religious fiction as science fiction.the Master's high priest went to the end of the world, had her crisis of faith, and saw nothing. And so she killed her god.
He is the funniest thing in the whole wide world. I am pretty sure a solid thirty minutes of End of Time consisted of John Simm doing his camp-ass evil laugh. Y'all, he spoke to my soul. He said, STRAP IN, BITCHES. IMMA GAY THIS SHIT UP! MUAHAHAHAHA!
Anyway! GERONIMO!
Episodes I have seen, for my reference: I watched all of S1 a while back. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances live up to the hype and then some. S2: I skipped a lot of it. Netflix Instant says I watched episodes 2-4, but that's where I gave up, so I skipped all of them this time and started with Doomsday to see Rose (<3) off. S3: Episodes 1-3 and then 9-14 S4: I skipped the bookending Christmas specials, but obviously did watch End of Time.
an awful lot of running - overall thoughts
I completely love the unabashedly, gleefully geeky feel of the show. It's not just that knowledge is cool. It's that curiosity - being excited about learning - that's awesome.
I always kind of perk up a little when the Doctor goes off on the science/magic interplay. The line where he lectures the witch on how her voodoo doll is a DNA replicator, for example. OTOH, I like that the show is taking the chance to make a statement that the world can be explained; on the other hand, the TARDIS is magic, for all intents and purposes. The timey-wimey explanation isn't any more quantum physics than a Hellmouth is geology. And that's cool, that it's trying to shift the cultural paradigm into "these are things you can explain! Everything can be explained!" rather than taking things on faith. Except we still are taking things on faith, we believe Ten when he says it's a ball of timey-wimeyness. So all it really does is shift the authority who's not to be questioned from God to, uh, an all-powerful all-knowing alien who takes the form of a white dude and has power over all other creatures. What if God was one of us? Just a stranger on the bus? He'd probably wear kooky glasses and twitch for a while. "SKIENCE!!!11!!" is not actually a magic word. (See what I did there?)
I have been a little spoiled. I knew to pay attention to River Song when she showed up (<3), and to pick up on the motif of mind manipulation - from the way Donna's mother's emotional abuse has clearly damaged her sense of herself, with the Ood's labotomies and her asking both to hear and forget the Ood's song, and then of course with Dr. Mood, and the villains of both Midnight and Turn Left.
S4 is far and away the best. Somewhere mid-S3, it finds exactly the right blend of embracing the camp (oh, the delicious camp) and drawing out the gorgeously unsubtle metaphors of each episode, and then S4 feels like a thematic whole as well as a collection of fantastic episodes. I even love the music the best there - I'd liked the kid's show orchestral score as well, but the notes behind the stolen earth arc quite literally rock. The end there is a five-episode love letter from Davies to the franchise, and it's well-earned, I loved every minute.
a doctor of what, exactly? thoughts on Ten
I know Ten is contentious and I kind of see why, but I like his oddball self. I mean, he's wacky in that way the Doctor should be, but that comes with the alienation that makes him be emo and kind of a dick. I get it; it all fits. He's alien in exactly the right way. I like the survival instinct that pokes through even as John Smith - WHY CAN'T I STAY, ugh. I was skeptical, having seen Ten called out by name more than a few times in Man Pain posts - and not for no reason - I love him. It's not the Man Pain that bothers me, it's just angst, some of which is down to his own failings and some of which really is that the one constant seems to be that the universe is cruel, which does work for me. And we all know I love me some crazy eyes.
I particularly love that psht, he ran away, are you crazy? His avoidance of violence isn't some warrior code thing, it just makes sense to him. I love him because he is not going to let five people die because some idiot let his pride get in the way! It's not that he is selfish or spineless - he's willing to sacrifice himself, he just doesn't have a martyr complex. My irritation at the way goodness and courage is defined by "willingness to fling oneself on the sword NO MATTER HOW CLEARLY POINTLESS" knows no bounds, and so I really love the emphasis on this character that is smart enough to look for and find another way without apologizing for it. It's emphatically not cowardice or selfishness - he gives up literally all the time in the universe, for the sake of a human in the twilight of his own life, when there was no other option. The Doctor is the least Gryffindory protagonist I've seen in a while - he is the consummate Ravenclaw; in fact, I demand a genderfuck crossover where Rowena Ravenclaw is the Doctor. MAKE IT SO.
The Doctor is a tragic figure, really - he can have experiences, he can technically change when he regenerates, but he can't grow. Each iteration of the Doctor can go any when, but it means his own timeline is just an eternal knot, until he loses his self completely. He's known by a title, not a name, and a hollow one at that, he's had plenty of opportunity to become an actual doctor if he'd wanted. How could he even really know he's nine hundred years old? Years are a quantitative measurement of our earth around our sun. He's a personality housing an idea - the Doctor is to the Companions as the TARDIS is to him. Their dedication to him is about trust and hope, in something good and bigger than themselves, about something they need and so create.
Even setting aside Journey's End - and I think it goes without saying that I'm with you all on that - I do see the problems that people have with him. I think every problem all comes from the exact same issue, which is the particular set of consequences when everyone involved in the show is too infatuated with a character or idea to even consider the possibility that the viewer might need to be sold on something or other. It's a mixed bag. Tennant's gleeful love of the Doctor shines though every moment and it makes me want to leap up on the TARDIS console and dance for joy. But at the same time - why would Rose rather die than leave him for a safe life with her family? BECAUSE THE DOCTOR, that's why. Why will I care more about Ten's Epic Sadface than whatever tragedy is actually happening around him? BECAUSE HE'S THE DOCTOR, DAMMIT. Why are Martha's actions boxed into being all about some stupid unrequited crush, rather than her own curiosity and pro-activity and ambition? BECAUSE HE'S THE DOCTOR, DUH. It's not that big an issue for me because I do quite like him, but I acknowledge the storytelling problem.
But oh, God, that exit might be self-indulgent but it wrung out my heart all the same. He'll do the honorable sacrifice for an old man, and he knows it's his honor, but damned if he won't win me over entirely by stumbling around whining about it for twenty minutes first. I don't want to go.
Also those black plastic glasses are The Sex. WELL PLAYED, DOCTOR.
makin' music with my friends: the Companions
So I've been skimming past Who discussions as much as possible, and so I'm not sure who to credit this idea to? I think angearia. But one of you has said that DW is really the companions' story, and I think that's my favorite way to look at the narrative so far. The Doctor himself can't grow, but Rose can see the world. Martha can become a doctor. Donna can build up her confidence. It's all about them.
I thought it would never end: Rose Tyler
Rose is such a BAMF. I did skip a lot of her episodes, but I'm looking forward to watching them now. Rose, I think, convinced herself that she wanted the Doctor when really, what she wanted was to be him. When she got what she ostensibly wanted, her very own pet Ten, she was repulsed, because he didn't come with the life of time'n'space-faring adventure. She didn't want to stay with her family because that was a safe, calm, boring life, and what she wanted was to be a badass time traveler in her own right, and dammit, she did. I hope she and human!Ten are running their own Torchwood unit in their reality, having all sorts of pants-shitting-terrifying fun.
give me something to believe: Martha Jones and me
Martha Jones saved the world. Martha Jones harnessed the god of the machine; she saved the world with her story, and her wonderful badass faith and hope and thought; not prayer, as the master says, because prayer happens in supplication. This is the reverse - this is a god given mercy by a human. She saved the world, even though she lost her illusions about it (if she ever had them at all), and then she picked right back up and went to work doing what she could. Because someone has to stay. I get choked up every time she shows up in S4.
She saves the world with her story, because she keeps on telling it.
but I'm a temp! I'm not even that! Donna, the Noblest of them all
To everyone's resounding lack of surprise, Donna Noble is my absolute favorite. Her first episode is so poignant. She's just trying so hard to bend her fierce, fabulous self into this mold where women put their lives on hold until a man validates them, and so she actively pursues this loser who was using her and couldn't wait to unleash his resentment on her. Such a sharp eye for how body fascism plays out for people - she's alternating between disbelief and her righteous FUCK YOU rage when he drops the f-bomb, and her face crumples; she was all wonderfully on show all that time because she was doing that thing where she's trying to distract everyone from her insecurity about what she is all over, all the time. All that effort, and he just punctures her hope that he saw anything else but that. And it's such an easy tool for user-schmucks to deploy against women.
Midnight was the perfect episode not to have her in - not because Tate was off filming the Donna-fulness of Turn Left, but because she is righteous and blunt and there's no way she wouldn't break the paranoia spell. Because she does make the world better by shouting at it. Also making out with her seems to cure cyanide poisoning, which sounds handy. J'ADORE, DONNA.
Donna is all about the mind nearly as much as the Doctor is. The companions so far all have very high levels of different types of intelligence - Rose is resourceful and quick-thinking in a street-smart way; Jack is brilliant at reading people and showing back what they want to see, a walking, flirting, coat-swirling piece of psychic paper himself; Martha is an ambitious doer, with that immediately, pragmatically useful knowledge of the human body; Donna is a huge book geek. Even her supertemp skills, by the way - because what she's really describing there are librarian skills, the process of thinking in a way which allows her to access whatever knowledge she needs. She can meld with the Doctor because they are perfectly complimentary - he can experience everything; she can see the whole picture and hone in on what she needs from it. AND THAT IS WHY SHE CAN SAVE REALITY DONNA HOW ARE YOU SO EPIC.
The mind-wipe is a pretty egregious storytelling choice. I mean, story-wise, there's no reason they couldn't have resolved the metacrisis by taking out the Time Lordiness whatever. Moreover, that'd be at least arguably fair - Doctor-Donna swallows the Doctor's identity, it's still his mind and he gets a say in how it's used as much as she gets a say in hers. I could understand that, and I think she would more than anyone. It makes sense only from the perspective of the Doctor's experience during that episode. He's afraid Davros is right about him, that he takes the people around him and makes them into the worst of himself; he saw his own actions laid before him like Dalek Khan and decided to destroy her.
But, well, that's the problem, isn't it? Because by doing this, he is making Donna into a tool of his own will, and the story is making her a reflection of him, and nothing more. Though, I don't think that's how he sees it, I think he thinks this is a mark of faith in her, that no matter what her experiences, Donna Noble can't help but be that wonderful self she was with him. I'm not excusing it, but I do think his perspective is consistent.
I'll admit to clinging to a little hope, though, that future seasons will deal with this eventually. If this season and the one before made any one worldbuilding detail clear, it's that mindwiping in the Whoniverse is a pretty surface-level deal. Both Donna and Doctor-Donna are still in there.
I was only saying hello!
I flailed with joy each and every time Captain Jack strode in, and I was not disappointed. That wily bastard, provoking the Daleks into letting him play dead. He's an uber-charming psychotic jackass, acting out to get the Doctor's attention and esteem, and I loved every minute of him.
So, at the beginning, I was thinking the Doctor was ace, and just responding to the cues from the companions who were attracted to him in whatever ways his weird read on them would let him think was appropriate.
But.
You're a fixed point. You're a fact. You were never intended to happen. You're my anchor; I can change everything and everyone that has ever existed for me but you, and that disgusts me, but even with the entire universe at my disposal you're still the only one I call for help. Cats and kittens, this is a ship of the best kind.
if I told you, your hearts would break - (some of) the villains
Naturally I want my very own pet Dalek. EX. TER. MINATE. EX. TER. MINATE!!! LAAAAAAAAAAAWL. They're like funny Cylons!
Blink only engaged me intellectually, not really emotionally (and I'm pretty startle-able). That said, I see what all the hype was about, and the Weeping Angels are the ur-example of a Who one-shot villain. I loved the exploration of fear itself, how as soon as you face it and try to understand it, it loses its power - but you absolutely can't stay in that holding pattern forever, or it will become all you are.
I love the fuck out of the Master. I love how the creepiness of the Doctor's hold over people, and especially the companion bond, gets taken to its logical conclusion with the Archangel program. And the Master and the Doctor are Damon and Stefan. Can I say that? They are. The power they have isn't the power of, I could kill you. It's the power of, I could kill me. I love you so much that I will die JUST TO FUCK WITH YOU. (With the added benefit of not pounding me right in the massive incest squick, so. #committed multishipper) And so the Master dies, and the Doctor loses. And again, this is as much religious fiction as science fiction.the Master's high priest went to the end of the world, had her crisis of faith, and saw nothing. And so she killed her god.
He is the funniest thing in the whole wide world. I am pretty sure a solid thirty minutes of End of Time consisted of John Simm doing his camp-ass evil laugh. Y'all, he spoke to my soul. He said, STRAP IN, BITCHES. IMMA GAY THIS SHIT UP! MUAHAHAHAHA!
Anyway! GERONIMO!
Episodes I have seen, for my reference: I watched all of S1 a while back. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances live up to the hype and then some. S2: I skipped a lot of it. Netflix Instant says I watched episodes 2-4, but that's where I gave up, so I skipped all of them this time and started with Doomsday to see Rose (<3) off. S3: Episodes 1-3 and then 9-14 S4: I skipped the bookending Christmas specials, but obviously did watch End of Time.