i had lessons from the best. shame you were busy that day. (Doctor Who S5)
any when, so long as it's amazing (episode thoughts)
So, I like Amy fine, but I am so very sick of the way young female companions pine for the Doctor while stringing along guys they seem to hold in contempt. It's just so over-the-top! Young girl gets saved, entranced, and abandoned by an older man; grows up to be a stripper - sorry, kiss-o-gram - and hangs out in her childhood bedroom until he comes for her, at which point she drops everything and goes running with him. I like her when I can force the season opener out of my mind, but I shouldn't have to. (Doesn't she have any friends or interests, at all, outside the Doctor? She seems like someone who would, she just doesn't. Rory has his career and dreams and a ton of friends at his stag party.)
It's a sexist - that is to say, cheap and unimaginative as well as plain nasty - trick that narratively does nothing. The weaker writers - or at least, writers who don't care as much about the female characters - then always have a handy excuse to explain the characters' motivations, which puts the interesting parts of their characterizations on the back burner. It's not a Time Lord thing, because it's not like non-humans fall for him this easily. It's a romantic dead end, because you can't get into it with the Doctor. And it makes him look like a dick, stringing them along into his little undersexed harem. I'm fine with him looking like a dick because of the arrogance and genociding and all, but he consciously takes companions to humanize himself, so the constant failure at that is irritating.
One of them, fine. But this is a pattern that doesn't add anything to the characters, and it's at its absolute most grating with Amy, which is even more of a shame than it'd be anyway, because KG brings a delightful sense of absurdity and humor on the rare occasion she's asked to do more than make puppy-dog eyes at the Doctor and look aggrieved and mortified whenever Rory has the temerity to remind us all of his existence.
If possible, Rory is even worse served by this. I want to like him for his willingness to be insecure about Amy and nervous about the aliens and resistant to the Doctor's charisma. But the whole Amy/Rory thing is so clearly written from a Nice Guy POV, it makes me grind my teeth. Rory's glow stick is smaller than the Doctor's, HAHA! Rory's friends all know Amy tried to cheat with the Doctor, HAHA! Rory's a beleagured nurse - HAHA, MALE NURSE, HAHA! Doesn't it suck to be RORY??? God, I was so irritated with everything RORY@!!! when he got sucked into the hole, I wasn't even affected, not because I didn't like him (I loved him when he came back!) but because I was just so fucking sick of hearing about it.
The season takes a huge turn for the better in the closer when the it has the good sense to become The River Song Show. River is perfect. I bet she shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. I love her with a forever love. (Superficially, more legitimately-athletic-looking women like this please?! LOOK AT HER SHE IS FLAWLESS.) Also, "anyone can break into a prison"? That's a tell, right? OR! I hope she really is Cleopatra.
I am definitely a madman with a box! on Eleven
I'm neutral on Eleven. He's less troubled - angst isn't inherently good, but it isn't inherently bad, either, so it's a difference in characterization, but doesn't really improve him. His cheery baby-face makes a great contrast when he's forced to Get Serious, but the lighter moments don't yet feel as poignant as they were. That's my issue as a whole with S5 so far, I think. It's got whimsy, it's got funny dialogue and good lines, it's not trying to be more than a really good kid's show, and so it's not reaching for the resonance the RTD era could achieve.
I'm trying not to compare and just take both sets of episodes for what they are, but it's frustrating. Nine was about a sharp flash-in-the-pan reaction to the trauma of....the Time War, TV Tropes informs me? Whatever. Then Ten was this thunderous narrative about outsiderness and identity and the existential exhilaration and alienation of uniqueness. Eleven is a fairy tale, a childhood dream come true - but those stories are told from the outside, they're really about us, so when you look at the Doctor himself, there's no there there anymore. He never even seems to choose to go anywhere. They always end up where they are by way of the TARDIS that never seems to work anymore. The first couple of episodes it made sense as part of the regeneration, but now it simply doesn't work. (I can't picture him having a showdown with the Master, not because he's so tough I think he'd win straight off, but because I think the Master wouldn't be interested enough in him to bother.) Which would be fine if Amy and Rory were anything at all independent of him, but so far they're really not.
I feel like it's working backward. Ten and, from what I remember, Nine were sometimes wacky and sometimes jerks because there was this fundamental difference that was always with them. Eleven feels like - he gets the wackiness and a lot of the asshole-ness offered as the evidence of the alienness, which isn't really there on its own. Every other episode has someone yelling I'M THE LAST OF MY KIND!!!1!! because there is no other way you would guess at that with Eleven. Whereas with Ten, I see intellectually how the FOREVER ALOOOOOOOOOOONEing was a bit much for people, but it was a consistent bit of characterization. Eleven isn't giving me a reason to be more than neutral one way or the other.
I mean, I acknowledge none of this makes Nine or Ten....better, per se. Ideally, they're all parts of the same arc. After Nine embraces life after the Time War, after Ten resolves his identity crisis (choosing both humanity and the Master over the other Time Lords and himself), and then gets some moral grounding when he gives himself up for Wilf, then he should be able to become someone like Eleven, someone less lonely and unafraid to dream. The challenge of S6 should be the Doctor becoming somebody on his own terms, rather than this symbiosis of his old consciousness and Amy's imagination.
we're all stories in the end. just make yours a good one, 'cause it was, you know?
The closer pulls it all together and is a gorgeous episode on its own. I absolutely loved the finale, until that excruciating moment at the reception. I hate big public epiphanies even more than I hate weddings. I bet they got married on Christmas just to fill my soul with bile.
Rory becomes something wonderful and brave and loyal in losing his humanity - "Why do you have to be so human?"/"Because right now I'm not." Amy finally gets a little grounding, and it becomes a clever little clue that the only constant in her life is the doctor, rather than just egregiously bad character work.
I especially enjoyed the continued problematization of the Doctor. Everything in the universe is so fucking afraid of him, they came up with the Pandorica. Yeah, he closes it, but the the fucking Pandorica was built for him, to contain all his violence and frankly inexplicable love for humans and Earth over all else about the galaxy. He saved the world because it wouldn't have been in danger at all, if it weren't for him. All his strutting and yelling about everything Ten he did, and oops, that kind of swagger has to come with some very violent bite.
Except, you really have to feel it emotionally and turn your brain off entirely, or else it seems pretty clear that Moffat only wants new viewers, because if the Doctor never existed then he wasn't there to save the universe at the end of last season. So if he saves the universe by never having existed himself, then the universe still doesn't exist. If you remember the past, there are no stakes for the future. (Now I do want my psychotic jackass Ten back out of sheer contrariness.) That said, that scene the Doctor thinks is his last moment is a very affecting one.
That's the sticking point, between this season and the last two. There is no place for tragedy in S5. There's no place for sadness or loneliness. Wistfulness and longing so profound you can never quite forget it, but ultimately, still finite - even the Doctor is only alone for about thirty seconds at the beginning of the season. Amy's dream comes true, quite literally, as does Rory's, more figuratively. It's very Magic Of Childhood (TM), which (like Christmas, like white weddings and fairy tales) is the kind of stuff that I know a lot of people like, but it just makes me so sad. S3 and 4 were about difference and uncertainty, and having that be part of the narrative let me get into it in a way that S5 really didn't. It's an exquisite fairy tale - but that's ultimately pretty much all it is.
- That second episode is a bit on the nose, but as much as I love identity stories, I really enjoyed the exploration of the consistent Doctor-consciousness. Amy's insistence that the Doctor is kind is quite jarring from Ten - who is good, but usually decidedly unkind. His willingness to even consider destroying the Daleks when they're holding Earth hostage is very un-Ten-like. "You don't ever decide what I need to know." ORLY? Special snowflake, this one. And I would like for Liz 10 to come be queen of the world please.
- Neat foreshadowing in the Churchill episode! I liked the Daleks re-created themselves with the help of humanity; we don't quite know who to trust with the great man and his greater weapon. And the Weeping Angels work much better this time around - you can't just avoid fear, you have to deal with it with confidence and faith, and that's what Amy will need most of all by the end.
- Ugh, Amy's Choice, is there anything grosser than the first ten minutes of Amy's Choice? Probably the last forty minutes of it. I don't know, because I was too squicked by the picking at preggo!Amy's body and the Doctor's condescension about their lovely-looking life in their (by all accounts, delightful) community to go on. I also skipped Vincent and the Doctor, because I know exactly enough about the plot and also that my local law enforcement agencies tend to frown upon arson sprees, so. (If you're not likely to change the world with your genius, then hop back up on that ledge, George! I cannot even. NO, THAT'S SUCH A LIE. I can totally even. I need half a reason to even.)
- I liked Craig and Sophie so much! I loved, too, how it wasn't a false choice about being held back by the relationship - they were very clearly held in stasis by their unwillingness to take any risks with their love for each other. It's coming together that lets them have their own dreams. I could see the point of Paris, if you were there.
So, I like Amy fine, but I am so very sick of the way young female companions pine for the Doctor while stringing along guys they seem to hold in contempt. It's just so over-the-top! Young girl gets saved, entranced, and abandoned by an older man; grows up to be a stripper - sorry, kiss-o-gram - and hangs out in her childhood bedroom until he comes for her, at which point she drops everything and goes running with him. I like her when I can force the season opener out of my mind, but I shouldn't have to. (Doesn't she have any friends or interests, at all, outside the Doctor? She seems like someone who would, she just doesn't. Rory has his career and dreams and a ton of friends at his stag party.)
It's a sexist - that is to say, cheap and unimaginative as well as plain nasty - trick that narratively does nothing. The weaker writers - or at least, writers who don't care as much about the female characters - then always have a handy excuse to explain the characters' motivations, which puts the interesting parts of their characterizations on the back burner. It's not a Time Lord thing, because it's not like non-humans fall for him this easily. It's a romantic dead end, because you can't get into it with the Doctor. And it makes him look like a dick, stringing them along into his little undersexed harem. I'm fine with him looking like a dick because of the arrogance and genociding and all, but he consciously takes companions to humanize himself, so the constant failure at that is irritating.
One of them, fine. But this is a pattern that doesn't add anything to the characters, and it's at its absolute most grating with Amy, which is even more of a shame than it'd be anyway, because KG brings a delightful sense of absurdity and humor on the rare occasion she's asked to do more than make puppy-dog eyes at the Doctor and look aggrieved and mortified whenever Rory has the temerity to remind us all of his existence.
If possible, Rory is even worse served by this. I want to like him for his willingness to be insecure about Amy and nervous about the aliens and resistant to the Doctor's charisma. But the whole Amy/Rory thing is so clearly written from a Nice Guy POV, it makes me grind my teeth. Rory's glow stick is smaller than the Doctor's, HAHA! Rory's friends all know Amy tried to cheat with the Doctor, HAHA! Rory's a beleagured nurse - HAHA, MALE NURSE, HAHA! Doesn't it suck to be RORY??? God, I was so irritated with everything RORY@!!! when he got sucked into the hole, I wasn't even affected, not because I didn't like him (I loved him when he came back!) but because I was just so fucking sick of hearing about it.
The season takes a huge turn for the better in the closer when the it has the good sense to become The River Song Show. River is perfect. I bet she shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. I love her with a forever love. (Superficially, more legitimately-athletic-looking women like this please?! LOOK AT HER SHE IS FLAWLESS.) Also, "anyone can break into a prison"? That's a tell, right? OR! I hope she really is Cleopatra.
I am definitely a madman with a box! on Eleven
I'm neutral on Eleven. He's less troubled - angst isn't inherently good, but it isn't inherently bad, either, so it's a difference in characterization, but doesn't really improve him. His cheery baby-face makes a great contrast when he's forced to Get Serious, but the lighter moments don't yet feel as poignant as they were. That's my issue as a whole with S5 so far, I think. It's got whimsy, it's got funny dialogue and good lines, it's not trying to be more than a really good kid's show, and so it's not reaching for the resonance the RTD era could achieve.
I'm trying not to compare and just take both sets of episodes for what they are, but it's frustrating. Nine was about a sharp flash-in-the-pan reaction to the trauma of....the Time War, TV Tropes informs me? Whatever. Then Ten was this thunderous narrative about outsiderness and identity and the existential exhilaration and alienation of uniqueness. Eleven is a fairy tale, a childhood dream come true - but those stories are told from the outside, they're really about us, so when you look at the Doctor himself, there's no there there anymore. He never even seems to choose to go anywhere. They always end up where they are by way of the TARDIS that never seems to work anymore. The first couple of episodes it made sense as part of the regeneration, but now it simply doesn't work. (I can't picture him having a showdown with the Master, not because he's so tough I think he'd win straight off, but because I think the Master wouldn't be interested enough in him to bother.) Which would be fine if Amy and Rory were anything at all independent of him, but so far they're really not.
I feel like it's working backward. Ten and, from what I remember, Nine were sometimes wacky and sometimes jerks because there was this fundamental difference that was always with them. Eleven feels like - he gets the wackiness and a lot of the asshole-ness offered as the evidence of the alienness, which isn't really there on its own. Every other episode has someone yelling I'M THE LAST OF MY KIND!!!1!! because there is no other way you would guess at that with Eleven. Whereas with Ten, I see intellectually how the FOREVER ALOOOOOOOOOOONEing was a bit much for people, but it was a consistent bit of characterization. Eleven isn't giving me a reason to be more than neutral one way or the other.
I mean, I acknowledge none of this makes Nine or Ten....better, per se. Ideally, they're all parts of the same arc. After Nine embraces life after the Time War, after Ten resolves his identity crisis (choosing both humanity and the Master over the other Time Lords and himself), and then gets some moral grounding when he gives himself up for Wilf, then he should be able to become someone like Eleven, someone less lonely and unafraid to dream. The challenge of S6 should be the Doctor becoming somebody on his own terms, rather than this symbiosis of his old consciousness and Amy's imagination.
we're all stories in the end. just make yours a good one, 'cause it was, you know?
The closer pulls it all together and is a gorgeous episode on its own. I absolutely loved the finale, until that excruciating moment at the reception. I hate big public epiphanies even more than I hate weddings. I bet they got married on Christmas just to fill my soul with bile.
Rory becomes something wonderful and brave and loyal in losing his humanity - "Why do you have to be so human?"/"Because right now I'm not." Amy finally gets a little grounding, and it becomes a clever little clue that the only constant in her life is the doctor, rather than just egregiously bad character work.
I especially enjoyed the continued problematization of the Doctor. Everything in the universe is so fucking afraid of him, they came up with the Pandorica. Yeah, he closes it, but the the fucking Pandorica was built for him, to contain all his violence and frankly inexplicable love for humans and Earth over all else about the galaxy. He saved the world because it wouldn't have been in danger at all, if it weren't for him. All his strutting and yelling about everything Ten he did, and oops, that kind of swagger has to come with some very violent bite.
Except, you really have to feel it emotionally and turn your brain off entirely, or else it seems pretty clear that Moffat only wants new viewers, because if the Doctor never existed then he wasn't there to save the universe at the end of last season. So if he saves the universe by never having existed himself, then the universe still doesn't exist. If you remember the past, there are no stakes for the future. (Now I do want my psychotic jackass Ten back out of sheer contrariness.) That said, that scene the Doctor thinks is his last moment is a very affecting one.
That's the sticking point, between this season and the last two. There is no place for tragedy in S5. There's no place for sadness or loneliness. Wistfulness and longing so profound you can never quite forget it, but ultimately, still finite - even the Doctor is only alone for about thirty seconds at the beginning of the season. Amy's dream comes true, quite literally, as does Rory's, more figuratively. It's very Magic Of Childhood (TM), which (like Christmas, like white weddings and fairy tales) is the kind of stuff that I know a lot of people like, but it just makes me so sad. S3 and 4 were about difference and uncertainty, and having that be part of the narrative let me get into it in a way that S5 really didn't. It's an exquisite fairy tale - but that's ultimately pretty much all it is.