Your regular weekly installment of DW episode commentary + a bonus review
Before I get to the bits relevant to this episode, I need to point out that I was a complete idiot about something in the last one (this isn’t spoiler-y, btw). When Ambrose is talking about an ‘Alun’ dying and wanting to be buried with her aunt, I’d at first thought that she’d called him ‘my husband’, meaning her own from the scenes before the credits. Upon hearing her again when BBC America re-aired it before the new episode, I realized she probably actually said ‘her husband’, meaning her aunt’s/Ambrose’s uncle. Things from the pre-credits scenes and not getting much sleep lately due to a cold combined to give me a severe case of the dumb, so please ignore the bitching about continuity mishaps in my last post.
Anyhoo…
Cold Blood- something, something, sudden yet inevitable betrayal:
An entire civilization of spoilers living beneath this post’s surface.
I imagine the pre-credits recaps on the two-part episodes are a lot more helpful in the UK. From what I’ve seen about the air times on the DW News Page, it doesn’t sound like they re-air the previous episode right before the new one like they do on BBC America. Their helpfulness to others still does not make them feel any less redundant to me, however.
’This is the story of our planet, Earth, on the day 1,000 years past when we came to share it with a race known as ‘humanity’. It is the story of the Doctor, who helped our races find common ground, and the terrible losses he suffered. It is the story of our past and must never be forgotten.’
So… does this imply that shitty stuff happens, but in the end we come to a peace agreement?
Is that a chainmail apron the freaky lab guy’s wearing? Nice. And Amy has remarkably flexible hands/wrists if she was still able to pick his pocket while in those restraints.
’You lied. You told us you were the police.’
‘It was a misunderstanding.’
Excuse me, Rory, but you don’t have to apologize to her for that. She’s the one who came up with all that and never let you get a word in to correct her on it before distracting everyone with disappearing corpses.
The Doctor is screaming again, after being electrocuted a few episodes ago…this is like season three all over again. Wonder if we’ll get dance parties on an airship in this finale too?
’Why aren’t you dead? You’re carrying my venom in your blood, you should be dead. Show me!’
Is someone not really human, or is Silurian venom just not what it used to be thanks to all the millennia of evolution we’ve had since they were last running around?
’I’m not an ape! Look at the scans! Two hearts. Totally different. Totally not ape! Remove all human germs and you remove half the things keeping me alive!’
So…Timelords aren’t what we’d count as primates on Earth, and our germs are actually good for them? I’m confused.
The ‘same genetic source’? Are Silurians a clone race like the Sontarans, or did they end up becoming one? The mad scientist is the only guy I’ve seen, so I’d say it’s plausible if the majority of whoever’s left down there is female.
Do the ray guns look like some sort of weird musical instrument/megaphone to anyone else?
Yes, Tony, down a random pill bottle you found in an old church basement as if it were a tequila shot. No way that could possibly turn out to be dangerous to your health.
Is this other time that the Doctor says he met a tribe of Silurians from The Sea Devils (w/ Three, iirc), Warriors of the Deep (Five), or some other story? I’ve seen WotD, and this sounds kind of like it did, but I was mostly focused on the giant plastic, grocery-store-deli potato salad containers they were using as helmets for the humans, so I don’t remember.
’Why should I tell you?’
‘Cos if you don’t, I’m gonna have to use this on you.’
I knew it! I knew she’d pocket that stun gun! Also, is it weird that I’m now curious if it freaks out professional torturers (like the guys in countries where treating prisoners humanely isn’t really a consideration) when the prisoner is encouraging them?
Oh, Ambrose. You fucking idiot. Never in my life have I felt a need to call someone a stupid Crappy Untrained Newt Taserer, but it certainly applies to you now. (I'm pretty sure you can see what I did there.) Why does she even need a taser, let alone one strong enough to kill someone with after that short of contact with it? She’s living in the middle of nowhere, with mostly just her family around her from the sound of it, so who the hell does she need protection like that from on an everyday basis? Stupid, stupid bitch…
’I knew it would be you. The one with the most to lose, the weakest-aaah!’
In hindsight, it is more obvious that Ambrose would turn out to be the murderer, especially now that I remember to consider her sick dad in addition to her kidnapped son and husband.
’Ooh, lovely place. Very gleaming.'
I agree, that’s a beautiful meeting/court room. Someday, this will be the room that Silurian cosplayers reenact Phoenix Wright games in. It even has the same layout!
Huh. Creepy lab guy’s actually kinda cool.
’I’m sorry! As far as rescues go, this one didn’t live up to its potential.’
But does the Doctor rank this one higher or lower than the Vinvoccis’? They at least managed to actually escape, despite his declaration that it was the ‘worst rescue ever’.
Did Restac just hack onto a computer that isn’t even plugged into anything? That is creepy.
’Who speaks for the apes?!’
*looks at Rory* ‘Don’t tell them what happened.’
‘I speak for the…humans. Some of us, anyway.’
Good choice! Just make sure Ambrose doesn’t open her trap and fuck everything up worse.
’Amy! I thought I’d lost you!’
‘What, because I was sucked into the ground? You’re so clingy.’
♥
’Ambrose, let Rory deal with this, okay?’
Aw, fuck. Why can’t this be one of the rare times people actually listen to the Doctor and do what he asks? If only they’d had more time in the church before Restac called…the black electrical tape they were using earlier may not be silver like duct tape, but silence would still be golden if they’d used some of it to keep Ambrose quiet.
’Fire!’
‘STOP! You want to start a war while the rest of us sleep, Restac?’
Oh shit, Daddy’s home. Which college/university graduation did they borrow his robes from?
’The moment we get down there, everything will fall apart!’
I’d be inclined to agree with ya there, Tony, if I didn’t think that already happened quite a while ago.
’Are you authorized to negotiate on behalf of humanity?’
‘Me? No!’
I don’t think that’s ever stopped him before…
’Oh, Nasreen! Sorry, probably worth mentioning at this stage-Amy and I travel in time…a bit.’
I love the face Eldane makes at this. It's exactly what 0_o would be irl.
’Anything else?’
‘There are fixed points through time when things must always stay the way they are. This is not one of them. This is an opportunity. This is a temporal tipping-point. Whatever happens today will change future events-create its own timeline, its own reality! The future pivots around you. Here. Now! So do good for humanity! And for Earth.’
‘Right. No pressure there then!’
Three things:
1) This seems like an awfully big thing for it to be in flux. I mean, the possibilities of a literal world war (countries can’t really take sides when it’s a war on all of humanity) and humans beginning to openly share the Earth’s surface with an alien-ish race of people? I’d think those would be major points in history.
2) It’ll create its own timeline/reality? Is this taking place in the Marvel Universe? Gonna take a guess that this Earth isn’t Earth-616.
3) They ought to call Amy’s friend Jeff with the laptop. If he was able to convince a panel of world leaders to help the Doctor with Prisoner Zero, he’d probably be a great asset here too, assuming the Silurians don’t catch him looking at porn again.
’Okay! Bringing things to order. The first meeting of representatives of the human race and homo reptilia is now in session. Ha! Never said that before. That’s fab! Carry on.’
‘Fab’? Oh, Eleven. I have no words. *hugs*
’They sent four. She was our only bargaining chip…’
Yeah, and whose fault is it that you no longer have any? Just go away, Ambrose. Go away before I slap you. Oh, oh. What stupid thing is that bitch trying to do now?
’Where are we?’
‘Um, well, I gotta be honest with you, son. We’re in the center of the Earth and there are lizard-men.’
‘Hi!’
‘Wow.’
Hee! I love it when people find out some batshit insane thing has happened/is happening and they're just like, 'Really? Neat.'
’Storage Facility 19 operational.’
Ooh, announcements about things being operational never turn out to be good.
Great. Now all I’ll be thinking about for the rest of the day will be the logistics of having another race of beings coming to live on the surface with us.
Do calm, rational people ever get to command tv/movie militaries? I’ll miss Malohkeh…
Just…shut up, Ambrose. Just fucking shut up.
It strikes me as odd that Restac calls Alaya her ‘sister’ here, but instead of calling it their ‘family’, they keep saying things like ‘genetic source’. It’s like there’s this weird disconnect in the levels of affection.
’An alliance could work!’
‘It’s too late for that, Doctor.’
Someone. Anyone. PUNCH HER. Just look at the Doctor's face. He won't do it because he's him and that's not how he does things, but he wants to.
’Why?’
‘Our drill…is set to start burrowing again in fifteen minutes.’
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY (and I’m pretty sure even all that’s unholy is sick of her idiocy at this point) PUNCH HER. Please!
Why do the Silurians also have to never come to the surface again if they return your family, Ambrose? Now you’re racist in addition to being moronic and violent.
How many races has he convinced that the Sonic Screwdriver is a ‘deadly weapon’ of some sort now? It's like a rule for a drinking game.
Hmm…they’re in some cave/forest/tech-combo place, barricaded in some control room because creatures outside want to kill them, and Amy is counting down numbers in the second episode of a two-part story. This situation sounds so familiar, but I just can’t place where I’ve heard/seen it…it’s on the tip of my tongue!
’You’re not dying, you’re mutating!’
…He’s turning into a Silurian? What?
Did he just say ‘squeaky bum time’? Wtf… (goddamn, they need to put close-captioning on the On Demand version of this)
Fml, he did say ‘squeaky bum time’.
Holy crap, Restac’s minions actually have some sense. Rare are the henchmen (er, henchwomen in this case) who actually practice self-preservation by defiance of their boss.
’Doctor, you-you can’t put your hand in there!’
‘Why not?’
Um, maybe because before you’d said that the cracks in the universe leak time-energy that’ll erase people from existence if it touches them? And that would be bad for you?
*Rory gets hit by the blast from Restac’s gun as he pushes the Doctor out of the way*
FFFUUUUUU-- No! I like Rory! I don’t want him to die, dammit! And what does he mean ‘[they] were on the hill’? Oh god, is the time!crack making him see their wedding or something? No, no! Now the time-energy’s going to erase him from Amy’s memories too? This is too cruel…
Omg, BBC America! Who the fuck do you keep letting time these commercial breaks? *shakes head* At least it’s only the On Demand version (they didn’t break here during the live-broadcast, or the rerun). And it’s for Star Trek: TNG. Although the fact that there’s a commercial at a moment like this is still annoying, Sir Patrick Stewart giving a heroic speech after someone dies a heroic death is infinitely better than the Top Gear guys going ‘Woo! Let’s have a drag race!’ after someone commits suicide by driving into a wall.
This ‘flashbacks to happier times with Rory’ montage of Amy’s memories is like putting salt in a wound.
The ring box! The Doctor just leaves it on the floor where it’s fallen! Won’t Amy see it and wonder what it is and how it got there?
’Hello me…!’
‘Are you okay?’
‘I thought I saw someone there for a second…’
I know she no longer knows there ever was a Rory, but now it’s more like we’re looking at future!Amy visiting his grave rather than going on a nostalgia trip. :(
’Now, as my people awaken from their 1,000-year sleep, ready to rise to the surface, my thoughts turn back to the Doctor. The losses he suffered then, and the greater losses that were still to come.’
Oh fuck. The shrapnel from the universe-cracking explosion is a piece of the Tardis? No. No, no, no, no, no! First Rory dies, and now the Tardis is going to be destroyed? It was hard enough seeing her catch on fire in The End of Time Pt. 2/The Eleventh Hour, I can’t watch her get blown to smithereens! (Also, does it seem like there should be some sort of flash-forward so we can see a bit of the future Eldane appears to be narrating from?)
Next time: some monster in a church is trying to kill Vincent van Gogh. Looks like it’ll be good. Why are they pronouncing it ‘van Goff’ though? I’ve always only heard it as ‘van Go’. Don’t really know that much about him-he was a painter with a fairly distinctive art style, he liked sunflowers and Japan, and he cut off one of his own ears (maybe we’ll find out why). In the trailer, the Doctor says something about him being murdered…was he in real life? Wikipedia says… no. Huh. Sounds like he was a fairly lonely and sickly man. Apparently he’ll survive whatever happens with the Doctor, only to commit suicide sometime later. Sad. (And why is there an entire ‘suicide by firearms in France’ category on Wikipedia? That’s kinda fucked up. Who would need to look up something based on that and why?)
I thought this story was good, but I know it’s nowhere near as good as it could’ve been. It had nearly the same problem The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone did with managing the story in the time they had, where they spent too much building things up, only to end up rushing through the important parts, although not as badly as in the other two-parter. In it they tried to cram too many things into the story, but here they had all or most of the things they needed, without anything extra or anything they built up as being important turning out to be a mere plot device in the end. The problem, I think, was that they spent too long playing out the set-up to everything in part two during the first half.
They didn’t need to take a full episode to show that people went missing/were kidnapped at a drilling site, a race of lizard people is living beneath the Earth’s surface, and humans ended up capturing one of them. I’d say to have taken maybe half the episode to do that, then spent the next half in the Silurian city, ending on either Restac rallying her troops during the negotiations or Ambrose killing Alaya in the church, then have part two be the aftermath of that and the escape back to the surface. I know that everything went to hell really fast in the story, but it felt like there wasn’t enough (condensed tv-)time for every event in it to have actually happened.
Still like (most) of the new characters. I like Tony a lot more in the end than I had after the first part. He and Nasreen are very sweet together. Eldane and Malohkeh were cool, although Malohkeh was creepy as hell to start with. Didn't like Restac as much as Alaya, and that was before she killed people I did like. Both sisters were bitches, but Alaya was a smart one, whereas Restac was just an angry one, and therefore not as interesting. And despite her seeming like an okay person before, I absolutely loathe Ambrose now. I can see how some people could be sympathetic to her, what with all she had to lose, but while I understand her being desperate, you have to remember that:
1) She wanted to go for the weapons before they had any idea the people they were dealing with were friendly or hostile, let alone that they were even people.
2) I’ll admit that her killing Alaya was accidental, but it never would’ve happened if she didn’t intend to torture someone for information using a potentially-deadly weapon in the first place, and right after being warned such an act could cause a war that would most likely end thousands, probably millions, of lives too.
3) Instead of trying to apologize and make amends for causing Alaya’s death, she threatens the Silurians with the drill, which nearly causes an inter-species war, and enrages Restac to the point where Eldane has to risk killing his own people to stop her from attacking the humans.
4) Not only was she rude to Rory earlier (yes, this was the start of my disliking her; same thing happened with me when Shannon was mean to Charlie on Lost-hurt a character I like’s feelings, and you gotta go), she indirectly caused his death. Sure, Restac was an angry bitch who was itching to go to war to begin with, but Eldane was able to keep her in line for the most part. She shot Malohkeh because he got in her way, but she didn’t truly snap and start trying to hunt people down until after she learned of her sister’s death at Ambrose’s hands.
*ahem* Well, I’m going to assume that you all can tell who I wish had gotten killed off instead of Rory. (I know, I know, she has to live in order for Elliot to be able to grow up not hating Silurians for killing his mother so he can help ensure humanity is ready for sharing the planet with them in 1,000 years.) I see now that I was wrong that the cute-and-happy beginning of the last episode would lead to something horrible. It actually started in The Eleventh Hour, dropped off for a bit but picked up again in The Vampires of Venice, then continued on until the end of this episode. Why did he have to die? He and Amy were so sweet and in-love… It’s not even really comforting that he died heroically while saving someone else’s life. I suppose that it’s probably kinder to Amy that she doesn’t remember him (for now, anyway), but to anyone who knows what she’s lost it’s cruel. And how does this effect the continuity (not sure that’d be the right word, but meh) in Amy’s memories for the times Rory was with her? Will it be like in Sakura’s memories of Syaoran in Tsubasa Chronicles, where she remembers doing whatever with someone, but she doesn’t know who that person was? Hopefully some wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff happens when that Pandorica thing opens and this shit can be fixed. Considering that it’s the Tardis that explodes to crack the universe, the cracks seem to follow Amy, and the date of the explosion is what-would-have-been her and Rory’s wedding day, I’m gonna guess that an attempt is at least made.
One thing I’m still curious about, though-when one of the Doctor’s companions either decides/has to stay somewhere else or if they die, how is their never returning explained back where they’re from? I realize that this probably won’t be much of an issue in Rory’s case, but what about people like Adric (died kicking Cyberman ass) or Mickey (at least while he stayed in the parallel universe for a couple years, more than long enough to make people here wonder where he’d gone during that time)? The Doctor can’t really go notify their loved ones back home since in addition to not knowing that Whatshisorherface was travelling with him, most of them wouldn’t believe the time/space travel with aliens stuff, and even among the ones who know those things are real, they could still try to pin kidnapping/murder on him. Are their hometowns plastered with missing person posters like what happened with Rose or what?
…fucking hell. Who’d have ever thought that [Adult Swim] would be what made me feel better after this episode? How did those bastards, of all people, know that Tachikomas discussing philosophy and a disturbingly sexy Col. Mustang were exactly what I needed?!
Seriously, it is disturbing if you know which episode aired (FMA: Brotherhood #19, ‘Death of the Undying’). I really shouldn’t find him as attractive as I do during the second part of his fight with Lust. If you’ve seen it, you know why.
Bonus spoiler-free review of Doctor Who: Dreamland, because I’ve finally gotten around to watching it after letting it sit on my hard drive for six months:
The story: B. Nothing particularly special, but fun nonetheless. It’s like a shorter equivalent to the Bleach/Naruto/One Piece movies-a big, random adventure outside of the main plotline that never effects or gets mentioned in canon, so as to prevent shark-jumping (I’m looking at you, Rugrats movies). Be awesome if the BBC could make full-length animated DW movies like that (and every year, like the Shonen Jump series do, too), but it’s probably too expensive, and I’m getting sidetracked thinking about it. It also seemed like it was less choppy than the last animated miniseries (The Infinite Quest) was, but I have the official dvd of that, and this was just something I downloaded, so you might wanna take that with a grain of salt since I don’t know if the uploader edited the parts together to be smoother, or if it’s a dvd-rip. Or if it’s a dvd-rip that was also then edited. *ahem* Yeah, grain of salt…
The acting: A+. Great as usual. It’s David Tennant, what did you expect, especially coming from me? O_o I was very impressed by Georgia Moffett’s American accent. Only having heard her British one, if I hadn’t already known she was playing Cassie, I never would have guessed that I was listening to her, or even a non-American actress for that matter. (Yes, I know her mother’s American so it’s not that surprising that she can do the accent, but for her to be able to switch between those two accents so flawlessly is still quite a talent.)
The animation: C- …yeah. It’s not the art style I’d have chosen, but it’s like the noses in Escaflowne-you get used to it after a while. The characters’ bodies’ movements were a little jerky at times, but not enough for it to be too distracting. My biggest problem was with the facial expressions. I’m not sure what I was looking at, but that is NOT how faces work, animation-people-the-BBC-hired. I couldn’t find an actual contact form anywhere, but here is a link to Square-Enix’s European website. There’s no phone number listed, but their address is on the bottom of the page, so you can try looking it up from that. Talk to these guys. They can show you how to animate a human face with expressions that humans actually make. =D