(no subject)
I have finally, for the first and possibly the only time, seen Doctor Who as it aired. No having to download it, no watching it the day after on BBC America, no watching it on SciFi, but as it aired. So awesome. I mean, I'm not particularly enthused with having added to the viewing numbers, but I'm still glad I could have done that at least once.
Was Moffat the one who wrote this? I didn't catch the writer's name. Or even the title of the episode, for that matter.
Well, whoever wrote it, I was not impressed. It didn't feel...very cohesive, to me. It's like these random things were happening and they were supposed to add up to a plot but instead they were a mess. How the hell is the Queen 300 years old, and why? I mean, why preserve her at all, rather than letting her life go naturally? Why did they show Amy the video first thing after finding her?
It just felt sort of choppy to me. Pasted together. As well as reminding me very strongly of The Long Game (though I felt The Long Game was much smoother, which given that it's the fill-in of S1, is not the best recommendation for this new episode) and Bad Wolf, Fires of Pompeii, one moment of Planet of the Dead, and Star Wars. (Please tell me it was Moffat who wrote this, because I hope there's not another writer who borrows plots and lines so heavily from other sources.)
I'm not sure about Eleven. Sometimes he felt very like the Doctor, like with the water glass, the empathizing with crying kids, and the avoiding Amy's question of if he'd had kids, but other times he felt sort of jarring. Deciding Amy had to go home because she wanted him to stop investigating and leave and was making decisions for him or whatever it was he'd said? The Doctor can totally be a hypocrite, but that seems like such an extreme reaction. It's not like she'd actually tried to make him leave, and she would hardly be the first companion to want to leave the situation in the middle of things. The Doctor's forgiven some pretty extreme things from his companions before, like Rose bringing Reapers and Turlough being there to kill him. He himself was adamant that they leave in Pompeii, and he didn't tell Donna she had to go home because she disagreed on whether or not they should stay.
I was also rather wtf? on his solution for the star-whale. He didn't even think about trying to talk to it, ask it what it wanted? It's not like they were on a time limit. He could have tried to figure out some way to communicate before immediately going for basically killing it. I mean, I know it was to give Amy her chance to shine, but something is really wrong when the Doctor thinks of killing before talking.
How could the ship immediately identify Amy? Seriously, how would she be on record, and how could they get her records if she was not? I was also a bit wtf? over the three things it identified. Name, age, and marital status? Why marital status? It seemed like it was only there to contribute to Amy's anxieties about her wedding. Otherwise, why is marital status so important to the identification process, and not, I don't know, ethnicity or place of birth or something?
This episode just seemed particularly clumsy to me. *sigh* Maybe it's just as well my weekends are getting too busy for me to watch and my computer won't let me use iplayer. I'm just not impressed so far.
In other news, I was in Oxford yesterday, and that was awesome. But it was for a school excursion and therefore I didn't get to do much of what I wanted to do. I'm going to try and go back and spend some time there properly.
I did, though, eat lunch at the Eagle and Child, the pub where The Inklings would meet. How awesome is that? I got to eat in the same room as Tolkien and Lewis. Awesome. We also did a tour of Christ Church College, which is where parts of Harry Potter were filmed. I'm not as big a fan of the movies as I am of the books, but that was still pretty exciting.
And now I really want to reread Gaudy Night, so I can read all the place references in Oxford and pick out ones I recognize. :p Too bad my copy is at home in America. *sigh*
I've also pretty much decided that I'm going to Norway for a weekend in May. One of my classmates found the cheapest flights ever--I can get a return ticket for sixteen pounds. Sixteen pounds! To visit another country! I can't pass that up, so, Norway in May!
Tomorrow I'm going to see Alice in Wonderland in IMAX. Whoo!
Was Moffat the one who wrote this? I didn't catch the writer's name. Or even the title of the episode, for that matter.
Well, whoever wrote it, I was not impressed. It didn't feel...very cohesive, to me. It's like these random things were happening and they were supposed to add up to a plot but instead they were a mess. How the hell is the Queen 300 years old, and why? I mean, why preserve her at all, rather than letting her life go naturally? Why did they show Amy the video first thing after finding her?
It just felt sort of choppy to me. Pasted together. As well as reminding me very strongly of The Long Game (though I felt The Long Game was much smoother, which given that it's the fill-in of S1, is not the best recommendation for this new episode) and Bad Wolf, Fires of Pompeii, one moment of Planet of the Dead, and Star Wars. (Please tell me it was Moffat who wrote this, because I hope there's not another writer who borrows plots and lines so heavily from other sources.)
I'm not sure about Eleven. Sometimes he felt very like the Doctor, like with the water glass, the empathizing with crying kids, and the avoiding Amy's question of if he'd had kids, but other times he felt sort of jarring. Deciding Amy had to go home because she wanted him to stop investigating and leave and was making decisions for him or whatever it was he'd said? The Doctor can totally be a hypocrite, but that seems like such an extreme reaction. It's not like she'd actually tried to make him leave, and she would hardly be the first companion to want to leave the situation in the middle of things. The Doctor's forgiven some pretty extreme things from his companions before, like Rose bringing Reapers and Turlough being there to kill him. He himself was adamant that they leave in Pompeii, and he didn't tell Donna she had to go home because she disagreed on whether or not they should stay.
I was also rather wtf? on his solution for the star-whale. He didn't even think about trying to talk to it, ask it what it wanted? It's not like they were on a time limit. He could have tried to figure out some way to communicate before immediately going for basically killing it. I mean, I know it was to give Amy her chance to shine, but something is really wrong when the Doctor thinks of killing before talking.
How could the ship immediately identify Amy? Seriously, how would she be on record, and how could they get her records if she was not? I was also a bit wtf? over the three things it identified. Name, age, and marital status? Why marital status? It seemed like it was only there to contribute to Amy's anxieties about her wedding. Otherwise, why is marital status so important to the identification process, and not, I don't know, ethnicity or place of birth or something?
This episode just seemed particularly clumsy to me. *sigh* Maybe it's just as well my weekends are getting too busy for me to watch and my computer won't let me use iplayer. I'm just not impressed so far.
In other news, I was in Oxford yesterday, and that was awesome. But it was for a school excursion and therefore I didn't get to do much of what I wanted to do. I'm going to try and go back and spend some time there properly.
I did, though, eat lunch at the Eagle and Child, the pub where The Inklings would meet. How awesome is that? I got to eat in the same room as Tolkien and Lewis. Awesome. We also did a tour of Christ Church College, which is where parts of Harry Potter were filmed. I'm not as big a fan of the movies as I am of the books, but that was still pretty exciting.
And now I really want to reread Gaudy Night, so I can read all the place references in Oxford and pick out ones I recognize. :p Too bad my copy is at home in America. *sigh*
I've also pretty much decided that I'm going to Norway for a weekend in May. One of my classmates found the cheapest flights ever--I can get a return ticket for sixteen pounds. Sixteen pounds! To visit another country! I can't pass that up, so, Norway in May!
Tomorrow I'm going to see Alice in Wonderland in IMAX. Whoo!