The Doctor's Daughter.
My first impression: I hate this.
The start sucked. Plot holes galore. Why exactly does only the Doctor get stuck into the clone maker? Why don't Donna and Martha deserve clones? Other things like abandoning/destroying a tunnel just because the Hath(?) come to fight even though the map showed an extreme lack of tunnels, the short short short lives of clones (and the "old" general), the extra guns being readily available, the fact that there were only 3 people guarding a tunnel and setting up explosives on it even though it had a valuable (and USABLE, why weren't THEY using it?!) cloning machine within attacking distance of the Hath, exactly why "clean hands" were noticed instead of 'weird clothes', why 'clean hands' were important (they may have just not picked up any dirt yet, just been cloned recently!) all made me hate the beginning of the episode(and the rest, really).
The entire premise of the episode is absolute rubbish, only based around "The Doctor has a Daughter for one episode! Go, make it so!". I've seen better plots on 100 word drabbles.
Then, ignoring all that, I started to find that I actually... liked it! I must qualify this.
I am a product of my generation. I like big booms and pretty graphics. A good spray of blood can completely turn around my review of a movie or show. Kill Bill is an example of this. ((I hate it for many reasons, but the way it was shot/ the wonderful imagery would make me watch it again, anyway. Muted.)) And I have to admit, the episode looked wonderful. No wobbly sets here! It was beautiful, looking well used and fought in (against the plot, which says that they fought for all of 7 days >.<) The action pushed me away from my pessimistic reviewer mentality and drew me into the episode itself. Until the end came up and I hated it all over again, the clichéd P.O.S. Only 7 days?! Maybe someone should have told the set designers that.
I did, however, love the characterizations of the main character, (ignoring plot details). The actors out did themselves this time. The Doctor ignoring his own daughter was so in character, along with using the mouse in his pocket to distract the guard. *grins*
The wound on the back of the hand looking exactly like the scar(s) in The Empty Child stuck me as stupid and useless.
The 7 days of fighting, and loosing generations within that time, yet having an "old" man there as stay-at-base general... Why didn't the FIRST generation do that?!
The aliens sucked. They were as shallow a character(s) as Capt. Jack still is. Maybe they were pacifistic against non-aggressors, but the way they treated Martha was... very naive and un-strategic. How the heck did they talk, anyway? Martha seemed to understand them at the end, but not at the beginning? She sure did grow fond of that one Hath pretty fast if she was joking, not understanding him at all but still responding to whatever she thought he was saying.
Maybe the Hath still had some 1st generation people, so they were quick to trust and stop fighting, but it still seemed unrealistic.
The Doctor ignoring Donna about the numbers was a bit OOC. Then again, he had a lot on his mind.
There's no way Donna memorized the Dewey Decimal System in 2 days. I worked in a library for years, focusing on memorizing the Dewey Decimal System and still had to look up what certain decimal points were for. Donna would have had to sit down with the big giant set of books devoted to the system, up to 5 decimal places(?), and read it from sun up to sun down. Even if she only stuck with 2 decimal places, like I did. ((On an off topic note, did you know that the Dewey Decimal system in my library had seahorses with all the amphibians, instead of with the fish in the previous number? I even looked it up in the big book of D. decimals(I thought they made a mistake on the labels. It happens). They're under the number for amphibians, not fish. Weird, no?))
Zomg! Random Martyrism/Angst scene with the Hath and Martha! Bleh. Oh well, he's a fish. Maybe he lives.
Whatever happened to that Time Lord mental link thing? He shouldn't need to hear her hearts(2? Don't they have only 1 on the first life?), he should be able to feel her in his mind! Then again, maybe it's a only Time Lord thing (rassilon's imprintur?(sp?)), and she was only a Galifreyan (perhaps a half-Galifreyan) but then why did she do a mini-regeneration?
The regeneration sucked, too. She shouldn't even have any artron in her system! (if regenerations use that.)
Oh, and how did she learn to fly a shuttle? How did they know what a shuttle WAS!? The general guy said that they had all forgotten how to READ! *glares at writer*
On a geeky note, when the Doctor said something about Jenny being too much like him and that's why she didn't regenerate, was he talking about his predilection for bad regenerations, or the fact that he's (possibly) half human? It's the first hint of him being half human in the T.V. series, I believe. Not that I'd call this cannon. *glares at the writer some more*
I'll update after I watch it again, this time with the commentary.
The start sucked. Plot holes galore. Why exactly does only the Doctor get stuck into the clone maker? Why don't Donna and Martha deserve clones? Other things like abandoning/destroying a tunnel just because the Hath(?) come to fight even though the map showed an extreme lack of tunnels, the short short short lives of clones (and the "old" general), the extra guns being readily available, the fact that there were only 3 people guarding a tunnel and setting up explosives on it even though it had a valuable (and USABLE, why weren't THEY using it?!) cloning machine within attacking distance of the Hath, exactly why "clean hands" were noticed instead of 'weird clothes', why 'clean hands' were important (they may have just not picked up any dirt yet, just been cloned recently!) all made me hate the beginning of the episode(and the rest, really).
The entire premise of the episode is absolute rubbish, only based around "The Doctor has a Daughter for one episode! Go, make it so!". I've seen better plots on 100 word drabbles.
Then, ignoring all that, I started to find that I actually... liked it! I must qualify this.
I am a product of my generation. I like big booms and pretty graphics. A good spray of blood can completely turn around my review of a movie or show. Kill Bill is an example of this. ((I hate it for many reasons, but the way it was shot/ the wonderful imagery would make me watch it again, anyway. Muted.)) And I have to admit, the episode looked wonderful. No wobbly sets here! It was beautiful, looking well used and fought in (against the plot, which says that they fought for all of 7 days >.<) The action pushed me away from my pessimistic reviewer mentality and drew me into the episode itself. Until the end came up and I hated it all over again, the clichéd P.O.S. Only 7 days?! Maybe someone should have told the set designers that.
I did, however, love the characterizations of the main character, (ignoring plot details). The actors out did themselves this time. The Doctor ignoring his own daughter was so in character, along with using the mouse in his pocket to distract the guard. *grins*
The wound on the back of the hand looking exactly like the scar(s) in The Empty Child stuck me as stupid and useless.
The 7 days of fighting, and loosing generations within that time, yet having an "old" man there as stay-at-base general... Why didn't the FIRST generation do that?!
The aliens sucked. They were as shallow a character(s) as Capt. Jack still is. Maybe they were pacifistic against non-aggressors, but the way they treated Martha was... very naive and un-strategic. How the heck did they talk, anyway? Martha seemed to understand them at the end, but not at the beginning? She sure did grow fond of that one Hath pretty fast if she was joking, not understanding him at all but still responding to whatever she thought he was saying.
Maybe the Hath still had some 1st generation people, so they were quick to trust and stop fighting, but it still seemed unrealistic.
The Doctor ignoring Donna about the numbers was a bit OOC. Then again, he had a lot on his mind.
There's no way Donna memorized the Dewey Decimal System in 2 days. I worked in a library for years, focusing on memorizing the Dewey Decimal System and still had to look up what certain decimal points were for. Donna would have had to sit down with the big giant set of books devoted to the system, up to 5 decimal places(?), and read it from sun up to sun down. Even if she only stuck with 2 decimal places, like I did. ((On an off topic note, did you know that the Dewey Decimal system in my library had seahorses with all the amphibians, instead of with the fish in the previous number? I even looked it up in the big book of D. decimals(I thought they made a mistake on the labels. It happens). They're under the number for amphibians, not fish. Weird, no?))
Zomg! Random Martyrism/Angst scene with the Hath and Martha! Bleh. Oh well, he's a fish. Maybe he lives.
Whatever happened to that Time Lord mental link thing? He shouldn't need to hear her hearts(2? Don't they have only 1 on the first life?), he should be able to feel her in his mind! Then again, maybe it's a only Time Lord thing (rassilon's imprintur?(sp?)), and she was only a Galifreyan (perhaps a half-Galifreyan) but then why did she do a mini-regeneration?
The regeneration sucked, too. She shouldn't even have any artron in her system! (if regenerations use that.)
Oh, and how did she learn to fly a shuttle? How did they know what a shuttle WAS!? The general guy said that they had all forgotten how to READ! *glares at writer*
On a geeky note, when the Doctor said something about Jenny being too much like him and that's why she didn't regenerate, was he talking about his predilection for bad regenerations, or the fact that he's (possibly) half human? It's the first hint of him being half human in the T.V. series, I believe. Not that I'd call this cannon. *glares at the writer some more*
I'll update after I watch it again, this time with the commentary.