New Who 4.10, Midnight

[strange_complex]

I'm up in Birmingham for the weekend, making sure that Mum's OK while Dad spends a weekend in Cambridge at his annual college reunion event. Mum continues to make good progress, but she's very tired out all the time. So, while she's sleeping, I hope you'll forgive me if I take the chance to catch up on a bit of Who blogging. There may be some spam

Comments

[chrisvenus]

I did enjoy the episode. The only thing I thought let it down was the ending which felt a little lacking. Mainly just in that there was never any explanation. There was never any attempt to find out what actually happened from the doctor or anybody else and it left me with the feeling that he discovered dangerous entities on the surface of a planet and then just wandered off. It damaged what had been an excellent episode otherwise. Even just some kind of identification of what made it attack then (apart from that nobody had gone that way you got the impression it wasn't a huge detour off of their usual route). It felt very much like when the story was written all that good stuff you commented in mind was there and the way to build in the conclusion was just skipped entirely.

[strange_complex]

I think I was glad RTD didn't try to offer any specific explanation of what the thing that attacked the tour-buggy had been. It meant that it remained more frightening by dint of being unexplained, and left the focus on people's reactions to the attack, rather than the attacker itself. I think it would have taken the impact off how utterly devastated the Doctor was afterwards if they'd also had to put in scenes of him reporting back to the planet's authorities about what had happened, and advising them to get the hell outta there. It was made pretty clear in his dialogue with Donna that he would do that, anyway.

[white_hart]

Yes, I've seen a lot of commentary saying this kind of thing: 'another anonymous non-white woman' and so on. I think that they are kind of conflating the actions and beliefs of the characters with those of the author.

[white_hart]

It is. I do try to be aware, as a white woman in a Western democracy, that things that seem innocuous to me could be offensive to black and Asian viewers, but it still seems to me that sometimes the accusations go too far. And sometimes they don't; I think there have been genuine problems with the representation of a number of minorities in New Who, but because there are people who will protest any time a villain is anything other than a white man those get overlooked rather.

[strange_complex]

Yes, I'd agree. I still think I just about preferred Fires of Pompeii - and of course Turn Left was pretty decent too! But I'd easily class this as my second-favourite episode of the season to date, just after Fires.

[lefaym]

Brilliant review, I absolutely love your analysis of this episode, particularly the way that you link it back to the early First Doctor serials. This episode really had quite a lot in common with The Edge of Destruction, although in that case the Doctor was a character that the audience (along with Ian and Barbara) mistrusted for good reason, and the episode attempted to flip that mistrust around every way it could. This time, it's a matter of defamiliarising a Doctor that the audience, for the most part, trusts implicitly to act in the best interests of humanity.

[strange_complex]

Thanks. :-) Yes, I agree about the links with Edge of Destruction (which I also loved!). I think it does the character of the Doctor a great deal of good to, as you say, defamiliarise him every now and again. Otherwise he runs the risk of losing that fascinating alienness which makes him so interesting, and just turning into a bland superhero instead.

[weepingcross]

As usual your analysis is spot-on. I thought it was a fascinating exploration of the workings of trust - something far in advance of what you normally expect of any tv serial, let alone such a genre show. Every now and again I get struck by the astonishing way the whole of society functions on trust, for no better reason than we assume others trust us - and without it, where are we?

[strange_complex]

Every now and again I get struck by the astonishing way the whole of society functions on trust

Oh, I entirely know what you mean! It's scary to think how much of our basic everyday life rests on assuming that other people aren't going to kill us, rob us, or otherwise abuse us. Obviously, sometimes they do - but the fact that, on the whole, that basic assumption seems to work out all right is quite a credit to us all, really.