Yay! For the first time this season I was able to watch Doctor Who live on broadcast, it was a good episode, and I have time to write up my thoughts this evening! Happy times
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I completely misunderstood what the gramophones were doing... I'm glad you enjoyed it, as I thought it was brilliant on first viewing. The curse of being able to watch this a few times before transmission is that one begins to doubt what one first saw...
It's almost becoming spot-the-Classic-Who-reference, isn't it? I wonder if the rocket was meant to be reminiscent of the Thal rocket in Genesis of the Daleks, although I suppose you could say that if your plot involves a big rocket in a silo then it's going to look like a big rocket in a silo.
Talking of rockets, wasn't the plot pretty much that of Moonraker?
It's almost becoming spot-the-Classic-Who-reference, isn't it?
Yep! As parrot_knight has pointed out, this episode had some considerable resonances with Ghost Light as well. I'm happy enough with it in this anniversary year, but I'm starting to hope it will ease off a bit next season. A little every now and then is nice to create a sense of continuity, but it can jar when it is being done constantly for its own sake, rather than to enhance the story we are watching.
I also wasn't sure what we were supposed to make of the Doctor kissing Jenny, followed by the rather teenage joke involving his sonic screwdriver
No one seems quite what to make of the Doctor's sexuality any more. In The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe he seemed quite disgusted at the thought of anyone fancying him and he panicked when Amy made a pass at him at the end of Time of the Angels/Flesh and Stone. At other times, as here, he seems as sexually-confident as the tenth Doctor. It seems very inconsistent to me and I don't really know what Moffat, Smith et al are thinking, unless they're trying to make him sexual and asexual at the same time, in a 'have cake and eat it' sort of way.
Re: children in the TARDIS, John and Gillian were the Doctor's grandchildren and accompanied him in TV Comic in the sixties, beginning as children and eventually reaching adolescence before going to "galactic university". (The DWM comic later implied that the Doctor dreams the sixties strips when he needs an innocent adventure away from the
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Ah, yes - good point about John and Gillian. I did know about them, mainly from DVD extras on some of the '60s TV stories, but didn't know about them going to 'Galactic University' in the end.
I dislike that he seems to have been regressed from where he seemed to be a series or so ago having a grown up if rather kinky relationship with River (her being in jail all day and all) to this pantomime creepy stalker kids entertainer type approach. I think they've lost the plot a it actually .
For me, it wasn't just the kiss with Jenny, but the business afterwards where she slaps him and he says 'you've no idea how good that feels. I mean yes, I get the humour, but it also looks uncomfortably like a man sexually harassing a woman and then laughing off her reaction. Which is something I do not want in my Who.
He also kissed Ada on the cheek and Clara on the forehead. I don't want to get all 'is this a kissing story?', but one of the things that I usually like about Who is that it presents respectful, friendly relationships between men and women without suggesting that there has to be a physical or sexual element. If every other media representation did this then I wouldn't mind, but Who is precious and rare in this respect.
There's a definite attempt to explore the way the Doctor uses language and actions which signify attraction to the opposite sex, but I don't think it's being done very well.
You're right about the humour. Within the story, it was obviously supposed to be an expression of how glad he was not to be paralysed any more, but that could have been demonstrated in a hundred other ways which didn't also read as "Woo-hoo! Isn't is fun to violate a woman's boundaries so much that she feels compelled to slap me?!"
I enjoyed that - as I have most of this half-season. However, there seemed to be a little bit of time-travel as Parry's version of Jerusalem dates only from 1916!
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Talking of rockets, wasn't the plot pretty much that of Moonraker?
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Yep! As parrot_knight has pointed out, this episode had some considerable resonances with Ghost Light as well. I'm happy enough with it in this anniversary year, but I'm starting to hope it will ease off a bit next season. A little every now and then is nice to create a sense of continuity, but it can jar when it is being done constantly for its own sake, rather than to enhance the story we are watching.
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No one seems quite what to make of the Doctor's sexuality any more. In The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe he seemed quite disgusted at the thought of anyone fancying him and he panicked when Amy made a pass at him at the end of Time of the Angels/Flesh and Stone. At other times, as here, he seems as sexually-confident as the tenth Doctor. It seems very inconsistent to me and I don't really know what Moffat, Smith et al are thinking, unless they're trying to make him sexual and asexual at the same time, in a 'have cake and eat it' sort of way.
Re: children in the TARDIS, John and Gillian were the Doctor's grandchildren and accompanied him in TV Comic in the sixties, beginning as children and eventually reaching adolescence before going to "galactic university". (The DWM comic later implied that the Doctor dreams the sixties strips when he needs an innocent adventure away from the ( ... )
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He also kissed Ada on the cheek and Clara on the forehead. I don't want to get all 'is this a kissing story?', but one of the things that I usually like about Who is that it presents respectful, friendly relationships between men and women without suggesting that there has to be a physical or sexual element. If every other media representation did this then I wouldn't mind, but Who is precious and rare in this respect.
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