Doctor Who
Apr. 11th, 2010 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I've spent the day cogitating, and now I'm ready to spew forth.
I'm still not keen on the new opening, it has a bit of an ominous 'fires of hell' feel to it that makes me decidedly uneasy. Perhaps that is the purpose. I'm pretty sure the opening was originally meant to be eerie and a little bit discomfitting, but has lost that impact on most people over time. Maybe this is Moffatt's way of bringing some of that back.
Eleven's personality still seems to be bouncing around all over the place. He seems far less his own Doctor than previous regenerations. I think they all have little touches and call-backs to their previous selves, but it seems more so with this one. I'm curious to see if he settles into himself more over time, or if he continues to flit wildly back and forth.
I think the writers were pushing things a bit with this story. While Amy may have known of the Doctor most her life, her actual interactions with him were limited to only one very bizarre evening as a child, another very bizarre day as an adult, and her imaginings in between. This doesn't seem to me to have been enough of an association for her to understand the terrible choices knowing about the star whale (I'm sorry, star whales? That's the best they could come up with?) would present him with. She leaps head first into a lot of conclusion in this episode, about the whale and about the Doctor. And while her conclusion that the star whale would continue to carry the city/ship willingly once no longer tortured was correct, I think her correlation of the whale and the Doctor, that they are both old, miserably lonely, tortured and immensely kind is only partially valid. Her perception of him is certainly still influenced by her early childhood experience, in which he was a peculiar knight in wetly shining armor when she desperately needed a hero. (You can argue that the shine certainly dimmed on his armor when he came back for her twelve years rather than five minutes later, but his subsequent grandiloquent saving of the entire planet from aliens had to have buffed out the dents.) That's not to say that he's not kind (the old, sometimes miserably lonely and tortured part is pretty inarguable, however little of this Amy should really understand at this point) it's just that he's only kind some of the time. Yeah, give him a child in need and he's a big softy, but that's only part of the picture. She hasn't yet seen the side of him that is full of implacable, unyielding rage and hatred. He's pretty good at keeping that bottled up most of the time. I hope her opinion of him doesn't get too tarnished when she does see that other side.
Anyway, long-windedness aside, other than that I enjoyed the episode a lot. I think Amy is going to be a very good companion for the Doctor. She's brave and intuitive, which will get her far in the Doctor's world. She's not afraid to call him on it when he's wrong, and she'll remind him of the good things when all he can see is the dark. Eleven is, I think, less wounded than Nine and Ten, but still deeply scarred. The sadness and loss is buried deeper and may be reflected in a quieter, calmer manner, but it's still very much there. And I love me a good angsty hero with a veneer of okayness, so that's all to the good.
And despite my general dislike of Dalek episodes, I'm actually looking forward to the next one. It looks intriguing - Daleks and Winston Churchill make for a fascinating combination.
This timey-wimey icon isn't doing it for me anymore. I guess I'll have to break down and get something more appropriate for Eleven.
I'm still not keen on the new opening, it has a bit of an ominous 'fires of hell' feel to it that makes me decidedly uneasy. Perhaps that is the purpose. I'm pretty sure the opening was originally meant to be eerie and a little bit discomfitting, but has lost that impact on most people over time. Maybe this is Moffatt's way of bringing some of that back.
Eleven's personality still seems to be bouncing around all over the place. He seems far less his own Doctor than previous regenerations. I think they all have little touches and call-backs to their previous selves, but it seems more so with this one. I'm curious to see if he settles into himself more over time, or if he continues to flit wildly back and forth.
I think the writers were pushing things a bit with this story. While Amy may have known of the Doctor most her life, her actual interactions with him were limited to only one very bizarre evening as a child, another very bizarre day as an adult, and her imaginings in between. This doesn't seem to me to have been enough of an association for her to understand the terrible choices knowing about the star whale (I'm sorry, star whales? That's the best they could come up with?) would present him with. She leaps head first into a lot of conclusion in this episode, about the whale and about the Doctor. And while her conclusion that the star whale would continue to carry the city/ship willingly once no longer tortured was correct, I think her correlation of the whale and the Doctor, that they are both old, miserably lonely, tortured and immensely kind is only partially valid. Her perception of him is certainly still influenced by her early childhood experience, in which he was a peculiar knight in wetly shining armor when she desperately needed a hero. (You can argue that the shine certainly dimmed on his armor when he came back for her twelve years rather than five minutes later, but his subsequent grandiloquent saving of the entire planet from aliens had to have buffed out the dents.) That's not to say that he's not kind (the old, sometimes miserably lonely and tortured part is pretty inarguable, however little of this Amy should really understand at this point) it's just that he's only kind some of the time. Yeah, give him a child in need and he's a big softy, but that's only part of the picture. She hasn't yet seen the side of him that is full of implacable, unyielding rage and hatred. He's pretty good at keeping that bottled up most of the time. I hope her opinion of him doesn't get too tarnished when she does see that other side.
Anyway, long-windedness aside, other than that I enjoyed the episode a lot. I think Amy is going to be a very good companion for the Doctor. She's brave and intuitive, which will get her far in the Doctor's world. She's not afraid to call him on it when he's wrong, and she'll remind him of the good things when all he can see is the dark. Eleven is, I think, less wounded than Nine and Ten, but still deeply scarred. The sadness and loss is buried deeper and may be reflected in a quieter, calmer manner, but it's still very much there. And I love me a good angsty hero with a veneer of okayness, so that's all to the good.
And despite my general dislike of Dalek episodes, I'm actually looking forward to the next one. It looks intriguing - Daleks and Winston Churchill make for a fascinating combination.
This timey-wimey icon isn't doing it for me anymore. I guess I'll have to break down and get something more appropriate for Eleven.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-11 10:04 pm (UTC)And I definitely agree about Amy's (so far) spurious associations. She was right, not because she as a character knew about the doctor, but because she was channeling the writers. Boo. I can't see how they didn't think that idea through and move that episode to later in the series. Though it also serves to introduce new concepts (the time war, hints at the doctor's past) so it would have naturally had to change later on in the series. it just wasn't very bright of the writers, I think. heck, how does Amy even know the doctor is old? He looks 12.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-11 10:16 pm (UTC)Exactly! I couldn't remember if it had come up last week, but I don't think it did. Just carelessness on the part of the writers.