Doctor Who, Yet Again
Oct. 8th, 2011 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
netgirl_y2kYou know, I find that I judge Doctor Who a lot more kindly than other shows because I've been a fan of it since I was three, and that because of the history attached to it, if all else fails you can always go: Well, at least it's not as bad as The Twin Dilemma. But I rewatched the S6 finale in the hope of liking it more, actually I liked it quite a bit less.
-On a second viewing the shiny things (mammoths, pterodactyls, offices on trains) did less to distract me from the things I didn't like - the characters, mostly.
-The Ponds. The pregnancy/stolen baby plot has left a very bad taste in my mouth for a number of reasons, but mostly, it killed the Ponds for me. I have talked before, at length, about the need for characters to care about things consistently otherwise they become nothing more than devices of the plot and it becomes very difficult to care about them (it was exactly this that killed Merlin for me last year.) Amy and Rory's often lamented lack of a reaction to their daughter's kidnapping rang terribly, terribly false to me, and because of that so did all their other reactions. Their declarations of love for each other, and Amy's affection for the Doctor seemed unconvincing too, because how can we believe anything these characters seem to be feeling after that?
-River Song. The answer to the question Who Is River Song? broke River for me. Because now she's a woman whose choice in life, whose only choice in life, was whether to turn her inescapable obsession with the Doctor into love or hate. Which is the kind of thing I'm going on about when I talk about a female character lacking agency, only quite a bit worse.
-The wedding. I handwave there seemingly being no plot related reason for the wedding, I like to think that the Doctor gets married about once a week accidentally or for shenanigan related reasons. And River Song Gives The Doctor An Eye Examination doesn't have the same ring to it as an episode title, does it? It's the way the wedding was done.
"You embarrass me."
As the Doctor tells River two minutes before he marries her, and this is not Curse of Fenric/The God Complex I have to break your faith in me for the good of the world, he sounds completely disgusted with her.
"What am I doing?"
"As you're told."
And it's not that he doesn't ask her, because River's not going to say no, it's not in her programming to say no, which is the heart of the problem.
-I am so ready for a new companion without all that plot baggage and am slightly worried that River and the Ponds will turn out to be Moff's Rose Tyler and never properly leave.
-Yeah, so S6 was a series of two halves for me, and not in the way the producers intended. There were the stand alone episodes which I thought were among the best New Who has done, and the arc episodes which I hated with the burning passion of a thousand suns.
And on that note, I'm off to watch Fringe.
-On a second viewing the shiny things (mammoths, pterodactyls, offices on trains) did less to distract me from the things I didn't like - the characters, mostly.
-The Ponds. The pregnancy/stolen baby plot has left a very bad taste in my mouth for a number of reasons, but mostly, it killed the Ponds for me. I have talked before, at length, about the need for characters to care about things consistently otherwise they become nothing more than devices of the plot and it becomes very difficult to care about them (it was exactly this that killed Merlin for me last year.) Amy and Rory's often lamented lack of a reaction to their daughter's kidnapping rang terribly, terribly false to me, and because of that so did all their other reactions. Their declarations of love for each other, and Amy's affection for the Doctor seemed unconvincing too, because how can we believe anything these characters seem to be feeling after that?
-River Song. The answer to the question Who Is River Song? broke River for me. Because now she's a woman whose choice in life, whose only choice in life, was whether to turn her inescapable obsession with the Doctor into love or hate. Which is the kind of thing I'm going on about when I talk about a female character lacking agency, only quite a bit worse.
-The wedding. I handwave there seemingly being no plot related reason for the wedding, I like to think that the Doctor gets married about once a week accidentally or for shenanigan related reasons. And River Song Gives The Doctor An Eye Examination doesn't have the same ring to it as an episode title, does it? It's the way the wedding was done.
"You embarrass me."
As the Doctor tells River two minutes before he marries her, and this is not Curse of Fenric/The God Complex I have to break your faith in me for the good of the world, he sounds completely disgusted with her.
"What am I doing?"
"As you're told."
And it's not that he doesn't ask her, because River's not going to say no, it's not in her programming to say no, which is the heart of the problem.
-I am so ready for a new companion without all that plot baggage and am slightly worried that River and the Ponds will turn out to be Moff's Rose Tyler and never properly leave.
-Yeah, so S6 was a series of two halves for me, and not in the way the producers intended. There were the stand alone episodes which I thought were among the best New Who has done, and the arc episodes which I hated with the burning passion of a thousand suns.
And on that note, I'm off to watch Fringe.