fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2011-04-23 03:42 pm
some_stars) wrote2011-04-23 03:42 pm
(no subject)
some Doctor Who 6x01 thoughts! not many, I will be waiting for the story to finish first. also the majority of it is minor to middling criticism, since I have not much to say about everything I loved except OMG YES YES HOORAY. --or, more than I thought, but still not that much.
SO MANY FEELINGS. I love how important feelings are on this show, love the scene with them all in the TARDIS silent and incredibly disturbed and confused and hurt, and the Doctor knowing nothing but of course picking up on all the pain. All stories, even sci-fi ones, are ultimately about feelings, and Moffatt is continuing a long--if often fraught--Doctor Who history of realizing and embracing that fact.
I appreciate the color-blind casting of 1969 D.C., though it makes me wonder why they couldn't do it with the guest star, or even with smaller characters commanding any respect or interest. To be fair, a lot of this is lingering RTD resentment. Not all, but much. I think, hmm. I think it's that Moffatt is better about this in present/near-future or distant future settings, but then when you have something set in the past there's this weird halfway reluctance that draws SO MUCH attention to itself.
If this weren't Moffatt, I'd assume Canton is supposed to be queer; Moffatt being allergic to male gay it will doubtless be something else. (Though I did like the bit about the founding fathers fancying the Doctor, it was pleasantly effortless.)
Another scary child with a scary disembodied voice? Really, now? I wonder, if we took up a collection, perhaps we could bribe him not to write anything featuring children or scary sounds of any kind until at least mid-season 8. It would be so refreshing.
I feel like the River ~*~drama~*~ is being played too hard, and I don't like that apparently they are now officially living in exact opposite order, along two straight lines. That's hardly a non-linear love story. (And speaking of linearity, the rationale for why they can't tell the Doctor about his future death seems rather strained after all these years of cheerfully ignoring paradoxes left and right. Ah well, I suppose that's an inherent hazard of time travel stories that last longer than one story.)
BUT, you know. I adored it, those few things aside. It felt like a good balance of all four characters plus guest star, which DW has always struggled with. Everyone has their own ongoing emotional story and dramatic role, and they intertwined in wonderful and productive and sometimes surprising ways--I am SO delighted at Rory and River sharing a scene with EMOTIONS and PARALLELS in it, I cannot even begin to express. River and Amy as two stages in the same life cycle, and River echoing Rory too--"I'll look into that man's eyes...and he won't have the faintest idea of who I am."
Rory had some great moments, actually; the shot with him walking back from the flaming boat sticks in my mind. I like that he's not more prominent than Amy, I definitely do NOT want that to happen most of the time(I would like it to happen for just one episode though, to get a closer look inside his head). His main function, and such a crucial one, is to heighten and contrast and harmonize with Amy's story, and to push at the edges of the dyad and make it less claustrophobic, so that we CAN focus on it without making Amy or the Doctor unlikable or (excessively) unhealthy-seeming. River also does some of this, but of course I wasn't at all worried about Moffatt giving her short shrift, since he's married to her on the astral plane. Also she doesn't have the outsider-ness that makes Rory so emotionally useful.
(Saving my thoughts on Amy until I can see how the story turns out. But: VERY PROMISING. If kind of "wait WHAT, what the FUCK" at the very end there, but I have trust!)
IN SHORT: everyone felt right, I want to spend every hour of every day with them watching them be TOGETHER and this episode was far, far too short. MORE PLEASE IMMEDIATELY.
(Also they all looked so so so hot. I require ALL THE FOURSOMES. Alllll. You could even throw in Canton, if you liked. But not Nixon.)
SO MANY FEELINGS. I love how important feelings are on this show, love the scene with them all in the TARDIS silent and incredibly disturbed and confused and hurt, and the Doctor knowing nothing but of course picking up on all the pain. All stories, even sci-fi ones, are ultimately about feelings, and Moffatt is continuing a long--if often fraught--Doctor Who history of realizing and embracing that fact.
I appreciate the color-blind casting of 1969 D.C., though it makes me wonder why they couldn't do it with the guest star, or even with smaller characters commanding any respect or interest. To be fair, a lot of this is lingering RTD resentment. Not all, but much. I think, hmm. I think it's that Moffatt is better about this in present/near-future or distant future settings, but then when you have something set in the past there's this weird halfway reluctance that draws SO MUCH attention to itself.
If this weren't Moffatt, I'd assume Canton is supposed to be queer; Moffatt being allergic to male gay it will doubtless be something else. (Though I did like the bit about the founding fathers fancying the Doctor, it was pleasantly effortless.)
Another scary child with a scary disembodied voice? Really, now? I wonder, if we took up a collection, perhaps we could bribe him not to write anything featuring children or scary sounds of any kind until at least mid-season 8. It would be so refreshing.
I feel like the River ~*~drama~*~ is being played too hard, and I don't like that apparently they are now officially living in exact opposite order, along two straight lines. That's hardly a non-linear love story. (And speaking of linearity, the rationale for why they can't tell the Doctor about his future death seems rather strained after all these years of cheerfully ignoring paradoxes left and right. Ah well, I suppose that's an inherent hazard of time travel stories that last longer than one story.)
BUT, you know. I adored it, those few things aside. It felt like a good balance of all four characters plus guest star, which DW has always struggled with. Everyone has their own ongoing emotional story and dramatic role, and they intertwined in wonderful and productive and sometimes surprising ways--I am SO delighted at Rory and River sharing a scene with EMOTIONS and PARALLELS in it, I cannot even begin to express. River and Amy as two stages in the same life cycle, and River echoing Rory too--"I'll look into that man's eyes...and he won't have the faintest idea of who I am."
Rory had some great moments, actually; the shot with him walking back from the flaming boat sticks in my mind. I like that he's not more prominent than Amy, I definitely do NOT want that to happen most of the time(I would like it to happen for just one episode though, to get a closer look inside his head). His main function, and such a crucial one, is to heighten and contrast and harmonize with Amy's story, and to push at the edges of the dyad and make it less claustrophobic, so that we CAN focus on it without making Amy or the Doctor unlikable or (excessively) unhealthy-seeming. River also does some of this, but of course I wasn't at all worried about Moffatt giving her short shrift, since he's married to her on the astral plane. Also she doesn't have the outsider-ness that makes Rory so emotionally useful.
(Saving my thoughts on Amy until I can see how the story turns out. But: VERY PROMISING. If kind of "wait WHAT, what the FUCK" at the very end there, but I have trust!)
IN SHORT: everyone felt right, I want to spend every hour of every day with them watching them be TOGETHER and this episode was far, far too short. MORE PLEASE IMMEDIATELY.
(Also they all looked so so so hot. I require ALL THE FOURSOMES. Alllll. You could even throw in Canton, if you liked. But not Nixon.)
no subject
NO. None.
no subject
I loved that throw-away line about the Founding Fathers fancying the Doctor - it's the kind of casual gay-friendliness that I've been missing in Moffatt's run. And I love Rory's role here - to interpret "weirdness" for "non-weird" people just like he's been doing with Amy and their village his whole life. I was really interested to see if there had been any changes in Amy and Rory with her parents existing again, but not so far...
no subject
Yes, the casualness, that's what I've been missing--god knows Rusty wasn't exactly a model of queer-inclusive, not-offensive television, but there was queerness there and it just happened and mostly it wasn't remarked upon.
I suspect that actually integrating the effects of season 5's fairytale ending into the characters' relationships with each other is a lot more followup than Moffatt is interested in doing. I don't entirely blame him; if you start down that path you kind of have to go into it with at least some depth, and it would dramatically change large parts of everyone's basic personality. They're probably just going to go with the unstated assumption that, at the wedding, Amy and Rory became their old pre-Pandorica selves and those are their primary set of memories, though they still have the other set(or sets in Rory's case). At least, I hope so, that's the approach I'm taking in my head. *g*