fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2011-04-30 10:00 pm
some_stars) wrote2011-04-30 10:00 pm
doctor whooooo
I have complex feelings about this one! Because...so many things are being set up that could go HORRIBLY WRONG. And I still have the scars from season 3, when I just ran blithely through the season trusting that everything would come out right, and then the finale destroyed my soul. And some of the things I'm worried about going wrong are Moffat-specific, so I can't just be like "well I was deeply suspicious last season because of my RTD scars but it all came out wonderfully!"
PESSIMISM AND ANXIETY FIRST. So:
1. Popular science fiction CANNOT HANDLE PREGNANCY. It can't. Sci-fi pregnancy--as a plot point, not just "sci-fi story and also someone's pregnant" has never, not ONCE in every single instance I've seen or heard about, been handled in a way that wasn't at least a little bit awful. Usually a LOT awful. This isn't even a point of anxiety, really, I'm resigned to it being offensive and stupid. I'm just hoping it won't be too overwhelmingly so.
2. I'm really torn on the Doctor-Amy-Rory triangle (or V, rather) and jealousy and...I can't tell where it's going. EDIT: I seem to have interpreted this way differently than...everyone else. I expect this is half due to pessimism and half to how poorly I absorb information in television form, but even if it was more resolved than I thought it was...Moffat's still making a THING of it. [/END EDIT] My instinct is not to like it because it's just so damned obvious and cliched. But I also don't think that the way they seem to be having Amy behave/feel is out of character...depending how they continue to write it. And because I like my TARDIS to be as full of relationships as it is of people, if not more, I really enjoyed the deepening complexity between Rory and the Doctor this episode.
I think what it may come down to for me, is that I want to be inside Amy's head for this stuff. And I may get that! It's only episode two. But if the story is going to be about her trying and/or failing to choose between two guys, I want the story to be first and foremost about her. So obviously, yes, including scenes focusing on Rory's reaction to hearing her say those things over the little relay device--but the next time she says anything like that, I want to see her face, I want the followup to be her POV. (POV in filmed material is--I have thoughts on it, it's complicated, I'm sure other people understand it better than I do. But the majority of the time, especially in a heavy emotional scene, it's very clear, even when there's several people in the shot. This episode, all the jealousy/triangle stuff was from Rory's POV except a little bit from the Doctor's.)
So--the only way for this storyline not to be unbearably cliched, boring, repetitive, and most likely bordering on misogynistic, is to locate the drama firmly in Amy's feelings and choices, from inside. And on Amy and Rory's RELATIONSHIP, not just the dissolution thereof, I want to see them interacting outside scenes where someone is in immediate danger of death, or just rescued from said danger a second ago, or the scene is all about potential infidelity and jealousy. Obviously there's not much time in a 43-minute episode to see them playing, but I certainly hope to see them working together. (And playing, there must be SOME time, they're so ADORABLE.)
Will that happen? I cannot even begin to predict. Because,
3. Moffat's sexism: it is showing its head. It's a far different breed from Rusty's, and it starts off a lot less bothersome. But the thing is, those women he creates, those loud bold forward peculiar women whom we rightfully adore...they're still created as Other. As objects of adoration, and because what's adored is, to a large degree, the assertive kickass personality, that object-ness isn't evident at first. But it starts to show when you realize that these women, no matter how badass or fiercely individualist or whatever, always have to be about a man. Or men. But everything they do and feel must be about, around, focused on: a man.
I don't know if we're that far gone yet--but given what I know of his previous work and patterns, I'm not exactly...I'm hoping, but I'm not putting a lot of weight on that hope. Already we seem to be losing a sense of River as a whole person, with a life of her own. The first time we met her she was doing her own thing and called the Doctor for help, and she was actually being an archaeologist--being a something, leading a life, into which the Doctor apparently popped in and out. Now we see her in prison, leaving only to go help the Doctor when summoned.
Don't get me wrong, she was AMAZING this episode. I freaking LOVED her. But...the decline is beginning. And Amy--well, I was feeling a lot worse about Amy before the preview. The preview didn't totally dispel my fears, but it's not like I'm hoping for a completely perfect character free of all sexism. I'd just like to hold steady at where we were last season. Even if the independent subject-ness is a facade designed to appeal to Moffat's personal kinks (which don't include genuinely being a subject rather than an object, with a full interior life), it's still pretty enjoyable to watch, compared to TV where we don't even get that. And it's much easier to build fanon on.
3a. Honestly I just--I have so much trouble getting inside Amy's head. And part of it's me and the character types I'm instinctively drawn to, but it's not ALL me. Last season, I think it was mostly me, to be fair. (But not all.) This season, less me, more show. So far.
4. OKAY, depressing myself, let's move on from sexism. Or, mostly--I am SO UPSET that Moffat's definitely going with the "River and the Doctor's lives are going in exact opposite order." THAT'S NOT NON-LINEAR AT ALL. That's so boring, it's the most boring thing you could POSSIBLY do with the initial vague premise. It cuts out so much potential for storytelling and character growth and semi-thoughtful science fiction and, you know, retcons. That wouldn't even count as retcons! They'd be built in! In fact that would be a major advantage, it would actually create characterization and drama and--I mean, there are a lot of good reasons to be down on The Time Traveler's Wife(which I only skimmed, enough to get annoyed and a bit grossed out), but something it got RIGHT was the way the time travel happened. Because the romance and emotional draw was in the idea of a relationship where you get to know the other person all at once, but spread out--you learn them as a full, completed life, not an identity-in-progress, and every time the two characters meet, they recognize an essential core in each other while also encountering something exciting and new. They're constants for each other, not countdowns running in opposite directions. It doesn't have to be only a tragedy. --so that's not sexism, really, just HORRIBLE STORYTELLING.
5. Even less significantly--Moffat you have GOT to branch out, the "corner of your eye" thing is PLAYED. It's been DONE. There were some good innovations in scariness/atmosphere this episode--see below list, somewhere, probably--but "creepy little girl" and "detached, unreachable voice" and "juuuuust beyond your field of vision" are OVER. Put them away for at least the next sixteen episodes. Thank you.
5a. Further in regard to Moffat's writing...usually it takes me at LEAST thirty minutes after an episode ends to spot plot holes, because I'm very slow and easily distracted by music and dramatic cinematography, but the instant the Doctor explained to the Silence his plan about the moon landing footage, I got very indignant and thought: How the hell could he know that one of the Silence would say exactly that to Canton? The plan would have been absolutely meaningless if they'd said ANYTHING else! Sure, Canton prompted it with "what would you do in my place?" but--first, they know NOTHING about the Silence's personalities, if they would talk, if they would display emotions like that and insult their captors--and second, the obvious expected answer to that question is not "YOU should kill US." Certainly it's an answer you would have non-negligible odds of getting, but not odds I'd bet twenty bucks on much less THE PLANET EARTH. It's such an obvious example of coming up with a very specific way to resolve the plot and working sloppily backwards without bothering to stop and figure out if it makes sense FORWARD as well.
It's the kind of flaw that's pretty easy to fanwank, of course, because they have a time machine and also because there was no indication--I think--that the world would end if they didn't get everything wrapped up ASAP, or even necessarily that Amy would die. Which...might be a flaw in itself, unless I'm misremembering something, which I probably am. But less of a flaw, because I didn't notice it until after the episode had ended. --HEY. Hey wait, did they ever explain how Canton could shoot Amy and Rory in front of a bunch of other agents, and not kill them, and everyone was fooled? This actually did occur to me when they came out of the bodybags, but then I forgot it until now.
OKAY. Enough of that.
POSITIVE STUFF:
1. Okay, so, I am HORRIBLE at keeping track of plots, I know this, so this might have been resolved and I totally missed it, but--are we in fact left with a begging-to-be-ficced three month space where Amy and Rory and River were running around America, either split up from the start or getting split up at some point, and Canton was--I totally lost track of that part, actually of everything that happened between "end of last episode" and "Doctor captured, other three scatter." But the main thing is Amy and Rory and River running around America, drawing on themselves and looking for the Silence and--I NEED THIS STORY SO BAD. Ideally in epic form but I'll take little vignettes, I don't care, GIVE IT.
2. I underestimated Moffat a bit and Canton did turn out to be queer! I mean, it also turned out to be a red herring as far as the actual plot--I had expected us to encounter his (I assumed) girlfriend or at least that his feelings about her would become plot-relevant in some way. But it was just played as a joke at the end--but I can't really get upset about that, I'm so surprised and pleased that it happened. And, okay, the bit with Canton adjusting Eleven's bowtie--post-hypnotically, of course, but--I saw chemistry, OKAY, maybe it was just because I was thinking about Canton's possible sexual orientation, probably nobody else saw it, but. CHEMISTRY. --OH. Okay, and I was just reminded by someone else's post that we almost HAVE to see Canton again at the end of the season, when the Doctor sends out the invitations. I mean, they could get away without showing him, but the odds suddenly seem SO much better that he'll be back at least for a scene. OH HOW THIS FILLS ME WITH JOY.
3. With many caveats that are far too thoroughly explored above, BUT, I love how Rory and the Doctor are developing a relationship. With some wariness, yes, but even when there's so much hurt like in this episode, there's still a core of--trust? Something that's not pure resentment and anger. Something. And it's two-way, the Doctor both cares about him and respects him, by which I don't only mean "isn't contemptuous of him"--although that is not to be undervalued, god knows--but sees him as a fully complex person whose thoughts and experiences are as interesting and worth knowing as anybody else's. Or, well, any other human's. Which is all I could ask. Plus! Attention paid to ongoing effects of having three sets of memories in his head! Or possibly two, I suspect Moffat doesn't want to bother with "Rory AND Amy and possibly River all remember leading parallel lives in the universe without stars, does this change any of the relationships?" I can't blame him at all, really; that universe was never designed to hold up under close examination(the physics ALONE...). But, attention paid to ongoing effects having TWO sets of memories in his head is an excellent thing as well.
4. Abovementioned successfully creepy things, not completely worn out: the WRITING, the writing on the walls--that was a bit creepy--and then it showed up on the guy's BODY. It created this intensely disturbing impression that the writing just--arose, showed up on any surface that spent too long in the house. I mean, and then it became clear that the guy--probably? Okay, not THAT clear--was painting the messages and forgetting them, and that was also deliciously scary and disturbing. But the best part was the first second after I saw the writing on his wrist and my brain just did a full-body shudder of repulsion and distress.
And I also loved the tally marks on their skin! Another thing where the literal explanation for how/why it's happening was, while not at all unsatisfying, not nearly as important as the immediate screaming feeling of WRONGNESS upon seeing it.
5. ELEVEN/RIVER YES PLEASE. The flirting, how he just got carried away with how much he was enjoying the flirting! And the KISS--oh my GOD--like, ignoring all the stuff in the above list about why did they film it as tragedy, goddammit--Matt Smith was so fucking HOT. With his ARMS, oh my god, I just. I can't even deal, I can't--I need to read porn about Eleven for HOURS now. And I'm already rewriting the rest of that scene in my head to be 90% comedy/sweetness/fun with an undertone of wistfulness. I'm actually...going to be rewriting every single River Song episode, I think, so that it doesn't have them living their lives in exact opposite order. And I will start with that scene, because something as delightful and adorable as an accidental first kiss shouldn't be wasted on a mournfully-scored tragedy.
BUT--it's a positive, despite all that, because SO. FREAKING. HOT. And excellent raw material for headcanon. And promises so many good good things ahead.
6. Oh lord, let me try to be quicker about these...Rory with his hair all slicked back, wearing a suit!
7. RIVER GUNNING DOWN THE SILENCE AND SPINNING. FUCK. YES. FUCK YES.
8. Potential ongoing jealousy storyline ASIDE--Rory's love for Amy was just so thick and present and it grabbed me, I loved it. I am so INTO it. And also when he picked her up and spun her a little and they were laughing, I was also into that.
8a. And potential nightmarishly offensive pregnancy storyline ALSO aside--"What's a Time head?" I LOL'D.
9. You know what, I'm just going to list "the bit with Canton adjusting Eleven's tie" as its own item. Because I can, and it REALLY appealed to me.
10. All the America jokes. THEY WERE FUNNY. Especially Canton shooting the Silence. Eleven telling Nixon to tape everything was totally cheap but I still liked it, mostly because he had to have known what he was doing and been so amused.
11. This could probably be better edited into an above item but WHATEVER: I loved the "lost time" scenes, I loved the conceit of not letting us see the Silence either and only find out when we see the flashing red light. That was so effective.
12. Oh I just really dug everyone. Especially Eleven, he was AMAZING. But all their faces!!!
13. NEXT WEEK. No spoilers in case anyone doesn't watch previews, but: IT'S GOING TO BE AMAZING. I hope. It looks like it's going to be almost everything I want most in a Doctor Who episode.
Now that we keep getting the full team of four, choosing an icon is HARDER.
I feel like...the top half of this post is SO much more wary and pessimistic than most of the other posts I'm seeing, I feel like I should explain the nature of my TRAUMA from season three. Because I wasn't just not expecting the worst, that season. I was absolutely convinced that it was going to be brilliant. I believed that all the hints and themes, all the emotional twistiness and loose ends and motifs and suggestions, it was all building to an amazing self-aware climax that would change things, that people would change and arcs would be completed or pushed to the next level--I believed completely. I made posts about how much I believed it. And a lot of that belief came from the concurrently growing thread of dissatisfaction and annoyance at certain characterization and plotting trends that--well--at first I believed all that repeated, increasing dissonance must be leading to something, and then towards the end of S3 I started seeing large clear signs that yes, in fact, it was leading to something, they were aware of that dissonance and the awareness was about to be made explicit and textual and it would be ADDRESSED.
And not only was it not addressed or pointed out, it was made worse in every possible way. It was repeated at maximum volume and suddenly the entire season, the season I'd been so excited about I'd nearly completed a pre-finale vid the entire message of which was "SEASON THREE IS SO AWESOME," suddenly it and everything I loved about it became disgusting. I didn't watch season four until...six months? A year? after it finished. And I certainly didn't get excited about it, it was just a random binge-urge one weekend when I had nothing to do. And I didn't watch the specials and I went into season five with a dark and broken heart incapable of trust. I continued to not trust until the very last second of The Big Bang. I still can't, really. This show destroyed my ability to squee without fear of horrible betrayal, and I mean, I feel a bit better after season five ended so wonderfully...but some wounds do not heal. SOME WOUNDS.
Which is why I wrote like five pages of crap I'm worried about over the entire rest of the season even though it's only episode two. THE END.
(I hate feeling like I have to apologize for including negative stuff, but I also hate feeling like people think I don't LOVE things I do in fact love. When I was actually watching this episode, barring a few moments here and there I spent it with 90% of my brain devoted to SQUEE OMG OMG YES. And the other 10% whirring in the background, and as soon as the episode finishes I have to work through all that stuff on paper (as it were) and then I can put it aside for a week and focus entirely on where is the porn I am so in love. Unless it gets really bad in the future, but--this is also my modus operandi for shows where the grouchy background brain takes up like 50% or sometimes a lot more. Overjoyed excitement with brief interruptions, lengthy dumping of all my criticism and concerns, six more days of excitement. And it will continue pretty much just like this, most likely, so...well, it will. My reaction posts for ANY show are never going to be a 100% squee-safe zone. Which only bothers me because I ALSO want to talk about the squee, I want to talk about the squee MORE, usually. I don't want people to not read my posts because I seem like a hater.)
(THE END FOR REAL. I hope. We'll see.)
PESSIMISM AND ANXIETY FIRST. So:
1. Popular science fiction CANNOT HANDLE PREGNANCY. It can't. Sci-fi pregnancy--as a plot point, not just "sci-fi story and also someone's pregnant" has never, not ONCE in every single instance I've seen or heard about, been handled in a way that wasn't at least a little bit awful. Usually a LOT awful. This isn't even a point of anxiety, really, I'm resigned to it being offensive and stupid. I'm just hoping it won't be too overwhelmingly so.
2. I'm really torn on the Doctor-Amy-Rory triangle (or V, rather) and jealousy and...I can't tell where it's going. EDIT: I seem to have interpreted this way differently than...everyone else. I expect this is half due to pessimism and half to how poorly I absorb information in television form, but even if it was more resolved than I thought it was...Moffat's still making a THING of it. [/END EDIT] My instinct is not to like it because it's just so damned obvious and cliched. But I also don't think that the way they seem to be having Amy behave/feel is out of character...depending how they continue to write it. And because I like my TARDIS to be as full of relationships as it is of people, if not more, I really enjoyed the deepening complexity between Rory and the Doctor this episode.
I think what it may come down to for me, is that I want to be inside Amy's head for this stuff. And I may get that! It's only episode two. But if the story is going to be about her trying and/or failing to choose between two guys, I want the story to be first and foremost about her. So obviously, yes, including scenes focusing on Rory's reaction to hearing her say those things over the little relay device--but the next time she says anything like that, I want to see her face, I want the followup to be her POV. (POV in filmed material is--I have thoughts on it, it's complicated, I'm sure other people understand it better than I do. But the majority of the time, especially in a heavy emotional scene, it's very clear, even when there's several people in the shot. This episode, all the jealousy/triangle stuff was from Rory's POV except a little bit from the Doctor's.)
So--the only way for this storyline not to be unbearably cliched, boring, repetitive, and most likely bordering on misogynistic, is to locate the drama firmly in Amy's feelings and choices, from inside. And on Amy and Rory's RELATIONSHIP, not just the dissolution thereof, I want to see them interacting outside scenes where someone is in immediate danger of death, or just rescued from said danger a second ago, or the scene is all about potential infidelity and jealousy. Obviously there's not much time in a 43-minute episode to see them playing, but I certainly hope to see them working together. (And playing, there must be SOME time, they're so ADORABLE.)
Will that happen? I cannot even begin to predict. Because,
3. Moffat's sexism: it is showing its head. It's a far different breed from Rusty's, and it starts off a lot less bothersome. But the thing is, those women he creates, those loud bold forward peculiar women whom we rightfully adore...they're still created as Other. As objects of adoration, and because what's adored is, to a large degree, the assertive kickass personality, that object-ness isn't evident at first. But it starts to show when you realize that these women, no matter how badass or fiercely individualist or whatever, always have to be about a man. Or men. But everything they do and feel must be about, around, focused on: a man.
I don't know if we're that far gone yet--but given what I know of his previous work and patterns, I'm not exactly...I'm hoping, but I'm not putting a lot of weight on that hope. Already we seem to be losing a sense of River as a whole person, with a life of her own. The first time we met her she was doing her own thing and called the Doctor for help, and she was actually being an archaeologist--being a something, leading a life, into which the Doctor apparently popped in and out. Now we see her in prison, leaving only to go help the Doctor when summoned.
Don't get me wrong, she was AMAZING this episode. I freaking LOVED her. But...the decline is beginning. And Amy--well, I was feeling a lot worse about Amy before the preview. The preview didn't totally dispel my fears, but it's not like I'm hoping for a completely perfect character free of all sexism. I'd just like to hold steady at where we were last season. Even if the independent subject-ness is a facade designed to appeal to Moffat's personal kinks (which don't include genuinely being a subject rather than an object, with a full interior life), it's still pretty enjoyable to watch, compared to TV where we don't even get that. And it's much easier to build fanon on.
3a. Honestly I just--I have so much trouble getting inside Amy's head. And part of it's me and the character types I'm instinctively drawn to, but it's not ALL me. Last season, I think it was mostly me, to be fair. (But not all.) This season, less me, more show. So far.
4. OKAY, depressing myself, let's move on from sexism. Or, mostly--I am SO UPSET that Moffat's definitely going with the "River and the Doctor's lives are going in exact opposite order." THAT'S NOT NON-LINEAR AT ALL. That's so boring, it's the most boring thing you could POSSIBLY do with the initial vague premise. It cuts out so much potential for storytelling and character growth and semi-thoughtful science fiction and, you know, retcons. That wouldn't even count as retcons! They'd be built in! In fact that would be a major advantage, it would actually create characterization and drama and--I mean, there are a lot of good reasons to be down on The Time Traveler's Wife(which I only skimmed, enough to get annoyed and a bit grossed out), but something it got RIGHT was the way the time travel happened. Because the romance and emotional draw was in the idea of a relationship where you get to know the other person all at once, but spread out--you learn them as a full, completed life, not an identity-in-progress, and every time the two characters meet, they recognize an essential core in each other while also encountering something exciting and new. They're constants for each other, not countdowns running in opposite directions. It doesn't have to be only a tragedy. --so that's not sexism, really, just HORRIBLE STORYTELLING.
5. Even less significantly--Moffat you have GOT to branch out, the "corner of your eye" thing is PLAYED. It's been DONE. There were some good innovations in scariness/atmosphere this episode--see below list, somewhere, probably--but "creepy little girl" and "detached, unreachable voice" and "juuuuust beyond your field of vision" are OVER. Put them away for at least the next sixteen episodes. Thank you.
5a. Further in regard to Moffat's writing...usually it takes me at LEAST thirty minutes after an episode ends to spot plot holes, because I'm very slow and easily distracted by music and dramatic cinematography, but the instant the Doctor explained to the Silence his plan about the moon landing footage, I got very indignant and thought: How the hell could he know that one of the Silence would say exactly that to Canton? The plan would have been absolutely meaningless if they'd said ANYTHING else! Sure, Canton prompted it with "what would you do in my place?" but--first, they know NOTHING about the Silence's personalities, if they would talk, if they would display emotions like that and insult their captors--and second, the obvious expected answer to that question is not "YOU should kill US." Certainly it's an answer you would have non-negligible odds of getting, but not odds I'd bet twenty bucks on much less THE PLANET EARTH. It's such an obvious example of coming up with a very specific way to resolve the plot and working sloppily backwards without bothering to stop and figure out if it makes sense FORWARD as well.
It's the kind of flaw that's pretty easy to fanwank, of course, because they have a time machine and also because there was no indication--I think--that the world would end if they didn't get everything wrapped up ASAP, or even necessarily that Amy would die. Which...might be a flaw in itself, unless I'm misremembering something, which I probably am. But less of a flaw, because I didn't notice it until after the episode had ended. --HEY. Hey wait, did they ever explain how Canton could shoot Amy and Rory in front of a bunch of other agents, and not kill them, and everyone was fooled? This actually did occur to me when they came out of the bodybags, but then I forgot it until now.
OKAY. Enough of that.
POSITIVE STUFF:
1. Okay, so, I am HORRIBLE at keeping track of plots, I know this, so this might have been resolved and I totally missed it, but--are we in fact left with a begging-to-be-ficced three month space where Amy and Rory and River were running around America, either split up from the start or getting split up at some point, and Canton was--I totally lost track of that part, actually of everything that happened between "end of last episode" and "Doctor captured, other three scatter." But the main thing is Amy and Rory and River running around America, drawing on themselves and looking for the Silence and--I NEED THIS STORY SO BAD. Ideally in epic form but I'll take little vignettes, I don't care, GIVE IT.
2. I underestimated Moffat a bit and Canton did turn out to be queer! I mean, it also turned out to be a red herring as far as the actual plot--I had expected us to encounter his (I assumed) girlfriend or at least that his feelings about her would become plot-relevant in some way. But it was just played as a joke at the end--but I can't really get upset about that, I'm so surprised and pleased that it happened. And, okay, the bit with Canton adjusting Eleven's bowtie--post-hypnotically, of course, but--I saw chemistry, OKAY, maybe it was just because I was thinking about Canton's possible sexual orientation, probably nobody else saw it, but. CHEMISTRY. --OH. Okay, and I was just reminded by someone else's post that we almost HAVE to see Canton again at the end of the season, when the Doctor sends out the invitations. I mean, they could get away without showing him, but the odds suddenly seem SO much better that he'll be back at least for a scene. OH HOW THIS FILLS ME WITH JOY.
3. With many caveats that are far too thoroughly explored above, BUT, I love how Rory and the Doctor are developing a relationship. With some wariness, yes, but even when there's so much hurt like in this episode, there's still a core of--trust? Something that's not pure resentment and anger. Something. And it's two-way, the Doctor both cares about him and respects him, by which I don't only mean "isn't contemptuous of him"--although that is not to be undervalued, god knows--but sees him as a fully complex person whose thoughts and experiences are as interesting and worth knowing as anybody else's. Or, well, any other human's. Which is all I could ask. Plus! Attention paid to ongoing effects of having three sets of memories in his head! Or possibly two, I suspect Moffat doesn't want to bother with "Rory AND Amy and possibly River all remember leading parallel lives in the universe without stars, does this change any of the relationships?" I can't blame him at all, really; that universe was never designed to hold up under close examination(the physics ALONE...). But, attention paid to ongoing effects having TWO sets of memories in his head is an excellent thing as well.
4. Abovementioned successfully creepy things, not completely worn out: the WRITING, the writing on the walls--that was a bit creepy--and then it showed up on the guy's BODY. It created this intensely disturbing impression that the writing just--arose, showed up on any surface that spent too long in the house. I mean, and then it became clear that the guy--probably? Okay, not THAT clear--was painting the messages and forgetting them, and that was also deliciously scary and disturbing. But the best part was the first second after I saw the writing on his wrist and my brain just did a full-body shudder of repulsion and distress.
And I also loved the tally marks on their skin! Another thing where the literal explanation for how/why it's happening was, while not at all unsatisfying, not nearly as important as the immediate screaming feeling of WRONGNESS upon seeing it.
5. ELEVEN/RIVER YES PLEASE. The flirting, how he just got carried away with how much he was enjoying the flirting! And the KISS--oh my GOD--like, ignoring all the stuff in the above list about why did they film it as tragedy, goddammit--Matt Smith was so fucking HOT. With his ARMS, oh my god, I just. I can't even deal, I can't--I need to read porn about Eleven for HOURS now. And I'm already rewriting the rest of that scene in my head to be 90% comedy/sweetness/fun with an undertone of wistfulness. I'm actually...going to be rewriting every single River Song episode, I think, so that it doesn't have them living their lives in exact opposite order. And I will start with that scene, because something as delightful and adorable as an accidental first kiss shouldn't be wasted on a mournfully-scored tragedy.
BUT--it's a positive, despite all that, because SO. FREAKING. HOT. And excellent raw material for headcanon. And promises so many good good things ahead.
6. Oh lord, let me try to be quicker about these...Rory with his hair all slicked back, wearing a suit!
7. RIVER GUNNING DOWN THE SILENCE AND SPINNING. FUCK. YES. FUCK YES.
8. Potential ongoing jealousy storyline ASIDE--Rory's love for Amy was just so thick and present and it grabbed me, I loved it. I am so INTO it. And also when he picked her up and spun her a little and they were laughing, I was also into that.
8a. And potential nightmarishly offensive pregnancy storyline ALSO aside--"What's a Time head?" I LOL'D.
9. You know what, I'm just going to list "the bit with Canton adjusting Eleven's tie" as its own item. Because I can, and it REALLY appealed to me.
10. All the America jokes. THEY WERE FUNNY. Especially Canton shooting the Silence. Eleven telling Nixon to tape everything was totally cheap but I still liked it, mostly because he had to have known what he was doing and been so amused.
11. This could probably be better edited into an above item but WHATEVER: I loved the "lost time" scenes, I loved the conceit of not letting us see the Silence either and only find out when we see the flashing red light. That was so effective.
12. Oh I just really dug everyone. Especially Eleven, he was AMAZING. But all their faces!!!
13. NEXT WEEK. No spoilers in case anyone doesn't watch previews, but: IT'S GOING TO BE AMAZING. I hope. It looks like it's going to be almost everything I want most in a Doctor Who episode.
Now that we keep getting the full team of four, choosing an icon is HARDER.
I feel like...the top half of this post is SO much more wary and pessimistic than most of the other posts I'm seeing, I feel like I should explain the nature of my TRAUMA from season three. Because I wasn't just not expecting the worst, that season. I was absolutely convinced that it was going to be brilliant. I believed that all the hints and themes, all the emotional twistiness and loose ends and motifs and suggestions, it was all building to an amazing self-aware climax that would change things, that people would change and arcs would be completed or pushed to the next level--I believed completely. I made posts about how much I believed it. And a lot of that belief came from the concurrently growing thread of dissatisfaction and annoyance at certain characterization and plotting trends that--well--at first I believed all that repeated, increasing dissonance must be leading to something, and then towards the end of S3 I started seeing large clear signs that yes, in fact, it was leading to something, they were aware of that dissonance and the awareness was about to be made explicit and textual and it would be ADDRESSED.
And not only was it not addressed or pointed out, it was made worse in every possible way. It was repeated at maximum volume and suddenly the entire season, the season I'd been so excited about I'd nearly completed a pre-finale vid the entire message of which was "SEASON THREE IS SO AWESOME," suddenly it and everything I loved about it became disgusting. I didn't watch season four until...six months? A year? after it finished. And I certainly didn't get excited about it, it was just a random binge-urge one weekend when I had nothing to do. And I didn't watch the specials and I went into season five with a dark and broken heart incapable of trust. I continued to not trust until the very last second of The Big Bang. I still can't, really. This show destroyed my ability to squee without fear of horrible betrayal, and I mean, I feel a bit better after season five ended so wonderfully...but some wounds do not heal. SOME WOUNDS.
Which is why I wrote like five pages of crap I'm worried about over the entire rest of the season even though it's only episode two. THE END.
(I hate feeling like I have to apologize for including negative stuff, but I also hate feeling like people think I don't LOVE things I do in fact love. When I was actually watching this episode, barring a few moments here and there I spent it with 90% of my brain devoted to SQUEE OMG OMG YES. And the other 10% whirring in the background, and as soon as the episode finishes I have to work through all that stuff on paper (as it were) and then I can put it aside for a week and focus entirely on where is the porn I am so in love. Unless it gets really bad in the future, but--this is also my modus operandi for shows where the grouchy background brain takes up like 50% or sometimes a lot more. Overjoyed excitement with brief interruptions, lengthy dumping of all my criticism and concerns, six more days of excitement. And it will continue pretty much just like this, most likely, so...well, it will. My reaction posts for ANY show are never going to be a 100% squee-safe zone. Which only bothers me because I ALSO want to talk about the squee, I want to talk about the squee MORE, usually. I don't want people to not read my posts because I seem like a hater.)
(THE END FOR REAL. I hope. We'll see.)
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Dude, I SO agree. When he first started touching the bowtie and it hadn't been explained yet I was like, "...Canton, don't know what you're doing but I think I speak for everyone when I say that I want you to KEEP GOING."
Basically I totally want an all-TARDIS orgy for this ep. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?
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THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN AN ORGY. It has been a very long time since there's been an ensemble on TV, including the guest star(s), that I wanted to just throw in a PILE so very very much.
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