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half-season finale time
Dear Doctor Who fandom,
I am sorry that I yelled at you about your stupid theory, because apparently you were right, and it wasn't too rubbish in execution after all.
Sincerely,
Aria
I ... have not decided what I think about almost any of it, actually, but I am wary of my reaction mostly because I think I was trusting Moffat to do something different. I usually expect that Moffat isn't going to do the screamingly obvious thing, but then, he tends to do the simplest thing too; so in theory River as the Ponds' daughter seemed eye-rollingly absurd, but in practice I think I am willing to be quite down with human Time Lord Melody Pond and the strange tangled time travel adventures she gets up to. I suspect that I am okay with this because I've been convinced that River is the greatest, and because MORE TIME LORDS ALWAYS YES YES PLEASE, and because holy wow Doctor/River just got fifty times as delicious and weird and totally fucked up. (I confess I am a bit sad that my OT4 dreams are shattered. On the other hand, HOW COOL IS THAT, TRAVELING WITH A WHOLE FAMILY OF PONDS.)
I think I will get out of the way the things I know I did not much like, though! First I want to know why in heaven's name the Doctor didn't go rescue that little girl at once back in Day of the Moon, and why for the love of sanity he didn't tell Amy and Rory what was up. Hey, Doctor, you know those nine months Amy was gestating? IF YOU CAUGHT ON SO FAST WHY DIDN'T YOU GET HER WHILE THE BABY WAS STILL IN HER BODY. Moffat, I suspect you have maxed out your allotment of fridge logic here.
Also, I'm a bit meh on so many people fearing the Doctor and wanting to raise an army against him -- not that Moffat didn't properly set it up, with the Doctor's weirdly violent solutions this season, and the Pandorica last time, and &c, but it still felt kind of off? Like, when Ten went off the rails in Waters of Mars, it was long, long overdue. Eleven's intense anger here, and his "Colonel Runaway" speech, was ... I know Amy is important to him (because in weird ways they imprinted on each other and grew up together, and Eleven-Amy might be near Nine-Rose codependency levels) and I know baby-kidnappers probably tick him off pretty bad, but it still just felt odd.
That said, things I really liked:
+ the Silurian and her Victorian girlfriend, omg. EVERYONE NEEDS TO WRITE IT.
+ RORY. Seriously, Amy is 100% right: crying Roman centurion holding a baby = very cool. And adorable. And oh Rory, Rory, you have crept into my heart quietly and subtly but I love you like mad now.
+ Lorna the soldier girl! I just really enjoyed her generally, and the bit where the Doctor pretends to remember her is so utterly lovely.
+ to my surprise, the Melody Pond = River Song reveal actually gave me shivers and was delightfully executed. Plus we know it means bb Melody is going to be okay, though, heartbreak, they don't get to raise their daughter.
I am trying to keep track of all the questions there still are to answer. Re: the opening two-parter, there is of course what was going on with River there, especially regarding her total shock at the Doctor's death and the way she shot at the space suit; either she's the best actor ever, or something else is going on -- no matter whether the Doctor knows who it is in that suit, it might not be River. Even so she must have been playing it very close to the vest there, since she knew her younger self was also running about, unless of course she doesn't remember that bit of her life very well. (Also, the Silence are still involved somehow, right? Since they were keeping bb Melody in that orphanage? WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON.)
And we STILL don't know why TARDIS go boom, or why whatever made TARDIS go boom wanted us to know that Silence will fall, or why the Silence apparently had space ships very like the one atop Craig's house, or or or. Moffat, I'm trusting you to not drop your plot threads. Some September, DON'T LET ME DOWN.
I am sorry that I yelled at you about your stupid theory, because apparently you were right, and it wasn't too rubbish in execution after all.
Sincerely,
Aria
I ... have not decided what I think about almost any of it, actually, but I am wary of my reaction mostly because I think I was trusting Moffat to do something different. I usually expect that Moffat isn't going to do the screamingly obvious thing, but then, he tends to do the simplest thing too; so in theory River as the Ponds' daughter seemed eye-rollingly absurd, but in practice I think I am willing to be quite down with human Time Lord Melody Pond and the strange tangled time travel adventures she gets up to. I suspect that I am okay with this because I've been convinced that River is the greatest, and because MORE TIME LORDS ALWAYS YES YES PLEASE, and because holy wow Doctor/River just got fifty times as delicious and weird and totally fucked up. (I confess I am a bit sad that my OT4 dreams are shattered. On the other hand, HOW COOL IS THAT, TRAVELING WITH A WHOLE FAMILY OF PONDS.)
I think I will get out of the way the things I know I did not much like, though! First I want to know why in heaven's name the Doctor didn't go rescue that little girl at once back in Day of the Moon, and why for the love of sanity he didn't tell Amy and Rory what was up. Hey, Doctor, you know those nine months Amy was gestating? IF YOU CAUGHT ON SO FAST WHY DIDN'T YOU GET HER WHILE THE BABY WAS STILL IN HER BODY. Moffat, I suspect you have maxed out your allotment of fridge logic here.
Also, I'm a bit meh on so many people fearing the Doctor and wanting to raise an army against him -- not that Moffat didn't properly set it up, with the Doctor's weirdly violent solutions this season, and the Pandorica last time, and &c, but it still felt kind of off? Like, when Ten went off the rails in Waters of Mars, it was long, long overdue. Eleven's intense anger here, and his "Colonel Runaway" speech, was ... I know Amy is important to him (because in weird ways they imprinted on each other and grew up together, and Eleven-Amy might be near Nine-Rose codependency levels) and I know baby-kidnappers probably tick him off pretty bad, but it still just felt odd.
That said, things I really liked:
+ the Silurian and her Victorian girlfriend, omg. EVERYONE NEEDS TO WRITE IT.
+ RORY. Seriously, Amy is 100% right: crying Roman centurion holding a baby = very cool. And adorable. And oh Rory, Rory, you have crept into my heart quietly and subtly but I love you like mad now.
+ Lorna the soldier girl! I just really enjoyed her generally, and the bit where the Doctor pretends to remember her is so utterly lovely.
+ to my surprise, the Melody Pond = River Song reveal actually gave me shivers and was delightfully executed. Plus we know it means bb Melody is going to be okay, though, heartbreak, they don't get to raise their daughter.
I am trying to keep track of all the questions there still are to answer. Re: the opening two-parter, there is of course what was going on with River there, especially regarding her total shock at the Doctor's death and the way she shot at the space suit; either she's the best actor ever, or something else is going on -- no matter whether the Doctor knows who it is in that suit, it might not be River. Even so she must have been playing it very close to the vest there, since she knew her younger self was also running about, unless of course she doesn't remember that bit of her life very well. (Also, the Silence are still involved somehow, right? Since they were keeping bb Melody in that orphanage? WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON.)
And we STILL don't know why TARDIS go boom, or why whatever made TARDIS go boom wanted us to know that Silence will fall, or why the Silence apparently had space ships very like the one atop Craig's house, or or or. Moffat, I'm trusting you to not drop your plot threads. Some September, DON'T LET ME DOWN.
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I suspect we just haven't met her yet, but the most delightful part of this episode was how much it felt like the Doctor dropping in on the universe - a 100% completely realized universe we've only seen in bits and pieces until this point.
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But that fact would also mean that the Doctor learned nothing from River's carefully-worded beat down, and that he's still going to go off and give the Gamma Forest a new word for "mighty warrior."
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(Anonymous) 2011-06-05 12:37 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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And I did have a moment of, "But that's like the Doctor shagging his niece!"
But then I realized, no, it means he gets a some of the best bits of his favorite Ponds wrapped up in a Time Lordish package. Of course that's cool, to him. *facepalms*
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AND NOW I CANNOT UNSEE IT
AMY+RORY=BELLA+EDWARD
THE DOCTOR=JACOB
RIVER=RENESMEE
NEEDS MOAR SPARKLY
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IT'S THE INSANE SCHEDULE
AND THE COMPLETE LACK OF SLEEP
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...and suddenly I feel SO MUCH BETTER ABOUT IT ALL. /o\
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That said, I did like the Eleventh's brief glimmer of anger. He had worked so hard and so carefully to get his A-Team together, and he'd won the day with no bloodshed... and at that last moment, he can't help but reveal that under it all, he's absolutely livid. And his revenge on Manton is exactly the terrible vengeance that a technical pacifist, master manipulator of time would mete out.
But it did feel a little out of place. The Ninth and Tenth Doctors were very... emotive... about their anger -- and as he mentioned himself, its something new for the Eleventh. SO
Also:
+ the Silurian and her Victorian girlfriend, omg. EVERYONE NEEDS TO WRITE IT.
YES PLEASE
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BUT HOLY CRAP DO I LOVE MELODY POND = RIVER SONG SFM.
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(and maybe even consider the Valeyard...)
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Well, it would be two angry shouty people going at each other, each of the opinion that the other is wearing something outrageous. It would be more awesome if Valeyard had gotten to wear a better hat.
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I've been thinking backwards. I'm thinking that this "endless terrible war" that Eyepatch Lady mentions may not have happened at all if they hadn't taken Melody. Timey-wimey, yes?
Of course, then you have to wonder what Eyepatch Lady and the Clerics (good name for a band?) think started the war...
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If the classics are to be believed, then the Trojan war began because each king had sworn to never interfere in Helen's marriage, and also to protect it - with the threat of everybody else turning on them if they didn't protect it (sounds a little Cold Warish to me there, frankly). But also Troy was rich; their gods were a little bit different; the newly-returned prince was a classical coward (an archer); their women were meant to be beautiful (read: blonde - they weren't terribly imaginative); and at the least somebody would have wanted Cassandra and her twin brother for their future-telling if they'd heard of and believed it (oh yes, she had a brother. Her brother's foretellings were always believed. This may be because he was a bloke. He gets his own island in the Aeneid). And it was, importantly, far away, thus giving all the typically-feuding kings a common enemy to fight far away, which can often make it easier to kill off the person you don't like and make it look like somebody on the other side got him. I'm not saying this was a factor, but it might have been.
The American Civil War only became about the emancipation of slaves partway through. Up until then, it was more a matter of 'we don't like who the rest of you have elected, so we shall make our own government and secede from yours'.
War of the Roses? That's a power struggle. Henry VII felt he had a legitimate claim to the throne, as he was descended from a bunch of Welsh kings and his great-times-something grandmother had been the bastard daughter of the great-times-something grandfather of the then-ruling king. And he convinced other people he stood a chance.
Napoleon wanted power. And then he invaded Russia. This is generally considered a bad idea. Who knows what Hitler really wanted, but he made the same mistake.
I don't think it was just Melody. It's usually a number of small treaties being broken, or one person deciding he wants more power than the people around him. Even a madman in a box can't cause so much havoc. He leads revolutions, yes, but usually because he's the outsider looking in and going 'this isn't how it's done, actually look around you' and then people do look around them because it's hard to ignore somebody dressed like that and they go 'well, maybe we do need to shake things up around here. But we're not wearing that'.
(It's morning and I've only had one coffee. I therefore make no apologies for the rambling.)
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This bit confuses me, because everyone is referring to them as girlfriends and I don't remember ANYTHING in the episode that says they're a couple. I know that Jenny works for the Silurian woman as a maid and I remember the Silurian saying, "Jenny, get the swords," so apparently they work together sometimes? But that's it. I saw the Silurian woman in a couple of other scenes (though she hardly said anything), but Jenny never showed up again.
So I'm wondering where all the girlfriend-ness is coming from. I was WATCHING, and I didn't see a damned thing.
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I did decide that Jenny-the-Maid was Jenny-the-Doctor's-Daughter who had regenerated.
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