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fourth option
It's Doctor Who day! Again! IT'S HAPPENING EVERY WEEK, HOW AWESOME IS THAT.
I'll get the bits I liked less out of the way first, so as to sort out the things that I did like.
1. Although I liked large bits of the plot in concept, in execution it didn't work quite so well. What is the space whale going to eat now, and did it ever really need humans in its diet or was that just a way to keep the population cooperating? Whyyyy did we have to go inside its mouth and spend five minutes in goo? (I was not one of those children who liked gross things, but maybe children who are not me still like lots of goo?) If both Amy and Liz X were so appalled and so puzzled by their former choice upon the Big Reveal, what was the actual change in motivation? And really, why all the fear and the keeping down of the population, especially with those Smilers? I think I really want a different creepy fairytale-esque episode with the Smilers, because it felt like they were there for bonus terror and didn't serve the plot in any functional way.
2. We don't need it hammered in that ELEVEN IS LIKE A SPACE WHALE. HE IS OLD AND KIND AND ALONE! Meanwhile I also want to know why the Doctor doesn't just evacuate everyone using the TARDIS. It's not like they were on a time limit.
On the other hand, here are some things I loved:
1. AMY. She keeps hairpins in her nightdress for convenient lock-picking. She was morally opposed to what the Doctor was doing, but everyone, including the Doctor, was too, and she didn't spend any time being a useless moral compass -- which is not specifically a criticism of any previous companions, but there has been a tendency to go "THIS IS WRONG," which the Doctor probably already knows, without offering a viable alternative -- but she stopped him when she came up with a better solution! I am always, always easy for Companions As The Doctor; it seems to always be done in a different iteration, but I really like this one. Amy makes choices without consulting anyone, and tries to protect the Doctor from being hurt, and basically does her best to put the Doctor in the companion role for some of the episode. I love Eleven's look of horror at this, and also how he manages to deal with it.
2. Relatedly, I adore Amy's anxiety about her upcoming wedding. Perhaps she's rubbish at weddings, especially her own. I like that her running away is like the Doctor's running away, and that in exchange for a normal life, they have the TARDIS and anywhere they would like. I'm curious to see Eleven's reaction when he learns exactly what it is that Amy's running from.
3. I love the quiet understated way they dealt with the Time War. "Bad day," the Doctor says, but somehow from Eleven it doesn't feel like a downplayed understatement to mask pain. He's finally dealing with it. [There is a whole separate, possibly pages-long chunk of meta here, about each Doctor as a reaction to the last one, and the ways in which Eleven is different from Ten -- obviously -- and why; I have many Thoughts, most of them related to the scene where he tells Amy about being the last of his kind. I'll need to watch it again first, though, and also probably see how he deals with Daleks this time through.]
4. Amy's innate understanding of the Doctor is great, and probably also deserves to be looked at some more, in a way that is tied up with how she gets to Be The Doctor this episode. I like that I feel there's a lot going on with Amy. I also adore their scene at the end; those two have such great chemistry and affection for each other, and I just want to watch them interact more.
Yeah, still excited for Moff time. :D
I'll get the bits I liked less out of the way first, so as to sort out the things that I did like.
1. Although I liked large bits of the plot in concept, in execution it didn't work quite so well. What is the space whale going to eat now, and did it ever really need humans in its diet or was that just a way to keep the population cooperating? Whyyyy did we have to go inside its mouth and spend five minutes in goo? (I was not one of those children who liked gross things, but maybe children who are not me still like lots of goo?) If both Amy and Liz X were so appalled and so puzzled by their former choice upon the Big Reveal, what was the actual change in motivation? And really, why all the fear and the keeping down of the population, especially with those Smilers? I think I really want a different creepy fairytale-esque episode with the Smilers, because it felt like they were there for bonus terror and didn't serve the plot in any functional way.
2. We don't need it hammered in that ELEVEN IS LIKE A SPACE WHALE. HE IS OLD AND KIND AND ALONE! Meanwhile I also want to know why the Doctor doesn't just evacuate everyone using the TARDIS. It's not like they were on a time limit.
On the other hand, here are some things I loved:
1. AMY. She keeps hairpins in her nightdress for convenient lock-picking. She was morally opposed to what the Doctor was doing, but everyone, including the Doctor, was too, and she didn't spend any time being a useless moral compass -- which is not specifically a criticism of any previous companions, but there has been a tendency to go "THIS IS WRONG," which the Doctor probably already knows, without offering a viable alternative -- but she stopped him when she came up with a better solution! I am always, always easy for Companions As The Doctor; it seems to always be done in a different iteration, but I really like this one. Amy makes choices without consulting anyone, and tries to protect the Doctor from being hurt, and basically does her best to put the Doctor in the companion role for some of the episode. I love Eleven's look of horror at this, and also how he manages to deal with it.
2. Relatedly, I adore Amy's anxiety about her upcoming wedding. Perhaps she's rubbish at weddings, especially her own. I like that her running away is like the Doctor's running away, and that in exchange for a normal life, they have the TARDIS and anywhere they would like. I'm curious to see Eleven's reaction when he learns exactly what it is that Amy's running from.
3. I love the quiet understated way they dealt with the Time War. "Bad day," the Doctor says, but somehow from Eleven it doesn't feel like a downplayed understatement to mask pain. He's finally dealing with it. [There is a whole separate, possibly pages-long chunk of meta here, about each Doctor as a reaction to the last one, and the ways in which Eleven is different from Ten -- obviously -- and why; I have many Thoughts, most of them related to the scene where he tells Amy about being the last of his kind. I'll need to watch it again first, though, and also probably see how he deals with Daleks this time through.]
4. Amy's innate understanding of the Doctor is great, and probably also deserves to be looked at some more, in a way that is tied up with how she gets to Be The Doctor this episode. I like that I feel there's a lot going on with Amy. I also adore their scene at the end; those two have such great chemistry and affection for each other, and I just want to watch them interact more.
Yeah, still excited for Moff time. :D
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And to add to the plotholishness of the episode, what was with the bit at the beginning? That was totally never explained. What were the Smilers testing the kids on, anyway, and were they reading minds? What?
Also, how did Amy's eye makeup get fixed after she sent herself that message?
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On the other hand, I think I am loving Eleven's character arc so far!
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Also: how does Liz Ten figure it out every ten years if the Doctor doesn't show up? She said he'd gotten farther in one day than she had in years, right?
I guess I should stop nitpicking. I did very much love Eleven, which is really the important thing.
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What I am finding very interesting about Eleven is that he is clearly willing to kill to save. I think we'll see what happens with this as the show goes on, but there's that preview clip with the gun, and him punching someone in the face in next week's episode, and of course the space whale. It's not that the Doctor hasn't been willing to kill to save before, of course, but after Ten and the Master and That Gun, and Ten's aggressively professed pacifism, I'm finding it intriguing. At least Eleven knows he interferes when children are crying, even as he gives Amy the required speech about non-interference.
I am so into Amy! She screwed up badly and found a workable solution and got covered in slime and read the Doctor's mind all in her first trip! I like that she leaps before she looks, and that sometimes that works out and sometimes it doesn't, but it's always kind of her Being the Doctor; I like that we got that right away, and of course I wonder how much it's about the fact that the Doctor has been such a huge (if absent) part of her life for so long. Meanwhile I also love that he cavalierly sent her off on her own in the space ship with no engine in her nightgown to investigate the Smilers, and she was like "What! What! Okay," and then picked locks.
Amy's Wedding = The Time Vortex, Y/Y?
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Yes. I think that ... well, I feel like it's still too early to be forming Theories of Eleven (if I'd tried to form Theories of Ten after only New Earth and Tooth and Claw, I would have a much lighter and weirdly less sympathetic take, for instance) but it does look like Eleven has a lot more self-awareness, or at least self-honesty. He's not going to yell about not hurting things; he's going to get the job done and actually deal with the consequences. I think I really dig it.
I love all those things you list about Amy, and also that she and the Doctor seem to really form/inform each other's characters, in a surprisingly equal way. I mean, she was there through his entire regenerative process, he's been a major presence for more than half her life, and I think they've become a bit like each other. I hope this Goes Places.
Y/Y/MFY. :D
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1) I almost instantly thought of an alternative to torturing the Star Whale, to letting it kill everyone as it broke free, or to rendering it brain dead: "Why doesn't someone just talk to the Star Whale and ask it what IT wants to do?" And, if it wants to burst free of its starship prison (and I wouldn't blame it if that was the case), then asking it to please get the people of Starship UK to another starship or to a planet that would support human life first.
I was a bit surprised at the Doctor for not thinking of asking the Star Whale to share its opinion, as he knew it was an intelligent creature and he's always been one for talking to people before deciding anything.
2) Question for afterwards, though...okay, the Whale is now free and flying Starship UK of its own volition--so, what are the people of the starship going to feed it? Are the people of the starship going to keep tossing arbitrary adults down feeding tubes that lead into its mouth? It's a big, BIG animal. It needs a lot of fuel. And how the Whale was being fed was a fairly major plot point.
I don't think the Doctor actually solved the problem here. The Whale is no longer being tortured, but the people of the starship still are. Unless being eaten alive is a GOOD thing in this future.
3) Um...if the Star Whale has NEVER hurt or eaten children in three hundred years, and if Hawthorne, the guy in charge of the Smilers and hence in charge of the Whale, has noticed this fact--then why does little Timmy get taken to Floor Zero after failing a test and trying to take an elevator to London?
Don't get me wrong. It's a great opening. It's beautifully creepy, and it sets up Starship UK as a terrible place, a police state in which anyone can be sent Below for the smallest infraction. But the reason for taking Timmy to the Beast--as food for the Star Whale--is established in the end as entirely pointless, because the Star Whale will not eat children. Has never eaten children. And Hawthorne knows this, for he tells this to Liz 10 and the Doctor.
So why do it? If the reason the Whale-Keepers are sending children to the Whale is not working and they know it's not working, why do it? Is this really the only way that Starship UK can grab kids and enslave them to work in the Tower of London? (Because we see Timmy in the end in the Tower as a blank-faced slave of the Whale...though the blankness may be an effect of trauma. Understandably, I think.) Do the Smilers believe that they need to enslave children? Why do they think this?
Honestly, it looks to me as if Timmy disappeared
down a wellsolely to upset Mandy, which would get the Doctor involved and which would allow Amy to draw a couple of key parallels in the end.