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May. 21st, 2011 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cblj_backupSee? I'm doing better this week! Because it is already time for Sam's Three Things About Doctor Who!
Spoilers for Doctor Who 6.05: The Really Ooky Flesh
1. This episode seemed almost back to front. I kept thinking, during certain monologues, "Isn't this usually the speech we get at the climax?" It wasn't boring, but it did have a very steady-energy, no-build feel to it. You'd think people who could write brilliant stuff like Doctor Who, which used to manage a build and climax in every part of, say, a TEN PART EPISODE, would be able to get past this backloaded-two-parter thing. Maybe I'm wrong, though. We'll see next week!
2. Is it me or have the one-off characters been a bit inclined towards hysteria lately? I mean this episode was basically driven by the slightly unrealistic irrationality of the science team and their gangers. You know what it's like, it's like these people exist in a world where Science Fiction doesn't.
Scifi is one of the great moral instructors of our time -- the vast majority of it, in any medium, frames contemporary ethical dilemmas within futuristic worlds. It's practically a marker of the genre and we all accept it, this idea that we're watching people of the future struggle with problems that are allegorically linked to ones we face every day. It reinforces the idea that a particular moral code is timeless and universal. Much of science fiction teaches that a code of understanding, patience, and mercy is necessary for the survival and prosperity of the species, but even dystopian fiction posits an opposing code of wariness, perception, and the power inherent in strength.
As a byproduct, all this prepares us to deal, emotionally and spiritually, with things that haven't happened yet. These people act like people who haven't even had the most basic indoctrination that we all get just by existing in the same culture as the scifi genre. I get where the problem lies: if they aren't suspicious of their doubles, then there's absolutely jack-shit driving the plot. But maybe that means there ought to be a different plot, because at the moment they're rather caricatures, and we've all had this particular moral lesson before.
3. AHAHAHAHA DOCTORGANGER. (Also, we think this is the Birth Of The Autons, yes?)
3a. I couldn't figure out any particular reason to be using a castle for this episode, but that's because for a while I forgot a cardinal rule of Doctor Who: WE DON'T NEED A REASON FOR A CASTLE.
Spoilers for Doctor Who 6.05: The Really Ooky Flesh
1. This episode seemed almost back to front. I kept thinking, during certain monologues, "Isn't this usually the speech we get at the climax?" It wasn't boring, but it did have a very steady-energy, no-build feel to it. You'd think people who could write brilliant stuff like Doctor Who, which used to manage a build and climax in every part of, say, a TEN PART EPISODE, would be able to get past this backloaded-two-parter thing. Maybe I'm wrong, though. We'll see next week!
2. Is it me or have the one-off characters been a bit inclined towards hysteria lately? I mean this episode was basically driven by the slightly unrealistic irrationality of the science team and their gangers. You know what it's like, it's like these people exist in a world where Science Fiction doesn't.
Scifi is one of the great moral instructors of our time -- the vast majority of it, in any medium, frames contemporary ethical dilemmas within futuristic worlds. It's practically a marker of the genre and we all accept it, this idea that we're watching people of the future struggle with problems that are allegorically linked to ones we face every day. It reinforces the idea that a particular moral code is timeless and universal. Much of science fiction teaches that a code of understanding, patience, and mercy is necessary for the survival and prosperity of the species, but even dystopian fiction posits an opposing code of wariness, perception, and the power inherent in strength.
As a byproduct, all this prepares us to deal, emotionally and spiritually, with things that haven't happened yet. These people act like people who haven't even had the most basic indoctrination that we all get just by existing in the same culture as the scifi genre. I get where the problem lies: if they aren't suspicious of their doubles, then there's absolutely jack-shit driving the plot. But maybe that means there ought to be a different plot, because at the moment they're rather caricatures, and we've all had this particular moral lesson before.
3. AHAHAHAHA DOCTORGANGER. (Also, we think this is the Birth Of The Autons, yes?)
3a. I couldn't figure out any particular reason to be using a castle for this episode, but that's because for a while I forgot a cardinal rule of Doctor Who: WE DON'T NEED A REASON FOR A CASTLE.
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Date: 2011-05-22 02:31 am (UTC)2 - The extras were either people who just had melty-faced doubles created of themselves or people who realized their entire life was a lie and also they were made of plastic they can't control. The one girl totally did a bathroom punch on the Cute One. Not surprised she got a bit hysterical. Then later, one of their friends totally french fries another.
Anywho, I disagree. They are a bunch of disagreeable govermental contractors who just gave birth to themselves. All in all, they're handling it pretty well. It's Amy who's going a bit off the rails, all because the woman Rory is trying to save is cute.
And note how AWESOME Rory was. The writers noticed what I did, that having Rory spend most of the episode insane, murderous or hooked up to happy alien drug sick bay is not working out for the heroics.
And P.S. Shouldn't Rory BE an expert in medevial culture? Didn't his plastic double (hey!) live through it?
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Date: 2011-05-22 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-22 04:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-22 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-03 08:59 am (UTC)Not actually a vid, but still.
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Date: 2011-06-03 12:32 pm (UTC)Ok I must vid this. Possibly this weekend. I think I have the video files for the original Autons episodes, too...
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Date: 2011-06-03 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-22 03:28 pm (UTC)Rory WAS awesome. :D Definitely. And -- I dunno, he lived through the middle ages but he did so while guarding the box, so I don't know how out-and-about he got. Plus, I mean, I might know a bit about how things looked in general in, say, the 90's, but just living through it didn't make me an expert in the furniture or architecture or whatnot of the era.