Sea Devils And Die: GeroniMoffat's Doctor Who In The 2010s

Well that sucked.

― Leee, Lord of Wtfomgham (Leee), Saturday, September 10, 2011 6:26 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

didn't mind it. but that's three episodes running that shared quite a lot - claustrophobic environments, inner fears, malfunctioning aliens. Kinda want one where they just get out of the TARDIS and explore an alien planet.

Relinquishing assistants was decent. Rory talking about helping someone conquer a stammer/actual nursing being about helping with real nightmares as opp. to the doctor was good as well. Actual alieny stuff bit dull.

Anyone else find all the introspection can get a little wearying? In terms of TARDIS interrelations but also how the mechanics of defeating the alien work?

Also, realise it's possibly a function of having independent episodes by different writers, but the way River Pond/time baby has just been completely forgotten is a little weird.

Favourite episode so far this series.

Yeah, the continuity of this season seems pretty fucked up, particularly in characterisation terms. I liked the episode as it was, though they overplayed the annoying Walliams comedy character, and I also didn't get how easily Amy lost her faith in the doctor while he was still there with her and after he'd worked out the monster fed on faith and said it OUT LOUD WHILE SHE WAS THERE.

Hoping that there's some actual weird time anomaly that explains the stupidity of some of these narrative things but I doubt it, though the Doctor-Rory "you're talking in the past tense" thing was interesting.

not seen it, btw. just thought that was the traditional first post after a new ep now.

Didn't get the plot or premise at all, but quite liked it nonetheless despite the shoehorned reference to Nimon and the whole minotaur death scene feeling ripped off from the bit in Top Ten where the giant game-playing bull phases with the spaceship.

Time Babby was dealt with at the end when Amy said "oh, if you bump into my daughter tell her to come and visit her mother, will you?"

Next week looks on the face of it to be a largely pointless retread of a story from last year that was wrapped up in the story but WHO KNOWS might just have been sequeled because of the guest star.

oh right, missed that aldo, thanks. Thought that 'past tense' bit was the Doctor realising that Rory was subconsciously saying he didn't want to travel with the Doctor any more.

I've been liking these closed in, claustrophobic episodes. This series has really been strong on the pain and suffering the doctor causes his companions, I hope it gets resolved well.

As for next week, James Corden's spare room with a tardis in it seem to be put there for a reason this series. It fits with Neil Gaiman's tardis graveyard somehow.

plus, cybermats, it would seem

Amy "grew up" by becoming Amy Williams and relinquishing adventure for domesticity and Rory's dream of owning a mid-life crisis car. And I pretty much hate this show.

I liked that - well, up to their return to Earth, at any rate - but I like anything with a minotaur in. Hotel of Asterion!

Was a bit similar in some ways to the one before last with the scared kid and the dolls' house, I suppose, but as someone who has a lot of dreams about weird buildings full of staircases and corridors I appreciate the vein of nightmarish creepiness that they both tap into.

Amy "grew up" by becoming Amy Williams

Actually totally agree with the 'ick, fuck off' about this. However, we all know that they aren't going to stay in this form of domesticity, so I'm not sure that the show itself is *actually* saying that this is the paradigm they should aspire to. Judgement suspended for the time being.

^ yeah. I share your distaste and could've done without it being tacked on the end of an otherwise good episode, but I'll wait till I've seen where this is going before I get too angry about it.

Also, minotaurs.

No comments on the direction? For mainstream prime time TV that was some pretty weird direction. All those long shots to give a sense of distance from the Doctor and co... Had a very different feel to the other episodes. Voyeuristic, creepy. Seriously, that was a weird episode, really bold in its execution. Fairly spooked me.
Amy relinquishing adventure for domesticity? Don't you think you're jumping the gun? The Doctor doesn't want to put Amy in further danger, but obviously she'll be back. As has been said above, this isn't what they should aspire to. They're setting something up...

My reaction to this episode:

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ll7peiFOXN1qbe30io1_500.gif

I thought the entire point was not that Amy "grew up" by becoming a domestic drone but that The Doctor basically ditched another set of companions because shit was getting too real (see: the departures of Susan, Sarah Jane).

Hopefully if Melissa hates this show she'll stop watching it; life is too short to spend it on things you don't like.

Rubik's cube seems to be significant... supports the theory that there are two Doctors at play. In Night Terrors the Doctor couldn't solve it - this week's Doctor could. Or maybe that's a red herring. Perhaps he's solved it in the meantime. Colour symbolism... much blue in this episode. Doctor's bowtie and Amy's nail varnish were Tardis blue. Meaningful or a red herring?

when would they have switched places?

during the quarantine maybe?

I thought the entire point was not that Amy "grew up" by becoming a domestic drone but that The Doctor basically ditched another set of companions because shit was getting too real (see: the departures of Susan, Sarah Jane).

Yeah -- I thought that was rather obvious. Unless you're being willfully obtuse.

Look-In magazine! Respect due.
"With respect, you're fired" gave me a little lol.

I really liked this episode. Brought to mind how many of my favourite books/films reference spooky hotels with dreamlike moving walls etc. ALSO, I liked how Rory was the 'rational' one with no belief system to do for him.

He didn't have to ditch Amy while calling her "Amy Williams", a name she clearly never wanted (and shouldn't have to want). The idea that Amy's version of growing up and losing faith in childish things is capitulating to her husband's desires and taking his name is gross. It's also gross because Amy's last name has always represented adventure on the show ("a bit fairytale", "Melody Williams is a geography teacher, Melody Pond is a superhero"), so the Doctor calling her that and saying that that's who she really is (should be) seems to represent putting away "childish" things, as if a woman keeping her own name and rejecting her husband's is symbolic of immaturity.

Not going to stop watching.

Thought it was kind of "in reality, I'm kind of a dick. you need to realise that."

Why on Earth would you keep watching a show you hate so much? Are you that desperate to be unhappy that you feel forced to subject yourself to things you don't like?

Because it's a show that I'm invested in and that I want to be better than it is? Because I like the concept and some of the characters? And if I dropped everything that trafficked in this particular brand of bullshit I'd quickly be without any forms of entertainment.

I'm not a fan of the "Williams" thing, but I don't think it was about reinforcing a female-subjugated domesticity. It was just lazy writerly shorthand to signify an identity shift.

PRIME NUMBERS!

also the girl from Darjeeling Limited was in this.

If so, I need to watch Darjeeling Limited.

The fact that it's lazy writerly shorthand makes it worse though? It's the unexamined assumption that taking her husband's name=growing up that makes it so insulting. I mean, I wouldn't expect that they would do that while fully cognizant of the implications (perhaps giving them too much credit here, idk), I do think that it was a shorthand to signal her identity shift. That doesn't make it better to me, that just makes it more clear that that particular belief is just background noise to them and acceptable within the framework of how they think about women, marriage, etc. I mean, society is full of the unexamined assumption that a woman not taking her husband's name is emasculating or immature or some hairy feminist thing. x-posts

Maybe, but maybe not.

I think the show has dealt far too much with Rory and Amy's relationship to make it as simple as "taking your husbands name is the way to have a normal existence". It's unfortunate that the lazy, shorthand for an identity-shift encroached upon an area of feminist issue, but I don't think the show that grand, subjugating claim either. At the end of the day, it's not about creating (a very specific kind of) female empowerment.

After having slept on it, the thing I liked the most was the Muslim nurse and The Doctor's seeming admission that he'd be much better served by her as a companion than a needy, whiny, self-entitled, abusive arsehole. Although he'd probably keep the bloke who used to be made out of plastic.

Then that got me thinking - is NuWho Doctor defined and affected by his companions? Ecclescake started out out tough but the slide to Emo Doc had started midway through S1 and went full-on through S2 I WUB YOU nonsense. He gained the ability not to act in S3 and then became family obsessed in S4 which led to his eventual fate - trusting The Master and The Timelords to be doing the right thing because they were 'family', then poisoning himself to save Wilf 'for' Donna.

Over S5 and S6 we've seen him as a selfish, petulant child, who doesn't unstand how people think and often does irrational things just because they benefit him. We've also seen him throw himself at the opposite sex (Marilyn Monroe, the French Queen at the beginning of this series) whether he has an emotional attachment to them or not and as cocky and arrogant when it suits him, being abusive to the people that care about him for his own ends. Also he seems to have an inexplicable attachment to Melody/River that seems more like a family tie than anything.

Or is this just a coincidence?

Thought it was kind of "in reality, I'm kind of a dick. you need to realise that."

I got this feeling from it as well. I don't think it was the show as much as it was the character that wanted Amy safely packed away into a version of a safe life that appeals to him. I don't think he cares how she feels about it. I didn't even hear him call her Amy Williams and I'm sure I'd have been annoyed by it if I had. We were already too busy complaining about yet more magic and yet more sickening Murray Gold swelling choral music, and yet more "oh the Doctor, he is so ancient and lonely, you know," business. Bleurgh.

I really hated this. I want a new Doctor, I want Gillan to go away and get a role that challenges her ability, I want the Doctor-companion relationship to be solid enough that I care even a tiny bit when they split up at the end of the episode, and I want them to drop the high concepts JUST. ONCE.

The fact that it's lazy writerly shorthand makes it worse though? It's the unexamined assumption that taking her husband's name=growing up that makes it so insulting. I mean, I wouldn't expect that they would do that while fully cognizant of the implications (perhaps giving them too much credit here, idk), I do think that it was a shorthand to signal her identity shift. That doesn't make it better to me, that just makes it more clear that that particular belief is just background noise to them and acceptable within the framework of how they think about women, marriage, etc. I mean, society is full of the unexamined assumption that a woman not taking her husband's name is emasculating or immature or some hairy feminist thing. x-posts

Already feeling sorry for the poor bugger you end up marrying, love.

Likewise, asshole.

Cup of tea please, scotstvo.

While he's making that - yeah, always worth examining the fallback assumptions of popular TV, especially in a programme that has done so much to examine sexual difference and in a series that has repeatedly presented strong woman/weak man relationships and consciously bucked marriage name tradition. Didn't actually notice the Amy Williams thing but did feel slightly queasy at the suburban house and fast red sports car for Rory.

Which of course suggests it's a quite deliberate ploy - either the doctor camouflaging them from the danger, or a more general, 'I'll give you what I think you are beginning to think you want and see how you get on, because the only companion I can travel with is a willing companion.' So they are given the most cliched and traditional set-up to play with. I don't think there's an implied judgment there that it's bad.

It's a bit weird to me because Amy pretty clearly was still a willing companion who was willing to take the risks involved. It's The Doctor who decided the risk was too great without asking her how she felt about it or what she wanted. I mean, obviously, he can decide who he wants and does not want on the TARDIS, but the idea that it's what Amy wanted (or is even starting to want subconsciously) seems off to me. He just decided without any input from her at all that what she should want is a house and a car and the whole Amy Williams life he thinks he has been "letting" her put off because of a childish faith in him. And everything about it was Rory's dream, from the house to the car to a wife that stays home and safe with him. I wish there had been something there that seemed more "Amy" at the very least.

I'd like to think there's something more to this storyline, but it really does seem to be about Amy growing up and putting the Doctor in a drawer with all her other childish things. And that's a pretty common fantasy trope that the girl has to leave behind adventure for domesticity whether she wants to or not. I'd love to see it subverted, but I don't have much faith.

I definitely noticed the surname thing, esp since at the start of the episode he calls A+R "assorted Ponds"!

(unless there was further context that I missed - we were a bit frazzled when we sat down to watch it on iplayer, since we'd put the telly on at broadcast time only to realise that this was the week of the digital switchover here and the tuner took 40 minutes to retune all its channels. Got to do it again in 10 days, rssnfrssn)

Amy "grew up" by becoming Amy Williams

yeah i am with you on this one, that was bullshit

tho presumably that was their old house he took them back to, the one they were living in at the beginning of the series?

but anyway yeah for all moffat's "we have a married couple now and we need to deal with that" all they seem to do is rehash the amy's-choice domesticity-or-adventure binary foreverrrrrr -- the baby/search-for-melody stuff could have been a way for them to genuinely focus on the married couple as a partnership or w/e and they basically just handwaved her out of the way and continued with the same all-that-defines-them-is-romantic-primacy tedium.

also: "oh no your faith in me and my ~saving you~ is what is putting you in danger! stop believing me, because i just told you to, and i will ~save you~ (OH AND THEN i will ~save you~ again by leaving you behind)" is duuuuumb

It's a bit weird to me because Amy pretty clearly was still a willing companion who was willing to take the risks involved.

The only thing I'll say in the Doctor's defence here (because basically I agree with you), is that Amy has less of an idea than the Doctor has of what the risks actually are.

On the other hand, not every female companion the Doctor has ever had has been required to put away her life of adventure. Sarah Jane didn't, and nor did Martha. Also some of them used to get killed, which needs to happen more in the new series or the risks involved are frankly not that huge.

tho presumably that was their old house he took them back to, the one they were living in at the beginning of the series?

Didn't think so, the way he gave her the keys to it, but it would admittedly be odd not to take them back to their house/flat, unless he were genuinely putting them in a simulacrum of the traditional suburban ideal in order to hide them.

The house in the first episode didn't have a blue door.

oh so it's either shitty continuity or yet more timey wimey bobbins

I also didn't get how easily Amy lost her faith in the doctor while he was still there with her and after he'd worked out the monster fed on faith and said it OUT LOUD WHILE SHE WAS THERE

because the faith was ill-founded, and not based on her actual experience. she knew this, really, and was thus able to let it go

oh so it's either shitty continuity or yet more timey wimey bobbins

...or just a new house

Or a lick of paint.

Already feeling sorry for the poor bugger you end up marrying, love.

― scotstvo, Sunday, September 18, 2011 2:21 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

could you not do this please, in all seriousness. it's rude and belittling