Day of the Doctor
Nov. 24th, 2013 09:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkYesterday was the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special! I went, and I had a great time :) I went alone because my friends bought tickets much earlier than me and went to another cinema, and I was planning to meet people there but the place was so packed we didn't find each other. There were people in costumes :D Several TARDIS, Doctors, a Rose with a giant (water) gun, a Dalek, and many people in great shirts. The atmosphere was great, during and after, even in the train on the way home I found a group discussing it *g*
I enjoyed it, there were several great things in it, but also a couple of things that made me go "meh..."
Some things, not in order:
- Strax! Threatening everybody! Popcorn can feel pain! Everybody loved it :)
- I enjoyed Elizabeth I killing the Zygon and being unexpectedly badass, but that was Elizabeth I? Queen of an Empire? Just marrying this random dude? Okay...
- The Doctors had some fantastic interactions. "Why are you pointing your screwdrivers? Are you going to assemble a cabinet at them?" xD Also the scene in the cell in the Tower together. I'm sad the 9th wasn't there.
- There were some nice throwbacks to earlier episodes, I'm sure I didn't catch all of them (but Tumblr will probably help *g*)
- Nitpick, but Clara fell into the Doctor's timeline - shouldn't the Tenth and 8.5 at least have had a "didn't I see you somewhere before?" moment?
- I liked the girl in the scarf. She hopes the Doctor will save them, but the first time she does it herself, and she might be terrified but she does fine. She felt like the audience self-insert, but in a good way.
The solution, negotiate a compromise while unsure which side is which, is great. I was confused in the end: one of them has the inhaler, and they know who had it before, so they know which one of them is the Zygon, right? I don't think the amnesia would have covered that. So why are they still friendly?
- The leader of UNIT (Kate Stewart, Wikipedia tells me) was prepared to destroy London with a nuke to prevent the Zygons from taking over Earth. We've seen similar things before, e.g. with Martha. The Doctor tells her not to do it because she'd never be able to live with it. But she knows that. It's a sacrifice she's making. Good of the many vs. good of the few. She thinks there isn't another way, she thinks the Tower is TARDIS-proofed, she doesn't even know the vortex manipulator is gone, she probably thinks that if she hesitates for even a short time the Zygons could do enormous damage to the planet. Okay, maybe once the Doctors arrive she could take a second to reconsider, but she's locked into a panic action. I don't blame her for her actions in the least.
- The Doctor, however... looking for a different way out is what he does. He refuses to accept situations like this. What makes the Time War any different? That parallel with Kate Stewart, as well done as it was, made this situation even stranger and made it make less of an impact for me. In the end he (almost) decides to do it because it would save others, which is exactly why he wanted to do it in the first place, and he would have done it if not for finding a different solution, so he has no right at all to give lectures to Kate (even though I can understand why he does, he is not rarely quite the hypocrite.)
We didn't even get to see what he did during the war that broke him, we were only told he was a warrior but we only saw him shooting at a wall and maybe one Dalek. What did he do? Invent weapons? Fire weapons?
It's not like it's a particularly difficult solution: put Gallifrey into stasis. Temporarily remove it from this reality. It shouldn't be such an outlandish solution that it takes a Time Lord 400 years to come up with it - and then almost forget, if Clara hadn't reminded him, which, what - much less a planet full of Time Lords and Ladies. When the Council guy said "but the calculations would take hundreds of years" - you're literally a race of time travellers! Why is this war being fought with guns instead of throughout time lines? Have you completely forgotten about that added dimension? Have they suddenly become stupid? (At least the High Council tried. Psychopaths.)
Also I found the focus on children rather strange, especially for a race that lives hundreds of years. You don't feel that sorry for the adults? Once the children grow up you care less about them? Sometimes focusing on children as emphasis works well, but here it didn't for me at all.
- It's not like it changed much, as far as I'm aware. We already knew, at the latest by "End of Time" that the Time Lords were not literally "dead", Gallifrey was just timelocked, and I'm pretty sure Ten knew that too. Only I/we thought that both Gallifrey and the Daleks were timelocked - which we didn't really know what that meant - and now the Dalek fleet destroyed itself and Gallifrey is in stasis - which we don't really know what that means either. Except that apparently "timelocked" is final, out of reach, and "in stasis" means "can be found again?" To be honest I care less about what it changes for the Doctor's ability to find it again and more about what it means to the people inside of the bubble, and let's be honest, we're not going to find that out anyway. "Timelocked" could mean "have to continue that fight forever" and that sounds like a fate at least as bad as death; it would actually work really well with the name of the weapon, "Moment", but then the emphasis on killing and burning them would be strange. So maybe the change just means the people inside don't suffer? I'd be perfectly happy with that, and damning your people to eternal war would definitely be something to feel an enormous amount of guilt over. Hm.
- Nitpicking: Where did the War Doctor pick up "for god's sake"? I wasn't aware that Time Lords have god(s), and when/where would this Doctor have spent enough time with other species to pick up that phrase? Edit:naye explained it :)
- From what I saw/heard, very few people recognized Tom Baker. I didn't either *g* I just guessed it was one of the earlier Doctors.
- So Tl;dr, I didn't like the presentation of the main plot, but other than that it was fun and I enjoyed most of it, especially as long as I don't think about it too much ;)
Edit: Someone once described Torchwood to me as "the show where there is no third option because the Doctor doesn't show up." So you actually have to make the sacrifice. Oh Jack *hugs him*
I enjoyed it, there were several great things in it, but also a couple of things that made me go "meh..."
Some things, not in order:
- Strax! Threatening everybody! Popcorn can feel pain! Everybody loved it :)
- I enjoyed Elizabeth I killing the Zygon and being unexpectedly badass, but that was Elizabeth I? Queen of an Empire? Just marrying this random dude? Okay...
- The Doctors had some fantastic interactions. "Why are you pointing your screwdrivers? Are you going to assemble a cabinet at them?" xD Also the scene in the cell in the Tower together. I'm sad the 9th wasn't there.
- There were some nice throwbacks to earlier episodes, I'm sure I didn't catch all of them (but Tumblr will probably help *g*)
- Nitpick, but Clara fell into the Doctor's timeline - shouldn't the Tenth and 8.5 at least have had a "didn't I see you somewhere before?" moment?
- I liked the girl in the scarf. She hopes the Doctor will save them, but the first time she does it herself, and she might be terrified but she does fine. She felt like the audience self-insert, but in a good way.
The solution, negotiate a compromise while unsure which side is which, is great. I was confused in the end: one of them has the inhaler, and they know who had it before, so they know which one of them is the Zygon, right? I don't think the amnesia would have covered that. So why are they still friendly?
- The leader of UNIT (Kate Stewart, Wikipedia tells me) was prepared to destroy London with a nuke to prevent the Zygons from taking over Earth. We've seen similar things before, e.g. with Martha. The Doctor tells her not to do it because she'd never be able to live with it. But she knows that. It's a sacrifice she's making. Good of the many vs. good of the few. She thinks there isn't another way, she thinks the Tower is TARDIS-proofed, she doesn't even know the vortex manipulator is gone, she probably thinks that if she hesitates for even a short time the Zygons could do enormous damage to the planet. Okay, maybe once the Doctors arrive she could take a second to reconsider, but she's locked into a panic action. I don't blame her for her actions in the least.
- The Doctor, however... looking for a different way out is what he does. He refuses to accept situations like this. What makes the Time War any different? That parallel with Kate Stewart, as well done as it was, made this situation even stranger and made it make less of an impact for me. In the end he (almost) decides to do it because it would save others, which is exactly why he wanted to do it in the first place, and he would have done it if not for finding a different solution, so he has no right at all to give lectures to Kate (even though I can understand why he does, he is not rarely quite the hypocrite.)
We didn't even get to see what he did during the war that broke him, we were only told he was a warrior but we only saw him shooting at a wall and maybe one Dalek. What did he do? Invent weapons? Fire weapons?
It's not like it's a particularly difficult solution: put Gallifrey into stasis. Temporarily remove it from this reality. It shouldn't be such an outlandish solution that it takes a Time Lord 400 years to come up with it - and then almost forget, if Clara hadn't reminded him, which, what - much less a planet full of Time Lords and Ladies. When the Council guy said "but the calculations would take hundreds of years" - you're literally a race of time travellers! Why is this war being fought with guns instead of throughout time lines? Have you completely forgotten about that added dimension? Have they suddenly become stupid? (At least the High Council tried. Psychopaths.)
Also I found the focus on children rather strange, especially for a race that lives hundreds of years. You don't feel that sorry for the adults? Once the children grow up you care less about them? Sometimes focusing on children as emphasis works well, but here it didn't for me at all.
- It's not like it changed much, as far as I'm aware. We already knew, at the latest by "End of Time" that the Time Lords were not literally "dead", Gallifrey was just timelocked, and I'm pretty sure Ten knew that too. Only I/we thought that both Gallifrey and the Daleks were timelocked - which we didn't really know what that meant - and now the Dalek fleet destroyed itself and Gallifrey is in stasis - which we don't really know what that means either. Except that apparently "timelocked" is final, out of reach, and "in stasis" means "can be found again?" To be honest I care less about what it changes for the Doctor's ability to find it again and more about what it means to the people inside of the bubble, and let's be honest, we're not going to find that out anyway. "Timelocked" could mean "have to continue that fight forever" and that sounds like a fate at least as bad as death; it would actually work really well with the name of the weapon, "Moment", but then the emphasis on killing and burning them would be strange. So maybe the change just means the people inside don't suffer? I'd be perfectly happy with that, and damning your people to eternal war would definitely be something to feel an enormous amount of guilt over. Hm.
- Nitpicking: Where did the War Doctor pick up "for god's sake"? I wasn't aware that Time Lords have god(s), and when/where would this Doctor have spent enough time with other species to pick up that phrase? Edit:
naye explained it :)- From what I saw/heard, very few people recognized Tom Baker. I didn't either *g* I just guessed it was one of the earlier Doctors.
- So Tl;dr, I didn't like the presentation of the main plot, but other than that it was fun and I enjoyed most of it, especially as long as I don't think about it too much ;)
Edit: Someone once described Torchwood to me as "the show where there is no third option because the Doctor doesn't show up." So you actually have to make the sacrifice. Oh Jack *hugs him*
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Date: 2013-11-28 08:13 am (UTC)And while I mostly enjoyed it, there is something about wiping out the doctor's dark past and having it suddenly be ok that is strangely unsatisfying............
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Date: 2013-11-28 10:01 am (UTC)Yeah, I wasn't sure about that as well. But I think I'm okay with it because a) his memories were real (idk, timey-wimey stuff), b) it's not all magically ok, Gallifrey is still lost somewhere, it's just become a bit more likely that it'll be found one day, c) the Daleks survived too, so it's not completely one-sided, d) hopefully it'll make for nice episodes :)
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Date: 2013-11-28 06:01 pm (UTC)Yes, THIS is the attitude I need to cultivate!
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Date: 2013-11-24 02:56 pm (UTC)I don't know why the earlier doctors didn't recognize Clara - but then again, I was never quite clear on what her "born to save the Doctor" deal was, nor why we didn't get a full season of Clara being awesome with past Doctors or something, so. As always with Doctor Who, the explanation is probably timey-wimey. XD
My take on the Time War was that everyone was pretty much traumatized out of their minds, especially the Doctor, which explains a lot. The stupid shit they pulled (ground war against Daleks) was after trying and already failing everything possible and clever. The Doctor's idea was literally impossible in the minds of the other Time Lords (which I think fits with Classic Who canons - the Doctor is always the maverick rule breaker and reality bender, where the rest of Gallifrey are much more stuck in their ways and follow procedure and protocol), which is why they didn't come up with it, and why it took Eight-Point-Five through Eleven to actually DO the impossible thing.
I am very glad the impossible saving of Gallifrey has happened, because I feel the show was beginning to suffer from the Doctor being not just the only Time Lord, but also the last of his race. Too much angst, too much sadness, not enough Time Lords and Time Ladies around for the Doctor to interact with. From Classic Who I know I love Romana, and anything that might mean bringing her back I am ALL FOR.
Children are usually used as a shorthand for "innocents who have no choice in what happens to them". With adults, I guess the implication is that they might have voted for the war in the first place, or done whatever the Time Lords did to end up in the Time War in the first place, but the kids never had a choice one way or the other, so it sucks even more for them. I totally get why you'd feel worse about killing people completely without agency of their own than you would about people who at least theoretically had a chance of participating in events. And then we have seen the Doctor grieve for all of his people before, so it's not like he's ever said "screw everyone else, I just want to save the children!". But yeah, I can see how THINK OF THE CHILDREN can be a bit eye-rolly when overused. (Especially with a race of people that force young kids to stare into the Time Vortex which apparently drives a not insignificant number of them insane... Actually, maybe that's why the Doctor felt more guilt about the kids?! The adults are all complicit in continuing the tradition that completely broke the Master as a little boy, and sent the Doctor himself running - the kids, however, never hurt him or anyone else in that way, and he wishes he could protect them all against not only death by Dalek or Doomsday Device, but also from their own parents and guardians...?)
I guess watching it in Britain is different - EVERYONE in the theatre gasped when Tom Baker appeared. I mean everyone. Some just at the sound of his voice - it was an electric moment where you could just feel people going OMG is that...?! and then when the reveal came there was this shockwave of happy awe. It was an amazing moment. ♥
Nitpicking: the Doctor doesn't speak English, he speaks Gallifreyan and the TARDIS translates to whatever the closest human language equivalent is. So "oh god" might be "in the name of Rassilon" or whatever, but because human English doesn't use that expression, we hear what a fellow human would say in the same situation. So, "oh god". (My fan theory is that things like "allons-y" are clearly words the Doctor is saying in that language, which is why the TARDIS doesn't bother with translation. Because if the TARDIS did translate it, the line would just be "Let's go!" XD)
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Date: 2013-11-24 03:17 pm (UTC)I get the children = innocents shortcut, but it's a shortcut, and it was just overdone for me. It makes maaaybe a bit more sense when you consider the Time Vortex, but given that many are likely traumatized, and idk how Gallifreyan politics work... and while my impression is that the Doctor is at times very critical of Gallifreyan society, I don't think it's at that point where he'd only save the children and not mourn the others.
I'm neutral on saving Gallifrey, I think. Maybe that'll change when I've had more time to think about it. It'll definitely open up some fascinating new stories. I just wasn't convinced by the how, and so far I don't see how different the earlier gone and the gone now are, so *shrugs* Ever since End of Time I thought it was possible it would come back somehow.
Okay, they're traumatized - but why? What happened? Mass slaughter on the ground, yes, but with the risk of sounding cold, I don't think it's the first time the Doctor has seen something like that. Seeing their own civilization in danger of destruction, maybe. And if you see yourself as the last barrier between the Daleks and the universe - yeah, okay.
But all we got was "the Daleks breached the sky trench", no idea what that even is, and then ground war. Where are the clever ideas and tricks they've tried? You could at least mention them. Where are their allies? I imagined the Time War as this long epic conflict spanning many worlds, not one attack on Arcadia/Gallifrey. And what the Doctor used for his trick are 13 TARDIS - so, there weren't 13 TARDIS on Gallifrey? And nobody thought about even trying something like that, on a planet of time travellers? Give me something more than "that's impossible"/"no it's not." Maybe "the risk it would destroy the universe is too great"/"but I'm risking it." Or "it'll create a paradox that'll collapse/it will kill us all immediately/it'll blow up half the galaxy"/"I think it will work, because I'm insane." Just something.
Maybe that's one of the reasons why I'm not that enthusiastic about saving Gallifrey (yet) - sure, it's the Doctor's home, nice for him, but we haven't seem them as time travellers yet, and we haven't seen them being competent/interesting yet, so I'm not really invested in it yet. (It's probably different for people who know Romana and the old Doctor/companions!)
I was never a huge fan of the "born to save the Doctor" thing with Clara - come on, we just had someone whose entire life is about the Doctor in River - and now they apparently forget about it, great.
Yes, we had 3D glasses! Friends who saw it in another cinema said that they got a live broadcast from the producer or something, which we didn't get, but I don't care. The tickets I got were expensive enough, but the fan experience was worth it :)
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Date: 2013-11-24 03:25 pm (UTC)I've seen Romana (Romana II, with Tom Baker), and I really liked her! Also there's stuff like a random retired Time Lord who has camouflaged his TARDIS as a room in a Cambridge University College where he's held a position as professor for the past three hundred years. XD (Everybody in Cambridge is apparently really discreet, and nobody makes a bit deal out of him always just being there.) Stuff like that. There's been way too little of the Doctor interacting with people who know just as much as he does about time travel, and may have even more life experience. Plus I'm a sucker for "finding home" type plots (it's what makes The Hobbit work for me). ♥
Sorry I can't really help on the rest - I've found that in seven years of watching Doctor Who, I'm usually happier the fewer questions I ask, and the higher I can suspend my disbelief. XD I'm just glad that The Day of the Doctor gave me cause to do both, because of the sheer thrill of the experience.
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Date: 2013-11-24 03:31 pm (UTC)It's probably also a bit of a timing thing for me: the happier I am with a canon the less likely I am to ask a lot of plot questions, and I didn't like the last season that much. I hope the next one will be better, I'm looking forward to it :)
no subject
Date: 2013-11-24 03:40 pm (UTC)So, yay!
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Date: 2013-11-24 09:21 pm (UTC)Doesn't someone mention that "all of Time and Space is burning" when talking about the War? I took that to mean that the War is fought all over Time, but linearly in all time-locations, even if there might be several versions of various people crossing their own timestream. If that makes sense, which it might not, because I'm bad at explaining timey-wimey stuff.
Speaking of which, I loved the looks on Ten and Eleven's faces when War Doctor asked them why they were so afraid of being grown-up and I loved the way they were characterised as "the man who regrets and the man who forgets".
Scarf Girl handed the Zygon her inhaler just after her "theDoctorwillsaveme" moment, so they both knew who was who. The Zygon did (possibly*) save her life by handing her the inhaler, so that might explain why they're still friendly. And the other two human/Zygon pairs still don't know which is which, so.
Like naye said, the TARDIS doesn't translate when you're speaking a language other than your native one (see Donna trying to speak Latin in the Fires of Pompeii and being told that who she's talking to doesn't speak Celtic). I have to wonder how that works for bilingual people, though, or borrowed words.
Also, I am so jealous you got to see it in a cinema! I didn't even realise it was yesterday until today.
*Depending on how bad her asthma is.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-25 10:44 pm (UTC)Scarf Girl was awesome. I don't quite remember her name, but it's probably not as good as Scarf Girl anyway *g*
Hm, bilingual people - very interesting! (Reminds me of the translation handwaving going on in Stargate ^^)
It was amazing! I'm sorry you didn't have the opportunity.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-26 08:52 pm (UTC)Timeline 1: D punches one of the ambassadors from A in the face. (Call this one D1)
Timeline 2: T travels back in time to stop D from punching A. (T1 & D1)
Timeline 3: D goes back in time to punch the other ambassador in the face (D2).
Timeline 4: T decides to bribe both ambassadors this time (T2).
Timeline 5: D decides to bribe them more, and earlier (D3).
And so on and so forth. In this example, at this point in time there are 5 timelines interacting and more than one version of both time travellers: D1, D2, D3 and T1, T2.
Hopefully that's a little clearer.
I think she got the scarf from Four. SOMEHOW.
Maybe next time? If there even is a next time.