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*
no subject
Date: 2013-11-28 06:01 pm (UTC)Yes, THIS is the attitude I need to cultivate!