I'm the random person who just added you (Tari-Roo pointed you my way, and I'm glad she did, I've enjoyed reading your thoughts. I hope you don't mind.
Also, I think I fundamentally disagree with you on the choices issue in the special, but I found your argument interesting. To me, having a third way wasn't a cop out or a way of dodging the original stakes, but...well, a thesis statement, I suppose, that the ends don't justify the means. The lesser-of-two-evils/hard choices/genocide or destruction of the whole universe thing has become just as much of a cliche as the thing it was originally trying to deconstruct, and the circumstances used to justify it are just as contrived as those stories that never explore hard choices. And it's kind of ugly, if you think about it. It implicitly condones atrocities "for the right reasons"...which history itself has quite enough of and how often have those right reasons turned out to be true, in the end?
But I don't think that ever sat very well with Doctor Who...and I'm not sure that's the kind of story we need these days. It's good to have a story that rejects that kind of reasoning as a false dilemma. And I think that's why the time-travel shenanigans aspect of it worked for me, because it allowed us to see why the Doctor once fell into that trap- it gave context to how often he fought against it on the smaller scale, after (and haven't we seen the Doctor offered the same choice, on smaller scales, over and over through the series? And so very frequently, the Doctor defined himself by finding a third way)- and it made his decision to change his mind more meaningful. At least to me. As I said, it worked for me as a thesis statement.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2013-12-05 12:28 pm (UTC)I'm the random person who just added you (Tari-Roo pointed you my way, and I'm glad she did, I've enjoyed reading your thoughts. I hope you don't mind.
Also, I think I fundamentally disagree with you on the choices issue in the special, but I found your argument interesting. To me, having a third way wasn't a cop out or a way of dodging the original stakes, but...well, a thesis statement, I suppose, that the ends don't justify the means. The lesser-of-two-evils/hard choices/genocide or destruction of the whole universe thing has become just as much of a cliche as the thing it was originally trying to deconstruct, and the circumstances used to justify it are just as contrived as those stories that never explore hard choices. And it's kind of ugly, if you think about it. It implicitly condones atrocities "for the right reasons"...which history itself has quite enough of and how often have those right reasons turned out to be true, in the end?
But I don't think that ever sat very well with Doctor Who...and I'm not sure that's the kind of story we need these days. It's good to have a story that rejects that kind of reasoning as a false dilemma. And I think that's why the time-travel shenanigans aspect of it worked for me, because it allowed us to see why the Doctor once fell into that trap- it gave context to how often he fought against it on the smaller scale, after (and haven't we seen the Doctor offered the same choice, on smaller scales, over and over through the series? And so very frequently, the Doctor defined himself by finding a third way)- and it made his decision to change his mind more meaningful. At least to me. As I said, it worked for me as a thesis statement.