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seawaspOverall, the New Who has been an excellent series, with good scripts, inventive approaches, more complex character building and interaction, and so on. So I have a fairly high expectation threshold when I go into new Who episodes.
This new episode, alas, was a vast disappointment. Here's the Doctor, so desperate to escape some unknown enemy that he TURNS HIMSELF HUMAN and WIPES HIS MEMORY. He's never done anything like that -- not when pursued by the Daleks, the Master, the Black Guardian, whatever. This implies an enemy of incredible potential, something up on the level of his greatest adversaries.
Then, at the end, if we accept the monologue of one of the villains, the reason that the Doctor was running was so that he could be MERCIFUL to these villains.
None of this makes sense. The Doctor isn't an idiot, nor is he a villain, yet we're supposed to believe that in order to spare a family of soul-destroying psychopaths he's willing to go to extremes that he's never done, even in the Time War, even against adversaries of vastly greater power, intellect, and capability? To put his companion in the position of having to pretend to be a proper servant in an era where not only her sex but her race puts her in a lower and more imperiled position? All to spare these monsters?
We're supposed to believe that he's so stupid that he believes that these monsters, who have only about three months of life left, will just die off and then he'll be free? No, I don't THINK so. The Doctor has encountered creatures of this sort before, and he knows that the shorter the time gets, the more desperate, psychopathic, and destructive such beings get. So to spare them, he's willing to risk -- no, to ALLOW the deaths -- of many other people (on this world, or whatever world the Family ended up on toward the end)?
No, this isn't the Doctor we know. The story of the Doctor becoming human, that was a potentially interesting story. The idea of his human identity wanting to finish his life rather than be turned into one small facet of this titanic intellect, that could have been interesting and touching. But the WAY in which this episode set it up, and the way in which it implied the Doctor was either a fool or a knave, totally destroys the ability to enjoy it.
I think I'll just ignore this one, like I ignore "Black Orchid".
And I'll hope that it doesn't represent a new, shark-jumping trend.
(alas, also, because the young man playing the one villain (who possessed one of the schoolboys) was clearly having IMMENSE fun chewing the scenery and I thought he did it so very well.)
This new episode, alas, was a vast disappointment. Here's the Doctor, so desperate to escape some unknown enemy that he TURNS HIMSELF HUMAN and WIPES HIS MEMORY. He's never done anything like that -- not when pursued by the Daleks, the Master, the Black Guardian, whatever. This implies an enemy of incredible potential, something up on the level of his greatest adversaries.
Then, at the end, if we accept the monologue of one of the villains, the reason that the Doctor was running was so that he could be MERCIFUL to these villains.
None of this makes sense. The Doctor isn't an idiot, nor is he a villain, yet we're supposed to believe that in order to spare a family of soul-destroying psychopaths he's willing to go to extremes that he's never done, even in the Time War, even against adversaries of vastly greater power, intellect, and capability? To put his companion in the position of having to pretend to be a proper servant in an era where not only her sex but her race puts her in a lower and more imperiled position? All to spare these monsters?
We're supposed to believe that he's so stupid that he believes that these monsters, who have only about three months of life left, will just die off and then he'll be free? No, I don't THINK so. The Doctor has encountered creatures of this sort before, and he knows that the shorter the time gets, the more desperate, psychopathic, and destructive such beings get. So to spare them, he's willing to risk -- no, to ALLOW the deaths -- of many other people (on this world, or whatever world the Family ended up on toward the end)?
No, this isn't the Doctor we know. The story of the Doctor becoming human, that was a potentially interesting story. The idea of his human identity wanting to finish his life rather than be turned into one small facet of this titanic intellect, that could have been interesting and touching. But the WAY in which this episode set it up, and the way in which it implied the Doctor was either a fool or a knave, totally destroys the ability to enjoy it.
I think I'll just ignore this one, like I ignore "Black Orchid".
And I'll hope that it doesn't represent a new, shark-jumping trend.
(alas, also, because the young man playing the one villain (who possessed one of the schoolboys) was clearly having IMMENSE fun chewing the scenery and I thought he did it so very well.)
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Date: 2007-06-03 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-04 05:34 am (UTC)Yeah...
Date: 2007-06-04 01:47 pm (UTC)This goes into the Coulda Been a Contendah, but Failed file.