So, months later...
Aug. 20th, 2008 01:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenAnd I'm 2/3 of the way done with this last season of Doctor Who! ::cheers::
I watched "Silence in the Library" and "Forest of the Dead" and all I could think was, "Jesus H., why didn't they let Stephen Moffat write the last three seasons entirely!?" Seriously now, he scripted a tense, well-paced thriller of an episode that kept me absolutely riveted. His Doctor keeps David Tennant in line, too, which Ohthankyoufuckinggod, because that man is about three xanaxes short most days. I like wild and crazy Doctor. I'm pretty sure, however, that Ten has rabies. Stephen Moffat writes him so brilliantly that you don't forget he's the Doctor--he's still funny and silly and full of self importance. But he makes him so much more.
Honestly, it reminds me of season one and Christopher Eccleston and the way the show used to walk the line between pathos and humor in its explorations. None of the Tennant seasons have been half so good at maintaining a sense of consequence quite the same way. Except--except when Stephen Moffat is writing them. Mostly, the prior two seasons and some of this one have seemed so airy, so unconnected to anything while all the time crying out loud about how the world was going to end forever and ever and ever and run! Run!
Whereas atmosphere and character alone made Nine's season move and Moffat's episodes captivate. I wish I could explain it better. But it's nice to see the tragedy of time travel, not just the horrors. You can throw the Doctor against Satan (literally) and moan and scream about it. Or you can trap him in an eerie place with nothing but darkness as his enemy and watch him bleed for the loss of the people (and the books--oh, the books). I love it. You can't sell fantastic elements to a story without grounding them in the real, connecting them to the mundane. A library is a great creepy-as-anything environ that most viewers will have patronized. You hardly need add monsters at all to believe there's something off about them. Marvelous.
I can't believe they wasted an entire season pretending to give rat's ass about faux-Master and his SS goons terrorizing the Jones family. When Stephen Moffat can write one episode where you care more about perfect strangers that series regulars, imagine what he could do with the regulars if he'd had them at the outset! Dr. Song, Mme de Pompadour, Sarah Jane...oh, Sarah Jane. The way he makes them breathe is amazing. You have this idea of them as people with only the details being fuzzy. You can see where they have adventures, how they smile at certain jokes, what impact they have on the world around them. They aren't foils for the Doctor: they're people. And I say again, what if Stephen Moffat had been allowed to write all the characters from the get-go? Shocking idea, but so fabulous.
So far, I have to say that I've mostly liked this season. I entirely thank Donna for this. Donna is awesome. Donna is another sort of Rose, but not in the way Martha wanted to be. Martha wanted to be the girl who threw herself into everything fearlessly, like Rose, only she utterly failed at being useful whenever she did. Rose got shit done in between her swoons over the Doctor. (And she had better reason to love the Doctor, sez I, by virtue of the fact that she met him at his rawest--just after he escaped the Time War.) Donna is like Rose that way--getting shit done. She spends as much time as any running and screaming, but she takes no guff, contributes a lot, and she connects to people. She, like Rose, drifts to the little people because she is a little person. She's got a lot more experience at it, unlike Rose, which is what makes her sadder at times because she was this close to only being a little person forever. It also makes her ballsier because she's not waiting on or hoping for better to come along; she's not so young that she believes in happily ever after the way Rose, just by being younger, does.
Still not finished though! Four more episodes to go. NO SPOILERS!! However, if I don't stop reading fandomsecrets, I might get spoiled out of enjoying it. I've nearly done it to myself already. Stupid LJ com. I should stop reading it if only to avoid hearing twenty times in one post about The Dark Knight. Listen you crazy-obsessed freak fucks: THE JOKER DOES NOT WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU. The fact that they are fantasizing wildly over a fictional character? Fine. Over one played by an actor who is now deceased? Doesn't bother me. (Ask me about my Brandon Lee crush some time.) REPEATEDLY TALKING ABOUT HOW A PSYCHOPATHIC, DISEASED, HOMICIDAL CLOWN MAKES YOU CREAM YOUR SHORTS IS THE QUICKEST WAY TO MAKE ME KILL YOU. Actually, second quickest. The quickest way to death-by-stupid-fangirling is to be this person.
I watched "Silence in the Library" and "Forest of the Dead" and all I could think was, "Jesus H., why didn't they let Stephen Moffat write the last three seasons entirely!?" Seriously now, he scripted a tense, well-paced thriller of an episode that kept me absolutely riveted. His Doctor keeps David Tennant in line, too, which Ohthankyoufuckinggod, because that man is about three xanaxes short most days. I like wild and crazy Doctor. I'm pretty sure, however, that Ten has rabies. Stephen Moffat writes him so brilliantly that you don't forget he's the Doctor--he's still funny and silly and full of self importance. But he makes him so much more.
Honestly, it reminds me of season one and Christopher Eccleston and the way the show used to walk the line between pathos and humor in its explorations. None of the Tennant seasons have been half so good at maintaining a sense of consequence quite the same way. Except--except when Stephen Moffat is writing them. Mostly, the prior two seasons and some of this one have seemed so airy, so unconnected to anything while all the time crying out loud about how the world was going to end forever and ever and ever and run! Run!
Whereas atmosphere and character alone made Nine's season move and Moffat's episodes captivate. I wish I could explain it better. But it's nice to see the tragedy of time travel, not just the horrors. You can throw the Doctor against Satan (literally) and moan and scream about it. Or you can trap him in an eerie place with nothing but darkness as his enemy and watch him bleed for the loss of the people (and the books--oh, the books). I love it. You can't sell fantastic elements to a story without grounding them in the real, connecting them to the mundane. A library is a great creepy-as-anything environ that most viewers will have patronized. You hardly need add monsters at all to believe there's something off about them. Marvelous.
I can't believe they wasted an entire season pretending to give rat's ass about faux-Master and his SS goons terrorizing the Jones family. When Stephen Moffat can write one episode where you care more about perfect strangers that series regulars, imagine what he could do with the regulars if he'd had them at the outset! Dr. Song, Mme de Pompadour, Sarah Jane...oh, Sarah Jane. The way he makes them breathe is amazing. You have this idea of them as people with only the details being fuzzy. You can see where they have adventures, how they smile at certain jokes, what impact they have on the world around them. They aren't foils for the Doctor: they're people. And I say again, what if Stephen Moffat had been allowed to write all the characters from the get-go? Shocking idea, but so fabulous.
So far, I have to say that I've mostly liked this season. I entirely thank Donna for this. Donna is awesome. Donna is another sort of Rose, but not in the way Martha wanted to be. Martha wanted to be the girl who threw herself into everything fearlessly, like Rose, only she utterly failed at being useful whenever she did. Rose got shit done in between her swoons over the Doctor. (And she had better reason to love the Doctor, sez I, by virtue of the fact that she met him at his rawest--just after he escaped the Time War.) Donna is like Rose that way--getting shit done. She spends as much time as any running and screaming, but she takes no guff, contributes a lot, and she connects to people. She, like Rose, drifts to the little people because she is a little person. She's got a lot more experience at it, unlike Rose, which is what makes her sadder at times because she was this close to only being a little person forever. It also makes her ballsier because she's not waiting on or hoping for better to come along; she's not so young that she believes in happily ever after the way Rose, just by being younger, does.
Still not finished though! Four more episodes to go. NO SPOILERS!! However, if I don't stop reading fandomsecrets, I might get spoiled out of enjoying it. I've nearly done it to myself already. Stupid LJ com. I should stop reading it if only to avoid hearing twenty times in one post about The Dark Knight. Listen you crazy-obsessed freak fucks: THE JOKER DOES NOT WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU. The fact that they are fantasizing wildly over a fictional character? Fine. Over one played by an actor who is now deceased? Doesn't bother me. (Ask me about my Brandon Lee crush some time.) REPEATEDLY TALKING ABOUT HOW A PSYCHOPATHIC, DISEASED, HOMICIDAL CLOWN MAKES YOU CREAM YOUR SHORTS IS THE QUICKEST WAY TO MAKE ME KILL YOU. Actually, second quickest. The quickest way to death-by-stupid-fangirling is to be this person.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 06:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 06:03 am (UTC)Or, don't. Because then I'm going to have a lot of ass-kicking to do, and I'm tired of that shit, too. Can't most of them just fall off the goddamned internet already?
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 07:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 07:01 am (UTC)I still think Empty Child/Doctor Dances and Blink are the two creepiest and freakiest episodes of the whole lot..
Agreed about Donna though, the Doc having a (ZOMG!) *strong* female character, rather then two lovebirds who occasionally do other things, is definitely the way they should do things.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 12:58 pm (UTC)What about talking about how a psychopathic, diseased, homicidal watchmaker (with superpowers and bushy eyebrows) makes you want to cream your shorts?
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 02:47 pm (UTC)Okay, so pot, meet kettle, I get it. I just...I don't even have words for how different the levels of perversion are, though. I'm thinking of light bondage, maybe some food products--you know, vanilla stuff next to people who literally post "I want the Joker to rape me." I just...what?
Plus, it's the Joker. The only other person I could see having a sexual thing for being worse would be like Hannibal Lector.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 03:47 pm (UTC)And you know what both the Joker and Hannibal Lector have in common, besides being psychopathic killers? They're both charismatic. Nothing is sexier than charisma. That's why Charlie Manson, who looks like a deranged elf, was covered in [admittedly crazy] women.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 04:13 pm (UTC)Or, in the words of one of my favorite psycho crushes: "The so-called "normal" man will always let you down. Sickos never scare me. At least they're committed."
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 09:44 pm (UTC)Indeed, confidence. It took me years to learn that lesson for attracting women, but boy oh boy, did it pay off.
This is going to be a dangerous question, but how many of your recent lust-objects have been sane?
no subject
Date: 2008-08-21 03:24 pm (UTC)Oh, and Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. He's not insane, but he does have the wicked confidence thing going on.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 01:05 pm (UTC)I adore Martha, of course, but it's true that she wasn't as well written in most of her episodes.
I'm very curious to see what happens next season. Davies has been brilliant as the showrunner but "eh" as an episode writer. Moffat has been brilliant as an episode writer but that doesn't automatically mean he'll be equally brilliant as the showrunner. I do think we'll get a lot more focus on character interaction and on quietly spooky elements, which seem to be his strong suits.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 02:53 pm (UTC)Though, with the lady in "Silence in the Library" saying what she did, I do assume we're bound to see her again!
I liked Rose a lot, but I liked her especially because she immediately sought out the people she was comfortable with, and they were often refreshingly bullshit-free. Rose might have lucked into more fun than Donna, but she did make the effort to bring the common person into the light. It helped as a metaphor for the audience, what the companions have always been--they are us, we are them. The idea that Rose, working in a shop, not particularly spectacular in any worldly way, is capable of such amazing things? That gives everyone a warm fuzzy.
My problem with Martha was almost exactly that she started from a position of superiority--being a doctor herself. (Not to mention the groans of that Doctor and Dr. Jones stuff.) She was already lofty and harder to connect with. Her empathy was, forgive me, rather clinical. And I don't fancy the actress' ability to emote at all. She has this one face. Either she's half snarling or beaming brightly--it looks mostly the same except for the tiniest differences in the corners of her mouth. Otherwise, barely any inflection, always a blank, slightly dazed-seeming candidate.
Granted, had her season not been DREADFUL and her family problems so stupidly MUNDANE, perhaps I would have cared more...
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-21 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-21 09:48 pm (UTC)Catherine Tate is a damned fine actress, but I thought Billie Piper was marvelous, too. Especially given that she was all of 19 at the time and formerly a pop star. I think it must be Eccleston. He makes everyone around him look better somehow!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-22 01:21 pm (UTC)