Every now and then there's a Saturday.
Apr. 23rd, 2011 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexsarllWell, that was odd. I suppose it's the first opening episode of new Who which didn't have to establish any of the regulars, and it did feel oddly like the old series, where you could take 45 minutes before anything especially *happens*. I exempt the opening incident, because it was so obviously a fake-out that it was only once it was undone that it started to mean anything. I think I'm impressed. I know I'm intrigued. But a lot depends on next week, and onwards.
It must in part have been excited anticipation of the new series that saw me getting through so much Doctor Who this week. On DVD: Jon Pertwee in The Mutants, which like many stories of the era is far too long and riddled with junk science that makes Evolution of the Daleks look positively authentic. Aside from the inevitable capture/escape/corridors/recapture padding, it includes an episode mainly consisting of the Doctor being unable to decipher a tablet written in an old language. Guess the TARDIS must have been in even worse shape back then than we knew, then. And yet, it has the Marshal. The head of Earth's military presence on the colony planet of Solos, he's played by Paul Whitsun-Jones, who seems to have had a lot of TV guest roles back then, and looks like an overgrown version of a spoilt, piggy child - yet one with enough presence, and power, to be authentically terrifying. He's part of the same lineage as the monstrous colonialists in Kinda, Planet of Evil or Warrior's Gate ("I'm finally getting something done!") - unthinking in his utter assurance of his own superiority, yet devious when presented with any threat to same; casually genocidal; horribly plausible. Yet somehow the sheer repulsiveness of the man makes him even worse - ironic, for a story about not judging the Other by appearances, but when he can stand next to a giant bug-man and look like the beast, you know it's inner ugliness shining through. Plus, it predates Brian Aldiss' much-admired Helliconia by the best part of a decade in showing potential evolutionary adaptations to a planet with centuries-long seasons, and the likelihood that human stupidity might not respond well to same.
(The DVD extras include a documentary about race on Doctor Who and British TV generally, narrated by Noel Clarke aka Mickey, which is pretty good in spite of the first talking head being Bidisha. There are some lovely mocked-up pictures of black actors of the appropriate periods in each previous Doctor's costume, but most of all there's a 1973 interview with Patrick Troughton where he says that initially he was going to black up for the role. Apparently this is notorious, but it was news to me)
And then on top of that, I listened to Tom Baker in A Shard of Ice, which isn't bad, and Paul McGann versus Davros in the excellent, unsettling Terror Firma, and read a fair chunk of Short Trips: 2040, which for that necessarily uneven beast, the anthology, has a pretty good hit rate (especially worthy of mention is the story about penguins, which had me crying on the bus.
All of which ramping up was somewhat spoiled by the Lis Sladen news - that's two of the best companions ever already dead this year, and that's not good. And yet...the story goes on. Always.
It must in part have been excited anticipation of the new series that saw me getting through so much Doctor Who this week. On DVD: Jon Pertwee in The Mutants, which like many stories of the era is far too long and riddled with junk science that makes Evolution of the Daleks look positively authentic. Aside from the inevitable capture/escape/corridors/recapture padding, it includes an episode mainly consisting of the Doctor being unable to decipher a tablet written in an old language. Guess the TARDIS must have been in even worse shape back then than we knew, then. And yet, it has the Marshal. The head of Earth's military presence on the colony planet of Solos, he's played by Paul Whitsun-Jones, who seems to have had a lot of TV guest roles back then, and looks like an overgrown version of a spoilt, piggy child - yet one with enough presence, and power, to be authentically terrifying. He's part of the same lineage as the monstrous colonialists in Kinda, Planet of Evil or Warrior's Gate ("I'm finally getting something done!") - unthinking in his utter assurance of his own superiority, yet devious when presented with any threat to same; casually genocidal; horribly plausible. Yet somehow the sheer repulsiveness of the man makes him even worse - ironic, for a story about not judging the Other by appearances, but when he can stand next to a giant bug-man and look like the beast, you know it's inner ugliness shining through. Plus, it predates Brian Aldiss' much-admired Helliconia by the best part of a decade in showing potential evolutionary adaptations to a planet with centuries-long seasons, and the likelihood that human stupidity might not respond well to same.
(The DVD extras include a documentary about race on Doctor Who and British TV generally, narrated by Noel Clarke aka Mickey, which is pretty good in spite of the first talking head being Bidisha. There are some lovely mocked-up pictures of black actors of the appropriate periods in each previous Doctor's costume, but most of all there's a 1973 interview with Patrick Troughton where he says that initially he was going to black up for the role. Apparently this is notorious, but it was news to me)
And then on top of that, I listened to Tom Baker in A Shard of Ice, which isn't bad, and Paul McGann versus Davros in the excellent, unsettling Terror Firma, and read a fair chunk of Short Trips: 2040, which for that necessarily uneven beast, the anthology, has a pretty good hit rate (especially worthy of mention is the story about penguins, which had me crying on the bus.
All of which ramping up was somewhat spoiled by the Lis Sladen news - that's two of the best companions ever already dead this year, and that's not good. And yet...the story goes on. Always.
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-23 06:07 pm (UTC)But maybe I'm just a drunk old grouch.
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Date: 2011-04-25 07:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-25 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-25 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-25 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-23 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-25 07:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-25 08:39 am (UTC)At the Q&A, Moffat was insistent that the Doctor most definitely dies in that scene. He repeated River Song's response that everyone dies, and the Doctor is no different.
Of course it's not up to him, and any future show runner can reverse it (big problems arise if they need to regenerate again!), but I like the idea he's been brave enough to say "That's it, you've just watched how it will all end". Even though, since it's 200 years in the Doctor's future, there's no need for us ever to reach that point in our viewing lifetimes.
But the story isn't really about that and is about to become even more headfucky in pt.2. At least it was, until Caitlin Moran's 7-year-old daughter seemingly solved it on the car journey home. Four confused adults suddenly span round, jaws agape, and shouted, "I think she's got it!"
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Date: 2011-04-25 08:45 am (UTC)Agreed, though, that the story isn't really about that - and got better the further it got from that moment.
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Date: 2011-04-25 09:01 am (UTC)Has there ever been discussion about whether he can regenerate back into a previous version? Maybe that's why he has to die: "No, this is just silly. We barely tolerated your brief incarnation as an ageing Su Pollard, when Channel 5 bought the show, but being Matt Smith again is a step too far..."
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Date: 2011-04-25 09:25 am (UTC)