nu who redux: fires of pompeii and planet of the ood

You know, one of the best things about rewatching a whole season of the wonderfulness that is Nu Who, is you can see how they start the threads really early. I mean, right here in Fires, we've got 'she's returning' and we've got 'there's something on your back' and we've got warnings that the end is near, there's a missing planet, they mention the Medusa Cascade. And we've got the new companion, though at this time, she wasn't even in the running, because my-future-husband hadn't announced he was leaving yet.

This was a fun episode. This whole season is more fun than poor Marfa's previous season. The Doctor takes Donna to Rome... only his aim is off again, and it's Pompeii, about twelve hours before the word Volcano is invented. I love the translation discussion-- and I love that if they actually speak in the language, the Tardis gets glitchy, and they sound Welsh to the listeners (and I think they should play with the idea that the Tardis translates-- sometimes inconsistently-- more often. Think how much fun it would be if the Doctor suddenly isn't speaking English because even though he can, he relies on the Tardis to translate whatever the hell Gallifreyan sounds like into English when he's there...).

I digress. Poor Donna gets pushed into the captured-companion role, but she fights all the way and the Doctor saves her, of course. What I really like about this ep is how Donna fights everything-- the Doctor says it's a Fixed Point, there's nothing he can do about it, and Donna disagrees, keeps disagreeing until they find an excuse for something to be done, and then disagrees more when he's gone all hard-hearted and wants to just leave. But she knows, as we know, that the Doctor isn't like that, and she reminds him of who he is just enough to make a little bit of difference. Which is what the Doctor is all about.

I don't know what's up with the caption on this picture. The Beeb is weird sometimes.

So here we go on Donna's first off-planet adventure. She's so excited that we can hardly understand what she's saying-- and then it's a glacier world with a secret slave trade. I feel bad that she's in the Whoverse after everything has gone to darkness and sadness, but I'm glad it's her, because she fights and she finds the silver lining and she tries to change things. Good on her.

The Ood are... problematic. They're creepy in the face, but we're supposed to see them as something ordinary and not at all gross. They live to serve, but that's because we lobotomized them. They're supposed to be harmless, but both times we saw them, they were being mentally manipulated by stronger minds... But they're also really cool. They share consciousness and sing to eachother across the galaxies. They're not really individuals, I'd guess, though it isn't explicitly said so-- the Ood Brain would be the actual entity, and they are it's eyes and ears and hands in the universe. And that's cool. 

And maybe their low level telepathy translates into something of psychicness-- they are the first to bring up the Doctor's song ending, and it's not the last time we hear it. H thinks Ood Sigma will be a big part of 10's Final Story, since they keep saying everyone is coming back, and I think maybe that's true. There's alot of weight on that Ood's words in this ep.

I like that Donna is adapting quickly; her first sight of an alien is an Ood lying bleeding in the snow, and she gets over it very quickly. She refuses to treat them like slaves, and she even works to actively free them. And she reminds the Doctor that this is what he does. Because after all the sadness and screaming of the last series, he needs it. Maybe that's why he keeps getting younger? It's to counteract the natural hardening and darkening of a very old soul? But at this rate, Doctor 12 will be, like, sixteen, and Doctor 13 will be in second grade...

nu who: planet of the dead

Yay! My Who fix that I know will last all of about six and a half minutes before I start feining like woah. I mean, they throw me this delicious little bone, and then I have to wait until November, knowing that the last story is a two parter that will have a month—A MONTH—between parts.

But I digress.

Planet of the Dead starts out with a robbery and a Torchwood-ish escape-and-chase. Lady Christina-who-is-not-the-Bionic-Woman-and-is-cooler-anyway hops on a giant red bus to escape the cops, and our lovely Doctor waltzes in and introduces himself and his new hobby: following tears in reality. (I hope this hobby sticks around. Really, it’s so random and will be so useful for future stories if the right writer gets his /her/ it’s grubby hands on it) This one goes wonky and the bus falls through into Dubai where once a thriving society lived.

The Doctor is great in this one, sparkling and sparky and chattery and fun as all hell—and a little more honest then he’s been lately: he says at one point ‘the worse it is, the more I love it’, which just about sums up the entirety of the Doctor’s best traits, and in the end, he tells Christina to bugger off because he isn’t having any more companions. He’s finally gotten tired of losing them. (This is brilliant. Think how weird he’s going to be without anyone to reign him in! Think how dark and closed off he’ll be when he meets his first real companion as 11!) He’s gripy when no one’s paying attention to him, he’s genius when he needs to be, he’s absolutely batty, he talks to aliens in their own language, and he doesn’t quite tell people what he’s doing, and he has the most gloriously insane expressions through the whole thing, and it’s just wonderful. I’ve missed my Doctor so much, and I’m so glad this fresh story has the Doctor exactly how I love him. The Next Doctor was fun, but it was melancholy also; this one holds off the darkening until the end when the psychic sets up the plot for the rest of my love’s run: The darkness is returning, his song is ending like the Ood said, and when it comes, whatever it is, it’ll knock four times. Ominous!

And Christina is fun. I wasn’t all that thrilled with Bionic Woman, so I was a bit ick about her casting, but she’s fine. Strong, mysterious, cheeky, clever enough to keep up with the Doctor, confident and self-sufficient. She’s the sort of companion the Doctor needs—one who can keep up and have as much fun as he does as the world falls down around him. And he tells her no. Beautiful. Maybe he’s finally getting over his codependency issues, even if he is replacing them with a fear of intimacy. Ha! Our Doctor’s just a different sort of basketcase now.

I’d heard that the story was silly, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. Maybe my standards just aren’t as nonsilly as others, but I found it pretty tight and well-put-together, even if they didn’t really deal with the fact that an entire planet was dusted. Or that the neat creepy bug-aliens (at least one of which had definite weevil body language and is probably the same actor) we very conveniently gobbled and gone. Or that UNIT was sort of a sideline that didn’t really need to be there and could as easily have been Torchwood or the usual cops, who must be getting used to this crazy by now. But I was glad to see them, and the nuBrig (who’s a captain) was appropriately badass, and Malcom is just lovely and so Welsh I could die.

Dear Moff: here’s a spinoff about a royal jewel thief in a flying bus for you. Also, here’s a lovely mad scientist who loves the Doctor like the very best fan; keep him around.

So! Next time, we’ve got a space station, which I always do love and get so little of in nu Who. And there’s people screaming and running down corridors, good good. As to be expected. And there’s water. On Mars. That seems to take over / come out of people. And it may or may not be an anagram for War of the Master, which would just make my year.

Technorati Tags: nu who,doctor ten,special,planet of the dead,series 4.5

nu who redo: utopia, sound of drums, last of the timelords, time crash

These last three episodes nearly save the season for me. I've mellowed on it some since the first time around, and I don't think it's as bad as I once interpreted it, but it's still laced through with these emotional tones that I find uncomfortable, and it's so unhappy, so thwarted and sort of dark-verging-on-bitter... But these last episodes are great. Silly, way over done in that climax, but overall, very likable.

Utopia brings us Chantho and the return of Captain Jack Harkness, and all the bouncy fun of him intereacting with the Doctor and the Doctor knowing all his tricks. Love the running joke about Jack introducing himself, the Doctor shooting him down, and everyone not minding. And it brings us Professor Yana, who's a genius and a weirdo and a sweet absentminded professor-- and how utterly different he is as soon as he opens that watch. And that poor doomed hope of saving the human race from the end of the Universe (and how horrible would it be to be witnessing the last moments of the whole Universe?). We finally get to see the Doctor dealing with what happened to Jack and admitting that Rose isn't just hidden, she's gone and he can't see her again. Big news. Marfa doesn't get to do much, but the sweetest scene in the episode is her's-- when she gets Chantho to talk without saying 'chan' and 'tho'.

And the Sound of Drums / Last of the Timelords brings us the Sexy Master who is just as overbearing, but way more entertainingly insane than the old one. He's the dark image of the Doctor-- his companion gets messed up by traveling with him, he gets very involved with her (they're making out all over the place, her marries her, and he beats her), he enslaves Marfa's family, he kills people left and right, he humiliates the Doctor... He's like when MyFutureHusbandDavidTennant took over the role-- manic, bouncy, fast-talking, fresh, twitchy-- but all warped in the direction of badness, evilness. And yet, there's still this little bit that makes him almost likable, almost three dimensional-- he wants the drumming to stop, and wants the Doctor to make sense of it, to be as messed up as he is; he's almost sweet to Lucy when he isn't driving her insane, pulling the chair out for her before he sits down himself, comforting her when she freaks out that someone has figured out their plan...

Poor Doctor. What a way to cap a bad year-- that's actually several bad years. He traveled with Marfa, but our count, somewhere around a minimum of three years experienced time, and we just saw the highlights, all of which were rough. And then here comes the end of that phase of his life, and he has to ask Marfa to Walk The Earth while her family is beaten and enslaved, he has to take the Master's mistreatment for a year while he works on his plan, he has to watch the world being taken down, the Toclaphane proving to be the people he tried to save, his Tardis being cannibalized and used to warp reality... It's awful. And then the whole world believes in him and he's a god for a moment, all be it one that's made so by tapping into a technological feedback loop, and then he's so entirely the Doctor. There's no vengance there. For once-- and maybe he finally worked through that angry and destructive phase. He forgives him. He takes responsibility for keeping the Universe safe from him, and seems to think maybe he can help the Master-- which is a nice nod to their history: he was never one to kill or damage the Master, only to stop him when he needs stopping and maybe to find a way to contain him, to help him. 

But the Master won't be contained, and he's entirely himself, too-- better to die once and for all then be contained by the Doctor, who he knows is better than him, and who he hates because they're opposites. One last wound for the Doctor.

So he gets a Vader death, though I don't know if he deserves it, and then there's that last shot where a lady's hand with red nails claims his ring. So there's an out if they want him back, though hopefully they won't overuse him like they did in the past and the daleks have been used in this series.

Other points:

- The Doctor eats. I find this weird because he never is shown eating in the new series, though he always was in the old one, and I'd kinda decided that he doesn't eat and doesn't sleep because he's an alien who's only pretending to be like a person and who gets sustenance some other way. I suppose it could still be that, and eating and sleeping are just human affectations he's taken on as part of his obsession with Earth... which could be why broken-hearted season 3 Doctor doesn't do either until this episode: he's not trying to seem human these days...

- Jack is the Face of Boe? It would make everything make sense, but it's a silly way to do that. 

- Torchwood in the Himalyas? Really? You couldn't think of something better than that? ::sigh::

And then there was Timecrash! With the return of Peter Davidson, who is lovely. My second favorite Doctor before 10, now about tied with 4, who was my previous fav. It's a nice little antidote to the sadness of the season right before it, and it's fun. Joky. Written by the Moff, who so far has written all the best episodes. Well, most of them. And it plays with the Doctor Who mythos without being mean and while still being a good little episode-- the Doctor gets to be self-aware on both sides of the rift, there's sciencing the fiction, there's averted disaster, and it's lovely. I know the sadness will continue into Voyage of the Damned, but I also know that Series 4 is lighter and brighter and more fun, and this little moment of relaxed joyfulness in being the Doctor is enough to get me through.

nu who revisted: 42, human nature, family of blood

What a good stretch! The first half of this season is still iffy, though I resist it less knowing that these episodes come after, but these really are some of the best. 

42 has a feel similar to Impossible Planet and Satan pit, which are some of my favorites, and it's got a literal ticking clock that makes everything so imperative. And the neat creature being a living sun, how cool is that? Super-cool, that's how cool!

The Human Nature / Family of Blood double feature is just great-- MyFutureHusbandDavidTennant gets to act differently, and gets to comment on the type of person the Doctor is, and since I'm a huge fan of metafiction, these eps are just great fun. He's so very ordinary as John Smith, so distressingly normal and boring and so very well integrated that he does and says things that are not in the Doctor: he lets the one kid beat the other, he teaches children to kill, he tells Martha to keep her place... and he's so useless in an emergency situation.

And there's so much screaming in these episodes. So much screaming. It made it hard to watch the first time around, being so in love with the joyful!Doctor we've seen through the first two seasons, but this time around, the sobbing emotional breakdown of John Smith was almost worse to watch. It's so unlike the Doctor, so raw and human and hopeless... And then there's that miraculaous and perfectly smooth transition from the helpless John Smith to the wonderful restored Doctor, that has just a little bit of mixed feeling-- we're glad to see the Doctor back, but at the same time, we're sad to see John go and so proud that he gave himself up so the Doctor could save everyone.

The Doctor was so dark in season three. Always walking into sure death, always burning things up and yelling and screaming and critisizing. Always being hurt. Always being half suicidal. But in these three episodes, we can see him being the best that he can be, even with all that brokenness.

nu who: news

We already know that the Bionic Woman is the current companion (which still sits strangely with me, as I wanted to like the new show and pretty much found myself bored and depressed and rooting for Starbuck the Crazy, and I'm not sure how much of the blame is due to writing / editing, and how much is due to her being boring)-- and I think that qualifies as at least a potential problem.

Now, however, there's actual problems with my next fix: the plot-integral red bus is busted up to the point that it can't be used, and as it was shipped overseas, there's no second option. Major rewrites.

Hopefully, it'll turn out well, and then we can get the 'leaked' original script afterward to compare and contrast and see about what might have been, and it'll prolong the fix a little. 

I seriously don't know how I'm going to get through the year.

But I'm loving the idea of a bus that transports people to strange worlds. (If that's what it really is) I already love red double deckers-- they're so iconic-- and there's one in UnLunDun that makes me happy. There's even that one in Harry Potter. I like multi-text interpretations.

side project: nu who revisted

Gridlock and Daleks in Manhattan

I mostly remember series three as sub-par. I didn't love Martha (hertofore called Marfa), and I wasn't a fan of the tone of the season. But we watched all of it before introducing it to D, and we've been re-watching it in a piecemeal sort of way to catch him up with where we are now. Tonight, we watched eps three and four.
Gridlock was one of the better episodes of the season, and I did remember liking it, but I didn't remember a whole lot about the events in it. The Doctor and Marfa land on New Earth and quickly get separated, Marfa taken into the depths of permanent traffic jams and the Doctor to a Senate where only Novice Haim and The Face of Boe are still alive, and it's up to the Doctor to put everything right, as usual. The plot is fun, but it's the characters that make this episode-- Brannigan the Cat and his lovely human wife and their litter of hybrid kittens who have never seen the ground; The Sisters, who are actually a married lesbian couple who have been on the road for twenty three years; all the random characters the Doctor drops down on as he hops from car to car, looking for Marfa before Haim kidnaps him. It's fun and it's straight forward, and it's good Who. Not the best, not like Blink, but good, and definitely a high point of the season. But even this is haunted by the fact that the Doctor's heart is broken and he's in willing denial, trying to start over with Marfa without really letting her know anything at all about why he won't talk about things and where he's from and what he's running from. We get some stories of Gallifrey in the end, and it sounds lovely, and we get the all important "you are not alone" that will define the end of the season, but that's not the point of this ep. The point is the Doctor being the Doctor and saving people.


Daleks in Manhattan is another issue all together. It's just not good. I'll admit that on my second watch through, it's not as bad as I remembered, but I know how bad it's going to get, and I think it's because now I know how it all goes, I can be more forgiving. There isn't the shock of it's badness smacking me in the face like before. But it's still bad. Why are there pig slaves? Why pigs? And there's no wait on the big bad's reveal. I mean, we know it's Daleks, but they're right there, plain as day, in the first fifteen minutes and that leaves nothing to the imagination and flattens any excitement the reveal might have had. The Doctor plays with a squishy jellyfish that has no purpose by to tell him where it's from, there's Tallulah who could stand to be less annoying, though I do like her love-conquers-all approach to the fact that her boyfriend's a pig now, and then-- then there's that whole crap with the Worst Villain Evar. D's reaction when he was revealed: 'seriously??', and mine back 'yeah. see?', and then he understood why we didn't want to rewatch this one. The season would be better if these two eps were just removed-- or, better yet, if they were replaced with something better. When I first watched this season as it aired, this was almost enough to make me walk away entirely, and only my love of a certain lead male kept me watching, hoping it would improve, and this two-part set is a large part of why I didn't like this season. One and two were so good, so rich, everything worked and even the dumb eps were passable, but three... three feels like it's limping, damaged, things are missing. If that's what they were aiming for, they hit it dead on. But mostly I think it was missing the joy; a heatbroken Doctor screams too much and has that horrible about-to-cry face that I can hardly stand to look at. And the lack in this season allows this ep to just fall flat.