![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
DW 8.04. Listen.
Before I start:
I come across this a lot. ‘What is [insert specific issue from any episode] teaching our children?’
Or worse: ‘Doctor Who is telling our children to [insert most problematic interpretation possible of any episode]!’
The thing is, children are not little sponge-like automatons. I doubt a single one went and threw themselves in front of a lorry after seeing Donna doing so. (Although the ‘dying and waking up somewhere else’ part of Donna’s story (and the Ponds, repeatedly *g*) reminds me of The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren. Don’t think any children tried jumping out of windows either.) Nor is Doctor Who a public service instruction guide for modifying child behaviour. It’s a family show whose aim is to entertain.
Plus, children are all different. Just like adults they like different things. They take different things away. So - as I can’t speak for anyone else - this was MY 8 year old’s main reaction to ‘Listen’:
Once it was revealed/implied who the little boy in the barn was she nearly fell of the sofa in sheer excitement. (I wish I was exaggerating.) And then had to TELL US how she WORKED IT OUT - and how THAT WAS THE DOCTOR and IT’S THE SAME BARN and so on. It made it rather hard to catch Clara’s lovely monologue, to be honest.
She is unlikely to ‘turn her back’ on scary things btw. When she has a nightmare she comes RUNNING TO OUR BEDROOM and stands outside the door telling us all about it. Until we either let her in our bed or walk her back to her own and settle her there. (Incidentally, Clara’s line - 'Do you know why dreams are called dreams? Because they’re not real' works an absolute treat.) Children are quite capable of separating fact from fiction. She has watched ‘Blink’ and thought it thoroughly underwhelming - that was supposed to be scary? The only thing that has properly freaked her out so far is ‘Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS’ - she DID NOT like ‘the burning lava people’. Oh, and there was the *adorable* time when she wouldn’t go to bed because she thought there might be Silents on her ceiling. I got around that one by pointing out that they are about 7 foot tall, and if they were hanging from her ceiling she would be bumping into them.
There is nothing wrong with pointing out problematic issues. But as the mother of three very different daughters, I know that there is nothing as simple as ‘children’. Although if you want to generalise, then I want to say that kids are smart. Which brings me to the actual meta...
Listen
Listen is basically the Doctor getting himself all worked up in the middle of the night and making Clara come check the closet for monsters.
(x)
This sounds flip, yet it is uncannily accurate. Because this episode is not about a monster or a problem that needs solving or saving a world - no, this episode is about the Doctor. Specifically, the Doctor’s fears. Not the big obvious ones, but childhood fears. Those deep fears we never talk about. He dresses it up in fancy words, does research, makes a good case - and yet, it’s all about his childhood nightmare. He wants to be proved right, even as he is scaring himself silly. (That is what both the scene in Rupert’s bedroom, and the one at the end of the universe, is all about. He is… not exactly rational.)
Because here’s the thing. The Doctor always takes children seriously.
AMY: So is this how it works, Doctor? You never interfere in the affairs of other peoples or planets, unless there's children crying?
DOCTOR: Yes.
In S6, we even had a whole episode dedicated to nightmares. From ‘Night Terrors’:
DOCTOR: It means I've come a long way to get here, Alex. A very long way. George sent a message. A distress call, if you like. Whatever's inside that cupboard is so terrible, so powerful, that it amplified the fears of an ordinary little boy across all the barriers of time and space.
ALEX: Eh?
DOCTOR: Through crimson stars and silent stars and tumbling nebulas like oceans set on fire. Through empires of glass and civilizations of pure thought, and a whole, terrible, wonderful universe of impossibilities. You see these eyes? They're old eyes. And one thing I can tell you, Alex. Monsters are real.
And because of children’s nightmares, the Doctor intervenes and changes children’s lives. Here’s a handful of examples:
Those five, specifically, have their lives altered by the Doctor (and in Melody’s case, he is the monster she is scared of). Well most of the children he meets have their lives altered (just look at George), but in these we see the consequences when they’re adults.
But this episode turns the tables - why is the Doctor so attuned to children? We have been given hints in the past - and now, finally, have the answer we suspected (with thanks to Owls):
DOCTOR: It's never easy being the only child left out in the cold.
NANCY: I suppose you'd know."
DOCTOR: I do, actually.
The Empty Child
REINETTE: Oh, Doctor. So lonely. So very, very alone.
DOCTOR: What do you mean, alone? You've never been alone in your life. When did you start calling me Doctor?
REINETTE: Such a lonely little boy. Lonely then and lonelier now. How can you bear it?
The Girl in the Fireplace
DOCTOR: Hundreds of parents walking past who spot her and not one of them's asking her what's wrong, which means they already know, and it's something they don't talk about. Secrets. They're not helping her, so it's something they're afraid of. Shadows, whatever they're afraid of, it's nowhere to be seen, which means it's everywhere.
The Beast Below
MAN: Why does he have to sleep out here?
WOMAN: He doesn’t want the others to hear him crying.
MAN: Why does he have to cry all the time?
WOMAN: You know why.
Listen
Every adult was once a child. And because Doctor Who is a timey-wimey kinda show, it often crosses from one time period to another, shows what was (or what will be):
DOCTOR: We all change, when you think about it. We're all different people all through our lives. And that's okay, that's good, you've got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be.
And we have seen all the people the Doctor used to be - but always the adult. Have seen how he interferes in the lives of his companions (and anyone else he comes into contact with). He is the Time Lord, the one with the power, the one who lays down ideas, the one whom their lives get shaped by, or around. (And in the case of Amy and River, people complained about this rather a lot.)
‘Listen’ turns that on its head. ‘Listen’ places the Doctor where the Companion/that week’s main character usually sits. The same place where little Rupert Pink is. (Just so we can’t miss the parallels.) Two little boys who grow up to choose their own name, yet go down different paths. But linked by a small plastic soldier without a gun… (What this show does with imagery is downright breathtaking in its clever simplicity. What defines that figure? The fact that he’s a soldier, or that he doesn’t have a gun? One figure, two meanings. It’s all very Clara.)
My point being: The Doctor was a child. And what’s more, he was a child just like the others we have seen. Frightened and alone.
We suspected this - see the quotes above - but he very rarely talks about his childhood (see ‘The Sound of Drums’ for an unusual glimpse). So what shaped him?
One answer: Clara.
She was the monster under the bed, and the quiet, reassuring voice in the darkness. (One Clara, two meanings. Clara is always opposites, simultaneously.) And what does she say?
I’m gonna leave you something just so you’ll always remember: Fear makes companions of us all.
I have seen quite a few people having issues with this. Which is understandable - it’s not easy to grapple with. People united in fear is not exactly something to be desired, is it? (Just look at Midnight.) Why on earth was that the line chosen for her to repeat and put emphasis on?
(I could point out that obviously the point of the whole thing is that fear is something that will always be there, how you choose to respond to it is what matters. But I can go deeper, so I will.)
You see, this is where I am, well, grateful that I hurt my foot. Because thanks to being generally immobile, I’ve had time to watch early Doctor Who. So far ‘An Unearthly Child’ and ‘The Daleks’. And it is fascinating what you discover…
From ‘An Unearthly Child’ (Part 2: ‘The Cave of Skulls’):The Doctor, Susan, Barbara and Ian have been captured by cavemen, who have tied them up and stashed them away in the Cave of Skulls of the title. They are trying to cut Ian's bonds so they can get free. The Doctor tells Barbara to try to remember the way they came so they can find their way back to the TARDIS once they're out
BARBARA (a little surprised): You're trying to help me.
DOCTOR (slightly mumbling): Yes, fear makes companions of all of us, Miss Wright.
BARBARA: I never thought you were afraid.
DOCTOR: Fear is with all of us and always will be. Just like that other sensation. Your companion referred to it.
BARBARA: Hope.
DOCTOR: Yes that's right. Hope.
So in one way - if you have an issue with this, go back to 1963 and confront the writer, Anthony Coburn. Because this very, very first Doctor Who story is… unsettling. There are no moral absolutes, or simple answers - just primitive, fearful people with a whole bunch of different motivations and impulses. Morally it’s hugely complicated and you'd be hard pressed to argue whether or not the cavemen are better or worse off at the end. And the Doctor is not the hero. Indeed it is not until 'The Daleks' that he begins to find any kind of moral certainty (Twelve was spot-on in ‘Into the Dalek’ to define himself in reaction against the Daleks - that is exactly what happens). Heroes are made, not born, and it is Ian and Barbara who make the moral decisions initially - the Doctor is interested in science, discovery and self-preservation. (Ifthe macguffin that he needed to get the TARDIS to work hadn’t been left in the Dalek city , he’d have quite happily left the Thals to their fate. Not his problem!)
With yet more thanks to Owls, here is a perfect quote that illustrates what I mean:
So yes, Clara shapes him (by mirroring back everything she has been given so far, as she always does), but this has always been the case. ('My friends have always been the best of me.')
They all shape him, every one of them, and he becomes their Doctor.
Although all of this almost misses the point. Because at the heart of this, it’s just an immensely beautiful scene. Let’s go back to ‘A Christmas Carol’, as that is the story where the Doctor deliberately re-writes someone’s life:
DOCTOR: Did you ever get to see a fish, back then, when you were a kid?
SARDICK: What does that matter to you?
DOCTOR: Look how it mattered to you.
SARDICK: I cried all night, and I learned life's most invaluable lesson.
DOCTOR: Ah. Which is?
SARDICK: Nobody comes.
But the Doctor comes - and Kazran’s life is not the same. In the same way, Moffat here re-writes the Doctor’s life, except he does so in such a clever way that it fits seamlessly. (‘I didn’t rewrite it - you just didn’t know it happened until I showed you!’)
So, just like in ‘A Christmas Carol’, Clara comes to help a little boy who feels abandoned and lonely. I think it’s very important that Clara is someone who works with children, whatever shape that takes (junior entertainment manager, governess, nanny, teacher). Her specific role is one of protector/nurturer, which we first see in The Snowmen (she is very devoted to her young charges) and is then firmly established in The Rings of Akhaten. In the beginning it is shown when she instinctively follows Merry Gejelh, calms her panic and encourages her to overcome her fears. Later on, when the Doctor has gone to defeat the sun and failed, we see two flashbacks in her memory:
ELLIE [memory]: And I will always come and find you. Every single time.
DOCTOR [memory]: We don't walk away.
So she sets off to save the Doctor. Armed with a leaf and a story.
(And we see that she is furious in ‘Listen’ when the Doctor sends her away before the door opens, because he wants to see the monsters, but won’t allow her to stay.)
But she is not a warrior-protector like River (or say, Ace). She is the one who will find him when he’s lost. Who will remind him of who he is. Who will guide him when the path is uncertain. Who will protect him and tell him off and generally make sure he’s OK and not doing foolish things.
She is the one who will come to check the closet for monsters (even if she’s busy and not in the mood)... And soothe a frightened child to sleep.
~ ♥ ~
(She also happens to be the monster under the bed, but the question 'Clara Who?' is a subject for another post.)
I come across this a lot. ‘What is [insert specific issue from any episode] teaching our children?’
Or worse: ‘Doctor Who is telling our children to [insert most problematic interpretation possible of any episode]!’
The thing is, children are not little sponge-like automatons. I doubt a single one went and threw themselves in front of a lorry after seeing Donna doing so. (Although the ‘dying and waking up somewhere else’ part of Donna’s story (and the Ponds, repeatedly *g*) reminds me of The Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren. Don’t think any children tried jumping out of windows either.) Nor is Doctor Who a public service instruction guide for modifying child behaviour. It’s a family show whose aim is to entertain.
Plus, children are all different. Just like adults they like different things. They take different things away. So - as I can’t speak for anyone else - this was MY 8 year old’s main reaction to ‘Listen’:
Once it was revealed/implied who the little boy in the barn was she nearly fell of the sofa in sheer excitement. (I wish I was exaggerating.) And then had to TELL US how she WORKED IT OUT - and how THAT WAS THE DOCTOR and IT’S THE SAME BARN and so on. It made it rather hard to catch Clara’s lovely monologue, to be honest.
She is unlikely to ‘turn her back’ on scary things btw. When she has a nightmare she comes RUNNING TO OUR BEDROOM and stands outside the door telling us all about it. Until we either let her in our bed or walk her back to her own and settle her there. (Incidentally, Clara’s line - 'Do you know why dreams are called dreams? Because they’re not real' works an absolute treat.) Children are quite capable of separating fact from fiction. She has watched ‘Blink’ and thought it thoroughly underwhelming - that was supposed to be scary? The only thing that has properly freaked her out so far is ‘Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS’ - she DID NOT like ‘the burning lava people’. Oh, and there was the *adorable* time when she wouldn’t go to bed because she thought there might be Silents on her ceiling. I got around that one by pointing out that they are about 7 foot tall, and if they were hanging from her ceiling she would be bumping into them.
There is nothing wrong with pointing out problematic issues. But as the mother of three very different daughters, I know that there is nothing as simple as ‘children’. Although if you want to generalise, then I want to say that kids are smart. Which brings me to the actual meta...
Listen is basically the Doctor getting himself all worked up in the middle of the night and making Clara come check the closet for monsters.
(x)
This sounds flip, yet it is uncannily accurate. Because this episode is not about a monster or a problem that needs solving or saving a world - no, this episode is about the Doctor. Specifically, the Doctor’s fears. Not the big obvious ones, but childhood fears. Those deep fears we never talk about. He dresses it up in fancy words, does research, makes a good case - and yet, it’s all about his childhood nightmare. He wants to be proved right, even as he is scaring himself silly. (That is what both the scene in Rupert’s bedroom, and the one at the end of the universe, is all about. He is… not exactly rational.)
Because here’s the thing. The Doctor always takes children seriously.
AMY: So is this how it works, Doctor? You never interfere in the affairs of other peoples or planets, unless there's children crying?
DOCTOR: Yes.
In S6, we even had a whole episode dedicated to nightmares. From ‘Night Terrors’:
DOCTOR: It means I've come a long way to get here, Alex. A very long way. George sent a message. A distress call, if you like. Whatever's inside that cupboard is so terrible, so powerful, that it amplified the fears of an ordinary little boy across all the barriers of time and space.
ALEX: Eh?
DOCTOR: Through crimson stars and silent stars and tumbling nebulas like oceans set on fire. Through empires of glass and civilizations of pure thought, and a whole, terrible, wonderful universe of impossibilities. You see these eyes? They're old eyes. And one thing I can tell you, Alex. Monsters are real.
And because of children’s nightmares, the Doctor intervenes and changes children’s lives. Here’s a handful of examples:
Those five, specifically, have their lives altered by the Doctor (and in Melody’s case, he is the monster she is scared of). Well most of the children he meets have their lives altered (just look at George), but in these we see the consequences when they’re adults.
But this episode turns the tables - why is the Doctor so attuned to children? We have been given hints in the past - and now, finally, have the answer we suspected (with thanks to Owls):
DOCTOR: It's never easy being the only child left out in the cold.
NANCY: I suppose you'd know."
DOCTOR: I do, actually.
The Empty Child
REINETTE: Oh, Doctor. So lonely. So very, very alone.
DOCTOR: What do you mean, alone? You've never been alone in your life. When did you start calling me Doctor?
REINETTE: Such a lonely little boy. Lonely then and lonelier now. How can you bear it?
The Girl in the Fireplace
DOCTOR: Hundreds of parents walking past who spot her and not one of them's asking her what's wrong, which means they already know, and it's something they don't talk about. Secrets. They're not helping her, so it's something they're afraid of. Shadows, whatever they're afraid of, it's nowhere to be seen, which means it's everywhere.
The Beast Below
MAN: Why does he have to sleep out here?
WOMAN: He doesn’t want the others to hear him crying.
MAN: Why does he have to cry all the time?
WOMAN: You know why.
Listen
Every adult was once a child. And because Doctor Who is a timey-wimey kinda show, it often crosses from one time period to another, shows what was (or what will be):
DOCTOR: We all change, when you think about it. We're all different people all through our lives. And that's okay, that's good, you've got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be.
And we have seen all the people the Doctor used to be - but always the adult. Have seen how he interferes in the lives of his companions (and anyone else he comes into contact with). He is the Time Lord, the one with the power, the one who lays down ideas, the one whom their lives get shaped by, or around. (And in the case of Amy and River, people complained about this rather a lot.)
‘Listen’ turns that on its head. ‘Listen’ places the Doctor where the Companion/that week’s main character usually sits. The same place where little Rupert Pink is. (Just so we can’t miss the parallels.) Two little boys who grow up to choose their own name, yet go down different paths. But linked by a small plastic soldier without a gun… (What this show does with imagery is downright breathtaking in its clever simplicity. What defines that figure? The fact that he’s a soldier, or that he doesn’t have a gun? One figure, two meanings. It’s all very Clara.)
My point being: The Doctor was a child. And what’s more, he was a child just like the others we have seen. Frightened and alone.
We suspected this - see the quotes above - but he very rarely talks about his childhood (see ‘The Sound of Drums’ for an unusual glimpse). So what shaped him?
One answer: Clara.
She was the monster under the bed, and the quiet, reassuring voice in the darkness. (One Clara, two meanings. Clara is always opposites, simultaneously.) And what does she say?
I’m gonna leave you something just so you’ll always remember: Fear makes companions of us all.
I have seen quite a few people having issues with this. Which is understandable - it’s not easy to grapple with. People united in fear is not exactly something to be desired, is it? (Just look at Midnight.) Why on earth was that the line chosen for her to repeat and put emphasis on?
(I could point out that obviously the point of the whole thing is that fear is something that will always be there, how you choose to respond to it is what matters. But I can go deeper, so I will.)
You see, this is where I am, well, grateful that I hurt my foot. Because thanks to being generally immobile, I’ve had time to watch early Doctor Who. So far ‘An Unearthly Child’ and ‘The Daleks’. And it is fascinating what you discover…
From ‘An Unearthly Child’ (Part 2: ‘The Cave of Skulls’):
BARBARA (a little surprised): You're trying to help me.
DOCTOR (slightly mumbling): Yes, fear makes companions of all of us, Miss Wright.
BARBARA: I never thought you were afraid.
DOCTOR: Fear is with all of us and always will be. Just like that other sensation. Your companion referred to it.
BARBARA: Hope.
DOCTOR: Yes that's right. Hope.
So in one way - if you have an issue with this, go back to 1963 and confront the writer, Anthony Coburn. Because this very, very first Doctor Who story is… unsettling. There are no moral absolutes, or simple answers - just primitive, fearful people with a whole bunch of different motivations and impulses. Morally it’s hugely complicated and you'd be hard pressed to argue whether or not the cavemen are better or worse off at the end. And the Doctor is not the hero. Indeed it is not until 'The Daleks' that he begins to find any kind of moral certainty (Twelve was spot-on in ‘Into the Dalek’ to define himself in reaction against the Daleks - that is exactly what happens). Heroes are made, not born, and it is Ian and Barbara who make the moral decisions initially - the Doctor is interested in science, discovery and self-preservation. (If
With yet more thanks to Owls, here is a perfect quote that illustrates what I mean:
“There used to be an idea that the role of the companion was to potter along beside [the Doctor] and have things explained to [them]; but I don’t think that’s true at all, it’s never been true. I think it’s a very dynamic relationship. I think the Doctor is this strange, occasionally often very dangerous man, and he needs to be in a dialogue with someone as strong as he is, intellectually and spiritually… to make him the hero he can be. Without that person by his side, that very special person, he’s nowhere, he’s a threat. I think if you look at all the great Doctor Who companions from the old series, from the new series, that’s what they do. I think they make him better, and him better saves us all.”
Moffat
So yes, Clara shapes him (by mirroring back everything she has been given so far, as she always does), but this has always been the case. ('My friends have always been the best of me.')
They all shape him, every one of them, and he becomes their Doctor.
Although all of this almost misses the point. Because at the heart of this, it’s just an immensely beautiful scene. Let’s go back to ‘A Christmas Carol’, as that is the story where the Doctor deliberately re-writes someone’s life:
DOCTOR: Did you ever get to see a fish, back then, when you were a kid?
SARDICK: What does that matter to you?
DOCTOR: Look how it mattered to you.
SARDICK: I cried all night, and I learned life's most invaluable lesson.
DOCTOR: Ah. Which is?
SARDICK: Nobody comes.
But the Doctor comes - and Kazran’s life is not the same. In the same way, Moffat here re-writes the Doctor’s life, except he does so in such a clever way that it fits seamlessly. (‘I didn’t rewrite it - you just didn’t know it happened until I showed you!’)
So, just like in ‘A Christmas Carol’, Clara comes to help a little boy who feels abandoned and lonely. I think it’s very important that Clara is someone who works with children, whatever shape that takes (junior entertainment manager, governess, nanny, teacher). Her specific role is one of protector/nurturer, which we first see in The Snowmen (she is very devoted to her young charges) and is then firmly established in The Rings of Akhaten. In the beginning it is shown when she instinctively follows Merry Gejelh, calms her panic and encourages her to overcome her fears. Later on, when the Doctor has gone to defeat the sun and failed, we see two flashbacks in her memory:
ELLIE [memory]: And I will always come and find you. Every single time.
DOCTOR [memory]: We don't walk away.
So she sets off to save the Doctor. Armed with a leaf and a story.
(And we see that she is furious in ‘Listen’ when the Doctor sends her away before the door opens, because he wants to see the monsters, but won’t allow her to stay.)
But she is not a warrior-protector like River (or say, Ace). She is the one who will find him when he’s lost. Who will remind him of who he is. Who will guide him when the path is uncertain. Who will protect him and tell him off and generally make sure he’s OK and not doing foolish things.
She is the one who will come to check the closet for monsters (even if she’s busy and not in the mood)... And soothe a frightened child to sleep.
(She also happens to be the monster under the bed, but the question 'Clara Who?' is a subject for another post.)
no subject
Yes. Yes it is. And it's the Best Show Ever. <3
(I don't think Clara is the Doctor and River's daughter. She's had grand-daugtherly signs all over her right from the start (just see how she is mirrored with Susan in my icon), but I'm not sure how she could be... I just don't see any hints that the Doctor & River had children. At all. Which is a shame, because it *would* fit beautifully. But I do think there's something Time Head-y about her. She has - since her very first appearance - mirrored the Doctor. Companions don't. Their role is different. And her name! Oh her name... ETA: She could be a great-great-granddaughter through Susan. That could work.)
Maybe she is connected to Missy, and if Missy is the Master that could make sense. Esp if Missy then deliberately throws the two of them together, as they'd be the only two people she actually cares about. But I am mulling over meta, so I'll delve deeper then.
I think part of my trouble is that when I only see this level in elisian meta, I'm totally happy for it to be head!canon but I'm not sure that it's canon!canon. Which maybe, to paraphrase Lord Peter wildly out of context, and chiming off Eleven's “just make it a good one, eh” to young Amelia at the end of S5, doesn't matter either, so long as it makes a good book, but it still niggles occasionally. Does Moffat ever explicitly admit to any of this?
Watch Jekyll. Or, if you don't have time to do that, there is Philip Sandifer (whom I've just discovered). I posted this the other day:
'There’s a turn here, though, in which Doctor Who becomes a show that is about the pleasures of the text. It exists to be taken apart and read closely, so much so that there is almost no point at which the phrase “reading too much into things” applies. It is a show that is about reading extremely and perversely into things. When every single sentence can be as pregnant with meaning as this structure allows, what can “reading too much into things” even possibly mean? Moffat’s work, around this point, becomes strangely and wonderfully obsessed with testing the limits of what an episode of television can do. It is, in its own way, as fascinating and radical as Doctor Who has been since the Hartnell era.'
You Were Expecting Someone Else 32 (Night and the Doctor)
Although my best argument, I suppose, is that you can use the symbols embedded in the show to see where the story is going/what it's doing. Love the Lord Peter paraphrasing even though it IS hugely out of context. Actually, the poem in Gaudy Night is a lot like what Doctor Who is doing. You get all the answers, but they're encoded and you have to work through the meaning. (A+ on picking up on the hand symbolism of the toy soldier... And how everything is about family. You've seen Promethia's vid, right? The New Age.)
SORRY ABOUT THE EDITS!
no subject
Ok, I am going to pull a Rusty on you. Forget what you know, and just look. What is this story about?:
no subject
You can totally buy that they're doing all of this deliberately and loving every moment of it, but then they do something like the Statue of Liberty in The Angels Take Manhattan and I can't help thinking “You really expect us to believe that in the City that Never Sleeps nobody looked up and stopped it in its tracks? And if that didn't occur to them, how sure can I be that I'm not just making up some of this other stuff?” Yes, Philip Sandifer can call it an “endearingly gonzo set piece”, but it feels... clumsy? Like something that you can get caught up in the first time you watch it but shouldn't ever watch or think about again, which given how other bits delightfully transcend the idea of reading too much into things... just feels wrong.
Or take the tragedy of River's childhood. We've got your meta in the Doctor's Final Lesson about how the Ponds respond to people messing up their beloveds' lives (“Your girlfriend isn't more important than the whole universe” / “She is to me!” / “Haha! Welcome back Rory Williams!” (said by Eleven with obvious approval) // “I'm going to pull time apart for you”) and yet the Doctor pretty much says “yep, River's childhood is now doomed” and the Ponds are okay with that? That exchange with Vastra near the end of A Good Man: “Yes, they did, and it's already too late.” / “You're giving up? You never do that.” / “Yeah, and don't you sometimes wish I did!” And that's it? From a purely constructional point of view, it doesn't work for me. He's a Pond with a Time Head, and he's just giving up? And in the episodes after Let's Kill Hitler Amy and Rory are just okay with that?
Yes, so many things, to Promethia's point, point in the same direction, and do so beautiful and subtly and clearly deliberately. But not all the things. And some of the things that don't feel too sloppy to ignore. And that's where it doesn't feel like I'm watching the same show that you and Promethia are watching, although I wish I were. Is it just that you're better at not worrying about the details that don't fit? Or am I missing something?
no subject
It's just silly. It's Doctor Who. It's taking the basic idea of the angels and extending it so far that it's beyond ridiculous. Yet it does make me laugh, and damn, if you can - why not? I could probably come up with some sort of meta explanation (dear god, that episode is so steeped in pure imagery & meta it's like drowning), but I'm not sure it needs it. :)
He's a Pond with a Time Head, and he's just giving up? And in the episodes after Let's Kill Hitler Amy and Rory are just okay with that?
Well that moment ("don't you sometimes wish I did!”) comes just after his second defeat. He is acutely aware of how he's screwed everything up, and that's before River's dressing down. Of course then River also reveals who she is and he runs off, laughing, to find bb!Melody... Except he can't. And LKH shows us that her childhood/youth has been spent with her parents. He can't go back and fix it, without rewriting everyone's personal history... (Which he can't.) So they have no choice except to accept it. River clearly isn't all that bothered - or rather, her issues don't manifest until TWoRS.
So yes, there are issues with how the Ponds respond to this (it could have been handled a lot better), but I tried to detangle it in this post: Meta: The Ponds (This is the way women and men have behaved since the beginning...).
And some of the things that don't feel too sloppy to ignore. And that's where it doesn't feel like I'm watching the same show that you and Promethia are watching, although I wish I were. Is it just that you're better at not worrying about the details that don't fit? Or am I missing something?
Did you read my 'All the Layers' post? Because often something that doesn't work in a story sense still works when you look at the metaphors. (And I am fabulous at fanwanking the story part! *g*) So it all depends on where you're looking. Like looking at a 3D picture.
no subject
The other say ten percent still bothers me - I still want, if the Doctor could save all those children on Gallifrey, there to be some way of disentangling River. Because, yes, part of her childhood was spent with Amy and Rory, but presumably part of the same period was spent being brainwashed and tortured by Kovarian. And so yes, Amy kills Kovarian in TWoRS and quite right too, and her speech just before that (“You took my baby from me, and hurt her, and now she's all grown up and she's fine, but I'll never see my baby again.”) makes perfect sense in a show without a time machine, but... they have a time machine.
And this must be why they invented the Blinovitch Limitation Effect in the seventies, so they could still tell stories as if they didn't have a time machine, and more recently there's Moffat's Three Approaches to Time Travel, but... I guess on the story-teller level it boils down to there have to be some limits to time travel otherwise you could fix everything and there wouldn't be any conflict, and we have to accept that the characters with the Time Heads know what can and cannot be changed (Moffat's #2), but... that keeps coming unstuck for me.
I think in my perfect world there would have been a minisode between LKH and Night Terrors in which Eleven tells Amy and Rory that he wants to go back and sort it but that he can't. And after that Night Terrors starting with Eleven and Amy and Rory being business-as-usual would have been okay.
no subject
Just went and re-read that one myself. Goodness that was 2 years ago! (And that is quite a nifty post. *is pleased*)
Are people closer to you already suggesting that you turn this into a book?
... No? No, that's never come up. (I wrote an essay for Chicks Unravel Time, but that is the only thing I've ever had published. And having gone through that process I am now aware of just how much work goes into actual writing.) Although it would be very neat.
You take me most of the way to accepting and seeing and liking everything about the Moffat era in a way that I just don't get to on my own. (Sure, quoting Dorothy L. Sayers and Dante and C. S. Lewis and T. S. Eliot helps.)
I think they'd help any subject! ;) And yay, that does make me very very happy. Helping people overcome hurdles is my favourite thing of all.
The other say ten percent still bothers me - I still want, if the Doctor could save all those children on Gallifrey, there to be some way of disentangling River.
I would say that those are very, very different things. If saving River had been about a single moment (like saving Gallifrey, or like cheating death at Lake Silencio) he would surely have found a way.
Because, yes, part of her childhood was spent with Amy and Rory, but presumably part of the same period was spent being brainwashed and tortured by Kovarian.
Not sure what you mean. She ran away from the Silence - to such an extent that not even the Doctor could find her (well, not until after she regenerated). The brainwashing took place when she was in the children's home. We see the effects of it in LKH - how she snaps into Kill The Doctor mode - but notice that although she is very effective (she kills him very easily indeed), she is following the wrong script. He doesn't just have to die, he has to die at a specific time and place. Killing him in Berlin is a huge screw-up from Kovarian's POV (dunno if she ever finds out, but she would be aghast). River in LKH is a loose canon, not the finely tuned weapon they needed. Which is why the spacesuit is automated - Kovarian & co don't just want him dead, they are creating a Fixed Point, something he can't get out of. He does - eventually - find a way to cheat (just like he finds a way to save Gallifrey) but in both cases he leaves the narrative intact. However, there is no way of removing River from her own narrative. (He's read the book, knows the outcome - he can no more salvage her childhood than she could get out of the angel's grip without breaking her wrist.)
I guess on the story-teller level it boils down to there have to be some limits to time travel otherwise you could fix everything and there wouldn't be any conflict, and we have to accept that the characters with the Time Heads know what can and cannot be changed (Moffat's #2), but... that keeps coming unstuck for me.
In which way? Actually, you should read Continuity Errors. (Short Doctor Who story by Moffat as part of Decalog 3. Published in 1996.) I say 'short', give yourself ample reading time... But the whole 'time can be rewritten' thing definitely originates there (for Moffat). Anyway, that was a tangent. (Although a relevant one.) Please just unpack your question a little more? What's the issue? That only Time Headed people can tell what should and shouldn't be changed? (Oooh, Father's Day! There's a good one.)
I think in my perfect world there would have been a minisode between LKH and Night Terrors in which Eleven tells Amy and Rory that he wants to go back and sort it but that he can't.
Well, that's what fic is for! *g* (I came up in the Buffy fandom. FitBs were the norm a lot of the time...)
no subject
Is your idea instead that after she was brainwashed by the Silence in her earliest years at Greystark Hall and then at Jefferson Adams Hamilton in Florida, she escaped from the Silence, got to New York six months later where she regenerated, and then somehow time-jumped from 1969 to 1990 or so to grow up with Amy and Rory? And when she met the Doctor, the early programming kicked in, but not the way Kovarian had intended, so when they were ready with the Lake Silencio plan they came for her, and that aside from keeping tabs on her for the twenty-odd years in between they just left her alone? (“You never really escaped us, Melody Pond. We were always coming for you.”)
I like the idea of her only being tortured for her first two or three years much much better than her being tortured for her first twenty-five, obviously. (Though I always assumed it would have to be Kovarian & co that got the very young Mels to the 90s.)
And up until Mels starts trying to kill the Doctor in Berlin in 1939 there might have been time for Eleven to find River and change the story, but once Mels kills him the story and therefore the parts of it up until then, including the young-childhood brainwashing, are fixed?
no subject
Yes. I can't see Kovarian letting a ridiculously complicated and important Time Headed Human Weapon run around in New York and get so ill that she actually regenerated. Even the Doctor couldn't find her, and I'm sure he tried. How she got to Leadworth is never explained, but it's possible that River (post LKH) told him where she'd been when she was tiny and he somehow picked her up & set her up with a new identity near her parents. Or she could just have lived her way to them, deliberately staying young. Oh! And there is a hint in an interview with Amy (extra in Summer Falls) that she and Rory tried to find her after they got stuck in New York. So it's possible they found her, and looked after her, until she could go to Leadworth. In either case, she was removed from the Silence.
When she popped back up as River Song at Luna University, it was easy for the Silence to go pick her back up. But as Mels Zucker? No, I don't think Kovarian ever knew where she was.
I like the idea of her only being tortured for her first two or three years much much better than her being tortured for her first twenty-five, obviously.
I never knew people thought the latter! How awful.
And up until Mels starts trying to kill the Doctor in Berlin in 1939 there might have been time for Eleven to find River and change the story, but once Mels kills him the story and therefore the parts of it up until then, including the young-childhood brainwashing, are fixed?
Pretty much, yes. Before Mels crashes into the story, he can save her. But once he knows, it's fixed.
no subject
Just remembered that I meant to include this quote, which is very, very apt re. Listen and Clara's role:
REINETTE: It's the way it's always been. The monsters and the Doctor. It seems you cannot have one without the other.
ROSE: Tell me about it. The thing is, you weren't supposed to have either. Those creatures are messing with history. None of this was ever supposed to happen to you.
REINETTE: Supposed to happen? What does that mean? It happened, child, and I would not have it any other way. One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel.