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Gimme nice things?
So, I am trying to write up my thoughts on S11 (because apparently I need to write them down in order to get them out of my system) and some parts make me cross and some are just annoying and some are just... less than what I hoped for (even with having low expectations).
And I really don't like being negative, so - if you feel so inclined - please share your favourite Thirteen stuff with me? Like, anything. Your favourite scene, or exchange, art work, vids, fic, cosplay, a news story about how Thirteen & Team TARDIS made a difference to someone... Just anything.
Because I want to remember how I felt right at the beginning when everything was exciting and happy.
And I really don't like being negative, so - if you feel so inclined - please share your favourite Thirteen stuff with me? Like, anything. Your favourite scene, or exchange, art work, vids, fic, cosplay, a news story about how Thirteen & Team TARDIS made a difference to someone... Just anything.
Because I want to remember how I felt right at the beginning when everything was exciting and happy.
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I would second Promethia's list, and specifically the screwdriver-making (and the way that was paralleled by the Dalek in the NY ep) and that scene in ep2 where she first goes in the TARDIS. That's the only ep I've seen twice, and I cried BOTH TIMES watching that scene.
I would also say that for all my reservations about this season, it has brought SO MANY of my former-DW-loving friends back to the show. People who dropped out during the Clara years, or during S6, or even way back during Ten's final angst-fest - so many of them have come back and are loving Thirteen, in all her weirdness and hopefulness, and that brings me joy.
I also think you really nailed something very interesting about Thirteen and this season when you made that post early on about Twelve living and dying on a battlefield, and Thirteen as a result just concentrating on small-scale victories - I think that's a great lens through which to watch the series, and makes a lot of sense of things.
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*raises hand* I was a S6 dropout. Now I'm back – and enjoying the non-epicness.
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What do you love? Why? I like aspects, but it never gelled and I am trying to work out why. This is my favourite show (well, it's tied with the Buffy verse), and I *want* to like it.
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I joined the fandom during Nine's season. It was fun, hectic, and snarky. I loved how it would dip into a random situation, and they'd run around doing things until the chaos suddenly stopped and back to the Tardis they'd go.
My first problem with the show was because of Ten's increasingly angsty staring. I loved Ten, but angst has never been my thing (the only shows I've seen do it well were Buffy and Farscape).
Then... came season 6. In which:
a) everything in the universe revolved around the Doctor
b) all the characters revolved around the Doctor
c) everything was EPIC
d) everything was all linked up with everything else
e) angst angst angst angst angst
I noped out of there mid-season, mainly due to River being so central to the show. (And I liked River. Which is to say that I liked awesome archeologist who has adventures and occasionally meets the Doctor mid-adventure River.)
This new season is refreshingly non-epic. The Doctor is back to experiencing life and interacting with what's right in front of her, rather than Doing Epic Things And Altering The Course Of History. (I loved, in Father's Day, Nine's comment about the ordinary life of the bride and groom. He wanted to run around the universe experiencing ordinary life, and I liked that.)
The Doctor herself is also refreshingly down to earth, and practical. (And she welded herself a new screwdriver! Gotta love a gal with a welding torch.) She worries about her companions, and the situations she ends up in – but she doesn't ANGST about them. Which is nice. (Compare Ten's "sorry"s to Thirteen's. Ten puts his entire heart, and his entire intense gaze, into the most angsty sorry you've ever heard in your life. Thirteen looks a bit apologetic and gives a bashful "sorry" before running off for more of the adventure.)
There's also the companions. And the fact that:
a) none of them are in love with her
b) none of them have made dramatic speeches about how important she is
c) all of them are capable of telling her off
d) they'd all have perfectly reasonable lives if they ever stopped travelling with her and went back home
We are not quite up to the calibre of Nine's season yet. But we are, once again, focusing on fun, hectic, and snarky adventures with lots of running. Which is lovely.
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I joined the fandom during Nine's season. It was fun, hectic, and snarky. I loved how it would dip into a random situation, and they'd run around doing things until the chaos suddenly stopped and back to the Tardis they'd go.
This is a brilliant summary of the show. :)
My first problem with the show was because of Ten's increasingly angsty staring. I loved Ten, but angst has never been my thing.
And don't worry about not liking Moffat - we like different things, and that part was obviously not what you were looking for. And it got VERY arc-y and meta-y. It was (in part) Moffat trying to deal with the fallout of the Time War and the pile of man!pain Ten had turned into. So, a lot of Eleven & Twelve's runs were about putting the world and the Doctor himself back together, and a lot of it was complex and difficult, because well, trying to help someone get over having committed genocide and having a god complex and so on is... Not easy. (Although I wonder if you might like S10. It's mostly quite quiet and Bill is just... Bill. ♥ And at that point the Twelfth Doctor is just old and kind and semi-retired and dammit, now I want to watch it again. It's SO GOOD. Sorry, ignore me.)
This new season is refreshingly non-epic. The Doctor is back to experiencing life and interacting with what's right in front of her, rather than Doing Epic Things And Altering The Course Of History.
I hear ya. :)
The Doctor herself is also refreshingly down to earth, and practical. (And she welded herself a new screwdriver! Gotta love a gal with a welding torch.)
I see what you did there! :D (Love all the welding yes.)
She worries about her companions, and the situations she ends up in – but she doesn't ANGST about them. Which is nice. (Compare Ten's "sorry"s to Thirteen's. Ten puts his entire heart, and his entire intense gaze, into the most angsty sorry you've ever heard in your life. Thirteen looks a bit apologetic and gives a bashful "sorry" before running off for more of the adventure.)
LOL. And that's 6 seasons worth of work, right there. (Or for the Doctor, more than a thousand years of life.)
I like your points about the Companions (again, I think you'd like Bill, cause a lot of this started back then, except how Twelve was old and Thirteen is young and bright - okay, stopping now, it gets VERY meta at some point, and yet it is just so exquisitely beautiful), although my caveat is that I would love for the companions to tell her off more. I feel there is very little conflict, like I can literally think of only one, and that gets resolved without any fuss or repercussions.
We are not quite up to the calibre of Nine's season yet. But we are, once again, focusing on fun, hectic, and snarky adventures with lots of running. Which is lovely.
Good. I am happy you are happy. May there be much more of it for you! <3
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I believe you're right. I've tracked down a couple of Bill clips on YouTube, and they seem quite fun. The only reason I haven't watched that season so far is because I think I'd need to know the backstory of the previous few seasons... and I don't wanna.
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No, you don't really, it's very self-contained. I just can't help but throw it at people because it's supremely good TV with amazing characters. (S8 and S9 were... difficult. Some amazing stuff in there, but I can understand why people were put off.) S10 is just like an extra - a perfect slice of Doctor Who, funny and touching and rich and dark and clever and all the things.
If you'll like it is of course a completely different question. But thank you for coming to my TED talk. ;)
ETA: And now I start to doubt myself. Like, I love that season beyond anything, and it's very much a standalone, and the first half is just fun travelling around, but it DOES go on to break your heart, so if what you want from Doctor Who is what you got from this season (or the Ninth Doctor), maybe just leave it alone. Unless you really like TV that is actual poetry.
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♥ I really want your thoughts too! Actually I'd love to know what kind of vid you feel like making - like, what would you tackle? Does anything strike you? I think (because I am trying to work out why it's not working for me) that's the thing - there is no particular hook, or issue, or relationship that has struck me. It's all just very nice.
And I am glad you asked for positive recs, because I think that is a GREAT and wonderful way to approach this whole thing, and I wish more people would do :)
Well I spent the best part of Saturday writing and realised I had 6000+ words that were mostly grumpy. So, I figured I'd ask people what made them happy, cause I don't want to be a total downer (if that's all I wanted I could just post a link to Sandifer's Eruditorum Press).
I would second Promethia's list, and specifically the screwdriver-making (and the way that was paralleled by the Dalek in the NY ep)
Real trufax parallels!!
and that scene in ep2 where she first goes in the TARDIS. That's the only ep I've seen twice, and I cried BOTH TIMES watching that scene.
How funny, I think that's my least favourite of them all. Well, finding the TARDIS at the end is beautiful, but the rest never worked for me. I have watched the first ep twice (because I started out just following my normal pattern of re-watching new Doctor Who), and I like that one a lot. A+ regeneration episode. And then It Takes You Away, which I literally re-watched as soon as it had finished. <3
I would also say that for all my reservations about this season, it has brought SO MANY of my former-DW-loving friends back to the show. People who dropped out during the Clara years, or during S6, or even way back during Ten's final angst-fest - so many of them have come back and are loving Thirteen, in all her weirdness and hopefulness, and that brings me joy.
This makes me happy. But I still want to take her apart and work out what makes her tick. Or as Promethia put it a few months ago:
'Back during season five I remember an old-timer saying that watch enough Who and inevitably your favorite character become the Doctor and your favorite Doctor becomes the Doctor. Which made enough intellectual sense to me to take note of, but man, I am feeling it this season. I get it now. Like, yes, your new friends seem lovely, but slightly in the middle of a 55-year old character arc here. Bit keen to get back.'
I also think you really nailed something very interesting about Thirteen and this season when you made that post early on about Twelve living and dying on a battlefield, and Thirteen as a result just concentrating on small-scale victories - I think that's a great lens through which to watch the series, and makes a lot of sense of things.
Yes, that is totally the only angle through which she makes sense. And I THINK they might be doing something interesting, but it's all too opaque for me to do anything with.
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Ha, I would love to know that too! I haven't made any vids in FOREVER, primarily for technical reasons :( I was eventually forced, after putting it off for ages, to upgrade my computer's OS and now Final Cut Express no longer works. I'm trying to learn how to use Final Cut Pro, but it's HARD and I DON'T LIKE IT. *grump* But I think I would have much more motivation to figure out how to use it if I had a vid I had a *burning desire* to make! But I...don't? Which makes me sad, as I've made a vid per season for the last 4 seasons of DW and I would like to continue. But yeah, like you, beyond celebrating 'Yay, female Doctor!' I don't really have a strong idea of what angle to take...
I think that's my least favourite of them all. Well, finding the TARDIS at the end is beautiful, but the rest never worked for me.
I didn't rewatch it because it's my favourite, don't worry! I watched it when it aired, and then I was with some friends a few days later and they hadn't seen it yet, so I watched it with them. I think most of the ep is fine (beautifully filmed, kind of a meh linear plot) but that TARDIS scene is glorious.
Inevitably your favorite character become the Doctor and your favorite Doctor becomes the Doctor
YEP. We've talked about this before. :) I think one thing that has struck me this season is the relative passivity of the companions...as in, we've had a LOT of time on Ryan/Graham's relationship and feelings, and we've had a lot of moments where the Doctor actively claims them all as her fam/team/gang, etc (most notably in the NYD ep, when she says that the Earth is not just protected by her, but by her AND her friends, which is an evolution on previous Doctors) - and YET there have not been a huge number of moments when I've felt the companions have been instrumental in the action? Perhaps I'm just not remembering stuff, as I have only seen most eps once, and perhaps it's because a lot of the things they have done have been really small (no big dramatic saving-the-Doctor's life-moments) but it's something I've been thinking about. And perhaps that's a good thing, in some ways, for all that I struggle with it? It reinforces the idea that ANYONE can travel with the Doctor, not just people who are extraordinary in some obvious way, and it's also a way of showing that you can travel with the Doctor and still remain 'yourself', or the best version of 'yourself' - you don't have to *become* like the Doctor. Anyway. Unformed thoughts are unformed.
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Ugh, that sucks. :(
But I think I would have much more motivation to figure out how to use it if I had a vid I had a *burning desire* to make! But I...don't? Which makes me sad, as I've made a vid per season for the last 4 seasons of DW and I would like to continue. But yeah, like you, beyond celebrating 'Yay, female Doctor!' I don't really have a strong idea of what angle to take...
I hear ya. And the only reason I am writing about S11 is that parts of it annoyed me/made me cross. There is nothing that stands out otherwise particularly.
I didn't rewatch it because it's my favourite, don't worry!
Darnit! I was hoping you could tell me positive things about it that I had missed. *g* (Except for the end.) And I also realised that in assigning it my 'least favourite' I was working on 'S11 generally' in my head, completely bypassing Kerblam! which I hated and doesn't come near 'least favourite'. It's funny the things our brains do.
YEP. We've talked about this before. :)
I had a feeling we had, but I forget whom I've talked to about what... /o\
I think one thing that has struck me this season is the relative passivity of the companions... and YET there have not been a huge number of moments when I've felt the companions have been instrumental in the action? Perhaps I'm just not remembering stuff, as I have only seen most eps once, and perhaps it's because a lot of the things they have done have been really small (no big dramatic saving-the-Doctor's life-moments) but it's something I've been thinking about.
Same here. I like the word 'passive', because that actually fits very well. Partly this is probably in contrast to the other things I have been watching, but when I really enjoyed Peri and Six arguing constantly in S22, because she was pushing back, and telling him he was full of himself and wrong about things, it was just very refreshing... And I don't really WANT people to argue, but the lack of any sort of disagreement is just weird. (Except for Graham, once.) I have a vague fic idea, but it's very difficult to write because I don't feel I have any sort of grasp on how they'd react to stuff. :(
And perhaps that's a good thing, in some ways, for all that I struggle with it? It reinforces the idea that ANYONE can travel with the Doctor, not just people who are extraordinary in some obvious way, and it's also a way of showing that you can travel with the Doctor and still remain 'yourself', or the best version of 'yourself' - you don't have to *become* like the Doctor.
No, this is very good, and I hope that's what they are aiming for, but it also doesn't hurt to question the Doctor. One of the good things about a big TARDIS team is that you can have many opinions at the same time; one might think the new planet looks awesome, another might think there is something odd going on, the third one is sulking because they were promised Space Vegas. :)
Unformed thoughts are unformed.
Welcome to my brain! Here, have the icon Promethia made of Five and his lil ducklings. <3