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Update of things.
All hail the Moff and Twelve. DW magazine did a poll of best Doctor Who episodes, and well... go look!
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I posted Chapter 3 of All Breakages Must Be Paid For. <3
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The Netflix series of Avatar: The Last Airbender has an Official Teaser, and it looks incredible!
(If writing/acting etc lives up to the visuals, it will be stunning.)
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I updated my Good Omens S2: The Big Tumblr Meta Post with yet more links! ^_^
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I posted Chapter 3 of All Breakages Must Be Paid For. <3
~
The Netflix series of Avatar: The Last Airbender has an Official Teaser, and it looks incredible!
(If writing/acting etc lives up to the visuals, it will be stunning.)
~
I updated my Good Omens S2: The Big Tumblr Meta Post with yet more links! ^_^
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1) World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls
2) The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang
3) Enlightenment
4) Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon
5) Day of the Doctor
6) End of Time
7) Human Nature/Family of Blood
8) Magician's Apprentice/Witch's Familiar
9) War Games
10) Kinda
A list in quality order would basically have all the Moff ones first, then Human Nature, the Classic ones, then End of Time.
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I think they might actually be perfect television? Other episodes on that list have scenes that hit me harder, but TIA/DotM is just such ridiculous quality from start to finish. It does literally everything? If what you want from television can't be found in TIA/DotM, television is not for you. I can't even process how much happens in those two episodes. It's hysterical. It's massively creepy. It's got more genius ideas than Rusty had in four seasons. It has all the Pond feels, all the Doctor feels, all the shippy feels. It's gorgeous. It never lets up. It left us all dizzy and breathless. The only thing wrong with it is how much the rest of the season completely failed to live up to it.
If I was going to list things in order of what would I drop everything, right now, to watch, it would be #1.
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Also as it goes on, and he becomes a proper Whovian, things get very amusing. I won't spoil it, but you'll appreciate it. :)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVmO00KCT_E
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1) Heaven Sent
2) The Beast Below
3) The Day of the Doctor
4) World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls
5) The Waters of Mars
6) The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang
7) Midnight
8) Listen
9) The End of the World
10) Vincent and the Doctor
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End of the World is a distinctive choice. I'm gonna hazard that you've not put it on the list for its use of Britney Spears ; ) Quite similar to The Beast Below, really: the 'here's what this Doctor is about' episodes.
ETA: there's a part of my brain that thinks I should want Waters of Mars on my list rather than End of Time. It is objectively the far superior episode, and I have to salute Rusty for finally doing what he'd been flirting with for three full seasons. But Ten's run is ultimately meaningless to me without those couple of teary kitchen table conversations with Wilf and then Ten sacrificing himself to save him. Without that it's just the story of the slow and inexorable decline of somebody with massive PTSD who is, actually, quite a bit of a dick. The two episodes work together, of course, but I prefer the course-correct at the end. And thus I must choose EoT despite the cactus people and the Master making everybody into himself and despite the flawlessness that is Adelaide Brooke.
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There is no 'despite' the Master. I mean, the plan is stupid, but the Doctor/Master in the episode is outstanding. The Master would be firmly in the plus column for me.
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You know, my main problem with that has always been that fact that there are LOADS of aliens on Earth. What were they all doing??
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People do sometimes say that Eleven imprinted on Wilf and that shaped his character. Which I like of course. But I've long felt it actually goes deeper than that: that (in that episode, at least) Wilf serves as some sort of Jungian Doctor avatar, a . . . what's the opposite of a shadow self? I should really learn that terminology. He both embodies all these qualities of the Doctor at his best and is Just A Person (tm). 'I would be proud [if you were my dad],' Ten says. So, yes, Ten sacrifices himself so that this 'unimportant' human can live, and that is plenty beautiful all in itself. But on a symbolic level he sacrifices the Lonely God so that this future, more Wilf-like Doctor can live. I'm sure you can see the similarities to Missy's murder as self-actualization. Of course the Doctor is the Doctor and the Master is the Master, so in the one case its self-sacrifice and in the other it's murder/suicide. And then I think that there's also something to the fact that Simm had to be tricked by his future self into regenerating. Ten, for all his protests, goes of his own volition. There's never a doubt that he'll do it, either from us or from him. And therein lies the difference between the Doctor and the Master, perhaps. But I really like that as a parallel for the ends of these two incarnations.
Side notes:
1) On that note, you've often expressed dissatisfaction with Wilf not being angry with the Doctor about what he did to Donna, and I think that's never bothered me because that's just not the role he's playing in that story? The Doctor doesn't need self-incrimination there. It's not going to help anything.
2) Somehow I have not thought until now about the possibilities of Fourteen meeting Wilf. Things I need in my life.
3) I just have to laugh because people hate Ten's ranting before he gets in the radiation chamber so much, and I can appreciate the pure Ten-fatigue inherent in that, but it's never bothered me because, as I've said, there is never any doubt he's going to do it. But it occurred to me: River said 'without hope, without witness, without reward.' She never said anything about without whinging. So there we go.
TL;DR: Twelve makes Ten's run better, and I have to eat breakfast now.
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Oooh. So Wilf is like a... future echo of Eleven? ('All the men are one man' and so on). He has to die so Wilf/Eleven can live.
Ten, for all his protests, goes of his own volition. There's never a doubt that he'll do it, either from us or from him. And therein lies the difference between the Doctor and the Master, perhaps.
That is a lovely distinction, I like it!
But I really like that as a parallel for the ends of these two incarnations.
I had never thought of that before, it's lovely.
1) On that note, you've often expressed dissatisfaction with Wilf not being angry with the Doctor about what he did to Donna, and I think that's never bothered me because that's just not the role he's playing in that story? The Doctor doesn't need self-incrimination there. It's not going to help anything.
Oh it would be fatal for the story, I know that. But Wilf absolving Ten is still weird to me.
But it occurred to me: River said 'without hope, without witness, without reward.' She never said anything about without whinging. So there we go.
LOL. And Ten has all of those! He's just being a drama queen. *pets him*
TL;DR: Twelve makes Ten's run better, and I have to eat breakfast now.
You are correct. I hope your breakfast was yummy.
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“The Beast Below” isn’t – to me – about the Doctor at all.
“The Beast Below”: stunning story at the intersection of epistemology and social and political psychology.
People who say that “The Beast Below” is just “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” are Just Plain Wrong, because what Le Guin is doing in Omelas is completely different from what Moffat is doing in TBB. Le Guin is looking at individual moral choice: what do you do when you learn that your society is built upon injustice?
But “The Beast Below” isn’t about the individual. “The Beast Below” is about what it does to society when everything is built upon a terrible truth that no one can bear to know, when everyone knows that there is something that can’t be known, when everyone chooses not to know.
“The Beast Below” is about knowledge: what we refuse to know, and also…what we assume we know. That’s the utter brilliance of it. It never occurred to anyone that the whale had volunteered. Human perception is filtered through our assumptions, our expectations, our schema – shaped by what the people around us believe – shaped by social forces – and then we assume that our understanding is correct and frame moral choices within what we believe to be reality. We see two choices – let everyone die, or torture a whale – and it never occurs to anyone that our understanding of the situation is inaccurate.
Everyone believes they know the truth of the situation and refuses to remember the truth of the whale’s suffering…and no one knows that the whale volunteered.
Honestly...I kind of feel like the Doctor is irrelevant to “The Beast Below”? It’s not about the Doctor at all, it’s not even about Amy, it’s about us...and it’s about belief, and knowledge. And it’s BRILLIANT.
“The End of the World”: I do see that as more about the Doctor, but...it’s complicated? Most of the episode does nothing for me, but that last scene is just...there’s so MUCH there. The Doctor just lost his own world, so he takes his new companion to the end of hers:
“The end of the earth. It’s gone. We were too busy saving ourselves. No one even saw it go. All those years, all that history, and no one was even looking. It’s just..”
“Come with me.”
And he takes her back to her own time and tells her that his world is gone, “It’s dead. It burned, like the Earth. It’s just rocks and dust. Before its time.”
He tells her he’s the last of the Time Lords. “I’m the only survivor. I’m left travelling on my own ‘cause there’s no one else.”
Rose: There’s me.
Doctor: You’ve seen how dangerous it is. Do you want to go home?
Rose: I don’t know...I want...Oh, can you smell chips?
Doctor: Yeah. Yeah.
Rose: I want chips.
Doctor: Me too.
And Life is affirmed.
I used to have an icon of the two of them in that scene, and the words “Everything has its time and everything dies...and life goes on.”
It’s a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful scene.
And it’s also complicated, and emblematic of so much that’s...the Doctor is an old person with PTSD who uses young women as his Emotional Support Humans. He’s just lost his world so he takes a 19-year-old to the end of hers because he needs it, pulls her in by making her feel sorry for him, making her believe that she can heal him...it’s a dynamic that happens in real life WAY too often (many of us, as young women, got involved with messed-up older men who both expanded our worlds and used us as emotional support humans, whom we tried to heal in exactly the same way and didn’t realize until many years later just how bad it was for us)...it’s disturbing, and yet...it’s BEAUTIFUL, it's BOTH at once, and that’s the beauty of it. It’s real, and it’s true, and it’s horrible, and it’s beautiful, and...it’s so many different things, all at once.
Everything has its time and everything dies.
And life goes on.
ETA: Though actually...since most of "The End of the World" doesn't do much for me, it's only the end that I love, I might substitute either "Dalek" or "The Empty Child" / "The Doctor Dances". I do want to get at least one Nine episode in there. Twelve is my favorite Doctor, Eleven my second-favorite, and Nine my third-favorite, so I do want to get a Nine episode in there somewhere!
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I shall both agree and disagree (as to whether or not it's about the Doctor). Or rather, I will offer a different viewpoint. Firstly I need to link to El Sandifer's review which is brilliant and that is probably the best thing ever written about that episode.
Secondly, to quote a quote from this meta, then I think that The Beast Below is the point where Moffat sets out who his Doctor is. Ten was The Lonely God, but Eleven describes himself differently, once more becoming the archetype he has traditionally occupied - that of the Trickster:
The Trickster is often not the protagonist or hero, but the other fellow--the catalyst or outsider whose unexpected arrival and unpredictable behavior turn the world upside down and get the story rolling. And sometimes even tell the story.
And we see this perfectly illustrated in The Beast Below. The characters on the Spaceship UK are in a holding pattern, unable to escape. It takes the Doctor's arrival to affect change. He, himself, does not change things, he is merely the catalyst for Amy to understand the deeper truth no one else could.
So it is very much about everything that you say, but also quintessential Doctor Who. :)
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Oh, thank you for the link! I read that a long time ago, just re-read it. It is brilliant!
And we see this perfectly illustrated in The Beast Below. The characters on the Spaceship UK are in a holding pattern, unable to escape. It takes the Doctor's arrival to affect change. He, himself, does not change things, he is merely the catalyst for Amy to understand the deeper truth no one else could.
Oh, that's an excellent point!
So it is very much about everything that you say, but also quintessential Doctor Who. :)
<3
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"Midnight" isn't about the Doctor and "The Waters of Mars" isn't about the Doctor. Both "Midnight" and "The Waters of Mars" are about the human characters. In both stories you have a group of humans in a confined space suddenly faced with a terrifying and inexplicable threat. In "Midnight" they turn on each other and behave monstrously. In "The Waters of Mars" they work together and behave decently to the end. And BOTH are so psychologically TRUE, so INSIGHTFUL, so REAL...and it's FASCINATING.
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