Dr Who, Season 36: Random Points In No Particular Order

[poliphilo]

 If the Silence have been leeching off humanity since the beginnings of civilisation, how come the Doctor hasn't winkled them out before?

Are we to imagine The Silence as an invisible presence in every Who adventure since the Hartnell era? It's a bit of a stretch.

 

Big heads and floppy hands. I'm afraid I'm less impressed by the Silence than I'm supposed to be. They're so obviously just men in prosthetics.

 

Matt Smith's Doctor is adorable, but it's hard to care about him. He lacks the vulnerability Eccleston and Tennant brought to the role.

Actually, the only character I care about is River Song. Am I showing my age?

Amy and Rory are sweet and funny, so why don't I give a monkey's?  

I enjoyed both episodes immensely, but afterwards I shrugged. This is fast food TV. 

Best moment so far? The utterly inexplicable Lynchian lady with the eye-patch at the spy hole that wasn't really there. Now there's a touch of authentic weirdness.

 

Playing Nixon as  genial and trustworthy is counter intuitive and smart. 

 

It was nice to see Monument Valley, but given its deep cinematic history, you'd have thought they could have extracted a little more poetry from it.

Comments

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

I fancy Karen Gillan. That is all.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

She's very pretty and charming, but... somehow I don't feel any connection to her character

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

IMHO it went downhill once The Doctor stopped being eccentric but a fighter of baddies (c. Tom Baker) and he was "reimagined" as a camp icon of Cool Britannia.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Have you watched any of those old shows lately? They're not really much good. Dr Who was always a great idea indifferently executed.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Blake's Seven seemed great for 1978. Maybe that is allure?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

None of this stuff was made with posterity in mind.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's the last of the Silence - they've been seeded in the previous series just a little bit too much for Moffat to get rid of them so straightforwardly. And it was all too neat, even for the Doctor - Mark Sheppard manages to get the captured Silence to say exactly the right words that will post-hypnotically suggest that the world kill them all?

I agree about River, but then a large part of that is that Alex Kingston is the actor there with the greatest experience, and the only one old enough to conceivably show loss after a lifetime of love.

Overall, it's a problem I've seen (and written poor plot for in games) over and over again; the urge to make this threat the biggest, baddest threat than the last one is fine, until you realise that you have to top that with the next biggest and baddest. Eventually you have to ret-con and reset, and tell the fans that what they knew before isn't true. And for some, inevitably, that will leave a bad taste in their mouths.

Finally - the Silence remain undiscovered more than 5 years after the invention of photography? Really?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wish they'd scale down. Small stories- in which the threat is to an individual or small group of people are actually more involving- perhaps because they're more plausible- than threats to the world, the universe, the very fabric of existence.

Alex Kingston is lovely. As you point out, there are drawbacks to hiring a very young cast.

I'm sure the Silence will be back. I imagine I will come to dread (but not in a good way) their reappearance, just as I dread the reapperance of the Daleks.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Nixon as genial and trustworthy? I can accept that as counterintuitive, but were it anyone else I should simply assume that you don't really know what smart means.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Maybe "smart" isn't quite the right word. "Bold" might be better. So might "provocative". Whatever. I like it that they chose to challenge the received wisdom.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Had they portrayed Winston Churchill as a bisexual pedophile who enjoyed crushing small animals underfoot wearing naught but stiletto heels and a bishop's mitre, that would be "bold" and "provocative". Pretending Nixon was anything more than a murderous crook who betrayed the trust of the American people, who damaged the Republic and its political process so badly that it has yet to recover, and may indeed never recover, strikes me as just culturally arrogant and insensitive.

None of this is intended to reflect on you, of course. It is just that, during our last national election cycle and its aftermath, I learned something about how Brits see us, or rather how they utterly fail to see us while convincing themselves that they do. And sometimes I resent it.

[internet-sampo.livejournal.com]

Ayyyyy! Spoilers! We just got the first episode here in the US.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Sorry about that, but at least I didn't reveal who came out on top. Bet you can't guess.

[internet-sampo.livejournal.com]

When I realized you were referring to the complete season I stopped reading.

I can probably guess who came out on top ... but there's always hope: according to the old series the Doctor's 12th regeneration is evil.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No, no- not the complete season. We've only seen two episodes. We're as much in the dark as you are- almost.

[calizen.livejournal.com]

Myself, yes, I do not want to see a campy Dr. Who.

But oh, good-o with Alex Kingston. We don't get to see her nearly enough.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say Matt Smith's Doctor was camp- more like an absent-minded professor.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

For me Amy was lost the moment she started throwing herself at the doctor while purporting to have a boyfriend she cared about. Whom she then... married? And seems to care about? I feel like she can't form a sustained connection to anyone, so why should I be able to form one to her?

Perhaps she was just written badly. Or written as a very young person with no idea what she wants. In either case, I disliked that her flightiness seemed to have no consequences. Rory stayed with her, after all. God knows why. :,

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes. You've put your finger on something important there. Amy is flighty and immature- and if the Doctor had any of the wisdom he's supposed to possess he'd get out of her life and give her the chance to settle down with her new husband.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I wondered about Doctor's previous inability to spot The Silence, too.

Otherwise, I'm thoroughly enjoying these latest ones. I might even buy the DVD's...