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

[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.