Closing Time
Sep. 25th, 2011 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloIt's the perennial problem. Dr Who (the show) conjures up these vastly powerful foes and then has to devise ways for the usually unarmed heroes to defeat them. Sometimes there's a lever or a button and sometimes there's the power of love.
Has there ever been a reversement that was truly convincing?
We've seen people converted into cybermen before and there's never been any way out. But last night there was. Paternal love trumps alien technology. Yeah, right, OK....
No, actually, not OK. Far too easy. Insulting even. When in human history has paternal love ever stopped the jackboot descending?
Apart from that ridiculously sentimental get-out, Closing Time was excellent. A comedy episode, with James Corden playing straight man to Matt Smith, but with a thread of poignancy running through it. That's the third episode in a row I'll remember fondly.
I have been dismissive of Matt Smith. He's not a leading man. He doesn't have that indefinable something that allows an actor to take command of stage or screen. He doesn't have authority. On the other hand he's an accomplished farceur and there's something spooky about the way- every so often- a very tired, lonely,old man peeks out from behind the Woosterishness. He is, I think, the most convincingly alien Doctor there's ever been.
Has there ever been a reversement that was truly convincing?
We've seen people converted into cybermen before and there's never been any way out. But last night there was. Paternal love trumps alien technology. Yeah, right, OK....
No, actually, not OK. Far too easy. Insulting even. When in human history has paternal love ever stopped the jackboot descending?
Apart from that ridiculously sentimental get-out, Closing Time was excellent. A comedy episode, with James Corden playing straight man to Matt Smith, but with a thread of poignancy running through it. That's the third episode in a row I'll remember fondly.
I have been dismissive of Matt Smith. He's not a leading man. He doesn't have that indefinable something that allows an actor to take command of stage or screen. He doesn't have authority. On the other hand he's an accomplished farceur and there's something spooky about the way- every so often- a very tired, lonely,old man peeks out from behind the Woosterishness. He is, I think, the most convincingly alien Doctor there's ever been.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-25 10:29 am (UTC)I still think of it, primarily, as a children's programme, but versions I watched in my own childhood had something of the quality of Roald Dahl's writing, a quirkiness and intelligence and willingness to confront the ugly darkness hovering at the edges of life. There was always the sense that the Doctor only just got away with it, because of his wits. It's lost that, and replaced it with the banal sentimentality and predictability of Britain's Got Talent.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-25 11:15 am (UTC)It's odd how sentimental a culture we are. I thought- growing up in the fifties and sixties (in the shadow of the war, when people couldn't afford sentimentality)- that Little Nell had been knocked on the head and shovelled away- never to return. But here she is, back from the dead- zombie Nell- dripping goo.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-26 12:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-26 08:39 am (UTC)Simon Callow was good as Dickens. He's apparently returning in the season finale, but we haven't yet been told whether he's playing Dickens again.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-26 09:12 am (UTC)He is. Charles Dickens is appearing along with Winston Churchill and a lot of other people. I do hope it's not going to be Character Catalogue: The Movie like "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End".
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Date: 2011-09-25 11:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-25 12:58 pm (UTC)If only the Doctor didn't have to save the world every week!
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Date: 2011-09-25 12:56 pm (UTC)Called it! This is exactly why I've liked him from the first.
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Date: 2011-09-25 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-25 01:10 pm (UTC)http://chrisbaer.net/mp/category/science-fiction/
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Date: 2011-09-25 02:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-25 01:10 pm (UTC)i've not seen much of the new doctor
they keep putting other things in his time slot
or the forget to list it
some thing to look forward to i guess
maybe some other time...
no subject
Date: 2011-09-25 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-25 03:15 pm (UTC)they've not seen the incarnations the changes
would it seem flat with out the history
for the previous episodes. would it seem flat?
I date from the time of tom baker
when pbs in my area started to show it.
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Date: 2011-09-25 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-25 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-25 03:16 pm (UTC)My father identified this trait in the Doctor yesterday: he thought of it as a negative. ("At first, I thought he was too young for the part. Now I'm beginning to think he's too old.") I agree on the convincingly alien; I care about that sort of thing very much.
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Date: 2011-09-25 06:25 pm (UTC)I quite agree (
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Date: 2011-09-25 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-25 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-25 06:28 pm (UTC)I was saying to a friend that sometimes Moffatt gets the DW "behind the sofa" formula, but not all that often! There has to be the right balance of initial terror, revelation of the more complicated, less immediately terrifying circumstances that created the monster (which are usually shown to be something like injustice meeting happenstance), and then resolution/understanding and that exhilarating kind of justice the Doctor dispenses ("I'll show you MOVES!").
no subject
Date: 2011-09-25 08:30 pm (UTC)Since he took over as show runner I've found Moffat's writing much less impressive than it was under RTD. I suspect he's seriously overworked.