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umalt posted:The first and only time I watched Doctor Who was leading up to Moffat's run. But one weird thing I remember about it was that I actually liked Mickey. Although I agree with most of the criticism about him, I actually really like Mickey too, and found myself sympathizing with him a lot. I really wish they hadn't kept slamming the reset button on his character development, and his relationship with Rose and the Doctor. Like at the end of the Aliens of London 2-parter the Doctor actually liked and respected Mickey, and Nine treated him better after that, but as soon as Ten came along, it was back to "Be a huge rear end in a top hat to Mickey" for awhile. And of course his "I'm over you / no I'm not" cycle. Ugh.
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Aug 24, 2014 07:38
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DoctorWhat posted:Yeah. For that matter, is Doctor Who not "kiddy" enough?
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Aug 24, 2014 07:38
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VagueRant posted:I always thought Torchwood was the spinoff for kids. It felt like it was written for 11 year olds who think swearing is cool. The usual descriptive division is that Doctor Who is a "family show", with monsters and relationships and death and implied sex jokes; The Sarah Jane Adventures is a "kids show", with monsters and relationships and being grounded and implied dating jokes; and Torchwood is a "travesty", with monsters and relationships and eternal torment and literal extended rape jokes. The "Children of Earth" mini-season (with Peter Capaldi!) was okay though. Don't watch Torchwood. Not even if you love Barrowman. It's just not worth the damage it will do.
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Aug 24, 2014 07:58
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Torchwood is the Save By The Bell College Years of Doctor Who. Sure, you can put Captain Jack into more adult situations, but nobody really needs to see that, and they did a piss poor job of it.
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Aug 24, 2014 08:10
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Mo0 posted:Sure, you can put Captain Jack into more adult situations, but nobody really needs to see that 
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Aug 24, 2014 10:33
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Torchwood was less 'adult' and more 'adolescent'.
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Aug 24, 2014 10:54
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Torchwood was what adolescents/RTD think is cool about being an adult.
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Aug 24, 2014 11:34
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Man, this show's complete and utter lack of consistency in either tone or quality is making for a great thread.
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Aug 24, 2014 11:54
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MikeJF posted:Torchwood was less 'adult' and more 'adolescent'. This is description of most geek media that attempts to be "dark," "more adult," and "not for kids anymore," really. Video games, comics, all of it. They're basically the "for kids!" version stripped of their whimsy and hope. It is a shame, there are lots of great stories that could be told to a more mature audience that grew up on the material, it just never happens.
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Aug 24, 2014 16:55
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Doctor Who "The Girl in the Fireplace" Series 2, Episode 4 Series 2's best episode so far is also its most depressing, a dark, melancholy little character study that's just utterly terrific, penned once again by the supremely capable Stephen Moffat. The new trio of The Doctor, Rose, and Mickey arrive on a dank, derelict spaceship in the 5000s, which turns out to have a bunch of time gates open, all of which are focused in and around the life of late 1700's French royal Reinette (Sophia Myles), better known as Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of King Louis XV. As The Doctor attempts to figure out what, exactly, happened to the missing crew and why, exactly, there are so many time gates focused on this one french woman, he intersects and interacts with Reinette many times throughout her life, forming a bit of an unrequited love story element to the episode as a whole- Reinette pines for him over the course of decades, but to The Doctor their meetings have taken place over the space of a couple of hours at the most. In any case, as Reinette is repeatedly menaced throughout her life by clockwork automatons with creepy, bizarre theatre masks, the plan begins to slowly unfold: the automatons are workers tasked with maintaining the ship, and when they ran out of suitable materials after a particularly disastrous trip, quickly started harvesting the crew themselves- and now need Reinette's brain to make the ship fully functional again. Unfortunately, they need her brain at a specific age- in detail, they need her 37-year-old brain -for it to work, hence the large amount of time gates. The Doctor saves the day by destroying a time gate, thus marooning himself and the robots within pre-Revolutionary France, and as the crew realize the pointlessness of their plan they voluntarily shut themselves off, since they're doomed to never complete their mission. At the end of the episode, though, there turns out to be essentially a plot macguffin that magically allows The Doctor to return back to the ship, and thus the TARDIS and his adventures. This was an exceptionally well-crafted script by Moffat. I've noticed that Moffat, as a writer, loves taking his time and teasing out the plot details until it all coalesces in the final act; as Oxxidation has mentioned before, he's a very clockwork (EHHHHHHHHH? EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?) sort of writer, and he's pretty good at it all things considered. The slow build of the relationship between The Doctor and Reinette is a particular standout, as the cold open begins with Reinette desperately calling for The Doctor, then the episode proper begins with his and Reinette's first meeting (her as a child) before progressing chronologically throughout her life as she's variously threatened by the spaceship's crew. It was a neat trick that Moffat pulled, immediately establishing that The Doctor and Reinette had some sort of deep relationship before explaining how, exactly, that relationship was formed. The writing, as well, was as sharp as I've now expected Moffat's scripts to be, heavy on the one-liners and with incredibly good characterization. Reinette in particular is a standout- Sophia Myles brings an incredible amount of warmth and relatibility to the character, but Reinette-as-written is an incredibly clever, special woman deserving of the focus the episode by necessity places on her. Normally I'm quite sick of The Doctor making goo-goo eyes at any moderately attractive woman he meets, but the way the interactions between him and Reinette played out through "The Girl in the Fireplace" made me appreciate the romantic angle of this episode in this one particular case. Which is good, because nearly the entire running time of the episode is spent on scenes between The Doctor and Reinette, and if their character moments didn't land then the entire episode would be worthless. The script is able to juggle the rather bizarre "two time periods" aspect of the episode as well- all episodes of Doctor Who thus far have been set either firmly in the past or in the future, and this episode being set on a spaceship observing late 1700s France is a rarity for DW, but the script is able to juggle the inherent dissimilarity of both time periods well- the spaceship scenes feel different, tonally, to the France scenes, and because of it the episode never really feels like it's lagging- plus, having it set in two time periods gets us scenes like The Doctor being followed around by a horse or confronting the robot crew as they're ready to operate on Rose and Mickey, fresh off a decadent French party, tie around his head like a bandanna. Even the plot macguffin (In this case: Reinette had the original fireplace that The Doctor visited her, for the first time, transported entirely and rebuilt in the French palace, which The Doctor is able to bring online due to plot shenanigans) worked for me solely because it was a clever reminder to the circumstances of how The Doctor and Reinette met, and how far their relationship had progressed even within the span of a single episode of television. In any case, the episode as a whole builds to its rather gut-wrenching finale, with The Doctor nipping off temporarily, promising to Reinette that he'd bring her to see any star in the sky, but when he returns seven years have passed, and Reinette is now dead. It's a sober moment of reflection that brings the episode into tragic relief- the episode had stressed throughout the timelessness of The Doctor's character, especially in relation to Reinette's, with her melancholy muttering about being forced to take the "slow road" in the timestream. It also brings about another, common theme of The Doctor as a whole- he invests himself fully, and is willing to sacrifice himself without a second's thought, for the safety of another, but it all turns out to be a rather pointless endeavor. The Doctor saving her brain from being harvested by killer robots doesn't make her immune to death- she dies anyway of a rather more mundane factor, illness. All he did was give her more time, and in the end wasn't even able to fulfill her one wish. But maybe that's all the best he can really do, and the cruel irony of it all is maybe, perhaps, he's the one who has to suffer the most of all the people he does and doesn't save. Those people are able to live their lives, such as they are, but he's doomed to only vicariously experience life a nibble at a time, one episode at a time. He's doomed to constantly wander, to experience the fast road, yes, but to never experience the pleasure of a live well lived. A depressing thought, indeed. Grade: A Random Thoughts:
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Aug 25, 2014 03:32
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Thanks for reminding me of how much I liked "The Girl in the Fireplace" Toxx. Goddammit Moffat.
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Aug 25, 2014 03:39
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drat, after reading that I hate myself for forgetting such a great episode; it literally took me a few paragraphs to remember that episode at all. It really makes me wish I enjoyed Moffat/Smith's first season more.
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Aug 25, 2014 03:42
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So how long until Occupation changes his name to Docwhopation and starts going to conventions in TARDIS shirts?
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Aug 25, 2014 03:43
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Jsor posted:Docwhopation Oh mannnnn that's a great pun can I oxx can I
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Aug 25, 2014 03:47
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Jsor posted:So how long until Occupation changes his name to Docwhopation and starts going to conventions in TARDIS shirts? At this rate we're going to end up funding a group field trip to a convention wherein he gets some poor Doctor Who actors to sign something amidst a chorus of goon cheers.
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Aug 25, 2014 03:52
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If Occupation wears it, I will pitch in to buy him a C O A T
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Aug 25, 2014 03:54
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DoctorWhat posted:If Occupation wears it, I will pitch in to buy him a C O A T I will burn it and I will burn you.
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Aug 25, 2014 04:00
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Oxxidation posted:I will burn it and I will burn you. Then you'd have to deal with question-mark sweater-vests* and umbrellas and rolled "r"s and would that really be all that much better? *I actually have one of those, too.
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Aug 25, 2014 04:09
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Doctor Who "The Girl in the Fireplace" Series 2, Episode 4 This episode catches praise for a lot of things - its acting, its concept, the Doctor's little jubilant hip-thrust into the fireplace after he smooches Reinette - but it especially benefits from its place in the season. After "School Reunion," which had Sarah Jane giving us a glimpse of what happens to a companion after the Doctor leaves, "The Girl in the Fireplace" shows what is essentially the Doctor's relationship with a companion in fast-forward; he saves someone from mortal peril, leaves a lasting impression on their lives, there's excitement and danger and acts of derring-do. And then he leaves, and his luckless friends try to move on and die waiting for a reunion that never comes. The Doctor might have mistakenly blinked ahead through all 43 years of Reinette's life via the fireplaces, but in the end, this is his life in miniature, always taking the fast path, unable to wait for others to catch up. There, that's the obvious metaphor out of the way. One thing I don't see complimented much for this episode is the set dressing, which is a shame, because it really is outstanding for Who. The scenes in Versailles were filmed in a grab bag of locales and mansions across Wales, and the rich lighting and frankly excellent costumes really do lead one to think that this is 18th-century France (though there did appear to be an awful lot of multiculturalism going on in the French aristocracy in this episode - this could of course just be Who setting a good example for the kids, but I'd be genuinely curious if the mixed races portrayed in those scenes was historically accurate. Race relations in those times were a strange and uneasy thing, especially in Europe). The Clock Men, likewise, were apparently actual animatronics, and their uneasy jerking movements and constant ticking under their garish outfits provided a queasy mix of the comical and the threatening, a good fit for an episode that had such a varied tone. They're not nearly as creepy or characterized as the Child, but their brief conversation with Reinette and dreadfully literal way of thinking ("We do not require your feet") lets them more than suffice as an antagonist for this episode. Also worth noting is that Moffat is now two for two on villains, or at least villainous creatures, who are not actually malevolent but simply working towards a single goal with a severely warped regard for the consequences. It wouldn't be too much of a spoiler to say that this is far from the last time Moffat will dip into this idea, or numerous others. One of the many, many things that differentiates him from Davies (which I will, again, be forced to reveal in bits so I don't blueprint his whole repertoire for Occ) is that while Davies will often shut himself in a freshly painted room and bang his head on a post until the fumes and trauma give the voices in his head a script idea, Moffat's stories are one long recombinant series of motifs,meaning he has a set number of ideas that he constantly re-arranges and re-skins from script to script. I will make no comment on the relative quality of this approach, because if I did then someone would argue, and I would have to destroy them. It's just a thing I'm saying. The thing has been said. Two things that didn't quite work for me in this one - the Doctor's mind-link, and, of course, the Doctor's sidekicks. The Time Lords have had bullshit psychic powers since the old serials, but the new series doesn't drag them out very often; on one hand, good, because it's a stupid thing to have, but on the other, it tends to leave the question hanging as to why the Doctor doesn't just telepath his way out of more jams. Moffat at least dances around one big reason - that telepathy is a two-way street, and there are some questions, particularly the one right there in the show's name, that the Doctor really doesn't want answered - but even then the Doctor appears flabbergasted that that his mind can be read, so it kind of falls flat as a threat. Reinette's relationship with the Doctor could've carried itself perfectly find without the mind-link, especially given her characterization as a remarkably astute and insightful young lady, and honestly, I have a built-in grudge against the Doctor's memory powers for reasons that anyone who has watched this show will understand and that if anyone spoils I will call upon Annakie Force One to strafe your lives so help me God. And then you have Rose and Mickey's hijinks through the ship, which could have probably been excised entirely without much lost. Mickey is the clown of the universe as always, and Rose's brief tete-a-tete with Reinette is a surprisingly effective scene (if only because it shows how coolly competent Reinette is compared to her t-shirted Cockney interloper) but ultimately they just feel like they're in the episode out of obligation, and detract from the neat, cute, fun, and finally heartbreaking arc in Versailles. The tonal whiplash survives scrutiny solely due to its deft execution - the cool blue lighting in the final palace visit, King Louis' veiled jealousy for the Doctor's unseen, unspoken relationship with his mistress (which he immediately recognizes and smothers, knowing that this isn't the time to express it), and the Doctor's final assurance to Rose that he's "always all right." But of course he isn't. Everyone knows that everyone dies, and it's a lesson that the Doctor has to learn over and over again, and always in different ways as his mind and body shift from one Doctor to the next. The end is never the end. Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 04:12
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e: in retrospect this might be a spoiler even though I was trying to be as vague as possible, someone take the kettle off the stove
Four Score fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 04:22
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edit: THE TEA HAS GROWN COLD
Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 04:24
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Toxxupation posted:Mickey: "What a horse doin' on a spaceship?" The Doctor: "Mickey, what's Pre-Revolutionary France doing on a spaceship? Get a little perspective." This is, quite possibly, my favourite line and delivery of the entire new series. Always cracks me up. (Also a pretty good summary of Doctor Who in a nutshell, come to think of it) You didn't mention that lovely final zinger, the last shot, where a simple explanation is finally given to the last mystery of the episode and makes you go 'Ohhhhhh', just to cap it all off. There was a cut scene, apparently, which referenced that if The Doctor had been trapped after smashing through the mirror, he'd given Rose instructions to trigger the same override from the Season One finale to take the TARDIS home.
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Aug 25, 2014 04:26
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Toxxupation posted:
Ah, those bygone days. Do yourself a favor and never read a word of any interview Moffat has given, particularly with regard to anything involving gender.
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Aug 25, 2014 04:33
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Bicyclops posted:Ah, those bygone days. Those interviews were already posted. No one cared, as is right and good.
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Aug 25, 2014 04:35
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Oxxidation posted:Those interviews were already posted. No one cared, as is right and good. Personally, I think it makes it harder to deal with things that would otherwise be fairly normal microaggressions, but to each his own.
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Aug 25, 2014 04:37
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Oxxidation posted:edit: THE TEA HAS GROWN COLD Say what you will about Moffat, he can write a fantastic loving one-line joke.
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Aug 25, 2014 04:42
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Oxxidation posted:Those interviews were already posted. No one cared, as is right and good. Although it does mean that I often find myself putting his female characters to the Bechdel test often, with unsatisfying results.
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Aug 25, 2014 05:43
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This episode was the first I ever watched of Doctor Who and convinced me to watch the show after thinking it was probably something I wouldn't like. Its still in my top 3. edit: Also one of my female friends found the clockwork robots to be the most terrifying aliens in doctor who to date for some reason. Xenoborg fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 06:07
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We haven't mentioned the music in this episode yet, which personally I think was the final perfect touch to a great episode. It just... suited it exactly.
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Aug 25, 2014 06:29
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Toxxupation posted:Doctor Who I'm really glad you liked this one. Definitely one of my favourites. Re: Mickey, he was pretty good this episode, especially at the end where he takes rose away from The Doctor to give The Doctor his moment alone at the end with the letter. That's probably Peak Mickey.
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Aug 25, 2014 07:16
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Great, now I've pulled this episode out and am watching it. We've become a bit desensitised to 'what the gently caress' cold opens in Doctor Who since Moffat took over, since he enjoys that kind of thing, but I remember at the time that this cold open was one serious 'what the hell is going on huh?' great opening to the episode. Really, I think the biggest thing about this episode is that it was serious and at times melancholic, but it also never stopped having fun, and that's key to the Doctor Who formula. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 07:23
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I saw this episode on TV a few days ago. It is legitimately really good, but it is downright odd how much of it Moffat has since reused in different ways. Honestly, it's well written, but it really hinges on Sophia Myles' amazing performance, and a bad actress or even a mediocre one would have made this an unmemorable episode. we-ell, people might remember the Clockwork Men.
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Aug 25, 2014 07:51
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Okay, I definitely gave up on the show before this episode. But I did end up checking it out when urged by fans some years later, and I didn't care for it. It just didn't do anything for me.  (But the other episode fans told me to check out was probably the only decent episode of the show ever. So I'm not completely negative!)
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Aug 25, 2014 08:23
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Toxxupation posted:At this point, Moffat has been two for two on crafting female characters who are independent and free from the sexist stereotypes surrounding most-to-all other female characters on Doctor Who. I mean, heck, in this case he designed a character that was explicitly a rival for Rose's affections and still wrote Rose incredibly well. Again, that scene between Reinette and Rose was genuinely great and service both characters incredibly well. Okay, so I like this episode a lot. It's a great concept and has lots of awesome lines. But didn't you get annoyed just last episode that Sarah Jane was defined purely by her fancying the Doctor? This episode is exactly that. Myles' performance is really great and papers over a lot of it, but that still is basically...it. Tennant rattles off her accomplishments at one point but we don't get a sense of any of that from her herself. Her life becomes defined (at least to her it does) by some mystery man she met once as a kid. Bicyclops posted:Personally, I think it makes it harder to deal with things that would otherwise be fairly normal microaggressions, but to each his own. Of course it does. It would be absolutely foolish not to scrutinise things in that way.
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Aug 25, 2014 08:55
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Bown posted:Of course it does. It would be absolutely foolish not to scrutinise things in that way. Foolish I say! 
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Aug 25, 2014 09:27
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VagueRant posted:Okay, I definitely gave up on the show before this episode. But I did end up checking it out when urged by fans some years later, and I didn't care for it. It just didn't do anything for me.
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Aug 25, 2014 09:33
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Bicyclops posted:normal microaggressions lol
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Aug 25, 2014 09:42
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Senor Tron posted:Although it does mean that I often find myself putting his female characters to the Bechdel test often, with unsatisfying results. Trying to apply the Bechdel test to Doctor Who is stupidity. It's not a universally useful test. The nature of the show is that nearly all of the conversations which The Doctor is not part of will be about him.
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Aug 25, 2014 10:53
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Gravity fails the Bechdel test.
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Aug 25, 2014 10:57
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MrL_JaKiri posted:Gravity fails the Bechdel test. Yeah, but on a technicality.
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Aug 25, 2014 11:08
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