Doctor Who: Xmas Special 2013
Thursday, December 26th, 2013 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
retsukoUhm.
Uhm...
What did I just watch?
Let me see if I have this straight: the crack-in-the-universe plot was never properly solved, and now the crack itself is a conduit to the lost planet of Gallifrey, where the people are trying to communicate with the Doctor and see if it's safe to come back to the universe. For some reason, the epicenter of this is a tiny, adorable postcard town on Trenzalore*, the inhabitants of which look like they stumbled out of a Dickens/German fairy tale reenactment. So all of the Time Lords' enemies (who, I guess, are the Doctor's specific enemies, too) want to blow up the planet to stop Gallifrey's return, but the Doctor and the Weirdo Church** want to prevent the war, so the Doctor spends 300 or so odd years keeping everything at a stalemate, after sending Clara back to London after explicitly promising not to. But then she comes back again at the Head of the Church's*** request, and talks to the Gallifreyans on the other side of the crack, and they give the Doctor two doses**** of extra Regeneration Juice, and then BAM! Everything's blown up! And a montage of important people sort of happens! And then he's Pete Capaldi!
That's what happened, right?
I don't mean to sound facile, I'm just sort of... weirded out. When you have aflying plot device TARDIS, I think that normal rules don't apply to you, but here was the Doctor letting normal rules apply to him, and then yelling at the Daleks not to tell him the rules. I don't get that. The Doctor has a TARDIS, and the knowledge of how to get out of worse situations than this one, so why stick around in the post card planet? (Other than the inhabitants making adorable Punch-and-Judy-esque puppets of him and his enemies.) If the message of the episode is that the Doctor just wanted to live out a portion of his life stuck in one place, then that seems very out of character for him. I didn't like Clara as disposable prop in this episode, either, although I was pleased to see that she has a real family, even if they drive her crazy.
All this said, I really did love the line about how we're all different people at one time or another, and we shouldn't forget the selves that we used to be. That sequence encapsulated really nicely all that I love about Who, and why I want to stick with the series even at its low points. The Doctor is vast, and contains multitudes, just like all of us. :)
I enjoyed it, I just wish the story had been told a little more clearly.
* The planet that I was hoping to never hear about ever again, because I don't like war movies very much, and because we heard about it in the last season So. Frikkin'. Much.
** That's my name, and I'm sticking to it.
*** I was thoroughly impressed with Tasha Lem. Any woman who can mentally beat back physical possession by the Daleks gets a free pass with me.
**** At least, I saw two lights. Maybe one got used up on blowing up the Dalek ship?
Uhm...
What did I just watch?
Let me see if I have this straight: the crack-in-the-universe plot was never properly solved, and now the crack itself is a conduit to the lost planet of Gallifrey, where the people are trying to communicate with the Doctor and see if it's safe to come back to the universe. For some reason, the epicenter of this is a tiny, adorable postcard town on Trenzalore*, the inhabitants of which look like they stumbled out of a Dickens/German fairy tale reenactment. So all of the Time Lords' enemies (who, I guess, are the Doctor's specific enemies, too) want to blow up the planet to stop Gallifrey's return, but the Doctor and the Weirdo Church** want to prevent the war, so the Doctor spends 300 or so odd years keeping everything at a stalemate, after sending Clara back to London after explicitly promising not to. But then she comes back again at the Head of the Church's*** request, and talks to the Gallifreyans on the other side of the crack, and they give the Doctor two doses**** of extra Regeneration Juice, and then BAM! Everything's blown up! And a montage of important people sort of happens! And then he's Pete Capaldi!
That's what happened, right?
I don't mean to sound facile, I'm just sort of... weirded out. When you have a
All this said, I really did love the line about how we're all different people at one time or another, and we shouldn't forget the selves that we used to be. That sequence encapsulated really nicely all that I love about Who, and why I want to stick with the series even at its low points. The Doctor is vast, and contains multitudes, just like all of us. :)
I enjoyed it, I just wish the story had been told a little more clearly.
* The planet that I was hoping to never hear about ever again, because I don't like war movies very much, and because we heard about it in the last season So. Frikkin'. Much.
** That's my name, and I'm sticking to it.
*** I was thoroughly impressed with Tasha Lem. Any woman who can mentally beat back physical possession by the Daleks gets a free pass with me.
**** At least, I saw two lights. Maybe one got used up on blowing up the Dalek ship?
no subject
Date: 2013-12-27 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-27 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-29 04:28 pm (UTC)And my hobbyhorse is that I just hope/trust that Capaldi, as a more experienced performer, may handle the Moffat excesses better. Nothing against Matt Smith but I think he wasn't up to it so early in his career.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-30 03:10 am (UTC)I don't think Moffat has ruined the show, or anything near approaching that (to hear some fans talk, you'd think he'd personally come over and spit in their morning cornflakes), but I do wish that he'd get some writers on his side who'd have a more "outside" perspective. I'm betting that on paper, this seemed like a really great episode--classic enemies! Clever one-liners! High stakes!--but that no one on staff seriously contemplated how it would look all together.
I have a feeling that the Capaldi episodes may swing back in another direction all together, but I'm trying to hold back with the majority of my speculation.