Doctor Who: The Doctor's Wife
May. 14th, 2011 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaThat was so much better than last week's where I was looking at the clock wondering how much longer was to go, while this week I was looking at the clock in horror that there was only that much to go.
That said, and without spoilers, which I will get to under a cut-tag, that episode felt about fifteen minutes too short and that hung there, in the heart of the emotions, like a very sad wound, which maybe, considering Idris' speech at the end of the episode, is appropriate: there is never enough time, it's sad when it's over. But...yeah. That's my overwhelming emotional reaction to all this - I want to reach out and grab it and shake it and ask why it didn't do more when it would have been so wonderful. I would not have this visceral reaction if the episode weren't amazing enough to want more. I needed more time. It should have had more time.
So, let's get down to it. The plot was good, but frankly, not breathtakingly amazing. This bothers me not a jot - there's plenty else in the episode to make up for it. But perhaps it's why I feel it was overcrowded. The core of the episode was the Doctor and the TARDIS and everything else was window-dressing. And that's the problem.
The subplot with Amy and Rory was chilling and creepy. It made good use of their personal histories in order to increase the horror factor. It was great to see more of the TARDIS to give a real sense of its scope, and the very appropriate house of mirrors aspect of it, with the Escher-like repetition of corridors and events, the potential warping of time, the gravity issues. If you're going to tell this kind of subplot this is the way you do it. On the technicalities of it, it was excellent - I cannot criticise the choices Gaiman made.
But I spent most of their scenes waiting to get back to the Doctor and Idris.
For all the fact the idea is creepy, the true horror of what House did to the Time Lords never quite came through for me on a deep, emotional level the way I think it needed to.
I mean, individual lines? Certainly. His words to Amy about wanting to be forgiven were perfect. When he finds the distress beacons and realises that he's been tricked, again, the way he's actually quite quiet, and Smith's delivery on the line about how taking that hope away would turn most people dangerous, but god knows what it will do to him, is startlingly good because it's a threat but only because it's true. He's not fronting, he's explaining; and I believe him that he honestly doesn't know, yet, what he's going to do, because the discovery was devastating.
But...throughout the course of the episode, honestly, there's no payoff to either of those moments. And honestly, if you're going to raise the spectre of the Time Lords returning in any capacity and then go, no, lolz, it was a trick, how cruel! you need to treat it like a pretty epic event. The Doctor doesn't seem more furious with House than any other big, mean villain. The Doctor was given a chance at redemption and forgiveness for something he thought he'd never be able to have for either, and it was snatched away from him, casually, by a cupboard of little boxes that made him angry (somewhere in there there is a clever line about boxes that contain the worst things in the world). But there's no cathartic moment about that either.
Now, on the plot of it, there's a lot of parallels going on with Idris, the last TARDIS. Her line about her sisters corpses really brings home that she's also the last of her kind; that she and the Doctor are tied together by more than their mutual theft.
What I think this episode was going for was an expression of the Doctor's loneliness, desperation and anger through that relationship and the ultimate loss of it. That's why it's so tragic he loses her in physical, human-contact form, even though he still has her. Because they are the last. She's his best friend.
And 90% of that story works; really, really works.
But it's 10% shy of amazing.
That moment, say, when the TARDIS is surveying the graveyard of her people, there's...no time. We move on to building one.
Anyone who knows me is probably surprised I'm basically arguing that we needed more wallowing in emo, because that was my perennial irritation with the Tennant-era. And certainly I didn't want things on that level. But I also didn't feel we reached the level of Nine's single tear in The End of the World. I didn't want things any more overstated or overwrought than they were in the episode - the emotional tone of most of it was spot on. But I wanted more of it.
I wanted more of those moments between the Doctor and Idris. I wanted more moments of quiet, subtle, fleeting recognition that they are the same, and that they stand in the graveyard of their hopes. And all of this is there in the episode if you dig for it, but I think it needed to be more towards the surface. It makes me honestly wonder if this episode ran long and they had to cut a lot of stuff? Because the plot/character balance seems off for the type of story Gaiman was telling.
I just think...adding ten minutes of character stuff would have skyrocketed this to incredibleness instead of very good with some beautiful moments.
And there really were a lot of them. I mean, basically the entirety of Idris' storyline was wonderful, and if I wish the Doctor had said more, or shown more reaction to certain things, the same isn't true of her - she was a brilliant guest actress/character. Gaiman's dialogue for her is incredible and touching, circular and right. He paid off a lot in that last speech in a really good way.
All the inversions around her were brilliant; that she stole a Time Lord to explore the universe and she has no intention of ever giving him back, and her confusion that people are bigger on the inside - how beautiful! The word she spent the whole episode looking for; when she finally found it, I was sure it was going to be love, and I thought that would fit fine, and be perfectly satisfying in a big, sweeping, all-encompassing way, but of course then it was "alive" and it was so much better. Big, and complicated, and sad.
This is the part where we spoke, and now it's over. Hello.
And the Doctor looked like he was crying the way you cry when you're a kid and you don't understand why it has to be someway, and it worked because I didn't feel manipulated, and because it was sad without being tragic. Which is, I guess, a bit unusual on telly. Well done, Gaiman, for giving the Doctor an excuse to Cry and Look Devastated, without it actually requiring the genuine fridging of another character. I hereby give you the Donna Noble Award for Good Writing.
So yes. There's my thoughts. I feel like a bad fan for not being unambiguously squeeful over every bit, but the criticism is only because I think it was so close to being one of the best of the best, it's hard not to want to point that out. Generally I only bother to do that when I either really love something or really hate it. And I definitely didn't hate this. ;)
That said, and without spoilers, which I will get to under a cut-tag, that episode felt about fifteen minutes too short and that hung there, in the heart of the emotions, like a very sad wound, which maybe, considering Idris' speech at the end of the episode, is appropriate: there is never enough time, it's sad when it's over. But...yeah. That's my overwhelming emotional reaction to all this - I want to reach out and grab it and shake it and ask why it didn't do more when it would have been so wonderful. I would not have this visceral reaction if the episode weren't amazing enough to want more. I needed more time. It should have had more time.
So, let's get down to it. The plot was good, but frankly, not breathtakingly amazing. This bothers me not a jot - there's plenty else in the episode to make up for it. But perhaps it's why I feel it was overcrowded. The core of the episode was the Doctor and the TARDIS and everything else was window-dressing. And that's the problem.
The subplot with Amy and Rory was chilling and creepy. It made good use of their personal histories in order to increase the horror factor. It was great to see more of the TARDIS to give a real sense of its scope, and the very appropriate house of mirrors aspect of it, with the Escher-like repetition of corridors and events, the potential warping of time, the gravity issues. If you're going to tell this kind of subplot this is the way you do it. On the technicalities of it, it was excellent - I cannot criticise the choices Gaiman made.
But I spent most of their scenes waiting to get back to the Doctor and Idris.
For all the fact the idea is creepy, the true horror of what House did to the Time Lords never quite came through for me on a deep, emotional level the way I think it needed to.
I mean, individual lines? Certainly. His words to Amy about wanting to be forgiven were perfect. When he finds the distress beacons and realises that he's been tricked, again, the way he's actually quite quiet, and Smith's delivery on the line about how taking that hope away would turn most people dangerous, but god knows what it will do to him, is startlingly good because it's a threat but only because it's true. He's not fronting, he's explaining; and I believe him that he honestly doesn't know, yet, what he's going to do, because the discovery was devastating.
But...throughout the course of the episode, honestly, there's no payoff to either of those moments. And honestly, if you're going to raise the spectre of the Time Lords returning in any capacity and then go, no, lolz, it was a trick, how cruel! you need to treat it like a pretty epic event. The Doctor doesn't seem more furious with House than any other big, mean villain. The Doctor was given a chance at redemption and forgiveness for something he thought he'd never be able to have for either, and it was snatched away from him, casually, by a cupboard of little boxes that made him angry (somewhere in there there is a clever line about boxes that contain the worst things in the world). But there's no cathartic moment about that either.
Now, on the plot of it, there's a lot of parallels going on with Idris, the last TARDIS. Her line about her sisters corpses really brings home that she's also the last of her kind; that she and the Doctor are tied together by more than their mutual theft.
What I think this episode was going for was an expression of the Doctor's loneliness, desperation and anger through that relationship and the ultimate loss of it. That's why it's so tragic he loses her in physical, human-contact form, even though he still has her. Because they are the last. She's his best friend.
And 90% of that story works; really, really works.
But it's 10% shy of amazing.
That moment, say, when the TARDIS is surveying the graveyard of her people, there's...no time. We move on to building one.
Anyone who knows me is probably surprised I'm basically arguing that we needed more wallowing in emo, because that was my perennial irritation with the Tennant-era. And certainly I didn't want things on that level. But I also didn't feel we reached the level of Nine's single tear in The End of the World. I didn't want things any more overstated or overwrought than they were in the episode - the emotional tone of most of it was spot on. But I wanted more of it.
I wanted more of those moments between the Doctor and Idris. I wanted more moments of quiet, subtle, fleeting recognition that they are the same, and that they stand in the graveyard of their hopes. And all of this is there in the episode if you dig for it, but I think it needed to be more towards the surface. It makes me honestly wonder if this episode ran long and they had to cut a lot of stuff? Because the plot/character balance seems off for the type of story Gaiman was telling.
I just think...adding ten minutes of character stuff would have skyrocketed this to incredibleness instead of very good with some beautiful moments.
And there really were a lot of them. I mean, basically the entirety of Idris' storyline was wonderful, and if I wish the Doctor had said more, or shown more reaction to certain things, the same isn't true of her - she was a brilliant guest actress/character. Gaiman's dialogue for her is incredible and touching, circular and right. He paid off a lot in that last speech in a really good way.
All the inversions around her were brilliant; that she stole a Time Lord to explore the universe and she has no intention of ever giving him back, and her confusion that people are bigger on the inside - how beautiful! The word she spent the whole episode looking for; when she finally found it, I was sure it was going to be love, and I thought that would fit fine, and be perfectly satisfying in a big, sweeping, all-encompassing way, but of course then it was "alive" and it was so much better. Big, and complicated, and sad.
This is the part where we spoke, and now it's over. Hello.
And the Doctor looked like he was crying the way you cry when you're a kid and you don't understand why it has to be someway, and it worked because I didn't feel manipulated, and because it was sad without being tragic. Which is, I guess, a bit unusual on telly. Well done, Gaiman, for giving the Doctor an excuse to Cry and Look Devastated, without it actually requiring the genuine fridging of another character. I hereby give you the Donna Noble Award for Good Writing.
So yes. There's my thoughts. I feel like a bad fan for not being unambiguously squeeful over every bit, but the criticism is only because I think it was so close to being one of the best of the best, it's hard not to want to point that out. Generally I only bother to do that when I either really love something or really hate it. And I definitely didn't hate this. ;)
