Doctor Who: Smith & Jones
Apr. 3rd, 2007 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaI finally saw it! Yay!
It wasn't as funny as actual Smith & Jones but it was a pleasant surprise. I wasn't annoyed by the Tenth Doctor at all, and I think I could get to like Martha an awful lot, though she did get stuck with a few really awful lines.
I enjoyed her insistance that the title "Doctor" is earned and I would have liked to see her hold out on him a little longer, actually. I also enjoyed the way she was trying to protect him and be the hero before she quite realised who he was.
Martha has the potential to be a companion who has her own stories and development WITHOUT being a cheap Ace knockoff. And somehow she makes the Tenth Doctor more likeable.
Perhaps because she doesn't inspire previous comparisons?
I still prefer the Ninth, and in Old Who, the Seventh. They make an interesting comparison, I think. Both darker, nastier, more desperate than their other incarnations. One suffering from PTSD, terrified of confronting what he's done, the other terrified of what he won't bring himself to do, of what he won't prevent. Both followed around by not-quite-drop-out, nails, determined kids, both looking for a way to grow up, be something more than their histories have laid out for them - if time were allowed to develop organically. Both attempting to grow beyond the prison-images they carried of a parent. Though only one of them did it with explosives and a baseball bat; the other had to make do with a mobile phone.
I'll never think Rose kicks as much ass as Ace, I'll never find her as interesting, but perhaps she was a better balance for the Ninth Doctor than Ace would have been. Because for all their parallels, Ace was cast as the Seventh Doctor's daughter, learning the brutality of adulthood - of parental betrayal - of a cruel universe - through him. Ironic, since I think she was altogether better equipped for adult life than Rose who was far more sheltered.
But Rose was cast as the Ninth Doctor's lover. She was already an adult, for all her childish behaviour, and she took the edges away from the Ninth. She took him, full of bitterness and bile at the universe, at the lost of his homeworld, his family, his metaphorical parent, of his betrayal of Gallifrey and the universe's betrayal of him, she took that and made it more bearable. Perhaps Rose raised the Doctor.
I suppose this isn't strictly relevant, but it's one of my favourite comparsions/inverses in the Who-Universe and it's integral to my thinking on the Doctor and Martha.
For all his superficial similarities to Tom Baker's Doctor, I started to feel he was actually more similar to Colin Baker's. He's pompous, a little righteous and judgemental, in a holier-than-thou way, not in Sylvester McCoy's pragmatic, factual fashion.
The Tenth Doctor was never going to have the Ninth's hollow brutality. His attitude ensured that. But also he is a different person and he's not the one that destroyed his homeworld, or woke up in the aftermath of its destruction.
And that's a tough position to be in, he's the last of his kind, but he can't pull off the angst of the Ninth. When he tries it just seems...fake, hollow, perhaps a little undeserved.
One thing I appreciated was the Doctor's insistance to Martha that she wasn't replacing Rose, that she wasn't his next companion. It's not that I'm desperate for Rose to be extra special because I loooooved her as a companion. It's more that this goes some way towards making the Doctor seem less like a serial stalker. It took me long enough to get to grips with the idea that Doctor Who could have companions as romantic interests (and I won't rant about that in full now because I've done so before), and one of the only ways I could really get on board with it was because of who the Doctor was at the time and what Rose represented (see above).
To insert Martha suddenly into that role is more than slightly creepy.
(Also if she pulls a Rose and disappears accidentally for a year, her brother is going to have SUCH a good reason to be pissed at her - YOU DISAPPEARED ON MY 21ST BIRTHDAY! Wow. Bummer.)
So anyway, it occurs to me that while the Tenth Doctor might be a little more removed from the tragedy of Gallifrey, he's still the last of his kind, and that's got to be difficult to deal with. Perhaps the tragedy of the Tenth isn't the tragedy of The Man Who Killed His Planet, but The Man Who Was Left Behind. It's not so much guilt as loneliness. Which is perhaps why he's taking the loss of Rose so hard.
His guilt is that he lost her - his adopted family in perhaps a more literal way than previous Companions and with previous Doctors. Even though she was the chosen companion of Christopher Eccleston's Doctor and not David Tennant's.
I should really reserve judgement until I've seen a few more episodes without him acting like a nob, but is it too much to hope that he's more likable because he's finally found a companion that he wants, not that he's obsessed with posessing because she's the only thing his genocidal previous incarnation left him as an emotional tie, to, well, anything?
Hmm.
And to think this was supposed to be short.
In other news, I'm enjoying Life on Mars. Gene Hunt is awesome though an asshole. It's a really well put together drama though I am getting tired of the "they're going to kiss! Oh, wait, someone just walked in and interrupted!" scene between Sam and Annie at the end of EVERY BLOODY EPISODE. Anyway, score for Life on Mars which I was originally entirely meh on when I heard the premise.
In other news, my boy and I are totally convinced that Fiona Bruce is really a viking. We think she keeps her axe under her newsdesk and probably moors her longboat in the BBC carpark.
You know I'm right.
It wasn't as funny as actual Smith & Jones but it was a pleasant surprise. I wasn't annoyed by the Tenth Doctor at all, and I think I could get to like Martha an awful lot, though she did get stuck with a few really awful lines.
I enjoyed her insistance that the title "Doctor" is earned and I would have liked to see her hold out on him a little longer, actually. I also enjoyed the way she was trying to protect him and be the hero before she quite realised who he was.
Martha has the potential to be a companion who has her own stories and development WITHOUT being a cheap Ace knockoff. And somehow she makes the Tenth Doctor more likeable.
Perhaps because she doesn't inspire previous comparisons?
I still prefer the Ninth, and in Old Who, the Seventh. They make an interesting comparison, I think. Both darker, nastier, more desperate than their other incarnations. One suffering from PTSD, terrified of confronting what he's done, the other terrified of what he won't bring himself to do, of what he won't prevent. Both followed around by not-quite-drop-out, nails, determined kids, both looking for a way to grow up, be something more than their histories have laid out for them - if time were allowed to develop organically. Both attempting to grow beyond the prison-images they carried of a parent. Though only one of them did it with explosives and a baseball bat; the other had to make do with a mobile phone.
I'll never think Rose kicks as much ass as Ace, I'll never find her as interesting, but perhaps she was a better balance for the Ninth Doctor than Ace would have been. Because for all their parallels, Ace was cast as the Seventh Doctor's daughter, learning the brutality of adulthood - of parental betrayal - of a cruel universe - through him. Ironic, since I think she was altogether better equipped for adult life than Rose who was far more sheltered.
But Rose was cast as the Ninth Doctor's lover. She was already an adult, for all her childish behaviour, and she took the edges away from the Ninth. She took him, full of bitterness and bile at the universe, at the lost of his homeworld, his family, his metaphorical parent, of his betrayal of Gallifrey and the universe's betrayal of him, she took that and made it more bearable. Perhaps Rose raised the Doctor.
I suppose this isn't strictly relevant, but it's one of my favourite comparsions/inverses in the Who-Universe and it's integral to my thinking on the Doctor and Martha.
For all his superficial similarities to Tom Baker's Doctor, I started to feel he was actually more similar to Colin Baker's. He's pompous, a little righteous and judgemental, in a holier-than-thou way, not in Sylvester McCoy's pragmatic, factual fashion.
The Tenth Doctor was never going to have the Ninth's hollow brutality. His attitude ensured that. But also he is a different person and he's not the one that destroyed his homeworld, or woke up in the aftermath of its destruction.
And that's a tough position to be in, he's the last of his kind, but he can't pull off the angst of the Ninth. When he tries it just seems...fake, hollow, perhaps a little undeserved.
One thing I appreciated was the Doctor's insistance to Martha that she wasn't replacing Rose, that she wasn't his next companion. It's not that I'm desperate for Rose to be extra special because I loooooved her as a companion. It's more that this goes some way towards making the Doctor seem less like a serial stalker. It took me long enough to get to grips with the idea that Doctor Who could have companions as romantic interests (and I won't rant about that in full now because I've done so before), and one of the only ways I could really get on board with it was because of who the Doctor was at the time and what Rose represented (see above).
To insert Martha suddenly into that role is more than slightly creepy.
(Also if she pulls a Rose and disappears accidentally for a year, her brother is going to have SUCH a good reason to be pissed at her - YOU DISAPPEARED ON MY 21ST BIRTHDAY! Wow. Bummer.)
So anyway, it occurs to me that while the Tenth Doctor might be a little more removed from the tragedy of Gallifrey, he's still the last of his kind, and that's got to be difficult to deal with. Perhaps the tragedy of the Tenth isn't the tragedy of The Man Who Killed His Planet, but The Man Who Was Left Behind. It's not so much guilt as loneliness. Which is perhaps why he's taking the loss of Rose so hard.
His guilt is that he lost her - his adopted family in perhaps a more literal way than previous Companions and with previous Doctors. Even though she was the chosen companion of Christopher Eccleston's Doctor and not David Tennant's.
I should really reserve judgement until I've seen a few more episodes without him acting like a nob, but is it too much to hope that he's more likable because he's finally found a companion that he wants, not that he's obsessed with posessing because she's the only thing his genocidal previous incarnation left him as an emotional tie, to, well, anything?
Hmm.
And to think this was supposed to be short.
In other news, I'm enjoying Life on Mars. Gene Hunt is awesome though an asshole. It's a really well put together drama though I am getting tired of the "they're going to kiss! Oh, wait, someone just walked in and interrupted!" scene between Sam and Annie at the end of EVERY BLOODY EPISODE. Anyway, score for Life on Mars which I was originally entirely meh on when I heard the premise.
In other news, my boy and I are totally convinced that Fiona Bruce is really a viking. We think she keeps her axe under her newsdesk and probably moors her longboat in the BBC carpark.
You know I'm right.
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-04 04:50 pm (UTC)*pretends she didn't just have to google Alias Smith and Jones*
...no...
I'm surprised I haven't seen, "Your ship is made of wood" on an icon yet.
It shows my tragic lack of fannish knowledge that it took me a second to get that and the first thing that popped into my head was Doctor/Jabe?!
I thought the ability to deliver dodgy lines convincingly was written into the Companion's contract?!
HAHAHA! But also, probably.
Meaning Rose, but I'm sushigal007 wondered if the line about Adeola was more than a throwaway continuity reference and Ten is projecting his (selfish) guilt onto Martha already.
Wow. Interesting. Very interesting...
Also (ref comment below) I always approve of added Ace.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-04 05:51 pm (UTC)Didn't Martha say, "Your (space)ship is made of wood," to the Doctor in the
scary stalkingscene at the end of the ep? Possibly I didn't hear it correctly as my telly is rubbish. Or maybe I made it up in my head because I'm the bestest script writer evah! But I think it was in the episode. ::nods convincingly::no subject
Date: 2007-04-07 07:00 am (UTC)So um, yeah. His ship is literally made of wood!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-07 01:03 pm (UTC)