Doctor Who thoughts
Apr. 5th, 2010 03:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI had more thoughts this morning, when I moved the furniture and couldn't get to the computer. They sort of wore off. Now I have two thoughts left that I haven't seen elsewhere.
Miniskirt! Stockings! Er, okay, I've seen that thought in many, many places, especially blogs of fellow queer women. Very nice. But my extra thought was: Did you see the way she kept pulling her skirt down? It was sort of cute and practical and the kind of thing you do when you're wearing a skirt out of context. Also when she was in her house being policewoman she didn't fuss with her skirt, but then they ran away and they're heading into the village and she was fussing it down. After that there's running. First time the Doctor goes over the wall and Amy goes around to the gate, which is why he got there a sentence ahead of her. Next time he goes leaping over things, the little chain fence, she leaps right after him... and fusses her skirt down. But after that she's focusing on Doing Things and doesn't fuss with her skirt.
Miniskirt of characterisation!
There was also a thing about Seeing. I have a thing about Seeing, because there's a lot of bad stuff that can happen right in front of people and they somehow in their heads manage to Not See. It's the Somebody Else's Problem Field, but not funny at all. So if there's a house with a scared kid and a room they don't want to think about, that's proper childhood terror that is, and not of an amusing kind. That's the stuff people don't want to see. But Amy refused to take anyone else's word for it or be talked out of her experiences, she refused to just not look, she had to see. She went right in the scary room and kept looking until she saw the scary thing. (Do Not DO Freudian Reading On Doctor Who. Even when it gets really easy. It's always annoying.) She also wasn't about to turn her back and not look at the Doctor later. And yeah, some of that's funny, but it's also about being the person that sees in the village that doesn't. And it links in with the only way to fix the crack being to see it - to see it needs fixing, to call for the right help, to open it up all the way and see what was the other side. She could have hid under the blanket, but then they'd not have known. Prisoner Zero has escaped, *already*, and the danger only got known because she wouldn't be talked out of seeing and hearing and knowing.
It's proper fairytale that way, asking the questions and seeing the secrets, and also the thing where people you help, even in little ways, come back with help later. Someone turns up hungry, she feeds him. That's the rules. (I read someone complaining about how Not Christian it was on Easter weekend, praying to Santa and all. But she fed the hungry and that's one of the rules. No turning people away, they're all Him in disguise.)(I'm not a Christian but they've got some good rules.)(Scary dangerous though they would be.)
Oh dear, what was the second thing...
Oh! Right. In the TARDIS, when Amy is asking why the Doctor wants her in particular, and he says he's lonely, and that's the only reason? Behind him on the TARDIS monitor, the one he turns off next? I think that squiggle looks like the crack. The one in her bedroom wall. The one she lived next to for years and years. So now I rather wonder...
I have watched the whole episode 3 and a bit times. I watched lots of speaking bits again once I realised I'd left the TV sound on the wrong settings and didn't rightly know what he sounds like.
Is good story :-)
Miniskirt! Stockings! Er, okay, I've seen that thought in many, many places, especially blogs of fellow queer women. Very nice. But my extra thought was: Did you see the way she kept pulling her skirt down? It was sort of cute and practical and the kind of thing you do when you're wearing a skirt out of context. Also when she was in her house being policewoman she didn't fuss with her skirt, but then they ran away and they're heading into the village and she was fussing it down. After that there's running. First time the Doctor goes over the wall and Amy goes around to the gate, which is why he got there a sentence ahead of her. Next time he goes leaping over things, the little chain fence, she leaps right after him... and fusses her skirt down. But after that she's focusing on Doing Things and doesn't fuss with her skirt.
Miniskirt of characterisation!
There was also a thing about Seeing. I have a thing about Seeing, because there's a lot of bad stuff that can happen right in front of people and they somehow in their heads manage to Not See. It's the Somebody Else's Problem Field, but not funny at all. So if there's a house with a scared kid and a room they don't want to think about, that's proper childhood terror that is, and not of an amusing kind. That's the stuff people don't want to see. But Amy refused to take anyone else's word for it or be talked out of her experiences, she refused to just not look, she had to see. She went right in the scary room and kept looking until she saw the scary thing. (Do Not DO Freudian Reading On Doctor Who. Even when it gets really easy. It's always annoying.) She also wasn't about to turn her back and not look at the Doctor later. And yeah, some of that's funny, but it's also about being the person that sees in the village that doesn't. And it links in with the only way to fix the crack being to see it - to see it needs fixing, to call for the right help, to open it up all the way and see what was the other side. She could have hid under the blanket, but then they'd not have known. Prisoner Zero has escaped, *already*, and the danger only got known because she wouldn't be talked out of seeing and hearing and knowing.
It's proper fairytale that way, asking the questions and seeing the secrets, and also the thing where people you help, even in little ways, come back with help later. Someone turns up hungry, she feeds him. That's the rules. (I read someone complaining about how Not Christian it was on Easter weekend, praying to Santa and all. But she fed the hungry and that's one of the rules. No turning people away, they're all Him in disguise.)(I'm not a Christian but they've got some good rules.)(Scary dangerous though they would be.)
Oh dear, what was the second thing...
Oh! Right. In the TARDIS, when Amy is asking why the Doctor wants her in particular, and he says he's lonely, and that's the only reason? Behind him on the TARDIS monitor, the one he turns off next? I think that squiggle looks like the crack. The one in her bedroom wall. The one she lived next to for years and years. So now I rather wonder...
I have watched the whole episode 3 and a bit times. I watched lots of speaking bits again once I realised I'd left the TV sound on the wrong settings and didn't rightly know what he sounds like.
Is good story :-)
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 03:15 pm (UTC)has noticed the monitor squiggle. with a screencap. is more win.
is a good squeecap and I like the pictures.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 03:23 pm (UTC)But the Doctor was doing that this episode. He doesn't turn up and say 'I'm the Doctor, I'm brilliant, I'm the smartest person in the room, hey, why are you all looking at me like that?' He turns up and says it doesn't matter who he is, this is what he knows *demonstrates* and this is what he can do. And only then does he pull a Vashta Nerada. Look me up... and, basically, run.
:-)
And that makes it all so much better. We don't have to be told this is the Doctor, he shows us. And in a way it makes the Doctor not be his name, again. He's just the Doctor, that's what he does. He's function, not name.
Is good.
Everyone's saying Moffat quotes himself too much. I think he pulled it all together to make it better.
So now we know where we stand. And we're off...
no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 03:28 pm (UTC)Beans are Evil = Children of Earth LOL
... there is not much LOL associated with CoE...
no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 07:07 pm (UTC)And reading your fairy-tale points about seeing made me realise that's why Rory will also have a role as companion. He is the one who sees first. He's the one who photographs prisoner zero weeks/months before the Doctor returns. So, yes, seeing beneath the mundane is a big theme this season and Moffat is playing with it beautifully.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-06 05:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-05 04:11 pm (UTC)Don't suppose you'd know where I'd find subtitle files for the ep would you?
no subject
Date: 2010-04-06 04:27 am (UTC)opensubtitles.org is where I usually get stuff
haven't checked these ones, I recorded it twice off the tv, once with subs.