Doctor Who: Nightmare in Silver
May. 11th, 2013 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabeth*hugs this episode*
:-)
Okay, so I'm easy for the Doctor playing chess. I was just sitting there grinning the whole time, waiting for it. Finite number of moves? Mate, you have not played chess with a Time Lord. As soon as he chose the ground, the other guy had lost.
it wasn't the bad sort of predictable though, it was the good sort where you can see it all come together and sit there :-D
for me anyways.
The setting on the theme park planet seemed under utilised. You can just imagine storytellers sitting there rubbing hands together with glee at all the gags you could fit in... but the episode is only so long, so, now it just leaves a playground for everyone else to fill in.
Storyteller me was watching Warwick Davis in this and making grabby hands. Want to write for him! I know he's good, I've seen him before, but I've also seen him given very little chance to be good, so this was lovely.
I have remarked before that I have watched a hell of a lot of fantasy and science fiction, and seen many short actors play many roles in the genre, but what I have not seen is a short person playing a human when the setting has other options. If another species is possible, another species is what happens. Which is freaky weird.
So it feels like someone sat down and noticed that and went right, Emperor! Leader of all human space!
Or, possibly, someone watched Game of Thrones and decided who should win. I don't know.
But this had fun stuff and thoughtful stuff and enough clues I noticed early like we're supposed to and enough excuses for other people not noticing and some hero stuff in the middle and just all the stuff. Yaays!
And now I want to play with Warwick Davis and some scripts I was thinking on. Which is one of my fangirl reactions.
I also feel odd for finding this exceptional, because surely there is...? But, previously on Doctor Who, there are a lot of short aliens, is all. So.
I like the Cybermen upgrades. Visually they're rounder and sleeker and not my favourite, but I like seeing the logical progression of beings who upgrade all the time. The horror of the only way they could stop them being to wipe out whole planets to stop just the one of them... that was too big to really sink in, but now I'm remembering Cyberwoman and wondering when exactly this episode was relative to Jack.
The end with the Emperor means the whole episode with the running and trying not to die and I don't know how many of the soldiers survived without being upgraded, all that bit was the Emperor trying to run from his responsibilities. The soldiers couldn't blow the place up because nobody would bother to pick them up first, but the Emperor could save them all as long as he was willing to be Emperor some more. Which makes a lot of the middle a bit of a bastard. But he's being the Doctor this week.
I loved how the Doctor reacted to the upgraded cybermen, the cybermites and all, which a mixture of drawing a line and glee. Such lovely enemies the universe gives him!
I loved that the cyber controller goes all Doctor-ish trying to exist in the Doctor's brain. Mr Clever! *facepalm* Attempts at imitations of previous incarnations are also lolarious. I liked the Doctor showing the invader the self destruct, sort of thing, that regeneration could clean him out and he was just avoiding it because he doesn't know who they'd end up with next. How real was that threat? Would it work? Is it really what he's trying to avoid? How many regenerations does he have left, under all the lies? But he doesn't do that and doesn't have to, he wins anyways. Chess!
... I still love Time Lord chess...
I also like slightly crazy Mr Clever because brains are tricksy things that do a lot of the shaping for you and having a whole new neural architecture to deal with should do something to the expression. That wasn't a cyberman with no feelings, that was someone gleeful and vengeful and smug. Which isn't flattering if that's what's easiest to access in that brain... but was very fun to watch.
Attitudes to Clara this week... Attitudes to women this week were a relief. There were lots of women. Many different varieties. Plural. You know there's been episodes this season with one (1) woman, so much yaays for plurality. There was serious officer captain, and scared person, and tech person, and clever kid, and Clara who was busy being the boss today. Oh, and teleport lady on the imperial ship at the end. Lots! And in that context it's far less annoying when Clara is treated like The Girlfriend, and then when she can see right through it and it's just a stupid boring distraction then it's not annoying at all, it's just a funny about things the enemy assumes. The Emperor proposing to her at the end made me LOL because old school DW did that repeatedly and made companions go away that way. Clara is like, er, no. Thanks.
I don't know, but I think if he'd been asking for a date, rather than someone to help with the job he'd been running away from, that might have worked better.
(Miles Vorkosigan, *waves hello*)
I think I bounce squeed about all the parts now. Lovely episode of loveliness! Yaays!
The Next Episode bit at the end...
I am very worried about River Song. Very. Very.
Also the bit about saying you could figure out the Doctor by the shape of the gap he left by erasing himself, that felt like a Clue. Maybe about the Doctor. But there feels like a River shaped gap in the way he's been acting lately.
... I'm still not at all bothered about what turns out to be the story with Clara. It'll be something interesting, presumably, because it usually is, but I don't find her a very enthralling mystery. The possibilities are all too Science Fiction. What's the emotional investment? Losing her again? This is the first episode since christmas that made me like her again, and it wasn't very distinctive. *shrugs*
Similarly with the Doctor's name. Of course we know who he is, we've seen what he does and who he cares for for fifty years, why does the label matter? I don't know why we should care.
I care about River because there's all these Feelings involved and we know what the stakes are. But these other questions I don't know what the feelings are or what the stakes are. Maybe I'll care after I've seen?
*shrugs*
:-)
Okay, so I'm easy for the Doctor playing chess. I was just sitting there grinning the whole time, waiting for it. Finite number of moves? Mate, you have not played chess with a Time Lord. As soon as he chose the ground, the other guy had lost.
it wasn't the bad sort of predictable though, it was the good sort where you can see it all come together and sit there :-D
for me anyways.
The setting on the theme park planet seemed under utilised. You can just imagine storytellers sitting there rubbing hands together with glee at all the gags you could fit in... but the episode is only so long, so, now it just leaves a playground for everyone else to fill in.
Storyteller me was watching Warwick Davis in this and making grabby hands. Want to write for him! I know he's good, I've seen him before, but I've also seen him given very little chance to be good, so this was lovely.
I have remarked before that I have watched a hell of a lot of fantasy and science fiction, and seen many short actors play many roles in the genre, but what I have not seen is a short person playing a human when the setting has other options. If another species is possible, another species is what happens. Which is freaky weird.
So it feels like someone sat down and noticed that and went right, Emperor! Leader of all human space!
Or, possibly, someone watched Game of Thrones and decided who should win. I don't know.
But this had fun stuff and thoughtful stuff and enough clues I noticed early like we're supposed to and enough excuses for other people not noticing and some hero stuff in the middle and just all the stuff. Yaays!
And now I want to play with Warwick Davis and some scripts I was thinking on. Which is one of my fangirl reactions.
I also feel odd for finding this exceptional, because surely there is...? But, previously on Doctor Who, there are a lot of short aliens, is all. So.
I like the Cybermen upgrades. Visually they're rounder and sleeker and not my favourite, but I like seeing the logical progression of beings who upgrade all the time. The horror of the only way they could stop them being to wipe out whole planets to stop just the one of them... that was too big to really sink in, but now I'm remembering Cyberwoman and wondering when exactly this episode was relative to Jack.
The end with the Emperor means the whole episode with the running and trying not to die and I don't know how many of the soldiers survived without being upgraded, all that bit was the Emperor trying to run from his responsibilities. The soldiers couldn't blow the place up because nobody would bother to pick them up first, but the Emperor could save them all as long as he was willing to be Emperor some more. Which makes a lot of the middle a bit of a bastard. But he's being the Doctor this week.
I loved how the Doctor reacted to the upgraded cybermen, the cybermites and all, which a mixture of drawing a line and glee. Such lovely enemies the universe gives him!
I loved that the cyber controller goes all Doctor-ish trying to exist in the Doctor's brain. Mr Clever! *facepalm* Attempts at imitations of previous incarnations are also lolarious. I liked the Doctor showing the invader the self destruct, sort of thing, that regeneration could clean him out and he was just avoiding it because he doesn't know who they'd end up with next. How real was that threat? Would it work? Is it really what he's trying to avoid? How many regenerations does he have left, under all the lies? But he doesn't do that and doesn't have to, he wins anyways. Chess!
... I still love Time Lord chess...
I also like slightly crazy Mr Clever because brains are tricksy things that do a lot of the shaping for you and having a whole new neural architecture to deal with should do something to the expression. That wasn't a cyberman with no feelings, that was someone gleeful and vengeful and smug. Which isn't flattering if that's what's easiest to access in that brain... but was very fun to watch.
Attitudes to Clara this week... Attitudes to women this week were a relief. There were lots of women. Many different varieties. Plural. You know there's been episodes this season with one (1) woman, so much yaays for plurality. There was serious officer captain, and scared person, and tech person, and clever kid, and Clara who was busy being the boss today. Oh, and teleport lady on the imperial ship at the end. Lots! And in that context it's far less annoying when Clara is treated like The Girlfriend, and then when she can see right through it and it's just a stupid boring distraction then it's not annoying at all, it's just a funny about things the enemy assumes. The Emperor proposing to her at the end made me LOL because old school DW did that repeatedly and made companions go away that way. Clara is like, er, no. Thanks.
I don't know, but I think if he'd been asking for a date, rather than someone to help with the job he'd been running away from, that might have worked better.
(Miles Vorkosigan, *waves hello*)
I think I bounce squeed about all the parts now. Lovely episode of loveliness! Yaays!
The Next Episode bit at the end...
I am very worried about River Song. Very. Very.
Also the bit about saying you could figure out the Doctor by the shape of the gap he left by erasing himself, that felt like a Clue. Maybe about the Doctor. But there feels like a River shaped gap in the way he's been acting lately.
... I'm still not at all bothered about what turns out to be the story with Clara. It'll be something interesting, presumably, because it usually is, but I don't find her a very enthralling mystery. The possibilities are all too Science Fiction. What's the emotional investment? Losing her again? This is the first episode since christmas that made me like her again, and it wasn't very distinctive. *shrugs*
Similarly with the Doctor's name. Of course we know who he is, we've seen what he does and who he cares for for fifty years, why does the label matter? I don't know why we should care.
I care about River because there's all these Feelings involved and we know what the stakes are. But these other questions I don't know what the feelings are or what the stakes are. Maybe I'll care after I've seen?
*shrugs*
no subject
Date: 2013-05-12 09:09 am (UTC)