Doctor Who: Deep Breath
Aug. 23rd, 2014 09:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThe trouble with getting new Doctor Who for my birthday is it feels like a birthday present. So now I feel pretty much like I do most years when I get a present from mum. That is: They tried, but we like such different things...
So, context: I have nothing against Capaldi, but after Torchwood Children of Earth I really wanted to punch that face. It's a disproportionate reaction, I know, but it was a very definite one. And that's what I think of when I see him. So when I heard he would be the Doctor, I was not thrilled.
By the end of the episode, watching him, I was just watching an actor play the Doctor. Which is progress.
But I'm very much not sold.
It has nothing to do with the gray or the old, and I felt talked down to when the text went there. I felt lectured at by this whole episode. Like, there was an adventure, one that did interesting themey bits with that 'every part replaced' section and the mirror tray, though I'm not enthusiastic about that direction. But the adventure was squeezed between the... Confidential, basically, the meta stuff they could have put in behind the scenes interviews. The episode told us how to feel at every turn and tried to frame any adverse reaction in terms that did not fit, and I felt jarred out of the narrative every time they talked to us / Clara about it.
And that phone call at the end felt like a confession of narrative failure. We don't need the before Doctor to phone up and say hi that's still me. By the end of the episode we should be absolutely sold on this new guy being still the same guy. It's happened before a bunch of times. The only time it was dodgy was 6, because dark.
And oh, hey, objection the second: are they really going there? I feel like the writers have looked at everything that hasn't worked in the past and just decided they're so much better they'll have another crack at it and win. So, dark Doctor incoming.
I am epic sick of grimdark.
And it feels massively inappropriate to shut us out of the story to the point we don't know what happened right then. Like, that's obvious intervention of writer, when the rest of the time... like in Blink, where the Angels can't move because we're watching, the story invited us in at every turn. Until someone thinks they're clever. I know they've kicked off with lying to us before, with the astronaut and all, but still, it feels wrong and I'm bored of it already. I want to be invited along on adventures, I don't want a contrived mystery between me and that adventure.
Wow, grumpy.
I liked the robot/cyborg spaceship, I could have done without the Doctor lampshading it was a rerun quite so many times, and now we don't know how much of his memory he has back or if he'll just be conveniently forgettery. The Doctor being one step behind the audience is ... well, when he's just regenerated, maybe, but it's just wrong in general.
But I liked having to hold your breath to be a robot.
And the return of Vastra, Jenny and Strax is always fun.
... but. Er, the more of the marriage I see, the less I like it?
Victorian steampunk ninja lesbian detectives, one of them a dinosaur woman, is really difficult to mess up. I mean, I'm so predisposed to like that, I'm kind of boggled I'm finding things not to like. But if they're in love, there's something odd about how they show it.
Why is she playing maid, and in what world is it just funny to have someone pose uncomfortably for work you're not doing? Why is massive power and knowledge imbalance part of this relationship structure?
The Doctor and Clara have some issues too, though not like one being treated as the maid... wait, she sent him for coffee, Jenny was pouring tea. But that's backwards? Why does Clara get to decide things? (Why does she get to decide he'll get hugged? That's creepy. But it's a kind of background noise creepy that happens a lot.) But the Doctor has the knowledge-power and telling people to shut up, why is he calling her the control freak, where's that come from? I don't know, they seem weird and clunky. And I've just been ignoring the whole not-boyfriend thread because whatever, the writers can 'ship or anti-'ship as they please, it's just puzzling to me either way.
Back to Jenny and Vastra, combat lesbians: we shouldn't need an excuse for kissing. Buddy breathing was the excuse on Due South in the early 90s, what even is that doing in the here now?
Also, much as I do enjoy the cosplay opportunity, the ninja thing... I keep reading articles that say the good thing about Doctor Who is how they don't solve problems with violence. I just wonder what show they're watching. The Doctor keeps violence specialists around to aim at problems. And this week, well, we don't really know. He either talked someone into suicide (unacceptable) or killed them (also unacceptable).
Why didn't he at any point ask for coordinates to the Promised Land, spatial and temporal? Why not offer him a lift? I typoed that 'life' and that seems about right. The Doctor spends time explaining this cyborg has made itself human enough to have opinions of the view, and yet the solution involves death? Why?
Why do they think the viewers want this?
Why do I want to be along for this ride?
And then right at the end, the weird woman talking about her boyfriend... there are few interpretations yet available, and I don't want to go there for any of them.
Where is the hope? Where is the endless possibility? Whose lives were improved today?
I miss the space whale moment.
I'm bored of dark. We can get that anywhere.
So, okay, the more I write about it the more I whine. I wasn't feeling it. I kept seeing the writers yanking around their assumed audience, and that wasn't me. And they have weird ideas about how people work and what is fun in relationships.
I kind of want to go play in fanfic instead.
It's just that feeling that I'm unlikely to get what I'm looking for from here.
But then I'm not sure I can clearly articulate what it is I want instead.
So then I just feel whiny.
but since i'll watch next week like usual they probably don't care.
So, context: I have nothing against Capaldi, but after Torchwood Children of Earth I really wanted to punch that face. It's a disproportionate reaction, I know, but it was a very definite one. And that's what I think of when I see him. So when I heard he would be the Doctor, I was not thrilled.
By the end of the episode, watching him, I was just watching an actor play the Doctor. Which is progress.
But I'm very much not sold.
It has nothing to do with the gray or the old, and I felt talked down to when the text went there. I felt lectured at by this whole episode. Like, there was an adventure, one that did interesting themey bits with that 'every part replaced' section and the mirror tray, though I'm not enthusiastic about that direction. But the adventure was squeezed between the... Confidential, basically, the meta stuff they could have put in behind the scenes interviews. The episode told us how to feel at every turn and tried to frame any adverse reaction in terms that did not fit, and I felt jarred out of the narrative every time they talked to us / Clara about it.
And that phone call at the end felt like a confession of narrative failure. We don't need the before Doctor to phone up and say hi that's still me. By the end of the episode we should be absolutely sold on this new guy being still the same guy. It's happened before a bunch of times. The only time it was dodgy was 6, because dark.
And oh, hey, objection the second: are they really going there? I feel like the writers have looked at everything that hasn't worked in the past and just decided they're so much better they'll have another crack at it and win. So, dark Doctor incoming.
I am epic sick of grimdark.
And it feels massively inappropriate to shut us out of the story to the point we don't know what happened right then. Like, that's obvious intervention of writer, when the rest of the time... like in Blink, where the Angels can't move because we're watching, the story invited us in at every turn. Until someone thinks they're clever. I know they've kicked off with lying to us before, with the astronaut and all, but still, it feels wrong and I'm bored of it already. I want to be invited along on adventures, I don't want a contrived mystery between me and that adventure.
Wow, grumpy.
I liked the robot/cyborg spaceship, I could have done without the Doctor lampshading it was a rerun quite so many times, and now we don't know how much of his memory he has back or if he'll just be conveniently forgettery. The Doctor being one step behind the audience is ... well, when he's just regenerated, maybe, but it's just wrong in general.
But I liked having to hold your breath to be a robot.
And the return of Vastra, Jenny and Strax is always fun.
... but. Er, the more of the marriage I see, the less I like it?
Victorian steampunk ninja lesbian detectives, one of them a dinosaur woman, is really difficult to mess up. I mean, I'm so predisposed to like that, I'm kind of boggled I'm finding things not to like. But if they're in love, there's something odd about how they show it.
Why is she playing maid, and in what world is it just funny to have someone pose uncomfortably for work you're not doing? Why is massive power and knowledge imbalance part of this relationship structure?
The Doctor and Clara have some issues too, though not like one being treated as the maid... wait, she sent him for coffee, Jenny was pouring tea. But that's backwards? Why does Clara get to decide things? (Why does she get to decide he'll get hugged? That's creepy. But it's a kind of background noise creepy that happens a lot.) But the Doctor has the knowledge-power and telling people to shut up, why is he calling her the control freak, where's that come from? I don't know, they seem weird and clunky. And I've just been ignoring the whole not-boyfriend thread because whatever, the writers can 'ship or anti-'ship as they please, it's just puzzling to me either way.
Back to Jenny and Vastra, combat lesbians: we shouldn't need an excuse for kissing. Buddy breathing was the excuse on Due South in the early 90s, what even is that doing in the here now?
Also, much as I do enjoy the cosplay opportunity, the ninja thing... I keep reading articles that say the good thing about Doctor Who is how they don't solve problems with violence. I just wonder what show they're watching. The Doctor keeps violence specialists around to aim at problems. And this week, well, we don't really know. He either talked someone into suicide (unacceptable) or killed them (also unacceptable).
Why didn't he at any point ask for coordinates to the Promised Land, spatial and temporal? Why not offer him a lift? I typoed that 'life' and that seems about right. The Doctor spends time explaining this cyborg has made itself human enough to have opinions of the view, and yet the solution involves death? Why?
Why do they think the viewers want this?
Why do I want to be along for this ride?
And then right at the end, the weird woman talking about her boyfriend... there are few interpretations yet available, and I don't want to go there for any of them.
Where is the hope? Where is the endless possibility? Whose lives were improved today?
I miss the space whale moment.
I'm bored of dark. We can get that anywhere.
So, okay, the more I write about it the more I whine. I wasn't feeling it. I kept seeing the writers yanking around their assumed audience, and that wasn't me. And they have weird ideas about how people work and what is fun in relationships.
I kind of want to go play in fanfic instead.
It's just that feeling that I'm unlikely to get what I'm looking for from here.
But then I'm not sure I can clearly articulate what it is I want instead.
So then I just feel whiny.
but since i'll watch next week like usual they probably don't care.
PS: I hate the opening credits
Date: 2014-08-23 09:05 pm (UTC)But that's such a piddly thing to have an opinion on I'm almost embarrassed to type it.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-23 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-26 06:33 am (UTC)