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beccaelizabethThat made marginally more sense than I recall.
It'd still strongly recommend not bothering to listen to it, unless you feel a pressing need to follow Charley's arc and how they get to the next bit. But it probably does fit together, past the annoying voices and the way eveyrone is deliberately out of character except Charley, who is simply annoying.
Rassilon as the dream of old empire is here revealed as a horrible bigoted genocidal madman, and a plagiarist too, which explains the 'of Rassilon' on everything. It's not that he invents it, he just nabs it. And with time technology presumably makes sure it was always his. And then he makes everyone in the galaxy look pretty much like humans? That doesn't really fit all the evidence though. But the loophole is the whole stupid adventure happens in some combination of the dreamworlds of madmen, holographic projections, and the matrix. So this entity calling itself Rassilon is lurking in the matrix being a bastard, but that don't mean the story actually happened in the real world anywhere.
which is pretty tedious.
At the end of the previous story the Doctor sacrificed his life to save the universe. Then it turned out he'd only sacrificed his mind. And this whole endless mess was him sorting that part out. And rounding it out with sacrificing the universe to save the universe, or rather, sacrificing his ability to stay in the usual universe. All very noble, all very sad.
And then he sends Charley away because it's not like he can take her into exile in a potentially unsurvivable pocket universe. But Leelah knows the TARDIS back door (really??) so Charley gets to override that decision.
There's a problem here. For one, the whole story has been about putting the worst possible light on the decisions of the others. And for another, we just saw Charley kill the Doctor because he asked her to, but also, explicitly, because he wouldn't have asked her if he'd really loved her back. Charley has explicitly romantic feelings for the Doctor, and when she thinks he doesn't return them, that is when she kills him? She's kind of a supervillain in progress, there. If it had been Leelah then her logic would have been about the Doctor choosing his own time if he's lost his mind, which would be creepy and he talked her out of it when it was her. Romana would have done it for the whole universe. But they gave the knife to Charley, who did it for love.
I very strongly do not like Charley.
And the stories the writers consider appropriate for her.
And I'm sure they meant something different and something more noble, but they borked it. So.
A woman who just killed him expects them to just ignore it all, not process what happened, and go off on adventures. He rejects that and rejects her and tells her to leave. That... that's perfectly logical. And he's all angsty and conflicted about it, says he doesn't want to but he has to, fine, but still, they break up and that's his choice.
And then she lets herself back in to his house and hides from him?
... that's rather a problem. I mean, I don't think creepy stalker was the vibe they were going for there, I don't know, I haven't listened to the arc for a while, but stalker has at that point been achieved, because they broke up and she broke back in.
Sooooo...
I really don't like Charley Pollard.
And I'm pretty sure the story thinks I should.
In fact I'm pretty sure the story thinks this is what I'd want, a companion romantically involved with the Doctor, and it's a problem because if someone thinks this is romantic it's pretty worrying.
That's a lot of writing about the last couple of minutes of a very long story.
The whole thing where it didn't even try to make sense makes it sort of useless to comment on the rest.
There was a bit in the middle that needed a trigger warning where the Doctor fails to regenerate because just for a moment he didn't want to. He was all miserable and didn't want to live, hence the telling someone to kill him. That pushes it from 'noble sacrifice' into 'oops suicide immediately regretted'. The other Doctors give a pep talk about how they never ever ever give up. So that works out.
I know the reasons 8 gets messed around the most. Nobody has to color inside the lines with him. For much of the time they didn't know they'd have to keep him alive even, he didn't turn into 9 until a couple of years after this audio. So with no limits, no children assumed to be in the audience, no budget constraints on lines like the novels or comics and a lot you can do on audio, they can do to 8 whatever they want. So he gets an absolute nightmare, even more than the other Doctors. ... one reason I always vote for him as my favourite is I want to scoop him up and keep him and wrap him in blankets and make things better.
But still, 8 gets messed around with EPIC amounts.
And if what you want is to hear the Doctor save the universe a lot, if you want him to have his own mind and stay in character and investigate things and figure stuff out and save everyone, that's ... often a bit of a problem. Because between amnesia and madness and all the other weird things they do to him, well, he's outside of those lines a lot.
So, I don't like Charley, I think how she's having feelings is being creepy, and while I like 8 a lot he isn't always himself. So... I haven't relistened to the main range 8th Doctor audios for a very long time. As far as I wrote online, I listened to Zagreus in 2009. I don't recall relistening. And I'm relearning why.
And yes, I should find something different to listen to rather than complain to the internet, this is quite true.
... just as soon as I think of it...
It'd still strongly recommend not bothering to listen to it, unless you feel a pressing need to follow Charley's arc and how they get to the next bit. But it probably does fit together, past the annoying voices and the way eveyrone is deliberately out of character except Charley, who is simply annoying.
Rassilon as the dream of old empire is here revealed as a horrible bigoted genocidal madman, and a plagiarist too, which explains the 'of Rassilon' on everything. It's not that he invents it, he just nabs it. And with time technology presumably makes sure it was always his. And then he makes everyone in the galaxy look pretty much like humans? That doesn't really fit all the evidence though. But the loophole is the whole stupid adventure happens in some combination of the dreamworlds of madmen, holographic projections, and the matrix. So this entity calling itself Rassilon is lurking in the matrix being a bastard, but that don't mean the story actually happened in the real world anywhere.
which is pretty tedious.
At the end of the previous story the Doctor sacrificed his life to save the universe. Then it turned out he'd only sacrificed his mind. And this whole endless mess was him sorting that part out. And rounding it out with sacrificing the universe to save the universe, or rather, sacrificing his ability to stay in the usual universe. All very noble, all very sad.
And then he sends Charley away because it's not like he can take her into exile in a potentially unsurvivable pocket universe. But Leelah knows the TARDIS back door (really??) so Charley gets to override that decision.
There's a problem here. For one, the whole story has been about putting the worst possible light on the decisions of the others. And for another, we just saw Charley kill the Doctor because he asked her to, but also, explicitly, because he wouldn't have asked her if he'd really loved her back. Charley has explicitly romantic feelings for the Doctor, and when she thinks he doesn't return them, that is when she kills him? She's kind of a supervillain in progress, there. If it had been Leelah then her logic would have been about the Doctor choosing his own time if he's lost his mind, which would be creepy and he talked her out of it when it was her. Romana would have done it for the whole universe. But they gave the knife to Charley, who did it for love.
I very strongly do not like Charley.
And the stories the writers consider appropriate for her.
And I'm sure they meant something different and something more noble, but they borked it. So.
A woman who just killed him expects them to just ignore it all, not process what happened, and go off on adventures. He rejects that and rejects her and tells her to leave. That... that's perfectly logical. And he's all angsty and conflicted about it, says he doesn't want to but he has to, fine, but still, they break up and that's his choice.
And then she lets herself back in to his house and hides from him?
... that's rather a problem. I mean, I don't think creepy stalker was the vibe they were going for there, I don't know, I haven't listened to the arc for a while, but stalker has at that point been achieved, because they broke up and she broke back in.
Sooooo...
I really don't like Charley Pollard.
And I'm pretty sure the story thinks I should.
In fact I'm pretty sure the story thinks this is what I'd want, a companion romantically involved with the Doctor, and it's a problem because if someone thinks this is romantic it's pretty worrying.
That's a lot of writing about the last couple of minutes of a very long story.
The whole thing where it didn't even try to make sense makes it sort of useless to comment on the rest.
There was a bit in the middle that needed a trigger warning where the Doctor fails to regenerate because just for a moment he didn't want to. He was all miserable and didn't want to live, hence the telling someone to kill him. That pushes it from 'noble sacrifice' into 'oops suicide immediately regretted'. The other Doctors give a pep talk about how they never ever ever give up. So that works out.
I know the reasons 8 gets messed around the most. Nobody has to color inside the lines with him. For much of the time they didn't know they'd have to keep him alive even, he didn't turn into 9 until a couple of years after this audio. So with no limits, no children assumed to be in the audience, no budget constraints on lines like the novels or comics and a lot you can do on audio, they can do to 8 whatever they want. So he gets an absolute nightmare, even more than the other Doctors. ... one reason I always vote for him as my favourite is I want to scoop him up and keep him and wrap him in blankets and make things better.
But still, 8 gets messed around with EPIC amounts.
And if what you want is to hear the Doctor save the universe a lot, if you want him to have his own mind and stay in character and investigate things and figure stuff out and save everyone, that's ... often a bit of a problem. Because between amnesia and madness and all the other weird things they do to him, well, he's outside of those lines a lot.
So, I don't like Charley, I think how she's having feelings is being creepy, and while I like 8 a lot he isn't always himself. So... I haven't relistened to the main range 8th Doctor audios for a very long time. As far as I wrote online, I listened to Zagreus in 2009. I don't recall relistening. And I'm relearning why.
And yes, I should find something different to listen to rather than complain to the internet, this is quite true.
... just as soon as I think of it...
no subject
Date: 2015-01-02 03:42 pm (UTC)