Doctor Who: Extremis
May. 20th, 2017 08:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethGreat big giant recurring trigger warning for suicide, since it's pretty central and many many people.
Also I can't trigger warning the other bit without giving away the ending : If you ever start worrying about if we are all secretly somehow not real, this one will kick you in that feel.
Which is a classic of philosophy, really, which makes utter bollocks of the story to my mind. The answer to Descartes demon, to wondering if we're even real, is Cogito Ergo Sum. I think therefore I am. A sufficiently detailed computer simulation is a sentient being in its own right, and there's no damn reason for such a being to kill themselves.
I mean we've done this before when River woke up in the library computer. Or Donna for that matter. They're just real in there.
For that matter I've read excellent Atlantis fic on this theme. The simulations settled down to get some really good math right, iirc. Or in another one, hacked themselves and tweaked themselves better by pieces. Or... you know, everything and anything.
So the human reactions don't track.
I mean give me definitive proof I'm in a computer game and hello Matrix, time to hack reality, magic is going to be real. Granted I'd freak out, call a pshrink, and flail first, but ffs, think of the possibilities.
I realise the problem isn't the stated 'am I real' but actually 'am I free willed'. I mean, no point getting all giddy trying to look for the source code, if there's someone who will turn you off and on again before you get that far. And yet, that wasn't even how it was stated, despite the unhelpful that's what computer games feel section. I mean, if they're sentient enough to feel, that's a hell of a game. There's lines. That one doesn't quite make sense.
Having a hundred percent of people react the same way never makes sense.
The only way the mass suicides can work is if the simulation has a kill switch built in. Which is also the only way to make sense of the way Bill didn't kill herself but realising still unmade her. But that would just bork their data because their simulation would diverge from reality right there. And is two solutions where one would do.
So I'm somewhere between puzzled and frustrated because the triggery shit just plain doesn't make sense. So why even write it that way?
The Doctor's approach to being blind also doesn't make sense, because it requires him to be stupid about basic computer functions available in any modern tablet. If his glasses can't function to ocr and screen read then they're behind the default settings of human tech of this century. Pretty embarrassing. And to do something that risky to himself instead of pressing a read aloud button on a laptop? What?
Also he went from concealing it from everyone except Nardole to chatting about it with someone he couldn't identify. I mean, what?
The approach to languages might have been a clue. TARDIS translation not working, I mean. But if you start going there then everything Sim Doctor did could be somewhere between clue and glitch, and then how are we to feel about it?
The Doctor being able to borrow against his future is... interesting. He's going to do that again, at some point, isn't he? I... am really wary of where they're going with that.
And going from a speech about dying well last ep to a whole suicide as escape thing this time is... *sigh* Even in a regeneration year.
So there's a lot of aspects of this one I'm not keen on.
Some I'm even hoping I've plain misinterpreted or misremembered.
Flip side, there were many good bits, and I actually liked Nardole. Which takes good work on their part. A companion tasked to kick the Doctor when he needs it? Actually taking seriously the task of putting himself in the way of danger? The sci fi deductive reasoning in the projector room, so we don't have to wait for the Doctor to figure it out? The way he can switch modes, switch the way he talks, keep you guessing. Versatile. Nice.
On the other hand, I'm not sure what Bill did today. Be talked to?
The Doctor being blind incompetently irritated me. I mean, the Doctor knowing less than me puts me right out of sorts. But it maybe might make sense about disability. He had a whole breezy attitude of it'll be fixed. Maybe he's too used to full repair to have put any thought into assistive tech? ... and didn't google or get Nardole to? But... feels wrong.
Oh, I'm back to didn't like.
Okay, I meant:
The whole bit with the Doctor and Missy?
Now that's the good stuff.
Nardole turning up to treat River's writ as religion.
And the Doctor keeps it with him, as if same.
Someone to believe in, the one who believed in him.
But the Doctor and Missy and every word of their interaction, oh, yes.
And now we know exactly what the Doctor swore.
... also that he just locked himself in for a thousand years.
... also also that any conversation or interaction we can imagine between those two that could fit in a quantum vault? Canon has plenty of room for.
It's making me think of the tarot card The Lovers, the way River and Missy are juxtaposed. The card is also called The Choice. He'd be choosing between two different versions of himself, who he is to them. Or learning to reconcile them.
Makes those pictures on his desk slightly more significant, if Nardole is using River's memory as a moral standard.
So there's interesting stuff, but it was ... diluted rather, by stuff I just... don't see why they put it in there. Why they want us to buy it even for the length of a story. Why it belongs in family viewing.
I want an edited together version of That One Good Bit, and then to not touch the rest of this ep again.
Also I can't trigger warning the other bit without giving away the ending : If you ever start worrying about if we are all secretly somehow not real, this one will kick you in that feel.
Which is a classic of philosophy, really, which makes utter bollocks of the story to my mind. The answer to Descartes demon, to wondering if we're even real, is Cogito Ergo Sum. I think therefore I am. A sufficiently detailed computer simulation is a sentient being in its own right, and there's no damn reason for such a being to kill themselves.
I mean we've done this before when River woke up in the library computer. Or Donna for that matter. They're just real in there.
For that matter I've read excellent Atlantis fic on this theme. The simulations settled down to get some really good math right, iirc. Or in another one, hacked themselves and tweaked themselves better by pieces. Or... you know, everything and anything.
So the human reactions don't track.
I mean give me definitive proof I'm in a computer game and hello Matrix, time to hack reality, magic is going to be real. Granted I'd freak out, call a pshrink, and flail first, but ffs, think of the possibilities.
I realise the problem isn't the stated 'am I real' but actually 'am I free willed'. I mean, no point getting all giddy trying to look for the source code, if there's someone who will turn you off and on again before you get that far. And yet, that wasn't even how it was stated, despite the unhelpful that's what computer games feel section. I mean, if they're sentient enough to feel, that's a hell of a game. There's lines. That one doesn't quite make sense.
Having a hundred percent of people react the same way never makes sense.
The only way the mass suicides can work is if the simulation has a kill switch built in. Which is also the only way to make sense of the way Bill didn't kill herself but realising still unmade her. But that would just bork their data because their simulation would diverge from reality right there. And is two solutions where one would do.
So I'm somewhere between puzzled and frustrated because the triggery shit just plain doesn't make sense. So why even write it that way?
The Doctor's approach to being blind also doesn't make sense, because it requires him to be stupid about basic computer functions available in any modern tablet. If his glasses can't function to ocr and screen read then they're behind the default settings of human tech of this century. Pretty embarrassing. And to do something that risky to himself instead of pressing a read aloud button on a laptop? What?
Also he went from concealing it from everyone except Nardole to chatting about it with someone he couldn't identify. I mean, what?
The approach to languages might have been a clue. TARDIS translation not working, I mean. But if you start going there then everything Sim Doctor did could be somewhere between clue and glitch, and then how are we to feel about it?
The Doctor being able to borrow against his future is... interesting. He's going to do that again, at some point, isn't he? I... am really wary of where they're going with that.
And going from a speech about dying well last ep to a whole suicide as escape thing this time is... *sigh* Even in a regeneration year.
So there's a lot of aspects of this one I'm not keen on.
Some I'm even hoping I've plain misinterpreted or misremembered.
Flip side, there were many good bits, and I actually liked Nardole. Which takes good work on their part. A companion tasked to kick the Doctor when he needs it? Actually taking seriously the task of putting himself in the way of danger? The sci fi deductive reasoning in the projector room, so we don't have to wait for the Doctor to figure it out? The way he can switch modes, switch the way he talks, keep you guessing. Versatile. Nice.
On the other hand, I'm not sure what Bill did today. Be talked to?
The Doctor being blind incompetently irritated me. I mean, the Doctor knowing less than me puts me right out of sorts. But it maybe might make sense about disability. He had a whole breezy attitude of it'll be fixed. Maybe he's too used to full repair to have put any thought into assistive tech? ... and didn't google or get Nardole to? But... feels wrong.
Oh, I'm back to didn't like.
Okay, I meant:
The whole bit with the Doctor and Missy?
Now that's the good stuff.
Nardole turning up to treat River's writ as religion.
And the Doctor keeps it with him, as if same.
Someone to believe in, the one who believed in him.
But the Doctor and Missy and every word of their interaction, oh, yes.
And now we know exactly what the Doctor swore.
... also that he just locked himself in for a thousand years.
... also also that any conversation or interaction we can imagine between those two that could fit in a quantum vault? Canon has plenty of room for.
It's making me think of the tarot card The Lovers, the way River and Missy are juxtaposed. The card is also called The Choice. He'd be choosing between two different versions of himself, who he is to them. Or learning to reconcile them.
Makes those pictures on his desk slightly more significant, if Nardole is using River's memory as a moral standard.
So there's interesting stuff, but it was ... diluted rather, by stuff I just... don't see why they put it in there. Why they want us to buy it even for the length of a story. Why it belongs in family viewing.
I want an edited together version of That One Good Bit, and then to not touch the rest of this ep again.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-20 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-21 06:30 am (UTC)the other way to fight demons is like actively not fighting them. like, if everyone meditates, the demons learn nothing but enlightenment.
you'd want to bork their data, not tell them to just run it again.
it just occurred to me, how would the lottery work in that world?
like, it might not be the key to human behaviour, but if your sims can't gamble, bit of a divergence there.