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beccaelizabethNow this is a good use for the wrapper. Framing story actually doing a Good Thing, and it makes sense because it's Memory. Jamie and Zoe get their memories back, in the Tales canon. They're a lot older but they remembered in the back of their minds the whole time so all the growing and learning counted. And Jamie got a big family and Zoe gets to be President. Very happy making :-)
As for the Mind Robber, I thought I'd watched it enough times I wouldn't have new thoughts, but it has been long enough it feels fresh again And Also as if I'm reading the novelisation in a tent when I was small. Which is an excellent feeling.
Also, everyone gets younger every time I watch, which is less excellent and slightly disconcerting, but the frame story kind of helped with that?
... everyone is every age they've ever been on the inside, but the rest changes without permission...
I usually Dislike stories where people get mind controlled and puppeted around. People have choices, that's key, or else what's the point? And what do you learn about characters if they're not the ones driving?
But in the Mind Robber it was a bit more complicated, because the story keeps trying to trick them into doing what the story says, making themselves fictional and easy to manipulate. Which can be a bit about propaganda or a very meta mask off or just vaguely worrying to a brain that thinks too much. I mean, we can't prove we're not in the matrix so the non zero chance that I am a fictional character thinking about being a fictional character is a very three in the morning thought.
The Doctor repeatedly realising that he almost turned himself into a story is a good way of nearly tripping him up. He understood the rules, it's just so much easier to grab for the power and so make himself powerless. He keeps refusing to, and he keeps refusing to do what other stories did. Like when he threw down the sword to refuse to slay the monster. There is no monster, you just have to look at it the right way to see that.
The story is clever and many years of thinking about it layers on more clever.
So the mind control bit doesnt annoy me this time. They pushed their way out again anyways.
I like the stories fight part, it's every crossover fanfic or toy fight in the back garden, except with out of copyright classics and the Karkus, a comic strip from the distant year 2000. (... it's always weird when we catch up to the distant years. Zoe must be from a different calendar now.) I like when Zoe beats him handily.
I like when they get Jamie's face wrong, both as a cunning solution to a filming problem, and as a thought about being trapped as others see us, only they get it wrong. Also the Doctor being bad at faces is very relatable, from the non neurotypical corner.
All the word play and riddles and the trees that are words are fun as well.
I just like this story.
And it can break any semblance of rules because they just popped outside reality for a bit, so none of it is real. ... or because there's a giant computer brain running it all.
The idea they need a human to make stories is... well it seems more encouraging than anything, given the current AI problem. Take the stories out of the humans and make everyone the same, that's a problem, but take the humans out of the story making and you inch closer to the same mess.
Taking a writer who does weekly boys adventures is fun, but I couldn't help thinking how the nature of the fiction world could change rather a lot with a different choice. Captain Jack Harkaway is a very different framework than anything with Harkness... give a fanfic writer that chair and... well.
Tempting.
Lots of excellent things to think about and good bits to watch. Very fun.
Also, tempting to speculate on connections to ongoing canon. Stories about stories, and a narrator trying to tell the Doctor who to be... which didnt work out to plan before.
Shall see.
As for the Mind Robber, I thought I'd watched it enough times I wouldn't have new thoughts, but it has been long enough it feels fresh again And Also as if I'm reading the novelisation in a tent when I was small. Which is an excellent feeling.
Also, everyone gets younger every time I watch, which is less excellent and slightly disconcerting, but the frame story kind of helped with that?
... everyone is every age they've ever been on the inside, but the rest changes without permission...
I usually Dislike stories where people get mind controlled and puppeted around. People have choices, that's key, or else what's the point? And what do you learn about characters if they're not the ones driving?
But in the Mind Robber it was a bit more complicated, because the story keeps trying to trick them into doing what the story says, making themselves fictional and easy to manipulate. Which can be a bit about propaganda or a very meta mask off or just vaguely worrying to a brain that thinks too much. I mean, we can't prove we're not in the matrix so the non zero chance that I am a fictional character thinking about being a fictional character is a very three in the morning thought.
The Doctor repeatedly realising that he almost turned himself into a story is a good way of nearly tripping him up. He understood the rules, it's just so much easier to grab for the power and so make himself powerless. He keeps refusing to, and he keeps refusing to do what other stories did. Like when he threw down the sword to refuse to slay the monster. There is no monster, you just have to look at it the right way to see that.
The story is clever and many years of thinking about it layers on more clever.
So the mind control bit doesnt annoy me this time. They pushed their way out again anyways.
I like the stories fight part, it's every crossover fanfic or toy fight in the back garden, except with out of copyright classics and the Karkus, a comic strip from the distant year 2000. (... it's always weird when we catch up to the distant years. Zoe must be from a different calendar now.) I like when Zoe beats him handily.
I like when they get Jamie's face wrong, both as a cunning solution to a filming problem, and as a thought about being trapped as others see us, only they get it wrong. Also the Doctor being bad at faces is very relatable, from the non neurotypical corner.
All the word play and riddles and the trees that are words are fun as well.
I just like this story.
And it can break any semblance of rules because they just popped outside reality for a bit, so none of it is real. ... or because there's a giant computer brain running it all.
The idea they need a human to make stories is... well it seems more encouraging than anything, given the current AI problem. Take the stories out of the humans and make everyone the same, that's a problem, but take the humans out of the story making and you inch closer to the same mess.
Taking a writer who does weekly boys adventures is fun, but I couldn't help thinking how the nature of the fiction world could change rather a lot with a different choice. Captain Jack Harkaway is a very different framework than anything with Harkness... give a fanfic writer that chair and... well.
Tempting.
Lots of excellent things to think about and good bits to watch. Very fun.
Also, tempting to speculate on connections to ongoing canon. Stories about stories, and a narrator trying to tell the Doctor who to be... which didnt work out to plan before.
Shall see.