Tales of the TARDIS: Vengeance on Varos
Jul. 1st, 2024 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethAnother Tale in the memory TARDIS, another chance used to ... clarify an ending. Peri the Warrior Queen, who got back to Earth eventually and isn't very impressed with it in the 21st century. Travelling with the memory Doctor in the memory TARDIS, on the condition she goes to see her dead husband King Yrcanos' memorial once a year.
... I just checked the TARDIS wiki to refresh my memory and it's not just the audios that confuse matters vs the already confusing TV, everything else weighed in sometimes as well. And apparently one audio says this is because Time Lords seperately and severally set out to fix things and, well, mess.
Travelling forever in the Memory TARDIS counts as one of the good endings I think.
Actual Vengeance on Varos is the one with the acid pit etc. It's mean and messy, yes, but this time I've been reading lots of Pathfinder and it just struck me as being a perfectly normal DnD dungeon. Illusions everywhere, pit traps, acid damage, and a bit of Baleful Polymorph, saved at the last minute. Familiar stuff now.
The bit where they're all on TV getting voted off was bleak then but 9 Rose Jack did a funnier and somehow more bleak version. Just as much suffering with a prettier aesthetic makes it worse. Blank corridors with varied lighting ... actually the satellite was doing the same thrifty thing but ... making it look all grim and industrial somehow wasn't as nasty as being all colors and reality TV. Is interesting.
The very meta bit where we are all watching the same screens still makes you think.
It's nice to see the good guys win once a story, but I don't know what to watch to see them win by meaningful negotiation.
The idea of the one planet with the useful ore being exploited to the point of starvation by distant corporations... made me notice how white they all were this time.
Being exploited to mine what the rest of the world(s) can't live without is unfortunately plausible.
Not that local miners were treated with the heights of dignity, safety, and profit sharing.
It bothered me they could have such tech as space flight but they're not growing food. But it's kind of fun inventing reasons from available data: all those poison plants. Maybe they have trouble keeping them out of the habitats. Maybe they'd make animal husbandry unsafe and would contaminate plants grown there. Or maybe just as the miners grew burrowing claws the plants would grow their own defences... maybe those poison plants were food plants with a dream...
Or maybe the set up was all about control so they kept the basics of survival away from the prisoners from the start. That fits too.
I was going to say I didnt like the mood swingy Doctor at the start sitting down and giving up, but, it does go with later in the story interestingly, where giving up got him out of the trap. Doesn't feel like much of a lesson, but it's a bit work smarter not harder.
Calling Varos one of the good stories seems a teensy mean, given how dark it was. I'm still not sure about the calibration. But it holds together and tells the story it set out to, and it's not like the 'live voting for horrible outcomes' bit gets old.
So I quite like it.
Good one.
... I just checked the TARDIS wiki to refresh my memory and it's not just the audios that confuse matters vs the already confusing TV, everything else weighed in sometimes as well. And apparently one audio says this is because Time Lords seperately and severally set out to fix things and, well, mess.
Travelling forever in the Memory TARDIS counts as one of the good endings I think.
Actual Vengeance on Varos is the one with the acid pit etc. It's mean and messy, yes, but this time I've been reading lots of Pathfinder and it just struck me as being a perfectly normal DnD dungeon. Illusions everywhere, pit traps, acid damage, and a bit of Baleful Polymorph, saved at the last minute. Familiar stuff now.
The bit where they're all on TV getting voted off was bleak then but 9 Rose Jack did a funnier and somehow more bleak version. Just as much suffering with a prettier aesthetic makes it worse. Blank corridors with varied lighting ... actually the satellite was doing the same thrifty thing but ... making it look all grim and industrial somehow wasn't as nasty as being all colors and reality TV. Is interesting.
The very meta bit where we are all watching the same screens still makes you think.
It's nice to see the good guys win once a story, but I don't know what to watch to see them win by meaningful negotiation.
The idea of the one planet with the useful ore being exploited to the point of starvation by distant corporations... made me notice how white they all were this time.
Being exploited to mine what the rest of the world(s) can't live without is unfortunately plausible.
Not that local miners were treated with the heights of dignity, safety, and profit sharing.
It bothered me they could have such tech as space flight but they're not growing food. But it's kind of fun inventing reasons from available data: all those poison plants. Maybe they have trouble keeping them out of the habitats. Maybe they'd make animal husbandry unsafe and would contaminate plants grown there. Or maybe just as the miners grew burrowing claws the plants would grow their own defences... maybe those poison plants were food plants with a dream...
Or maybe the set up was all about control so they kept the basics of survival away from the prisoners from the start. That fits too.
I was going to say I didnt like the mood swingy Doctor at the start sitting down and giving up, but, it does go with later in the story interestingly, where giving up got him out of the trap. Doesn't feel like much of a lesson, but it's a bit work smarter not harder.
Calling Varos one of the good stories seems a teensy mean, given how dark it was. I'm still not sure about the calibration. But it holds together and tells the story it set out to, and it's not like the 'live voting for horrible outcomes' bit gets old.
So I quite like it.
Good one.
no subject
Date: 2024-07-04 06:20 am (UTC)