BFA DW Vortex Ice Cortex Fire
Nov. 14th, 2024 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThe other day I posted about 6 and Flip, and how I was getting worried about Flip's mental health.
I listened to these two stories today and I think the mental health thing was addressed deliberately here.
Vortex Ice was just a twisty time travel depressing thing where everything happens because it happened, and it shows unusual sides of the Doctor and Flip but it isn't the kind of time travel story I like. Also the trapped in a cave bit reminded me of Torchwood, after Hollow Choir, and DW never gets quite so dark so it felt... like it was going fast so you didn't get stuck in your feelings about the bad bits, like the tone was skipping out on the awful, and I noticed this time. Oddly unsatisfying.
Cortex Fire got stuck in to depression and the urge to self destruction and self sacrifice. Very Torchwood topics, but again, the busy running and fixing things with super science made it so you don't get stuck in the feelings. Never quite so dark. Somehow, even though multiple people spontaneously combusted because of their feelings.
I like how Flip stopped to talk to the guy on the bridge. Like, it sounds like she's just going to ask for a lift, the Doctor has missed the potential subtext completely, but Flip takes some time to check the guy is alright, because she's known people that went to have a think on a bridge.
She's direct and chatty and sort of clumsy at it, but she cares, and I like how they did that.
But since this is Doctor Who they end up fighting a sort of memetic virus of the collective subconscious, something from beyond the world that wants to burn everything on the way out.
(Except it might be from somewhere a bit closer to home, and just be an idea of destruction to escape.)
The idea of self sacrifice recurs over and over, and characters explicitly discuss the theme.
Also Flip runs into a burning building and as usual takes every risk available.
But they all survive it this time, because the Doctor and the TARDIS avert the destruction,
in a way that is implied to take a very, very, long and painful time: Flip yhinks he looks older, and the Doctor is acting like it's a surprise people remember him and ah he remembers all this.
Self sacrifice by living the hard way.
It's pretty much a mission statement then, even if it isn't precisely something anyone without a TARDIS could do.
So it felt emotionally coherent and pretty satisfying as Doctor Who stories go, even if it felt oddly light for the topics at hand. Appropriate tone for DW but it feels like there's a lot going on if you stop and think about it.
What it doesn't do is get any closer to bridging the two of Flip. Here she is running around with the Doctor, then next we hear she's gone home and got married and got swept up again. Feels like an odd leap. Did I miss something? The only story left the actress is in that I could find is 6's last story, which goes last in the listening. *googles* Oh, and the Quin Dilemma. But that goes elsewhere in the sequence. I mean obviously we can imagine the leap pretty easily, but the listening order I just picked does the gap no favours.
*checks TARDIS wiki* https://tardis.wiki/wiki/Flip_Jackson#First_travels_with_the_Doctor wait they had the Doctor just talk about it to someone else?? Well that is certainly a choice.
Apparently when I listened Vortex Ice Cortex Fire the first time I only gave it 2.5 stars, which seems ungenerous this time. I've bumped it up to 3.5 and am pondering a 4. If it's a deliberate answer to the story arc I perceived it's a lot better.
I really am not remembering these stories even though my reviews say these are relistens.
Ah well, means I get a first opinion twice...
I listened to these two stories today and I think the mental health thing was addressed deliberately here.
Vortex Ice was just a twisty time travel depressing thing where everything happens because it happened, and it shows unusual sides of the Doctor and Flip but it isn't the kind of time travel story I like. Also the trapped in a cave bit reminded me of Torchwood, after Hollow Choir, and DW never gets quite so dark so it felt... like it was going fast so you didn't get stuck in your feelings about the bad bits, like the tone was skipping out on the awful, and I noticed this time. Oddly unsatisfying.
Cortex Fire got stuck in to depression and the urge to self destruction and self sacrifice. Very Torchwood topics, but again, the busy running and fixing things with super science made it so you don't get stuck in the feelings. Never quite so dark. Somehow, even though multiple people spontaneously combusted because of their feelings.
I like how Flip stopped to talk to the guy on the bridge. Like, it sounds like she's just going to ask for a lift, the Doctor has missed the potential subtext completely, but Flip takes some time to check the guy is alright, because she's known people that went to have a think on a bridge.
She's direct and chatty and sort of clumsy at it, but she cares, and I like how they did that.
But since this is Doctor Who they end up fighting a sort of memetic virus of the collective subconscious, something from beyond the world that wants to burn everything on the way out.
(Except it might be from somewhere a bit closer to home, and just be an idea of destruction to escape.)
The idea of self sacrifice recurs over and over, and characters explicitly discuss the theme.
Also Flip runs into a burning building and as usual takes every risk available.
But they all survive it this time, because the Doctor and the TARDIS avert the destruction,
in a way that is implied to take a very, very, long and painful time: Flip yhinks he looks older, and the Doctor is acting like it's a surprise people remember him and ah he remembers all this.
Self sacrifice by living the hard way.
It's pretty much a mission statement then, even if it isn't precisely something anyone without a TARDIS could do.
So it felt emotionally coherent and pretty satisfying as Doctor Who stories go, even if it felt oddly light for the topics at hand. Appropriate tone for DW but it feels like there's a lot going on if you stop and think about it.
What it doesn't do is get any closer to bridging the two of Flip. Here she is running around with the Doctor, then next we hear she's gone home and got married and got swept up again. Feels like an odd leap. Did I miss something? The only story left the actress is in that I could find is 6's last story, which goes last in the listening. *googles* Oh, and the Quin Dilemma. But that goes elsewhere in the sequence. I mean obviously we can imagine the leap pretty easily, but the listening order I just picked does the gap no favours.
*checks TARDIS wiki* https://tardis.wiki/wiki/Flip_Jackson#First_travels_with_the_Doctor wait they had the Doctor just talk about it to someone else?? Well that is certainly a choice.
Apparently when I listened Vortex Ice Cortex Fire the first time I only gave it 2.5 stars, which seems ungenerous this time. I've bumped it up to 3.5 and am pondering a 4. If it's a deliberate answer to the story arc I perceived it's a lot better.
I really am not remembering these stories even though my reviews say these are relistens.
Ah well, means I get a first opinion twice...