Cybermen episode
May. 16th, 2006 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethTalking about Doctor Who, with vague incoherence of zombie brain and a couple days memory full of stuff between here and there.
Talking about Mickey, how he's turning into one of my favourite characters, how much depth he's got going now, and why I think he should be around a good long while.
I'm reading around LJ and *everyone* is reading this ep as Mickey's exit episode. And I just don't get it. To me this reads like an intro. Show us who he is by showing us who he isn't. Show us which are the good parts by showing us an AU version where he's actually kind of a git.
Have him have a choice to make and *then choose to go with the Doctor*. Because right now, if he chooses to stay in the AU, he is saying that yeah actually he is kind of useless. His life is not in fact a life he wants. He'll go be this other bloke instead. And that would be fucking sad, almost suicidal/sick. So bugger that. We need him to get to the end of the episode and see that the world he lives in is better, and he is part of what makes it better.
And the thing is, I'm pretty sure this is the point of the text.
Mickey was calling himself the robot dog, and in this ep he's 'spare parts'. In a *cyberman* ep. (And do I ever wish I had the ep to rewatch to make sure I'm quoting it right). It follows up from last week, with the using the crew as parts. Saying people are parts, interchangeable. If Mickey can slot in to Rickey's life, then the cybermen are right. If Rickey ends up in Mickey's life, same damn thing. They are *not* interchangeable, *not* spare, they are integral and essential as their own selves. Have to be. I mean having the Doctor compare to cybermen at the start of the episode (treating Mickey as incompatible), that is the setup, that is the problem at hand. But having it still be so at the end? NO. No fucking way.
Er, I swear a lot when I'm tired.
What I mean is, they've set up the problem, they've shown the Doctor and Rose being gits to Mickey, and by the end they have to fix it. Which means M *must stay*, or else they've set up the Doctor with the same problem as the bad guys and left him there.
Doctor+Rose is way cliquey, ignore/exclude Mickey and talk about the shared past instead of making a shared present. Doctor+Rose+Jack was exactly the same. I read someone say that this makes Jack unique. Not so very. Other people get the Doctor's attention. The common element is Mickey. See the problem with making him a companion as is, is that in order to keep up with the Doctor, you have to really bring it. The Doctor is turned up to 11 all the time, I read someone say. Too very true. He reads as manic most of the time. (Can't call an alien manic, have no baseline.) To keep up with him you have to be *fast*, you have to roll with the changes and keep on going under stress. Mickey is the guy who got scared enough by being eated by the wheelie bin he ended up cowering for a while to get over it. Fair enough, but not looking good, in fact deliberately set up to look bad compared to the Doctor.
There's a bit in a Vorkosigan book where Miles is off on one, hyper as ever, and the character he's been with all through the book realises that no, it wasn't meds or circumstances, this is what he's like *all the time*. And Miles says he relies on his people to fight back. (Was it fight? Need quote, should dig.) People around Miles have to bring their best game, and he surrounds himself by people who are absolutely top of their form and have energy, steel, and the kind of personality that can hear him go off on one and not ever just roll over and take it.
The Doctor is constantly off on one, manic, hyperactive, going a million miles an hour. Remember the speech when Rose met 9, how the world is always moving and he can feel it? Doctor goes *fast*. And the others have to keep up.
Mickey stands there holding a thing for half an hour because he was told to.
Not so stupid. Not uniquely anyways. Leela did that yoyo for how long before the Doctor realised she wasn't having fun?
But Mickey does it because he's the guy who gets taken for granted, and he lets that happen.
And we see some of why. Thinks he's useless. Has Trauma about his gran. Abandonment issues, surely, big time, for the parents buggered off and his gran died and it was years ago and he is how old? Rose age. Meaning he would still be school age when she died? Teenager loses a parent and thinks its his fault for not looking after her. Now these are Issues with mileage!
The Doctor is always pushing, and Mickey needs to learn to push back. Not be obnoxious, not turn into Rickey with loudness and aggression and guns, just be more of the self he is starting to be this ep. Not just the moment he challenges the Doctor about him always running after Rose. More the one where he asks if it helped when the Doctor kicked the TARDIS. And if it hurt.
And the Doctor replies honestly to both (yes).
See 9 and M were rivals for Rose's affections. 10 knows he's won. Rose didn't even want M travelling with them. M knows too, the Doctor is Rose's everything.
I think he is also fully aware that one day the Doctor is going to metaphorically bugger off to Spain and never call, possibly leaving Rose holding the baby, and he doesn't want her left alone unable to cope.
He asked to travel. Got a spaceship first time out. All cool.
But he asked to travel after Rose saw Sarah Jane, and he had some evidence that yeah, the Doctor really is just a guy.
And isn't it *fabulous* that Mickey is relating to the Doctor as a bloke. The Mrs meets the Ex is not a comment I'd expect from *any other companion ever*, and that is the distinctiveness a character needs.
I think he is traveling with the Doctor because he wants to find some way for his life to be more, better, bigger, more useful. He doesn't want to be Mickey that fixes cars all his life. He's seen that the universe is huge, and he's stepping up to do something about it. Class.
But I think he is traveling with Rose because he knows she's going to need someone when Spain (hey, Barcelona! The planet of course. Connections?) turns up, and he's her mate, so he'll be there.
If, at this point, Mickey has something permanent happen, gets dumped in an AU or gets cybered or whatever, that undermines all these layers and takes a wonderful character and gets rid of him. Why the hell would they do that?
Mickey is about the truth now, he's the guy who nobody believes when he runs the website to tell the world about aliens, he's the guy who does the investigating and calls the Doctor and Rose in. He's not a Cassandra, because D & R listen to him, even if the world doesn't. And he gets things done. Yeah, first time out, he got scared and got left behind. And yeah, the tin dog helped. But he gets things done. Digs up truths (dog! bone!). Skeletons in the closet.
Lose that character, lose that voice.
Plus - there is Rose.
This AU is also about her.
Because she doesn't exist here. Watch what the world is like without her!
Rose is all emotions, all heart (I don't like her but she do decide things from the heart). She feels things are true and acts on it. Feelings girl.
She says stuff too, tells off the Doctor for things when she don't agree (yesno?), but all from feelings. No net investigation for her. (Which is part of why she irritates me. Get some data, woman!)
So the Cybermen world is the world without Rose, without feelings, without heart. Where 'Rose' is a little bitch, everything goes wrong.
Muchly meta.
But in this world, Mickey is still the voice of truth (Preacher, as in Gospel truth). Rickey says it but it applies to Mickey too. What's he got to say to the world? A ton of stuff it needs to hear.
If Mickey gets left behind in the AU, then the regular canon loses gospel truth boy, and that would be a big problem.
Rose gets to see a world with no her. Two surviving parents. Rich. Miserable. Empty. Sell outs.
Rickey without Rose? Is better, by some standards. More effective. He got the voice of truth gig without the being left behind. He is, in fact, the Most Wanted. But, he's also a bit of a git. Save the world but ignore his gran? Git, with same problem as Rose and Doctor, taking regular people for granted to chase big shiny Issues to fix.
So I don't know if this will be dealt with in the second part or in the season as a whole, but Mickey *has* to come out of this being the better man, because in the Cyberman episode he is *more human*, has more feelings, cares more. Isn't about the violence. Is about the little details, the people stuff, connecting. He can't get left behind now, because that stuff is exactly what the Doctor and Rose have been losing sight of, so they need him.
Read it as meta commentary and Rose=bitch just gets funnier.
Rose has to learn from this shit, this is why you bring it up, the main characters are flawed and you say so and then they have to fix it.
Rose is all feelings, Rose would care. But she takes people for granted too. Same flaw as the Doctor, dive in and help in a new shiny situation, ignore the home life (and let it go boom?)
So what Rose has to learn from this is never, ever, take anyone for granted. Put work into caring about people. Do the listening thing as well as the talking thing. You know, your basic growing up stuff.
Mickey on the other hand is the always there guy. Ever reliable. Fixes things (repair guy). Tells truths even when mocked. So what he needs is to realise the worth in this. Fixing things and telling truths is what the Doctor does too. It is far from trivial. Its the cool stuff. He needs to get good at it, yeah, he's a bit 1st level as heros go. But he mostly needs to learn he's doing alright as is.
He also needs a bit of happy for himself. So he needs Rose & the Doctor to like him as much as they need that character development.
So the story can really work tidy. If it goes like I think it is going. If he stays and they work on this stuff.
If he leaves now, they'll have to fix it by the end of the season. Or they'll have screwed up all the pretty setup.
I don't know how much of that is ramble. I'm reading from keywords and potentials, looking for theme and layers. I honestly don't know for sure they are there in DW. But I think things could turn out really well.
I didn't specifically mention the Cybermen. They were cool.
But everyone said that, and I wanted to poke at the character stuff as I read it.
ETA: Well, spoiler interviews apparently says all that is dead wrong and Mickey is an exparrot companion. Sulk. Vague embarassment. and sulk.
Talking about Mickey, how he's turning into one of my favourite characters, how much depth he's got going now, and why I think he should be around a good long while.
I'm reading around LJ and *everyone* is reading this ep as Mickey's exit episode. And I just don't get it. To me this reads like an intro. Show us who he is by showing us who he isn't. Show us which are the good parts by showing us an AU version where he's actually kind of a git.
Have him have a choice to make and *then choose to go with the Doctor*. Because right now, if he chooses to stay in the AU, he is saying that yeah actually he is kind of useless. His life is not in fact a life he wants. He'll go be this other bloke instead. And that would be fucking sad, almost suicidal/sick. So bugger that. We need him to get to the end of the episode and see that the world he lives in is better, and he is part of what makes it better.
And the thing is, I'm pretty sure this is the point of the text.
Mickey was calling himself the robot dog, and in this ep he's 'spare parts'. In a *cyberman* ep. (And do I ever wish I had the ep to rewatch to make sure I'm quoting it right). It follows up from last week, with the using the crew as parts. Saying people are parts, interchangeable. If Mickey can slot in to Rickey's life, then the cybermen are right. If Rickey ends up in Mickey's life, same damn thing. They are *not* interchangeable, *not* spare, they are integral and essential as their own selves. Have to be. I mean having the Doctor compare to cybermen at the start of the episode (treating Mickey as incompatible), that is the setup, that is the problem at hand. But having it still be so at the end? NO. No fucking way.
Er, I swear a lot when I'm tired.
What I mean is, they've set up the problem, they've shown the Doctor and Rose being gits to Mickey, and by the end they have to fix it. Which means M *must stay*, or else they've set up the Doctor with the same problem as the bad guys and left him there.
Doctor+Rose is way cliquey, ignore/exclude Mickey and talk about the shared past instead of making a shared present. Doctor+Rose+Jack was exactly the same. I read someone say that this makes Jack unique. Not so very. Other people get the Doctor's attention. The common element is Mickey. See the problem with making him a companion as is, is that in order to keep up with the Doctor, you have to really bring it. The Doctor is turned up to 11 all the time, I read someone say. Too very true. He reads as manic most of the time. (Can't call an alien manic, have no baseline.) To keep up with him you have to be *fast*, you have to roll with the changes and keep on going under stress. Mickey is the guy who got scared enough by being eated by the wheelie bin he ended up cowering for a while to get over it. Fair enough, but not looking good, in fact deliberately set up to look bad compared to the Doctor.
There's a bit in a Vorkosigan book where Miles is off on one, hyper as ever, and the character he's been with all through the book realises that no, it wasn't meds or circumstances, this is what he's like *all the time*. And Miles says he relies on his people to fight back. (Was it fight? Need quote, should dig.) People around Miles have to bring their best game, and he surrounds himself by people who are absolutely top of their form and have energy, steel, and the kind of personality that can hear him go off on one and not ever just roll over and take it.
The Doctor is constantly off on one, manic, hyperactive, going a million miles an hour. Remember the speech when Rose met 9, how the world is always moving and he can feel it? Doctor goes *fast*. And the others have to keep up.
Mickey stands there holding a thing for half an hour because he was told to.
Not so stupid. Not uniquely anyways. Leela did that yoyo for how long before the Doctor realised she wasn't having fun?
But Mickey does it because he's the guy who gets taken for granted, and he lets that happen.
And we see some of why. Thinks he's useless. Has Trauma about his gran. Abandonment issues, surely, big time, for the parents buggered off and his gran died and it was years ago and he is how old? Rose age. Meaning he would still be school age when she died? Teenager loses a parent and thinks its his fault for not looking after her. Now these are Issues with mileage!
The Doctor is always pushing, and Mickey needs to learn to push back. Not be obnoxious, not turn into Rickey with loudness and aggression and guns, just be more of the self he is starting to be this ep. Not just the moment he challenges the Doctor about him always running after Rose. More the one where he asks if it helped when the Doctor kicked the TARDIS. And if it hurt.
And the Doctor replies honestly to both (yes).
See 9 and M were rivals for Rose's affections. 10 knows he's won. Rose didn't even want M travelling with them. M knows too, the Doctor is Rose's everything.
I think he is also fully aware that one day the Doctor is going to metaphorically bugger off to Spain and never call, possibly leaving Rose holding the baby, and he doesn't want her left alone unable to cope.
He asked to travel. Got a spaceship first time out. All cool.
But he asked to travel after Rose saw Sarah Jane, and he had some evidence that yeah, the Doctor really is just a guy.
And isn't it *fabulous* that Mickey is relating to the Doctor as a bloke. The Mrs meets the Ex is not a comment I'd expect from *any other companion ever*, and that is the distinctiveness a character needs.
I think he is traveling with the Doctor because he wants to find some way for his life to be more, better, bigger, more useful. He doesn't want to be Mickey that fixes cars all his life. He's seen that the universe is huge, and he's stepping up to do something about it. Class.
But I think he is traveling with Rose because he knows she's going to need someone when Spain (hey, Barcelona! The planet of course. Connections?) turns up, and he's her mate, so he'll be there.
If, at this point, Mickey has something permanent happen, gets dumped in an AU or gets cybered or whatever, that undermines all these layers and takes a wonderful character and gets rid of him. Why the hell would they do that?
Mickey is about the truth now, he's the guy who nobody believes when he runs the website to tell the world about aliens, he's the guy who does the investigating and calls the Doctor and Rose in. He's not a Cassandra, because D & R listen to him, even if the world doesn't. And he gets things done. Yeah, first time out, he got scared and got left behind. And yeah, the tin dog helped. But he gets things done. Digs up truths (dog! bone!). Skeletons in the closet.
Lose that character, lose that voice.
Plus - there is Rose.
This AU is also about her.
Because she doesn't exist here. Watch what the world is like without her!
Rose is all emotions, all heart (I don't like her but she do decide things from the heart). She feels things are true and acts on it. Feelings girl.
She says stuff too, tells off the Doctor for things when she don't agree (yesno?), but all from feelings. No net investigation for her. (Which is part of why she irritates me. Get some data, woman!)
So the Cybermen world is the world without Rose, without feelings, without heart. Where 'Rose' is a little bitch, everything goes wrong.
Muchly meta.
But in this world, Mickey is still the voice of truth (Preacher, as in Gospel truth). Rickey says it but it applies to Mickey too. What's he got to say to the world? A ton of stuff it needs to hear.
If Mickey gets left behind in the AU, then the regular canon loses gospel truth boy, and that would be a big problem.
Rose gets to see a world with no her. Two surviving parents. Rich. Miserable. Empty. Sell outs.
Rickey without Rose? Is better, by some standards. More effective. He got the voice of truth gig without the being left behind. He is, in fact, the Most Wanted. But, he's also a bit of a git. Save the world but ignore his gran? Git, with same problem as Rose and Doctor, taking regular people for granted to chase big shiny Issues to fix.
So I don't know if this will be dealt with in the second part or in the season as a whole, but Mickey *has* to come out of this being the better man, because in the Cyberman episode he is *more human*, has more feelings, cares more. Isn't about the violence. Is about the little details, the people stuff, connecting. He can't get left behind now, because that stuff is exactly what the Doctor and Rose have been losing sight of, so they need him.
Read it as meta commentary and Rose=bitch just gets funnier.
Rose has to learn from this shit, this is why you bring it up, the main characters are flawed and you say so and then they have to fix it.
Rose is all feelings, Rose would care. But she takes people for granted too. Same flaw as the Doctor, dive in and help in a new shiny situation, ignore the home life (and let it go boom?)
So what Rose has to learn from this is never, ever, take anyone for granted. Put work into caring about people. Do the listening thing as well as the talking thing. You know, your basic growing up stuff.
Mickey on the other hand is the always there guy. Ever reliable. Fixes things (repair guy). Tells truths even when mocked. So what he needs is to realise the worth in this. Fixing things and telling truths is what the Doctor does too. It is far from trivial. Its the cool stuff. He needs to get good at it, yeah, he's a bit 1st level as heros go. But he mostly needs to learn he's doing alright as is.
He also needs a bit of happy for himself. So he needs Rose & the Doctor to like him as much as they need that character development.
So the story can really work tidy. If it goes like I think it is going. If he stays and they work on this stuff.
If he leaves now, they'll have to fix it by the end of the season. Or they'll have screwed up all the pretty setup.
I don't know how much of that is ramble. I'm reading from keywords and potentials, looking for theme and layers. I honestly don't know for sure they are there in DW. But I think things could turn out really well.
I didn't specifically mention the Cybermen. They were cool.
But everyone said that, and I wanted to poke at the character stuff as I read it.
ETA: Well, spoiler interviews apparently says all that is dead wrong and Mickey is an ex