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Okay, so I owe y'all an entire season's worth of posts on last season on, well, everything I watch. I haven't forgotten.
But I've just seen Doctor Who, "Deep Breath," and I can actually share a reaction while I'm still having it!
Overall, I'm happy. I had a lot of fun. I think again I'll divide into things I liked and things I didn't like so that you can easily skip whichever you might not want to read.
Things I Didn't Like:
* Don't tell me what to think, Steven Moffat. Yes, meta can be fun, but it's really heavy-handed when you have the characters tell us how we should react to the Doctor looking older or to his accent or anything else we've been talking about. I agreed with some of the things Vastra said, and then Missy at the end, but they got my back up anyway because I don't want someone in-show to tell me what to think about the show so very hard.
• Clara really seemed too freaked out by the Doctor's regeneration. As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
astrogirl2 reminds us here, Clara appealed to the Time Lords to give the Doctor the regeneration! Even if she doesn't remember what happened when she jumped into his time stream on Trenzalore (and everything about that is still a sore point with me), she knows more about his regeneration in the episode right before this one than she appears to know now (see a transcript here). I can understand that his confusion would upset her, even panic her: the only one who can get her back to her own time argues with her about what her name is. I have more trouble that she's angry that he looks older—he was no spring chicken in his last day! See this picture of him if you don't recall (and I didn't quite recall how old and grey they'd made him until I found this picture). That bothered me. Characterization seemed to take a back seat to plot, and I didn't even find that a very good plot twist. Perhaps characterization took a back seat to meta: Moffat wanted someone in the story to reject the Doctor's new appearance so that he could lecture the audience on it. No, thanks. That really jarred me, because it disrupted an otherwise more interesting Clara than I think we've had in many episodes!
• I'm not sure whether the Doctor talked the cyborg into suicide or pushed him; I'm not happy with either alternative. Couldn't he talk the cyborg into just living out whatever lifespan his current body parts allowed and calling off the others?
[Brilliant Husband has no such question about what happened. His logic: the robot was programmed against self-destruction and can't alter that programming. The Doctor isn't really programmed against killing; he has done rather a lot of it lately. Also, as River reminds us (more than once, I think): "The Doctor lies." He thinks the Doctor pushed.]
• "I'm not your boyfriend." Nobody said you were! I feel like this is about the Doctor and Amy, or maybe the Doctor and Rose, but never the Doctor and Clara! Maybe the Doctor flirted with Clara, but in the way that he flirted with everyone, male or female: he can be flattering and attention-grabbing and he likes to be, and that's often flirting. I'm fine with that. I don't want Doctors and companions romantically interested in each other, ever. That soured Rose for me, and I was heartily glad when Amy grew out of her crush on him (though it seemed to take an awfully long time). Sure, the companions love the Doctor, and he loves them, but romantic love is not the be-all and end-all of love.
• Things were a bit too silly for me at some points, especially with the Doctor falling into a tree. That was the low point of the episode for me.
What I Liked: short version: a whole heck of a lot!
* Peter Capaldi. Many of the lines coming out of his mouth struck me as lines that the Eleventh Doctor could have delivered, but he would have done so very differently. Even when the script was silly, Capaldi delivered. I totally believe this guy is the Doctor. I don't think I need any adjustment period. (It might help that he's older than me. I prefer my Doctors that way, okay?)
* The phone call. I was unspoiled and very surprised, and I loved that scene. I thought Matt Smith was brilliant, and I'm glad I didn't know about it, though surely they filmed it when they filmed "The Time of the Doctor."
• Mostly: Clara. I have not always been happy with her (which is the topic of a different post), but I like that she wasn't taking guff from the Doctor or Vastra. "Give him hell; he needs it." Vastra's right (here; she really went too far when accusing Clara, but I'm pretty sure she did that deliberately). She held her own when she thought he'd abandoned her, and I loved how she turned her fear into a defense instead of denying it. She did trust in him in the end, and she did come back to him—and she gave him a great big hug that he didn't want.
• Madame Vastra and Jenny: always, even with the silliness ("I thought you were painting me!" So say we all). They're awesome; I don't know what else to say.
• Strax: he can wear on me, but he didn't quite wear out his welcome this time. I liked his alternation of "Miss Clara" with "boy." It's really goofy, but he still doesn't get human sex and gender.
• The Doctor's speeches in that alley: "I'm Scottish. I can complain about things." We had to stop the TiVo repeatedly in this scene because we'd laugh so hard at one line we'd miss the next, so we ran it back a few times. Briefly wanting the scarf. (In the same vein but later: wanting more circles in the TARDIS.) I felt kind of bad for the poor guy who had the misfortune to stumble across him (the first one, not the one who took his watch for the smelly coat).
• I like the confusion. The transition from the Ninth Doctor to the Tenth was a little too easy. Sometimes, regeneration doesn't go so well. It makes sense that this one wouldn't be smooth, especially going into the uncharted territory of extra regenerations. Some bits of it were silly, but I like that the Doctor needs to figure himself out again. It's time.
Aside: I'm of two minds about his inability to remember Madame de Pompadour: he ought to have remembered her and from there remembered the ship in her name. It was used more for comic effect than dramatic, and I didn't like that. I'd like to see him remember it more in the future.
I love that he named a previous companion. He hardly ever did that before, and it is disturbing; they matter to him. He should acknowledge that.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing more of this Doctor.
What do you all think?
But I've just seen Doctor Who, "Deep Breath," and I can actually share a reaction while I'm still having it!
Overall, I'm happy. I had a lot of fun. I think again I'll divide into things I liked and things I didn't like so that you can easily skip whichever you might not want to read.
Things I Didn't Like:
* Don't tell me what to think, Steven Moffat. Yes, meta can be fun, but it's really heavy-handed when you have the characters tell us how we should react to the Doctor looking older or to his accent or anything else we've been talking about. I agreed with some of the things Vastra said, and then Missy at the end, but they got my back up anyway because I don't want someone in-show to tell me what to think about the show so very hard.
• Clara really seemed too freaked out by the Doctor's regeneration. As
astrogirl2 reminds us here, Clara appealed to the Time Lords to give the Doctor the regeneration! Even if she doesn't remember what happened when she jumped into his time stream on Trenzalore (and everything about that is still a sore point with me), she knows more about his regeneration in the episode right before this one than she appears to know now (see a transcript here). I can understand that his confusion would upset her, even panic her: the only one who can get her back to her own time argues with her about what her name is. I have more trouble that she's angry that he looks older—he was no spring chicken in his last day! See this picture of him if you don't recall (and I didn't quite recall how old and grey they'd made him until I found this picture). That bothered me. Characterization seemed to take a back seat to plot, and I didn't even find that a very good plot twist. Perhaps characterization took a back seat to meta: Moffat wanted someone in the story to reject the Doctor's new appearance so that he could lecture the audience on it. No, thanks. That really jarred me, because it disrupted an otherwise more interesting Clara than I think we've had in many episodes!• I'm not sure whether the Doctor talked the cyborg into suicide or pushed him; I'm not happy with either alternative. Couldn't he talk the cyborg into just living out whatever lifespan his current body parts allowed and calling off the others?
[Brilliant Husband has no such question about what happened. His logic: the robot was programmed against self-destruction and can't alter that programming. The Doctor isn't really programmed against killing; he has done rather a lot of it lately. Also, as River reminds us (more than once, I think): "The Doctor lies." He thinks the Doctor pushed.]
• "I'm not your boyfriend." Nobody said you were! I feel like this is about the Doctor and Amy, or maybe the Doctor and Rose, but never the Doctor and Clara! Maybe the Doctor flirted with Clara, but in the way that he flirted with everyone, male or female: he can be flattering and attention-grabbing and he likes to be, and that's often flirting. I'm fine with that. I don't want Doctors and companions romantically interested in each other, ever. That soured Rose for me, and I was heartily glad when Amy grew out of her crush on him (though it seemed to take an awfully long time). Sure, the companions love the Doctor, and he loves them, but romantic love is not the be-all and end-all of love.
• Things were a bit too silly for me at some points, especially with the Doctor falling into a tree. That was the low point of the episode for me.
What I Liked: short version: a whole heck of a lot!
* Peter Capaldi. Many of the lines coming out of his mouth struck me as lines that the Eleventh Doctor could have delivered, but he would have done so very differently. Even when the script was silly, Capaldi delivered. I totally believe this guy is the Doctor. I don't think I need any adjustment period. (It might help that he's older than me. I prefer my Doctors that way, okay?)
* The phone call. I was unspoiled and very surprised, and I loved that scene. I thought Matt Smith was brilliant, and I'm glad I didn't know about it, though surely they filmed it when they filmed "The Time of the Doctor."
• Mostly: Clara. I have not always been happy with her (which is the topic of a different post), but I like that she wasn't taking guff from the Doctor or Vastra. "Give him hell; he needs it." Vastra's right (here; she really went too far when accusing Clara, but I'm pretty sure she did that deliberately). She held her own when she thought he'd abandoned her, and I loved how she turned her fear into a defense instead of denying it. She did trust in him in the end, and she did come back to him—and she gave him a great big hug that he didn't want.
• Madame Vastra and Jenny: always, even with the silliness ("I thought you were painting me!" So say we all). They're awesome; I don't know what else to say.
• Strax: he can wear on me, but he didn't quite wear out his welcome this time. I liked his alternation of "Miss Clara" with "boy." It's really goofy, but he still doesn't get human sex and gender.
• The Doctor's speeches in that alley: "I'm Scottish. I can complain about things." We had to stop the TiVo repeatedly in this scene because we'd laugh so hard at one line we'd miss the next, so we ran it back a few times. Briefly wanting the scarf. (In the same vein but later: wanting more circles in the TARDIS.) I felt kind of bad for the poor guy who had the misfortune to stumble across him (the first one, not the one who took his watch for the smelly coat).
• I like the confusion. The transition from the Ninth Doctor to the Tenth was a little too easy. Sometimes, regeneration doesn't go so well. It makes sense that this one wouldn't be smooth, especially going into the uncharted territory of extra regenerations. Some bits of it were silly, but I like that the Doctor needs to figure himself out again. It's time.
Aside: I'm of two minds about his inability to remember Madame de Pompadour: he ought to have remembered her and from there remembered the ship in her name. It was used more for comic effect than dramatic, and I didn't like that. I'd like to see him remember it more in the future.
I love that he named a previous companion. He hardly ever did that before, and it is disturbing; they matter to him. He should acknowledge that.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing more of this Doctor.
What do you all think?
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*HUGS*
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I thought about how Eleventy would have delivered certain lines too; it's only natural! And the character is in the process of changing, so he'll echo his previous self in some ways, and not in others.
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I do expect that. That has never changed and I've seen all the regens since Three into Four. But one still never quite gets used to it. Some Doctors you take to right away, some take a bit to get a handle on them. I have my favs, but I know I will love Peter. And the great thing about Who is - all of the Doctors are relevant all of the time. One of the best things about this Fandom, lol!
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I'm afraid so. Here's his chance to prove us wrong!
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