For@Writersblock039

“Heaven Sent/Hell Bent” – The Long Way ‘Round

I realized something this week as I watched Hell Bent; the Doctor very rarely directly faces the consquences of his actions.

Now before you all jump on me and tell me I have no idea what I’m saying, answer yourself this:

When was the last time the Doctor was physical harmed/affected as a result of a mistake he made?

Honestly, I can’t think of anything.  The Doctor has sacrificed himself for people and been hurt/regenerated, but I wouldn’t call that a mistake.  Usually it’s the companion or some other supporting character who suffers, which in turn causes the Doctor pain, but it’s the companions who personally suffer.

Not this time.

The Doctor would destroy time and space and Gallifrey, all just to save Clara.  As Me says, “Makes you wonder what you’re going to do next.” (Bye the way, that is the hugest Whoffauldi nod this show is ever going to give.)  And it’s too much.  Way too much.

I understand the Doctor loves Clara.  In what way is never exactly clear, and in a way that’s okay, because he is an alien and doesn’t love people with the same ‘reproductive frenzy’ as humans.  And Clara loves him, as a best friend she looks up to.  That’s the funny thing about their relationship; in series 8 it seemed like Clara loved the Doctor so much that she could never leave him and now it’s almost evolved to the reverse.  Clara never wants to leave the Doctor, but she can live without him, and the Doctor has realized how attached to her he is, but he doesn’t want to change it.

Their arc this season is really about Clara letting go and the Doctor holding on as tight as he can.  And it’s so interesting to see, because their relationship should have dissolved long ago, after the Doctor left Clara on the moon, after he tricked Clara into thinking she destroyed the TARDIS keys, after seeing her willing to destroy the TARDIS, after they lied to each other about Gallifrey and Danny Pink.

It’s the writers pushing them back together even though real people would have given up long ago, I know.  But if I pretend they are real people and point out a few important character points about the Doctor and Clara, it’s clear why they stick together, even after countless betrayals and lies.

Firstly, Clara jumped into the Doctor’s timestream, i.e., she would do pretty much anything for him.

Secondly, the Doctor has proven that he would also do pretty much anything to get Clara back and/or keep her safe.

Somehow, you don’t just let a person like that go.  And in the end, that’s their downfall.

What happens when you get two people who would tear the universe apart for each other?

The Hybrid.

Was this a cop-out?  Yes and no.  Will the Hybrid be back?  Most likely.  (To the people who though ‘the Hybrid is me’ was the Doctor and those who thought it Me(Ashildr), you were both right.  Congratulations.

So the Doctor decide, in a very Doctorish fashion, that he’ll just erase Clara’s memories, because or course it’s best that the mere human forgets him, not the all-powerful Time Lord with the actual power to destroy the universe.  Obviously. (Another side note, sorry-this brought up the umpleasant memories of the Doctor basically mind-raping Donna.  At least this time he asks first.)

But Clara is having none of this.  She sees straight through the plot BS and tells him that her memories are hers and he has no right to them.  (By the way, this episode is scoring a lot’o hits on the Feminist Meter.  This, and Clara/Me, and that female regeneration gender swap thing.  Also, is this first episode we see black Gallifreyans?)

So the polarity is reversed and the Doctor’s memories are erased of Clara, but it of course doesn’t work properly, because it’s intended for a human, not a Time Lord.  But it’s just enough so we can have the heart-breaking diner scenes, where the Doctor plays ‘Clara?’ on his guitar and Clara pretends not to recognize him.  Fourth wall break, anyone?

And then Clara and Me fly off in their TARDIS, leading to the greatest spinoff that never will be.  But gosh darn it, how adorable are they?  Shipping mode engaged.

And herein lies my issue with how the showwriters deal with leaving companions:

They always make it seem like it’s a terrible thing for the Doctor to love someone.  Like, the only way for the Doctor to lose someone is to be in the most dramatic and initially emotionally painful way possible.  They have to die or be as good as dead, maye even several times, for it to have any real emotional impact on the audience.  But the Doctor clearly never learns from his mistakes, because he never sees how his actions hurt his companions until it’s too late, and then the realization is overshadowed by his grief.

With Clara, they played with several possible exits, and one that I secretly wish they’d taken advantage of was the ending of Kill The Moon.  The Doctor would have seen how being a dick (pardon my French) pushed away his companion and might have learned something.  Clara needn’t have left the series immediatly; maybe she met back up with him in Into the Forest of the Night, and then reconsidered her actions a bit, and the finale could have happened as normal, with Clara leaving at the end of the series.  This would have been unusually accurate character development from a show that is notoriously terrible at it.  The Doctor could have become his rocker self and flew off with Shona or someone, and the ending of series 9 could still work as well, with some name swapping, etc.

And here’s another thing:  Losing someone to death is not the worst way to lose someone.  When they die, you can still remember all the ways they were important to you and why you loved them, and you can choose to remember all the good things.   When someone dumps you for someone else, or betrays you, or nearly ruins your life, the pain sticks with you for much, much longer as you wonder what you could have done differently to make them stay.  And the worst thing?  With death, you always love them, but the love becomes a background thing eventually as you move on.  With the latter, you can’t love them anymore.  And you never stop hating them.  Which is why you learn something.

In real life, people don’t try to destroy the universe because their best friend/husband/lover/sibling is dead.  They move on.  The showrunners need to understand that, because whether Moffat or Davies, they have to keep bringing back the departed companion.  Rose came back, Martha came back, Donna came back, Amy and Rory came back, and Clara came back.  At some point they need to learn to let go.  And the Doctor, who has lost so much, should be no different.

It’s a crying shame that the way he learns that is by forgetting his need for it in the first place.

Stray bits of adorable fangirling:

• Last week I was mad they didn’t use the ‘This is Gallifrey’ theme, and Gold made it up to me by using the Doctor’s theme from series 1.  I melted inside.
• Sisterhood of Karn being BA as always.   “I think he’s finishing his soup.”
• Rassilon.  The Cloisters.  Gallifreyan writing.  More Doctor childhood backstory.  The Barn.  GALLIFREY.
• “How are you sustaining the reality bubble?” “Brilliantly.”
• How is old is Ashildr now?  Goodness, that girl is very good at staying out of trouble.  Also, how does she remember the Doctor, because presumably he’s long gone by the time Gallifrey is gone?  Additionally, was Sam Swift not immortal, then?  Finally, was the person knocking on Orson Pink’s door Ashildr?
• So, I guess they’ll never resolve that Orson Pink thing, then?  Okay, fine, I guess the first human time traveler’s not a big deal at all.
• The Doctor telling Clara to smile for him one last time.  Ah, the tears.
• NEW SONIC SCREWDRIVER!  WITH RED SETTINGS!  And distinctly  shaped, if you know what I mean, as the Internet helpfully pointed out.  Thanks, Internet.  That was exactly the image I needed to be reminded of.  I was still trying to delete that other scewdriver thing from a fanfic that took an unexpected turn.
• Can we all just stand up and applaud Clara’s emotional strength when it really counts?  She stood there and listened to the Doctor not recognize her.  And then she left him.  And eventually, she will willingly go back to her death.  Kudos to you, Impossible Girl.  If there’s one good thing you got from the Doctor, it’s the stoicity.
• Don’t leave yet, one more thing:  Run you clever boy, and remember me.  Talk about foreshadowing.

GIF of the week:

Next time…

The potentially sexist Christmas episode actually looks good and funny.  Isn’t Peter Capaldi smiling the goshdarnit cutest thing ever?  I mean, lookat this:

“Face the Raven” – Clara’s Raven, Er, Swan Song

This week marked the beginning of the end for Clara Oswald.  I say the beginning because she will be in the finale in some shape or form.  My own theory is that she is an Echo, but we’ll see.

But Face the Raven isn’t only focused on Clara’s death, unlike many other companion departure episodes.  There is no (extra) foreshadowing (Amy and Rory), no cryptic prophecies (Rose), no massive events that you know not everyone could possibly survive (Donna).  It’s not until a quiet moment halfway through the episode when Clara takes Rigsy’s death sentence that we realize this is it.

I mean, it’s not as though they were warning us about it both in and out of the show.

At first, knowing what’s coming, I was irritated at how impulsive Clara’s act seemed.  Then I remembered:

This is the woman who sacrificed her ‘page 1’ without hesitating, who volunteered to speak to Skaldak, who jumped into the Doctor’s time stream to save him even though it meant her death.  

This is the woman who watched the sun nearly burn her own planet from space, who would have trapped herself on a volcano because she couldn’t get her boyfriend back, who convinced a bunch of Cybermen that she’s the Doctor at the risk of her life.

This is the woman who left the Faraday cage to get her phone, who nearly convinced the Mire to leave Earth, who calmly informed her Zygon duplicate, who had control over her life, that she would and could lie to her.

Of course Clara would take Rigsy’s Quantum Shade.  Of course she would.  Because Clara is, primarily, reckless, arrogant, self-asssured. Take your pick.  She’s the control freak who thinks she can control the universe.  And boy has she tried.  I mean, she freaking ordered the Time Lords to stop asking The Question and they listened.  

And how fitting an end for the control freak; an inevitable death she couldn’t decide the circumstances of.  The only thing she can do is die ‘a good death like Danny Pink.’  And so she goes out there and faces the raven, literally, and dies bravely.

Clara can be brave; I would never claim otherwise.  I just want to point out that what people usually quote as examples of her bravery are usually not examples of brave behavior.  Clara is stalwart, takes risks, is reckless, and is brave, but her actions usually come from a place of no fear, not of a place of courage.  In the instance of her death, Clara is afraid, very much so, but she finds the courage to face her death.

It’s in the quieter character moments we see Clara’s bravery.  She chooses to stay with the Doctor, even though he has changed so drastically and it terrifies her.  She lied about Danny’s return so that the Doctor could return to his home.  She left her happy and beautiful dream of Danny to return to the cruel real world.

These quiet moments are when we really see Clara, when she loses her controlling and snarky outer shell.  And it’s very fitting her death sees her stripped bare, just her on an empty street, dressed in simple clothes (although I am surprised they didn’t dress her in red), just a simple death scene, her and the raven.

One more thing:

“Your reign of terror will end with the sight of the first crying child and you know it.”

Ah, who is going to fill your high-heeled shoes, Clara Oswald?

Other bits, since this post isn’t only a (premature, I’m sure) eulogy of Clara:

• Mayor Me’s outfit.  Guess what I’ll be cosplaying when I finally get to a Comic Con?  No power in the verse can stop me, even if you steal my hairspray.
• The Doctor’s reaction to Lucy: “She’s brilliant.”
• The design and special effects.  Gorgeous.  And very Harry Potter like.
• The Quantum Shade.  Why is it quantum exactly?
• Rigsy tagging the TARDIS.  I hope the Doctor gets to see it before the TARDIS gets itchy and burns it off.
• Who wants to bet the people who told Ashildr to bait the Doctor are the Time Lords?  So called it.

Next time…

The Doctor rehearses for his audition monologue while being chased by a Dementor in Hogwarts.  Gosh, they really are going for this Harry Potter imagery, aren’t they?

GIF of the week is a video of the week:

I love this idea, so, so much.

 

 

For This, We Wept. For Them, We Live.

I am a ghost.

I walk through the hallway, my socked feet silent on the hard tile floor.

I feel nothing.  I am invisible.

They sit in cluster, eyes glued to their phones, finger ready to type, to press send.  Their eyes are wide with horror and fear, confusion and sadness.

How can it be him, they whisper.  It can’t be true, they insist.

I do not join them.

Instead, I go upstairs.

She was just screaming, she sobs, her always smiling face contorted, her blue eyes filled with tears.  Screaming and crying.  I didn’t know what to do. 

There is no dignified way to cry, I think.  The corner of my eyes burn, as though giving an ironic response.

I put on my boots.  I slide my phone in my back pocket.  I go outside.

My phone rings.  It’s my mom.

I answer, and suddenly, I can’t breathe.  Somehow, I choke out the story.

When I hang up the phone, I realize I am alone.

I am a ghost, I tell myself.  I am invisible.

In the dining room, no one speaks as they push the ugly green plastic chairs, the only sound the squeaking on the floor.

In a circle, the singing begins, the one way we think we can comfort ourselves.  I cannot open my mouth, the lump in my throat holding it closed.

The girl next to me weeps, her tiny body shaking with the strength of her sobs.  I pause, then take her hand.  It is cold between my fingers.

I am no longer a ghost.  I am solid between her fingers.

She grounds me, even with her sobs and the sad smile of thanks she offers me.

I feel.

Another girl staggers in, crying so hard she can barely stand on her own.

I feel.

And perhaps there is a dignified way to cry after all.  Together.  Because that’s what we do.

We cry, and then we promise.  We promise to live to make their deaths count.   We promise peace, one day, so that no one, no one, will ever have to lose their boyfriend, their best friend, their father, their teacher, their child.

No one.

In memory of Yakov Don, Aviram Reuben, Aron Yesiab, Shadi Arafa, and Ezra Schwartz.

Ezra, I never had the privilige of meeting you, but I met your friends, which truly says more about a person than anything else.   And your friends are amazing.

#prayforIsraeltoo

 

 

 

“Sleep No More” – And you thought Last Christmas was confusing…

What.  The.  Frick.  Happened?

I have decided something today.  I have been far too kind on Doctor Who this season.  Which has resulted in me being extremely disappointed in this week’s episode.  But there’s really no way I can do the episode justice here, especially after I read BrianofMorbius’s hilarious review.  Check it out here: https://wordpress.com/read/post/feed/1066463/863664757

So, let’s talk about Sleep No More.

Firstly, the found footage style.  I was excited to see how the showrunners handled it, and I was not disappointed.  The plot twist of there not actually being cameras was geniunly terrifying, although it felt frustratingly familiar, like the twist of Last Christmas or Amy’s Choice.

But this couldn’t make up for the eye booger monsters. When the Doctor first voices his theory, I actually laughed, sure it was just another gag, like the Oliver! reference.

But seriously?!  Eye booger monsters? That can see, smell, and roar?  WTF?  How is there so much sleep dust from a crew of 4?  Even if their whole bodies were converted, they should not be that big.  How does Neil Gaiman feel about this?  How about Morpheus himself?

And then the ending.  Oh, the ending…Here are my theories:

1.  The spores were real, the sandmen (I refuse to capitalize that.) were real, and Rassmussen’s plan was to infect Triton and the rest of the galaxy.  And then the spores took over his body completely, and the planet’s gravity pulled him apart.  But there’s still the matter of the encoded signal…
2. The sandmen weren’t really real, maybe holograms or something, all there to make a good story like Rassmussing said, and that the Morpheus signal was really being transmitted in the video.  But if the sandmen weren’t real, then why did Rassie disentigrate, and what was the point of transmitting the signal?
3. The whole thing never happened, and Rassilon, sorry, Rassmusty, made it up on Blender or something in his free time (do they still have Blender in the future?), faking the space station’s silence, and having the crew pretend to be the rescue workers.  All for the purpose of sending out the signal, of course.  But why were the Doctor and Clara there?
4. Neil Gaiman heard about Gatiss’s plan to write another episode of Doctor Who instead of working on Sherlock, and had the Sandman send him a weird dream about eye booger monsters and the ending of Blink to scare him off.  Except Gatiss was inspired instead of terrified.
5. Rassmessy is the Rani.  So are the sandmen.

Interesting bits and more questions:

• “Consider yourself-”  “Part of the furniture!”
• Macbeth.  Such Macbeth quoting.
• I don’t dislike Mark Gatiss.  I really don’t.  I just wish he’d stick with the quirky historicals.  You know, like the one where the hungry TV sucks people’s faces off.  And the gay pride Dalek one.
• The Clara/Doctor banter.
• Will Clara and Nagata become sandmen, too?
• Does anyone else keep having the urge to call Nagata Nagato?  As in Yuki Nagato, of course.  If you get this reference, I’m up to the Endless 8 episodes.  Shoot me now.
• Why did Neptune’s gravity pull apart the sandmen?  Also, weren’t they orbiting Triton?

How many tears will I cry next week?  Choose one:

A.  One.  Dramatically.

B.  A River.

C. Enough to fill a pond.

D.  Enough to drown the fifth Doctor.

E. 42

Next time…

The Doctor and Clara land in Diagon Alley, where Rigsy has been hexed by Ashildr, who has decided to cosplay as Bellatrix Lestrange.  Also, there will be a random woman singing everytime the Doctor and Clara have moment.

GIF of the week: I feel like I’m betraying someone…Like the Lord of Dreams, or something

The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion -THIS IS TOOTHPASTE

Peter Harness returns to Doctor Who with a two parter about some Classic Who monsters taking over the world, again, with a healthy dose of social and political commentrary.  This is not the first time that the implications of war have been discussed, but its the most powerful instance of it.  I was kind of nervous about the plotting of this episode, after Harness’s Kill the Moon.  I have a post about that somewhere on this blog.

But this two parter is well written, well paced, and plausible, somewhat, as much as a bunch of shape-shifting aliens can be.  Osgood, one of them, anyway, has returned, bringing with her Kate, Jac, UNIT soldiers, and the president of the world’s plane.  That I could have sworn blew up in Death in Heaven.

The peace treaty has broken down (surprise!) due to a splinter group of Zygons attacking the humans.  And it turns out, kidnapping them all.  They can’t just kill them, because then they would lose the connection, but apparently they can form a mental link of some sort, which doesn’t require the human to be alive or actually present, hence the very disturbing and emotional scene when the UNIT soldiers come face to face with their loved ones outside a church in the Zygon village.

Our three main characters spilit up, leaving Kate who looks like she needs a nap to go to Truth or Consequences, the Doctor to got to Turmezistan (or something) to negotiate with the Zygons, and Clara to go back to her apartment to get stuff with Jac?

That struck me as weird, but Clara does weird things all the time.  Turns out there was a good reason for the wierdness, which also included Clara just casually leaving a creepy apartment with a child screaming inside and somehow, somehow, knowing about Truth or Conseqences.  Clara is a Zygon clone, who names herself Bonnie.

It’s not until the second act do we see her true villany, as she mercilessly shoots down the Doctor’s plane, presumabley killing everyone else besides the Doctor and Osgood.  More than anything, Bonnie showcases Coleman’s acting ability, playing a character that looks just like Clara, but is nothing like her whatsoever, best examplified in the scene in which Clara and Bonnie ‘discuss’ the Osgood box(es).

The episodes focus on predjeduce, oppression, and how it leads to war without showing us actually.  Instead, Harness tries to make his point with conversations and emotional impact, playing with our pity for the Zygons and the humans alike.  But it’s not until the last third of The Zygon Inversion that the emotional impact truly snaps into focus.  Kate and Bonnie are caught in a showdown, each with a box that will either destroy the other, or destoy themselves, with buttons labeled Truth and Consequences.  And there’s only the Doctor to change their minds.

And change their minds he does.  With sudden accent changes and outbursts, Peter Capaldi delivers his best scene of his run as the Doctor, better even then Listen and Death in Heaven’s ending.  When Bonnie tells him he could never understand what she’s going through, what she has to choose, I saw the expression on the Doctor’s face, and thought, ‘Sh*t, now she’s gonna get it.”  And get it she does.

I think that that speech really showed how even though the Doctor has saved Gallifrey, he still feels guilty for ever considering destroying it.  And all the other destruction he has ever done, all the people he has pushed away from him and lost.  This Doctor feels guilt, terrible guilt, though he hide it well.  You would never get a speech like that from the Eleventh Doctor, the one who just casually mentions he killed all the Time Lords in the episode The Doctor’s Wife.

“Fear me, I’ve killed hundreds of Time Lords,” House says.

“Fear me,” the Doctor says.  “I’ve killed them all.”

Yes, I memorized that exchange. Don’t judge, as my friend says whenever she dares eat an entire sandwich.  (Isn’t being a young adult fun?)

Take that pain, and hold it tight, until it burns your hand.

That’s what we do.  We take out pain, and use it to make us stronger, and there’s no reason why some aliens can’t try that, too.

Next time:  Sleep No More.

A Macbeth reference, a horrrifying looking monster, the Doctor begging Clara to hold his hand, and probably no sleeping that night.

GIF of the week:

Dat smirk, tho

The Woman Who Lived – “I’ll be the patron saint of the Doctor’s leftovers.”

Season 9 of this darn show has reached a double Hazaka (Hebrew term, refering to the idea that if something happens three times the same way, it will always be that way.)  So the rest of the season should be as good as the first half.  Unfortunatly, that probably won’t happen, considering that Mark Gatiss is writing an episode, and he is rather hit and miss.  Sorry, Mark.  I love your work in Sherlock, though.  Also, we now know what episode Clara is (probably) leaving, although I read an interview with her that implies she is in the finale.  Also, Maisie Williams will be back for that episode as well.  Google it.

Also, there is going to be an episode that only features the Doctor.  Peter Capaldi is a fantastic actor, but I don’t know if he can carry an entire episode.  These Doctor-lite or comapanion-lite episodes rarely work, even when there is a supporting cast (except Blink).  I’m not counting Turn Left in the Doctor-lite or companion-lite category, becuase in that parallel universe, the Doctor doesn’t even technically exist.  That’s why, even though the series 4.5 specials were good (except for Planet of the Dead), they were still hard to watch, because the companion is our point of view, and helps us understand the Doctor’s thought process.  Without them, it gets confusing.  I’ll elaborate more once I’ve seen Heaven Sent.

I think this it the first season that I have liked all the episodes so far, with six in a row, which is a huge number.  Lets see if I’m right.

Series 1:  Aliens in London and World War Three?  No, thank you.

Series 2:  New Earth?  Tooth and Claw?  Yeah, right.  I feel like School Reunion and The Girl in the Fireplace sort of make up for it. But they have Mickey.  I just didn’t really like most of Series 2, just the two mentioned above and that two parter with the devil.  You know.

Series 3:  Pretty solid series, but Gridlock?  Daleks in Manhattan?  Evolution of the Daleks?

Series 4:  One of my favorite season, confession.  But those Sontaran episodes?  The season finale?  (Okay, that one was besides the point.  But can’t Rose just leave?  She was done!  And now they’re doing it to Clara!)

Series 5: Victory of the Daleks.  ‘Nuff said.

Series 6:  You’re kidding, right?  Have you even seen The Curse of the Black Spot?

Series 7:  Dinosaurs on a Spaceship?  A Town Called Mercy?  Blargh.

Second half wasn’t terrible.  Bad charater development (*cough* Clara *cough*) but entertaining.

Series 8:  Wasn’t a fan of Into the Dalek or The Caretaker, so no go.  Still a fairly solid season, kind of like 3.  Not great, but not terrible, either.

Now that I’m done excitedly applauding the ability of the show to be consistent, I want to say that this week’s episode is a very good example of the reason why this season is so good.

The Doctor is screwing up.  Consistenlty.  And consequences are actually appearing.

The show has played with this idea before, but then they wimped out, again and again.  Eleven got too big, well he’ll just erase himself from history and keep coming back and doing the same things over and over again.  The man who forgets, indeed.

Twelve realizes he’s not a good man, nor a bad man.  Annnnd, he almost regrets all the terrrible things he’s done.  But then Moffat says, no we need to like the Doctor and admire him and all that crap, so lets have Santa and comedy elves and Clara will forgive him and flying ponies and roses galore.

You know, the episode that stuck with me the most of RTD’s era was The Waters of Mars.  My heart(s) broke when the Doctor snaps and breaks his rules.  I was shocked when almost the entire crew of Bowie base died, and I understood and empathized with the terror of those he saved, at what he had become.  It took the suicide of Adelaide (lots me screaming and crying at the computer when that happened) for him to realize what he had done.  But for the later Doctor’s, even death wasn’t enough for them to see what they have become.

For Eleven, it takes the sight of his past selves, and how far he is from them.  For Twelve, it takes more than the death of Danny, or the possible loss of Clara, or the apparent death of Missy.

It takes Davros.  It takes the realization that he cares (loves) about Clara more than anything in the world, that she’s going to die and leave him.  It takes the realization that he’s created an immortal who may be more dangerous to him than he realizes.  The Doctor knows now that he has made too many tidal waves.

And that immortal he’s created.  Let’s take a moment of silence for Maisie Williams’ acting ability.  The face of an 18-year old, the eyes of 600 something year old.  She’s seen it all, things that are so painful she’s torn the pages out of her diary so she’ll forget them.  The most painful memory of all she keeps, to remind her to never make the mistake of haing children again.

That scene, of Ashildr weeping over a doll facing the cradles of her children struck me in its imagery.  Instead of holding the body of her child, wrapped in a blanket to hide its face like most death scenes do, she holds a doll, something that represents a child.  When she remembers the childrens’ death, she’s not remembering them, she’s remembering the idea of them, the idea of their death, the idea of the grief that she felt when they died.  A human-sized memory for an immortal.

Anyway, Sam Swift the Quick and the second dick joke on DW might be immortal, but who knows?

Next week, an episode about Zygons written by anti-abortionist Peter Harness.  Kill the Moon makes me uncomfortable.  You can read about that somewhere on this blog, I think.

GIF of the week:

Also, this gem that is Maisie’s Twitter:

Tweets by Maisie_Williams

I’m with you, sister on these ‘luxury’ items.

The Girl Who Died – “My Head Is Always Full Of Stories”

There was a line in this week’s episode that really caught my attention; in its delivery and the way it was written.  It’s a line spoken by Ashildr when she and the Doctor are chatting, and the moment she said it, I went from kinda liking Ashildr to really sympathizing and relating to her.

“The girls all thought I was a boy.  The boys all said I was just a girl.  My head is always full of stories.  I know I’m strange.  Everyone knows I’m strange.”

The way the dialogue is deceptively simple, the emotion which its delivered with is anything but.  You can hear the embarrassment of childhood, the resignation of being different, the loneliness of creativity.  You can hear how out of place Ashildr feels, even more so than a normal teenager.  What must it be like for her, in a village of warriors and blacksmiths, to be the one making up stories and building puppets?

I can certainly imagine, as someone who was a very strange child and teenager.  I told stories holding books before I could even speak a real language, let alone read.  The first day of kindergarten, during coloring time, the girl next to me leaned over and informed me that no one had red hair, referring to the girl I was drawing with a red marker.  I like to joke that was the moment I knew I would never be like anyone else.  Since I wasn’t obsessively attracted to Justin Bieber or One Direction, girls decided I was a lesbian.  The boys didn’t take me seriously academically, until I kicked their butts in science lab.  I didn’t watch Glee, nobody else’s first crush was Han Solo (see, I am straight, mostly – not that being lesbian is bad), and I can’t tell you a single thing about Pretty Little Liars.

In a way, everyone who was ever a teenager could be Ashildr, and that really is the point.  We can relate to her fear and concern for her friends and family, her loneliness, her triumph when her talents are put to use.  And just like her, we all fall the tiniest bit in love with the Doctor when he comes to save our village.  She represents that little emotion inside of us that makes us smile sadly when we don’t know the dance everyone else does, when we don’t get the joke, when we don’t dress/act/feel like everyone else.

In a slightly abstract way, the Doctor has been going through a similar struggle, trying to understand why he is the way he is, why he has the face he has, why he makes the choices he makes.  If you dig a bit, the episode not-so-subtley draws some parallels between Ashildr and the Doctor; most particularly their mutual feeling of being anomalies in a society that has a pretty rigid social structure.  Only, unlike the Doctor, Ashildr would never leave her village.  It looks like next week’s episode will keep the parallels up, if the latest preview is anything to judge by.

And so the story of the Doctor and Clara continues.  I was reading some reviews by ravingsanity, another blogger on WordPress.  (Look her up, she’s cool and way more educated than me. ;P)  She mentioned something interesting, that the episodes this season have all been either titled relating to fairytales, like The Magician’s Apprentice, or containing characters from fairy tales or legends, like the Fisher King and Odin.  Ashildr creates stories, the Doctor tells the Fisher King this is where his story ends, etc.  They are clearly going somewhere with this.  it’s interesting, because Doctor Who has been (negatively, usually) compared to a fairy tale, particularly with the scientifically weaker episodes.  This season they seem to be embracing the label, and before you tell me Doctor Who is too dark to be a fairy tale, read the Brother’s Grimm original stories.

And of course, we foreshadow the ultimate loss of Clara again.  This time it’s not with a threat of death, but with something much more powerful, with a comment by the Doctor:

“I’m sick of losing people. Look at you, with your eyes, and your never giving up, and your anger, and your kindness. One day, the memory of that will hurt so much that I won’t be able to breathe, and I’ll do what I always do. I’ll get in my box and I’ll run and I’ll run, in case all the pain ever catches up. And every place I go, it will be there.”

Oh, god, she’s going to die horribly, isn’t she?  The worst part is waiting for it to happen, and anticipation always makes it worse.   We know it, and the Doctor knows it, but does Clara?  Can she hear her clock ticking?

Favorite bits:

• Wait, there was a whole reveal thing with the Doctor figuring out where his face came from, wasn’t there?  Every other reviewer is only talking about it, and I have nothing new to say, so go read Nerdist or something.
• The Benny Hill theme song.  Laughed so hard.  I actually made a video to that music for a Digital Arts project last year, and I got a really good grade specifically for my soundtrack choice.
• “She’s nice.  Fight you for her.”  Yes, please do, Clara.  Fight the Doctor for Ashildr.  I’ll just be here doing the creepy smile.
• Murray Gold is slaying this episode’s soundtrack.  The music for the last scene was gorgeous…
• The last scene – Maisie Williams is so adorable as Ashildr, but she scared me so much as the sky exploded behind her.

GIF of the week: You get two, because I love you

Makes me want to cry…

And this one scares the hell out of me.

“Under the Lake” – Sure You’ll Come Back, But How?

Doctor Who sure has an obscession with death lately.

It really started last season, with robots looking for paradise and dead people popping up in the Nethersphere.  But this was all leading up to the finale, where dead people were being downloaded into Cybermen (quick recap ;P).

What is this season leading up to?   Well, it’s a tiny bit early to know, although by this time last season we knew about the Nethersphere and Missy, the season before that Clara/Oswin/Oswald, and the seasons before the Silence and the crack in time.

That’s why I think it’s interesting that we started the season off with Missy’s return, whom we associate with death, coupled with the Doctor facing his death, plus the apparent death of Clara, the impending death of Davros, and the potential death of all the Daleks.

That’s a lot of death.  And it’s just the first two episodes.

Before I get into the death in this week’s episode, and why I think death is being so prominently featured now, I just want to point out that the season finale is titled Heaven Sent/Hell Bent.

Well, I think Missy will be back, don’t you?

In Under the Lake, the story focuses around the ghosts that are haunting the Drum and are killing crew members, who then in turn become ghosts themselves.  This is fairly creepy, especially because the CGI on the actors is fantastic.  Those eyes, man.  Pritchard was so creepy.  (We’ve come so far since the ‘ghosts’ in The Unquiet Dead, folks.)     

The Doctor gets very excited when he sees the ghosts and immediately wants to figure out what they are and how they got there. As Clara put it, he’s dying to save a planet.  Well, he might get that chance.

But he’s still the socially awkward Doctor, and he doesn’t quite know how to be excited about the ghosts and not offend the other crew members.  But what really bothered me about that is his casual attitude toward the possible deaths of the other crew members.  He’s seen so much death recently, some of it his responsibility, and I just can’t imagine this hasn’t affected him in some way.  I really wish he hadn’t so blatantly manipulated the surviving crew members into staying.  I don’t think any of them are going to die next week, but that doesn’t change how the Doctor is so willing to risk their lives because he likes a crowd to show off to.

Doctor Who has never been afraid to deal with the hard stuff (unless it involves the 11th or 12th Doctor) and usually doesn’t shy away from the consequences of the real world, whether it’s suicide, abuse, genocide, and the clashings of faith.  RTD was better at this, more of his episodes dealt with the bad stuff and he was more willing to make the Doctor the bad guy, but I can see Moffat becoming more willing to follow through on the tragedies.  I mean, look at Clara, peoples.  Actually upset about Danny’s death, and now she’s overcompensating for her grief by being an adrenaline junkie, something even the Doctor has noticed.  Of course Danny’s words to her in her dream in Last Christmas didn’t fix everything, like they would have for Amy or Rory or season 7 Clara.  She’s still grieving, even if she isn’t crying and threatening to destroy the TARDIS keys.

And right now we’re most afraid of death.  Everyday, it feels like, we hear about another mass shooting, another teenage suicide, another terrorist attack.  I know where I live right now, people are afraid for the life, afraid to go out alone for fear of being stabbed because of their nationality and religion.  My school is in lockdown as I write this, which is why I’m not out being a normal human being.  So of course, if death is such a reality, wouldn’t I wonder what happens after I die?  What if there is no heaven?  What if I can feel everything that happens to my body?  What if I become a ghost, a signal beaming out to the stars, sending a message to aliens to come to Earth.

No one knows.  And that is why we seem so obsessed.  It’s a genuine fear in a world gone mad, where teenage boys get arrested because their science project looks like a bomb, because people walk onto college campuses and shoot 20 people, where toddlers are stabbed on the streets of their city for simply living there.  Sometimes we forget that Doctor Who is written by real people.

Now for happy stuff!  Sorry I got so dark there.  It’s been a long week.

All the best bits:

• A deaf character on DW that does stuff!  Go Cass!  Go forth and do not be a plot device.
• “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you don’t live in Aberdeen.”  Sarah Jane reference. ❤
• The Tivoli are back.  Doesn’t that sound like the name of a pasta?
• All the sciencey stuff:  Nuclear reactors = legitimate reasons for the TARDIS to not be available for everyone, a Faraday cage lined with lead (I think that ghosts can’t go in or out because they are made of radio waves or something similar), and other science things.
• They got so close to the Kirk-Spock thing!
• Cass and Lunn = shipped
• The men’s shorts that actually made me laugh.
• Richard Pritchard.  I do not lie.
• The Doctor makes a hell of a scary ghost.
• All these supporting characters are cool and I care about them and don’t want them to die.
• O’Donell’s fangirling.  “Oh shut up, it was nothing.”  She and Osgood should meet.
• “Good morning.  Entering day mode.”  Who does the voices for the computers?  If you write Nicholas Briggs in the comments, I will laugh.
• The coordinates that rewrite the brain.  Cool eyeball close-ups, Daniel O’Hara.  Come back and direct more DW, please.

Questions:

• What’s in the stasis chamber?  The Doc, probs.   But who was there first?
• What was the Tivoli doing on Earth in the first place?
• How will Clara, Cass, and Lunn escape the ghost Doctor?  They were barely in the Next Time trailer.
• Who else thinks this ghost thing is temporary and  everyone will be brought back at the end of Before the Flood?  How else will the Doc come back?
• Who picked out that yellow turtleneck for Jenna?

GIF of the week:

That smile, tho

“The Witch’s Familiar” – Pity, Really. I Was Actually Quite Peckish

The Witches Familiar picks up right where we left off, which is quite a relief.  No messing around for this episode.

Clara and Missy are still alive, and THEY ACTUALLY EXPLAIN WHY.

WHAT IS THIS MADNESS?  There is a logical explanation for Missy not being dead and for Clara and Missy not being exterminated.  I am so impressed with everyone right now.  No more ‘well, I’m alive now’ nonsense.

Now, if they would just explain how Missy escaped the Time War…

After more brilliant Missy and Clara scenes involving Clara asking for a pointy stick (a moment that I feel like was improvization somewhat), we return to the Doctor who has stolen Davros’s chair and driven it over to the Daleks, at which point they all shoot him, but his forcefield protects him.  This is indeed their worse nightmare.

Well, not really.  Some subset of Colony Sarff is living in Davros’s chair, and they promptly return custody of the chair to Davros.  The Doctor comes to sitting in a different , ordinary chair, which Davros informs him is the only other chair on Skaro.   I laughed so hard at that, especially at the delivery of the line.   It really was a very good joke.

Meanwhile, Clara and Missy have been trying to get back into the city, which mostly involves Missy abusing Clara somehow, either by pushing her off a 20 foot drop or tricking her into setting off an alarm.

Is it just me, or is Clara being a bit too trusting?  She hates and distrusts Missy, remember?

Using Clara as bait, Missy traps and kills a Dalek with the help of the sentient rotten Dalek goop.  (Daleks never die?  Maybe that’s how they kept coming back in season 1-4.  There was rotten Dalek goop in all those Dalek cases.)  Then she has Clara link herself up to a Dalek to drive it in a scene that became surprisingly emotional for me.  Remember in Asylum of the Daleks when Oswin has that flashback about when she became a Dalek?

And then the episode starts to get weird.  I mean, it was doing so well.  So Davros finds out Gallifrey escaped the Time War, and then he gets all emotional and stuff and opens his real eyes to see the Doctor (?!) and wants to see the sunsrise but he doesn’t have the strength to open his eyes again.  And the Doctor falls for it.  Okay, I fell for it too.  Which is weird, because I’m always the one yelling at the TV, ‘No, it’s a trap/trick/Ganger!’

So the Doctor decides to do the dumbest thing EVER since letting his hand get kidnapped by Jack and turned into another Doctor and gives some of his regeneration energy to Davros, who takes a lot more, leaving the Doctor screaming in pain, and the Daleks all glowy.

Isn’t Missy’s irritation and fear for the Doctor adorable?  This is becoming my favorite friendship in the show, I thought all adorably and naively.  Well, luckily there were a few more minutes of the episode left to set me back to my cynical rights.

After defeating Davros by having given the sentient Dalek goop more strength, the city collapses.  Hmmm.  And Missy tries to convince the Doctor that Clara-Dalek is actually the Dalek that killed Clara, which almost works, but then the Dalek begs for mercy, which Daleks shouldn’t be able to do, which makes the Doctor realize something important:  Daleks shouldn’t have a concept of mercy.  So Clara in tow, they reform the TARDIS with sonic sunglasses (awesome!) and go back in time to save child Davros.

Which brings us back to the end of last week’s episode.  The Doctor ‘exterminates’ the hand mines, and then he and Davros walk off hand in hand.  A very sweet and hopeful ending for the Doctor and the future of the Daleks.

But I’m still annoyed by the deus ex Doctora.  How in all of the hells in every religion did he know Davros’s plan?  How?  There was no indication of this anywhere before hand, no sideways glances or coded converations with Missy.  NOTHING.

The plot could have still worked even if the Doctor didn’t know Davros’s plan.  It could have been, ‘Oh whoops, you didn’t realized the regeneration energy would restore the sentient Dalek goop.  I’m going to escape now.  Byeee!’

In summary of my complicated emotions, I feel that The Witch’s Familiar was a very good episode.  There was really very little else wrong with it.  However, it answered the wrong question, or rather, it completely sidestepped the question of The Magician’s Apprentice, which was ‘Who made Davros?’  The answer, according to this episode, could be that Davros made Davros.  That the Doctor doesn’t have that much influence, and saving him only saved a kid who happened to be named Davros and would happen to grow up into the creator of the Daleks.  But that is an answer of not answering.  Instead, we get ‘what if the Doctor and Davros could have been best buddies?’   But I really feel that the ending was just so much the Doctor having mercy and forgiving that I’ll be forgiving too and like this episode.  Also, why did the Doctor think he was going to die?  Did he already know Davros wanted to see him before that scene in The Magician’s Apprentice?

Next week:  Ghosts!  Scary Who!  I love scary Who.  I have no idea when next weeks review will be up, since it seems unlikely I’ll be able to watch the episode before next Tuesday night, due to slow Internet and other stuffs.  But I’ll probably have a lot more to say about Under the Lake.  Only two more weeks till Maisie Williams!

GIF of the week:

Aren’t they adorkable?