Doctor Who - Father's Day
May. 14th, 2005 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenHee. Every week at about this time, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hathy_col and I have a good old-fashioned squee-fest, and it never fails to cheer me up no end.
Hmm. As Colleen said, it's hard to know what to think about this episode because it's so different from your usual fare. Stuff I liked:
-It wasn't ashamed to be about Rose, the companion, the mere human, and not the Doctor. It was her story.
-And that said, the Doctor is his usual self throughout and I never stop loving the Doctor's usual self. His egotism at the beginning - "I can do anything!" - is subtle. Heh.
-The landscape of 1987. I was born in an inner-city area in Britain in 1987, and the details of it were fantastic. The posters - "Thatcher fails to gain third term" - were typical of the BBC's subliminal political messaging. (As Colleen noted later, the Geocomtex website has "MED BIL ETOV" as its own exercise in subtlety.)
-The big hair!
-Rose's dad. While I wanted to hate him, I liked the Del Boy reference, and in the end I really liked him. He wanted to be a good dad, and he was honest enough to know Rose was lying to him.
-the Doctor's anger. While Rose potters about happily oblivious, the Doctor stands there, arms folded, radiating rage - even Pedar looked up and said, "He has issues, doesn't he?"
-The Reapers. I didn't think I'd like them either, but they were nicely creepy. They were creepier when you couldn't see them, though, if that makes sense.
-the Doctor talking to baby Rose. He does seem to have some sort of affinity for babies, and he was thoroughly adorable in this.
-Talking about families. It seems a little counter-intuitive that we should have a reference to the Doctor's own family and world in an episode where he comments he doesn't have anything like "two in the morning on a street corner." But I'm willing to overlook that on the grounds it was a really nicely judged moment. Squee for the Dance of Backstory.
-The setting. The church seemed oddly appropriate for no reason I can put my finger on - however, I noticed right from the start that the Doctor is older than the building! Go team me. But I did start getting a little wibbly when he yelled, "I'm the oldest thing here!" and stepped out as a sacrifice.
-The Doctor's death! Oh my god, as I said later, he gets eaten. At which point Colleen asked why he didn't regenerate. I said maybe he did, only we can't see him 'cause he's been eaten. And then she said maybe each chewed-up piece regenerates separately, so there's hundreds of little proto-Doctors marching around like in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. And then it started getting really silly.
-the conspiracy theory. The Doctor knew how to fix this all along, but didn't say, just to spare Rose's dad.
-And also, the dignified death of Peter Tyler. In the end, he can do what the Doctor couldn't, and despite being only human, can do it with the same grace. I really liked that.
Stuff I didn't like:
I don't know, really. It's just the whole thing hasn't gelled in my head yet. I think it's the sort of episode you can only really appreciate on a second viewing. A good one, overall. Confidential was fun, afterwards, what with all the references to big hair, the evolving character of the Doctor and the past Doctors' reactions to losing their companions. It's so sad, as Colleen and I agreed. So terribly sad. But then we got distracted into talking about Romana's schoolgirl hat.
Also: where was the bad wolf reference? My bet's on one of the posters. Anyone see it?
hathy_col and I have a good old-fashioned squee-fest, and it never fails to cheer me up no end. Hmm. As Colleen said, it's hard to know what to think about this episode because it's so different from your usual fare. Stuff I liked:
-It wasn't ashamed to be about Rose, the companion, the mere human, and not the Doctor. It was her story.
-And that said, the Doctor is his usual self throughout and I never stop loving the Doctor's usual self. His egotism at the beginning - "I can do anything!" - is subtle. Heh.
-The landscape of 1987. I was born in an inner-city area in Britain in 1987, and the details of it were fantastic. The posters - "Thatcher fails to gain third term" - were typical of the BBC's subliminal political messaging. (As Colleen noted later, the Geocomtex website has "MED BIL ETOV" as its own exercise in subtlety.)
-The big hair!
-Rose's dad. While I wanted to hate him, I liked the Del Boy reference, and in the end I really liked him. He wanted to be a good dad, and he was honest enough to know Rose was lying to him.
-the Doctor's anger. While Rose potters about happily oblivious, the Doctor stands there, arms folded, radiating rage - even Pedar looked up and said, "He has issues, doesn't he?"
-The Reapers. I didn't think I'd like them either, but they were nicely creepy. They were creepier when you couldn't see them, though, if that makes sense.
-the Doctor talking to baby Rose. He does seem to have some sort of affinity for babies, and he was thoroughly adorable in this.
-Talking about families. It seems a little counter-intuitive that we should have a reference to the Doctor's own family and world in an episode where he comments he doesn't have anything like "two in the morning on a street corner." But I'm willing to overlook that on the grounds it was a really nicely judged moment. Squee for the Dance of Backstory.
-The setting. The church seemed oddly appropriate for no reason I can put my finger on - however, I noticed right from the start that the Doctor is older than the building! Go team me. But I did start getting a little wibbly when he yelled, "I'm the oldest thing here!" and stepped out as a sacrifice.
-The Doctor's death! Oh my god, as I said later, he gets eaten. At which point Colleen asked why he didn't regenerate. I said maybe he did, only we can't see him 'cause he's been eaten. And then she said maybe each chewed-up piece regenerates separately, so there's hundreds of little proto-Doctors marching around like in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. And then it started getting really silly.
-the conspiracy theory. The Doctor knew how to fix this all along, but didn't say, just to spare Rose's dad.
-And also, the dignified death of Peter Tyler. In the end, he can do what the Doctor couldn't, and despite being only human, can do it with the same grace. I really liked that.
Stuff I didn't like:
I don't know, really. It's just the whole thing hasn't gelled in my head yet. I think it's the sort of episode you can only really appreciate on a second viewing. A good one, overall. Confidential was fun, afterwards, what with all the references to big hair, the evolving character of the Doctor and the past Doctors' reactions to losing their companions. It's so sad, as Colleen and I agreed. So terribly sad. But then we got distracted into talking about Romana's schoolgirl hat.
Also: where was the bad wolf reference? My bet's on one of the posters. Anyone see it?
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no subject
on 2005-05-14 09:30 pm (UTC)