Doctor Who - The Empty Child

[raven]

I posted in new_who about the time change tonight, and meant to post in my personal journal but totally forgot. Looking at my flist now, I feel horribly guilty. Sorry, all you bereft people. Sorry, sorry.

Moving swiftly on, I was expecting a homage to The Unearthly Child. That didn't happen, really.

Actually, I don't know what I think about this one and I don't think I will until I see part two. Anyway, stuff I liked:

-The beginning. Throw us right into it, why don't you? And mauve is the colour of danger. "What happened to red?" Rose asks, reasonably.

"Red's camp!", according to the Doctor. No, sweetheart, it's not red that's camp...

-Wartime London. Beautiful, beautiful direction, with the spooky atmospheric setting and the smoke and the bright, diffuse lighting and oh, yes, I loved it.

-Rose hanging off the barrage balloon, wishing she'd taken the Doctor's advice on her t-shirt! Again, beautifully shot in every respect. And the moment where she falls - I can't have been the only person who really did catch her breath.

-The Doctor's reaction to the TARDIS phone ringing. "How can you ring?" he asks, quite happy to hold a conversation with an inanimate object. "What am I supposed to do with a ringing phone?"

-The entrance of Captain Jack Harkness. I'm echoing cscottd here, but I love the BBC for this. A real, actual, bi character! And as he simultaneously admires Rose ("Excellent bottom!") and the guy behind him within thirty seconds of his first appearance, it's not being played subtly.

-The Doctor's arrival at the homeless children's party. He's so funny all the way through the scene - as I told hathy_col later, I particularly liked how the way Nancy helps the children take food from the richer families prompts him to comment, acerbically, "I don't know if it's Marxism in action or a West End musical!"

And later, he's looking for a blonde girl in a Union Jack t-shirt. "A specific one, I didn't wake up this morning with a craving!"

-Actually, that whole scene has some inspired dialogue between Nancy and the Doctor. The subtle nod to the Doctor's childhood (he was lonely, too; is this a veiled reference to the half-human thing?) was sweet, as was his later insight into why exactly Nancy helps the children. "Who did you lose?"

-Nancy is sweet, brave, a great character, but unlucky for her, has made friends with the Doctor. She is going to die, that is patently obvious. He tells her to "save the world", meaning self-sacrifice is on the way (but it was a lovely moment). When she told the Doctor that he should go and see "the doctor", did anyone else immediately think it might be a former incarnation?

-Richard Wilson was fabulous, simultaneously sympathetic and creepy. I liked (wildly paraphrased): "Before the war, I was a father. And a grandfather. Now I'm just a doctor."

The Doctor - "Know the feeling."

Which means Susan was his biological granddaughter, doesn't it? Not that I ever saw a real reason to doubt it.

-I did think the gas mask children were scary. Their eye-sockets were particularly horrifying.

-All that stuff with Rose and Jack - I don't think they could do that if this wasn't a two-parter. It'll be interesting to see where they go with it, and if Jack really is interested in the Doctor, too.

-And, to finish, I didn't know it was a two-parter! Gutted. But next week's is The Doctor Dances, which I know I will just love for the title. And someone at the BBC is paying attention to us, it seems! After all that complaint on the various comms that they spoiled the second half of Aliens of London, the announcer guy actually warned us, "Look away now if you don't want to be spoiled", and really, my Beeb-love remains something pure and holy.

I watched Confidential, which was rather fun, and they played Keane! I got way too excited as strains of Somewhere Only We Know drifted over the background of Rose, the Doctor and Jack. And after that came the now essential squeefest with hathy_col.

We both missed the bad wolf reference (anyone?) but have since made our plan for our Doctor Who geekery day. Tuesday will be spend geeking out over End of the World and City of Death, and then I'm tutoring her sister Megan. Who said you can't mix business with pleasure?

Comments

[puredeadthingy.livejournal.com]

Sorry to just barge in on your personal lj, but I was looking at some Dr. Who communities and read your (excellent) Empty Child thoughts. I do, however, have one question: what's this bad wolf thing everbody's on about?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Heh, don't worry, everyone under the sun barges into my personal journal and I've never minded.

Bad wolf, yes! In short, every episode of the new series so far (with the possible exception of The Empty Child, though I'm not sure) has had a reference of some sort to the phrase "bad wolf." In Rose, the Nestene Consciousness mentioned it; in End of the World, it was in a snippet of overheard conversation; in TUD, Gwyneth saw it in Rose's mind; in AOL/WW3 it was graffitied onto the TARDIS; it was the helicopter's callsign in Dalek; it was the name of a TV channel in The Long Game, and it was on a poster in the background in Father's Day!

Whew. The general consensus is that it will be resolved in episode eleven, which is actually titled Bad Wolf. We shall see.

Or, you could ignore me and go here (http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/tv/badwolf.html), which has a much better explanation of it.

[puredeadthingy.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks a million! That really clears up some stuff for me! Thanks again!