Doctor Who - The Doctor Dances
May. 28th, 2005 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raven“Doctor Who is supposed to be scary,” said Russell T. Davies, last week. I wasn’t scared then, though. This week – aaaargh!
It’s true. I didn’t freak out last week at all, if you ignore the moment where Dr. Constantine says, “They’re not dead,” and all the gas-mask zombies sit up.
Oh, this episode was so good. Stuff I liked:
-“Go to your room!” yells the Doctor, and the zombie-children look sheepish and begin drifting away. I didn’t actually like that much. What I did like was his later addition, “I’m really glad that worked. Those would have been terrible last words.”
Is it just me, or is that a reference to the Sixth Doctor? I have a vague idea that his last words were “Carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice…”
-The bit in the Child’s room. That’s where the Doctor sent him, sure enough, and I shivered all the way through the scene when the Doctor plays the tape: “Are you my mummy? I want my mummy!”
And when he says the tape’s stopped... and we can still hear the voice... I freaked. I’ll admit it. A small strangled shriek emerged at the sight of the Child, sitting on the other side of the glass.
-All that stuff about screwdrivers and bananas. If I quote everything I liked, I’ll end up transcribing the entire scene. To be quick, then:
The Doctor, defending his sonic screwdriver: “Don’t you ever get bored? Don’t you ever have a lot of cabinets to put up?!”
The Doctor again, explaining the disappearance of the weapons factory: “There’s a banana grove there now. I like bananas. Bananas are good.”
Following which, Jack draws his weapon, and aims a banana at the gas-mask zombies. “Don’t drop the banana!”
“Why?”
“It’s a good source of potassium!”
And again! Jack, assessing the situation: “Well, I’ve got a banana, and you could put us up some shelves!”
-And then Jack disappears! It’s good stuff.
-Nancy, holding her own against the owner of the house. She rocks so hard, that girl. “Everyone on the street thinks your wife’s messing about with the butcher! But she’s not, is she? You are!”
-The scene with the typewriter. They shouldn’t be able to play the same trick on us twice, but it works so well and I freaked a second time. You can hear the sound of the keys tapping… but there’s no-one there.
-Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Rose assumes the Doctor doesn’t do stuff like Jack does, stuff like “dating, and dancing.” This scene, which could have been ridiculously corny, plays out perfectly. I hereby present my personal award for most effective line of dialogue in a television show:
“The world doesn’t end because the Doctor dances!”
Brilliant. And the dialogue that follows, when Jack says, “You can get back to… whatever it is you were doing.”
“We were talking about dancing.”
“It didn’t look like talking.”
“It didn’t feel like dancing!”
-The Doctor, Rose and Jack arrive at the bombsite and need to distract the guard. Rose assumes it’s her job, but, as Jack informs her, “You’re really not his type.”
And he would know. “I know him quite well.”
-But it’s too late, of course. This is the only bit of the episode that didn’t quite work for me. There’s a bomb about to land, there’s zombies on the loose, but somehow they have time to chat and a lot more time for exposition. Hmmm. The one bit I did like is Nancy correcting them: “Jamie. Not ‘the Child.’ Jamie.” The Doctor, bless him, gets it.
-That said, the episode resolution did work for me. Nancy isn’t Jamie’s sister at all. She’s his mother. And their reunion was cute. But what lifted that out from being saccharine was the Doctor’s reaction. He isn’t all warm-fuzzy-awww, he doesn’t assume it’s all going to be all right, but he’s not cynical either. What he is, is childish - he entreats, childlike, whoever may be up there: “Give me this one day.” Just this once, let everything be all right. And while he doesn’t say “please, please, please”, he might as well have done.
-And when his prayers are answered, he reacts in his usual happily overdramatic fashion, and everything’s fine. “Everybody lives! Just this once!” If Colleen had been here, I would have done the Dance of Backstory there – because isn’t the obvious comparison the Time War, where no-one lived, except the Doctor?
-I absolutely adored the digression into Dr. Constantine and his patients at this point. He didn’t say, “I don’t believe it!”, which I will always regret, but what he does say is so funny and so impeccably delivered. On hearing all his patients are cured, he says, “But they appear to be standing around in a disused railway station. Is there some reason for that?”
And then a woman comes to say she’s feeling better, but she now has two legs. “I only had one leg before!”
“There is a war on. Are you sure you haven’t miscounted?”
I die.
-Captain Jack’s soliloquy was brilliant beyond words. I actually started really liking him, there. He shouts at the computer, and when it says it has no escape pods he asks if it checked under the sink, and finally gives up, orders a Martini and gets ready to go out with style. The dialogue concerning how he ended up in bed with both his executioners was sublime. I really like the way they’re playing his bisexuality; every time it’s mentioned, it’s affectionate and teasing, and the Doctor and Rose are now, I think, more amused at him than anything else.
-And talking of the Doctor and Rose, their dancing around the TARDIS to Glenn Miller was just lovely. “I can dance! I can dance!”
Yes, Doctor, you can. Hands up who wants their own pet Time Lord.
-And lastly, the episode ended on such a wonderful note. Rose is quite right when she says she thinks Jack wants the next dance. And the Doctor, bless him and his wicked side, is also quite right: “But who with?”
Step, step, dance, twirl, fade out. Fantastic.
I’m aware that this is not a review, it’s more a half-paraphrased recap interspersed with incoherent squeeing, but I can’t help it, I really did love it that much. More than Dalek, even. Favourite of the series so far, I think.
I watched ten minutes of Confidential before being thrown off, and stamped off to phone![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hathy_col. As one may remember, Colleen, Clare and Em are on a Magical Mystery Tour – for Colleen, at least. They took her to a Stargate convention (embarrassingly, I forget which one exactly) for her birthday (although it is in August), without telling here where they were going until she got there. I could have gone, but my parents would have hit the roof.
Anyway, we talked, I filled them in on what happened in the first ten minutes (they got lost and missed it, and I’m sure Colleen reacted well to that), and I asked them what they did today. Apparently Clare babbled incoherently at Anna-Louise Plowman (Osiris in Stargate SG-1, Van Staten’s far sexier replacement in Doctor Who), they’re currently eating Pot Noodles and drinking mango Malibu before going to the party tonight.
I wish I was there so much, it’s not even funny.
However, they are apparently missing me; Colleen offered me a virtual jellybaby and sounded amused when I squealingly accepted, as no-one else in the room got the reference. I spoke to Clare for a moment, who sounded more sane than anyone else, then Emily, who noted that she’s always at the conventions I’m not, and why is this, and then back to Colleen again. She wanted to know what was happening on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
new_who. No flamewars, I said, and no stress at all bar ficathon stress. “Anything else happened?” she asked.
“The first piece of femmeslash for the new fandom!” I said.
“Who?” she demanded.
“Not telling you. It’s my story, I don’t have to tell you!”
She paused. “It’s the two Romanas, isn’t it? I know how your mind works.” At which point I collapsed laughing, as you do. “You’re laughing! It is, isn’t it?”
“Maybe...”
“And Four and Nine were Bad and Wrong enough!”
“I’m still doing that,” I said, and I meant it. “They’d so do it, you know they would.”
“It’s like masturbation! It’s like masturbation with extra arms!”
A pause. Then:
“Everyone else in the room is looking at me funny.”
Sadly enough, I left her to explain that to non-fen, and toddled off to the computer. I’m calling them tomorrow night, when they’re drunk enough to chat. Should be fun.
It’s true. I didn’t freak out last week at all, if you ignore the moment where Dr. Constantine says, “They’re not dead,” and all the gas-mask zombies sit up.
Oh, this episode was so good. Stuff I liked:
-“Go to your room!” yells the Doctor, and the zombie-children look sheepish and begin drifting away. I didn’t actually like that much. What I did like was his later addition, “I’m really glad that worked. Those would have been terrible last words.”
Is it just me, or is that a reference to the Sixth Doctor? I have a vague idea that his last words were “Carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice…”
-The bit in the Child’s room. That’s where the Doctor sent him, sure enough, and I shivered all the way through the scene when the Doctor plays the tape: “Are you my mummy? I want my mummy!”
And when he says the tape’s stopped... and we can still hear the voice... I freaked. I’ll admit it. A small strangled shriek emerged at the sight of the Child, sitting on the other side of the glass.
-All that stuff about screwdrivers and bananas. If I quote everything I liked, I’ll end up transcribing the entire scene. To be quick, then:
The Doctor, defending his sonic screwdriver: “Don’t you ever get bored? Don’t you ever have a lot of cabinets to put up?!”
The Doctor again, explaining the disappearance of the weapons factory: “There’s a banana grove there now. I like bananas. Bananas are good.”
Following which, Jack draws his weapon, and aims a banana at the gas-mask zombies. “Don’t drop the banana!”
“Why?”
“It’s a good source of potassium!”
And again! Jack, assessing the situation: “Well, I’ve got a banana, and you could put us up some shelves!”
-And then Jack disappears! It’s good stuff.
-Nancy, holding her own against the owner of the house. She rocks so hard, that girl. “Everyone on the street thinks your wife’s messing about with the butcher! But she’s not, is she? You are!”
-The scene with the typewriter. They shouldn’t be able to play the same trick on us twice, but it works so well and I freaked a second time. You can hear the sound of the keys tapping… but there’s no-one there.
-Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Rose assumes the Doctor doesn’t do stuff like Jack does, stuff like “dating, and dancing.” This scene, which could have been ridiculously corny, plays out perfectly. I hereby present my personal award for most effective line of dialogue in a television show:
“The world doesn’t end because the Doctor dances!”
Brilliant. And the dialogue that follows, when Jack says, “You can get back to… whatever it is you were doing.”
“We were talking about dancing.”
“It didn’t look like talking.”
“It didn’t feel like dancing!”
-The Doctor, Rose and Jack arrive at the bombsite and need to distract the guard. Rose assumes it’s her job, but, as Jack informs her, “You’re really not his type.”
And he would know. “I know him quite well.”
-But it’s too late, of course. This is the only bit of the episode that didn’t quite work for me. There’s a bomb about to land, there’s zombies on the loose, but somehow they have time to chat and a lot more time for exposition. Hmmm. The one bit I did like is Nancy correcting them: “Jamie. Not ‘the Child.’ Jamie.” The Doctor, bless him, gets it.
-That said, the episode resolution did work for me. Nancy isn’t Jamie’s sister at all. She’s his mother. And their reunion was cute. But what lifted that out from being saccharine was the Doctor’s reaction. He isn’t all warm-fuzzy-awww, he doesn’t assume it’s all going to be all right, but he’s not cynical either. What he is, is childish - he entreats, childlike, whoever may be up there: “Give me this one day.” Just this once, let everything be all right. And while he doesn’t say “please, please, please”, he might as well have done.
-And when his prayers are answered, he reacts in his usual happily overdramatic fashion, and everything’s fine. “Everybody lives! Just this once!” If Colleen had been here, I would have done the Dance of Backstory there – because isn’t the obvious comparison the Time War, where no-one lived, except the Doctor?
-I absolutely adored the digression into Dr. Constantine and his patients at this point. He didn’t say, “I don’t believe it!”, which I will always regret, but what he does say is so funny and so impeccably delivered. On hearing all his patients are cured, he says, “But they appear to be standing around in a disused railway station. Is there some reason for that?”
And then a woman comes to say she’s feeling better, but she now has two legs. “I only had one leg before!”
“There is a war on. Are you sure you haven’t miscounted?”
I die.
-Captain Jack’s soliloquy was brilliant beyond words. I actually started really liking him, there. He shouts at the computer, and when it says it has no escape pods he asks if it checked under the sink, and finally gives up, orders a Martini and gets ready to go out with style. The dialogue concerning how he ended up in bed with both his executioners was sublime. I really like the way they’re playing his bisexuality; every time it’s mentioned, it’s affectionate and teasing, and the Doctor and Rose are now, I think, more amused at him than anything else.
-And talking of the Doctor and Rose, their dancing around the TARDIS to Glenn Miller was just lovely. “I can dance! I can dance!”
Yes, Doctor, you can. Hands up who wants their own pet Time Lord.
-And lastly, the episode ended on such a wonderful note. Rose is quite right when she says she thinks Jack wants the next dance. And the Doctor, bless him and his wicked side, is also quite right: “But who with?”
Step, step, dance, twirl, fade out. Fantastic.
I’m aware that this is not a review, it’s more a half-paraphrased recap interspersed with incoherent squeeing, but I can’t help it, I really did love it that much. More than Dalek, even. Favourite of the series so far, I think.
I watched ten minutes of Confidential before being thrown off, and stamped off to phone
hathy_col. As one may remember, Colleen, Clare and Em are on a Magical Mystery Tour – for Colleen, at least. They took her to a Stargate convention (embarrassingly, I forget which one exactly) for her birthday (although it is in August), without telling here where they were going until she got there. I could have gone, but my parents would have hit the roof.Anyway, we talked, I filled them in on what happened in the first ten minutes (they got lost and missed it, and I’m sure Colleen reacted well to that), and I asked them what they did today. Apparently Clare babbled incoherently at Anna-Louise Plowman (Osiris in Stargate SG-1, Van Staten’s far sexier replacement in Doctor Who), they’re currently eating Pot Noodles and drinking mango Malibu before going to the party tonight.
I wish I was there so much, it’s not even funny.
However, they are apparently missing me; Colleen offered me a virtual jellybaby and sounded amused when I squealingly accepted, as no-one else in the room got the reference. I spoke to Clare for a moment, who sounded more sane than anyone else, then Emily, who noted that she’s always at the conventions I’m not, and why is this, and then back to Colleen again. She wanted to know what was happening on
new_who. No flamewars, I said, and no stress at all bar ficathon stress. “Anything else happened?” she asked.“The first piece of femmeslash for the new fandom!” I said.
“Who?” she demanded.
“Not telling you. It’s my story, I don’t have to tell you!”
She paused. “It’s the two Romanas, isn’t it? I know how your mind works.” At which point I collapsed laughing, as you do. “You’re laughing! It is, isn’t it?”
“Maybe...”
“And Four and Nine were Bad and Wrong enough!”
“I’m still doing that,” I said, and I meant it. “They’d so do it, you know they would.”
“It’s like masturbation! It’s like masturbation with extra arms!”
A pause. Then:
“Everyone else in the room is looking at me funny.”
Sadly enough, I left her to explain that to non-fen, and toddled off to the computer. I’m calling them tomorrow night, when they’re drunk enough to chat. Should be fun.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2005-05-28 10:13 pm (UTC)God, if he had said that I would have just died. Even the thought of it is cracking me up. LOL
no subject
on 2005-05-28 10:15 pm (UTC)“I’m still doing that,” I said, and I meant it. “They’d so do it, you know they would.”
“It’s like masturbation! It’s like masturbation with extra arms!”
She has a point, you know. But why not? Everybody masturbates.
(Four/Nine? Share!)
no subject
on 2005-05-28 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-05-28 11:14 pm (UTC)Sadly, foiled again!
no subject
on 2005-05-29 12:04 pm (UTC)Me! Me! Pick me!
I had forgotten all that banana-stuff, and the really nice soliloquy at the end. Oh, and Nancy rocks my socks. [grins]
I always turn it off when the logo appears before the credits, but have they stopped showing spoilers? Can I, for once, watch the end credits and listen to the lovely music?
no subject
on 2005-05-30 03:19 pm (UTC)No, they haven't stopped showing spoilers at the end, sorry! I actually quite like them.