Once, twice, three times the Doctor...
Oct. 25th, 2018 07:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThree episodes in, and I still don't have much sense of how I feel about the new Doctor Who. Can I assume that anyone who cares about this is up to date, if not far ahead of me? Oh, well, better be on the safe side:
SPOILERS FOR THE THIRTEENTH DOCTOR EPISODES 1 - 3: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Jodie Whittaker's Doctor is shaping up nicely: I liked her in the first episode, The Woman Who Fell to Earth, where she was still feeling her way into this new body, still half Peter Capaldi, but quite together enough to construct a sonic screwdriver from whatever she could find lying about a 21st century workshop. I liked, too, how she gradually put together what was going on, until what felt like an overloaded plot (oh, let's face it, what probably was an overloaded plot: peril on a train! aliens! more aliens! peril on a crane!) began to make some sort of sense.
I'm not convinced that more is better, when it comes to companions. I'm particularly not convinced, since of all the characters in that first episode, the one who actually enjoyed grappling with aliens was the one who (I said there would be spoilers, didn't I?) died - and whose death was then milked for all the pathos it could yield. Grace and the Doctor, two older women having adventures in time and space: it was never going to happen, but how I would have loved it! And could we have a moment's sympathy for Karl, the aliens' quarry, with his mantra of I am wanted, I am special, who is forgotten the moment he stops being useful to the plot.
One other disappointment in that first episode: there's a moment when a strange blue object appears in the woodland where Ryan is looking for his bike. It's about human height, and an attractive sculpted teardrop shape - I'd say tactile except that it's icy cold, not easy to the touch. Just for a moment I wondered if the TARDIS had got its camouflage circuits going, and chosen this inscrutably pleasing shape. But no, the TARDIS is withheld until episode 2, when it appears as the eponymous Ghost Monument, phasing in and out on a planet which isn't where it should be. All our intrepid heroes have to do is make their way across the planet to reach it. This is fine, I quite enjoyed this. There was perhaps a bit too much emphasis on how toxic everything is: the atmosphere may be poisonous, but they manage to breathe it OK (and to travel all day bare-headed in blazing sunlight without any ill-effects, too). They regain the TARDIS, which has spent the time redecorating itself. I really did not like its makeover, but luckily the Doctor did, and there was some nice Doctor / TARDIS interaction.
Episode 3, Rosa, is also all about the TARDIS, which deposits the team in Montgomery in 1955, so that they can ensure that history takes its proper course. Despite the impossibility of finding anywhere at that time and place where a team of several races can operate, they do not return to the TARDIS until the job is done. This doesn't make any sense, except that no opportunity must be missed to tell us how bad things were, and how important Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat, and the resultant bus boycot. And all this is true. Here's a handy summary of how historically accurate it all is. But historical accuracy and the high moral ground do not automatically make a good story, and I found Rosa quite heavy handedly didactic. Also, you know, Rosa Parks didn't just decide one day that she had had enough, it had been a hard day and she wasn't going to give up her seat: she was active in the NAACP, this was a planned protest. The programme hinted at this, but could admit that if not today then tomorrow, or soon, because that wouldn't leave much of the plot. It didn't have time to look at the paradox of how much our time travellers were prepared to intervene to protect the true line of history, either. So despite a splendid performance from Vinette Robinson as Rosa, it didn't work for me.
And next week, axxording to the trailer, there will be spiders. (I don't like spiders.)
SPOILERS FOR THE THIRTEENTH DOCTOR EPISODES 1 - 3: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Jodie Whittaker's Doctor is shaping up nicely: I liked her in the first episode, The Woman Who Fell to Earth, where she was still feeling her way into this new body, still half Peter Capaldi, but quite together enough to construct a sonic screwdriver from whatever she could find lying about a 21st century workshop. I liked, too, how she gradually put together what was going on, until what felt like an overloaded plot (oh, let's face it, what probably was an overloaded plot: peril on a train! aliens! more aliens! peril on a crane!) began to make some sort of sense.
I'm not convinced that more is better, when it comes to companions. I'm particularly not convinced, since of all the characters in that first episode, the one who actually enjoyed grappling with aliens was the one who (I said there would be spoilers, didn't I?) died - and whose death was then milked for all the pathos it could yield. Grace and the Doctor, two older women having adventures in time and space: it was never going to happen, but how I would have loved it! And could we have a moment's sympathy for Karl, the aliens' quarry, with his mantra of I am wanted, I am special, who is forgotten the moment he stops being useful to the plot.
One other disappointment in that first episode: there's a moment when a strange blue object appears in the woodland where Ryan is looking for his bike. It's about human height, and an attractive sculpted teardrop shape - I'd say tactile except that it's icy cold, not easy to the touch. Just for a moment I wondered if the TARDIS had got its camouflage circuits going, and chosen this inscrutably pleasing shape. But no, the TARDIS is withheld until episode 2, when it appears as the eponymous Ghost Monument, phasing in and out on a planet which isn't where it should be. All our intrepid heroes have to do is make their way across the planet to reach it. This is fine, I quite enjoyed this. There was perhaps a bit too much emphasis on how toxic everything is: the atmosphere may be poisonous, but they manage to breathe it OK (and to travel all day bare-headed in blazing sunlight without any ill-effects, too). They regain the TARDIS, which has spent the time redecorating itself. I really did not like its makeover, but luckily the Doctor did, and there was some nice Doctor / TARDIS interaction.
Episode 3, Rosa, is also all about the TARDIS, which deposits the team in Montgomery in 1955, so that they can ensure that history takes its proper course. Despite the impossibility of finding anywhere at that time and place where a team of several races can operate, they do not return to the TARDIS until the job is done. This doesn't make any sense, except that no opportunity must be missed to tell us how bad things were, and how important Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat, and the resultant bus boycot. And all this is true. Here's a handy summary of how historically accurate it all is. But historical accuracy and the high moral ground do not automatically make a good story, and I found Rosa quite heavy handedly didactic. Also, you know, Rosa Parks didn't just decide one day that she had had enough, it had been a hard day and she wasn't going to give up her seat: she was active in the NAACP, this was a planned protest. The programme hinted at this, but could admit that if not today then tomorrow, or soon, because that wouldn't leave much of the plot. It didn't have time to look at the paradox of how much our time travellers were prepared to intervene to protect the true line of history, either. So despite a splendid performance from Vinette Robinson as Rosa, it didn't work for me.
And next week, axxording to the trailer, there will be spiders. (I don't like spiders.)
