The End of Time, pt. 1

[rm]

OMGWTFBBQ!!!!



Well, hrrrrr.

1. I think it's too ambitious. This already feels like a three-parter, but it only has two parts. This really needed to ramp up into what it is, the intensity got too high too fast.

2. The quiet emo moments were really the best. Man, Ten crying is HOT. And all that Ood shit was creepy.

3. John Simm is a really good actor. And it looks like filming this vacillated between really fun and completely sucktacular. All that food stuff. Food scenes SUCK.

4. OMG, the porn. THE PORN. That little smile on the Master's face when he was being buckled into the straight jacket. Hello, hello, hello. HELLO.

5. No Jack yet. This is good. This means he may be there for the regeneration, this is my hope.

6. This really is pretty damn audacious. And the rebirth of Gallifrey/Timelords is a really smart plot line since the Doctor is getting close to the limit unless the council or whatever it is grants him some more. Er, yeah, this is the first time I've really felt stymied by my lack of old who knowledge.

7. So that first shit with the regeneration of the Master? What a waste of Lucy Saxon. What was with all the women basically being witches with potions? And "The Book of Saxon"? What now? The prison was named Broadfell? Seriously? I've never found RTD to be more misogynistic than he is fucked up (i.e., his issues as a writer tend to be more interesting to me than offensive), and this happened. Dude, REALLY?

8. OBAMA, WTF? Actually, could a Brit living in Britain currently help me out here? How is Obama perceived? Was this satire that made sense to you all in an eye-rolling at the believe he can fix everything thing or what? I was like confused. A lot confused. Also I hate when they do scenes that are supposed to be White House press conferences and of course everything looks wrong.

9. Naismith = ne Smith? Also, woah, incesty with the daughter there.

10. OMG, Whoniverse wardrobe department, I love you. But "The Master Race"? Seriously? You went there? Man. Really?

11. I'm glad Ianto got to miss this one, such as it is.

Woah.

Comments

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

They are all empowered, they are the agents of the plot and capable, between them, of the widest range of moral actions- from corruption to madness to responsibility and sacrifice. That the master picks one gender over another to subordinate or enslave might also be read as a particular sign of his perversion or evil. Later we see women in more powerful positions- the female apparition to Wilf, the return of the Doctor Donna and Abigail, who is the center of her world or limitless resource.

I don't think this is even true of TEOF, but I've been working on a paper on RTD's attitude to women for some months and TEOF is very consistent with a number of general, disturbing themes.

First, throwaway reference to Elizabeth I (to tie in with her cameo appearance at the end of The Shakespeare Code and not needed IMHO). What's that there for except to allow the Doctor to boast "I fucked the most famous virgin in history - and then I ran"?

Second, Abigail. Centre of her world - because her Daddy put her there (and creepy incest vibe, eh?)

Third, The Doctor/Donna. Currently without power (because the Doctor lobotomised her against her explicit and screamed "No!" at the end of Journey's End and, to the extent she has power, because it's a male mind superimposed over her own, not something coming from herself.

Fourth, the cult of the Master. All deluded women and I'm not even going to go into the symbolism of that blond woman's clothing look.


Fifth: all the female population of the Earth except for the Doctor/Donna. No longer in existence. Wiped out and overwritten by the Master.

And finally, Lucy Saxon: "Corrupted" by the Master, as per the Doctor (other people - male people - who go bad in Who eg Dr Lazarus are assumed to be capable of going to the bad because of their own desires and devices, but not poor,fragile Lucy) who finally does the decent thing, for a woman in Who, like Mercy Hartigan and Harriet Jones - she immolates herself.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

Well that would be the initial reading I was suggesting an alternative to.

1) Well that's not exactly laudable behaviour. It shows the Doctor is being driven by the fear of his death to act irresponsibly. HE is reprimanded for his delay by Ood sigma. He's not taking things seriously and gets a nasty shock from the Elder Ood that reminds him that he should have. Also the notion of Elizabeth I having lived without an active sexuality for the sake of her male government might be read as an act of misogyny that RTD was using the Doctor to correct. Also did he marry her and they fall out?

2) Yes there was a creepy incest vibe, but then they are villains. Abigail still had that power, wherever it came from.

3) Which was a tragedy that the Doctor deeply regrets.

4) Would that scene have been better or worse if it was men pushing Lucy around? Or men as part of a mixed group- leaving aside the idea that in a prison genders are normally segregated.

5) Well, nobody's saying that's a good thing.It's what the Doctor, Wilf, Donna and the woman in white have to work together to correct.

6) So what of the corrupted men and men who self-sacrifice in New Who? Is there a statistical break down of the numbers of men who take that narrative role versus women who do?

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

1)Also the notion of Elizabeth I having lived without an active sexuality for the sake of her male government might be read as an act of misogyny that RTD was using the Doctor to correct.

Indeed it might, by someone who knew bugger all about 16th century British history.

2) What power? Daddy's little princess?

3) And I'm sure Donna would regret it too, if he'd left her with her mind to do any regretting with.

4) That scene would have been far better having been cut and replaced with something which made sense on any level. Leaving aside the idea that in a top security psychiatric detention centre prisoners don't usually have ready access to individually crafted explosive liquids.

5) You can take a Holmesian or a Doylist view of that plot development. All I can see is RTD putting two fingers up to people who say his writing of non-white characters and of female characters is highly problematic and with one twist of the pen writing off the problem all together.

6) Yes, there is, but you'll have to buy the book, I'm afraid.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

Indeed it might, by someone who knew bugger all about 16th century British history.

Would you care to expand on that?

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Yes.

To begin with, Elizabeth's male government (as you put it) would have been absolutely delighted for her to have an active sexuality; they spent about 20 years urging one marriage or another on her. Her diplomatic dance around the matrimony game and her use of the carefully cultivated idea of herself as the unattainable Virgin is one of the most brilliant achievements of her reign (and a lot better managed in terms of avoiding faction fights and ingrouping than practically any other sovereign of England, of either sex, before or since managed), and if RTD thinks that the historical Elizabeth would have chucked all that away for a quick shag with the Doctor then he's a bigger twonk than I think he is, which at this precise moment is quite a large size in twonks.

[threewalls]

I <3 this comment.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting way of looking at a woman denying herself a husband or married and reproductive life in order to remain potential available for diplomatic maneuvers throughout the course of her life. But it overlooks the personal aspect of somebody being made unhappy- and I think it overstates the degree of choice Elizabeth had in the matter. Had she settled the marriage question, or taken a lover that could be known about, at any time then her ability to move diplomatically and secure her reign would have been compromised. I have always considered her a prisoner of the needs of her nation. Her affection for Leicester and then Essex indicated to me a terrible and thwarted desire for trust and intimacy- a desire cruelly magnified by the weight of responsibility. I have no doubt that Elizabeth capitalized in the Virgin Queen image, but I do not believe she deliberately originated it- that would have chiefly been the work of politicians, painters and poets. It seems a little too fanciful and egocentric for Elizabeth I.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

I don't agree. Given that her Grandfather was incredibly skilled at using imagery and pageantry for the purposes of political propaganda and that starting from right before her coronation, Elizabeth herself went to lengths to use visual and poetic symbolism to reinforce her hold on power, I have trouble believing she suddenly lacked agency when it came top crafting her own image. She commissioned quite a bit of that poetry and certainly had a hand in the imagrry that surrounded her. This is, after all, something Tudors were very, very aware of and good at.

She was raised under the constant threat of death and managed to walk a very delicate tight rope under Mary in particular. She was very politically astute and from her early teens at least clear on the fact that political missteps could be fatal. Her caution in matters of marriage and of image are pretty understandable.

Admittedly, the paper I did on the us of imagery for propaganda under the Tudors was written in the mid-90's, so theoretically new documents could have turned up, but to my mind she was a quintessential early modern monarch, with all the intelligence and ruthlessness it took to retain power in uncertain times. Propaganda was as much a part of that as her spy network and her careful political planning.

I'm not willing to speculate on her private sexuality as all I have are the documents that survive. I do agree she had a very specific taste in men. (The collected images of her court favorites are instructive). I'm not willing to go further, given how often chauvinistic historians have used both her sexuality and her stated virginity against her. It is and always has been a lose/lose situation for her, image wise. No mater what the answer is or was it gets turned against her, so I choose to let it go.

I do know I really don't like the doctor's throw away about Elizabeth. not cool RTD.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Well said. I particularly liked the idea that the Plantagenet kings had let touching for the King's Evil fall into abeyance and Henry VII revived it, because a touch of divine power was just what his shaky claim needed, given that a few people other than the last incumbent presumably thought of him as "An unknown Welshman, whose father I never knew nor him personally saw."

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

I also thought his grand progress quite clever. In some of those places they hadn't seen royalty in person in generations. They'd progress in and put on the show that reinforced his properness as king and post civil war prosperity.

The laying on of hands was a crowning touch really, and so very Henry.

I'm now forgetting what year he commissioned that "history" which spread the clever lies about Plantagenets, but it certainly through historians off for centuries.

Henry VII gets short shrift in histories as Henry VIII, Mary, and Elizabeth are so much flashier, but love him or hate him, he was a consummit politician.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I think Elizabeth I inherited her grasp of finance from her grandfather and her sense of style from her father (and mother) - hence the "Golden Age" (did you know Henry VII initialled all the account books himself, personally?)

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

I would be interested to know which artistic works proclaiming her role as the virgin queen Elizabeth personally commissioned, if you can recall them. I was aware of the nipples at court, and had seen that as evidence of her seeing a role and inhabiting it, rather than creating it all herself.

It's a bit tenuous to suggest she somehow inherited all this from her grandfather- he died 20 years before she was born. It is more likely that she taught herself that level of PR acumen through her extensive reading, which may have drawn upon the history of her own family and how they had secured power.

But the original point I was making was that to go through your entire life never having a sexual relationship- or any romance beyond some version or other of courtly love- not out of choice but out of self preservation and national duty can be seen as a deeply unfair condition of living as a woman of power in a patriarchal society. So the Doctor, used by RTD, uses the magic of time travel to relieve that isolation. They got married after all- it hardly sounds like a one night stand.

Do we really think that Elizabeth I would not have taken a husband of her choice had she really had that choice- again, given her obvious affection for Dudley and Devereux? So why does it require knowing 'bugger all' about Tudor history to see the Doctor having a fulfilling relationship with Elizabeth I as something to redress that unfairness?

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

Oh I don't think she got it from him directly, but certainly, the documents were there and there were people running around who'd seen it. Henry VIII was less into that sort of propaganda later in his rein, but used it in his early rein. Again, plenty of surviving witnesses to become advisers and documentation. She was bright and used all the political tools available to her.

Alas, I no longer have access to the materials I used then. I can poke around and see if I can find my paper. No promises though. I've moved often and I haven't much strength for digging through boxes and things.

I honestly don't know. There is an argument some people make that as she was alive an old enough to remember the fall of Catherine Howard, she may have been wary of marriage due to it's connection with death. I don't necessarily subscribe to it, but it's an option. People arguing it point to just how close she came with Dudley, only to pull away at the last minute. Of course, that can be argued three or four other ways. She may have been hetero-romantic, but hypo or asexual. some people are. She may have been molested by Catherine Parr's last husband. (There were contemporary rumors.) She may have had strong appetites secretly indulged or suppressed for political reasons. All of these are theories floated in the literature.

I have no proof one way or another of her sexual psychology or sexual history, so I feel uncomfortable holding a firm opinion of any type. It's too easy to impose my own biases as others have done, so i like to stay out of it.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

Please do not trouble yourself unnecessarily. I would be grateful for even an indication of what to research or look out for. I would feel awful if you had to exert any more effort than recollection for such a small matter.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

It's rather embarrassing that I can't remember these details. I used to know this stuff inside out. I do know the coronation stuff was absolutely deliberate. I remember commissioned poems later, but I no longer have the details stored in my head.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

I used to know how to solve quadratic equations, but now I can barely connect a television to my DVD player.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

How on earth, on the text-ev as presented in The End of Time and The Shakespeare Code do you parse the relationship between the Doctor and Elizabeth I as "fulfilling"? She appears in TSC referring to him as "her sworn enemy" and shrieking "Off with his head" (it's another incarnation of the middle-aged woman as harpy figure of which RTD is so fond) and Ten's implication that the marriage to "Good Queen Bess" had been a mistake (and the body language he used, as well as his words, was pretty unequivocal on that point)?

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

Because, whatever regrets and recriminations that followed, they wouldn't have married in the first place unless there were serious and satisfying feelings for both of them. Do you imagine the Tenth Doctor as the abusive (or abused) husband type?

And that doesn't answer my question: "why does it require knowing 'bugger all' about Tudor history to see the Doctor having a fulfilling relationship with Elizabeth I as something to redress that unfairness?"

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Do you imagine the Tenth Doctor as the abusive (or abused) husband type?

Since you ask, I wouldn't marry a man who was unable to respect a serious, informed and heartfelt "No!" from a woman, and, yes, I would take that lack of ability to respect someone's right to draw her own boundaries as possibly indicative of an abusive personality type.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

I don't recall asking if you would marry the Tenth Doctor? However I don't think either of us are really profiting from this discussion any further. I would be very interested to read your paper when it is published, I'm sure it will be both informative and challenging.

[elionwyr.livejournal.com]

5) You can take a Holmesian or a Doylist view of that plot development.

..I'm curious what you mean by that.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Holmesian analysis takes a view of the work from within it, treating it as its own universe, so oddities and inconsistencies have to make sense within that universe and not by reference to external factors. So, for example, in the Sherlock Holmes canon references to Watson's wife having two different names cannot be explained by authorial error, but have to be given a logically consistent explanation by reference only to other bits of canon (in that case, that Watson married twice and for some reason his remarriage was too painful to be dwelt on in the narrative context).

Accordingly, the comment that the situation happened and now it's up to the remaining characters to deal with it is a Holmesian approach; the argument which I put forward, namely that he chose to twist the plot in a way which would limit his need to write female or non-white characters is a Doylist one. Neither is right or wrong, but you can't challenge a Holmesian analysis with Doylist arguments and vice versa, because the framework for argument is different in each case.

[elionwyr.livejournal.com]

I have never come across that before..fascinating. Thank you for breaking it down for me.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

I think they are more usually referred to as Watsonian and Doylist analysis- that is what you will find them under on TVtropes, for example.