Doctor Who

[rm]

1. HOW CAN ANYONE HATE RIVER SONG? She's Jack, but with tits and frizzy hair. As someone with tits and frizzy hair I hate the haters on River Song. Seriously, the Jack references are SO OBVIOUS -- the drape of that dress is the girl version of Jack's coat; her lines are just as bad, and that teeny tiny blaster is the same model as the one pulled out of John Hart's ass in KKBB. Hell, I bet she's slept with John Hart.

2. I love the 51st Century! Oh, the things this season is doing with the military.

3. Wait, back to River Song.... the very good man she killed... it's the Doctor, isn't it?

4. Wow, I'm working on something related to how sacrifice of one's life is the gold standard for heroism in the Whoniverse and how that prevents the show's narrative heroes (the Doctor and Jack, primarily) from ever being actual heroes by the show's own definintion and wow this episode just handed me everything I needed on a platter with Octavian.

"Ready?" the Doctor asks.

"Content," comes the response.

The Doctor and Jack can never sacrifice themselves for anyone, can never be content!!!!

5. And if you think I didn't find that resonant with Ianto's death too, you're out of your mind.

6. Rory's speech about how the Doctor destroys people because they want to make him proud!!! Spot on! Also resonant with pretty much all the fuckery that goes down in Torchwood.

7. This season is weird in that it feels more like a children's show in pacing, exposition and staging, and yet the dark, dark, dark themes are still there. Silence and genocide! Ah, Doctor!

8. I didn't feel like "Vampires of Venice" was a major episode, but I suspect it will be so in retrospect.

9. Extension of the Weeping Angel mythology is challenging, at least to my Jack/Weeping Angel, eye-gouging sex fic, but I can work with it.

9.5 -- Oh hey, when River tells the Doctor that there's "a thing in there that can't die" did anyone else go "OH SHIT, THE DOCTOR THINKS IT'S JACK?"

10. Yeah, I'm not well.

11. There is truth in the meta on this show.

"That's a fairytale."

"So are we."

!!!!!!

12. Oh, oh, oh the things about death!!! Never being born vs. just dying. The horror of being undone as opposed to dead. Oh!

Right, so in three days I'll be in a plane over the Atlantic. I can't even process it. I think the idea that I can break this mood is probably bullshit. I'm just going to be in a weird space for a few days, and it is what it is.

In speaking with my mother on the phone earlier it occurred to me, not for the first time, but for the first time in a while, that I can only write -- in any genre, really -- from a place of sadness, of longing, of desire, of mourning, regardless of whether I'm writing something sad or not. It's just one of those Ways That I Am, but right now I feel very tired out by it.

My mother was saying how my paper is about something so neat and fun earlier, and I was like "Mom, it's awesome. I love what I'm doing work on, and I think my subject is fascinating, and quirky, and beautiful and really, really elegant. But it's sad. And it's exhausting to have to spend so much time in other people's grief, some of which I share and some of which I don't understand at all. And I do it every day, because I'm looking at everything I'm reading and watching through this lens, every day. I watch a show I love, and I sit there watching it through 'he's dead, he's dead, he's dead' so no matter how excited I am by this scholarship, RIGHT NOW I AM VERY TIRED."

Getting to say that made me feel about 200% better, too. But death project moratorium for a week post-Bristol (it's one reason I'm doing the Imperial War Museum before the conference and not after) before I start working on the D*C presentation. I suspect this will all feel moderately different on July 10. I can't wait. Take me there.

Meanwhile, as much as I don't buy this Doctor as a sexual creature (Nine wanted to fuck, Ten wanted to have his heart broken, Eleven doesn't want to think about how fucked up he was as Nine and Ten), anyone got any Amy/Rory/Eleven that will change my mind?

Comments

[eris.livejournal.com]

"I don't buy this Doctor as a sexual creature"

I've been rewatching a lot of the classic who and I just recently put my finger on why I can't see Eleven as a sexual creature either.

Despite the age of the actor, himself, Eleven is much more similar in personality to some of his older, stodgier, iterations. He pulls off the old soul in young body thing so well that I think of him as old. The fact that he's 900+ years old never escapes me with Eleven and it frequently did with Ten.

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

:nodding: Oh yes, definitely. That whole bit where Amy was trying to make out with him - WTF was she thinking? He does old-soul-in-young-body so well, but even without that, there has always been something asexual about him. I can't put a finger on it other than to say except you how you just know about certain people? The Doctor is one of those people.

[eris.livejournal.com]

That was hilarous/awkward!

Yeah, and it's totally the character. If you watch the confidentials, Matt and Karen have such an obvious crush on each other, and it's adorable and it works. Especially Matt to Karen, he adores the hell out of her, and they're like silly children on set between takes. At least what it shows in the Confidential episodes.

I was so nervous and wary when I'd heard they'd cast the youngest actor ever for the Doctor, but he's the oldest Doctor we've had in a while, personality-wise. The storyline and scripts could go to shit and I'd still adore Matt as Eleven just for that quality.

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

I've only seen a couple of the confidentials, but I do remember how playful they are together. It's adorable to watch and I hope they really do feel that way about each other, because, if they don't...god, then they both really and truly are actors.

As much as I loved Ten, his maniacal side grated on me after awhile. Eleven has that quality, but it's toned to a very small shout. I don't know if that was intentional, but I love that.

[eris.livejournal.com]

Despite the madcap adventures, the outlandish outfits, the jelly babies and the devices that go "ding when there's stuff", The Doctor is a Very Dangerous Man. And Ten rarely let us forget that.

And, for me, because Eleven doesn't let the Dangerous Man part (hurrr man part) out so much, it has more of an impact when it does.

To borrow from a whole other universe: "He is not a tame lion."

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

I think Eleven knows he's got a dangerous side, but I don't think he quite realizes how dangerous he can become if, say, provoked. What will happen to provoke him enough? And what will he do when he is provoked? How will he react afterward? There's quite a storyline in there.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

One of the things that was so gpd about Baker was that he'd lull one into thinking he was sweet and cuddly and safe, then he's do something subtly inhuman and remind one he's not human and not safe. I think that's something I'm enjoying about matt smith too.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

The "Ick! She's Kissing me flail" was what won me over to Matt Smith. I wasn't really feeling him as the Doctor until I saw that.