Doctor Who

[julesjones]

Well, that was very... RTDish.
It does not help that I managed to not see half the episodes in this run, and it really does not help that I couldn't make out half the dialogue, but I spent a lot of the final episode going "Wut? This does not make sense" for reasons which I appear to share with a number of other people on DreamWidth. Whoniverse logic can be batshit insane sometimes, but there is generally some sort of underlying logic. Except when Rusty is involved. My opinion of his work has always been that the man has written some of the best duologues I have ever heard, but he cannot write story endings for pants, and this turned the "can't write story endings" up to 11. This was an awful lot of "I have a cool idea!" without making it a coherent whole with the rest of the Whoniverse, even by Whoniverse standards.

Sutekh as the Big Bad? Bring it on. But when you're trying to outdo the original story, you need Bigger and Better, at least if you're RTD. This was Bigger but it was not Better. Sorry, I have the sort of heavily reinforced with steel springs disbelief suspenders one develops after decades of enjoying Dr Who, but undoing Sutekh's dust of death broke them. The explanation for Susan Triad made for some great big emotions, but zero sense when actually thought through.

While I liked who Ruby's mother (and father) turned out to be, it doesn't explain the snow. I hope we get an explanation for the snow at some point.

I didn't like the CGI Sutekh - for some reason I found it harder to suspend disbelief than I did with the original, even though in theory the effects were better. Bigger and Better may have been part of the problem in a literal sense - the giant Sutekh clearly was nothing but a special effect, in a way that 1970s humanoid Sutekh wasn't. Not a criticism, this; just an interesting observation of the way suspension of disbelief can work. And having written that - it's because of the "humanoid". Set was depicted in Egyptian illustrations as essentially human form with the head of an animal, and the Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars fitted that. The Sutekh of Empire of Death was physically nothing like the Egyptian god the character was inspired by.

Mrs Flood. Ah, Mrs Flood. What's really interesting about her is that she explicitly and deliberately breaks the fourth wall, which is not generally a thing for the Whoniverse. It's only just consciously occurred to me what last night's breaking of the fourth wall reminded me of - the ending of Life On Mars, when the Test Card Girl turns off the tv. I wonder where this is going. The obvious answer for the identity of Mrs Flood is the Master, but that doesn't fit with the fourth wall; that is not an obviously Masterish thing to do unless they think they've found a way to break into the next door universe, which happens to be ours.

I await with interest the Christmas episode.

Comments

[sallymn]

The new series isn't here yet, so I'll be interested to see the new Doctor when it does.

[katlinel]

I've had trouble with hearing the dialogue this series, and have seen enough posts elsewhere on the general subject to know it isn't only me getting older that is the problem. I've rewatched a couple of episodes, purely because I missed so much dialogue, and frequently watch programmes with subtitles on by default now. The only reason I caught what Mrs Flood said when she was curled up next to Cherry on the bed was because RTD repeated it in an interview in the Unleashed episode.

I said elsewhere that, at the end of the episode, Mrs Flood

Spoilers

was reminding me of Mary Poppins, but have also thought since that, for B7 fans, her outfit evokes Servalan. I've also seen suggestions re her being Romana, because of the outfit, but I think I'd like it if she were something new, or a more obscure old character than Romana/The Rani/Susan.

[watervole]

Yes, not even a passing attempt to explain the snow. And although I liked the concept of a remembered Tardis (with lots of fannish touches in the decor), it didn't really make sense in context.

[daibhidc]

I did see all the episodes in the season, and I'm not sure it helped that much. It may have made it worse, as I had specific things this didn't make sense with regard to.