Sunday 2 September 2012

Doctor Who 7x01



Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!
Here be SPOILERS for Doctor bloody Who series 7 episode 1!



First off, I’m confused. I thought Seven had a bit of a to do with the daleks and they accidentally destroyed Skaro. As in, destroyed. Maybe I got the wrong end of the eyestalk, but that had me under the false (?) impression that there had been some time travel involved.

And then the daleks - not the bright shiny ‘new’ ones that the Doctor made by accident with his jammy dodgers? Oh. So… no time travel? These aren’t previous daleks, but current ones? Someone tell me. I was a bit lost.

Amy’s only annoying bit was the “Who’s scared? Geronimo” moment. Not Karen’s fault, that cheesy line, but I just felt it was a little overdone.

Talking of overdone - Oswain was pretty funny until it grated. It felt to me that she was forcing herself to over-achieve and be quirky and crazy and cool and amazing. The first thing that came to me was Mary Sue. She hacks things the Doctor can’t hack; she’s holed up like Newt from Aliens; she’s just so fucking amazing she sweats awesome!sauce. Her amazingness was as overdone as her soufflĂ©. Making a point to the audience or a little too much character-love?

Mary Sue. She really was her own Mary Sue. Given her circumstances, can’t blame her for that. Then the character wasn’t so annoying - in fact, I felt bad for intruding on her private space by having seen inside her head (no pun intended). But then - here we go. She’s so BAMF and goddamn brilliant that she manages to purge her dalek programming and makes the Doctor leave her behind to save himself and the others. And as she knows she’s about to get obliterated? She’s smiling and carrying on as normal. I mean, I know she’s pretty fucking made up with the fact that she’s beaten the daleks because they made her into one but they couldn’t make her into one, but that was a bit weird for me. For me it didn’t come off as ‘VICTORY GRIN! TAKE THAT, DALEK BASTARDS!’, but was more like ‘wheeeeeeeeee! I’m going to die! Huzzah!’ This probably wasn’t as Moffat intended, but that’s how it felt to me. Millions of children around the world are now going ‘Mummy, is she really dead then?’ I’m still wondering about her face just then, and her ‘last words’, myself.

Which brings me to... Dear Moffat. I swear to the god who is Stephen Fry, if you repeat yourself with seeing-how-the-Companion-dies-on-first-meeting-and-meeting-them-earlier-in-their-life, we are done. If this character comes back at some point (and I haven’t read spoilers or cast lists or pretty much anything at all to do with DW) then it’d better be in a way you haven’t done before. Time travel: great. But you’ve done this before. I don’t want the character back, unless Oswain hacked into the TARDIS (ouch!) and uploaded herself by virtue of her amazing programming skills. If she’s not a continuance of where she left off, I’m going to be upset. —That’s if she ever does come back. She doesn’t need to unless someone hits her over the head with a hammer to knock all the trying-too-hard-to-be-ace (ace? Ace? Baseball bat? We don’t need another Ace - who already wins over Amy in my book) out of her. That is one Tigger that really does need un-bouncing.

Overall, a good episode. Twisty and mostly fun. Matt Smith continues to deliver and I’m still waiting for him to get the writing he deserves. Rory was brilliant as usual. Amy wasn’t as annoying as normal, but she was made to look two-dimensional in this ep, as if the single problem they ever had was kids. I’m sure that triggered a million other proper grown-up problems, but they’re not going to go into that in a ‘kids’ show, so I’m guessing they condensed that whole mess into that single scene as an excuse to get them back together.

Think that’s about it. Except to say: bring back Donna. There. Done.





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