Cold Blood
May. 29th, 2010 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
masterofmidgetsReading copperbadge's Three Things about Old Who sometimes makes me feel a bit silly for complaining about slow download speeds. There was a time when, if you missed Doctor Who airing on the BBC, that was it, you'd missed your chance - I mean, there are episodes now that only exist as photographed stills and audio recordings and can never be seen again by anyone. And I'm whining because it takes as long as four whole hours for me to be able to watch it on my computer on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. But in any case I've got it and seen it and now I have thoughts!
1. RORY DDDDD: Oh wow, that was a wrenching death. I thought I could hold it together when he was just regular dead, but that moment when Amy forgets him, and you can see all the loss and pain just fall away from her, just broke my heart. And the bit where she waves to herself standing across the graveyard finished the job. I am choosing to believe that the rest of the internet is right that he won't be permadead, because I can't stand to think of it otherwise. I want him back now...
2. How awesome is Nasreen? COMPLETELY AWESOME, THAT'S HOW. Seriously, I kind of love how completely non-plussed she was by the whole 'an alien time-traveller in a phone-box took me underground to meet a city of lizard-people' thing. Not jaded or unrealistically unimpressed, just too sensible to be fussed about panicking when there are interesting things to check out. I want her to be a Companion! But after the last several episodes, I'm just pretty happy she survived to the credits.
3. That was a reasonable effort at showing a non-human culture that isn't a monolithic collective, which I always appreciate in my sci-fi - a little ham-handed, yeah, with the Benevolent Scientist vs the Militant Ideologue, but points for trying, and for making it feel to me at least that the conflict came more from a clash in personalities and petty disputes between competing factions. It almost makes up for some of the weird racial undertones that kept jarring me in this episode. Really, Amy, just give the lizard people the land we don't want? Because that always ends so well! (I think I can see what they were trying to do with this, as far as parallels to immigration/displacement of native peoples. I'm just not quite sure it worked for me.)
4. "I've got to be honest with you son. We're in the center of the Earth and there are lizard men."
5. "There is a whole race of dazzling, peaceful human beings up there." Now, I'm as pro-human as the next Earth girl, but...the Doctor has met us, right? Because I would call us many things, but peaceful would not even begin to make the list of defining human characteristics. That said, it was pretty fun to watch the Doctor play mediator, even if he wasn't awfully good at it.
And of course, who else but the Doctor would, when confronted by an unnatural life-devouring crack in the universe, stick his hand in to poke around and see what he can find? LOOK WITH YOUR EYES, NOT YOUR HANDS DOCTOR.
copperbadge's Three Things about Old Who sometimes makes me feel a bit silly for complaining about slow download speeds. There was a time when, if you missed Doctor Who airing on the BBC, that was it, you'd missed your chance - I mean, there are episodes now that only exist as photographed stills and audio recordings and can never be seen again by anyone. And I'm whining because it takes as long as four whole hours for me to be able to watch it on my computer on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. But in any case I've got it and seen it and now I have thoughts!1. RORY DDDDD: Oh wow, that was a wrenching death. I thought I could hold it together when he was just regular dead, but that moment when Amy forgets him, and you can see all the loss and pain just fall away from her, just broke my heart. And the bit where she waves to herself standing across the graveyard finished the job. I am choosing to believe that the rest of the internet is right that he won't be permadead, because I can't stand to think of it otherwise. I want him back now...
2. How awesome is Nasreen? COMPLETELY AWESOME, THAT'S HOW. Seriously, I kind of love how completely non-plussed she was by the whole 'an alien time-traveller in a phone-box took me underground to meet a city of lizard-people' thing. Not jaded or unrealistically unimpressed, just too sensible to be fussed about panicking when there are interesting things to check out. I want her to be a Companion! But after the last several episodes, I'm just pretty happy she survived to the credits.
3. That was a reasonable effort at showing a non-human culture that isn't a monolithic collective, which I always appreciate in my sci-fi - a little ham-handed, yeah, with the Benevolent Scientist vs the Militant Ideologue, but points for trying, and for making it feel to me at least that the conflict came more from a clash in personalities and petty disputes between competing factions. It almost makes up for some of the weird racial undertones that kept jarring me in this episode. Really, Amy, just give the lizard people the land we don't want? Because that always ends so well! (I think I can see what they were trying to do with this, as far as parallels to immigration/displacement of native peoples. I'm just not quite sure it worked for me.)
4. "I've got to be honest with you son. We're in the center of the Earth and there are lizard men."
5. "There is a whole race of dazzling, peaceful human beings up there." Now, I'm as pro-human as the next Earth girl, but...the Doctor has met us, right? Because I would call us many things, but peaceful would not even begin to make the list of defining human characteristics. That said, it was pretty fun to watch the Doctor play mediator, even if he wasn't awfully good at it.
And of course, who else but the Doctor would, when confronted by an unnatural life-devouring crack in the universe, stick his hand in to poke around and see what he can find? LOOK WITH YOUR EYES, NOT YOUR HANDS DOCTOR.