See all you people that are picking holes in this, with your...
"I'm not too blah blah blah about the way the handled the blah blah blah. I think it would have been better if blah blah blah had blah blah blahed instead of blah blah blahing."
Gonnae stop? Unlock that beautiful Tardis called your heart and let it whisk you away on wonderful adventures. Don't worry about where you end up, just enjoy the ride as it happens, warts and all. The Doctor would want it that way. He shows you a better way of living your life.
Okay. So as is probably a little self-evident, I thought this was really rather good. At several points during, Squeee escaped from my mouth and I drummed my knees like a set of joy-bongos. It's easy to rip to shreds, but doing that tears all the fun into wee bits too, and that kind of defeats the whole point of Dr. Who, doesn't it?
Anyway.
The more I watch of this, the more impressed I get by it. It's a very odd show where structure is concerned, because it seems to be handled unlike any other program I can think of. For all the clunky, repeated name-dropping, and dodgy plot resolutions there is a lot of very complex and subtle character stuff going on, stretching behind it all on a very slow burn. So much so, that I think a lot of stuff only really begins to show itself when you start stitching both seasons together. I'm increasingly convinced that there's a long game (oooooo, see what I did there?) here. Time Lord stuff, Time War stuff...... It's all been coming since the start, it just needs time to ripen.
Over both seasons there are lines of dialogue here and there, behavioural tics and stuff, that all pile up on top of each other to build a bigger picture. Not so much like, say, Buffy, where Theme X is explicitly mirrored in Demon Y this week so that at the end we can have Revelation Z in order to start afresh again next season. Here we have new, unrelated situations coming out of left-field with every adventure, woven together by the threads of The Doctor and Rose with the Tardis as the needle.
At least for the most part. Obvious exceptions are the Big Thematic Numbers. Finales and setups and stuff.
That's not as clear as I'd like. No matter. I can clean up later. I'm not really sure where to begin. There's a whole muddle of brain-dump to be done here and no coherent order, so I apologise in advance........
Rose Rose Rose... I was done with her five minutes into the story. She then cried her way through the remainder of the episode and kept insisting on staying with the Doctor who strangely seemed ready to see her go
You're kind of doomed from the start then, because that's the payoff for everything this season's been building to thematically, and it's all solidly grounded.
There’s a reason The Doctor seems so nonchalant about the fact that he’s going to have to send her away.There’s a reason he doesn’t just fall to the ground in a heap when the void closes them off. There's a reason he stalls saying he loves her until he gets cut off.
Mortal/Time Lord. He may have tried to convince himself it was different with Rose after what she managed in Parting of the Ways, but he’s always known. One way or another it’s ending in a Madame du Pompadour. So like with all the stuff that really depresses him, the dark emotions that get in the way of his responsibilities, (his guilt over the fall of Arcadia, the inevitability of losing Rose) he sticks his fingers in his ears and goes la la la.
Except..... when it comes to sending Rose away he has no quips. He can’t dance around it and he certainly can’t deal with it so he has no option but to put it on ignore. There’s a billion Cybermen and a billion Daleks out there and a Doctor’s work is more important. His Hippocratic Oath to the universe pre-empts everything. That’s why he’s always going to be lonely.
You know that grin that Eccleston would flash about here and there? Full of manic energy but cracked around the edges? This regeneration is that to the power of Tennant. It's a lot more convincing (to himself and others) this time round, but we're shown here that it's not fool-proof.
Rose isn't daft either. She's known as well as he has. School Reunion, Girl in the Fireplace. She's just been hoping that the last-minute Tardis turnaround of Satan Pit can be the rule rather than the exception.
As for the Tardis.... This is something that I think is one of those behind-the-scenes slow-burners. Now stretched over both seasons, we're building up a view of the Doctor/Tardis relationship, and you know what? It’s one of the great buddy pairings of all time!
The Tardis isn’t just his Millennium Falcon, it’s also his Chewie. His constant companion that speaks in a language only he understands. It’s fiercely loyal to him above all others, but it takes those he lets into his life under its wing too. Impossible Planet and Satan Pit were the biggest episodes for Tardis relationship stuff this season, Parting of Ways was last season’s.
In IP, when The Doctor thinks he’s lost it to the pit, he has a conniption fit. He says quite plainly that “it’s all I have, literally the only thing” even when Rose is standing right next to him.
He’s right. It’s the only thing that will always be there, because it’s the only thing that can. When it falls into the pit, only to be found again at just the right moment, it’s kind of missing the point to say it’s all very convenient, or to wonder how it managed to get down there. It’s there at just the right moment because it’s THE TARDIS! It’s got his back. Whenever the Doctor risks it all to do his thing, whenever he cuts the cord and commits to the fall, it’ll always be there to catch him. Because it loves him and it’ll never leave him.
It does the same thing in Parting. It opens up its most intimate self to Rose because of their deep, shared devotion to The Doctor. They both need to stand with him and do everything in their power to prevent him from coming to harm. Neither of them are going to roll over and die while he fights on alone.
The Tardis is a character like any other. It’s very quiet about it, (it literally IS the background) but it’s always observing, and just like the Doctor it has a very deep emotional life hiding inside.
Ech.... you know what? It's five in the morning, I think I should maybe come back to this later when I can write with something resembling structure. Maybe an essay of some sort might be in order. |
