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I really, really loved this episode. I hadn’t really been looking forward to another historical romp, and so far any significant investigation of the Doctor’s nature has felt limited by the episodic nature of the show. But this was great! Self-contained, I thought the plot was interesting and well-paced, the clockwork monsters creepy, explored time travel in an interesting (if uncritical) way for a change, great dialogue, the period stuff also, the Doctor was great again, there was some hot spectacle fetish action, and even if it was all nonsense it was particularly successful Doctor Who absurdity, it had (as Suedey pointed out) a spaceship powered by human organs that with the days of one of the most vital women in history spread throughout it, who the Doctor rescues as a literal white knight on a charger crashing through the doors of time, appallingly iconic bunk but – what’s on earth’s not to love?
The mind meld thing didn’t bother me at all, I get the feeling they’re trying to expand on lots of little different things the Doctor can do and that make him different, and in this instance I think they handled it well. Sort of relatedly, I know that Rose and Mickey used them, but did anyone else wonder if it was only the Doctor who could open the “magic doors” in time? There do seem to be situations where the Doctor does unseen (magical?) things in an offhand manner which keeps plots “ticking” (sorry) while leaving a lot of scope for the Doctor doing super-complex Time Lord stuff – with the added benefit that it avoids turning him into a smirking, over super-science-hero.
Not to cause another hetero-panic type situation, but I’d be wary of attributing “canonically” bisexual, both in terms of the evidence so far presented, and in the sense of bi as being an attraction equally split across genders. Given threads out and about just now, it might be better to consider that the Doctor *maybe* is attracted to both sexes but one more than the other. I don’t think that it could be argued that there’s anything wrong with that, and that it’s rather dangerous to be wary of the specificities of the presentation of any relationship, heterosexual or homosexual. That said, certainly in my imagination the Doctor has lived long enough and, theoretically, experienced enough different cultures, to love across genders, races and species (and needless to say time), but maybe he has certain moods or phases like anyone else [and of course, regenerations, as Deva points out; much of the above written before she had revisited her original post], or his sexuality is constructed on entirely different terms? That the presentation of (reasonably) explicit het-ness reinforces heterosexual normativity may be the case, but I don’t think it follows that the expression of unambiguous sexual dynamics is always inappropriate or oppressive. I agree that the presentation of sexuality can be more interesting when there lies the potential to read it in multiple ways, and by implication when other readings challenge more orthodox presentations, but I don’t believe, at the moment, there’s more than circumstantial evidence to suggest that a more obvious, reductive state of affairs is the case – though certainly it will be interesting to see how that develops over the season.
and if he’s mooning about after specific individuals that seems to take the edge off of the kind of generalised love of lifekind he ought to have.
I don’t disagree, but surely the poor bloke is able to express that in particular sometimes right? I really loved, btw, how impressed he was with the clockwork creatures – if I remember right he said they were beautiful, no?
My only slight, slight, criticism of this episode would be how all the “lonely angel” stuff seems to be stacking up, and how designed it seems to appeal to the ideas awkward, shy, insular sci-fi nerd-boys* have about themselves, but overall, as I said, I loved this episode, it worked for me even more than the last one, and I can’t wait for the Cybermen!
*Where, admittedly, I am one, so I might be projecting. |
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