OK OK watchlog first
Jan. 9th, 2010 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaPosting incrementally so avoid scenarios of power shorting out etc.
S04E07 The Unicorn and the Wasp: I wanted them to take Agatha Christie alongggg :x Thought for sure that if she was missing a week they would've shown her around the universe a bit! Funny how when we go back in time it's mostly to meet writers, though, seems like The Great Authorial Bias (book plots skew toward what writers like because they are written by writers).
Key character development/foreshadowing bit: "It couldn't help itself!" "Neither could I." Donna is moral and compassionate but also "normal" human being, and in a Us vs Them situation normal humans can kill and feel justified. This has come up before, eg. Harriet Jones, but S4 fronts-and-centres that this killing instinct is biology, part and parcel of the survival instinct the Doctor loves so much in humans. No one confronts him with the contradiction, though: Davros makes it All The Doctor's Fault, which ignores the fact that, hello, free will! The reason the Doctor 2.0 genocided those Daleks so easily was not because he was "born in war", it's because he is part Donna. So who is corrupting whom exactly, here?
S04E08-09 Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead: not as scary as I thought it would be. XD Maybe just doesn't bash on my triggers - never have been afraid of the dark; what scares me is messing with lines of sight, things hiding behind doors. The Ood scare me way more despite them ultimately being good guys because the humans in the room don't see them, they treat them as furniture.
Key character development/foreshadowing bit: my only marginal source of comfort re the series ending is the loose end of Stutter Guy. NuWho to date never lets shiz like that dangle. Oh hmm and River Song... two Moffat classix there, the naming scheme (so vastly different from Russell T 'bothered to think of something other than Smith' Davies) and yet another iteration of Hoshi no Koe. She is in the new series though isn't she? That's kind of messed up as she was all like "The last time I saw you you looked so much older"your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder and #11 is, uh, younger-looking. We watched this with Zoe who thought it was unsatisfactory because knowing how a character dies before their arc happens takes all the hope out of it. I thought it made things more interesting because the viewer (and the Doctor hisself) will have to ask forever whether he lets/makes things happen between the two of them just to sort out his own timeline, and the Doctor's ambiguous dickery is integral to the series for me at this point. XD; Knowing what's going to happen ahead of time automatically makes you the cold one, even if you don't want to be - I've had experience with that on a puny human scale, so.
S04E10 Midnight: see this is why I love Donna, in actual reality YES there will be some days and planets when you just want to stay by the pool and get your nails done. Helluva ep, but then I always like these huis clos one-act play things. Back to the theme of "damn straight human beings respond to mortal danger by KILLING IT WITH FIRE", and how awful that is - but also how thin the line is between that and self-sacrificing altruism. Funny how this gets shoved in the Doctor's face but he doesn't... well, can he stop loving humans even if they're fully capable of turning on him? I'd say Ten, at least, can't.
Key character etc.: Donna echoing the Doctor's speech, and him telling her to stop it. FORESHADOWING (I am intentionally leaving out some observations re Donna, still got that meta to write).
S04E11 Turn Left: oh, entropy. The Doctor holding back the massed impersonal forces of the universe, burning like a roman candle... More on this when I meta about Daleks (no rly) but it's like the Vogons in HHGTTG, isn't it, such a Douglas Adams-esque worldview, that the default setting of the universe is that it will plow us over and no one will care. I kind of want to watch Adams' Doctor Who eps now. XD; One of them is the Paris one![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
canis_m mentioned, right?? O come to think of it "42" must've been a HHGTTG ref.
Every time this series does its The British In Wartime bit I'm like TELEVISION REINFORCES THE DOMINANT CULTURAL IDEOLOGY THROUGH THE CREATION AND PERPETUATION OF MYTHOLOGY and, yeah. All those eight-year-olds. XD;; At least nowadays it's not quite Dulce et decorum est.
Key character etc.: well all of it!?! Rose was kind of weird, though, like Billie Piper wasn't playing S2!Rose but couldn't bridge the gap to what she's supposed to be now.
S4 > S1 > S3 > S2, but not a fair comparison as S4 relies so much on buildup from previous seasons (and spinoffs). Also the music for S4 has been quite good as opposed to overblown and actively terrible as I thought it was for a good deal of S3, Spoiler's lulzsome taste aside. ILE turns out to be full of Moffat stans (what other discoveries lie in wait if I just type something into board search that is not the name of a band??), confirming me in my suspicion that Moffat's core contingent is analogous to the ILE sort of intelli-sausagefest rather than RTD's rabid shipper-trolling.
S04E07 The Unicorn and the Wasp: I wanted them to take Agatha Christie alongggg :x Thought for sure that if she was missing a week they would've shown her around the universe a bit! Funny how when we go back in time it's mostly to meet writers, though, seems like The Great Authorial Bias (book plots skew toward what writers like because they are written by writers).
Key character development/foreshadowing bit: "It couldn't help itself!" "Neither could I." Donna is moral and compassionate but also "normal" human being, and in a Us vs Them situation normal humans can kill and feel justified. This has come up before, eg. Harriet Jones, but S4 fronts-and-centres that this killing instinct is biology, part and parcel of the survival instinct the Doctor loves so much in humans. No one confronts him with the contradiction, though: Davros makes it All The Doctor's Fault, which ignores the fact that, hello, free will! The reason the Doctor 2.0 genocided those Daleks so easily was not because he was "born in war", it's because he is part Donna. So who is corrupting whom exactly, here?
S04E08-09 Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead: not as scary as I thought it would be. XD Maybe just doesn't bash on my triggers - never have been afraid of the dark; what scares me is messing with lines of sight, things hiding behind doors. The Ood scare me way more despite them ultimately being good guys because the humans in the room don't see them, they treat them as furniture.
Key character development/foreshadowing bit: my only marginal source of comfort re the series ending is the loose end of Stutter Guy. NuWho to date never lets shiz like that dangle. Oh hmm and River Song... two Moffat classix there, the naming scheme (so vastly different from Russell T 'bothered to think of something other than Smith' Davies) and yet another iteration of Hoshi no Koe. She is in the new series though isn't she? That's kind of messed up as she was all like "The last time I saw you you looked so much older"
S04E10 Midnight: see this is why I love Donna, in actual reality YES there will be some days and planets when you just want to stay by the pool and get your nails done. Helluva ep, but then I always like these huis clos one-act play things. Back to the theme of "damn straight human beings respond to mortal danger by KILLING IT WITH FIRE", and how awful that is - but also how thin the line is between that and self-sacrificing altruism. Funny how this gets shoved in the Doctor's face but he doesn't... well, can he stop loving humans even if they're fully capable of turning on him? I'd say Ten, at least, can't.
Key character etc.: Donna echoing the Doctor's speech, and him telling her to stop it. FORESHADOWING (I am intentionally leaving out some observations re Donna, still got that meta to write).
S04E11 Turn Left: oh, entropy. The Doctor holding back the massed impersonal forces of the universe, burning like a roman candle... More on this when I meta about Daleks (no rly) but it's like the Vogons in HHGTTG, isn't it, such a Douglas Adams-esque worldview, that the default setting of the universe is that it will plow us over and no one will care. I kind of want to watch Adams' Doctor Who eps now. XD; One of them is the Paris one
canis_m mentioned, right?? O come to think of it "42" must've been a HHGTTG ref.Every time this series does its The British In Wartime bit I'm like TELEVISION REINFORCES THE DOMINANT CULTURAL IDEOLOGY THROUGH THE CREATION AND PERPETUATION OF MYTHOLOGY and, yeah. All those eight-year-olds. XD;; At least nowadays it's not quite Dulce et decorum est.
Key character etc.: well all of it!?! Rose was kind of weird, though, like Billie Piper wasn't playing S2!Rose but couldn't bridge the gap to what she's supposed to be now.
S4 > S1 > S3 > S2, but not a fair comparison as S4 relies so much on buildup from previous seasons (and spinoffs). Also the music for S4 has been quite good as opposed to overblown and actively terrible as I thought it was for a good deal of S3, Spoiler's lulzsome taste aside. ILE turns out to be full of Moffat stans (what other discoveries lie in wait if I just type something into board search that is not the name of a band??), confirming me in my suspicion that Moffat's core contingent is analogous to the ILE sort of intelli-sausagefest rather than RTD's rabid shipper-trolling.
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Date: 2010-01-10 11:43 am (UTC)it's funny, obv for me it's 'the dr who community of people i see in the pub*' and therefore exists in a funny relation to the rest of the internet anyway, but
1. there's a certain crossover of people with ilx (numbers fluctuating with time, currently q low) so a few of the episode-reaction conversations on d-dum are uh inflected by ilx discussions. But ILX does the rolling thread thing, and LJ lends to single-issue discussions.
2. it is so utterly out of step with the kind of fandom i find on friendsfriends, which was weirdly thrilling during S3 - these two absolutely different common understandings of the same content.
* some of whom i have more time for than others tbqh
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Date: 2010-01-11 01:10 am (UTC)There are no locked posts right I don't need to join? I see the show writers actually stole that Master's Beard joke off yr comm though, well done.
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Date: 2010-01-11 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-10 11:51 am (UTC)what other discoveries lie in wait if I just type something into board search that is not the name of a band??
do you really want to know?
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Date: 2010-01-10 12:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-10 12:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-10 12:54 pm (UTC)Moffat has a long history with Who, which I think is one of the reasons for the fannish attachment. Also he more than anyone else writes counter to RTD (his eps play like they're part of a different continuity entirely, all the characterizations reset for what's needed for the ep he's writing) and so the RTD-haters gravitate toward him as their savior. Guy can write, but I can't think of this interview (http://news.scotsman.com/doctorwho/Time-Lad-scores-with-sex.2535185.jp) without my blood curdling a bit...
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Date: 2010-01-10 04:28 pm (UTC)so the RTD-haters gravitate toward him as their savior
This I think is very true - there's a lot of 'whoo moffat is going to fix this this and this problem i personally have with the show', which just ain't likely.
here is some good news for you: http://gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com/2010/01/murray-gold-returns.html
not to make it all about me but this is actually how I understood it
Date: 2010-01-10 09:31 pm (UTC)Re: not to make it all about me but this is actually how I understood it
Date: 2010-01-10 10:50 pm (UTC)