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New Doctor Who
Is all over my flist today! I did manage, even though bt was kvetchy and I had to trawl for rapidshare links. XD;
Mmmmnnn you know what I thought it would be more different. I always assumed that triumphalist note was uniquely Davies but apparently not? Meanwhile you get a sort of Moffat trope best-of, and by best-of I mean "something new next time pls". But in the excitement I'd forgotten that the season premieres aren't ever the best episodes. XD;
What actually is different:
* Homebase!Earth goes from very present-day London to Quaint English Village(tm) of mildly indeterminate period. Intentional result prediction: new dating controversy for grebt fan trolling lulz. Unintentional result prediction: not gonna be a step forward with regard to race/class/gender complexities ahaha. Token quirky residents to come... In fact Amy rather strongly comes across as the village token manic pixie dream girl. The manic pixie dream girl as Wendy Darling. Oh god I have made this sound terrible. But it is early days and I simply have no idea how her arc will play out. I don't imagine we've found out all there is to know about her.
* Youth or not, Matt Smith has a root - in the musical sense, a basse fondamentale - of authority that Tennant just didn't (not to get into everything Tennant brought to the role that was original to him). Which could work if they actually intend to go for an offbeat/offbeat Team TARDIS, like....... Four/Leela? I wrote "crazy/crazy" but that's not the right word for either Four or Leela. Basically what I mean is that the Doctor is not supposed to be the Voice of Sanity but then you get a companion who needs the brakes put on. It can't just be zaniness across the board, you've got to anchor it or it'll get old reaaaaally quick.
* Speaking of Wendy Darling.
I once compared Ten/Rose to vampire stories - that is, what's always interested me about vampire stories is the consequences-of-immortality aspect, rather than the blood-drinking (real sex for transgressive thrillz pls, metaphors are naff). But Davies's show was always anchored firmly in an adult (sometimes YA, but adult) perspective; any hint of child's-eye was a meta nod to "behind the sofa". What gives Moffat's S05E01 its "for kids" feel is the way it sets childhood up against adulthood, which is a given for kids and much less so for adults. Sororial unit thought it was too heavy-handed. I thought of reading Peter Pan as a child and taking it at face value, then rereading it at 17 - close to Amy's age during the main part of the story - and bawling. Now I am "over the hump" so to speak and it doesn't make me want to cry anymore, although I still love it as a powerful piece of literature and tangle of OMG BARRIE U HAZ ISSUES. But if Moffat intends to run with this as his emotional thesis re: the Doctor... It's as novel as Davies' Lonely God business, you don't see it anywhere in the old series. For good reason. Amelia would have made a lovely companion, but I wonder that Moffat has the steel balls to posit the idea to kids of running off with disheveled men who appear at the bottom of their gardens in the middle of the night. XD;;;
The really off thing, I mean actually unheimlich, about Peter Pan is that he's just a kid. Who will steal your kids from their cradles. The beginning of the book is a horror movie setup told from the mother's perspective. But the Doctor is a grownup. The proof being Amy's sexy nylons (AND WEDDING DRESS) don't disqualify her from Team Tardis a la Susan Pevensie or Wendy Darling -- look on the bright side! The Doctor is worse than everyone's aunt, but he is not worse than C.S. Lewis. (Amens from the congregation.) Nota bene? Neither Susan nor Wendy waits forever, and that was the whole point.
(A word on Susan Pevensie. That last bit was a cheap shot: I don't believe Lewis's message was as sexist as it's made out to be, because I remember very clearly how I received it at the time, as a preteen. What came through loud and clear to me was that Susan had made a choice, and - I want to emphasize - her choice. She chose the conventional adult world with its attendant joys and well-delineated possibilities, and yes that includes conventional expressions of feminine sexuality and so on, but that's just the shorthand. The well-trodden path. As a result she didn't go by the path less travelled by, which in Lewis is a not-necessarily-useful conflation of childhood with imagination that sets itself against the real world - which means anything from folie à plusieurs to religious calling and back, and Art too... Susan's fate is only Bad End if you buy that death-apotheosis is the only Good End, and that there is no value to the life she will undoubtedly continue to live. I certainly didn't buy that at the end of the Narnia books, and IMO Lewis was too smart a guy to sell it. But it was very powerful to me, this idea that you could and had to make a choice, between Book World and Real World if you will. To the left, one can tell kids that they don't have to choose, that they can have all the trappings of a conventional life lived and successfully answer whatever higher calling it is they hear, but to me that's a well-meant disservice because chances are one can't. Not enough time in the world. I make versions of that choice every day. If you're reading this, you probably do the same.)
tl;dr regarding the actual Eleventh Doctor![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
incandescens says Tom Baker, I think she's on the money (I always think incandescens is on the money XD - I still remember what she said about Tennant coming in, from when she said it, even though I had zero context for it at the time). I had the sudden realization one day that the Fourth Doctor doesn't dig Earth girls, and that this really says something huge about his character even though I can't pin down the terms exactly. But the Third Doctor was massively into Earth girls, just like the Tenth. Soooo.
Mmmmnnn you know what I thought it would be more different. I always assumed that triumphalist note was uniquely Davies but apparently not? Meanwhile you get a sort of Moffat trope best-of, and by best-of I mean "something new next time pls". But in the excitement I'd forgotten that the season premieres aren't ever the best episodes. XD;
What actually is different:
* Homebase!Earth goes from very present-day London to Quaint English Village(tm) of mildly indeterminate period. Intentional result prediction: new dating controversy for grebt fan trolling lulz. Unintentional result prediction: not gonna be a step forward with regard to race/class/gender complexities ahaha. Token quirky residents to come... In fact Amy rather strongly comes across as the village token manic pixie dream girl. The manic pixie dream girl as Wendy Darling. Oh god I have made this sound terrible. But it is early days and I simply have no idea how her arc will play out. I don't imagine we've found out all there is to know about her.
* Youth or not, Matt Smith has a root - in the musical sense, a basse fondamentale - of authority that Tennant just didn't (not to get into everything Tennant brought to the role that was original to him). Which could work if they actually intend to go for an offbeat/offbeat Team TARDIS, like....... Four/Leela? I wrote "crazy/crazy" but that's not the right word for either Four or Leela. Basically what I mean is that the Doctor is not supposed to be the Voice of Sanity but then you get a companion who needs the brakes put on. It can't just be zaniness across the board, you've got to anchor it or it'll get old reaaaaally quick.
* Speaking of Wendy Darling.
I once compared Ten/Rose to vampire stories - that is, what's always interested me about vampire stories is the consequences-of-immortality aspect, rather than the blood-drinking (real sex for transgressive thrillz pls, metaphors are naff). But Davies's show was always anchored firmly in an adult (sometimes YA, but adult) perspective; any hint of child's-eye was a meta nod to "behind the sofa". What gives Moffat's S05E01 its "for kids" feel is the way it sets childhood up against adulthood, which is a given for kids and much less so for adults. Sororial unit thought it was too heavy-handed. I thought of reading Peter Pan as a child and taking it at face value, then rereading it at 17 - close to Amy's age during the main part of the story - and bawling. Now I am "over the hump" so to speak and it doesn't make me want to cry anymore, although I still love it as a powerful piece of literature and tangle of OMG BARRIE U HAZ ISSUES. But if Moffat intends to run with this as his emotional thesis re: the Doctor... It's as novel as Davies' Lonely God business, you don't see it anywhere in the old series. For good reason. Amelia would have made a lovely companion, but I wonder that Moffat has the steel balls to posit the idea to kids of running off with disheveled men who appear at the bottom of their gardens in the middle of the night. XD;;;
The really off thing, I mean actually unheimlich, about Peter Pan is that he's just a kid. Who will steal your kids from their cradles. The beginning of the book is a horror movie setup told from the mother's perspective. But the Doctor is a grownup. The proof being Amy's sexy nylons (AND WEDDING DRESS) don't disqualify her from Team Tardis a la Susan Pevensie or Wendy Darling -- look on the bright side! The Doctor is worse than everyone's aunt, but he is not worse than C.S. Lewis. (Amens from the congregation.) Nota bene? Neither Susan nor Wendy waits forever, and that was the whole point.
(A word on Susan Pevensie. That last bit was a cheap shot: I don't believe Lewis's message was as sexist as it's made out to be, because I remember very clearly how I received it at the time, as a preteen. What came through loud and clear to me was that Susan had made a choice, and - I want to emphasize - her choice. She chose the conventional adult world with its attendant joys and well-delineated possibilities, and yes that includes conventional expressions of feminine sexuality and so on, but that's just the shorthand. The well-trodden path. As a result she didn't go by the path less travelled by, which in Lewis is a not-necessarily-useful conflation of childhood with imagination that sets itself against the real world - which means anything from folie à plusieurs to religious calling and back, and Art too... Susan's fate is only Bad End if you buy that death-apotheosis is the only Good End, and that there is no value to the life she will undoubtedly continue to live. I certainly didn't buy that at the end of the Narnia books, and IMO Lewis was too smart a guy to sell it. But it was very powerful to me, this idea that you could and had to make a choice, between Book World and Real World if you will. To the left, one can tell kids that they don't have to choose, that they can have all the trappings of a conventional life lived and successfully answer whatever higher calling it is they hear, but to me that's a well-meant disservice because chances are one can't. Not enough time in the world. I make versions of that choice every day. If you're reading this, you probably do the same.)
tl;dr regarding the actual Eleventh Doctor
incandescens says Tom Baker, I think she's on the money (I always think incandescens is on the money XD - I still remember what she said about Tennant coming in, from when she said it, even though I had zero context for it at the time). I had the sudden realization one day that the Fourth Doctor doesn't dig Earth girls, and that this really says something huge about his character even though I can't pin down the terms exactly. But the Third Doctor was massively into Earth girls, just like the Tenth. Soooo.