New Who November special: Waters of Mars
Sunday, 15 November 2009 20:26![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strange_complexHmm, I guess that was OK, but not exceptional. It felt like a re-run of The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (which, OK, it was owning to a certain extent by putting the Doctor in the same space-suit), but just tweaked to bring out what RTD obviously wanted to be the main theme: the Doctor going too far and setting himself up as the ultimate authority over time.
That said, given my current interest in the way early Doctor Who dealt with history, I did find the way this story played around with the same theme very interesting. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time in Doctor Who that events in the future, rather than the past, have been treated as fixed and unchangeable - which, of course, turned out to be necessary at the end of the story when the Doctor did try to change them after all. It was particularly striking to see that the main device used to establish as fixed the events of a 'history' which the audience doesn't actually know was written text. This is a very common point of reference in early Who - as Steven asks in The Time Meddler when Vicki explains that the Monk is trying to change time, "What about the history books?" So it was fascinating to see the same appeal to written text as an unshakeable authority which cannot be changed, even when the story had no basis in 'real' history at all.
Other than that, it's painfully obvious that the original plan was for this story to be broadcast on Saturday November 21st. Nice try, there, but oops! Lindsay Duncan is still HOT at 59. And yay for references to the Ice Warriors, The Thing, the X-Files episode Ice, and I think also 28 Days Later when one crew member was infected by a drop of water in his eye, and tried to shout to the others to get away before he 'turned'.
Er, and that's it, really. Nothing much else of substance or depth that I could see. But can't wait for the Christmas / New Year's specials, all the same!
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That said, given my current interest in the way early Doctor Who dealt with history, I did find the way this story played around with the same theme very interesting. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time in Doctor Who that events in the future, rather than the past, have been treated as fixed and unchangeable - which, of course, turned out to be necessary at the end of the story when the Doctor did try to change them after all. It was particularly striking to see that the main device used to establish as fixed the events of a 'history' which the audience doesn't actually know was written text. This is a very common point of reference in early Who - as Steven asks in The Time Meddler when Vicki explains that the Monk is trying to change time, "What about the history books?" So it was fascinating to see the same appeal to written text as an unshakeable authority which cannot be changed, even when the story had no basis in 'real' history at all.
Other than that, it's painfully obvious that the original plan was for this story to be broadcast on Saturday November 21st. Nice try, there, but oops! Lindsay Duncan is still HOT at 59. And yay for references to the Ice Warriors, The Thing, the X-Files episode Ice, and I think also 28 Days Later when one crew member was infected by a drop of water in his eye, and tried to shout to the others to get away before he 'turned'.
Er, and that's it, really. Nothing much else of substance or depth that I could see. But can't wait for the Christmas / New Year's specials, all the same!
Click here to view this entry with minimal formatting.
