strange_complex (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
strange_complex) wrote2010-04-03 07:38 pm
strange_complex) wrote2010-04-03 07:38 pm
Entry tags:
New Who 5.1: The Eleventh Hour
Knowing I didn't really have time to review this properly, I tried live-blogging it. I don't really want to make that a regular habit, as it meant that I missed quite a lot of what was going on on screen while I was writing down the last thing I'd noticed. But it was nice to have a go at it.
The results follow below:
Response to the earlier era - Moffat has the TARDIS avoid crashing into Big Ben, where RTD made a set-piece of alien ship clipping it in Aliens of London
Opening credits - I like the cloudier time-tunnel. It promises a murky, complex series. Music's not bad, too - emphasises the counter-melody (which I've always loved) and tones down the drums.
Amy first appears saying her prayers - will Christianity remain a serious part of her portrayal? (ETA: no, it won't, because she was actually praying to Santa.) It's a classic child's prayer, though - asking for things, 'back in a mo'.
Oh! Broken TARDIS is quite painful to see!
Starting with Amy as a child = reaching out to the classic target audience? An interest of Moffat's to do this - e.g. child in Silence in the Library.
Child!Amy reminds me of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pickwick - similar hair, Scottish. :-) A natural choice for Moffat to cast a Scottish actress, of course.
He pops an apple in his pocket for later - like Tennant's satsuma in The Christmas Invasion? (Uses it later to prove to Amy that he is the same person, travelling faster through time than her.)
Amelia has no parents, lives with aunt - just like Dodo!
Doc's time-line different from Amelia's - like The Girl in the Fireplace.
Is the hospital where the patients call on the Doctor the same one as used in Jon Pertwee's first story? Certainly looks quite similar.
Interesting that we meet a female Asian doctor and white male nurse in the hospital - looks like an attempt at positive portrayal of racial minorities, though undermined by fact that she is shown as closed-minded (does not believe what he says about patients).
Amy has star stud earrings just like mine!
Love her anger at his broken promise, 12 years of therapy. But do we really want a companion who is (again) on some level hung up on the Doctor, thinks their life is incomplete without him?
"What? what? what?" when he realises Amy is Amelia - but in a very different tone from David Tennant.
He liked the name Amelia - grown-up Amy says it's 'a bit fairytale'. Rejecting her childhood. Grown-up Amy is much more sceptical and cynical than child Amelia.
Rory resents Amy's interest in the Doctor - please don't be Mickey all over again!
Star-like space vehicle (Atraxi) = ref to Racnoss star?
Prisoner Zero melts and goes down drain - definitely a ref to The Three Doctors.
Amy the kiss-o-gram, Jeff looking at porn, Amy not turning back when Doc changes clothes - please let's not have Torchwood-style 'adult' content...
Conferencing on lap-top, refs to Bebo, Twitter - like Ten's 'outer space Facebook'.
Woman with children who turn out to be monsters - like monster-child in The Empty Child.
Doc wants monster to leave, rather than be captured and killed - moral stance.
Is one of the people on the computer conference Peter Capaldi? Surely not - surely he'd be in a bigger role than this? Or maybe he will recur later?
Solution is technology - computer virus and phone signal.
But monster takes Doc's form - evil twin syndrome! Seems to have tapped into Amy's obsession with the Doc to take form of her dreams.
Doc seems to use psychic abilities to turn her dreams to his advantage. So actually solution is partly his technological skill, partly his supernatural abilities. Nice - I like to see those two sides of the Doctor working together.
'Silence will fall' sounds a lot like a prophecy we should be Taking Note Of.
Shadow Proclamation, Earth as Level Five planet - drawing on past ideas about administrative systems of Whoniverse. Good.
Rory's ref to 'aliens of death' - is that a send-up of old-style story titles?
Summons aliens back to warn them off - definitely like Ten and the Sycorax. Sends them away by saying Earth isn't a threat ('mostly harmless'?), but is protected - again, like Ten saying it is defended.
Ooh - montage of past Doctors! So this new era is explicitly proclaiming from the start that it will respect the series' past - not just through oblique references, but direct on-screen visuals. Not that I'd expected anything other than respect for the past, but good to have it confirmed.
St. John's Ambulance sticker on the TARDIS door of course = One. :-)
Amy can't believe he just ran out on her... again. (Which is then reinforced by showing us child!Amy sitting glumly on her suitcase.)
Aw, but now he's back, and 'sorry about running off earlier'. He's 'run in' the newly-refurbished TARDIS, and she's ready to roll - with Amy on board.
Oops! But he's been gone two years again. Naughty Doc.
"You wanted to come 14 years ago." "I grew up." "Don't worry - I'll soon fix that." Explicit promise of taking us all back to the wonder of childhood.
Lovely play with the 'first time in the TARDIS' trope - Doc has heard it all before. And hooray for repeated refs to wardrobe, swimming pool, library. I love this aspect of the TARDIS, and am dying to see more of it.
Why on earth does she believe he'll get her back in time for 'stuff', given his previous track record?
New TARDIS is kind of H.G. Wells-ish - Victorian mad inventor vibe.
Proclaims, "I'm definitely a mad man with a box" - joy in anarchy. Fantastic.
We see her dolls and drawings - ref to fan-art? But she gets to live it for real. And it's all next to her wedding-dress! Child to adult.
Teasers for upcoming stuff looks fab! Dalek and sand-bags = Genesis of the Daleks ref? And the female Asian doctor returns - good.
In short, definitely looks promising. Moffat is referring to the past, but also positioning himself as having his own new take on the format. And Matt Smith seems just right. It's hard to judge how the adventures will pan out from this - like any opening story, it's really just about introducing the characters. But we've made a decent start.
Click here to view this entry with minimal formatting.
The results follow below:
Response to the earlier era - Moffat has the TARDIS avoid crashing into Big Ben, where RTD made a set-piece of alien ship clipping it in Aliens of London
Opening credits - I like the cloudier time-tunnel. It promises a murky, complex series. Music's not bad, too - emphasises the counter-melody (which I've always loved) and tones down the drums.
Amy first appears saying her prayers - will Christianity remain a serious part of her portrayal? (ETA: no, it won't, because she was actually praying to Santa.) It's a classic child's prayer, though - asking for things, 'back in a mo'.
Oh! Broken TARDIS is quite painful to see!
Starting with Amy as a child = reaching out to the classic target audience? An interest of Moffat's to do this - e.g. child in Silence in the Library.
Child!Amy reminds me of
pickwick - similar hair, Scottish. :-) A natural choice for Moffat to cast a Scottish actress, of course.He pops an apple in his pocket for later - like Tennant's satsuma in The Christmas Invasion? (Uses it later to prove to Amy that he is the same person, travelling faster through time than her.)
Amelia has no parents, lives with aunt - just like Dodo!
Doc's time-line different from Amelia's - like The Girl in the Fireplace.
Is the hospital where the patients call on the Doctor the same one as used in Jon Pertwee's first story? Certainly looks quite similar.
Interesting that we meet a female Asian doctor and white male nurse in the hospital - looks like an attempt at positive portrayal of racial minorities, though undermined by fact that she is shown as closed-minded (does not believe what he says about patients).
Amy has star stud earrings just like mine!
Love her anger at his broken promise, 12 years of therapy. But do we really want a companion who is (again) on some level hung up on the Doctor, thinks their life is incomplete without him?
"What? what? what?" when he realises Amy is Amelia - but in a very different tone from David Tennant.
He liked the name Amelia - grown-up Amy says it's 'a bit fairytale'. Rejecting her childhood. Grown-up Amy is much more sceptical and cynical than child Amelia.
Rory resents Amy's interest in the Doctor - please don't be Mickey all over again!
Star-like space vehicle (Atraxi) = ref to Racnoss star?
Prisoner Zero melts and goes down drain - definitely a ref to The Three Doctors.
Amy the kiss-o-gram, Jeff looking at porn, Amy not turning back when Doc changes clothes - please let's not have Torchwood-style 'adult' content...
Conferencing on lap-top, refs to Bebo, Twitter - like Ten's 'outer space Facebook'.
Woman with children who turn out to be monsters - like monster-child in The Empty Child.
Doc wants monster to leave, rather than be captured and killed - moral stance.
Is one of the people on the computer conference Peter Capaldi? Surely not - surely he'd be in a bigger role than this? Or maybe he will recur later?
Solution is technology - computer virus and phone signal.
But monster takes Doc's form - evil twin syndrome! Seems to have tapped into Amy's obsession with the Doc to take form of her dreams.
Doc seems to use psychic abilities to turn her dreams to his advantage. So actually solution is partly his technological skill, partly his supernatural abilities. Nice - I like to see those two sides of the Doctor working together.
'Silence will fall' sounds a lot like a prophecy we should be Taking Note Of.
Shadow Proclamation, Earth as Level Five planet - drawing on past ideas about administrative systems of Whoniverse. Good.
Rory's ref to 'aliens of death' - is that a send-up of old-style story titles?
Summons aliens back to warn them off - definitely like Ten and the Sycorax. Sends them away by saying Earth isn't a threat ('mostly harmless'?), but is protected - again, like Ten saying it is defended.
Ooh - montage of past Doctors! So this new era is explicitly proclaiming from the start that it will respect the series' past - not just through oblique references, but direct on-screen visuals. Not that I'd expected anything other than respect for the past, but good to have it confirmed.
St. John's Ambulance sticker on the TARDIS door of course = One. :-)
Amy can't believe he just ran out on her... again. (Which is then reinforced by showing us child!Amy sitting glumly on her suitcase.)
Aw, but now he's back, and 'sorry about running off earlier'. He's 'run in' the newly-refurbished TARDIS, and she's ready to roll - with Amy on board.
Oops! But he's been gone two years again. Naughty Doc.
"You wanted to come 14 years ago." "I grew up." "Don't worry - I'll soon fix that." Explicit promise of taking us all back to the wonder of childhood.
Lovely play with the 'first time in the TARDIS' trope - Doc has heard it all before. And hooray for repeated refs to wardrobe, swimming pool, library. I love this aspect of the TARDIS, and am dying to see more of it.
Why on earth does she believe he'll get her back in time for 'stuff', given his previous track record?
New TARDIS is kind of H.G. Wells-ish - Victorian mad inventor vibe.
Proclaims, "I'm definitely a mad man with a box" - joy in anarchy. Fantastic.
We see her dolls and drawings - ref to fan-art? But she gets to live it for real. And it's all next to her wedding-dress! Child to adult.
Teasers for upcoming stuff looks fab! Dalek and sand-bags = Genesis of the Daleks ref? And the female Asian doctor returns - good.
In short, definitely looks promising. Moffat is referring to the past, but also positioning himself as having his own new take on the format. And Matt Smith seems just right. It's hard to judge how the adventures will pan out from this - like any opening story, it's really just about introducing the characters. But we've made a decent start.
Click here to view this entry with minimal formatting.
no subject
Very much my own thoughts. I was particularly disappointed in Amy's career depiction here - it would have been so much better, and so much more positive, to have her portrayed as something much more intelligent, strong and mature - although we still don't know much about what's going on. Extra income to fund studies, perhaps? I don't know, but I hope it's not all there is to her.
no subject
no subject
no subject
However, I would have preferred Amy as a real cop than as a kiss-a-gram who'd been pining after the Doctor for years and years and gone a bit crazy for it. Sadly, this is exactly the Moffat view of women the interviews led me to expect (much like Girl in the Fireplace and Blink - women are strong on the surface, but ultimately they will pine after men, especially the Doctor - always loved Grace best for this as female love interests go, she set a standard I would have liked to see followed). That said, the male nurse and Asian doctor were good (so subtly mixed in I didn't even notice) and the Asian doctor only made reasonable assumptions because the nurse should have pressed his case and made her look at the photo. I'm desperately trying to ignore instantiations of Moffat's professed view of women because it makes me so mad. As I can't change his view, I'll take what I can as regards the message put out.
no subject
Why do you see Amy as "pining after the Doctor for years and years and gone a bit crazy for it"? She'd encountered something that all adults would believe was just her imagination, and when she insisted it was real they made her see psychiatrists. She wasn't crazy, and wasn't "pining" after the Doctor in any way that you wouldn't expect from what happened -- and that has nothing to do with her being female.
Reinette and now Amy had their lives touched by the Doctor in childhood, and always remembered him as being someone really special. That doesn't make their strength superficial at all -- Reinette was clearly depicted as being inherently special -- and there's no evidence they "pined" after any other men.
Sally fancied whatsisname, that Nightingale bloke, but so what? Most men and most women are attracted to members of the opposite sex, and unrequited love (perhaps ultimately fulfilled) is one of the great tropes of drama.
In fact, the one example I can think of in modern Who of a woman who definitely pined after an unavailable man -- the Doctor, as it happens -- for years, and actually said no-one else ever quite matched up, was Sarah Jane Smith. And Moffat had nothing to do with that episode, but RTD did.
(Sorry if this seems a bit brusque, btw, I'm just trying to keep it brief!)