Doctor Who 7.01 Deep Breath
Aug. 25th, 2014 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakYou know the Companion of ages past Clara should now urgently meet? Peri, in her early days with the Sixth Doctor.
I can just picture it.
"And then he leaves me with a bunch of human organ harvesting automatons."
"Well, at least he didn't try to strangle you!"
Seriously, though, I think Moffat is going for something like a second take on the Peri and Six dynamic - Companion signs on travelling with nice, young-looking Doctor, regeneration happens, Companion is stuck with abrasive Doctor, bickering ensues. Now when I watched my first tale with Peri and Six on tv - which wasn't their first story, it was "The Mark of the Rani" - I thought the bickering was seriously on the wrong side of banter (it didn't come across as fond and exasparated, it came across as two people who mostly disliked each other, imo of course), but the audios, as in so many things, improved on that, without losing the bickering, only the balance was right.
As for Clara and Capaldi!Doctor: I think going through the regeneration/alienation/rediscovery experience might have freed Clara from her generic companion-ness (which her Dalek and Victorian incarnations didn't have). Moffat laid it on a bit thick with the "not your boyfriend" (we didn't need to hear it twice to get the point, Moff) etc., but in general the exasparation-bewilderment worked, and so did the build up to Clara, at the climax of her confrontation with the automaton leader, not knowing whether the Doctor had deserted her for good and gambling on there still being a Doctor-ish core in him preventing him from doing so - but not knowing for sure. It's the kind of story you can only do with a new regeneration because in an established dynamic the audience is too convinced that of course he'll be there for the moment to feel tense. (Clara had a good episode in general, figuring out a lot of things amidst all the emotional ups and downs and getting her own relationship with Vastra.)
The Doctor, now. I thought the script was a bit sledgehammery not just with the "no flirting with this one!" message but also the key identity question - if you didn't get the main automaton rebuilding itself (himself) until nearly nothing of the original was left was to mirror the Doctor himself via the dialogue ("you can't even remember whose face you wear!") and acting, there was a helpful mirror raised between them, literally mirroring them both at the same time. Subtle, this was not. But Capaldi sold me on it from the moment the Doctor started to get out of the post-regeneration crazy (though not yet completely) and promised the dinosaur he would get her home, only for the dino be be fried by the villains du jour. (Both the delight in the wonder of dinosaurs and the quietly seething outrage about the dino's death reminded me of Three.) Sledgehammery lines aside, the big confrontation scene with the automaton leader (with the intentional ambiguity as to whether he reasoned the antagonist mirroring him into suicide or pushed him - either way, it's a dark if inevitable solution) and the last scene with Clara, where for the first time you see vulnerability that has nothing to do with post-regeneration haze but makes it clear he really wold miss her if she left both were made real for me by the performance.
The automatons from "Girl in the Fireplace" were like the Weeping Angels Moffat-created villains from the RTD era, and given that the Angels went downhill I was a bit uneasy about him bringing his other intended-as-one-shot success back. The differences between these automatons and the one from the Pompadour worked better for me than the changes for the Angels, though, because these automatons had been rebuilding themselves for millennia. The Doctor unable to remember where he met them before and hence also unable to remember Reinette, otoh, belongs into the sledgehammery "no romance, seriously, no romance with this one!" category which made me sigh wearily "yes, yes, I believe you". (BTW: since these automatons originally came from the Marie Antoinette: is there some curse on French futuristic space ships going on?)
Then again: the woman introduced in the last scene, obviously intended as at least a seasonal villain, uses the "boyfriend" term so maybe the intention was to underline more that the Doctor doesn't know himself than the promise to the audience that there will be no more kissing for a while. Incidentally: my crack theory is that the lady is the Master's first female regeneration, because that's just his style she uses, but I don't expect it to be true. Otoh I don't expect her to be another regeneration of River Song , either (not because River had used up all her regenerations to save the Doctor, Moffat could handwave that by River not being a Gallifreyan or something like that, but because I think he's done with River's story).
In conclusion: an okay introduction of a new regeneration saved by a good actor; otoh a really good Companion episode; the Doctor-mirroring antagonist was supposed to be tragic but was a bit too obvious a narrative ploy for that to work.
I can just picture it.
"And then he leaves me with a bunch of human organ harvesting automatons."
"Well, at least he didn't try to strangle you!"
Seriously, though, I think Moffat is going for something like a second take on the Peri and Six dynamic - Companion signs on travelling with nice, young-looking Doctor, regeneration happens, Companion is stuck with abrasive Doctor, bickering ensues. Now when I watched my first tale with Peri and Six on tv - which wasn't their first story, it was "The Mark of the Rani" - I thought the bickering was seriously on the wrong side of banter (it didn't come across as fond and exasparated, it came across as two people who mostly disliked each other, imo of course), but the audios, as in so many things, improved on that, without losing the bickering, only the balance was right.
As for Clara and Capaldi!Doctor: I think going through the regeneration/alienation/rediscovery experience might have freed Clara from her generic companion-ness (which her Dalek and Victorian incarnations didn't have). Moffat laid it on a bit thick with the "not your boyfriend" (we didn't need to hear it twice to get the point, Moff) etc., but in general the exasparation-bewilderment worked, and so did the build up to Clara, at the climax of her confrontation with the automaton leader, not knowing whether the Doctor had deserted her for good and gambling on there still being a Doctor-ish core in him preventing him from doing so - but not knowing for sure. It's the kind of story you can only do with a new regeneration because in an established dynamic the audience is too convinced that of course he'll be there for the moment to feel tense. (Clara had a good episode in general, figuring out a lot of things amidst all the emotional ups and downs and getting her own relationship with Vastra.)
The Doctor, now. I thought the script was a bit sledgehammery not just with the "no flirting with this one!" message but also the key identity question - if you didn't get the main automaton rebuilding itself (himself) until nearly nothing of the original was left was to mirror the Doctor himself via the dialogue ("you can't even remember whose face you wear!") and acting, there was a helpful mirror raised between them, literally mirroring them both at the same time. Subtle, this was not. But Capaldi sold me on it from the moment the Doctor started to get out of the post-regeneration crazy (though not yet completely) and promised the dinosaur he would get her home, only for the dino be be fried by the villains du jour. (Both the delight in the wonder of dinosaurs and the quietly seething outrage about the dino's death reminded me of Three.) Sledgehammery lines aside, the big confrontation scene with the automaton leader (with the intentional ambiguity as to whether he reasoned the antagonist mirroring him into suicide or pushed him - either way, it's a dark if inevitable solution) and the last scene with Clara, where for the first time you see vulnerability that has nothing to do with post-regeneration haze but makes it clear he really wold miss her if she left both were made real for me by the performance.
The automatons from "Girl in the Fireplace" were like the Weeping Angels Moffat-created villains from the RTD era, and given that the Angels went downhill I was a bit uneasy about him bringing his other intended-as-one-shot success back. The differences between these automatons and the one from the Pompadour worked better for me than the changes for the Angels, though, because these automatons had been rebuilding themselves for millennia. The Doctor unable to remember where he met them before and hence also unable to remember Reinette, otoh, belongs into the sledgehammery "no romance, seriously, no romance with this one!" category which made me sigh wearily "yes, yes, I believe you". (BTW: since these automatons originally came from the Marie Antoinette: is there some curse on French futuristic space ships going on?)
Then again: the woman introduced in the last scene, obviously intended as at least a seasonal villain, uses the "boyfriend" term so maybe the intention was to underline more that the Doctor doesn't know himself than the promise to the audience that there will be no more kissing for a while. Incidentally: my crack theory is that the lady is the Master's first female regeneration, because that's just his style she uses, but I don't expect it to be true. Otoh I don't expect her to be another regeneration of River Song , either (not because River had used up all her regenerations to save the Doctor, Moffat could handwave that by River not being a Gallifreyan or something like that, but because I think he's done with River's story).
In conclusion: an okay introduction of a new regeneration saved by a good actor; otoh a really good Companion episode; the Doctor-mirroring antagonist was supposed to be tragic but was a bit too obvious a narrative ploy for that to work.
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Date: 2014-08-25 04:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-25 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-25 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-25 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-25 05:41 pm (UTC)Whereas my first thought on 'boyfriend' was the Master, but I immediately dismissed that as coming out of left field. . .
I did enjoy Clara (and Vastra and Jenny and Strax in this a lot); as far as 12 it'll be interesting to come back and look at his performance once we've seen the character he settles into.
I have some halfbaked theories about 12 being visibly older and cranky as an about face from 11 being young* and (overall) sweet -- like 11 was him trying his hardest to deny the things he feared being true about himself and 12 being the swing-around to 'oh hell, this is what I am and I've got to embrace it.' Will see how it all plays out.
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Date: 2014-08-26 08:08 am (UTC)I would love a fem!Master, though, although I'm dubious about making the antagonist a femme fatale. (And would be annoyed if they made the boyfriend thing explicit as het when it has only been subtexty as slash.) I'm really interested to see the Master in general this time around, in any case.
Twelve so far in general has reminded me of Eight ("Who am I?" lol), Three, and Ten (give the man a cup of tea for the tannins, dammit), which is nice because continuity. I could deal with more Three flavouring in general, tbh, because I love him. And re: your last line, I'm remembering what the Doctor said once about how when he was young, he put on older faces to look all grown up, but later he didn't bother trying so hard anymore Maybe now (now that he's on his second set of regenerations, Twelve being really Fourteen or whatever) he's willing to admit to not being young. But yeah, so far so good. :)
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Date: 2014-08-26 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-27 07:06 am (UTC)As to the boyfriend being the Master, given that Missy asks "did he push you or did you jump?", she's clearly referring to the Doctor, so that never occured to me, but that at that point the body language had made me wonder "is this the Master as a woman?" already...
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Date: 2014-08-27 06:33 pm (UTC)Yeah, that occurred to me too. Though the Mary Poppins imagery in Clara's early appearances seem to be echoed here. Hmm. Do we know anything about Clara's family-of-birth?
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Date: 2014-08-27 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-27 07:12 pm (UTC)It's been a long few months :)
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Date: 2014-08-27 06:51 pm (UTC)Well, Moffat famously turned the Doctor into a woman at the end of that one spoof...never say never.
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Date: 2014-08-27 06:54 pm (UTC)