Doctor Who 8.04 Listen
Sep. 14th, 2014 05:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThat was classic Moffat.
All his favourite tropes polished into gem form: children (and childhood fears of the things moving when you don't look, like statues, shadows - or those things under your bed), timey-wimey, meetings out of order, mirrors. (With Coupling style dating misunderstandings thrown in.) Now if he's sloppy, as in certain season finales, these kind of favourite element mixtures can come across as slapdash, at least to me. But if he's in fine form, which imo he is in this episode, they make for captivating, sometimes even classic tv.
Same refrain as in all previous episodes: Clara is such a delight this season, her being a teacher so well used as part of her characterisation. New: just what I was missing in the Dalek ep - a previous Clara experience brought up, when it makes sense for the current plot and it even demands it, i.e. Oswin in the case of the Dalek tale, - this time was used beautifully. The last twist of the episode I did not see coming, and yet, like the best twists, in retrospect it was carefully prepared. I guessed the boy wasn't Danny/Rupert (or Orson, for that matter) but the First Doctor as a child only a second or two before Clara realised, but I had no idea of the significance of the shed until Clara spelled it out. (Was tempted to use my picture of John Hurt!Doctor for this entry, but I hate being spoiled and wouldn't want to do this for anyone.) And in retrospect, this gives Hurt!Doctor picking this particular shed as the place to destroy Gallifrey and the Daleks in the big anniversary episode another layer. And of course Clara would recognize it.
I bet there was nitpicking re: "becoming a Time Lord", but a) I always thought even post-Rassilon, there must be Gallifreyans who weren't Time Lords and didn't regenerate along with the time travelling variety, b) frankly, I don't care. Which is the case when an episode really grips me. That moment when Clara reaches out to grab the boy's ankles and thus becomes the monster under the bed, the equation of fear/companion, all of it was just too sublime for me to go into nitpicking mood or read nitpicking reviews just yet.
And all of it starting with the simple MacGuffin of the Doctor, seemingly on a whim, deciding to track down the origin of that archetypical childhood nightmare all children share sooner or later. And you think Moffat is going to create a new monster a la the Weeping Angels in Blink or the moving shadows, the Vashta Narada, in the Library episodes. I was a tad sceptical at first, because what puppetry or GCI could live up to what our imagination creates for the monster under the bed? And then he actually pulls it off by avoiding a creature!Monster altogether, and going for time travel and inadvertant self creation as the solution instead.
Meanwhile, ongoing Clara/Danny mouth-in-foot subplot: not quite sold on why Clara is so taken with Danny, and I bet if you hate the Moff already, the proposal joke grated, ditto for the heavy hints of Orson as a descendant of Danny and Clara both. For me, it remained on the right side of amusing so far, but could get old if Clara and Danny still don't get an actual conversation without misunderstandings going the next time they meet.
In conclusion: the first one this season I really want to rewatch. In case I didn't mention it, Capaldi's, Coleman's and the boy who played Rupert's acting was sublime, too.
All his favourite tropes polished into gem form: children (and childhood fears of the things moving when you don't look, like statues, shadows - or those things under your bed), timey-wimey, meetings out of order, mirrors. (With Coupling style dating misunderstandings thrown in.) Now if he's sloppy, as in certain season finales, these kind of favourite element mixtures can come across as slapdash, at least to me. But if he's in fine form, which imo he is in this episode, they make for captivating, sometimes even classic tv.
Same refrain as in all previous episodes: Clara is such a delight this season, her being a teacher so well used as part of her characterisation. New: just what I was missing in the Dalek ep - a previous Clara experience brought up, when it makes sense for the current plot and it even demands it, i.e. Oswin in the case of the Dalek tale, - this time was used beautifully. The last twist of the episode I did not see coming, and yet, like the best twists, in retrospect it was carefully prepared. I guessed the boy wasn't Danny/Rupert (or Orson, for that matter) but the First Doctor as a child only a second or two before Clara realised, but I had no idea of the significance of the shed until Clara spelled it out. (Was tempted to use my picture of John Hurt!Doctor for this entry, but I hate being spoiled and wouldn't want to do this for anyone.) And in retrospect, this gives Hurt!Doctor picking this particular shed as the place to destroy Gallifrey and the Daleks in the big anniversary episode another layer. And of course Clara would recognize it.
I bet there was nitpicking re: "becoming a Time Lord", but a) I always thought even post-Rassilon, there must be Gallifreyans who weren't Time Lords and didn't regenerate along with the time travelling variety, b) frankly, I don't care. Which is the case when an episode really grips me. That moment when Clara reaches out to grab the boy's ankles and thus becomes the monster under the bed, the equation of fear/companion, all of it was just too sublime for me to go into nitpicking mood or read nitpicking reviews just yet.
And all of it starting with the simple MacGuffin of the Doctor, seemingly on a whim, deciding to track down the origin of that archetypical childhood nightmare all children share sooner or later. And you think Moffat is going to create a new monster a la the Weeping Angels in Blink or the moving shadows, the Vashta Narada, in the Library episodes. I was a tad sceptical at first, because what puppetry or GCI could live up to what our imagination creates for the monster under the bed? And then he actually pulls it off by avoiding a creature!Monster altogether, and going for time travel and inadvertant self creation as the solution instead.
Meanwhile, ongoing Clara/Danny mouth-in-foot subplot: not quite sold on why Clara is so taken with Danny, and I bet if you hate the Moff already, the proposal joke grated, ditto for the heavy hints of Orson as a descendant of Danny and Clara both. For me, it remained on the right side of amusing so far, but could get old if Clara and Danny still don't get an actual conversation without misunderstandings going the next time they meet.
In conclusion: the first one this season I really want to rewatch. In case I didn't mention it, Capaldi's, Coleman's and the boy who played Rupert's acting was sublime, too.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-14 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-15 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-15 07:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-16 12:45 pm (UTC)I'd love to see Danny as companion.
The "becoming a Time Lord" thing made me very happy, rather than nitpicky, because it justifies a whole bunch of my own head canon (including the one where Ace became a Time Lord eventually) and just felt right for how Gallifreyan society would need to work. If that makes any sense?
This was just classic Moffat in the good sense. These kinds of meditations on childhood fears and commonplace things made scary are what he does really, really well.
no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-17 02:45 pm (UTC)Exactly my thought! We see lots of children in the Time War scenes, so it's not like they just stopped reproducing. If all of them lived for thousands of years, then they' have to keep birth rates incredibly low or the planet would quickly be overrun and all the resources consumed.