Doctor Who 9.05.
Oct. 19th, 2015 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakBack from Frankfurt Book Fair, barely, totally wrung out, hence briefly some impressions of the episode in which the Doctor and Clara meet Arya Stark a girl.
Liked it, Monty-Python-Vikings and all. (Electric eels? Doubtlessly the Meddling Monk at work. Pfff.) And not just because my darling Donna and one of my favourite s4 episodes made cameo appearances. Mind you, I'm not sure about the Doctor's theory as to why his subconscious picked Caecilius Metellus, because if he wanted to remind himself of a lesson learned while he was Ten, wouldn't Adelaide have been an obvious choice? Darker lesson, though. Otoh the idea of Lindsay Duncan playing a female Twelve to correspond to Michelle Gomez' female Master is delicious.
Anyway: Clara and the Doctor are such a team now, and it's going to break my heart all over again when she leaves. The Donna flashback - "save someone" - made for a fascinating contrast to Clara's approach, which was basically "we both know you won't let these people die and that you'll come up with a plan sooner or later if you really try, to get on with it already". It's not a confidence she'd have had in the first half of last season when she was unsure about the Doctor and what he would and wouldn't do in his new regeneration, and it's not something she'd have done in her brief time with Eleven because that early on she was following his lead, but it's the place she is with herself and the Doctor now.
(...and again I'm dreading an angsty upset to this. But for now it's great to watch.)
Ashildr, played by Maisie Williams: well, there are some obvious possibilities of how this new immortality could go:
- Ashildr turns into a supervillain (most obvious) and in fact is the hybrid AND the ominous "War Minister"
- Ashildr remains good or neutral, but the person she gives the second immortality-inducing MacGuffin to becomes a supervillain and, see above; this is actually my current theory, because it creates an obvious parallel to the Master/Missy, and Ashildr has been paralleled with the Doctor in this episode (being an outsider in her community of origin, yet wanting to save it but also almost dooming it; a storyteller, which is what the Doctor called himself once or twice this season already). (Of course there's also the big contrast: the Doctor running and defining himself by it, Ashildr staying.)
- Ashildr never uses the second device because by the time she could make a choice like that, she's lived long enough to not to wish it on someone she cares about; however, the second device ends up being used for Clara in some sort of almost death situation in the season finale, and they leave the show together
- Ashildr hooks up with Jack Harkness.
Just kidding about the last. But given Moffat wrote the first two Jack featuring episodes, it's a bit baffling he misses out referencing the obvious parallel here. Though I can fanwank that the Doctor IS aware and hence made sure Ashildr won't have to be alone in her immortality. In any case, he IS aware that this could go wrong and that reacting instinctively and saving Ashildr in this particular way was probably not a wise decision. Now I'm curious whether his next encounter with her will be by accident or whether he'll actually try and check on her some centuries later.
Outside possibility: Ashildr as the next Companion? I don't think so, because Maisie Williams is too busy with Game of Thrones in the near future, but it would provide the Doctor with his first centuries old Companion since Romana, and the show with its first "historical" Companion since decades, while also, since Ashildr would have lived into the present/future, avoiding the technological imbalance between viewers and Companion New Who apparantly dreads.
Other thoughts: seems the sonic glasses weren't just picked for the whimsical coolness on a Doylist basis, since we have a theme of seeing through devices going in this episode; Clara teaches Ashildr who to use them, later Ashildr uses the Maya helmet viewing device to save her village and almost burns out through it, the Maya are defeated through their use of such devices. And last episode the Doctor outwitted the antagonist twice via a hologram steered via a viewing device. I spy a Chekovian set up.
Liked it, Monty-Python-Vikings and all. (Electric eels? Doubtlessly the Meddling Monk at work. Pfff.) And not just because my darling Donna and one of my favourite s4 episodes made cameo appearances. Mind you, I'm not sure about the Doctor's theory as to why his subconscious picked Caecilius Metellus, because if he wanted to remind himself of a lesson learned while he was Ten, wouldn't Adelaide have been an obvious choice? Darker lesson, though. Otoh the idea of Lindsay Duncan playing a female Twelve to correspond to Michelle Gomez' female Master is delicious.
Anyway: Clara and the Doctor are such a team now, and it's going to break my heart all over again when she leaves. The Donna flashback - "save someone" - made for a fascinating contrast to Clara's approach, which was basically "we both know you won't let these people die and that you'll come up with a plan sooner or later if you really try, to get on with it already". It's not a confidence she'd have had in the first half of last season when she was unsure about the Doctor and what he would and wouldn't do in his new regeneration, and it's not something she'd have done in her brief time with Eleven because that early on she was following his lead, but it's the place she is with herself and the Doctor now.
(...and again I'm dreading an angsty upset to this. But for now it's great to watch.)
Ashildr, played by Maisie Williams: well, there are some obvious possibilities of how this new immortality could go:
- Ashildr turns into a supervillain (most obvious) and in fact is the hybrid AND the ominous "War Minister"
- Ashildr remains good or neutral, but the person she gives the second immortality-inducing MacGuffin to becomes a supervillain and, see above; this is actually my current theory, because it creates an obvious parallel to the Master/Missy, and Ashildr has been paralleled with the Doctor in this episode (being an outsider in her community of origin, yet wanting to save it but also almost dooming it; a storyteller, which is what the Doctor called himself once or twice this season already). (Of course there's also the big contrast: the Doctor running and defining himself by it, Ashildr staying.)
- Ashildr never uses the second device because by the time she could make a choice like that, she's lived long enough to not to wish it on someone she cares about; however, the second device ends up being used for Clara in some sort of almost death situation in the season finale, and they leave the show together
- Ashildr hooks up with Jack Harkness.
Just kidding about the last. But given Moffat wrote the first two Jack featuring episodes, it's a bit baffling he misses out referencing the obvious parallel here. Though I can fanwank that the Doctor IS aware and hence made sure Ashildr won't have to be alone in her immortality. In any case, he IS aware that this could go wrong and that reacting instinctively and saving Ashildr in this particular way was probably not a wise decision. Now I'm curious whether his next encounter with her will be by accident or whether he'll actually try and check on her some centuries later.
Outside possibility: Ashildr as the next Companion? I don't think so, because Maisie Williams is too busy with Game of Thrones in the near future, but it would provide the Doctor with his first centuries old Companion since Romana, and the show with its first "historical" Companion since decades, while also, since Ashildr would have lived into the present/future, avoiding the technological imbalance between viewers and Companion New Who apparantly dreads.
Other thoughts: seems the sonic glasses weren't just picked for the whimsical coolness on a Doylist basis, since we have a theme of seeing through devices going in this episode; Clara teaches Ashildr who to use them, later Ashildr uses the Maya helmet viewing device to save her village and almost burns out through it, the Maya are defeated through their use of such devices. And last episode the Doctor outwitted the antagonist twice via a hologram steered via a viewing device. I spy a Chekovian set up.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-19 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 12:26 pm (UTC)If that was the message the Doctor was trying to send himself, it seemed to me that he got it badly wrong. The lesson was that you can't save everyone, but you can save a few of them, and he'd already done that, by saving most of the villagers, at the cost of the warriors and Ashildr. The villagers would be able to continue their mortal lives much as before, like Caecilius, Metella and kids* - but there's no comparison between that and bringing Ashildr back from the dead to live an unnatural immortal life. She'd already talked about the social problems she'd had from being "different", but that would be a minor hiccup compared with this. This is the full Jack Harkness, an error made by Bad-Wolf-Rose which sent the Doctor running.
* I wasn't quite clear how Pompeian refugees had acquired a nice house in Rome so quickly, but maybe the Doctor arranged one, like he did for Amy and Rory.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-01 12:34 am (UTC)It occurred to me this evening - as I was walking over the Hungerford footbridge, for some reason - that Duncan and Gomez could be the closest thing we've had to Pertwee and Delgado.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 04:41 pm (UTC)Agreed on the message from Fires of Pompeii. But given the show already gave us Ashildr looking not happy as time passes around here, and the last conversation between the Doctor and Clara, I think the Doctor is already aware/suspects he got it wrong...
no subject
Date: 2015-10-23 04:07 pm (UTC)