Doctor Who ?.01 and ?.02

[selenak]

What even, Rusty? *boggles* That was bonkers. Not boring, though!



Spacebabies: A bit too twee with the premise, and the toddlers with the six years old voices felt uncanny valley like. (Sidenote: I have no idea what the expression "Uncanny Valley" exactly refers to, but I did osmose its meaning years ago.) Also, the first ten minutes put Ruby on a fast forward through Rose's arc in her first two eps during RTD's original DW reboot, but then Doctor did have to fill her in to that backstory, and now it's over and done with. I think Rusty probably wanted to make it clear it's not going to be handled as some mystery or great source of angst this time around, plus if there are new watchers, they learned along with Ruby.

All this said, it was fun, the snot monster was clearly created by the same man who came up with the Slitheen, the Doctor saving said monster is very Doctor-y, and I appreciated the rather overt dig at the entire US Republican Party. (Aka what the Doctor thinks of people who on the one hand want to enforce the existence of babies but on the other are completely unwilling to take care of them the moment said babies aren't embryos but born, alive and actually need, you know, social services. That the official excuse was budget cuts is just the dot in the i, as we say in German.)

All the Alien(s) homages: cute, but like the entire babies premise, a bit too twee for me. Basically, I think the episode reminded me of the s4 opening episode, but that one had the Doctor and Donna reuniting to off set the tweeness of the Adipose, and the Doctor and Ruby have a different dynamic, so I don't think it's one I'll rewatch soon.

The Devil's Chord: Bonkers. Clearly, the Christmas Special wasn't enough to get the musical bug out of RTD's system. As far as "DW meets the Beatles" stories is concerned, Big Finish's Fanfare for the Common Man did it better, but this said, the world without music annihlating itself and the villain being an entity sucking music out of the world and keeping it to themselves is very Whovian, I love they actually either got to film at Abbey Road or did a good studio reconstruction, go Rusty for including George Martin (George Martin is the man!) and Cilla Black (Go Cilla!), and my absolutely favourite thing was that the world and the universe and music in general was saved by Lennon and McCartney playing together. I mean, the moment Maestro said it would take a genius to find the chords to banish them I could see where this was going in that I knew it would have to be not the Doctor or Ruby but one of the two (George H, I love you, too, but in this case...), and was prepared to be opinionated as to which Beatle RTD chose, as the musical genius to bring back music to the 'verse, but of course our Welsh Overlord was smarter than me and did the only sensible thing by letting them creat the Chord(s) Of Worldsaving together. As is only right and proper.

While the moment John sits at the piano and Paul joins him was played tenderly and quietly, the ensuing victory musical extravanganza once Maestro had been banished made me wonder whether RTD originally had this idea for a Carnival special, or something similar. It's something you either hate or love, I guess. I was boggling and then decided on love, but I would really like something more low key for the next episode, Mr. Producer Sir, please.

The Maestro as the offspring of The Toymaker and a camp reality bending villain: another case of "yes, I'm entertained, but I'm quickly reaching my saturation point of those" for me.

Ruby's origin as the seasonal mystery: my current guess is that she will turn out to be one of the reality warping pantheon crowd herself without knowing it, hence the snow and the Christmas music. (I.e. it was Ruby who did it, but unconsciously.)

Oh, and the earlier attempt to bring back music by Ruby playing the piano on the roof top was another lovely touch for Beatles fans, though mind you, that (the famous last concert) was on the rooftop of the Apple (not the Steve Jobs one, the original, Beatles one) office building, not of the EMI Studios at Abbey Road.

Lastly: why does the Paul McCartney actor have blue eyes? Enquiring minds want to know.

Comments

[lightofdaye]

I've not watched it yet. Not sure if I will but I do admire your season numbering here.

[selenak]

It struck me as a Whovian compromise, especially given the Seventh Doctor's outfits. ;)

[nomadicwriter]

The idea of the uncanny valley originally comes from early robotics! Basically, the theory was that the closer to human a robot looks, the more positive and likely to show empathy people are towards it - until it get really close, at which point they start to find it creepy instead because it looks almost convincing but something's not quite right. So the idea is of a line on a graph that's steadily rising and then takes a sudden severe dip that comes back up again once something looks fully realistic. Hence the "valley" between high points, where something might be better if it was either more cartoonish and stylised or more convincingly true to life but is currently stuck at a bad place in the middle.

[selenak]

Ah, thank you for the background!

[labingi]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. You've done a much deeper analysis than I did, but my two cents is I actually didn't find the babies uncanny-valley-ish, maybe because I was mentally comparing them to the Twilight baby. I guess most of DW is too twee for me to deeply adore, so this one didn't bother me. I also enjoyed the bonkers music one.

(Fun to see my son invested in DW. He's hard to engage with shows.)

[selenak]

Not having seen the Twilight movies or read the books, I would not know; I was mentally comparing them with eerie young Leia in Rogue One. Anyway, it didn't stop me being very entertained, it's just that this won't become a favourite episode, and that's not a problem - not every episode has to be!