Doctor Who 5/31.02 The Beast Below
Apr. 11th, 2010 07:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which the UK travels among the stars, at a price.
Firstly, I think we'd all have gotten the Doctor/Star Whale parallels without Amy spelling them out in the last scene; that was a bit too heavy-handed for my taste. Much of the rest, I liked, even though some of it doesn't add up yet - for example, when did Amy have time to make the recording warning herself? I wonder whether we'll come back to the starship UK before the season is over...
Now, on to the good stuff. Amy getting filled in with important bits of the Doctor's backstory works without feeling repetitive of earlier scenes from previous seasons with other companions, and this time we get the "last of the Timelords" thing in the same ep with "used to be a dad", which previously was not the case. Conversely, Amy gets more fleshed out; she can open a lock, probably has done so before, really seems to be uneasy at the whole wedding prospect independent from her decision to travel with the Doctor (I wonder why she said yes to begin with then?) - and her two choices, pressing the "forget" button and later the "abdicate" one, contrast and balance each other. In the first case, she makes the same choice as Liz and the other inhabitants of the ship did over the centuries - the lives of everyone at the expense of not the life but the continuous torture of one; in the second, she gambles on her insight re: last of their kind beings, but whether she's right or wrong, she leaves the choice to the tormented being in question. The great thing is that this episode doesn't present one choice as the obvious clear-cut right one.
The Doctor's choice - a third option he comes up with - is quite telling about him at this point of his lives as well. He's not able to kill off the UK population for the alien, even though he's horrified by what they've done, nor is he able to let the alien continue being tormented, so he comes up with basically killing it but keeping the body alive so the UK population survives without causing further torment. To make the gamble Amy does doesn't occur to him; it might have done in previous times, but not, I think, to the regenerations post-Five, because of all that happened from Five onwards.
Elizabeth X.: great character. (Also proof that cooperation between show runners really pays off, i.e. RTD giving the Moff his scripts to read while the later was preparing the new season; according to The Writer's Tale, that Virgin Queen gag in End of Time was a relatively late adddition, so Liz' referring to it in Beast Below must have been a late addendum as well, but it feels completely natural. Incidentally, the fact Liz refers to it also makes Doctor/Elizabeth I canon, just in case you thought Ten was lying to the Ood.*veg*) With great twists on expectations going from "is she the evil mastermind? Future version of the little girl? Co-victim? Wait, no, she did make that decision, but...?" (BTW, it's interesting that the Doctor is angry with Amy but not with her re: the whole decision-making thing. Because Liz is a part of this society?) I'm not entirely kidding about the Moff & ALW, btw, because the mask, the cloak and the water glasses in lieu of candles do play up to the Phantom image and our changing estimations about who Liz is and what role she plays in the grand scheme of things. Given that before we get to "forget/abdicate" it's established that EVERYONE gets to vote, and that if even one disagrees, the entire scheme collapses (i.e. presumably if one of the earlier citizens or Amy had pushed the "protest" button, the same thing would have happened which did when Amy made Liz push "abdicate"), I don't think one can accuse our Mr. Moffat of glorifying the monarchy above democracy. "Basically, I rule" is still a great line. :)
Now, about the Churchill cliffhanger and the trailer. I'll leave space if you won't want to be spoiled for the trailer (which is all I've seen and know) for next week, because there is something I want to squee about, and it's not Winston C. as such.
A
T
L
A
S
T
?
!
?
Okay, so years ago when I watched the fourth season of Enterprise courtesy ofbimo, the opening episode which resolved the third season cliffhanger triggered a bit of a rant on something that not only Star Trek but many a sci fi show using time travel does. To wit: aliens arrive on Earth during WWII. Aliens team up with Nazis, allowing Nazis to win. Our Heroes have to put time right again. Back in my Enterprise related rant, I wrote that aliens arriving on Earth in 1944, which is what they did in that two-parter, would not team up with the Nazis. Especially if they were after natural geological resources. They would team up with the winning party with control over most of said resources, to wit, the Allies, allowing them a faster victory via their technology. A really interesting episode full of juicy moral dilemmas wouldn't be Our Heroes versus Aliens + Nazis to put the timeline right, but Our Heroes versus Aliens + Allies. Now what do I see in the trailer for next week? Churchill teaming up with the Daleks! (Additionally twisted because of the Daleks-as-Nazi-allegories when Terry Nation invented them.) Can the Moff have read my mind?
Firstly, I think we'd all have gotten the Doctor/Star Whale parallels without Amy spelling them out in the last scene; that was a bit too heavy-handed for my taste. Much of the rest, I liked, even though some of it doesn't add up yet - for example, when did Amy have time to make the recording warning herself? I wonder whether we'll come back to the starship UK before the season is over...
Now, on to the good stuff. Amy getting filled in with important bits of the Doctor's backstory works without feeling repetitive of earlier scenes from previous seasons with other companions, and this time we get the "last of the Timelords" thing in the same ep with "used to be a dad", which previously was not the case. Conversely, Amy gets more fleshed out; she can open a lock, probably has done so before, really seems to be uneasy at the whole wedding prospect independent from her decision to travel with the Doctor (I wonder why she said yes to begin with then?) - and her two choices, pressing the "forget" button and later the "abdicate" one, contrast and balance each other. In the first case, she makes the same choice as Liz and the other inhabitants of the ship did over the centuries - the lives of everyone at the expense of not the life but the continuous torture of one; in the second, she gambles on her insight re: last of their kind beings, but whether she's right or wrong, she leaves the choice to the tormented being in question. The great thing is that this episode doesn't present one choice as the obvious clear-cut right one.
The Doctor's choice - a third option he comes up with - is quite telling about him at this point of his lives as well. He's not able to kill off the UK population for the alien, even though he's horrified by what they've done, nor is he able to let the alien continue being tormented, so he comes up with basically killing it but keeping the body alive so the UK population survives without causing further torment. To make the gamble Amy does doesn't occur to him; it might have done in previous times, but not, I think, to the regenerations post-Five, because of all that happened from Five onwards.
Elizabeth X.: great character. (Also proof that cooperation between show runners really pays off, i.e. RTD giving the Moff his scripts to read while the later was preparing the new season; according to The Writer's Tale, that Virgin Queen gag in End of Time was a relatively late adddition, so Liz' referring to it in Beast Below must have been a late addendum as well, but it feels completely natural. Incidentally, the fact Liz refers to it also makes Doctor/Elizabeth I canon, just in case you thought Ten was lying to the Ood.*veg*) With great twists on expectations going from "is she the evil mastermind? Future version of the little girl? Co-victim? Wait, no, she did make that decision, but...?" (BTW, it's interesting that the Doctor is angry with Amy but not with her re: the whole decision-making thing. Because Liz is a part of this society?) I'm not entirely kidding about the Moff & ALW, btw, because the mask, the cloak and the water glasses in lieu of candles do play up to the Phantom image and our changing estimations about who Liz is and what role she plays in the grand scheme of things. Given that before we get to "forget/abdicate" it's established that EVERYONE gets to vote, and that if even one disagrees, the entire scheme collapses (i.e. presumably if one of the earlier citizens or Amy had pushed the "protest" button, the same thing would have happened which did when Amy made Liz push "abdicate"), I don't think one can accuse our Mr. Moffat of glorifying the monarchy above democracy. "Basically, I rule" is still a great line. :)
Now, about the Churchill cliffhanger and the trailer. I'll leave space if you won't want to be spoiled for the trailer (which is all I've seen and know) for next week, because there is something I want to squee about, and it's not Winston C. as such.
A
T
L
A
S
T
?
!
?
Okay, so years ago when I watched the fourth season of Enterprise courtesy of
bimo, the opening episode which resolved the third season cliffhanger triggered a bit of a rant on something that not only Star Trek but many a sci fi show using time travel does. To wit: aliens arrive on Earth during WWII. Aliens team up with Nazis, allowing Nazis to win. Our Heroes have to put time right again. Back in my Enterprise related rant, I wrote that aliens arriving on Earth in 1944, which is what they did in that two-parter, would not team up with the Nazis. Especially if they were after natural geological resources. They would team up with the winning party with control over most of said resources, to wit, the Allies, allowing them a faster victory via their technology. A really interesting episode full of juicy moral dilemmas wouldn't be Our Heroes versus Aliens + Nazis to put the timeline right, but Our Heroes versus Aliens + Allies. Now what do I see in the trailer for next week? Churchill teaming up with the Daleks! (Additionally twisted because of the Daleks-as-Nazi-allegories when Terry Nation invented them.) Can the Moff have read my mind?
