Doctor Who 7.03 A Town Called Mercy
Sep. 16th, 2012 08:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which Toby Whitehouse gets to write a Western.
It's been a loooong while since Doctor Who did one, and the more serious themes of the episode aside, you can tell the production team had fun with the opportunity. Also they had an excuse for hiring Ben Browder. (Who was very sympathetic but alas only around for a short while.)
A quick glance at everyone's reactions tells me this causes the usual divide between "omg well constructed master piece" and "omg sloppy mess" again (depending, predictably, whether the reviewers already considers Moffatian DW as a wonderfully tightly written oeuvre or a messy collection of gag and cool scenes before ever watching the episode), and you know, I can see reasons for both. There was some obvious mirroring going on (not just the most glaring, the Doctor and Jex, but also the Doctor and the Gunslinger, the Gunslinger and Jex), and whoever directed the episode stole a trick from the first two Hannibal Lector movies (and serial killer/detective combinations in general) where at some points the conversations are filmed in a way that you can't tell which of the characters is in prison, and which one is free, because they're both glimpsed through bars.
On the other hand, one of the key scenes, which by itself was good - Amy and the Doctor - in the larger context of the show highlighted two problems. One, and that's a smaller one, that you can tell the episodes were/are getting written independently from each other and don't get minutely edited; thus Amy this week can't shoot, which totally makes sense and makes for good visuals and avoidance of pathos when the gun she holds repeatedly goes off mid speech, except last week she had no problem handling laser guns as well as an experienced Edwardian hunter. The other, which is larger: we've done that scene before, back when it was Nine and Rose in Dalek, and "what are you becoming, Doctor?", and Ten and Donna at the end of Runaway Bride. Now for me the New Who "Companion reminds Doctor of ethics and stops him from crossing the line" trope is a good one that bears repeating every now and then, but if that is the case, then don't give me, in the same episode, Jex saying that what keeps the Doctor back his his own morality. What I did love about this newest variation of the trop was Eleven bringing up the Master, because that made it an emotional tie-in to both Last of the Time Lords and End of Time as far as New Who and many of the Master episodes from Old Who are concerned; to the basic Batman and Joker problem, if you like - by not killing him, is the Doctor responsible for his victims? (Or as Maria Hill puts it in a conversation with Tony Stark in the comics just before Civil War: at what point is the Green Goblin Spider-man's fault?)
As good as it is to get evidence of the Doctor's guilty awareness that by choosing to save the Master (and btw, not just Ten did that; the only regeneration who didn't, who made a conscious choice to let the Master die when he could have saved him was Five in Planet of Fire, a scene also worth keeping in mind as a precedent here if you want to argue the Doctor would never, even for a short while (before Amy snaps him out of it) throw a war criminal to his certain death), he also made the follow-up of victims possible; tying it to the situation as presented in A Town Called Mercy feels a bit fake. Given the Master's track record over centuries, there is no reason to believe he'd ever stop being a supervillain. (Well, unless you mindwipe him and make him Professor Yana.) Jex, on the other hand, shows no sign of intending to resume his war criminal deeds. Yes, you can argue the Doctor is projecting his own guilt in either case (i.e. condemming/saving either the Master or Jex is condemmning/saving himself), but the equations still don't quite work for me. Not the way they did when it was Bron and Nine in Boom Town.
Jex himself was a good character, though, definitely an improvement on when ST: Voyager did the idea of a doctor with a war criminal past; letting him not be Evil McEvilson in the present but genuinenly have started a new life helping people without belittling the enormity of what he did in the past was a good story telling choice. I was a bit torn on the suicide as the obvious dramatic solution to the episode's dilemma, but for me it was balanced by the Doctor persuading the Gunslinger NOT to do the same but to live to save peope instead (as I said: more than one mirror situation going on in this episode), because otherwise we'd have heroic suicide presented as the only means of atonement.
Missed chance of the episode: being a nurse,you'd think Rory would have had more emotional involvement in a doctor who mutilated his patients and transformed them into weapons to win war on the one hand and saved a town in the other, but instead, the episode just lets him side with the "hand Jex oer" solution with no hesitation at all and doesn't give him any interaction with the other alien doctor. Speaking of Amy and Rory, given they're about to leave, they had amazingly little to do here; with the exception of the big Amy and the Doctor scene, you could have taken them out of the episode altogether without changing it in the slightest.
Trivia: before anyone complains about the Doctor leaving a Cyborg (and his tech) in 19th century America, given the Cyborg in question has shown himself to be a man with a conscience in control of his weaponry, it doesn't trouble me the way Nine being an utter dick and leaving Adam with the uncontrollable futuristic tech in his head in The Long Game did.
Lastly: for sheer unserious Western spoof value (which this episode wasn't meant to be, only in part), I'd go for TNG's A Fistful Of Datas. Because Data as the saloon madam for the win.
It's been a loooong while since Doctor Who did one, and the more serious themes of the episode aside, you can tell the production team had fun with the opportunity. Also they had an excuse for hiring Ben Browder. (Who was very sympathetic but alas only around for a short while.)
A quick glance at everyone's reactions tells me this causes the usual divide between "omg well constructed master piece" and "omg sloppy mess" again (depending, predictably, whether the reviewers already considers Moffatian DW as a wonderfully tightly written oeuvre or a messy collection of gag and cool scenes before ever watching the episode), and you know, I can see reasons for both. There was some obvious mirroring going on (not just the most glaring, the Doctor and Jex, but also the Doctor and the Gunslinger, the Gunslinger and Jex), and whoever directed the episode stole a trick from the first two Hannibal Lector movies (and serial killer/detective combinations in general) where at some points the conversations are filmed in a way that you can't tell which of the characters is in prison, and which one is free, because they're both glimpsed through bars.
On the other hand, one of the key scenes, which by itself was good - Amy and the Doctor - in the larger context of the show highlighted two problems. One, and that's a smaller one, that you can tell the episodes were/are getting written independently from each other and don't get minutely edited; thus Amy this week can't shoot, which totally makes sense and makes for good visuals and avoidance of pathos when the gun she holds repeatedly goes off mid speech, except last week she had no problem handling laser guns as well as an experienced Edwardian hunter. The other, which is larger: we've done that scene before, back when it was Nine and Rose in Dalek, and "what are you becoming, Doctor?", and Ten and Donna at the end of Runaway Bride. Now for me the New Who "Companion reminds Doctor of ethics and stops him from crossing the line" trope is a good one that bears repeating every now and then, but if that is the case, then don't give me, in the same episode, Jex saying that what keeps the Doctor back his his own morality. What I did love about this newest variation of the trop was Eleven bringing up the Master, because that made it an emotional tie-in to both Last of the Time Lords and End of Time as far as New Who and many of the Master episodes from Old Who are concerned; to the basic Batman and Joker problem, if you like - by not killing him, is the Doctor responsible for his victims? (Or as Maria Hill puts it in a conversation with Tony Stark in the comics just before Civil War: at what point is the Green Goblin Spider-man's fault?)
As good as it is to get evidence of the Doctor's guilty awareness that by choosing to save the Master (and btw, not just Ten did that; the only regeneration who didn't, who made a conscious choice to let the Master die when he could have saved him was Five in Planet of Fire, a scene also worth keeping in mind as a precedent here if you want to argue the Doctor would never, even for a short while (before Amy snaps him out of it) throw a war criminal to his certain death), he also made the follow-up of victims possible; tying it to the situation as presented in A Town Called Mercy feels a bit fake. Given the Master's track record over centuries, there is no reason to believe he'd ever stop being a supervillain. (Well, unless you mindwipe him and make him Professor Yana.) Jex, on the other hand, shows no sign of intending to resume his war criminal deeds. Yes, you can argue the Doctor is projecting his own guilt in either case (i.e. condemming/saving either the Master or Jex is condemmning/saving himself), but the equations still don't quite work for me. Not the way they did when it was Bron and Nine in Boom Town.
Jex himself was a good character, though, definitely an improvement on when ST: Voyager did the idea of a doctor with a war criminal past; letting him not be Evil McEvilson in the present but genuinenly have started a new life helping people without belittling the enormity of what he did in the past was a good story telling choice. I was a bit torn on the suicide as the obvious dramatic solution to the episode's dilemma, but for me it was balanced by the Doctor persuading the Gunslinger NOT to do the same but to live to save peope instead (as I said: more than one mirror situation going on in this episode), because otherwise we'd have heroic suicide presented as the only means of atonement.
Missed chance of the episode: being a nurse,you'd think Rory would have had more emotional involvement in a doctor who mutilated his patients and transformed them into weapons to win war on the one hand and saved a town in the other, but instead, the episode just lets him side with the "hand Jex oer" solution with no hesitation at all and doesn't give him any interaction with the other alien doctor. Speaking of Amy and Rory, given they're about to leave, they had amazingly little to do here; with the exception of the big Amy and the Doctor scene, you could have taken them out of the episode altogether without changing it in the slightest.
Trivia: before anyone complains about the Doctor leaving a Cyborg (and his tech) in 19th century America, given the Cyborg in question has shown himself to be a man with a conscience in control of his weaponry, it doesn't trouble me the way Nine being an utter dick and leaving Adam with the uncontrollable futuristic tech in his head in The Long Game did.
Lastly: for sheer unserious Western spoof value (which this episode wasn't meant to be, only in part), I'd go for TNG's A Fistful Of Datas. Because Data as the saloon madam for the win.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-16 09:12 pm (UTC)