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selenakAt last, I managed to watch the Christmas Specials of two shows I'm following. One of them was lovely, encapsulating all the particular show's strengths and managing to create sympathy for the guest stars in peril despite the inevitable short screen time they could have. The other, while not as bad as some ominous above cut rumblings let me to believe, unfortunately, much like that show's last season, neither particularly good or particularly bad, just mediocre, though entertaining, with a few outstanding moments, which is all the more frustrating because very recently we've seen the show do better.
Three guesses which was which, and the first two don't count.
What The Time of the Doctor reminded me most of was Generations, the first Star Trek: TNG cinema outing. See, after delivering what I still think is not only the best finale of a Star Trek series but also one of the best tv series finales, All Good Things..., the writers of said finale, Ron Moore and Brannon Braga, went without a pause to write the script for the first TNG movie. While Generations isn't the worst Star Trek movie or the second or the third worst, it won't be anyone's choice among the best three, either, and there is a palpable aura of exhaustion and "been there, done that, and better" around it.
All of which I find to be true for The Time of the Doctor as compared to the immediately preceding anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor. It's not that I have a quarrel with the basic ideas. For example: The Doctor, someone who spent all his life times running, spending centuries of his life to defend a small town/village in one place, the first of the Doctors to age enough to die of old age since One: sound and touching premise. All these centuries happening to the Doctor while for Clara, it's only a single Christmas dinner: very Moffatian, and a great reversal of Ten experiencing Reinette's entire life within a few hours (and how the Doctor in general experiences human lives). And God knows I've given up on ever finding out what the point of the Silence was, or who made the TARDIS explode in the s5 finale, which this special does tell.
It's the execution that means the special except for a few times never gets out of the the mediocre region. I can handwave the existence of an eternally Christmassy town complete with vaguely Dickensian outfits for the inhabitants on Trenzelore as Whovian daftness, but what I can't handwave is that Moffat should have made me care for the inhabitants, and sorry, but the one moppet declaring he'll wait for the Doctor (a la Amelia) won't do the trick. In the abstract, I'm all for the Doctor giving what he thinks is the remainder of his existence for generations of the town (because every life is precious), but terms of tv effectiveness, for this to emotionally work on me I need to get to know some of these people and care about them. I also need to believe they're truly threatened, and despite the armada of Whovian baddies (who apparantly had nothing else to do with a couple of centuries, either, than hang around Trenzelore, which makes their threat level zero), I just plain didn't. (Point in case: Moffats inability not to do a "greatest hits" thing and bringing the Weeping Angels back for a short encore. Except after their cameo, they never get mentioned again (despite being just outside of the town which is full of inhabitants), because that would derail the plot, which reminds me of the way the Crack was important unless it wasn't in s5 and the Doctor just left the little girl who would be River despite this being wildly ooc because otherwise the River backstory would be derailed in s6. Not to mention that the Angels truly are Moffat's Borgs, with diminishing returns every time he brings them back.
Irony: he did make me care about the Cyberhead, complete with Zen (from B7) like demise. See, he can do it, even in the Christmas special, with new characters. Why not some of the townsfolk?
Then there was Tash (spelling?), who was such a clear River Song stand-in that I wondered whether Alex Kingston couldn't make it so the script had to be rewritten for a new character, and such lines like "I could always fly the TARDIS, it was flying the Doctor I never managed" remained in despite that.
The Time Lords donating a whole new generation cycle via the Crack is something I didn't have a problem with (not least because unlike Clara, I don't believe they did it out of the goodness of their hearts or because they love him, but for the same reason the Master got a new Gallifreyan body and life cycle during the Time War - they still need him), but the Doctor using the regeneration energy to shoot the Daleks from the skies was just ridiculous.
On the bright side: Matt Smith's performance, which was excellent, and props, too, to the costume and make-up people for making him resemble William Hartnell more and more in the later stages of the Doctor's aging.
And: little Amelia and adult Amy cameo. "The first face this face ever saw." Awwwww. I must admit, that was the one moment I really was misty eyed, and I never shipped the Doctor and Amy. Still don't, but there was so much love in that moment. Again, I say: Awwwwww.
In conclusion: Goodbye, Eleven. I liked you, a lot, though you were never one of my favourites. Hello, Twelve-who-is-really-Fourteen! And please, BBC, you should really start to look for a new and unexhausted writing team.
You know, they're still finding unexploded WWII bombs overe here - once near the Munich railway station when I was in a train - so I could relate to the premise a lot! Even without that, though: everyone getting evacuated, our heroines trying their best to take care of everyone while still doing their normal midwife business and dealing with polio cases, too, the former Sister Bernadette, now Sheelagh, struggling through the guilt her post-nun state causes her and the pre wedding jitters while Doctor Turner remains a champ among men and poor Timothy is in danger, Trixie revealing a key part of her backstory, her childhood with a shellshocked father, while she and Jenny help a couple through the wife's giving birth and the husband's PTSD (very sympathetic guest stars - btw, I didn't know Britain had also participated in the Korean war!), Sister Julienne being there for Sheelagh/Bernadette, Chummy organizing the boy scouts while she and Peter are new parents themselves - the script balances it all and somehow avoids ever coming across as saccharine while being very touching.
And in the end, Nonnatus House (the building, at least) is gone. Awwwww. And again, great balance; one can understand why the midwives are sad - it was their home for years - yet also the necessity of change, for new and safer buildings. I'm tempted to say "this is my comfort and feel good show", but such a description would imply it pretends the 50s were an idyllic time, which it really doesn't. But it has an immensely huggable ensemble, and never more so than at Christmas.
Three guesses which was which, and the first two don't count.
What The Time of the Doctor reminded me most of was Generations, the first Star Trek: TNG cinema outing. See, after delivering what I still think is not only the best finale of a Star Trek series but also one of the best tv series finales, All Good Things..., the writers of said finale, Ron Moore and Brannon Braga, went without a pause to write the script for the first TNG movie. While Generations isn't the worst Star Trek movie or the second or the third worst, it won't be anyone's choice among the best three, either, and there is a palpable aura of exhaustion and "been there, done that, and better" around it.
All of which I find to be true for The Time of the Doctor as compared to the immediately preceding anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor. It's not that I have a quarrel with the basic ideas. For example: The Doctor, someone who spent all his life times running, spending centuries of his life to defend a small town/village in one place, the first of the Doctors to age enough to die of old age since One: sound and touching premise. All these centuries happening to the Doctor while for Clara, it's only a single Christmas dinner: very Moffatian, and a great reversal of Ten experiencing Reinette's entire life within a few hours (and how the Doctor in general experiences human lives). And God knows I've given up on ever finding out what the point of the Silence was, or who made the TARDIS explode in the s5 finale, which this special does tell.
It's the execution that means the special except for a few times never gets out of the the mediocre region. I can handwave the existence of an eternally Christmassy town complete with vaguely Dickensian outfits for the inhabitants on Trenzelore as Whovian daftness, but what I can't handwave is that Moffat should have made me care for the inhabitants, and sorry, but the one moppet declaring he'll wait for the Doctor (a la Amelia) won't do the trick. In the abstract, I'm all for the Doctor giving what he thinks is the remainder of his existence for generations of the town (because every life is precious), but terms of tv effectiveness, for this to emotionally work on me I need to get to know some of these people and care about them. I also need to believe they're truly threatened, and despite the armada of Whovian baddies (who apparantly had nothing else to do with a couple of centuries, either, than hang around Trenzelore, which makes their threat level zero), I just plain didn't. (Point in case: Moffats inability not to do a "greatest hits" thing and bringing the Weeping Angels back for a short encore. Except after their cameo, they never get mentioned again (despite being just outside of the town which is full of inhabitants), because that would derail the plot, which reminds me of the way the Crack was important unless it wasn't in s5 and the Doctor just left the little girl who would be River despite this being wildly ooc because otherwise the River backstory would be derailed in s6. Not to mention that the Angels truly are Moffat's Borgs, with diminishing returns every time he brings them back.
Irony: he did make me care about the Cyberhead, complete with Zen (from B7) like demise. See, he can do it, even in the Christmas special, with new characters. Why not some of the townsfolk?
Then there was Tash (spelling?), who was such a clear River Song stand-in that I wondered whether Alex Kingston couldn't make it so the script had to be rewritten for a new character, and such lines like "I could always fly the TARDIS, it was flying the Doctor I never managed" remained in despite that.
The Time Lords donating a whole new generation cycle via the Crack is something I didn't have a problem with (not least because unlike Clara, I don't believe they did it out of the goodness of their hearts or because they love him, but for the same reason the Master got a new Gallifreyan body and life cycle during the Time War - they still need him), but the Doctor using the regeneration energy to shoot the Daleks from the skies was just ridiculous.
On the bright side: Matt Smith's performance, which was excellent, and props, too, to the costume and make-up people for making him resemble William Hartnell more and more in the later stages of the Doctor's aging.
And: little Amelia and adult Amy cameo. "The first face this face ever saw." Awwwww. I must admit, that was the one moment I really was misty eyed, and I never shipped the Doctor and Amy. Still don't, but there was so much love in that moment. Again, I say: Awwwwww.
In conclusion: Goodbye, Eleven. I liked you, a lot, though you were never one of my favourites. Hello, Twelve-who-is-really-Fourteen! And please, BBC, you should really start to look for a new and unexhausted writing team.
You know, they're still finding unexploded WWII bombs overe here - once near the Munich railway station when I was in a train - so I could relate to the premise a lot! Even without that, though: everyone getting evacuated, our heroines trying their best to take care of everyone while still doing their normal midwife business and dealing with polio cases, too, the former Sister Bernadette, now Sheelagh, struggling through the guilt her post-nun state causes her and the pre wedding jitters while Doctor Turner remains a champ among men and poor Timothy is in danger, Trixie revealing a key part of her backstory, her childhood with a shellshocked father, while she and Jenny help a couple through the wife's giving birth and the husband's PTSD (very sympathetic guest stars - btw, I didn't know Britain had also participated in the Korean war!), Sister Julienne being there for Sheelagh/Bernadette, Chummy organizing the boy scouts while she and Peter are new parents themselves - the script balances it all and somehow avoids ever coming across as saccharine while being very touching.
And in the end, Nonnatus House (the building, at least) is gone. Awwwww. And again, great balance; one can understand why the midwives are sad - it was their home for years - yet also the necessity of change, for new and safer buildings. I'm tempted to say "this is my comfort and feel good show", but such a description would imply it pretends the 50s were an idyllic time, which it really doesn't. But it has an immensely huggable ensemble, and never more so than at Christmas.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-02 04:21 pm (UTC)Several people are floating the idea that Tasha is actually an incarnation of River. It's not just the flirting, the implication of their having a romantic or sexual history, or her being able to fly the TARDIS. It's the reference to River being a "bespoke psychopath," followed shortly by the Doctor telling Tasha she's had a psychopath inside her all her life.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-02 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-02 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-02 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-02 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-03 03:25 am (UTC)Britain did indeed fight in Korea, and so did Australia (because Britain did). We didn't start getting into our own wars until Vietnam. Actually, that's been our only war without the UK.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-03 05:12 pm (UTC)I'm glad you mentioned the Hartnell thing; it was puzzling me that I hadn't seen any reviews that did!
no subject
Date: 2014-01-03 07:06 pm (UTC)Hartnell - it seemed strikingly obvious to me!
no subject
Date: 2014-01-04 08:22 pm (UTC)I agree with all you've said about 'Day of the Doctor' with the caveat that I also think Moffat rather bungled the regeneration, and the appearance of the Amys just tiredly reminded me of how limp Clara is as a companion. None of the casual viewers I watched with were compelled to want to follow Twelve's further adventures.