Impossible Astronaut.

[intrikate88]

I watched ‘The Impossible Astronaut’ at a friend’s house yesterday and was checking my phone to see what time I had to leave to get to my family’s house for dinner, so I can’t say I have the most analytical sense of it, but it was fun enough and fairly well directed, so that was nice. I feel like it’s a mystery plot and I’m not really the greatest fan of Moffat writing mystery, I think that a lot of confusing stuff gets thrown up for the sake of confusion instead of letting the plot develop organically and then it turns out to be something not that complicated, but frankly I’m not watching this show because I think he’s Dorothy Sayers, so whatever.

·  

       Still, though, it’s obvious that there will be some hat trick with Eleven in the end to show how he didn’t really die after all but probably constructed the whole thing. So I’m sort of wondering where the clues about “oh, fire and gasoline reverse the death rays’ destruction of cells” are, or if something like that will be held til the last minute as a dues ex machine. I think it was Terry Pratchett who said something like “if you’re going to have someone get stabbed in Scene Three, you need to show that the sword is hanging on the wall in Scene One.” As far as I know, I saw no sword.

·         Going to ignore the first few minutes of the ep, I have no idea what was going on there and since it involves Eleven in a French farce and Amy and Rory grocery shopping in suburban bliss, I’m not sure that I care.

·         I’m gathering from reaction posts that the aliens were The Silence that we’ve heard so much about. I guess they’re kind of scary; not really in themselves, but losing your memory is a scary thing, so it works. Looking forward to finding out why they’re huddling underground looking like refugees.

·         Personally I found River being vulnerable a bit scarier. What I love about her is that she’s generally a force of nature, she doesn’t really wait for things to happen to her but she happens to everyone else. Her being scared and hurt at the thought of losing the Doctor… or, I guess, her admitting that she may very well not be able to cope with any situation she can’t do anything about (even when it’s one we’ve already seen), is sort of frightening.

·         I loved the talk River and Rory had, and how the problematic nature of the type of relationship both Amy and River have with the Doctor. It was a little understated and very well written. I think the interesting part about the dynamic between the two of them is what wasn’t said—these two are the ones that had to pick up the pieces of the confused little girl who didn’t know what was going on, with Rory always following Amy, and River needing to become somewhat invincible, after the Doctor presumably leaves a trail of little girls falling asleep on their suitcases in the garden in his wake.

·         I don’t think Amy’s actually preggers, I think she just said that because she had something very important that she knew she had to tell the Doctor and couldn’t remember what it was but she knew it was making her nauseous and she hadn’t told Rory and so in the heat of the moment she just blurted out the first conclusion that came to mind. I mean, she was pregnant one of the last times she had trouble remembering what was real, so who knows.

·         I feel betrayed by the role they put Mark Sheppard in. I mean, he’s not Mark Sheppard at ALL. I don’t care if he’s typecast, he has a role that works for him and it should be stuck with, he’s excellent at being a menacy British petty crook, and variations thereupon.

·         I took Canton’s inability to marry someone as a mention of him being gay, despite the actual historical inaccuracies involved there. Did Nixon have a daughter? I’d say wanting to marry the president’s daughter would likely get you kicked right out of the Secret Service too.

·         Overall I thought it was good and a bit more purposeful than a lot of what we saw in the last series, I liked the directing (by Toby Haynes instead of by Adam Smith, who irritates me greatly), and I’m looking forward to seeing how things are cleared up next week.

 

Comments

[mind-the-tardis.livejournal.com]

Overall I thought it was good and a bit more purposeful than a lot of what we saw in the last series, I liked the directing (by Toby Haynes instead of by Adam Smith, who irritates me greatly), and I’m looking forward to seeing how things are cleared up next week.

Around my general Moffat negativity and nails-on-chalkboard reaction to a lot of his bag of tricks, this was my reaction, too. For me, not so much that it was good as that it seemed confident. I might not like the stories Moffat tells, so far, but at least this episode seemed to be really going for it. It felt like a show, with an identity.

And I've been talked around to the River/Rory scene. At first, I was dismissive of it because it's River saying her life revolves in total around the Doctor. River! Who we've seen seems to have a fairly epic life (and the ability to escape from prison whenever she feels like it) and who holds her own with the Doctor very well. But the scene finally admits that Amy has had her life used, by the Doctor, in the same way River is suggesting hers was used. And it's about time that got acknowledged. I hope the series continues to explore that.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Yeah I pretty much have assumed for awhile that River's life involves leaping through time at the slightest whim, not really giving a shit about crossing her own timeline or anyone else's, regularly having relationships in all the wrong order, and having affairs with the Doctor as well as with Indiana Jones (and Marian), and probably Malcolm Reynolds, and at least ten other people; she's just not hte sort to have her life centered around one person. But it's interesting, to think that she's become that person because the Doctor may have thrown her life all out of alignment in the first place. I hope the show keeps exploring it too.

[mind-the-tardis.livejournal.com]

I'm just starting to warm up to her, so I hope so. Now that I've thought about, she technically is as complicit as the Doctor—since she made it clear to Ten that she was very special to him in the future. So they both predestined themselves for being messed around by each other.

I'm not sure what I think of having that kind of story in an ongoing serial show. It doesn't feel like it can ever wrap up and pay off, and it smacks of predestination and fate. MAYBE IT WILL WORK OUT AND SURPRISE ME. If it does, I will have to take off my cynicism hat.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

She does take some warming up to- I certainly didn't like her that much until I wrote that Indiana Jones xover fic and explored some of her traits, and then I couldn't really help being at least a little enamored of a woman who was just that gutsy and unwilling to take shit from the universe. I agree, she is equally deep in co-messing up the Doctor; I think that at some point she had to decide if she was going to let a logical relationship to the world prevail, or if she was going to live her life no matter who entered or left it. I don't know if that's something that can be resolved in a show like this, and I am not a fan of predestination either- as Dairine says in Wizards at War, destiny is often just a way for people to tell you to do what you're told without asking inconvenient questions. That's another one of the reasons I want River to be an anthropomorphized version of the TARDIS- basically it would be okay for her to be his one true destiny if she's already the foremost lady in his life, and explains the way she lives outside of time and causality and knows how the TARDIS brakes work.

[mind-the-tardis.livejournal.com]

That's one of the better quotes about destiny I've heard/read, and River-as-TARDIS is probably the best explanation of River I've run into so far. It certainly beats her being the Master (although that would make me laugh forever).

I'm actually hoping she's just herself. It could be a really graceful story, about someone who fell into the Doctor's life (and vice-versa), the way people always do with him, but who had more power of her own than his companions usually do, to get out into the universe he travels in, and discomfit him with that. I'm not sure it will be, but at this point, I think that's the story I want. Someone who's not content to travel with him, as a passenger, but who's also not going to let him swan off permanently when he's done being impressive.

See, now I'm wanting to write her. Curses, Kingston. I'm liking a Moffat character, what will I do now.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Oh god I'd be in hysterics if she turned out to be the Master.

I'd like her to be herself too, and I really like your description there; it's a very graceful story indeed. But after all the hype about ~who she really is~ I don't particularly trust that a story of a woman with the quiet dignity to stand up and be her own hero while still loving the Doctor and not being willing to let him go can be properly told in that context. If she HAS to be super-meaningful then I just hope for something that makes sense.

Write her, write her! And perhaps we will pretend for a while that Moffat is a producer/director (awful Male Gaze aside) who only shows off his talent at lovely visual concepts and interesting characters and leave aside his shoddy storytelling.

[mind-the-tardis.livejournal.com]

I am secretly hoping the hype turns out to be ridiculously overblown and it's all because she's the Person Who Kills the Doctor (anticlimactic, much, since he can't die, what with being a money-making protagonist). Because any fancy twists I can think of will seem weak and tacked-on. Maybe she'll end up being his sister, in a pull from Star Wars ;) Awkward!

I may not write her, but I'm going to hold on to that idea of her. It's a good one, and *someone* should tell a story about a woman like that. Few of the Doctor's companions make themselves inconvenient to him (or make him convenient to them). Having a woman who loved him and treated him with that casualness that comes with equality—and had the presumption to sometimes take him for granted, shock and horror—while at the same time having the doubts someone always does about any relationship--that would be new, in Doctor Who, I think. Even RTD's companions had hero-worship to them—they were with the Doctor not just because of him, but because of what he represented and what he could do. River seems to be able to do just about anything he can do, even if it turns out she learned most of it from him. She's like a Sarah Jane who could get back off of Earth once he left her behind. Someone who's known him long enough for the shine to wear off.

NOW I LIKE HER. She will remain fantastic in my head, no matter what the story does.

[thunderemerald.livejournal.com]

a bit more purposeful than a lot of what we saw in the last series

Nail! Head! YOU HIT IT. YES!

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Well, I've been waiting a while to see it go this way- it's felt a lot like "OMG OMG Rusty gave me 45 minutes to make a show in OMG I MUST COVER EVERYTHING EVER." and I was hoping that would be resolved before series 5 even started, but it wasn't, really. This seems more like it was written by someone who is confident and making it his own.

[thunderemerald.livejournal.com]

Indeed, and I really hope that's the case here. Last season was a mess. This season is already off to a way more promising start. Except for the wtf-pregnant moment. Oh Moff.

[andi-horton.livejournal.com]

Yes, to mostly-all of it. I don't like River any more than I first did when she appeared, so that's not changed, but I hadn't thought it would and I am in fact mostly resigned to her, by now. I definitely like her best when she has absolutely nothing to do with anything else, of which moments she did here have one or two, so that was All Right.

As you already know, I am fully with you on Mark Sheppard's role. They gave him a bit more of his usual line of work in the second part, but it still wasn't entirely him, and while I am pleased to see he can do other things it wasn't necessary (for me) to see that because I never really doubted he could. After all, if he is going to be properly typecast ANYWHERE then surely it ought to be in Dcotor Who, because everything his characters usually are would fit in SO perfectly, here. Bah.

We will conjure some kind of fix-it-ness for that, won't we? Or at least rewatch some of his better Medium eps . . . I think it would be healing.

I believe that I like the not-pregnancy thing they have going on, but I can't say for sure because I keep waffling on it. The mutant child angle is actually fun, I think, and it certainly reminds me of that ficlet of yours when the TARDIS knocked Rose up, so let's just see where that goes, and maybe by the time it ends I will know for sure if I like it or not :P

Finally, creepy southern orphanage = actually kind of awesome, which I may have forgotten to mention last night, I cannot recall.