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intrikate88Doctor Who fandom, I am tired.
I saw the episode, mostly because I was tired of seeing other people's opinions posts and not knowing what they were talking about, so I just went ahead and watched.
And you know? I could talk about what was problematic in this episode. I could talk about Amy and Rory and how love is not a competition. I could talk about the bisexuality-as-a-phase joke. I could talk about how nothing Dalek-related made any fucking sense because there was this thing called the Time War that was a big fucking deal and also Daleks hate the impurity of being mixed with anything human and how every other Doctor has had a problem with killing all the Daleks when he could have makes him no better, and I wonder what Four, who nearly killed all the Daleks when they were first created and decided not to, would have to say about this.
But I don't know that this show is worthy of my discussion time anymore.
So here are the things I liked, because I'm going to say what they are and then probably forget the episode, just as if I wasn't a fangirl at all.
I liked Oswin, and her music, her souffle-cooking, and how even as every last bit of her body was stripped away from her she still said NO. I AM HUMAN. They took her freedom and she still demanded every smidgeon of agency she could. Good for you, Oswin.
I like how, despite everything, at a crazy adventure Amy is still the wild girl she always has been, even when zombie Dalek people (and may I say that is the first time Daleks have ever scared me. Holy shitsnacks, pepper shakers of doom are whatever but corpses growing eyestalks NEEDS TO NOT BE IMPRINTED IN MY MEMORY) start swarming and she faces scary death but if the Doctor is going to jump into a hole, she'll consider jumping first. That's my girl.
I saw the episode, mostly because I was tired of seeing other people's opinions posts and not knowing what they were talking about, so I just went ahead and watched.
And you know? I could talk about what was problematic in this episode. I could talk about Amy and Rory and how love is not a competition. I could talk about the bisexuality-as-a-phase joke. I could talk about how nothing Dalek-related made any fucking sense because there was this thing called the Time War that was a big fucking deal and also Daleks hate the impurity of being mixed with anything human and how every other Doctor has had a problem with killing all the Daleks when he could have makes him no better, and I wonder what Four, who nearly killed all the Daleks when they were first created and decided not to, would have to say about this.
But I don't know that this show is worthy of my discussion time anymore.
So here are the things I liked, because I'm going to say what they are and then probably forget the episode, just as if I wasn't a fangirl at all.
I liked Oswin, and her music, her souffle-cooking, and how even as every last bit of her body was stripped away from her she still said NO. I AM HUMAN. They took her freedom and she still demanded every smidgeon of agency she could. Good for you, Oswin.
I like how, despite everything, at a crazy adventure Amy is still the wild girl she always has been, even when zombie Dalek people (and may I say that is the first time Daleks have ever scared me. Holy shitsnacks, pepper shakers of doom are whatever but corpses growing eyestalks NEEDS TO NOT BE IMPRINTED IN MY MEMORY) start swarming and she faces scary death but if the Doctor is going to jump into a hole, she'll consider jumping first. That's my girl.
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Date: 2012-09-06 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-06 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-06 09:33 pm (UTC)BWAHAHAHA
But I don't know that this show is worthy of my discussion time anymore.
D:
this makes me sad.
but yes, yes, yes to everything you said on this ep.
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Date: 2012-09-06 10:29 pm (UTC)I will probably be lured into discussion posts after all, I'm incapable of keeping my mouth shut. It's just that I always purposefully ignored what Moffat had to say, for obvious reasons, and now the show seems to be turning into his mouthpiece of disrespect for storytelling, Doctor Who, and every viewer who isn't a straight white male. It's difficult to recognize characters from one episode to the next, and maybe if I don't make a point-by-point essay of everything in each ep, I can save a little energy for still enjoying at least some parts of the show.
Like adorable Oswin, and Amy being my precious wild girl. :)
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Date: 2012-09-07 01:15 pm (UTC)LOL, you sound exactly like me!
It's just that I always purposefully ignored what Moffat had to say, for obvious reasons, and now the show seems to be turning into his mouthpiece of disrespect for storytelling, Doctor Who, and every viewer who isn't a straight white male.
I agree with this, though I wouldn't go anywhere near as far as you. I actually think Moffat is very a gifted story-teller, it just seems that implicit (and probably unintentional and born from ignorance) misogynism creeps into his work... Well, all the time, making it a particularly prominent feature. But I certainly wouldn't say that all previous era Doctor Who episodes have not been ~offensive in the same way. I mean, classic!Who is full of it.
So basically ahaha I take it more or less with a pinch of salt! I just hope we don't get another storyline I can't follow (see: Season 6)!
Like adorable Oswin, and Amy being my precious wild girl. :)
Exactlyy! ;)
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Date: 2012-09-07 03:57 pm (UTC)That's actually not my biggest issue with it? I mean, yes, I'm normally going to call all the misogyny shit when I see it, but at this point... well, I don't go to the bookstore to get groceries, and I don't go to Moffat to get well-written women whose lives don't revolve around men. I can accept this, even if I wish for better.
It's the storytelling that gets me. Like, the entire thing with the souffles in this episode had nothing to do with anything, it was just forced in there so the Doctor could ask about the milk repeatedly and have it be The Big Clue that Oswin wasn't living as a human. In the show, post-Time War all remaining Daleks have been random escapees, yet somehow there is a whole society of Daleks here? The Daleks have ALWAYS, though classic and new Who, been focused on genetic purity, so why on earth would they take humans to turn into Daleks (even though it was done in that s3 episode, but there was a lot of Dalek self-loathing involved, which was not displayed here)? How does it work that nanoparticles could turn someone into a metal Dalek from the inside when Daleks have always basically been some cloned calamari in a metal condom with some weaponry attached? How does the Doctor, who in Genesis of the Daleks refused to kill the initial creation of the Daleks and then in Nine's series refused to commit genocide to destroy all the Daleks in The Parting of the Ways, gleefully stick a grenade inside a Dalek to blow a whole bunch of them up and then gets a force field lowered to destroy an entire planet of them? He always considered himself to be lowering himself to their murderous level if he behaved like them, and yet he does it without a thought here. And with Amy and Rory, their divorce comes out of nowhere, and when it is actually discussed is resolved in about thirty seconds, instead of using the opportunity of the last half season to deal with the fact that Amy was kidnapped, forced to give birth, had her baby stolen, and was never able to be River's parent, and all of her reactions to this and Rory's reactions (which, what? had he EVER mentioned he always wanted kids before?) were never examined. Instead of exploring his own characters more deeply and crafting journeys for them, Moffat ignores what happens to them and makes up new things about them each time in order to fit a flashy, but not necessarily logical, plot. I used to like him a lot, but even when I listened to the audio commentary on Girl in the Fireplace, Moffat said he had not watched the previous episode and didn't know anything about it, and just wrote what he wanted. When you're writing as part of a team and you choose to disregard the work of your fellow writers and disregard the season arc for the show, that just seems really unprofessional to me (as a professional writer and editor).
So, yeah, the storytelling is my issue, because Moffat never chooses to explain why anything is happening, just wraps it all up and handwaves it away with fast talk and random threats.
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Date: 2012-09-07 04:30 pm (UTC)She could have used evaporated milk. Just sayin'
Anyway, you raise a whole load of issues, basically all which I've raised myself in one place or another. (Except the Doctor killing daleks, which is a pretty notable exception that I hadn't picked up on and don't entirely agree with. Also I was too slow to even catch the dynamite thing, I thought the dalek self-destructed while going backwards ahaha.) So I don't actually disagree with any of your individual points in themselves. In fact, what I was trying to get across in my previous comment was almost just that, that the issues people keep bringing up (like, you know, mildly appalling treatment of women) are to me, subsidiary issues to Moffat failing on the plot, which I personally think isn't necessarily illogical but rather fiendishly complicated to the point of being naff (like the Doctor not dying because he was in a giant robot)!
It's personal preference, of course. It just happens that personally, I remain interested in the story and I appreciate some of the postives in Moffat era writing. I loved S5 and the fact that it sustained an over-arching storyline for about ten years longer than anything done by Russel T. Davies (who, to be fair, I love) and out of all the writers, I think that Moffat paints the Doctor's more ~introspective moments the darkest. I also love the way he jumps in scale from one episode to another (e.g small scale episodes like 'Vincent and the Doctor' and 'The Lodger' being followed by epic scale shit like 'The Pandorica Opens' and 'The Big Bang'). It doesn't mean there aren't problems, they just don't detract enough from my enjoyment for me to give it up.
LOL well I'm not a professional anything, so I don't have a personal or professional problem with Moffat. I don't even know what he looks like. It may well be my amateurishness that accounts for our differences on this matter LOL. Who knows...
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Date: 2012-09-06 09:40 pm (UTC)good god, show. have we not beaten this horse enough times?
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Date: 2012-09-06 10:37 pm (UTC)But it was kinda novel. They had nano daleks! That invaded people and turned them Dalek from the inside! (Let's ignore the fact that daleks were never born, they were always cloned calamari in a metal condom, so growing them out of the inside of a person makes no actual sense.) But then the eyestalk just came out of people's foreheads! And then corpse foreheads! Motherfucking freaky, man, gotta say.
I stg I remember a time when Moffat said he was sick of the daleks being trotted out every week and he totes wasn't going to do that. lawl.
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Date: 2012-09-06 11:59 pm (UTC)Ugh yeah, let's go back to that time where we basically had a whole season free of Daleks.
I did not buy a single thing about Amy or Rory in this ep, and I DID NOT BUY the Doctor's screaming fear when the Daleks were closing in. Like. Of all the things that would put that look of terror on his face, the Daleks are NOT ONE OF THEM. It's so OOC for him to be that stupid scared...or at least to show it.
Oswin was adorbs, though. And I continue to love everyone on the show, I just hate what gets done to them week in and week out. I feel like I have a better grasp on their personalities than the writers do.
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Date: 2012-09-07 12:21 am (UTC)I don't get anything about the Doctor. Except, woo continuity with the duck-pond-with-no-ducks by introducing an insignificant detail to be repeatedly mentioned so that it can be the key to everything.
I wanna write the show. I want Oswin and I want Amy and Rory to make sense and I want the Doctor to go back to being himself. Bleh.
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Date: 2012-09-07 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 02:10 am (UTC)This has been me since forever. Moffat has literally beaten me down to the point where I am just numbly watching the show just because I want to be in the know of the popular telly. And the fact that with every new companion I get this flutter of hope. But then I am reminded that I had the most hope for Amy and look what happened. Rory happened. And then everything was the worst. Anyway I didn't even watch this one yet but yeah, it's just not worth arguing about how dumb the Daleks actually are, how OOC most of Moffat Who is, how he doesn't even understand continuity within his own show let alone within the New Who franchise. Nothing else to say but UGH.
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Date: 2012-09-07 04:13 pm (UTC)