The Day of the Doctor
Nov. 23rd, 2013 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bagheera_sanOMG that was awesome. Not so much the episode itself, which was fine though, but the cinematic experience. I've seen people in academia talk about how cinema is a community experience, like theatre, and sometimes, yes, it is, when the movie does it right. And this movie? Did it SO DAMN RIGHT. It had some, let's call them framing devices right at the beginning which actually made you look at your neighbour and smile, as in, told you to do something that made sure you would laugh at each other. It broke the fourth wall, and in a very charming way - it reminded me of nothing so much as how Early Modern drama (very appropriate, heh) breaks the fourth wall especially in Prologues and Epilogues when the players as players address the audience. And this audience went with it. I have never seen an audience this friendly, responsive and engaged with the movie and each other. Good times.
1. GALLIFREY. Completely not my headcanon, but hey, it is BACK.
2. Tom Baker: okay that was cute. I liked that his dialogue was exactly as nonsensical as Four dialogue should be even though it wasn't properly Four.
3. John Hurt!Doctor: way better than "Night of the Doctor" made me fear. It implied that when Eight drinks his magic potion of warriorness he will actually become a warrior - instead he becomes this grumpy and slightly useless old dude who is a whole lot like One and is sweet to Clara and doesn't actually do any warring. Damn, Eight, what a rubbish plan. But rubbish is what I want, so that was excellent. I also really liked his interaction with Clara, and that right before she went to talk to him, she looked at Susan's picture.
4. Ten and Eleven. I think their interaction showcased the problem with them - they're too similar. They got along just fine, they actually mirrored each other in most of their scenes, they even sort of look like each other. But putting them next to each other also highlighted some of the differences - the way Ten will joke around but then actually get serious and direct, but Eleven will just avoid both the issue and direct eye contact. David Tennant slipped back into the role effortlessly and reminded me that I really do like Ten a lot.
5. UNIT! And the UNIT dating controversy. I laughed at that.
6. Moffat Who: for once, many of the things Moffat does actually worked, or were used well. The big retcon was okay, because the one time you're totally allowed to fuck with canon is the Time War. Moffat's time-travel-paradox-loop shenanigans ARE actually well-suited for a Time War episode. I also very much like that in the end, the decision not to press the button was induced by Clara and the Moment/BadWolf. People actually made decisions in this episode, and they made good choices and affirmed that there is no such thing as destiny. There were two other very Moffat things, and I liked them even better, because each time my first reaction was "argh I hate this" and then it turned around and was good. The first was Elizabeth and the Zygon duplicate. At first I thought: "no, why are there so many female characters in this episode who are things or replaced by things, what are you doing Moffat", but then it turned out that the real Queen Bess just stabbed the Zygon duplicate because she's that badass. And the other thing was the UNIT mindwipe thing. At first I thought "ugh, that's so fucking inhumane" and it still is, but then they used it rather cleverly to engineer peace and make a point: negotiations would be perfectly fair and unselfish if you didn't actually know which end of the stick you're going to get when it's over. Well done.
7. Rose/BadWolf/TheMoment: I thought that using Billie Piper but not Rose as a character was a good choice. Rose being in this serial would have made no sense, but Billie Piper was good as the Moment. My friend said after the movie that he thought the Moment was the TARDIS, or influenced by the TARDIS or that it became part of the TARDIS afterwards, because of the Bad Wolf comment. If so, I like it even more, because it would be very sweet if it was actually the TARDIS trying talk the Doctor out of destroying Gallifrey. Whatever the Moment really was, I liked that it was a sentient weapon with a conscience - this makes two characters in the serial who are meant to be warriors and turn out to be extremely kind, gentle people.
8. I also like that Eleven was all "ooooh darkness we're going to die I saw my tombstone it will be horrible we can do nothing" and Ten was like, "Nah, never say nothing" - good.
9. I also really loved those last lines about the destination of the Doctor's journey always having been home, the long way round. This is my headcanon, and anything else would always feel preposterously wrong to me: in the end, the Doctor goes back to Gallifrey. Earth would do, in a pinch, but really it's Gallifrey where I imagine him ending up.
10. End of Time is no longer canon. Or is it? I'm confused. It could be canon - maybe that whole thing with Rassilon was another front in the war, and Simm!Master is now stuck on frozen Gallifrey or something, who knows. Tbh I try not to think about EoT too much, so I'd be fine if it wasn't properly canon anymore.
11. The black and white opening and the first scene with Coal Hill school almost made me sniffle a little because - Unearthly Child! Fifty Years! And maybe if I'm lucky, I'll still be around for the next fifty years.
Well done, show.
1. GALLIFREY. Completely not my headcanon, but hey, it is BACK.
2. Tom Baker: okay that was cute. I liked that his dialogue was exactly as nonsensical as Four dialogue should be even though it wasn't properly Four.
3. John Hurt!Doctor: way better than "Night of the Doctor" made me fear. It implied that when Eight drinks his magic potion of warriorness he will actually become a warrior - instead he becomes this grumpy and slightly useless old dude who is a whole lot like One and is sweet to Clara and doesn't actually do any warring. Damn, Eight, what a rubbish plan. But rubbish is what I want, so that was excellent. I also really liked his interaction with Clara, and that right before she went to talk to him, she looked at Susan's picture.
4. Ten and Eleven. I think their interaction showcased the problem with them - they're too similar. They got along just fine, they actually mirrored each other in most of their scenes, they even sort of look like each other. But putting them next to each other also highlighted some of the differences - the way Ten will joke around but then actually get serious and direct, but Eleven will just avoid both the issue and direct eye contact. David Tennant slipped back into the role effortlessly and reminded me that I really do like Ten a lot.
5. UNIT! And the UNIT dating controversy. I laughed at that.
6. Moffat Who: for once, many of the things Moffat does actually worked, or were used well. The big retcon was okay, because the one time you're totally allowed to fuck with canon is the Time War. Moffat's time-travel-paradox-loop shenanigans ARE actually well-suited for a Time War episode. I also very much like that in the end, the decision not to press the button was induced by Clara and the Moment/BadWolf. People actually made decisions in this episode, and they made good choices and affirmed that there is no such thing as destiny. There were two other very Moffat things, and I liked them even better, because each time my first reaction was "argh I hate this" and then it turned around and was good. The first was Elizabeth and the Zygon duplicate. At first I thought: "no, why are there so many female characters in this episode who are things or replaced by things, what are you doing Moffat", but then it turned out that the real Queen Bess just stabbed the Zygon duplicate because she's that badass. And the other thing was the UNIT mindwipe thing. At first I thought "ugh, that's so fucking inhumane" and it still is, but then they used it rather cleverly to engineer peace and make a point: negotiations would be perfectly fair and unselfish if you didn't actually know which end of the stick you're going to get when it's over. Well done.
7. Rose/BadWolf/TheMoment: I thought that using Billie Piper but not Rose as a character was a good choice. Rose being in this serial would have made no sense, but Billie Piper was good as the Moment. My friend said after the movie that he thought the Moment was the TARDIS, or influenced by the TARDIS or that it became part of the TARDIS afterwards, because of the Bad Wolf comment. If so, I like it even more, because it would be very sweet if it was actually the TARDIS trying talk the Doctor out of destroying Gallifrey. Whatever the Moment really was, I liked that it was a sentient weapon with a conscience - this makes two characters in the serial who are meant to be warriors and turn out to be extremely kind, gentle people.
8. I also like that Eleven was all "ooooh darkness we're going to die I saw my tombstone it will be horrible we can do nothing" and Ten was like, "Nah, never say nothing" - good.
9. I also really loved those last lines about the destination of the Doctor's journey always having been home, the long way round. This is my headcanon, and anything else would always feel preposterously wrong to me: in the end, the Doctor goes back to Gallifrey. Earth would do, in a pinch, but really it's Gallifrey where I imagine him ending up.
10. End of Time is no longer canon. Or is it? I'm confused. It could be canon - maybe that whole thing with Rassilon was another front in the war, and Simm!Master is now stuck on frozen Gallifrey or something, who knows. Tbh I try not to think about EoT too much, so I'd be fine if it wasn't properly canon anymore.
11. The black and white opening and the first scene with Coal Hill school almost made me sniffle a little because - Unearthly Child! Fifty Years! And maybe if I'm lucky, I'll still be around for the next fifty years.
Well done, show.
