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Was watching the Doctor Who special The Waters of Mars earlier. Since the rest of this post contains my thoughts about that, it goes behind a cut in case someone who wants to watch it unspoiled is reading this and hasn't done so.
Prior to watching it I was not expecting much from this episode. After the first few minutes I decided it was another zombie plague (like The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances and it didn't stop being one of those. Also at the beginning we had two things: ads showing the Doctor describing the situation as a 'fixed point in time' (as in The Fires of Pompeii) and his awareness of the dates of death for all the base inhabitants led me to conclude a lack of tension for the episode. Every character except the Doctor would be dead at the end of the episode, and he would not be. It took me a few minutes to realise that as the means of death was nuclear explosion it would be entirely possible for him to save some people while retaining the integrity of the event. So that was the possibility of tension returned.
The episode was structured anyway to get drama and emotional response from character deaths. Something they've shown themselves competent to do in the past, if often a bit extravagantly.
For a while I have been thinking something that irks me about this show is it appears to subscribe to a version of Divine Command Theory about morality, with the Doctor as the commander. That is, whether something is right or wrong depends pretty strongly on whether the Doctor agrees with it, which he then enforces on the world. For this reason I was pleased at the end when the Doctor decided that as the sole surviving Timelord he knows of he is now the inheritor and arbiter of their laws and time - at least now he was aware and willing in himself rather than his decisions being framed as 'it just is' and that was if only for those brief moments more palatable to me.
Of course he went beyond this to declare himself the 'Timelord Victorious' and step right out of his established character role and into that of the villains he judges. Having committed this brief sin he apparently now is deserving of the death foretold for him. Truncated confrontation, bit disappointing.
As for the matter of 'little people' there is role in the progress of history to judge by, but really those characters were written into the story as 'little people' by being unable to handle the TARDIS and turning away from the wonder of it. In this show that is usually a marker of whether someone is 'little' or not, and not one I am fond of.
Sadly, after flirting with contravening that convention for a few minutes, Doctor Who reiterates the common social wisdom that Destiny is Destiny and Destiny is Good. What's bound to happen happens anyway and those who try to defy this suffer deserved consequences for their hubris.
Prior to watching it I was not expecting much from this episode. After the first few minutes I decided it was another zombie plague (like The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances and it didn't stop being one of those. Also at the beginning we had two things: ads showing the Doctor describing the situation as a 'fixed point in time' (as in The Fires of Pompeii) and his awareness of the dates of death for all the base inhabitants led me to conclude a lack of tension for the episode. Every character except the Doctor would be dead at the end of the episode, and he would not be. It took me a few minutes to realise that as the means of death was nuclear explosion it would be entirely possible for him to save some people while retaining the integrity of the event. So that was the possibility of tension returned.
The episode was structured anyway to get drama and emotional response from character deaths. Something they've shown themselves competent to do in the past, if often a bit extravagantly.
For a while I have been thinking something that irks me about this show is it appears to subscribe to a version of Divine Command Theory about morality, with the Doctor as the commander. That is, whether something is right or wrong depends pretty strongly on whether the Doctor agrees with it, which he then enforces on the world. For this reason I was pleased at the end when the Doctor decided that as the sole surviving Timelord he knows of he is now the inheritor and arbiter of their laws and time - at least now he was aware and willing in himself rather than his decisions being framed as 'it just is' and that was if only for those brief moments more palatable to me.
Of course he went beyond this to declare himself the 'Timelord Victorious' and step right out of his established character role and into that of the villains he judges. Having committed this brief sin he apparently now is deserving of the death foretold for him. Truncated confrontation, bit disappointing.
As for the matter of 'little people' there is role in the progress of history to judge by, but really those characters were written into the story as 'little people' by being unable to handle the TARDIS and turning away from the wonder of it. In this show that is usually a marker of whether someone is 'little' or not, and not one I am fond of.
Sadly, after flirting with contravening that convention for a few minutes, Doctor Who reiterates the common social wisdom that Destiny is Destiny and Destiny is Good. What's bound to happen happens anyway and those who try to defy this suffer deserved consequences for their hubris.
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Date: 2009-12-06 12:48 (UTC)From:The Time Lord Victorious thing, though...I saw where they were going with it, but I through it was WAY overdone, as was the "I'm going to die!" afterwards.