Day of the Doctor
Nov. 24th, 2013 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cest_what1) Billie Piper was so good, she was the actual highlight for me. I thought her inclusion would be totally gratuitous, like the Tom Baker cameo, but she was both a natural part of the plot and really great. I really liked her dynamic with John Hurt's Doctor - her opening scene especially - and I kind of like that they resisted having her interact with Tennant.
2) Moffat still has some pretty shitty problems with sexism. The Liz I storyline was terrible. Both stupid (dialogue and story were so clumsy) and also really offensive, in that she was one of the most powerful and extraordinary women in history, famous for being ruthless, brilliant and deliberately single, and you think the coolest and most hilarious thing to do with a storyline about her is to randomly marry her off to the Doctor, for zero in-story reason? Honestly, "every famous female figure from history wants to make out with and/or marry the Doctor who doesn't want them to" is not the delightful running joke you seem to think it is, Moffat.
The geeky scarf girl, too, was clearly intended to be a kind of avatar for geeky female Doctor Who fans, and therefore a gift to us, but then there were these awful little digs in her characterisation like her being ~jealous of her prettier sister (because all smart geeky girls wish they were prettier and all women envy one another), and her repeated chanting in corners for the Doctor to save her (even after she had proven she could save herself). Like, she was still a fun and cool character, and I liked her inclusion, but that stuff was so unnecessary.
3) I thought from the mini-episode that John Hurt was going to turn out to be some kind of alternate-timeline Doctor, where he became the Warrier instead, but no, we now have a new Ninth Doctor. All of my pinboard tagging is messed up ...
4) He was great, though, I really liked John Hurt's Doctor. And the dynamic of the three of them together was just as much fun as I hoped it would be. Occasionally the dialogue got clunky when a situation called for a quirky Doctor line and they needed to work in three different quirky Doctor lines instead, but a lot of their dialogue was really delightful.
5) The call-backs were ... well, some of them were pretty graceful and fun, and some of them were clunky as hell. I liked the visual call-backs, and I liked the timey-wimey thing, especially as it led into "Why are you so afraid to be a grown-up?", but e.g. Tennant's "I don't want to go" was super-awkwardly set-up and sank like a stone.
6) Clara was as delightful and fun as ever but she continues to feel like a really superficially drawn character to me. I feel like her two alternate selves - the Dalek and the Mary Poppins one - were a lot more fully realised as people than she is? Maybe because they had more backstory, come to think of it. (The leaf-of-wedding-destiny is not a goddamned backstory.)
7) Sooooo timelords again, hey? As a non-oldschool Who fan, a universe with other timelords to interfere in things and have power comparable to or greater than the Doctor is pretty new to me, I'm not sure what to expect. I hope we get to meet a new Romana, though. Even though I don't really know the olds ones.
8) Kate was great, I really like her. More Kate. (Also feel free to bring back Harriet Jones any time, honestly.)
9) The glorification of the act of necessary genocide at great personal cost to the soul was pretty awful (Great men are forged in the fires of battle, ugh)and went on and on, that scene with the three of them poised to hit the button dragged like crazy, and I haven't decided whether the fact that they didn't makes up for that. All the same, I'm glad they didn't. The thirteen Doctors saving the day together was really fun. (Although it would have been more narratively powerful for me if they'd managed to save some people, rather than completely reversing the tragedy.)
10) Overall I thought it did a good job of clearly being a tribute to 50 years of show but also being a fun story that worked as its own new thing.
11) Seriously though how is fandom going to resolve the ambiguity about which goddamn regeneration they're talking about? I find it really hard to think of Eccleston as the Tenth Doctor, etc.
12) I really wanted more time vortex, since it was 3D. What is the point of 3D without gratuitous time vortex scenes. Or at least some in the opening credits, even though yes that was very nostalgic to see the old credits.
13) Billie Piper as Bad Wolf, tho. Damn.
2) Moffat still has some pretty shitty problems with sexism. The Liz I storyline was terrible. Both stupid (dialogue and story were so clumsy) and also really offensive, in that she was one of the most powerful and extraordinary women in history, famous for being ruthless, brilliant and deliberately single, and you think the coolest and most hilarious thing to do with a storyline about her is to randomly marry her off to the Doctor, for zero in-story reason? Honestly, "every famous female figure from history wants to make out with and/or marry the Doctor who doesn't want them to" is not the delightful running joke you seem to think it is, Moffat.
The geeky scarf girl, too, was clearly intended to be a kind of avatar for geeky female Doctor Who fans, and therefore a gift to us, but then there were these awful little digs in her characterisation like her being ~jealous of her prettier sister (because all smart geeky girls wish they were prettier and all women envy one another), and her repeated chanting in corners for the Doctor to save her (even after she had proven she could save herself). Like, she was still a fun and cool character, and I liked her inclusion, but that stuff was so unnecessary.
3) I thought from the mini-episode that John Hurt was going to turn out to be some kind of alternate-timeline Doctor, where he became the Warrier instead, but no, we now have a new Ninth Doctor. All of my pinboard tagging is messed up ...
4) He was great, though, I really liked John Hurt's Doctor. And the dynamic of the three of them together was just as much fun as I hoped it would be. Occasionally the dialogue got clunky when a situation called for a quirky Doctor line and they needed to work in three different quirky Doctor lines instead, but a lot of their dialogue was really delightful.
5) The call-backs were ... well, some of them were pretty graceful and fun, and some of them were clunky as hell. I liked the visual call-backs, and I liked the timey-wimey thing, especially as it led into "Why are you so afraid to be a grown-up?", but e.g. Tennant's "I don't want to go" was super-awkwardly set-up and sank like a stone.
6) Clara was as delightful and fun as ever but she continues to feel like a really superficially drawn character to me. I feel like her two alternate selves - the Dalek and the Mary Poppins one - were a lot more fully realised as people than she is? Maybe because they had more backstory, come to think of it. (The leaf-of-wedding-destiny is not a goddamned backstory.)
7) Sooooo timelords again, hey? As a non-oldschool Who fan, a universe with other timelords to interfere in things and have power comparable to or greater than the Doctor is pretty new to me, I'm not sure what to expect. I hope we get to meet a new Romana, though. Even though I don't really know the olds ones.
8) Kate was great, I really like her. More Kate. (Also feel free to bring back Harriet Jones any time, honestly.)
9) The glorification of the act of necessary genocide at great personal cost to the soul was pretty awful (Great men are forged in the fires of battle, ugh)and went on and on, that scene with the three of them poised to hit the button dragged like crazy, and I haven't decided whether the fact that they didn't makes up for that. All the same, I'm glad they didn't. The thirteen Doctors saving the day together was really fun. (Although it would have been more narratively powerful for me if they'd managed to save some people, rather than completely reversing the tragedy.)
10) Overall I thought it did a good job of clearly being a tribute to 50 years of show but also being a fun story that worked as its own new thing.
11) Seriously though how is fandom going to resolve the ambiguity about which goddamn regeneration they're talking about? I find it really hard to think of Eccleston as the Tenth Doctor, etc.
12) I really wanted more time vortex, since it was 3D. What is the point of 3D without gratuitous time vortex scenes. Or at least some in the opening credits, even though yes that was very nostalgic to see the old credits.
13) Billie Piper as Bad Wolf, tho. Damn.
