(no subject)

[rynne]

Complete fail, Amazon. COMPLETE FAIL.

In other news, I watched Planet of the Dead again, with heart_of_man.


This is partly an expansion of my thoughts yesterday on human/alien perspectives.

Because I really think this episode said a lot about the Doctor and romance. I definitely saw a spark between the Doctor and Christina, and I was actually all right with that. I saw sparks between Five and Tegan too, and sometimes Three and Jo, and Eight and Grace had enough sparks that they kissed twice.

But the thing about the Doctor is that he doesn't typically let the sparks affect him, at least in terms of influencing him to indulge in a romantic relationship. Even if I saw sparks between Three/Jo and Five/Tegan, I definitely don't think they went anywhere, any more than Ten/Christina did.

Two things in this episode really jumped out to me: the Doctor as an alien, and Christina as his parallel. For that matter, Christina as his parallel emphasized the Doctor as an alien.

There was a lot of equalizing and equivalencing (er, dunno if those are words, but I don't really care XD) language. The Doctor calls them a couple, says they were made for each other, quite a team, etc. When she said that he looked human, he said that she looked Time Lord--expression of equality, with both of them putting each other on the same level. He compares her stealing various things to him stealing the TARDIS.

They're similar in actions, too. They both come prepared. She takes charge just as easily as he does. They both love adventure. At the end, the way she steals the bus really does remind me of how he stole the TARDIS.

But the thing is, all this equalizing and paralleling stuff? It's not enough. And that's because the Doctor's an alien, because I saw a lot of emphasizing that too.

Showing off that the Doctor is an alien isn't exactly unusual, of course. Mostly the show does it by giving him a lot of knowledge that humans don't have, occasionally abilities. But I don't think we often see his perspective as an alien, not the way that we do here. Like with Fires of Pompeii we got the fixed vs in flux thing, but for me at least, that was more of a cool factoid about the Doctor than anything else. It does show a difference between humans and Time Lords, but more in the way of Time Lords having something humans don't, so it's something we as the audience can only appreciate intellectually.

On the other hand, this felt a lot closer to home, because it was less a matter of simple absence vs presence (like abilities Time Lords have that humans don't) as it was a matter of interpretation.

The Doctor has never been shy about telling people how brilliant they are. Rose, Martha, Donna, Jack, various other people, and now Malcolm and Christina too. He gushes. That's what he does. He loves going into raptures about how awesome people are.

The fact that he does it to so many people says that he doesn't mean it the way Christina probably took it. He does mean that the person is brilliant and special and awesome, but he's not using that for a purpose. He's saying it just because he means it, not because he wants to get anything out of it.

Christina listened to him enthuse about how brilliantly they worked together, and extrapolated that to mean that he'd like to continue the partnership. When she went after him to ask to go with him, it was initially less asking than assuming they'd be going off together, and I think she got that assumption from her interpretation of his behavior.

And that's what makes him so alien, because it's a reasonable assumption. I know if I met a guy who kept going on about how awesome we were together, how similar we are, and then rhapsodized about how he traveled through time and space, I'd think it meant he was trying to be subtle about saying he wanted me to come do that with him. It's like, why do you keep saying that if you don't mean something by it?

Because he's not human, and his brain doesn't automatically interpret things the ways ours does. He thinks he's saying simple statements of fact, while Christina's reading things into it.

I do think he was attracted to her. I do think there were sparks. But I don't think they meant very much to him--certainly not as much as his angst does. :p

But I also have a point to these thoughts, and that's Rose. Anyone surprised? XD Because I've seen several reaction posts along the lines of "RTD, do you even care about the Doctor/Rose love story anymore? Don't you think that the Doctor kissing all these women and going on about how awesome they are cheapens that love story?" And honestly, I think it means the opposite.

Because the thing is, I think the Doctor's behavior with other women illustrates the difference between them and Rose.

He's an alien. He can send out signals that humans interpret one way and he interprets another, like with Martha and Christina (and Astrid, too, I think, because had she survived I can't imagine the Doctor would have just blithely gone on kissing her and entering that kind of relationship).

There were sparks between him and Jo, and Tegan, and Grace, and various other companions. There were sparks between him and Christina.

He just never got so close to giving in to them as he did with Rose. Of course this is another interpretation thing, but that's mine--he's an alien, and he doesn't have to let sparks affect him, but he did with Rose and he didn't with so many other companions and almost-companions, and I do think this shows how--and yes I'm using this word--special Rose is. Rose got closer than so many other people, and I think you have to show those other people to truly appreciate how close Rose got. And even if you fully believe, say, Four and Romana were totally together (I'm neutral on the idea, myself), just because Rose isn't the only person he's gotten that close to doesn't mean it's a regular occurrence. It's the exception, not the rule, and just because he gushes about people and gets kissed a bunch doesn't mean Rose wasn't very special to him.

And anyway, think about his reactions to all of the kisses he's gotten from people (not counting Joan to John Smith). Does anything really beat the complete look of "GUH" on his face when Cassandra!Rose kisses him in New Earth? *g*

Okay, now that I've once again MADE EVERYTHING ABOUT ROSE, there's something else I want to talk about, something that is probably just as predictable coming from me.

Though I might be slightly unpredictable when I say that I really saw shades of Moffat in this second watching.

In shinyopals's Moffat essay, she mentions a few things that Moffat tends to do with his plots and characters.

One of those is the villains--Moffat tends to make his villains either be machines functioning badly or creatures doing what's natural for them. The other thing is downplaying an ensemble cast to promote a female one-off character who the Doctor has sparks with.

RTD did both of those things in this episode. The villains were just flying metallic manta rays (er, did they get a proper name?) doing what was natural for them, which is apparently flying around planets and turning them into deserts and creating wormholes (the actual physics of which I'm going to ignore, because THAT is RTD all over). They weren't doing it to be evil or anything, or because they were selfish or greedy or whatever. That's just what they did.

And Christina got so much more focus and development than the people on the bus. It really reminded me of SitL/FotD, where River Song was basically so much more important than the other people on the expedition and she got so much more focus and development than they did.

So I was thinking about that as I watched and initially I kept going "WTF, RTD?" because I liked the episode overall, and I didn't want to like it if RTD could get away with doing things Moffat did and Moffat couldn't just because I'm prejudiced against Moffat.

But then I realized a key difference, which is that Moffat would background the companions in favor of his one-offs, and RTD didn't. Of course that's because there was no companion--when everyone's a one-off, someone has to function as the companion.

This doesn't mean I'm very happy about what he did with Christina vs the people on the bus. It still feels very much like River Song vs the expedition, because while I did like everyone on the bus, they didn't get much focus or development. They got some, yeah, but not that much. And RTD can do so much better than that, and did, with Voyage of the Damned. That was also not the best episode ever, but at least the people there weren't as bland as the people on the bus, even though Astrid was just as much a one-off companion as Christina.

But still, at least I can say that RTD's better than Moffat because he only did this when the Doctor didn't have a real companion around. XD Not much consolation, but some.

And with the villains thing, the big point shinyopals made was that all of Moffat's villains were basically things that couldn't help themselves, and it'd be nice if Moffat would vary it up a bit by making bad guys that were sometimes actual bad guys. RTD does that, so I can be fine with the occasional dangerous-creatures-acting-natural.

Hmmm. Am I being reasonable, or am I justifying because I want to keep vilifying Moffat? XD I don't want to be prejudiced--I don't like Moffat not just because he's Moffat, but because of various things about the stories he writes and the things he says. But is it reasonable to justify when RTD does some of the same things when I still vilify Moffat? Is that what I'm doing? XD

Totally time to stop before I give myself a headache.

Comments

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

This is actually a subject that I've been thinking of talking about, too, and, you know, for me there is a big difference between doing something occasionally, to change things up a bit, and doing something all the time.

But I've actually found (since JE, mostly) that I appear to be in an odd weird corner of Who-fandom, because I love Doctor/Rose a lot but am okay with the Doctor having sparks with other women (but I also, like you, see romance and sparks as different things: the Doctor had sparky chemistry with Christina, but he was never going to do anything romantic (from his perspective) with her. His reaction to the kiss (telling her to get behind the dividing line) was clear enough in that regard, I think).

Christina was witty and clever and didn't say anything intentionally cruel (it's the casual cruelty of Moffat's love interest characters that bothers me the most -- Reinette laughing about a woman's death, River (and the rest of that crew) being major league asses to that one woman), so the thieving didn't really bother me. It doesn't hurt anyone; it's just about taking stuff. Hmm. The difference between 'selfish' (which Christina unmistakably was) and 'mean' (which she definitely wasn't).

Also, Christina actually did awesome things. It wasn't all "history books say she's awesome" or "she tells us that in the future, the Doctor will think she's so awesome". River's big act is to knock the Doctor out and then make sure that gets handcuffed somewhere so that he can watch her sacrifice herself -- it's, again, so needlessly cruel of her to make the Doctor watch that. He didn't need to see that, but she wanted him to know how much she loved him (which only proved to me that she loved her own concept of herself so much more). Reinette... talks to the clockworks for a few minutes until the Doctor comes to saves the day and then... what was that? she sacrifices her happiness so he can go home, but makes an enormous fuss about it and writes a letter that is guaranteed to make him beat himself up over everything.

Christina, on the other hand, helped organize the passengers, was proactive in keeping an eye on her most valuable resource (the Doctor), took action in retrieving the gem/clamps, all while asking questions and figuring things out. Yes, the Doctor praised her... and he also frequently praised Martha ("You're a star!"), Donna ("You're brilliant, you are."), Rose ("I only take the best. I've got Rose."), and many many other random people. The Doctor likes people who are clever and quick.

The way he interacts with people in general is very flirty by nature -- it helps him get what he wants, for the most part. Smooths the way. He still gets confused when people mistake his nature and his admiration for flirting (a mistake that he never, as far as I can recall, made with Rose -- indeed, he spent more than a little time and effort trying to show her that he did mean it as genuine flirting).

[uliczka.livejournal.com]

IAWTC so much it hurts.

[shinyopals.livejournal.com]

I got very much the same thing as you did from his compliments and squeeing. It's what he does, after all. I think there might also have been an element of him knowing that he wasn't going to let her come with him, so he was sort of free to not think too hard about stuff.

Like you said, from a human perspective, it was incredibly flirty. But from where he's sitting, it probably didn't even occur to him. Like Martha falling for him. And like "I'll be health, you can be safety". He was also fairly clear, when she kissed him, that she'd crossed a line. Just like with Martha's flirting at the end of Smith and Jones and how he completely backed down and outright said "no", he was the same to Christina - brushing her off (although not quite as excessively because he knew they'd be saying goodbye soon, anyway). Rose was the only person whose flirting and talk of "dates" he outright encouraged.

I could see the spark between them, but I don't think he could have fallen for her quite like Rose. The sand-in-her-hair scene illustrated this for me. It didn't make me hate Christina (everyone's got flaws, after all, and this fitted with her character) but it did make me think of the Doctor in New Earth: "There people are dying, and Rose would care". A bit of chemistry with someone (and some overly positive signals in that way he does) doesn't make it any sort of true love.

I also noticed the Moffat-ish stuff, particularly watching the Confidential, when RTD talked about how the swarm are just doing what's in their nature. Thing is, that didn't bother me because I know RTD can write other things, whereas I've yet to see that with Moffat.

As for Christina herself, in part I can understand it. She was being marketed as "the companion", even as a one off companion, and therefore her role was always going to be bigger. In actuality, she reminded me more of Jack or even the Doctor himself (and a bit of Jenny) than Rose, Martha or Donna (despite the slight Martha-ness to her relationship) because she was never shown on a sort of ordinary human level.

I can see where you're coming from, definitely. And I can see the dilemma. It's easy for me to explain why I have less issues with Christina than Moffat's Reinette, because he wrote Reinette as fairly useless. It's trickier for me to explain why I like her more than River Song, because the flirting and some of the smugness, as well as being generally competent and having a lot of tricks up her sleeve - they're very similar for both characters.

I think in part, it's because in PotD, the Doctor's doing what he tends to do: singling out one person to help him (although Christina singled him out). If he'd been in a better emotional place, she'd probably have gone on to being a companion (although whether that would have been good or bad is another debate altogether). Whereas with SitL/FotD, Donna was sidelined to make way for SHINY NEW PERSON.

Maybe there is some bias from me. It's probably hard to argue that there isn't, at this stage, given how strongly I feel about Moffat compared to RTD, but I also think PotD was enjoyable for other reasons, and SitL/FotD sucked for other reasons. I liked Christina more than River, but everyone's always going to have preferences. And the Doctor's relationship with Christina felt perfectly reasonable. With River it was just messed up and only existed to preserve the time lines.

[thehornedgod.livejournal.com]

*wanders in via the_spdn*

It was very Moffatesque, wasn't it? You mention the focus on the sparks-will-fly! girl of the week over the ensemble, and the menace that's just following its nature rather than malicious. Those are indeed both Moffat signatures and both present and correct in Planet of the Dead, but I've got two more. One, Christina's characterisation is much more like a Moffat heroine than an RTD one: she's posh and peremptory, which is what a man like Moffat comes up with if the brief is "snarky and self-possessed". Two, hardly anybody died. It's not quite everybody lives, but all the humans except the bus driver make it off the planet of the dead alive. It references Midnight, itself an even darker variation on Voyage and tells a Moffatier story in which the passengers are whisked to safety.

So are the shades of Moffat the result of Gareth Roberts co-writing, do you think, is Christina his attempt to do a twenty-first century Romana? Or is Russell showing that whatever Moffat can do, he can do better, much better?

[goldy-dollar.livejournal.com]

Hee. Clearly I should have read this post first. XD

Good point about the Doctor being flirtatious just by nature. He's incredibly charismatic and it's not too surprising that others would be attracted to that. Besides, it's not like there's some rule against being attracted to others after sending Rose away with your duplicate. But it felt really IC to me that he wanted to cut off that connection before it got any deeper. He has some serious healing to do.

I don't think it's bad necessarily that RTD is borrowing some Moffat-like things for his episodes - Moffat usually writes some entertaining and tight scripts. Just shows how versatile RTD is as a writer. Plus, some things felt VERY RTD to me like the flying bus and Killer Stingrays creating wormholes of doom (WTF?).

Also, I think the lack of attention paid to the bus passengers was balanced out by Malcolm and Magambo's characterizations. Especially Magambo's. She, what, had maybe 5-10 minutes worth of screentime? Yet we were given an almost complete arc for her. So that's two characters outside of the two main ones who were developed and given real personalities. Not bad.