Doctor Who, Season One

[laleia]

Just finished watching Season One of Doctor Who (up to Parting of Ways), and I find myself brimming with thoughts, so here, have some thoughtvomit.

1. So obviously, I have a completely different perspective on Doctor Who than everybody else, since my exposure to Doctor Who unfolded as follows: Be forced by friends (theladyrose and darklightluna) to watch scariest episodes Empty Child and Doctor Dances; Go home and read fanfic; Watch other episodes in a leisurely, completely out-of-order pace. I'm sure that's affecting the way I see everything.

2. The Ninth Doctor is kind of a douche. Wait, did I see "kind of"? I mean, he is a huge douche. He take Rose from her life, emotionally manipulates her into leaving her family repeatedly, and honestly, I feel he almost deliberately tries to separate/distance Rose from her friends and family to minimize the temptation to leave him unless he decides it. I mean, when you're in a time machine it should in theory be easy to return people home in a timely manner, at least. Instead of dropping them home at odd times, you could decide that every 2-3 adventures, you visit Rose's timeline exactly one week after the last visit, so that she's always home for family dinner or something. I know the first time he meant to drop her off 12 hours later, but every time after that? She never goes home?

3. And then there was Father's Day. I am of the opinion that even though Rose saving her father and changing the timeline is stupid (although honestly the Doctor changes the timeline all the time), the Doctor taking her to see her father die twice is even more stupid. I believe that we should obviously make decisions for the greater good, but on a personal level, when you make the selfless decision to sacrifice that which you love for the greater good, then you are no longer human. I mean, sacrificing yourself is entirely up to you, but sacrificing that which you love and has been given no choice in the matter makes you inhumane. Inhuman?

For example, in Children of Earth, the politicians who asked that their children be excluded from the pool of sacrificial children obviously were being incredibly selfish and terrible. On the other hand, when I see Jack sacrificing his grandson to save all the children of the world, I recognize that he is making the "right" decision but I also believe that his many years of existence have made him inhuman. I won't contest that it was the best decision at the time, or that he's not torn up about it, and I'm not saying he doesn't have feelings, but his ability to make that decision at that time means he has become slightly inhuman.

Likewise, I think that while Rose made a stupid decision, that if she watched her father die (twice!) and wasn't compelled to do anything about it, especially given her nature, that would be inhuman and the Doctor himself is stupid not to realize that.

4. Skipping back a few episodes, I would like to talk about "Dalek." Okay, so obviously I don't really understand about Daleks but ... I don't understand why the Doctor virulently hates them so much. Of course, part of this is because I don't understand or believe that emotions can be completely removed from someone's DNA (or whatever explanation it was that he gave), but I think that they are either a.) robots or b.) sentient. And if they are sentient, they should have the capacity to feel.

I mean, I didn't understand this in the Season 5 Daleks serving tea episode either. I didn't understand why the Doctor believed Daleks were in their very nature so incredibly evil, especially considering how nuanced the show is about every other alien species and how much benefit of the doubt the Doctor gives everyone else. And obviously, "Dalek" highlights how the Doctor himself can be capable of unfeeling destructive tendencies and be Dalek-like.

The point is, I fail to understand why the only solution to Daleks is to genocide them. Every time. (Which, it's ridiculous how often they show up considering they're supposed to be "extinct". Why do extinct Daleks get to pop up zillions of times like cockroaches while the theoretically equally extinct Timelords have only popped up once? Not fair.) If it's so impossible to negotiate with them, why not give them feelings like Rose apparently did? Infect them all with emotion and see what happens? I mean, if they can "go mad", why can't they feel?

4b. My misgivings about genociding Daleks are kind of ridiculous considering how much I was rooting for the Silence to die and how I completely don't mind all of the Silence being wiped out in the way it was done, and how the only reason I didn't defend the Doctor's decision to all those people who thought the Doctor should have tried to negotiate is because I try to avoid confrontation on the Internet if at all possible.

5. And another thing. I see secondhand fandom wank about RTD vs. Moffat in terms of the ability to write plot, or the ability to do small details, or ability to write plots that make sense.

And really. You're expecting plots that make sense from Doctor Who? None of the plots make sense.

I mean, for every bit that manipulates time effectively and niftily, there are twenty bits that are handwaved as "Timey Wimey" and collapse under the power of Third Thoughts and Fourth Thoughts. I mean, "Blink" made sense in as far as I can remember (I refuse to rewatch because it's SCARY), but neither the Season 4 finale nor the Season 5 finale make much sense.

Season 4 has alternate universes that can't be traveled to and that are collapsing and then the Earth is transported in a way that doesn't massively disturb our gravity and then Daleks are ruining the Earth except not really because the Dalek that brought all the Daleks back actually ... brought them back but brought a way to kill them off as well? Part of that is lazy and inattentive viewing on my part, I'm sure, where things are explained and I just didn't catch it. But are you really going to sit there and tell me that the entire plot plus the overarching appearances of Rose actually all made sense?

Meanwhile, the Season 5 Finale had nifty time bits (anything with the fez!Doctor vs. nonfez!Doctor) but also had stuff that didn't make sense (like ... a universe that is dying but not dying and is dying everywhere in history and is an alternate universe and disappears and then all exists inside Amy's head only but she brings it to life). Also, the Crack doesn't make sense either.

(There is a thought here about A. the ridiculousness of me applying real-world logic to a fictional show, B. my indignation that a fictional show shouldn't have real-world logic applied to it; if we ignore logic, what do we have? if you can make anything up and anything goes and don't draw lines to explain things, why am I interested? C. the problem is I am applying my linear concept of time to a show that has explicitly stated time is not linear, so if I'm not willing to expand my thoughts horizons I have no business watching this show, D. well at least if they gave me a model and stuck with it, I would be willing to use that model to logically poke holes in the show but they're just doing whatever is convenient for them plotwise and none of it makes sens, E. well in real world, physics is one field where nothing make sense and multiple models are used for multiple things and none of them actually work, case in point is light a wave or an electron? or how in physics time can actually slow down and/or speed up, so Doctor Who is not a stretching considering all that, F. well, there's a reason I'm not going into physics, isn't there.

These are the arguments I have with myself inside my head.)

Especially since Doctor Who is intended to be a kids' show (which ... I don't know any actual kids who watch this, just adults), the plots often don't make sense but the point is that when you are watching it that first time, you are so caught up in the moment you either don't notice or don't care.

6. Consider TARDIS is Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, I feel there's not enough exploration of time travel. For example, why is River the first time we have out-of-order meetings? I don't understand why Rose has to go back home and see Mickey in order. When Mickey was telling her about the other shopgirl, all I could think was, "What if you went home out of order and saw Mickey at different times? It would be weird but cool and then if you miss an appointment you can always go back and try again at a later time in your timeline and it would work out so much better."

Also, when Rose was depressed because the Doctor was dying hundreds of thousands of years in the future, all I was thinking was ... well I mean he's in the future. You have plenty of time. If I were you, I'd get in touch with UNIT or with some of the other older Companions (though granted she didn't know about the latter, but she did about the former) and figure out some way to adapt the TARDIS and use it and take some weapons with you so you can kill of the Daleks while you're at it. I mean, he's dying at this moment but also in the future so actually you have a while to think of the perfect plan and then to travel to the right minute to enact your plan.

7. Watching the show out of order is really weird because it becomes clear when later episodes tried to claim things that former episodes kind of contradict.

Do we have the "heart of the TARDIS", the "Time Vortex", or "TARDIS matrix"? Daleks were secretly hiding in the dark spot outside Earth at the same time as other Daleks were moving the Earth under orders of Caan? (Actually since the Bad Wolf removed Daleks from space and time, I guess they were never actually there? But at any point BEFORE Bad Wolf removed them, did this scenario happen?) How many aliens have been controlling the human race now?

It's just a little weird because sometimes it's clear that there is an in-universe (Watsonian) explanation which flimsy at best because of an out-universe (Doylist) reason.

8. I don't ship Doctor/Companion in any permutation or any form, right now. First, of course, I don't like age gaps and this is alike a 900-year age gap. Second, I think that it's ... kind of weird. Because there's a power imbalance, and I'm just not a fan of that. Even when Companions treat him as a peer, there is still a clear power imbalance. He's the Doctor, it's his TARDIS, and if he doesn't like you he can drop you off home and there's really nothing you can do about it. I can buy Doctor/River so far precisely because right now she has more "power" and more "knowledge" than him so it doesn't feel unbalanced (even though he's Timelord and she's presumably human). Which, ironically, is part of the reason so much of fandom despises her.


One last vague thing I just wanted to say: Not all of us are HUGE fans or are good at picking up every detail of everything the first time through, or even remember everything from previous episodes. There's no need to look down at us for it -- we enjoy it just as much as you do even if we miss things on occasion, and enjoying it is the whole point of entertainment, yes?

Comments

[asim.livejournal.com]

There's a lot here. :) I'll touch on a few topics at random:

So far as consistency/canon, I think Paul Cornell -- writer for the show, and long-standing fan -- described it best in this post (http://www.paulcornell.com/2007/02/canonicity-in-doctor-who.html). Any media that's run this long is going to have gaps, but WHO has some special challenges around consistent history.

Time Travel -- the stories make much more sense if it's more-or-less linear, which goes back to "it's a children's show" rubric. Before the new series, for decades, they really could only write to a certain level of sophistication. In in the New Series, there was a lot of "finding feet" and trying to push the boundaries of the show. The leap from, say, the farting aliens to WATER Of MARS is pretty intense and emblematic, even with episodes like DALEK (which, for all it's emotional heft, is still a pretty straightforward story). The playing with time is part of that growing sense that they can be more sophisticated without losing the children of the audience.

So far as the TARDIS and accuracy -- yeah, you're not going to get it. And Rose's lack of intense desire to go home impacts as well. This gets touched on to some extent later on, including, oddly enough, the latest episode; suffice to say there are reasons why it happens, outside of (and not excluding) lazy writing.

The whole Doctor companion thing remains weird for fandom, and seems to esp underline the old/new fans divide. I think River is a deliberate attempt to poke fandom about some of the issues you mention, in fact.

[darklightluna.livejournal.com]

1. You're welcome!
2. Agreed. I do not understand why over the history of the show, none of the companions were all "I miss mum. Can we visit now and say two weeks have passed? Thanks!"
3. Word.
4. I'm not even going to touch this.
5. Well, there's plots not making sense and then there's plot holes you could loose a truck in. So we're comparing *handwavey timey whimey ball* to "Hey, this entire episode wouldn't have happened if only A had bothered to notice that B had grown a second head!" ... That's not a good example, but I hope you figure out what I mean.
6. WORD WORD WORD. I LOVE time travel stories/arcs/etc and it makes me weep that the only thing time travel is used for is to get them places. It's why I love Moffat, he actually remembers that time is free in this medium and River can do the whole backwards thing.

I also never, ever understood the bit about being in a rush in a situation with time travel. The one thing you have is time. Plenty of it. You could take a break for ten years and come back and still get to the same point.
7. I've got nothing again.
8. I was going to say stuff but you're more eloquent. So...word!