Doctor Who 6.02: Day of the Moon
Apr. 30th, 2011 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
paxpinnaeOh man. This EPISODE. I promised last week that I would have things to say, and as it turns out, I have a lot of things to say.
Examining the two episodes as a whole, this was a flawed but deeply terrifying story. It is impossible to hide behind my couch, because it is up against the wall with a whole lot of flattened cardboard boxes behind it, but I sure did try. I have a thing about messing with memories. It's not a phobia, because phobias are silly and irrational. Being afraid of something that can re-write your entire life, manipulate you to suit its whims, and make you like it? Something that leaves you marking your skin with sharpie like a frat boy on a blackout bender, just to hang on to what you ought to know? Extremely fucking rational.
It is for this reason that the solution also creeped me out and failed to satisfy me. Humanity is still brainwashed, but this time it is by the good alien! Yay? Don't get me wrong, it was quite clever, and it is nice when the Doctor gets to be quite clever, but still. It was a little too - convenient. This is a theme in Moffat's episodes, I think.. He spends a lot of time in the build-up, getting you to a place where your dreams will be haunted for years to come, and then can't figure out how to stick the landing. He goes for simple, elegant, ironic solutions and doesn't quite let them sink in, so you're left saying, "Wait, what? It's done?" and still feeling like you're about to be attacked by things you can't remember. Not quite enough to make up for the "everyone's dead - PSYCHE" hackery two episodes in a row.
I'LL TELL YOU WHAT DID MAKE UP FOR IT THOUGH: THE SILENCE STOLE AMY'S BABY, WHO IS ALSO A TIMELADY. WHAT THE - I DON'T EVEN KNOW, BUT I WANT TO WRITE FIC ABOUT IT UNTIL I FIGURE IT OUT.
The triad dynamic in this episode was wrenchingly painful, but in a good way! I love the moments when the show throws a bone to the idea that Rory and The Doctor do get along, and The Doctor pressing a kiss to Rory's forehead when they came out of the body bags was definitely one of those moments. And then Rory, with Amy's chip. OH GOD. Arthur Darvill sold the hell out of that moment, with Rory getting all solemn and Roman, and then his heart just about breaking when Amy asks for the Doctor instead. I love that he's willing to get her what she needs, even if that's not him. Then it turns out that hey, it is him, and isn't it nice when the girl you waited 2,000 years for is worth it. Amy is so very protective of him, of his need for normalcy. It's not exactly healthy, per se, but then again, as many, many people have noted, this is a show about a 900 year old alien who regularly abducts teenage girls. Healthy isn't our baseline here.
On a lighter note, the whole "Doctor Who in America" thing is HIGHLY amusing, from an American perspective. They had an MP in the Control Room! (Note to foreign types: We don't have Military Police, we have the National Guard.) Shooting someone and saying "Welcome to America!" They're never going to forget Nixon! At least the American accents weren't quite so ear-bleedingly awful as they've been in the past. Now I know how all you UK types felt when everyone in the world started writing Harry Potter fic and talking about showing someone their new pants. It all combined to make me think about things which are not spoilery, and which therefore go outside the cut.
There's something that I've known but never before processed - almost no other country has a space program like the United States does. Or rather, did. Russia does. In about six months, the only way into space will be on a Russian capsule, so maybe I shouldn't knock the rest of the world so much. However, the fact remains that I've always thought of space travel as a kind of transcendent international goal, when really a lot of it has happened in my backyard.
I grew up in Houston, which is where U.S. astronauts live and train and where Mission Control is. (Houston, we've had a problem.") I went on field trips to the Johnson Space Center about six times before high school, and my high school friends and I still truck out to the Brazos Bend Observatory every August to watch the Perseids. When Columbia went down, it seemed like the whole city was walking around like we'd been punched in the stomach, because seven people had died, and all the news would talk about was whether we should be going into space at all, given the lack of "practical applications." I know every kid wants to be an astronaut at some point, but it takes a special kind of crazy to try to brew jet fuel in your bathtub so you can launch your own rocket. I never did that, because my dad had some very reasonable objections, but I had friends who did. I've worked in a lab partially funded by NASA. When the Endeavor launch was delayed yesterday, about six of my friends posted disappointed status updates. It still breaks my heart that there's nothing to replace the shuttle program when it dies.
All of which goes to say that I know that the space program is important to me, and to the people around me. But these two episodes had this wonderful, mythic love for the space program that wasn't quite in line with what I've experienced. It was like going to a service in someone else's religion; all the standard elements were there, but just a little bit - off.
So, non-American friends - Am I way off-base? Is space travel as important everywhere else as it is here? Do you think of it as an international effort, or is it another thing that the US ropes the world into doing? Scifi would suggest the former, but hey - a lot of that's written by Americans. Drop a comment, please - I'm genuinely curious.
Examining the two episodes as a whole, this was a flawed but deeply terrifying story. It is impossible to hide behind my couch, because it is up against the wall with a whole lot of flattened cardboard boxes behind it, but I sure did try. I have a thing about messing with memories. It's not a phobia, because phobias are silly and irrational. Being afraid of something that can re-write your entire life, manipulate you to suit its whims, and make you like it? Something that leaves you marking your skin with sharpie like a frat boy on a blackout bender, just to hang on to what you ought to know? Extremely fucking rational.
It is for this reason that the solution also creeped me out and failed to satisfy me. Humanity is still brainwashed, but this time it is by the good alien! Yay? Don't get me wrong, it was quite clever, and it is nice when the Doctor gets to be quite clever, but still. It was a little too - convenient. This is a theme in Moffat's episodes, I think.. He spends a lot of time in the build-up, getting you to a place where your dreams will be haunted for years to come, and then can't figure out how to stick the landing. He goes for simple, elegant, ironic solutions and doesn't quite let them sink in, so you're left saying, "Wait, what? It's done?" and still feeling like you're about to be attacked by things you can't remember. Not quite enough to make up for the "everyone's dead - PSYCHE" hackery two episodes in a row.
I'LL TELL YOU WHAT DID MAKE UP FOR IT THOUGH: THE SILENCE STOLE AMY'S BABY, WHO IS ALSO A TIMELADY. WHAT THE - I DON'T EVEN KNOW, BUT I WANT TO WRITE FIC ABOUT IT UNTIL I FIGURE IT OUT.
The triad dynamic in this episode was wrenchingly painful, but in a good way! I love the moments when the show throws a bone to the idea that Rory and The Doctor do get along, and The Doctor pressing a kiss to Rory's forehead when they came out of the body bags was definitely one of those moments. And then Rory, with Amy's chip. OH GOD. Arthur Darvill sold the hell out of that moment, with Rory getting all solemn and Roman, and then his heart just about breaking when Amy asks for the Doctor instead. I love that he's willing to get her what she needs, even if that's not him. Then it turns out that hey, it is him, and isn't it nice when the girl you waited 2,000 years for is worth it. Amy is so very protective of him, of his need for normalcy. It's not exactly healthy, per se, but then again, as many, many people have noted, this is a show about a 900 year old alien who regularly abducts teenage girls. Healthy isn't our baseline here.
On a lighter note, the whole "Doctor Who in America" thing is HIGHLY amusing, from an American perspective. They had an MP in the Control Room! (Note to foreign types: We don't have Military Police, we have the National Guard.) Shooting someone and saying "Welcome to America!" They're never going to forget Nixon! At least the American accents weren't quite so ear-bleedingly awful as they've been in the past. Now I know how all you UK types felt when everyone in the world started writing Harry Potter fic and talking about showing someone their new pants. It all combined to make me think about things which are not spoilery, and which therefore go outside the cut.
There's something that I've known but never before processed - almost no other country has a space program like the United States does. Or rather, did. Russia does. In about six months, the only way into space will be on a Russian capsule, so maybe I shouldn't knock the rest of the world so much. However, the fact remains that I've always thought of space travel as a kind of transcendent international goal, when really a lot of it has happened in my backyard.
I grew up in Houston, which is where U.S. astronauts live and train and where Mission Control is. (Houston, we've had a problem.") I went on field trips to the Johnson Space Center about six times before high school, and my high school friends and I still truck out to the Brazos Bend Observatory every August to watch the Perseids. When Columbia went down, it seemed like the whole city was walking around like we'd been punched in the stomach, because seven people had died, and all the news would talk about was whether we should be going into space at all, given the lack of "practical applications." I know every kid wants to be an astronaut at some point, but it takes a special kind of crazy to try to brew jet fuel in your bathtub so you can launch your own rocket. I never did that, because my dad had some very reasonable objections, but I had friends who did. I've worked in a lab partially funded by NASA. When the Endeavor launch was delayed yesterday, about six of my friends posted disappointed status updates. It still breaks my heart that there's nothing to replace the shuttle program when it dies.
All of which goes to say that I know that the space program is important to me, and to the people around me. But these two episodes had this wonderful, mythic love for the space program that wasn't quite in line with what I've experienced. It was like going to a service in someone else's religion; all the standard elements were there, but just a little bit - off.
So, non-American friends - Am I way off-base? Is space travel as important everywhere else as it is here? Do you think of it as an international effort, or is it another thing that the US ropes the world into doing? Scifi would suggest the former, but hey - a lot of that's written by Americans. Drop a comment, please - I'm genuinely curious.
