The Doctor's Daughter
May. 12th, 2008 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackI enjoyed The Doctor's Daughter, though I didn't find it as excellent as the other recent episodes.
* I Loved the Hath
* At first I was bored by the endless war cliche, but it's a classic idea and had a really interesting twist
* I liked Jenny. I'm glad they didn't try to meet Susan's mother, that would have meet too ambitious (the series always left the doctor's past on Gallifrey ambiguous, trying to instantiate it would break too many past references and never live up to the suggestions.) However, I'm glad they used this opportunity to illustrate the doctor's past.
Nitpicks:
* It was very sad when the Hath drowned. And I thought Martha sounded genuinely crying, however, it wasn't very well played, it looked as if he spent ages standing within reach of Martha, and she didn't try to save him, so I was distracted during the moving moment.
* Several moments did seem to be someone reading out a line, rather than really reacting. Donna's "She's a person, not collateral" is the right reaction, but it felt perfunctory.
* I liked the doctor's dislike of soldiery. But he seemed harsher with Jenny that I would have imagined; even if she upsets him for personal reasons, and isn't fully his daughter, he normally goes out of his way to help people. Why did it take longer to accept her?
* How come all the soldiers were men, but Jenny was a woman? As Enismirdal points out, if it recombined genes randomly, you'd get more and more women. And if it deliberately makes men, why weren't they surprised by Jenny (even if you assume time lord genetics are different, so making Jenny is possible). I suppose maybe it was a brief hack to mainly make men, and so doesn't work for some weird genetics or aliens, and they figure that's ok? But it seemed to undermine the episode a bit; they made Jenny such a kick-ass soldier you'd think they supported a message that women can do that too, but then perpetuated a choice of an all-male army in the n00'th century.
* For that matter, why bother recombining DNA at all? Why not just clone the best soldier?
* Lasers. Right. Why not just make a few regular rows of lasers so no-one could possibly get through, rather than a random selection. Or, you know, a door? Or are those lasers for some other implausible reason, not security?
* The escape in the shuttle was sort of nice, I'm glad Jenny gets to see the galaxy, but it seems implausible that it's that easy to take a shuttle and take off. However laudable going and adventuring the galaxy is, if a shuttle can fly interplanetary, what is the spaceship for? And isn't a bit of a nasty thing to do to steal the shuttle and leave everyone else behind? She's supposed to seem impulsive, which is fine, but she seemed dangerously reckless, which presumably isn't the intention.
Non-nitpicks
So all the original people died? Is that likely? Even the women who, apparently, weren't supposed to fight?
Actually, on reflection, that is likely. All the human originals probably banded together at the back for safety and let the clones do the fighting, and then were killed in one attack/disaster. And who says the Hath didn't know what was going on? Maybe they knew they'd been fighting for a week, but didn't speak to the humans other than Martha, who can't speak Bubbling.
* I Loved the Hath
* At first I was bored by the endless war cliche, but it's a classic idea and had a really interesting twist
* I liked Jenny. I'm glad they didn't try to meet Susan's mother, that would have meet too ambitious (the series always left the doctor's past on Gallifrey ambiguous, trying to instantiate it would break too many past references and never live up to the suggestions.) However, I'm glad they used this opportunity to illustrate the doctor's past.
Nitpicks:
* It was very sad when the Hath drowned. And I thought Martha sounded genuinely crying, however, it wasn't very well played, it looked as if he spent ages standing within reach of Martha, and she didn't try to save him, so I was distracted during the moving moment.
* Several moments did seem to be someone reading out a line, rather than really reacting. Donna's "She's a person, not collateral" is the right reaction, but it felt perfunctory.
* I liked the doctor's dislike of soldiery. But he seemed harsher with Jenny that I would have imagined; even if she upsets him for personal reasons, and isn't fully his daughter, he normally goes out of his way to help people. Why did it take longer to accept her?
* How come all the soldiers were men, but Jenny was a woman? As Enismirdal points out, if it recombined genes randomly, you'd get more and more women. And if it deliberately makes men, why weren't they surprised by Jenny (even if you assume time lord genetics are different, so making Jenny is possible). I suppose maybe it was a brief hack to mainly make men, and so doesn't work for some weird genetics or aliens, and they figure that's ok? But it seemed to undermine the episode a bit; they made Jenny such a kick-ass soldier you'd think they supported a message that women can do that too, but then perpetuated a choice of an all-male army in the n00'th century.
* For that matter, why bother recombining DNA at all? Why not just clone the best soldier?
* Lasers. Right. Why not just make a few regular rows of lasers so no-one could possibly get through, rather than a random selection. Or, you know, a door? Or are those lasers for some other implausible reason, not security?
* The escape in the shuttle was sort of nice, I'm glad Jenny gets to see the galaxy, but it seems implausible that it's that easy to take a shuttle and take off. However laudable going and adventuring the galaxy is, if a shuttle can fly interplanetary, what is the spaceship for? And isn't a bit of a nasty thing to do to steal the shuttle and leave everyone else behind? She's supposed to seem impulsive, which is fine, but she seemed dangerously reckless, which presumably isn't the intention.
Non-nitpicks
So all the original people died? Is that likely? Even the women who, apparently, weren't supposed to fight?
Actually, on reflection, that is likely. All the human originals probably banded together at the back for safety and let the clones do the fighting, and then were killed in one attack/disaster. And who says the Hath didn't know what was going on? Maybe they knew they'd been fighting for a week, but didn't speak to the humans other than Martha, who can't speak Bubbling.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-12 11:27 pm (UTC)Oh, good point! I hadn't noticed that. (I can think of potential excuses, but they all suck.) Unless maybe he was an original but kept quiet about it, that might also explain why he was so anti peace, if he'd been deliberately perpetuating a myth. But that's not supported by any evidence or anything.
I can overlook the randomly changing levels of water in their bubbling jars, though, that would be too nitpicky.
LOL. Though who says it's random? I assumed the jars were due to a complicated biological reason :) After all, you expect alien species to be weird in ways you don't expect. Maybe it seems more abhorant to an anatomist, but I was happy to say they looked cool and leave it at that.
that would lead to a bias towards women, wouldn't it?
You mean, because the Y gene is a minority? Or because foetuses start female? Or because men are weird?
How about: The "soldier" template was male, and it modified each instance of the template, doing only a perfunctory job.
That sort of makes sense. Or maybe the soldier template was an amalgam of previous soldiers, and hence mostly male, but sometimes a female might be a best match. (Although it's not clear why it has to do anything with genetics at all, surely warm bodies with training are quite sufficient.)