Doctor Who

[jack]

Paper Forest

Hm, it didn't overwhelm me in either direction. It was a decent conclusion to a very nice first half, but didn't overwhelm me itself. Many people's guesses about what was going on were confirmed. The ghosting effect did turn out to be important. The Vashta Narada had a mixed reception, but even if they never come back, I think I'll always remember them as one of the most iconic monsters, which makes the entire thing a success by many standards.

It was very poignant when River died. I know she technically survived, and was glad (whether or not I think it dramatically sensible to save everyone deus ex machina), but she's still basically lost to the doctor so it had much the same effect. And it manages the simultaneous trick of wrapping up the whole affair, and yet deliberately leaving open the potential of her appearing in the series again.

Midnight Diamond Train

It was silly in places, and when I thought it was going to be about people over-acting and a mysterious monster of the week trying to be a horror movie, I wasn't that interested, but in fact it turned out really well.

What the doctor can always do is talk people round one way and another, so when he loses that, first when people stop listening to him, and then when he's actually trapped speechless, it's really creepy. Likewise that he had no idea what the monster was, it was left as a mystery.

Unlike so many similar efforts in other TV, the accusations of the supporting were rather understandable: their criticisms of the doctor were pretty on target, and when they stop listening to Dido, and when they go murderous, it's pretty understandable, and really does feel like what ordinary people might do, rather than just tacked on, which is very much more creepy.

And it was sad the stewardess died, just when I thought they might redeem the situation without anyone dying. Similarly, the boy, both started off as a stereotype, then faked you out when they started thinking, but she suddenly carried it through, and he didn't quite have the courage to act on his new convictions after all.

So, not perfectly executed, but quite interesting.

It's interesting to see the doctor utterly companionless for once, that seems quite rare in my limited memory. (It's sort of clear something like this'll happen when he leaves Donna behind, but that was handled as well as it could be. It was nice to see them specifically planning some fun, even if they never got there.) Maybe companions really are necessary to keep him going.

Nitpicks:

I've nearly stopped bothering with nitpicks, I don't know whether because the episodes are more consistent, or I just can't be bothered. Just one, the sunlight -- it was a cool idea, but unfortunately sounded slightly too much like technobabble, temporarily giving the false impression the doctor was going to proclaim it was all a con and wasn't actually poisonous.

Comments

Midnight Diamond Train

[pavanne.livejournal.com]

This occurred to me on the way to work, weeks after watching it.

Recap in case I missed an important plot point:
The first woman was possessed by a Creepy Possessing Thing. And the other people got very frightened and wanted to throw her out the airlock (lightlock?), but the Doctor of course said No.

So they faffed around a bit with some high tension and the Doctor getting possessed, and in the end the way to get rid of it was to throw the woman out of the airlock, which then necessitated a non-possessed person to throw herself out too.

Wouldn't it have been better to go with mob paranoia initially, in this instance? The Doctor's sensible-sounding attempts to save the first woman actually just killed another one as well. Or is the moral of the story "don't kill anyone unless you are also committing suicide"?