Doctor Who: Westerns and Slow Invasions
Sep. 25th, 2012 12:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackWestern
I liked the imagery.
It didn't have as many laugh out loud moments as the dinosaur one.
It was an ok execution of the "what do we do with a supposedly reformed war criminal" idea[1], but I didn't really feel it added anything.
Several people said there was a connection to the doctor's execution of the genocidal dinosaur thief in the previous episode, possibly part of an ongoing theme, but I didn't understand how? There didn't seem to be any progression, he didn't say "Oh no, what have I done? Can I do it again if I have to?" or "Oh well, now I've executed a genocide, I might as well escalate to killing a war criminal," he just happened to face a similar dilemma two weeks on the trot, and one week he agonised about it and the other week he didn't.
There were some fundamental logical holes: apparently the gunslinger marked the town boundary to avoid hurting people if he stormed in and executed Jenks, but no-one pointed out that if Jenks was near the boundary, it wouldn't matter which side he was on if the gunslinger could just shoot him. In fact, it didn't bother me, since it was obvious what the boundary was doing even if there wasn't a justification for it so the plot worked perfectly well. But it's another example of a "we had a cool premise so we made an episode about it regardless of whether it made sense."
[1] Pun intended.
Slow invasion
I liked the premise a lot, it was quirky, and later on quite tense.
I found the alien quite forgettable, I've already forgotten what the supposed point was.
I liked the interaction with the doctor and rory and amy and rory's dad. The doctor frantically painting stuff was funny. It didn't have as many awesome moments as Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, but had more than the western one.
I thought it was too meta when the doctor came out and said "I can't sit still for four days". The doctor normally exhibits stress by running off and doing stuff, usually for the best: it would have been really interesting for one of his companions to call him on it when he suggested something too counterproductive, but no, he just says he can't sit still.
The choice between normal lives and doctor's companions is an interesting one, although again I felt it was somewhat artificial to bring it all up in this episode.
And also somewhat undermined because the viewer knows its likely that the companions will only really change at seasons end.[2]
The doctor is really mean about dropping people back on Earth without really checking they're at the right time. It's a part of the character that he's happy-go-lucky like that, but if someone says "I want to go with you but person X is relying on me to be here at this time" even if he can't control the Tardis accurately, he's kind of a jerk for just ignoring the problem, not even saying "I'll try my best" or making sure to double-check the time when they arrive back, so at least people know when they've missed something important.
It's true that there's often a choice between a reliable life and an exciting one, and the doctor's companions generally benefit from having an exciting life for a bit, but it's also annoying he sometimes lumps everything in real life together as stupid and annoying, whether it's something comparatively unimportant the companion is unnecessarily worried over, or "I'm abandoning the person I love at the alter". There is a real choice to be made, but I didn't feel the show really showed the choice as well as it could have done.
[2] One of the things I liked about Jack Harkness was that he drifted naturally from being a one-off character to a temporary character, to assumed death, to spin-off. It seems a shame they didn't have a few consecutive episodes where Rory's dad travelled with them, or similar, more often.
I liked the imagery.
It didn't have as many laugh out loud moments as the dinosaur one.
It was an ok execution of the "what do we do with a supposedly reformed war criminal" idea[1], but I didn't really feel it added anything.
Several people said there was a connection to the doctor's execution of the genocidal dinosaur thief in the previous episode, possibly part of an ongoing theme, but I didn't understand how? There didn't seem to be any progression, he didn't say "Oh no, what have I done? Can I do it again if I have to?" or "Oh well, now I've executed a genocide, I might as well escalate to killing a war criminal," he just happened to face a similar dilemma two weeks on the trot, and one week he agonised about it and the other week he didn't.
There were some fundamental logical holes: apparently the gunslinger marked the town boundary to avoid hurting people if he stormed in and executed Jenks, but no-one pointed out that if Jenks was near the boundary, it wouldn't matter which side he was on if the gunslinger could just shoot him. In fact, it didn't bother me, since it was obvious what the boundary was doing even if there wasn't a justification for it so the plot worked perfectly well. But it's another example of a "we had a cool premise so we made an episode about it regardless of whether it made sense."
[1] Pun intended.
Slow invasion
I liked the premise a lot, it was quirky, and later on quite tense.
I found the alien quite forgettable, I've already forgotten what the supposed point was.
I liked the interaction with the doctor and rory and amy and rory's dad. The doctor frantically painting stuff was funny. It didn't have as many awesome moments as Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, but had more than the western one.
I thought it was too meta when the doctor came out and said "I can't sit still for four days". The doctor normally exhibits stress by running off and doing stuff, usually for the best: it would have been really interesting for one of his companions to call him on it when he suggested something too counterproductive, but no, he just says he can't sit still.
The choice between normal lives and doctor's companions is an interesting one, although again I felt it was somewhat artificial to bring it all up in this episode.
And also somewhat undermined because the viewer knows its likely that the companions will only really change at seasons end.[2]
The doctor is really mean about dropping people back on Earth without really checking they're at the right time. It's a part of the character that he's happy-go-lucky like that, but if someone says "I want to go with you but person X is relying on me to be here at this time" even if he can't control the Tardis accurately, he's kind of a jerk for just ignoring the problem, not even saying "I'll try my best" or making sure to double-check the time when they arrive back, so at least people know when they've missed something important.
It's true that there's often a choice between a reliable life and an exciting one, and the doctor's companions generally benefit from having an exciting life for a bit, but it's also annoying he sometimes lumps everything in real life together as stupid and annoying, whether it's something comparatively unimportant the companion is unnecessarily worried over, or "I'm abandoning the person I love at the alter". There is a real choice to be made, but I didn't feel the show really showed the choice as well as it could have done.
[2] One of the things I liked about Jack Harkness was that he drifted naturally from being a one-off character to a temporary character, to assumed death, to spin-off. It seems a shame they didn't have a few consecutive episodes where Rory's dad travelled with them, or similar, more often.