Doctor Who Christmas
Jan. 4th, 2014 03:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackSo... I watched the Christmas episode, despite having seen little of the last several series, as did Liv, who's seen none of it.
I think http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/12/the-captain-kirk-problem-how-em-doctor-who-em-betrayed-matt-smith/282690/ was a good description: I'm not sure if I put the blame in the same places, but it seemed to describe what's been less good.
I described this episode as "they spent three seasons writing themselves into a corner, and this was the corner". It did a very good job considering the constraints, it was definitely moving in several places.
And I'm glad they wrapped up lots of plot strands; I'd thought that was going to be dragged out for many more series. Although the fact that it came right now meant I had almost no actual suspense whether the doctor would permanently die. If there was a significant chance of that, I'd expect lots of meta-articles saying "Will they cancel Doctor Who" and "Will they go on producing Doctor Who with other characters but not the Doctor?" In fact, I think it would have been better if the doctor had evidence he would survive his last regeneration *somehow*, but be scared how, and be scared at what cost.
There's a long list of things that made no sense, I can't be bothered to enumerate. But one in particular puzzled me. When the Doctor regenerated from the beginning, why did that blow up all the Dalek ships? Was there an actual reason, even a handwavey one? Or was it just "woo, cool thing happened therefore magic plot resolution"?
I think http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/12/the-captain-kirk-problem-how-em-doctor-who-em-betrayed-matt-smith/282690/ was a good description: I'm not sure if I put the blame in the same places, but it seemed to describe what's been less good.
I described this episode as "they spent three seasons writing themselves into a corner, and this was the corner". It did a very good job considering the constraints, it was definitely moving in several places.
And I'm glad they wrapped up lots of plot strands; I'd thought that was going to be dragged out for many more series. Although the fact that it came right now meant I had almost no actual suspense whether the doctor would permanently die. If there was a significant chance of that, I'd expect lots of meta-articles saying "Will they cancel Doctor Who" and "Will they go on producing Doctor Who with other characters but not the Doctor?" In fact, I think it would have been better if the doctor had evidence he would survive his last regeneration *somehow*, but be scared how, and be scared at what cost.
There's a long list of things that made no sense, I can't be bothered to enumerate. But one in particular puzzled me. When the Doctor regenerated from the beginning, why did that blow up all the Dalek ships? Was there an actual reason, even a handwavey one? Or was it just "woo, cool thing happened therefore magic plot resolution"?