I don't know why I do this to myself. I am really not enjoying the new series at all. I suppose there are tons of fans who suffered through Doctors that they didn't like. There's a ton of people who absolutely hate Russell T. Davies, his stories, and his Doctors. So maybe if I just keep suffering through all this bullshit I'll be rewarded with a new Doctor and better companions.
The episode begins with Rory and Amy driving through a cornfield - the TARDIS appears in the center of the field, and the Doctor is standing there holding a newspaper that shows a crop circle with the word DOCTOR. There's a line through the center of the word, and Amy and Rory tell the Doctor that they didn't do that part. Suddenly, a car comes plowing through and a black girl jumps out and points a gun at the Doctor.
It turns out that she is Mels, who has been a friend of Amy and Rory since they were small children. Of course, we'd never heard of her before now, so they had to go and show us a montage of Mels interacting with Amy and Rory. Seems Mels is a bit of a trouble maker, and she's on the run from the police, so she makes the Doctor take her into the TARDIS. She fires her gun at some point and sends the TARDIS out of control. It happens to land in Hitler's office. Surprise!
In the meantime, there are little miniaturized people inside of a robot thing that can assume the shape of anyone. They are there to kill Hitler, but realize that they're not at the end of his timeline yet. Well, Hitler attempts to shoot the robot, but hits Mels instead. And you'll never guess what happens? She regenerates! Into River Song! Holy crap!
Yes, it turns out that Mels is Melody Pond (which I'm sure no one saw coming a mile away). Amy explains that she had named Melody after her good friend Mels (whom we'd never heard of before, remember?) She attempts to kill the Doctor several times, but each time, he outsmarts her. Oh, except for the whole poisoned lipstick thing. So he's poisoned, River/Mels gets away, and Rory and Amy leave the Doctor to apparently die on the floor and go after her, and the robot with the tiny people goes after them. After all, River Song is wanted for killing the Doctor.
Meanwhile, the Doctor lays dying inside of the TARDIS and attempts to activate the voice interface. It first flashes to an image of him, but he says, "show me someone I like!" We then see Rose, followed by Martha and Donna, and the Doctor keeps saying that he feels guilty. He says that there must be someone he hasn't messed up, and Amelia appears. She tells him that he has 32 minutes to live.
River/Mels crashes a party and steals everyone's clothes. Amy and Rory find her, and so does the robot, who now looks like Amy (and is actually called a Teselecta). It miniaturizes them, they almost die, and then I'm not really sure what happens next. The Doctor arrives in the TARDIS, now dressed in a tuxedo, and Amy prevents the Teselecta from killing River. However, they are still determined to kill her, so Amy turns the robot against itself. All of the tiny people dematerialize, and the Doctor convinces River to fly the TARDIS into the Teselecta and rescue Amy and Rory. The TARDIS tells her what to do - it teaches her in a millisecond because she is "the child of the TARDIS".
The Doctor whispers something into River's ear and then apparently dies. River asks Rory and Amy why they keep calling her River. The Teselecta then takes on the physical appearance of River, and she is so moved that she saves the Doctor by pouring the rest of her regenerations into him. They take her to a hospital and leave her there. Back in the TARDIS, we see that the Doctor has downloaded all of the information from the Teselecta and has learned the date of his death. The last scene is River declaring that she wants to be an archaeologist.
Curiouser and Curiouser:
1) Why doesn't the Doctor just regenerate?
2) In The Impossible Astronaut, River tells Rory that she and the Doctor are living their time lines in reverse order - her past is his future. I can't remember which episode it is, but at one point she also says that when she first met the Doctor, she was a little girl and he knew everything about her. Also, if her past is his future, then we shouldn't be seeing any more of River Song, we should be seeing more of Mels, and that doesn't make sense. So make up your mind, Moffat - I don't care if they're going in opposite directions or if they can pop up all over the place in different orders, but be consistent.
3) How did Mels get from 1969 to the 1990's? How did she find a family to adopt her? Because she tore herself out of that suit and was wandering around by herself, remember? I have a hard time thinking that the Silence or Eyepatch Lady came back to get her and deposit her in bonny ol' England.
Dislikes:
1) First of all, when Amy and Rory were carving out the name "Doctor" in the cornfield, they made too many turns. Also, what the heck was written all over that paper that Amy was looking off of?
2) When the Doctor is dying, he gives Amy his sonic screwdriver. She uses it in the Teselecta, and it really looks like Amy is holding a glowing green penis. Seriously, I hate this new screwdriver.
3) Could they smack us in the face with River Song any more? Moffat spends so much time not telling us anything, and then he gives us almost her entire backstory in about 10 minutes. It seems so forced. It is time for River to go away. This soap-opery story is just getting ridiculous. It's now the Amy and River Show! I bet Moffat is kicking himself for killing River off in Forest of the Dead - he could have made her regenerate into Amy! TIMEY-WIMEY!!
4) Mels should have existed before now. Moffat had no idea that there was going to be a Mels, did he? To work her into the story now like this is insulting. Also, did anyone else notice that the first time Moffat introduces an important black character, she gets killed off almost immediately?
5) When the Teselecta replicates the German, he is able to replicate everything except the guy's glasses? What sense does that make?
6) I hated seeing Rose, Martha, and Donna. First of all, their appearances were simply publicity shots - they couldn't find any live footage? Second, this is the first time that Eleven has ever acknowledged their existence - he's constantly throwing around photos of himself as the First Doctor, but he never shows any of his previous companions. Was this really the time? I feel like this was just another slap in the face by Moffat - he wants to shut up the people who don't like Amy. Well, I will tell you something. There are a lot of people on fan boards who say that people who don't like Matt Smith or Karen Gillan need to get over David Tennant and Billie Piper. I'm sorry, but it IS possible to not like a character without being upset that another character is gone. I'm over it. I bet most fans are over it. It is highly insulting to suggest that I don't like an actor because he's not an actor that I DO like. It's not impossible to simply just NOT LIKE that person/character. The fact that Matt Smith isn't David Tennant has nothing to do with my dislike for him. The fact that Amy isn't Rose has nothing to do with the fact that I don't like her.
7) Moffat loves fucking with our minds about "is [x character] dead?" This is the third time that we think that the Doctor is dead. Enough already.
Likes:
1) Wow, Rory has balls!
2) No surprise here - I loved Amelia. The lines that she had in the TARDIS were fantastic - "for 31 minutes you will be fine. In 32 minutes you will be dead".
Since Moffat smacked us in the face with Rose, Martha, and Donna, here is a fantastic fan video I found on YouTube.
Showing posts with label amelia pond. Show all posts
Showing posts with label amelia pond. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
S5 Episode 1: The Eleventh Hour
From the minute that Matt Smith was announced as the Eleventh Doctor, I didn't like him. My husband says that I don't like him solely because he's not David Tennant, but that's not true: when the episode The Next Doctor aired, and everyone thought that David Morrissey might be #11, I was really excited. I thought he was fantastic, and though we knew from the beginning of the episode that he couldn't be the next Doctor, I would have been so pleased with him in that role.
When Ten regenerated into Eleven at the end of The End of Time, the first thought that popped into my head was that Matt Smith looked like Lurch. However, my favorite episodes have all been Steven Moffat episodes, so while I went in thinking/knowing I wouldn't like Smith, I thought I'd still enjoy the writing. So, with the assumption that you, dear readers, have watched all of these episodes, let's examine Series 5, Episode 1: The Eleventh Hour.
We start out with little Amelia Pond praying to Santa Claus, which I thought was brilliant. The TARDIS crash-lands in her backyard, and a newly-regenerated Doctor climbs out. So far, so good.
He then proceeds to demand food, but everything that Amelia gives him, he spits out, throws out, or does something equally ridiculous. At this point, I think my husband fell in love with him, but I thought the performance was way over the top. I felt like Smith was trying to emulate Tennant, (which would make sense, since he's still regenerating), but that he went too far.
I'll pause for a moment to say that I think Amelia is amazing in every way. Not only does Caitlin Blackwood do a fantastic job, the character is intriguing and extremely likable.
So then the Doctor rushes back to his TARDIS, promising to return in five minutes, yells "Geronimo!" (yes, you just heard the sound of my teeth grinding) and disappears. He does return - twelve years later - and meets a grown-up Amelia Pond, who now goes by the name of Amy. She's very headstrong, very independent, and she doesn't listen to him. That last trait is eerily similar to Donna, and that was what I disliked most about that character. But still, Amy seems to be a worthy companion. Of course, she's dressed inappropriately, but that's only because she's a "kiss-o-gram", right?
By the way, she dresses up as a sexy cop/sexy French maid, goes to parties and kisses guys. This is her job. The first time I saw the episode I thought the "kiss-o-gram" idea was funny, but now I'm a bit disturbed by it. I don't know how things are like in England, but to me that seems like a very short step away from being a prostitute.
Amy finds Prisoner Zero, which is pretty scary, as he can take different forms and has a hard time "getting the mouths right".
So we meet Prisoner Zero, go to the village, and come to the next really annoying thing: what the Doctor sees. We see the scene in the way that the Doctor sees it - fast motion, 360°, close-ups, etc. I should mention that I would find this a really fantastic device, except that Steven Moffat has already used it - in his Sherlock series! He often shows us in this same manner how Sherlock analyzes a crime scene. I think we can classify this POV device as Moffat's first "repeat" idea of the series, which itself becomes a dominant theme in the Eleventh Doctor episodes.
Actually, I take that back. The first repeat of Moffat's is the Amelia/Amy storyline. He meets Amelia as a young girl and says he'll return in five minutes, but when he returns, she's an adult. In The Girl in the Fireplace, he also first meets Reinette as a young girl, then disappears and returns when she's a young woman. When he tells Amelia he'll be back, she immediately packs so she can travel with him, even though he doesn't invite her along. However, he does invite Madam de Pompadour, says he'll be back in five minutes, then returns in time to see her funeral carriage leaving the palace. In addition, when the Doctor looks at the crack in Amy's wall, he says that she's "got some cowboys in here", which is what he says when he reads Reinette's mind. Oh, Steven.
By this time we've met Rory, and I immediately liked him; he has an air of innocence and, while he seems a bit daft, I think he's smarter than people give him credit for.
After saving the world from both Prisoner Zero and the Atraxi, the Doctor runs back to his repaired TARDIS, leaves, and then accidentally comes back two years later. He takes Amy off for an adventure, and we close on a shot of her wedding dress hanging in the wardrobe ... and here we go again, another girl in love with the Doctor.
When Rose was in love with the Doctor, it was okay. She didn't moon over him, and she never made a big deal about it. The only time she was obvious was in Doomsday, when she confessed her love. But, pouting about how the Doctor didn't return her affection was all that Desperate Martha ever did. It was a dominant theme, and extremely tiresome. I really cannot face another character pining after the Doctor.
At the end of The Eleventh Hour, I had mixed feelings. While I loved Amelia and liked Amy, I felt like the Doctor was over-the-top.
Here's a little palette-cleanser:
When Ten regenerated into Eleven at the end of The End of Time, the first thought that popped into my head was that Matt Smith looked like Lurch. However, my favorite episodes have all been Steven Moffat episodes, so while I went in thinking/knowing I wouldn't like Smith, I thought I'd still enjoy the writing. So, with the assumption that you, dear readers, have watched all of these episodes, let's examine Series 5, Episode 1: The Eleventh Hour.
We start out with little Amelia Pond praying to Santa Claus, which I thought was brilliant. The TARDIS crash-lands in her backyard, and a newly-regenerated Doctor climbs out. So far, so good.
He then proceeds to demand food, but everything that Amelia gives him, he spits out, throws out, or does something equally ridiculous. At this point, I think my husband fell in love with him, but I thought the performance was way over the top. I felt like Smith was trying to emulate Tennant, (which would make sense, since he's still regenerating), but that he went too far.
I'll pause for a moment to say that I think Amelia is amazing in every way. Not only does Caitlin Blackwood do a fantastic job, the character is intriguing and extremely likable.
So then the Doctor rushes back to his TARDIS, promising to return in five minutes, yells "Geronimo!" (yes, you just heard the sound of my teeth grinding) and disappears. He does return - twelve years later - and meets a grown-up Amelia Pond, who now goes by the name of Amy. She's very headstrong, very independent, and she doesn't listen to him. That last trait is eerily similar to Donna, and that was what I disliked most about that character. But still, Amy seems to be a worthy companion. Of course, she's dressed inappropriately, but that's only because she's a "kiss-o-gram", right?
By the way, she dresses up as a sexy cop/sexy French maid, goes to parties and kisses guys. This is her job. The first time I saw the episode I thought the "kiss-o-gram" idea was funny, but now I'm a bit disturbed by it. I don't know how things are like in England, but to me that seems like a very short step away from being a prostitute.
Amy finds Prisoner Zero, which is pretty scary, as he can take different forms and has a hard time "getting the mouths right".
So we meet Prisoner Zero, go to the village, and come to the next really annoying thing: what the Doctor sees. We see the scene in the way that the Doctor sees it - fast motion, 360°, close-ups, etc. I should mention that I would find this a really fantastic device, except that Steven Moffat has already used it - in his Sherlock series! He often shows us in this same manner how Sherlock analyzes a crime scene. I think we can classify this POV device as Moffat's first "repeat" idea of the series, which itself becomes a dominant theme in the Eleventh Doctor episodes.
Actually, I take that back. The first repeat of Moffat's is the Amelia/Amy storyline. He meets Amelia as a young girl and says he'll return in five minutes, but when he returns, she's an adult. In The Girl in the Fireplace, he also first meets Reinette as a young girl, then disappears and returns when she's a young woman. When he tells Amelia he'll be back, she immediately packs so she can travel with him, even though he doesn't invite her along. However, he does invite Madam de Pompadour, says he'll be back in five minutes, then returns in time to see her funeral carriage leaving the palace. In addition, when the Doctor looks at the crack in Amy's wall, he says that she's "got some cowboys in here", which is what he says when he reads Reinette's mind. Oh, Steven.
By this time we've met Rory, and I immediately liked him; he has an air of innocence and, while he seems a bit daft, I think he's smarter than people give him credit for.
After saving the world from both Prisoner Zero and the Atraxi, the Doctor runs back to his repaired TARDIS, leaves, and then accidentally comes back two years later. He takes Amy off for an adventure, and we close on a shot of her wedding dress hanging in the wardrobe ... and here we go again, another girl in love with the Doctor.
When Rose was in love with the Doctor, it was okay. She didn't moon over him, and she never made a big deal about it. The only time she was obvious was in Doomsday, when she confessed her love. But, pouting about how the Doctor didn't return her affection was all that Desperate Martha ever did. It was a dominant theme, and extremely tiresome. I really cannot face another character pining after the Doctor.
At the end of The Eleventh Hour, I had mixed feelings. While I loved Amelia and liked Amy, I felt like the Doctor was over-the-top.
Here's a little palette-cleanser:
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