Doctor Who ~ "The Beast Below"
Apr. 10th, 2010 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trillianastraOK. First proper, non-introductory, episode. As I posted earlier, this episode was a key episode for me to figure out what kind of Doctor this is. (It's written by Moffat too, which is always a plus)
And... oh, boy. Oh, wow. It delivers. In spades. And... um, yeah. Well..
SO... first things first. The Doctor.
I liked Eleven last week, but Eleven last week was... not done yet, not finished yet. Eleven this week has finished regenerating and oh, wow, look at who he is now.
One of the big things, the really big thing that sticks out for me is the fact that he feels a lot more alien. It depends on the actor, see - some of the Doctors have felt a lot more alien than others, and Eleven is one of those. Ten was... well, he was complicated and emotional and if one were, hypothetically speaking, to put Ten and Eleven next to each other, Ten looks a lot more... human-like. Eleven looks human, true, but there's this sense of otherness about him that Ten didn't have most of the time. The past!Doctor that he reminds me of the most is Four, I think... I'm half expecting jelly babies to make an appearance sometime.
(I say 'most of the time', because he did have his moments... they are essentially the same person after all.)
He's not completely different, though, there's still all that energy (kind of like a hyperactive kid), that need to help... though he seems somewhat more aware of himself now:
"I'm going to do what I always do, and stay out of trouble - badly" ...and a couple of other lines.
~
And then, of course, we have Miss Amelia(/Amy) Pond.
Um... wow. Wow. Oh, Amelia, I like you.
Now... the previous NuWho companions, well, I liked them too. They were great, mostly. But here's the thing: Amy acted on her own initiative, more than once, and figured out something that even the Doctor had missed, rather than running around after him doing what he said.
I thought, after last week, that Amy = Rose + good bits of Donna + a bit of Gwen from TW. I was wrong about most of that. It's still a bit early in the game, so obviously I can't be 100% certain, but right now? Yeah, on one level I can see similarities with Donna. But... okay, how can I put this... she's not an RTD-era companion.
Yes, she reminds me a little of Donna. But much, much more than that, she makes me think of Sarah Jane and Ace and Jo Grant, and that is so, so much more awesome than I was expecting.
(I stand by my thought that she's a bit like Gwen, though. Gwen might not be that popular, but this is a Gwen-bashing-free zone.)
To sum up: She's Scottish, she's resourceful, she's smart, she takes the initiative... yeah, she gets the seal of approval.
Also, Karen Gillan's legs. Dude. DUDE.
~
OK, other stuff...
1. Sophie Okonedo as Liz 10: I believe the phrase here is BADASS.
2. The Smilers: These were some creepy, creepy bad guys. Not quite Weeping-Angel-level scary, but creepy, still.
3. Mandy, the little girl: She was awesome too.
4. The star whale: Oh, man. I may have had tears in my eyes for a moment or two there... but the pilot idea, the thing Amy figured out... that was cool.
Also... am I the only person who immediately thought of the space whale from Meat (TW S2) as soon as we found out it was called a "star whale"? (When the Doctor was going through the three, all unpleasant, options that he thought he had, I swear all I could think of was Owen. And... now I'm on a downer again, dammit.)
5. Telephone in the TARDIS! That was random... for a moment there I thought it was the mobile that Martha gave Ten, but... apparently not, it's an actual phone handset that's actually... part of the TARDIS console.
Also, it was Winston Churchill ringing. WINSTON CHURCHILL.
~
The NEXT TIME trailer:
OH, SHIT.
DALEKS AGAIN. (godsdamn Daleks. No imagination at all, always so singlemindedly xenophobic...)
And, um... OK, this only works if you've seen "Genesis of the Daleks" (Four, Sarah Jane, Harry), but this is potentially hugely ironic... Churchill using/intending to use Daleks in WW2, when there's a pretty clear Dalek=Nazi parallel in the Dalek origin story.
But the trailer didn't really say much, so I guess we'll have to wait for next week to see how it turns out.
My guess is: NOT PRETTY.
And... oh, boy. Oh, wow. It delivers. In spades. And... um, yeah. Well..
SO... first things first. The Doctor.
I liked Eleven last week, but Eleven last week was... not done yet, not finished yet. Eleven this week has finished regenerating and oh, wow, look at who he is now.
One of the big things, the really big thing that sticks out for me is the fact that he feels a lot more alien. It depends on the actor, see - some of the Doctors have felt a lot more alien than others, and Eleven is one of those. Ten was... well, he was complicated and emotional and if one were, hypothetically speaking, to put Ten and Eleven next to each other, Ten looks a lot more... human-like. Eleven looks human, true, but there's this sense of otherness about him that Ten didn't have most of the time. The past!Doctor that he reminds me of the most is Four, I think... I'm half expecting jelly babies to make an appearance sometime.
(I say 'most of the time', because he did have his moments... they are essentially the same person after all.)
He's not completely different, though, there's still all that energy (kind of like a hyperactive kid), that need to help... though he seems somewhat more aware of himself now:
"I'm going to do what I always do, and stay out of trouble - badly" ...and a couple of other lines.
~
And then, of course, we have Miss Amelia(/Amy) Pond.
Um... wow. Wow. Oh, Amelia, I like you.
Now... the previous NuWho companions, well, I liked them too. They were great, mostly. But here's the thing: Amy acted on her own initiative, more than once, and figured out something that even the Doctor had missed, rather than running around after him doing what he said.
I thought, after last week, that Amy = Rose + good bits of Donna + a bit of Gwen from TW. I was wrong about most of that. It's still a bit early in the game, so obviously I can't be 100% certain, but right now? Yeah, on one level I can see similarities with Donna. But... okay, how can I put this... she's not an RTD-era companion.
Yes, she reminds me a little of Donna. But much, much more than that, she makes me think of Sarah Jane and Ace and Jo Grant, and that is so, so much more awesome than I was expecting.
(I stand by my thought that she's a bit like Gwen, though. Gwen might not be that popular, but this is a Gwen-bashing-free zone.)
To sum up: She's Scottish, she's resourceful, she's smart, she takes the initiative... yeah, she gets the seal of approval.
Also, Karen Gillan's legs. Dude. DUDE.
~
OK, other stuff...
1. Sophie Okonedo as Liz 10: I believe the phrase here is BADASS.
2. The Smilers: These were some creepy, creepy bad guys. Not quite Weeping-Angel-level scary, but creepy, still.
3. Mandy, the little girl: She was awesome too.
4. The star whale: Oh, man. I may have had tears in my eyes for a moment or two there... but the pilot idea, the thing Amy figured out... that was cool.
Also... am I the only person who immediately thought of the space whale from Meat (TW S2) as soon as we found out it was called a "star whale"? (When the Doctor was going through the three, all unpleasant, options that he thought he had, I swear all I could think of was Owen. And... now I'm on a downer again, dammit.)
5. Telephone in the TARDIS! That was random... for a moment there I thought it was the mobile that Martha gave Ten, but... apparently not, it's an actual phone handset that's actually... part of the TARDIS console.
Also, it was Winston Churchill ringing. WINSTON CHURCHILL.
~
The NEXT TIME trailer:
OH, SHIT.
DALEKS AGAIN. (godsdamn Daleks. No imagination at all, always so singlemindedly xenophobic...)
And, um... OK, this only works if you've seen "Genesis of the Daleks" (Four, Sarah Jane, Harry), but this is potentially hugely ironic... Churchill using/intending to use Daleks in WW2, when there's a pretty clear Dalek=Nazi parallel in the Dalek origin story.
But the trailer didn't really say much, so I guess we'll have to wait for next week to see how it turns out.
My guess is: NOT PRETTY.
