newnumber6 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
newnumber6) wrote2007-06-04 08:05 pm
newnumber6) wrote2007-06-04 08:05 pm
Entry tags:
A bunch of assorted stuff
Okay, there's these commercials for this movie called 'Nancy Drew', about some teen girl outcast who solves mysteries. Come on, can't anyone come up with any ideas other than ripping off Veronica Mars? ;) (Oh, hush, I know Drew came first, I'm just kidding, but the commercial does give me a bit of the same vibe, even though they're outcast for different reasons). Maybe if the movie does well, for the sequel they'll adapt the controversial "Key in the Clock" (so many swears).
I reconfigured my room a few days ago, reorienting my bed and putting in my desk and all my comics, so it's much more cluttered, but I like it better this way. I'd kept the old way because supposedly people were going to fix my window but since I've been here 3 months with no word on when, I'm assuming someone dropped the ball on that. Really, I don't care about the window being fixed, it's a small crack and I don't look out of it anyway.
Doctor Who was... pretty good. I do have some serious reservations about it, though. (SPOILERS for Family of Blood)
Okay, general plot, good. Some nice emotional moments, and good acting from Tennant. (The main male badguy though was... startlingly creepy for an average person but seemed over-the-top when he spoke).
Overall, still one of the best of the season.
However, I have two problems. The minor one is the whole Martha-loves-the-Doctor plot rearing its ugly head again. Don't care for it any more than I care for the 'Rose is the only one who ever mattered to me' attitude of the first few eps (which thankfully has faded some).
Secondly, the resolution of the Family of Blood. I like the power of the scene, I like the 'dark side of the Doctor' being shown. But the way it actually worked out just... didn't work for me. At all. In fact, I might even go so far to say I hated it. First, it's another example of OMG MAGIC DOCTOR (which included, btw, being able to alter his smell to provide that last little misdirection).
'He was running away from us, because he was being kind!'. Yes, apparently all the trouble he'd been in before was nothing, because the moment he wants to, he's able to deal with four foes in four startling complex and ironic ways. He manages to forge unbreakable bonds just like that. Man, good thing he never needed unbreakable bonds before, because he never seemed to think of it before this moment. Oh, and trapped another in the event horizon of a black hole... well, that might be fair enough, though it assumes he was easily able to get her into such a position to trap her... trap them all. He somehow manages through the philosophically unlikely feat of trapping another in every mirror in existence (which is a whole other rant), but decides to visit her, and transforms the last into a watchman over Earth in some vague way. This goes out of the realm of 'remarkable things he's able to make work at the last second' to 'things he could have done all along, but didn't really want to until you pissed him off'.
Basically, what this sequence means to me is that everyone who died in this episode, and in many others, was all the Doctors fault, because instead of being the kickass dark being who can handle his foes in various and sundry ways, he's being nice to the monsters and running around being generally ineffective except occasionally when he waves his sonic screwdriver around. No, thanks. Give me Eccleston who is gleeful at it being one of the few times in all his tragic adventures 'everyone gets to live' rather than this 'lonely god who doesn't care one bit about mere mortals, just so long as he's having fun (but woe be to his enemies when he's ticked off)' schtick.
The more I think about it, the more I dislike this sequence, and have to, in order to enjoy the show, mentally rewrite it to being, essentially, an exaggeration on the part of Son-of-Mine. That a) he didn't run away to 1913 and hide simply because he was 'being kind', but because he was genuinely in fear for his life and that of Martha, and b) when residual anger from having to give up being John Smith was into him he became much more driven and vengeful, which drove him not only to do things he wouldn't have done before, but things he _couldn't_ have done, c) that the handling of the family was a long drawn out process and by no means easy that could theoretically have filled another episodes but they just did the sum-up to save time, and that d) much of what he did to the rest of Son-of-Mine's family were metaphorical or out and out lies. He did that just to drive the point home his anger to that particular one. Maybe he threw them all into the event horizon, save Son of Mine. Or maybe the 'unbreakable chain' was just a fancy way of saying 'sucked his essence into a container that it couldn't leave in order to find new bodies'. I don't have a clue about the trapped in all the mirrors crap, though.
So some of my high school friends had planned to get together for dinner at a place relatively near me over the weekend. Although I didn't want to confirm for the dinner itself, for various reasons, it was close enough that I thought about doing a surprise drop in to say hello for a few minutes and then going back. Alas, on the day of it slipped my mind and there were no followups on it, so if they did meet I wasn't able to see them. Ah well, would have been nice to see them again. Maybe next time, if there is one.
I have some book foo to do too (wow, try saying that 5 times fast) but I'll save that for another post, I think.
I reconfigured my room a few days ago, reorienting my bed and putting in my desk and all my comics, so it's much more cluttered, but I like it better this way. I'd kept the old way because supposedly people were going to fix my window but since I've been here 3 months with no word on when, I'm assuming someone dropped the ball on that. Really, I don't care about the window being fixed, it's a small crack and I don't look out of it anyway.
Doctor Who was... pretty good. I do have some serious reservations about it, though. (SPOILERS for Family of Blood)
Okay, general plot, good. Some nice emotional moments, and good acting from Tennant. (The main male badguy though was... startlingly creepy for an average person but seemed over-the-top when he spoke).
Overall, still one of the best of the season.
However, I have two problems. The minor one is the whole Martha-loves-the-Doctor plot rearing its ugly head again. Don't care for it any more than I care for the 'Rose is the only one who ever mattered to me' attitude of the first few eps (which thankfully has faded some).
Secondly, the resolution of the Family of Blood. I like the power of the scene, I like the 'dark side of the Doctor' being shown. But the way it actually worked out just... didn't work for me. At all. In fact, I might even go so far to say I hated it. First, it's another example of OMG MAGIC DOCTOR (which included, btw, being able to alter his smell to provide that last little misdirection).
'He was running away from us, because he was being kind!'. Yes, apparently all the trouble he'd been in before was nothing, because the moment he wants to, he's able to deal with four foes in four startling complex and ironic ways. He manages to forge unbreakable bonds just like that. Man, good thing he never needed unbreakable bonds before, because he never seemed to think of it before this moment. Oh, and trapped another in the event horizon of a black hole... well, that might be fair enough, though it assumes he was easily able to get her into such a position to trap her... trap them all. He somehow manages through the philosophically unlikely feat of trapping another in every mirror in existence (which is a whole other rant), but decides to visit her, and transforms the last into a watchman over Earth in some vague way. This goes out of the realm of 'remarkable things he's able to make work at the last second' to 'things he could have done all along, but didn't really want to until you pissed him off'.
Basically, what this sequence means to me is that everyone who died in this episode, and in many others, was all the Doctors fault, because instead of being the kickass dark being who can handle his foes in various and sundry ways, he's being nice to the monsters and running around being generally ineffective except occasionally when he waves his sonic screwdriver around. No, thanks. Give me Eccleston who is gleeful at it being one of the few times in all his tragic adventures 'everyone gets to live' rather than this 'lonely god who doesn't care one bit about mere mortals, just so long as he's having fun (but woe be to his enemies when he's ticked off)' schtick.
The more I think about it, the more I dislike this sequence, and have to, in order to enjoy the show, mentally rewrite it to being, essentially, an exaggeration on the part of Son-of-Mine. That a) he didn't run away to 1913 and hide simply because he was 'being kind', but because he was genuinely in fear for his life and that of Martha, and b) when residual anger from having to give up being John Smith was into him he became much more driven and vengeful, which drove him not only to do things he wouldn't have done before, but things he _couldn't_ have done, c) that the handling of the family was a long drawn out process and by no means easy that could theoretically have filled another episodes but they just did the sum-up to save time, and that d) much of what he did to the rest of Son-of-Mine's family were metaphorical or out and out lies. He did that just to drive the point home his anger to that particular one. Maybe he threw them all into the event horizon, save Son of Mine. Or maybe the 'unbreakable chain' was just a fancy way of saying 'sucked his essence into a container that it couldn't leave in order to find new bodies'. I don't have a clue about the trapped in all the mirrors crap, though.
So some of my high school friends had planned to get together for dinner at a place relatively near me over the weekend. Although I didn't want to confirm for the dinner itself, for various reasons, it was close enough that I thought about doing a surprise drop in to say hello for a few minutes and then going back. Alas, on the day of it slipped my mind and there were no followups on it, so if they did meet I wasn't able to see them. Ah well, would have been nice to see them again. Maybe next time, if there is one.
I have some book foo to do too (wow, try saying that 5 times fast) but I'll save that for another post, I think.
no subject
The climax was a little strange, especially given the genuine fear and upset he showed at their appearance and going off to hide was an awful lot of trouble. I think the danger he put the school into by his being there was a lesson he was learning as well, but the episode certainly made it seem as though he absolutely needed to hide until such time as he was flushed out. Maybe the Family was weak towards the end of their little life cycle or something. I agree that they mushed it together a bit much.
no subject
I prefer my heroes (unless they literally happen to be wizards or something), even if aliens, to have a few well-defined abilities of their own, and the rest they have to rely on their knowledge, rather than have the feeling that the writers can pull whatever they want out of the hat and describe it as 'oh, this is an elementary trick in some parts of the galaxy'. Like, for example, if he'd used his brains to divine a way to dose himself with something that smelled completely human, using TARDIS-tech or something (if he had access), that'd be fine. Or even if they used the explanation that 'the scent is the last thing to return, the time lord essence takes a while to seep out of your pores'. The fact that it's specifically an elementary trick that the Magic Doctor could do is what annoys me.
I want my doctor who're more like a human who happens to be brilliant and have two hearts, and yes, maybe some elementary 'timestream sensing' related abilities. Not a walking Deus Ex Machina. What next? "I thought you'd died?" "Died? What, just because I was in a vaccuum for 10 hours? No, that's silly. I learned to breathe space in the Andromeda Galaxy. Can't everybody?" Or "Don't worry, the ship's no longer in danger of blowing up!" "That's great Doctor, how did you?" "Oh, I just blew into the reactor a little. My breath can stop nuclear reactors from overloading. It's a Time Lord thing."
I'm reminded of the old campy Batman series where everythng was in his utility belt, no matter how silly. "Lucky I brought my Bat-Shark repellant!" "Good thing I had that Bat-Bomb-Defusing-Powder, or we would have been in trouble." (or the all time greatest, although not technically part of his utility belt, the time Batman was encased in concrete for an hour. "Holy suffocation Batman! You were in there for an hour, how did you survive?" "Easy chum, I HELD MY BREATH.")
no subject
no subject