Doctor Who 4.12: "TSE"
Jun. 29th, 2008 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Unlike most of my friends, I did not care much for this episode. I will therefore have to do a spoilery filled rant. Which means cuts for those who haven't seen it.
Okay, let's start with saying I didn't _hate_ it. It wasn't completely awful. It was just, as RTD's tend to be, and RTD's big two-part events tend to be EVEN MORE, sloppy and poorly written in which the good elements were soured strongly by the bad, and so my enjoyment wound up somewhere in the middle. It made me really eager for RTD to go away, and don't let the TARDIS door hit you on the way out.
I'll also say that what I did like about the plot was basically the Rose reunion (I'm not a super Rose fan but I do like that they brought her back for a special), the Shadow Proclamation (except for a few elements of it, like the mysterious psychic albinos who don't seem to know a damn thing except to refer cryptically to events in one of the character's life), the surprise ending (of which I forcast a 90% chance that it will leave a bad taste in my mouth by the resolution of the episode), and the Daleks/Davros. Even if they're overused, they're still fun to me. But that's not RTD's doing, really, the Daleks were great before him - it's a case where the ingredient is doing the work, not the chef.
It always seems to me though that RTD has two basic tricks up his sleeve for Who: 1) Creating a supporting cast for the companions that don't travel with the Doctor, but keep popping up. This is generally good work here, and probably one of the reasons
he's popular (I don't think he does as good with one-shot throwaway characters, though).
2) Having a little trail of hints running through the season's eps towards the season finale. In Season 1, it was Bad Wolf. In Season 2, Torchwood. In season 3, Saxon.
These all worked, for the most part. Bad Wolf because it was specifically a message scrawled throughout time and space by SuperRose. S2 was a little weaker, but at least it was mostly mentions and hints. S3 worked because the references were all from the present-day episodes, or from present-day characters in other episodes.
S4's was different. There were a couple different threads. It was the repeated mention that the bees were disappearing (which was okay, and one of the few things in the episode that made sense), the idea of something being on Donna's back (annoying if that's all it turned out to be in TL), Rose's brief failed attempts to contact the Doctor (which if she doesn't have her own time travel technology in the parallel world, is dumb, and if she does have it, is dumb for a different reason), and the mention of various planets disappearing, which, of course, was to lead up to the big reveal that Earth becomes one of those planets. OMG.
Except, it's done in such a crappy way. I mean, think about it. The Shadow Proclamation is frantic because 24 planets all disappeared at the exact same moment. Ooh, spooky. Then Donna pipes in and points out that Adipose 3 was also taken, and Pyrovillia, and the Doctor remembers the story of the 'Lost moon of Poosh'.
Now, this might have been fair enough, on its own. But then it turns out that that makes 27 planets. AND ONLY 27 PLANETS. It's explicitly stated. "Oh, look, that makes 27 plans which creates a perfect double immelmen turn or whatever", followed later by the Doctor's revelation of seeing all 27 planets. So, wait. Davros and the Daleks had a master plan that involved stealing 24 planets all from the exact same moment at the exact same time. Plus _one_ planet from thousands of years ago. And one planet from probably a year or so ago. And one moon from the far future (presumably, although it's never said exactly when Poosh went missing). Doesn't that seem dumb to anybody else? I mean, if there were 70 planets taken from different points in time and space, and the Doctor and Donna happened to hear about 3 of them, that's one thing. But in all of time and space, in the last year, they encountered brief mentions of 3 planets going missing, and all of them just happened to be the only 3 that weren't taken at the same time as everybody else.
Why? BECAUSE IT PROVIDED THEM A CLUE. Yes, it's another example of the dreaded "Just So" writing. The only reason the Doctor and Donna heard about these planets is Just So because RTD wanted to tease the plot in advance. Otherwise it stretches the bounds of coincidence past breaking. (And, what's more, like a lot of RTD's time travel work, it makes no sense. He writes Time Travel as though the Daleks operate on the same date as the audience - because they haven't launched their master plan until July 28th, 2008, even if you're 2610, if it's not July 28th, 2008 in the real world, no results of the master plan are evident. You can be on Earth at 2610 up until that date in 2008. You can get around the problem here with the Daleks time travel abilities, but now the problem is Poosh. If Poosh is gone in the future, that means the Dalek intervention in the timestream has already begun. So if Earth was taken in 2008, then _it's not there_ for the people of Midnight to have come from when they set up a colony and even noticed that Poosh has gone missing. That, or it's such a part of history, that Earth was stolen for a short time, attacked by Daleks, and then saved, but that the Doctor has somehow missed this despite being a huge know-it-all about all elements of history. This is a pet peeve that RTD is by no means alone on, though.)
And that's not the only Just So writing, where RTD just writes crappy magic tech into being just to get his plot from one beat to the next in the sloppiest way imaginable. Harriet Jones had access to a magic sentient operating system that could magically contact anybody who _might_ be able to contact the Doctor (and, oddly enough, only comes up with people the audience has seen). Why? Because it's the easiest way to hook up all the separate crossover elements. But a contactee not having a webcam is enough to stifle the whole thing and make them unable to communicate. Why? No reason. Just so Rose has to watch and no one else knows she's there. And the plan is just awful, over done. I mean, maybe hooking up the transmission to the rift (if the sub wave device wasn't just dumb magitech) might be okay... but 'Mr. Smith' helps by forcing everybody on Earth to dial the Doctor's Phone Number? That is dumbness on the level of saying "I know what we have to do! Get everyone on the Earth to jump up and down at the exact same time, and we'll knock the Earth out of orbit!"
There's also the Sontaran-derived Indigo device somehow providing the two numbers Jack needs to fix a device that lets him teleport right to the Doctor? Huh? How does that make sense.
You know, RTD, good SF isn't about shovelling stuff out of your ass and tying them together in any way you need for your plot, it's about making them make sense, sometimes setting them up in advance, and thinking through the consequences. Your science fiction plot elements SHOULD NOT operate by the laws of Fizzbin. "The Vortex Manipulator doesn't work, except on Saturdays when the 4th digit is the same as a Sontaran device you've barely heard about, or when the rift spins counterclockwise." Just like with magic, if ANYTHING can happen, I don't give a %$!% what happens. If you're making everything up off the top of your head for plot's sake, you suck as a SF writer.
Sure, you have decent skill at characterization, and making a few cool moments, but this ep? This was a 'bringing everyone together' ep, and you didn't do it well. Some of the moments were expected, still cool but predictable given what the plot was, and others, as described above, don't make sense, and a few were genuinely good with no qualifications. The ep also suffered a little for being a crossover with two other series, as well - it might be great if you watch them, but if not it was a little lame even though the main actors appeared in Who episodes, that's not a major problem, though, it was just exacerbated the other problems a little, making too many characters who have to be juggled and included.
(Oh, and RTD's other big stock trick is a huge, Earth-changing, people-killing event in the PRESENT, that nobody should be able to ignore, and that either has to be retconned with the reset button, or alter life fundamentally from then on because everybody on Earth knows what just happened. And guess what, it happens again here. I'm betting the reset button's coming on this one, and that will be total crap if that's what happens. But it'll be total crap if it doesn't, too. This is the horror of RTD, he gives you crap either way.).
Despite the ranting, like I said above, I didn't think it was _horrible_. It was okay, I just didn't get the gushing (well, okay, I can see the gushing of those people who absolutely love Rose returning, or any of the other supporting characters the ep involved). Taken on its own, I thought Turn Left was better, and, as I ranted last time, Turn Left itself was weak. Midnight remains RTD's best effort this season.
Okay, let's start with saying I didn't _hate_ it. It wasn't completely awful. It was just, as RTD's tend to be, and RTD's big two-part events tend to be EVEN MORE, sloppy and poorly written in which the good elements were soured strongly by the bad, and so my enjoyment wound up somewhere in the middle. It made me really eager for RTD to go away, and don't let the TARDIS door hit you on the way out.
I'll also say that what I did like about the plot was basically the Rose reunion (I'm not a super Rose fan but I do like that they brought her back for a special), the Shadow Proclamation (except for a few elements of it, like the mysterious psychic albinos who don't seem to know a damn thing except to refer cryptically to events in one of the character's life), the surprise ending (of which I forcast a 90% chance that it will leave a bad taste in my mouth by the resolution of the episode), and the Daleks/Davros. Even if they're overused, they're still fun to me. But that's not RTD's doing, really, the Daleks were great before him - it's a case where the ingredient is doing the work, not the chef.
It always seems to me though that RTD has two basic tricks up his sleeve for Who: 1) Creating a supporting cast for the companions that don't travel with the Doctor, but keep popping up. This is generally good work here, and probably one of the reasons
he's popular (I don't think he does as good with one-shot throwaway characters, though).
2) Having a little trail of hints running through the season's eps towards the season finale. In Season 1, it was Bad Wolf. In Season 2, Torchwood. In season 3, Saxon.
These all worked, for the most part. Bad Wolf because it was specifically a message scrawled throughout time and space by SuperRose. S2 was a little weaker, but at least it was mostly mentions and hints. S3 worked because the references were all from the present-day episodes, or from present-day characters in other episodes.
S4's was different. There were a couple different threads. It was the repeated mention that the bees were disappearing (which was okay, and one of the few things in the episode that made sense), the idea of something being on Donna's back (annoying if that's all it turned out to be in TL), Rose's brief failed attempts to contact the Doctor (which if she doesn't have her own time travel technology in the parallel world, is dumb, and if she does have it, is dumb for a different reason), and the mention of various planets disappearing, which, of course, was to lead up to the big reveal that Earth becomes one of those planets. OMG.
Except, it's done in such a crappy way. I mean, think about it. The Shadow Proclamation is frantic because 24 planets all disappeared at the exact same moment. Ooh, spooky. Then Donna pipes in and points out that Adipose 3 was also taken, and Pyrovillia, and the Doctor remembers the story of the 'Lost moon of Poosh'.
Now, this might have been fair enough, on its own. But then it turns out that that makes 27 planets. AND ONLY 27 PLANETS. It's explicitly stated. "Oh, look, that makes 27 plans which creates a perfect double immelmen turn or whatever", followed later by the Doctor's revelation of seeing all 27 planets. So, wait. Davros and the Daleks had a master plan that involved stealing 24 planets all from the exact same moment at the exact same time. Plus _one_ planet from thousands of years ago. And one planet from probably a year or so ago. And one moon from the far future (presumably, although it's never said exactly when Poosh went missing). Doesn't that seem dumb to anybody else? I mean, if there were 70 planets taken from different points in time and space, and the Doctor and Donna happened to hear about 3 of them, that's one thing. But in all of time and space, in the last year, they encountered brief mentions of 3 planets going missing, and all of them just happened to be the only 3 that weren't taken at the same time as everybody else.
Why? BECAUSE IT PROVIDED THEM A CLUE. Yes, it's another example of the dreaded "Just So" writing. The only reason the Doctor and Donna heard about these planets is Just So because RTD wanted to tease the plot in advance. Otherwise it stretches the bounds of coincidence past breaking. (And, what's more, like a lot of RTD's time travel work, it makes no sense. He writes Time Travel as though the Daleks operate on the same date as the audience - because they haven't launched their master plan until July 28th, 2008, even if you're 2610, if it's not July 28th, 2008 in the real world, no results of the master plan are evident. You can be on Earth at 2610 up until that date in 2008. You can get around the problem here with the Daleks time travel abilities, but now the problem is Poosh. If Poosh is gone in the future, that means the Dalek intervention in the timestream has already begun. So if Earth was taken in 2008, then _it's not there_ for the people of Midnight to have come from when they set up a colony and even noticed that Poosh has gone missing. That, or it's such a part of history, that Earth was stolen for a short time, attacked by Daleks, and then saved, but that the Doctor has somehow missed this despite being a huge know-it-all about all elements of history. This is a pet peeve that RTD is by no means alone on, though.)
And that's not the only Just So writing, where RTD just writes crappy magic tech into being just to get his plot from one beat to the next in the sloppiest way imaginable. Harriet Jones had access to a magic sentient operating system that could magically contact anybody who _might_ be able to contact the Doctor (and, oddly enough, only comes up with people the audience has seen). Why? Because it's the easiest way to hook up all the separate crossover elements. But a contactee not having a webcam is enough to stifle the whole thing and make them unable to communicate. Why? No reason. Just so Rose has to watch and no one else knows she's there. And the plan is just awful, over done. I mean, maybe hooking up the transmission to the rift (if the sub wave device wasn't just dumb magitech) might be okay... but 'Mr. Smith' helps by forcing everybody on Earth to dial the Doctor's Phone Number? That is dumbness on the level of saying "I know what we have to do! Get everyone on the Earth to jump up and down at the exact same time, and we'll knock the Earth out of orbit!"
There's also the Sontaran-derived Indigo device somehow providing the two numbers Jack needs to fix a device that lets him teleport right to the Doctor? Huh? How does that make sense.
You know, RTD, good SF isn't about shovelling stuff out of your ass and tying them together in any way you need for your plot, it's about making them make sense, sometimes setting them up in advance, and thinking through the consequences. Your science fiction plot elements SHOULD NOT operate by the laws of Fizzbin. "The Vortex Manipulator doesn't work, except on Saturdays when the 4th digit is the same as a Sontaran device you've barely heard about, or when the rift spins counterclockwise." Just like with magic, if ANYTHING can happen, I don't give a %$!% what happens. If you're making everything up off the top of your head for plot's sake, you suck as a SF writer.
Sure, you have decent skill at characterization, and making a few cool moments, but this ep? This was a 'bringing everyone together' ep, and you didn't do it well. Some of the moments were expected, still cool but predictable given what the plot was, and others, as described above, don't make sense, and a few were genuinely good with no qualifications. The ep also suffered a little for being a crossover with two other series, as well - it might be great if you watch them, but if not it was a little lame even though the main actors appeared in Who episodes, that's not a major problem, though, it was just exacerbated the other problems a little, making too many characters who have to be juggled and included.
(Oh, and RTD's other big stock trick is a huge, Earth-changing, people-killing event in the PRESENT, that nobody should be able to ignore, and that either has to be retconned with the reset button, or alter life fundamentally from then on because everybody on Earth knows what just happened. And guess what, it happens again here. I'm betting the reset button's coming on this one, and that will be total crap if that's what happens. But it'll be total crap if it doesn't, too. This is the horror of RTD, he gives you crap either way.).
Despite the ranting, like I said above, I didn't think it was _horrible_. It was okay, I just didn't get the gushing (well, okay, I can see the gushing of those people who absolutely love Rose returning, or any of the other supporting characters the ep involved). Taken on its own, I thought Turn Left was better, and, as I ranted last time, Turn Left itself was weak. Midnight remains RTD's best effort this season.
