The Whoniverse Returns.
Aug. 28th, 2011 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6"Let's Kill Hitler" was on and it was... not really what I expected. I think overall I liked it, though.
Some spoilery thoughts.
I really thought this was going to be a relatively standalone episode to give a break from the revelations... you know, how like the Doctor examined his viewscreen and realized Amy was pregnant/not pregnant, and then suddenly was all "hey, let's go fight pirates for no reason!". Even the title suggested that's what it was: "Let's Kill Hitler!"
Instead, we got an episode that was pretty key to the whole River Song mythos.
I kind of half-saw the big revelation coming (I say half because, when I heard the name "Mels", I thought it instantly, but then I spent the first quarter or whatever of the episode trying to determine if her name was "Mels" or "Bels" (I guess I must be a little deaf or have some aural processing issue, this seems to happen a lot for me... and it's so unfair, I went through a whole teenage life WITHOUT LISTENING TO LOUD MUSIC (because I don't really care about music), and so if anything my hearing should be better than anyone my age).
I didn't expect, and in fact was a little disappointed that Mels regenerated into River Song, the one we all know. I was kind of hoping she'd have multiple appearances over the course of the series that could surprise us, and that we'd actually see her grow up from a young lady to an adult, with different actors in those roles bouncing back and forth. Instead, it looks like we'll just have Alex Kingston, with perhaps the actress playing Mels in occasional flashbacks (speaking of, as a best friend she did kind of come out of nowhere, I'd have liked it more if she was mentioned regularly or something). Presumably there was a second regeneration as well, because she regenerated in 1969, and then apparently somehow got to be a young child again in time to grow up alongside Amy (Which must have been the late-80s, I'd guess? Karen Gillian was born in 87, anyway), but even then, that's probably only a single different appearance as a child, unless time travel whisked her around a bit, which is quite possible, but even so she wouldn't have met the Doctor, according to her). In fact, that's kind of a big disappointment for me. It loses out most of the cool factor of meeting a person out of sync timewise, you encounter them all over the place and don't always recognize them right away.
On the other hand, it solves the problem of how, if she could regenerate, she died in the Library two parter.
Anyway, if you take all the disappointments as given, it was kind of a fun episode, with some flaws, and although I'm not certain it works as a whole and as a part of the series, there are certainly lots of great little elements, like Amy first discovering Rory likes her, and River's "Gay Barmitzvah for the Disabled" line.
Next week's preview didn't really interest me in the slightest though. THAT looks like a throwaway episode, and not even an interesting-looking one.
I had a Doctor Who dream again, one of those dreams where it takes the form of an episode. And of course, as is not unusual for me, after waking up I stayed suspended in a half-awake half-asleep state trying to make it better.
I can't remember much of it any more, though...
Basically, the episode started with Rani from Sarah Jane Adventures who was somehow the Doctor's companion (which, btw, I think could be a cool idea in a couple years) stumbling on to a little booth that turned out to be bigger on the inside. Inside was an old man and a younger girl (teen-to-young-adult age). Anyway, the whole setup was a trap by the Meddling Monk (from the original series) who thought that the Doctor was in the area to try to drag him back to the Time War, which he deserted from and thought was still going on because he hid from it in some kind of time loop.
After I woke up, I sort of had the idea that the Monk was still a war deserter, and still thinking the Doctor was out to get him, but had hid in a more conventional way, perhaps in another universe, and now had a daughter. Now that the war was over and he was the only time lord left, he got back to his old tricks of playing around with Earth's timeline (meaning to improve it) and teaching his daughter about it. When the Doctor encounters him, they cross swords a little but in the end they're both too pleased to find other Time Lords out there to want to be enemies anymore (and the Monk was never outright villainous), and the Doctor convinces him to give up his Meddling, which is too dangerous now that the rest of the Time Lords aren't around to maintain temporal order, and that he's on his last regeneration and he has a daughter to think of.
It leaves the Doctor with a potential ally, a friend on his own level who has his own TARDIS.
Which of course, can be fun briefly, but not a good plan for very long, which is why shortly afterwards, the Meddling Monk is killed, and his TARDIS stolen by the Master (who escaped once again or had a backup plan), and leaves him out as a time traveling menace who could appear anywhere, and ALSO with the Monk's daughter becoming a new companion for the Doctor (possibly with her spending some time first assisting the Master in his TARDIS while unaware that he was the one who killed her father, and perhaps brainwashed into thinking the Doctor did it), although that might be too much of a retread of Nyssa, I think it could work, her having a little bit of experience with Earth's history and maybe a little bit more rogueish and willing to interfere.
In the cold light of day, some of the mechanics might not be what they were at 2am, but I still think that would be a pretty cool direction for the show to go.
In short, I should TOTALLY WRITE FOR DOCTOR WHO.
Oh, and in other news, I hope everyone who is/was in the path of Irene makes it through okay. I don't get much besides local news anymore, and even that I tend to miss on the weekend, so I don't know exactly how bad it's gone in various places, but, well, I'm hoping it's not too bad.
Some spoilery thoughts.
I really thought this was going to be a relatively standalone episode to give a break from the revelations... you know, how like the Doctor examined his viewscreen and realized Amy was pregnant/not pregnant, and then suddenly was all "hey, let's go fight pirates for no reason!". Even the title suggested that's what it was: "Let's Kill Hitler!"
Instead, we got an episode that was pretty key to the whole River Song mythos.
I kind of half-saw the big revelation coming (I say half because, when I heard the name "Mels", I thought it instantly, but then I spent the first quarter or whatever of the episode trying to determine if her name was "Mels" or "Bels" (I guess I must be a little deaf or have some aural processing issue, this seems to happen a lot for me... and it's so unfair, I went through a whole teenage life WITHOUT LISTENING TO LOUD MUSIC (because I don't really care about music), and so if anything my hearing should be better than anyone my age).
I didn't expect, and in fact was a little disappointed that Mels regenerated into River Song, the one we all know. I was kind of hoping she'd have multiple appearances over the course of the series that could surprise us, and that we'd actually see her grow up from a young lady to an adult, with different actors in those roles bouncing back and forth. Instead, it looks like we'll just have Alex Kingston, with perhaps the actress playing Mels in occasional flashbacks (speaking of, as a best friend she did kind of come out of nowhere, I'd have liked it more if she was mentioned regularly or something). Presumably there was a second regeneration as well, because she regenerated in 1969, and then apparently somehow got to be a young child again in time to grow up alongside Amy (Which must have been the late-80s, I'd guess? Karen Gillian was born in 87, anyway), but even then, that's probably only a single different appearance as a child, unless time travel whisked her around a bit, which is quite possible, but even so she wouldn't have met the Doctor, according to her). In fact, that's kind of a big disappointment for me. It loses out most of the cool factor of meeting a person out of sync timewise, you encounter them all over the place and don't always recognize them right away.
On the other hand, it solves the problem of how, if she could regenerate, she died in the Library two parter.
Anyway, if you take all the disappointments as given, it was kind of a fun episode, with some flaws, and although I'm not certain it works as a whole and as a part of the series, there are certainly lots of great little elements, like Amy first discovering Rory likes her, and River's "Gay Barmitzvah for the Disabled" line.
Next week's preview didn't really interest me in the slightest though. THAT looks like a throwaway episode, and not even an interesting-looking one.
I had a Doctor Who dream again, one of those dreams where it takes the form of an episode. And of course, as is not unusual for me, after waking up I stayed suspended in a half-awake half-asleep state trying to make it better.
I can't remember much of it any more, though...
Basically, the episode started with Rani from Sarah Jane Adventures who was somehow the Doctor's companion (which, btw, I think could be a cool idea in a couple years) stumbling on to a little booth that turned out to be bigger on the inside. Inside was an old man and a younger girl (teen-to-young-adult age). Anyway, the whole setup was a trap by the Meddling Monk (from the original series) who thought that the Doctor was in the area to try to drag him back to the Time War, which he deserted from and thought was still going on because he hid from it in some kind of time loop.
After I woke up, I sort of had the idea that the Monk was still a war deserter, and still thinking the Doctor was out to get him, but had hid in a more conventional way, perhaps in another universe, and now had a daughter. Now that the war was over and he was the only time lord left, he got back to his old tricks of playing around with Earth's timeline (meaning to improve it) and teaching his daughter about it. When the Doctor encounters him, they cross swords a little but in the end they're both too pleased to find other Time Lords out there to want to be enemies anymore (and the Monk was never outright villainous), and the Doctor convinces him to give up his Meddling, which is too dangerous now that the rest of the Time Lords aren't around to maintain temporal order, and that he's on his last regeneration and he has a daughter to think of.
It leaves the Doctor with a potential ally, a friend on his own level who has his own TARDIS.
Which of course, can be fun briefly, but not a good plan for very long, which is why shortly afterwards, the Meddling Monk is killed, and his TARDIS stolen by the Master (who escaped once again or had a backup plan), and leaves him out as a time traveling menace who could appear anywhere, and ALSO with the Monk's daughter becoming a new companion for the Doctor (possibly with her spending some time first assisting the Master in his TARDIS while unaware that he was the one who killed her father, and perhaps brainwashed into thinking the Doctor did it), although that might be too much of a retread of Nyssa, I think it could work, her having a little bit of experience with Earth's history and maybe a little bit more rogueish and willing to interfere.
In the cold light of day, some of the mechanics might not be what they were at 2am, but I still think that would be a pretty cool direction for the show to go.
In short, I should TOTALLY WRITE FOR DOCTOR WHO.
Oh, and in other news, I hope everyone who is/was in the path of Irene makes it through okay. I don't get much besides local news anymore, and even that I tend to miss on the weekend, so I don't know exactly how bad it's gone in various places, but, well, I'm hoping it's not too bad.
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