The Beast Below
Apr. 12th, 2010 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatWell that was very interesting indeed, both in terms of the components that worked and in terms of the components that didn't.
Where The Eleventh Hour was clearly seeking to stress continuity with Davies' period at the helm while giving pointers to where Moffat would be taking the show, The Beast Below is almost a manifesto stating Moffat's take on the Doctor, the Companion and their dynamic and on those terms it is a success.
I always, I have to confess, struggled to appreciate Rose. With one or two exceptions, I struggled to find what it was in her that was supposed to be so independent and resourceful. In retrospect, something that held her back was that the Doctor nearly always kept her close, which was possibly a side effect of the very linear style of plotting Davies preferred. In The Beast Below the Doctor almost immediately sends Amy off to investigate on her own and in doing so we see a take on the Companion which is, first and foremost, Doctorish. Amy pond wanders around London Market in her nightdress with only the slightest qualm and the residents simply accept the fact. She is instantly curious, has an overwhelming desire to meddle, and is both bold and resourceful. At the end it is Amy, not the Doctor, who puts the pieces together and finds a solution to the problem. It has often been stated that the huge problem with the Doctor Who companion is that they are, by the very format of the program, inferior and subordinate to the Doctor. Moffat here turned that on its head and showed pretty conclusively that it doesn't have to be like that. I find I'm really excited to see a series where it could equally be the Doctor or the Companion who ultimately saves the day and I hope that's what we will get.
Moffat was also seizing the opportunity to state his vision of the Doctor. This wasn't quite as successful. I bought the very old and very lonely but Smith didn't sell very kind. His actions both here and in The Eleventh Hour seemed to follow more from the Doctor's instinctive need to meddle and investigate than a specific deep vein of compassion. It's an interesting idea, with a lot of potential, and turns the viewpoint of the series out from contemplating the Doctor's own pain, while leaving plenty of scope for emotion and character growth/exploration. Smith's Doctor did appear much more his own person in this episode, particularly in lines like `it was a bad day', but I feel he's still settling into the role and finding the performance.
The story also succeeded, where Davies' output so often failed, in making the two resolutions to the story (emotional and plot) intricately linked together so that the whole thing seemed like a coherent whole, rather than a character study with some explosions, set pieces, and strange jargon thrown in. Moreover the resolution followed clearly from the logic of the world that had been set up, again something NuWho has shown a tendency to sacrifice. However the casualty seems to have been an odd drop in pace at around the point where the Doctor and Amy fall into the space whale's mouth which somehow failed to pick up again until the moment where Amy starts piecing everything together. I'm not quite sure what caused that, but my attention began to wander a bit and I started noticing clunkinesses like the fact that the little girl has no lines at all to speak in that entire segment, and that Liz 10, for an apparently extremely bright and able woman had seemingly spent ten years learning nothing at all about how her kingdom worked (and wondering why the British Isles had apparently reverted to an absolute monarchy with only a thin veneer of democracy). I suspect Moffat ended up needing a little more exposition than the forty-five minute format can easily sustain. I would also have loved to see some more details and exploration of the world of Spaceship UK, but NuWho has never been good at world-building and I at least appreciated that the ambition here was larger than simply tacking some technology/technobabble into a world that to all intents and purposes was otherwise 21st Century Britain.
Once again this was a story with a distinctly fairytale feel to it, though in this case the kind of modern urban idea of a fairytale that brought us Gaiman's London Below and the 1980s Beauty and the Beast. On the whole I found this a more uneven episode than The Eleventh Hour, but at the same time I thought it a whole load more interesting and even the points which didn't quite seem to work, didn't work in ways that suggested the writer/production team's priorities were in interesting places.
Where The Eleventh Hour was clearly seeking to stress continuity with Davies' period at the helm while giving pointers to where Moffat would be taking the show, The Beast Below is almost a manifesto stating Moffat's take on the Doctor, the Companion and their dynamic and on those terms it is a success.
I always, I have to confess, struggled to appreciate Rose. With one or two exceptions, I struggled to find what it was in her that was supposed to be so independent and resourceful. In retrospect, something that held her back was that the Doctor nearly always kept her close, which was possibly a side effect of the very linear style of plotting Davies preferred. In The Beast Below the Doctor almost immediately sends Amy off to investigate on her own and in doing so we see a take on the Companion which is, first and foremost, Doctorish. Amy pond wanders around London Market in her nightdress with only the slightest qualm and the residents simply accept the fact. She is instantly curious, has an overwhelming desire to meddle, and is both bold and resourceful. At the end it is Amy, not the Doctor, who puts the pieces together and finds a solution to the problem. It has often been stated that the huge problem with the Doctor Who companion is that they are, by the very format of the program, inferior and subordinate to the Doctor. Moffat here turned that on its head and showed pretty conclusively that it doesn't have to be like that. I find I'm really excited to see a series where it could equally be the Doctor or the Companion who ultimately saves the day and I hope that's what we will get.
Moffat was also seizing the opportunity to state his vision of the Doctor. This wasn't quite as successful. I bought the very old and very lonely but Smith didn't sell very kind. His actions both here and in The Eleventh Hour seemed to follow more from the Doctor's instinctive need to meddle and investigate than a specific deep vein of compassion. It's an interesting idea, with a lot of potential, and turns the viewpoint of the series out from contemplating the Doctor's own pain, while leaving plenty of scope for emotion and character growth/exploration. Smith's Doctor did appear much more his own person in this episode, particularly in lines like `it was a bad day', but I feel he's still settling into the role and finding the performance.
The story also succeeded, where Davies' output so often failed, in making the two resolutions to the story (emotional and plot) intricately linked together so that the whole thing seemed like a coherent whole, rather than a character study with some explosions, set pieces, and strange jargon thrown in. Moreover the resolution followed clearly from the logic of the world that had been set up, again something NuWho has shown a tendency to sacrifice. However the casualty seems to have been an odd drop in pace at around the point where the Doctor and Amy fall into the space whale's mouth which somehow failed to pick up again until the moment where Amy starts piecing everything together. I'm not quite sure what caused that, but my attention began to wander a bit and I started noticing clunkinesses like the fact that the little girl has no lines at all to speak in that entire segment, and that Liz 10, for an apparently extremely bright and able woman had seemingly spent ten years learning nothing at all about how her kingdom worked (and wondering why the British Isles had apparently reverted to an absolute monarchy with only a thin veneer of democracy). I suspect Moffat ended up needing a little more exposition than the forty-five minute format can easily sustain. I would also have loved to see some more details and exploration of the world of Spaceship UK, but NuWho has never been good at world-building and I at least appreciated that the ambition here was larger than simply tacking some technology/technobabble into a world that to all intents and purposes was otherwise 21st Century Britain.
Once again this was a story with a distinctly fairytale feel to it, though in this case the kind of modern urban idea of a fairytale that brought us Gaiman's London Below and the 1980s Beauty and the Beast. On the whole I found this a more uneven episode than The Eleventh Hour, but at the same time I thought it a whole load more interesting and even the points which didn't quite seem to work, didn't work in ways that suggested the writer/production team's priorities were in interesting places.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-12 05:27 pm (UTC)I think you've missed it slightly. Moffat wasn't presenting old-lonely-and-kind as a fait accompli. He was showing the way it's going to be from here on. Amy was channelling the Moff in that scene: given an opportunity to take charge, she says Right, you, you're old and lonely, now it's time to start being kind.
The Doctor's solution to the Morton's Fork was classic Ten: he was this close to saying as he waved his screwdriver about. But Amy told him that my Doctor doesn't just wantonly euthanize whales without looking for a third option. You can see the lesson go in: Matt had a learning experience, and from now on the Doctor is going to be different, but it's presented as character development with continuity.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-12 05:44 pm (UTC)