The Next Doctor

[purplecat]

I thought this was easily the best of RTD's Christmas Specials and I suspect that was because he found a way to marry the kind of emotional beats that he is interested in and is generally very good at, with the science fiction/fantasy and spectacle he clearly feels is a vital part of a Christmas Special. I'm also a bit of a sucker for steam punk in any form.

The plot itself was pretty simple and straightforward but RTD has demonstrated a number of times that he has no gift for complex plotting and at least keeping it simple and linear reduces the options for vast plot holes and inconsistencies to appear. In fact, I'm not sure that a companionless Doctor isn't better suited to RTD's style since he can then focus on the one plot thread without distraction. The plot itself had a fair bit of "insert technobabble here" style irritations but it's broad sweep made sense and characters did not have to be distorted in order to reach the next beat. The only moment that didn't really work was Miss Hartigan's sudden revulsion at the Cybermen and subsequent uncanny ability to destroy them, that was particularly galling since we were in "insert technobabble here territory" and a little more attention to the technobabble would probably have been sufficient to glue that scene together a little better. Come to think of it, we could have used a little more technobabble to explain how Miss Hartigan took over the Cybermen in the first place - even a throwaway comment from the Doctor to the effect of "that's what you get when you can't access precision micro-engineering" would have done! But I liked the (lack of) contrast of the Cybermen's cold "anti-emotion" with Miss Hartigan's equally cold "rage and passion".

But I thought the Doctor and Jackson Lake were a stonking idea, excellently executed. When I first heard about the story I assumed we were going to either be getting a genuine future Doctor or a malicious imposter. To have Jackson as a man who genuinely thought he was the Doctor and a man who was, essentially, rising to the challenge seemed strangely refreshing. I was cheering both when the Doctor stepped in to save the day for Jackson and when Jackson, in turn, managed to step in and save the Doctor. To take the Doctor's personality and reflect it back at him and, I suppose, in so doing give him a companion who really could understand him was compulsive viewing and the sort of thing new Who does so well which old Who would never have dreamed of attempting. And yeah the Cyberman data stick things don't bear close inspection, but who cares?. You could criticise the story for ultimately looking a bit like ego-massage for the Doctor ("never been thanked" - yeah! right! apart from, you know, all the times he was) but this wasn't the place for a dark and angst-filled examination of his character and I think I actually welcomed the step away from the "vengeful god" image to something that was more interested in celebrating the good, uplifting and heroic aspects of the character.

I did think it a shame that Jackson's proto-companion, Rosita, couldn't have had more screen time but can see that would have been difficult in a 60 minute Christmas Special type setting where (rightly or wrongly) it's considered important to keep the spectacle coming quick and fast.

We all pretty much know by now what RTD's strengths and weaknesses are. This is the first Christmas Special where he's really set out to exploit his strengths in a serious fashion and I think it was the better for it. Sure there was a lot of sound and fury to little ultimate effect on display but it also seemed to have the heart that was lacking from the previous offerings. The fact that he actually hit upon an emotional story that could not be told without the SF one was an extra plus.

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who_daily HTML: <lj user=louisedennis> thought it was <a href="http://louisedennis.livejournal.com/102882.html">easily the best of RTD's Christmas Specials</a>

Comments

[gominokouhai]

Spot on.

Enjoyable, but riddled with plot holes, so it was very much something to watch while you turn your brain off after dinner and the kids are all hyped up on sugar. If we must have Christmas specials, at least this one worked as intended.

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed it much more than last year's -- but I think that was mainly because of David Morrissey. The Jackson concept was brilliant and because of Morrissey's performance it really held the ep together for me (I could take or leave the cybermen, although the industrial angle made a lot of sense in view of the time period).

I hadn't come across steam punk until fairly recently. Someone recommended Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines to me. Does that count as YA steam punk? *g*.

[purplecat]

I think David Morrissey carried it but Jackson's plot needed to be played out against a crisis, and I think the cybermen are a good choice of monster for the steam punk aesthetic. I think there was an interesting idea going on with the Cyberman/Miss Hartigan alliance but somehow either the writing or the performance didn't bring it together in the way the Jackson plot worked.

[purplecat]

I don't know Reeve's. I think I first came across steam punk in the Castle Falkenstein RPG but, if you haven't already seen it you should see City of Lost Children.

[lukadreaming.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen it, so I've added it to my list *g*. Reeve's book (and I think there's a series) has movable cities which eat up weaker cities -- they look like huge riverboat structures. The idea is intriguing but so far the book isn't grabbing me as much as I thought it might.