The Name of the Doctor
Jun. 16th, 2013 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatOh dear! Poor old Lawrence Miles. In the late 1990s Miles was the golden child of the Doctor Who books, coming up with such mind-blowing ideas as the concept of a cataclysmic Time War between the Time Lords and some, ever mysterious, enemy, and exploring the chilling effect that being on a war footing had on Time Lord society. His break out book, Alien Bodies, centred around an auction for the Doctor's own dead body, a powerful artefact of the time war and the Doctor's struggles to keep his future corpse out of the hands of unsavoury characters such as Faction Paradox, UNIT and, in a surprise reveal, the Krotons.
Miles has never worked for the revived Doctor Who. One suspects this is for a variety of reasons including his own troubled mental health and a tendency, when roused, to make incautious remarks - e.g., referring to Moffat's snarling predatory Scottishness*. Whatever one thinks of him and his books, which were controversial largely, I suspect, because they tried to take Doctor Who in new directions, it must be galling to see your ideas strip-mined, deliberately or otherwise, for the new show in quite the way they have been.
I sort of half enjoyed this episode. There was lots about it I did like. Despite the central companion arc, once again, being a timey-wimey puzzle, I liked the way this one had been constructed. I hadn't actually seen this answer coming and so was both surprised and satisfied by the resolution. I appreciate the fact that when Moffat sets up a mystery he clearly and consistently knows what the reveal will be. I'm assuming that there is still more to come with Clara as well, since both the TARDIS's antipathy towards her, and the apparent impossibility (according to the Doctor anyway) of the original Clara haven't really been explained.
I'm in two minds about the montage of previous doctors. Some worked quite well but the Patrick Troughton clip, in particular, was very poorly done. I liked the brief interaction between Clara and the first Doctor and would have appreciated more in that vein. I feel, I suppose, that this was a good idea that the show lacked the time and/or money to actually make work.
I loved the Doctor's farewell to River, but I was slightly put out by the dramatic fast forward which strongly suggested that the Doctor now knows he's had all his interactions with her. This suggests, if nothing else, a lot of unseen adventures, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I also felt we were only really just beginning to see the way the Doctor and River worked together as a couple and so felt rather short-changed that it has ended. I'd also have liked to see something done with the fact that the Doctor wouldn't open the TARDIS for the Great Intelligence, but River would. That should have been a really important character note for both of them, but somehow it was just glossed over. There's also something a bit troubling about all these women sacrificing themselves for the Doctor - multiple times in Clara's case.
My biggest disappointment was that the Great Intelligence got nothing more to do other than commit suicide at the Doctor. That seemed like a complete waste of a both good bad guy and a high profile piece of casting. There weren't even any yeti, although B insists that the whispermen were actually yeti.
I thought this was one of the season's stronger episodes, but it still contains many of the flaws of the other episodes of this season - good ideas, thrown away, Clara's personality subverted to being a puzzle or plot twist. But I didn't feel cheated by the revelation of the Clara mystery, which could so easily have happened in so many other genre shows.
* yes, this did cause fanfic.
Miles has never worked for the revived Doctor Who. One suspects this is for a variety of reasons including his own troubled mental health and a tendency, when roused, to make incautious remarks - e.g., referring to Moffat's snarling predatory Scottishness*. Whatever one thinks of him and his books, which were controversial largely, I suspect, because they tried to take Doctor Who in new directions, it must be galling to see your ideas strip-mined, deliberately or otherwise, for the new show in quite the way they have been.
I sort of half enjoyed this episode. There was lots about it I did like. Despite the central companion arc, once again, being a timey-wimey puzzle, I liked the way this one had been constructed. I hadn't actually seen this answer coming and so was both surprised and satisfied by the resolution. I appreciate the fact that when Moffat sets up a mystery he clearly and consistently knows what the reveal will be. I'm assuming that there is still more to come with Clara as well, since both the TARDIS's antipathy towards her, and the apparent impossibility (according to the Doctor anyway) of the original Clara haven't really been explained.
I'm in two minds about the montage of previous doctors. Some worked quite well but the Patrick Troughton clip, in particular, was very poorly done. I liked the brief interaction between Clara and the first Doctor and would have appreciated more in that vein. I feel, I suppose, that this was a good idea that the show lacked the time and/or money to actually make work.
I loved the Doctor's farewell to River, but I was slightly put out by the dramatic fast forward which strongly suggested that the Doctor now knows he's had all his interactions with her. This suggests, if nothing else, a lot of unseen adventures, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I also felt we were only really just beginning to see the way the Doctor and River worked together as a couple and so felt rather short-changed that it has ended. I'd also have liked to see something done with the fact that the Doctor wouldn't open the TARDIS for the Great Intelligence, but River would. That should have been a really important character note for both of them, but somehow it was just glossed over. There's also something a bit troubling about all these women sacrificing themselves for the Doctor - multiple times in Clara's case.
My biggest disappointment was that the Great Intelligence got nothing more to do other than commit suicide at the Doctor. That seemed like a complete waste of a both good bad guy and a high profile piece of casting. There weren't even any yeti, although B insists that the whispermen were actually yeti.
I thought this was one of the season's stronger episodes, but it still contains many of the flaws of the other episodes of this season - good ideas, thrown away, Clara's personality subverted to being a puzzle or plot twist. But I didn't feel cheated by the revelation of the Clara mystery, which could so easily have happened in so many other genre shows.
* yes, this did cause fanfic.