Liveblogging the latest SJA
Oct. 26th, 2010 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsI wanted so much to squee myself senseless, but this was as much everything I hate about an RTD script as what I love about one.
Why send a squad of armed soldiers into the suburbs to announce a death, even that one? What the heck do they expect Sarah Jane to do, blow up the Earth in mourning? Seriously, here I was all set to squee and RTD lives down to my worst fears of him going senselessly over the top before the opening credits.
I don't care what they call it; that thing is a Skesis.
I like how they're handling Luke. Yeah, they don't have a lot of Tommy Knight's time this season, but they haven't just patted him on the head, sent him off to Oxford, and forgotten his existence.
"I don't think he's dead." Well, there's a switch from classic Who! Admit it, Sarah Jane, you were always crying over the idea of the Doctor having croaked, even after you saw him regenerate.
You're a good man, Haresh. A very good man, considering the nonsense you get from your wonky neighbor.
Okay, the UNIT theme does make me squee. Unreservedly. So does a mention of Liz! Now this is the best of what RTD can do, I'll grant that. LIZ! ONNA MOON!
Four! Three! It's just something in my eye, really. I'm not choking up at all.
Jo! Don't ever change! Actually, you haven't, not one bit, and it's wonderful. And thank you RTD, for having Sarah Jane and Jo start laughing and hug and compliment each other. Now THAT'S how companions are supposed to do it!Damned shame you forgot that before Once again the kiddie show is more mature than the family show.
And Jo gets to have a huge family and a happy life. (Figures; the kiddie show is the only one with the only intact, happy families before the Ponds.) That's the way it's supposed to be. Traveling with the Doctor is supposed to make you better when it's over, not make you miserable. Yeah, Jo has a right to have a pang, but to hug Sarah Jane and plan to be brilliant in tandem? THAT'S what ex-companions do, not snipe at each other!
Metebilis Three mention! Drink! Peladon! Aggador! Drink! And more laughter and hugs instead of one-upping each other? WHY COULD SCHOOL REUNION NOT BE LIKE THIS?
Crawling through a ventilation shaft? I may have squeed just a tiny bit. Now all we need is a quarry scene and someone reversing the polarity of the neutron flow.
Eleven! "Right now... ooo... he's in a lot of trouble." The Doctor certainly hasn't changed. Only Seven could think ahead, really. "It's like you've been baked." Not ginger, but still rude. C'mon Doctor! You've seen Sarah Jane relatively recently and you go wibbly over her, and Jo gets "you've been baked"? Someone still a tad jealous of Professor Jones?
A QUARRY! \o/ And an escape through ventilation shafts! Oh please, oh please, oh please, reverse the polarity. Please?
"It's a planet on a honeymoon. It married an asteroid." I must admit, RTD does beautiful Doctor piffle. But then, just because RTD also can't allow sheer joy for the sake of joy even in the kiddie show, he has Sarah Jane asking a question that you'd think she'd've brought up a regeneration or two ago. And then doubles down the depressive drama by giving Jo one of those "even though I had a happy life it kinda wasn't really because the last showrunner has a thing about pining women and has a problem with life on Earth" speeches and suddenly I'm so glad RTD is gone because I am so damned tired of that! Oh, and heap depression on the Doctor's head.
I don't miss any of that. I don't miss it one bit and I'm seriously sorry that it hasn't been stabbed in the heart and ripped out of this episode. Why does the Doctor have to give her the "it's a wonderful life" speech? Seriously, why can't RTD let ONE SINGLE COMPANION look the Doctor dead in the eye and say "I had a wonderful life with you and you showed me how to have a wonderful life without you and I lived it to the fullest"?
This is why RTD is on my shitlist. (This and turning Torchwood into underage snuff.) Because even the companion who left by her own choice to follow her own bliss suddenly gets saddled with lifelong regret that must be magically healed by the Doctor.
FUCK. THAT. This one scene is wiping out any squee I had, and what's really sad is, RTD so obviously meant it to be the uplifting "maybe life on Earth doesn't suck after all" moment.
But it's not like Jo was considered fit to make that decision on her own, apparently.
Oh, wait, and even in the kiddie show with the one big happy family RTD can't leave his shattered family issues out of it. Because the Joneses may be together, but they aren't *together* together, and being activists = being bad, neglectful parents.
I am so very tired of RTD's issues. I'm even more tired of him bringing them up in every single damned plot.
Not even the ventilation shaft joke is going to cheer me up now. The mood has been killed.
Considering the hysteria around possibly casting a man of color or a woman as Eleven, I'm surprised that the big wank now is over the number of regenerations and not "I can be anything."
Am I the only one who notices that the current key to the TARDIS is not the key as either Sarah Jane or Jo remembers it?
Okay, I am enjoying the retrospective, especially Jo's Earthly travels. But I'm still mad at RTD. Especially with Jo saying how much the Doctor meant to her while not giving a message to her own friggin' grandson who's only standing right there.
"If that day ever comes, I think the whole Universe might shiver." It may be Matt talking, but I'm hearing RTD's voice, not the Doctor's.
"Find yourself a fellow." I'd love to hear that as randy Jo talking, but once again, I'm hearing nothing but RTD's "you're nobody until you have somebody to love you" trope rearing its head yet a-friggin'-gain.
Sarah Jane's tracked down the other companions! Fanon becomes canon!
Would have been the perfect episode if it hadn't become a laundry list of RTD's standard personal issues.
Why send a squad of armed soldiers into the suburbs to announce a death, even that one? What the heck do they expect Sarah Jane to do, blow up the Earth in mourning? Seriously, here I was all set to squee and RTD lives down to my worst fears of him going senselessly over the top before the opening credits.
I don't care what they call it; that thing is a Skesis.
I like how they're handling Luke. Yeah, they don't have a lot of Tommy Knight's time this season, but they haven't just patted him on the head, sent him off to Oxford, and forgotten his existence.
"I don't think he's dead." Well, there's a switch from classic Who! Admit it, Sarah Jane, you were always crying over the idea of the Doctor having croaked, even after you saw him regenerate.
You're a good man, Haresh. A very good man, considering the nonsense you get from your wonky neighbor.
Okay, the UNIT theme does make me squee. Unreservedly. So does a mention of Liz! Now this is the best of what RTD can do, I'll grant that. LIZ! ONNA MOON!
Four! Three! It's just something in my eye, really. I'm not choking up at all.
Jo! Don't ever change! Actually, you haven't, not one bit, and it's wonderful. And thank you RTD, for having Sarah Jane and Jo start laughing and hug and compliment each other. Now THAT'S how companions are supposed to do it!
And Jo gets to have a huge family and a happy life. (Figures; the kiddie show is the only one with the only intact, happy families before the Ponds.) That's the way it's supposed to be. Traveling with the Doctor is supposed to make you better when it's over, not make you miserable. Yeah, Jo has a right to have a pang, but to hug Sarah Jane and plan to be brilliant in tandem? THAT'S what ex-companions do, not snipe at each other!
Metebilis Three mention! Drink! Peladon! Aggador! Drink! And more laughter and hugs instead of one-upping each other? WHY COULD SCHOOL REUNION NOT BE LIKE THIS?
Crawling through a ventilation shaft? I may have squeed just a tiny bit. Now all we need is a quarry scene and someone reversing the polarity of the neutron flow.
Eleven! "Right now... ooo... he's in a lot of trouble." The Doctor certainly hasn't changed. Only Seven could think ahead, really. "It's like you've been baked." Not ginger, but still rude. C'mon Doctor! You've seen Sarah Jane relatively recently and you go wibbly over her, and Jo gets "you've been baked"? Someone still a tad jealous of Professor Jones?
A QUARRY! \o/ And an escape through ventilation shafts! Oh please, oh please, oh please, reverse the polarity. Please?
"It's a planet on a honeymoon. It married an asteroid." I must admit, RTD does beautiful Doctor piffle. But then, just because RTD also can't allow sheer joy for the sake of joy even in the kiddie show, he has Sarah Jane asking a question that you'd think she'd've brought up a regeneration or two ago. And then doubles down the depressive drama by giving Jo one of those "even though I had a happy life it kinda wasn't really because the last showrunner has a thing about pining women and has a problem with life on Earth" speeches and suddenly I'm so glad RTD is gone because I am so damned tired of that! Oh, and heap depression on the Doctor's head.
I don't miss any of that. I don't miss it one bit and I'm seriously sorry that it hasn't been stabbed in the heart and ripped out of this episode. Why does the Doctor have to give her the "it's a wonderful life" speech? Seriously, why can't RTD let ONE SINGLE COMPANION look the Doctor dead in the eye and say "I had a wonderful life with you and you showed me how to have a wonderful life without you and I lived it to the fullest"?
This is why RTD is on my shitlist. (This and turning Torchwood into underage snuff.) Because even the companion who left by her own choice to follow her own bliss suddenly gets saddled with lifelong regret that must be magically healed by the Doctor.
FUCK. THAT. This one scene is wiping out any squee I had, and what's really sad is, RTD so obviously meant it to be the uplifting "maybe life on Earth doesn't suck after all" moment.
But it's not like Jo was considered fit to make that decision on her own, apparently.
Oh, wait, and even in the kiddie show with the one big happy family RTD can't leave his shattered family issues out of it. Because the Joneses may be together, but they aren't *together* together, and being activists = being bad, neglectful parents.
I am so very tired of RTD's issues. I'm even more tired of him bringing them up in every single damned plot.
Not even the ventilation shaft joke is going to cheer me up now. The mood has been killed.
Considering the hysteria around possibly casting a man of color or a woman as Eleven, I'm surprised that the big wank now is over the number of regenerations and not "I can be anything."
Am I the only one who notices that the current key to the TARDIS is not the key as either Sarah Jane or Jo remembers it?
Okay, I am enjoying the retrospective, especially Jo's Earthly travels. But I'm still mad at RTD. Especially with Jo saying how much the Doctor meant to her while not giving a message to her own friggin' grandson who's only standing right there.
"If that day ever comes, I think the whole Universe might shiver." It may be Matt talking, but I'm hearing RTD's voice, not the Doctor's.
"Find yourself a fellow." I'd love to hear that as randy Jo talking, but once again, I'm hearing nothing but RTD's "you're nobody until you have somebody to love you" trope rearing its head yet a-friggin'-gain.
Sarah Jane's tracked down the other companions! Fanon becomes canon!
Would have been the perfect episode if it hadn't become a laundry list of RTD's standard personal issues.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 04:53 pm (UTC)The Companions of Doctor Who had such a talent base, starting with Cheryl Duval and going from there. I still have that zine, which features a sketch she did of Adric carving a cyber-pumpkin with Nyssa looking on and saying "You know, you're really sick..."
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 08:13 pm (UTC)Ohhhh yeah. I worked w/Cheryl back in the day.