Waters of Mars

[neadods]

Much of Waters of Mars was much better than I'd expected.

Aside from how weird it is to have the hero basically watching and not acting for much of the episode, the first 3/4 worked for me... probably because it was a retread of Fires of Pompeii, which is a bit of a favorite. The Doctor sees a crux in time and can't do anything about it, and it makes him sick and sorry... but sick and sorry is all he can be.

After CoE, there were several elements to Waters that I was outright relieved by. In a manner uncharacteristic and unprecedented in an RTD script, all the members of the organization acted in a professional, pragmatic manner. They mourned their falling friends, but they didn't piss around either; they knew the stakes and they owned their actions, and they were willing to do what they had to do for the greater good. It was so nice not to see someone being secretly selfish, or so bleeding heart that something else started bleeding.

It was also nice to see the Doctor attempting to comfort Adelaide, however clumsily. I was frankly expecting something along the lines of what Jack had done to Stephen - grabbed a confused person, sacrificed them, and then essentially been all "oh, woe is ME." The Doctor was not (at that point) making it about himself. He was trying to offer the one thing he could give her - the knowledge that it was not, in the end, all in vain.

And when it did become all about him... oh, how I wish that moment had been handled in an arc! It would have been much more powerful to see him going more and more self-centeredly out of control (as he has been, increasingly) but to see his companions noticing it too until we have a Very Special "Kick the Doctor's Ass" episode. A moment this obvious and this deep and this *delayed* should have had far more screen time than to be reached and dropped in roughly 10 minutes.

Mind you, I also saw exactly what I've come to expect out of an RTD script. Screen time wasted on silly modes of travel or discussion of modes of travel. Random daleks. A heaping helping of wangst in the finale. Even someone dying to make a point. (I can sort-of see her sacrificing herself to maintain the timeline the Doctor saw in what looked like museum descriptions to me, but it was not the world's best, much less clearest, way of handling the plot issue.)

Still looking forward to Eleven.

Comments

[neadods.livejournal.com]

He's been increasingly out of control and sociopathic ever since he casually changed time just because Harriet Jones pissed him off. Why, oh why, was the whole "I CAN DO WHAT I WANT... oh, fuck" issue raised and dropped in less time than it takes me to type this? (And like Donna, I type very quickly.)

We should have been afraid of him back when he was treating Queen Victoria like a video game character, but did RTD raise any of this then?

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

While the pacing has been a bit off, I think we've seen for quite a while now that Ten has been going off the rails, and that RTD has even intended for it to have consequences. Every time Ten has pulled less extreme versions of this shit, it's eventually come back to bite him in the ass - his attitude toward Queen Victoria rather heavily foreshadowed Rose's loss, and by deposing Harriet Jones, he opened the door for the Master. As you pointed out, "The Fires of Pompeii" was the moment at which he finally OFFICIALLY ceded the role of conscience over to his companion (Rose was too fawningly approving, and even Martha a bit too in love with him to call him on his bullshit as much as he needed, but Donna possessed Sarah Jane's gift for forcing him to level with her).

Ten was frighteningly like Four here - later-phase Four, that is, after "Genesis of the Daleks," when he seemed ready to reverse his position in that episode. This is Ten as Four in "The Invasion of Time."

[neadods.livejournal.com]

it's eventually come back to bite him in the ass - his attitude toward Queen Victoria rather heavily foreshadowed Rose's loss, and by deposing Harriet Jones, he opened the door for the Master

*We've* seen that, but the Doctor has never, ever acknowledged it, or even given a sign that he's added 2+2. The only dialog to ever deal with it was a single line... and it was cut.

So this does seem to come out of the blue as far as I'm concerned, because he never dealt with it... and when he does, it's over in minutes. Literally.

That is one of the things about Ten that I've disliked, especially in light of Nine. *Ten* didn't allow his companions to be his conscience because he was Mr. "No Second Chances"... even though his very existence at the moment is an extended second chance for himself. Nine was so damaged and doubting that he usually let his companions make the moral decisions - "Do I have the right?" he muses yet again when he has the chance to blow up the Daleks. And as he did in Genesis, he just can't do it.

That's the Doctor I miss the hell out of, and not the judgmental git who never acknowledges how his own actions hurt the people he cares about most, including himself. No, *he* just whines about not being thanked.

[tiggerallyn.livejournal.com]

*We've* seen that, but the Doctor has never, ever acknowledged it, or even given a sign that he's added 2+2. The only dialog to ever deal with it was a single line... and it was cut.

What line of dialogue was that, and which episode was it to have been in?

And I have to admit, at times during Children of Earth, I wondered how Harriet Jones, her three terms in office, and her Golden Age would have dealt with the Four-Five-Six.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

What line of dialogue was that, and which episode was it to have been in?

Last of the Time Lords (or the one before it) - the Doctor realized that deposing Harriet Jones made it easier for the Master to take over.

Whatever Harriet did, she sure as hell wouldn't have essentially said "well, fuck, we've got to figure out how to hand over a bunch of kids without a panic. Oh, and put your own on that list."

[tiggerallyn.livejournal.com]

Whatever Harriet did, she sure as hell wouldn't have essentially said "well, fuck, we've got to figure out how to hand over a bunch of kids without a panic. Oh, and put your own on that list."

In a way, this is the thing that worries me about the finale.

It's not that the Doctor has gone off the rails. It's that history has gone off the rails.

We've seen history off the rails in the first season, all the stuff around the GameStation. (The ninth Doctor says it's wrong at the time.) The tenth Doctor sent Harriet Jones' Golden Age off the rails. The Daleks broke open a "fixed point" to recover Davros, and the Daleks stealing Earth wasn't supposed to happen. And let's not even mention the Master and his Paradox Machine.

History itself is wrong. The entirety of the RTD era has told us this.

It's why I fear the finale, that it's going to end with some sort of reset button that restores history at the cost of the tenth Doctor's life — and at the cost of the past five years worth of stories.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

It's that history has gone off the rails.

I do keep wondering about that great and bountiful human empire we seem to keep getting cheated out of.

I don't know if a reset button is really at the "cost" of the stories - just because the timeline changes, that doesn't mean that the timeline is truly erased. Even the year that never was... was.