Doctor Who 2.4: The Girl in the Fireplace
May. 7th, 2006 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenayI sense that I will be squeeing rather a lot during this season ;-)
I suspect that opinion is going to be rather divided on this episode, with many old-school DW fans absolutley loathing it. I will come out and say that I adored this episode, so neener to you ;-))
Out of habit, I always try to know as little about episodes in advance as possible. For this one, I literally only knew what I'd seen in the trailer last week so I had no idea what to expect. "The Doctor in love" wasn't the plot that I'd immediately imagined this episode would be leading to and I'm now very glad that I didn't expect it - I suspect that I would have joined in with my fellow old school fans in deriding the idea and calling RTD unkind names. This kind of plot didn't really work with the TV movie, but I suspect that had more to do with the writing than anything else. Paul McGann probably could have convinced me on the idea, but the way it was written simply didn't work at that time.
It was interesting to see just how well it worked for this Doctor in this setting.
I was genuinely sad when Reinette died. It kind of ties in with the themes of last week's episode, that the Doctor has to watch the people he loves grow old and die and that's why he only lets his companions stay for a short time. The hardest part was the brievity - for Reinette, the Doctor was a presence throughout her life but for the Doctor it was all over in a few hours. The device of the time windows that opened in different portions of her life was a brilliant use of the time travel idea. It's not often that time travel is actually a significant portion of the plot, despite the Doctor's nature.
The contrasts between Reinette's life and the ship thousands of years in her future gave us a great blend of sci-fi and period drama that, in many ways, worked much better than the purely Victorian setting of Tooth and Claw.
I enjoyed the Doctor's gradual discovery of Reinette. The moment when he meets the grown-up Reinette for the first time was beautifully played by both actors. Even the Doctor's childish delight at having "snogged Madame de Pompadour" worked well in the context.
And the kiss was a much better kiss than the TV movie kiss :-)
Each time we saw Reinette and she was a little bit older, we knew where this might eventually end, but it was done so well that her eventual death was genuinely sad. Even though in his own time line the Doctor only knew her for around a day, we could still see how much she had affected him. He seemed genuinely fascinated by her, both by her beauty (I loved the slightly stunned expression and "my how you've grown" when he first sees adult Reinette) and by her mind. I think her understanding of him was also an attraction. It was a little like the Ninth Doctor's reaction to Rose after she absorbed the time vortex - she suddenly understood the things that she'd never been able to understand before and the emptiness inside the Doctor needs that.
The Doctor's mind meld-y thing with her was an interesting moment - we saw a different side of him when she broke through and got into his mind, telling us about the lonely boy who has become such a lonely man. But we also saw that there was something unusual about her to be able to see his mind and that goes to explain his fascination further.
The main plot, of the droids from the ship opening time windows to find the right time in history to take Reinette, was interesting but really just acted as a backdrop to the Doctor's relationship with Reinette. The idea that the repair droids had cannibalised their own ship's crew to replace the damaged parts on the ship was slightly creepy and I liked the fact that we didn't get the big reveal about why they thought Madame de Pompadour was the only one who could replace the ship's brain until the end. It was one of those "oh!" moments in the closing moments that added a nice touch to the episode. The fact that the Doctor, Rose and Mickey will never know left me feeling ever so slightly smug.
This was a very Doctor-centric episode. Rose and Mickey were around and it was fun to see Mickey's delight at getting a real spaceship on his first trip, but they were really here as background this time with the main story focused around the Doctor. It didn't suffer for that, although the selfish part of me would have liked to see a little more reaction from Rose to Reinette.
OK, so I laughed when Rose complained about the horse and the Doctor retorted that he let her keep Mickey. After last week's comparison's to the tin dog, I have a feeling that this could be a running joke and they're actually building Mickey up to something pretty big.
The big climax, with the Doctor riding through the time window mirror into the ballroom on a white charger, was just the right touch. Yup, slightly cheesy, but done knowing that it was slightly cheesy and intending that it would be a fun touch to an episode that was going to have some deeper moments.
I did get rather confused when the main plot was done ten minutes before the end. That isn't the usual structure of a DW plot. But those final ten minutes were worth it and made the episode a rounder, richer experience.
I suspect that a lot of this is babbled and I've forgotten important stuff as usual. It was an episode that I enjoyed much more than I thought I would and that turned out to be completely different from what I'd expected. The writer was responsible for The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances last year so I knew this would be a good one. There were a couple of echoes of The Doctor Dances, but this episode was quite different and that's a really good thing - I'll never know what to expect when I see Simon Moffat's name, but I'll know that it will be good.
It's so much fun being a Doctor Who fan :-)
I suspect that opinion is going to be rather divided on this episode, with many old-school DW fans absolutley loathing it. I will come out and say that I adored this episode, so neener to you ;-))
Out of habit, I always try to know as little about episodes in advance as possible. For this one, I literally only knew what I'd seen in the trailer last week so I had no idea what to expect. "The Doctor in love" wasn't the plot that I'd immediately imagined this episode would be leading to and I'm now very glad that I didn't expect it - I suspect that I would have joined in with my fellow old school fans in deriding the idea and calling RTD unkind names. This kind of plot didn't really work with the TV movie, but I suspect that had more to do with the writing than anything else. Paul McGann probably could have convinced me on the idea, but the way it was written simply didn't work at that time.
It was interesting to see just how well it worked for this Doctor in this setting.
I was genuinely sad when Reinette died. It kind of ties in with the themes of last week's episode, that the Doctor has to watch the people he loves grow old and die and that's why he only lets his companions stay for a short time. The hardest part was the brievity - for Reinette, the Doctor was a presence throughout her life but for the Doctor it was all over in a few hours. The device of the time windows that opened in different portions of her life was a brilliant use of the time travel idea. It's not often that time travel is actually a significant portion of the plot, despite the Doctor's nature.
The contrasts between Reinette's life and the ship thousands of years in her future gave us a great blend of sci-fi and period drama that, in many ways, worked much better than the purely Victorian setting of Tooth and Claw.
I enjoyed the Doctor's gradual discovery of Reinette. The moment when he meets the grown-up Reinette for the first time was beautifully played by both actors. Even the Doctor's childish delight at having "snogged Madame de Pompadour" worked well in the context.
And the kiss was a much better kiss than the TV movie kiss :-)
Each time we saw Reinette and she was a little bit older, we knew where this might eventually end, but it was done so well that her eventual death was genuinely sad. Even though in his own time line the Doctor only knew her for around a day, we could still see how much she had affected him. He seemed genuinely fascinated by her, both by her beauty (I loved the slightly stunned expression and "my how you've grown" when he first sees adult Reinette) and by her mind. I think her understanding of him was also an attraction. It was a little like the Ninth Doctor's reaction to Rose after she absorbed the time vortex - she suddenly understood the things that she'd never been able to understand before and the emptiness inside the Doctor needs that.
The Doctor's mind meld-y thing with her was an interesting moment - we saw a different side of him when she broke through and got into his mind, telling us about the lonely boy who has become such a lonely man. But we also saw that there was something unusual about her to be able to see his mind and that goes to explain his fascination further.
The main plot, of the droids from the ship opening time windows to find the right time in history to take Reinette, was interesting but really just acted as a backdrop to the Doctor's relationship with Reinette. The idea that the repair droids had cannibalised their own ship's crew to replace the damaged parts on the ship was slightly creepy and I liked the fact that we didn't get the big reveal about why they thought Madame de Pompadour was the only one who could replace the ship's brain until the end. It was one of those "oh!" moments in the closing moments that added a nice touch to the episode. The fact that the Doctor, Rose and Mickey will never know left me feeling ever so slightly smug.
This was a very Doctor-centric episode. Rose and Mickey were around and it was fun to see Mickey's delight at getting a real spaceship on his first trip, but they were really here as background this time with the main story focused around the Doctor. It didn't suffer for that, although the selfish part of me would have liked to see a little more reaction from Rose to Reinette.
OK, so I laughed when Rose complained about the horse and the Doctor retorted that he let her keep Mickey. After last week's comparison's to the tin dog, I have a feeling that this could be a running joke and they're actually building Mickey up to something pretty big.
The big climax, with the Doctor riding through the time window mirror into the ballroom on a white charger, was just the right touch. Yup, slightly cheesy, but done knowing that it was slightly cheesy and intending that it would be a fun touch to an episode that was going to have some deeper moments.
I did get rather confused when the main plot was done ten minutes before the end. That isn't the usual structure of a DW plot. But those final ten minutes were worth it and made the episode a rounder, richer experience.
I suspect that a lot of this is babbled and I've forgotten important stuff as usual. It was an episode that I enjoyed much more than I thought I would and that turned out to be completely different from what I'd expected. The writer was responsible for The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances last year so I knew this would be a good one. There were a couple of echoes of The Doctor Dances, but this episode was quite different and that's a really good thing - I'll never know what to expect when I see Simon Moffat's name, but I'll know that it will be good.
It's so much fun being a Doctor Who fan :-)
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-07 06:55 pm (UTC)I couldn't agree more. *g*
no subject
Date: 2006-05-08 12:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-07 08:01 pm (UTC)Simon Moffat's name
That would be Steven. He wrote Coupling!
And I liked this one too.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-08 12:52 pm (UTC)And this one was definitely cool.