In which I watch teevees
Jun. 6th, 2011 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenaySpoilers abound, but I'm putting them all behind cuts just in case. No, I didn't watch three episodes of Doctor Who and one of Holby over the weekend. I've just been a wee bit behind in my reviews and chatter.
I'm actually struggling to find much to say about this two-parter, which may be why I haven't actually talked about it so far. It wasn't bad, it was decent, but I didn't really care much for the guest characters and the entire point of it was that final five minutes with the reveal of flesh!Amy.
Thankfully, even a subpar episode of Doctor Who is better than 90% of other telly so it was still quite enjoyable and compelling.
After the discovery that it hasn't been the real Amy on the show, possibly since the first episode this year, it was obvious that the Doctor and Rory would have to go after her. I'm very happy that the skipped all the tedious investigation stuff and went straight to the big confrontations. The Doctor tracking down Amy using very complicated sciencey stuff may be pretty, but it doesn't make for compelling TV.
Rory going all centurion, giving a brilliant speech and asking if anyone wants him to repeat the question while we see many Cyber-ships blow up behind him was rather a genius way to open the show.
In fact, Rory was wonderful throughout this episode and I love seeing the way that he's been developed into a much stronger character over time. The Rory that we met in The Eleventh Hour was kind, caring and compassionate - all traits that Rory still has - but he didn't have the toughness that Rory now has. This may be why he's growing into one of my favourite Doctor Who characters.
There was a sense of big, epic events to the first half of the episode and it was slightly anti-climactic that Amy and the baby were rescued so easily. I'm used to the plotting in this thing, though, so knew that there was a much deeper game being played and it couldn't end that easily.
The baby turning out to be a flesh copy was not what I expected, though. After all, Moffat had done that once already so I assumed that he wouldn't do it a second time. Devious man.
I'm not really surprised that the baby has turned out to have unusual timey-wimey things going on with its DNA. After all, this is the first canon couple to occupy the TARDIS so there's nothing in canon to contradict it and we already know that time travellers can retain some kind of timey-wimey energy that other races like.
The big surprise, for me, was River. Even when the baby was announced to be Melody Pond, I was so caught up in the episode that I didn't make the jump from Melody Pond to River Song. I may possibly have sat with my mouth open for a while after the episode ended.
It does explain a few things about River, most noticeably why she can fly the TARDIS when it's been hinted a few times that only Time Lords can do it properly.
When I was picturing her first meeting with the Doctor, though, I wasn't picturing the possibility that he'd need to change her nappy.
The episode felt a little uneven in pacing and not quite as flowy as the big epic ones can be, but there were so many things to love about it: inter-species lesbian lovers (I haven't met anyone yet who thought their love was platonic), Lorna Bucket, Last Centurion, the return of Danny Boy, the Sontaran nurse...
How lovely was it to have a couple of reminders of Rory's vocation in an episode filled with Rory being awesomely heroic?
I did rather get the feeling that Moffat has been watching the Star Wars films a bit too much. So many visuals that were straight out of the movies and the Headless Monks were completely Sith Lords complete with red light sabres. It's been a bit of a theme in several episodes so I think the set and FX guys are in on it, too. Not that it's a bad thing, provided Moffat doesn't take any hints from Mr. Lucas on dialogue. Moffat's dialogue is always lovely and clever. It's best not to mention Mr. Lucas' dialogue.
In conclusion, a thoroughly enjoyable episode that I think I'll need to re-watch a few times to get things detangled in my head. The only bad thing is that I have to wait three months before I get to find out how the Doctor rescues Melody/River and what happens to everyone.
Does anyone else want the Silurian and her pretty girlfriend to get their own spin-off show?
Having dwelt on the good science fiction, we now move onto the crack that is Holby City.
I am impressed with the way that Holby managed to hit nearly every suddenly!gay! cliche ever in those final couple of scenes with Malick, Dan and Chrissy. As soon as we had the stripping off shirts in the locker room, I was thinking "No, you won't go there, it's too cliched".
Nope, they went there. Kiss as a result of a fight, shocked look of horror from "straight" guy, running off to fuck his girlfriend in a closet (oh, the subtext of that alone...) - it was all there. It's the suddenly gay plot! We haven't seen this one before, nope not at all.
The only cliche they didn't hit was that Malick (our known gay guy) is not a compassionate caring blond nurse, but a tough, arrogant, occasionally violent black doctor with a terrible bedside manner. That is rather refreshing, but only if they find an interesting place to go with this story-line that takes advantage of who Malick is rather than doing the same plot that every show does. I'm sure this isn't even the first time Holby has done this plot.
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historyterry pointed out one thing that I'd overlooked: the kiss was in super close-up, rather than the usual distance wide-angle shot. That did make the scene more shocking than I expected when I started the "I know where this is going" count down.
Why yes, we do enjoy a weekly bitching about Holby section to our Skype chat. We're trying to work out the logistics of watching Holby and Skyping at the same time for extra bitching fun.
Part of me is hoping that they do something interesting and new with this plot. Then I remember that this is Holby and I don't watch it for the cutting-edge drama. I watch it for the crack.
So, the next episode will be filled with steamy and guilty looks between our heroes. Episode after that will be another confrontation, probably with another passionate kiss in the locker room. Second kiss probably won't be half-naked, given that we've already done the half-naked kiss. I'm giving it five episodes before angry sex happens, six before Chrissy finds out and is horrified. Seven episodes before she runs to Sasha in tears and broadcasts it to the entire hospital. In the meantime, Dan is going to be having horribly middle-class white man issues about whether he's gay, what his attraction to the gay black man means and how this will affect his rugby-loving life. His love for rugby is the only iota of personality his character has been given so far. He may occasionally also angst about Chrissy, but as he didn't sleep with her during several months of dating until he accidentally fell on Malick's lips, his Chrissy angst may be mainly "OMG, I'm not gay! What will I tell Chrissy?" angst.
And then, rather than the interesting exploration of bisexuality that T is hoping for, Dan will eventually admit that he's gay and run off with Malick into the sunset. As we'd both love to see Dan and Malick fall under a bus, this will be a happy ending for all of us.
Or Malick and Dan will both stay just to torment T and I, in which case they will stay and be horribly tortured about their history together without ever doing anything actually interesting.
I may be slightly cynical about this story-line. Come on, Holby writers, prove me wrong!
In other Holby news, I learned yesterday that two new nurse characters are arriving this week. This is a good thing because right now, three wards are sharing two nurses depending on which wards need a nursey subplot. I worry for the patients.
Of course, you couldn't pay me enough to get treated in Holby City hospital. The death rate! The patient neglect! The interfering butting in! But it does make for fun, mindless TV.
Apparently Rosie Marcel, who plays Jac, has Becet's (was bed-bound with it for two years) and the female form of haemophilia. Plus she was treated for stage 2/3 cervical cancer a couple of years ago without taking any time off filming Holby. Jac is one of my favourite characters already, a worth successor to Connie, but this makes me respect her actress a great deal as well.
I also learned recently that Amy Brenneman has ulcerative colitis. She was written a 'break' in Private Practise so that she could have a colectomy and be fitted with an ostomy bag. It's giving me a bit of hope for what might happen if I need to do the same - you really cannot tell that she's wearing a bag and she's skinnier than I am.
Why do we feel so much more respect for people once we know they've had to battle some kind of major health thing to get where they are? Hmm.
I'm actually struggling to find much to say about this two-parter, which may be why I haven't actually talked about it so far. It wasn't bad, it was decent, but I didn't really care much for the guest characters and the entire point of it was that final five minutes with the reveal of flesh!Amy.
Thankfully, even a subpar episode of Doctor Who is better than 90% of other telly so it was still quite enjoyable and compelling.
After the discovery that it hasn't been the real Amy on the show, possibly since the first episode this year, it was obvious that the Doctor and Rory would have to go after her. I'm very happy that the skipped all the tedious investigation stuff and went straight to the big confrontations. The Doctor tracking down Amy using very complicated sciencey stuff may be pretty, but it doesn't make for compelling TV.
Rory going all centurion, giving a brilliant speech and asking if anyone wants him to repeat the question while we see many Cyber-ships blow up behind him was rather a genius way to open the show.
In fact, Rory was wonderful throughout this episode and I love seeing the way that he's been developed into a much stronger character over time. The Rory that we met in The Eleventh Hour was kind, caring and compassionate - all traits that Rory still has - but he didn't have the toughness that Rory now has. This may be why he's growing into one of my favourite Doctor Who characters.
There was a sense of big, epic events to the first half of the episode and it was slightly anti-climactic that Amy and the baby were rescued so easily. I'm used to the plotting in this thing, though, so knew that there was a much deeper game being played and it couldn't end that easily.
The baby turning out to be a flesh copy was not what I expected, though. After all, Moffat had done that once already so I assumed that he wouldn't do it a second time. Devious man.
I'm not really surprised that the baby has turned out to have unusual timey-wimey things going on with its DNA. After all, this is the first canon couple to occupy the TARDIS so there's nothing in canon to contradict it and we already know that time travellers can retain some kind of timey-wimey energy that other races like.
The big surprise, for me, was River. Even when the baby was announced to be Melody Pond, I was so caught up in the episode that I didn't make the jump from Melody Pond to River Song. I may possibly have sat with my mouth open for a while after the episode ended.
It does explain a few things about River, most noticeably why she can fly the TARDIS when it's been hinted a few times that only Time Lords can do it properly.
When I was picturing her first meeting with the Doctor, though, I wasn't picturing the possibility that he'd need to change her nappy.
The episode felt a little uneven in pacing and not quite as flowy as the big epic ones can be, but there were so many things to love about it: inter-species lesbian lovers (I haven't met anyone yet who thought their love was platonic), Lorna Bucket, Last Centurion, the return of Danny Boy, the Sontaran nurse...
How lovely was it to have a couple of reminders of Rory's vocation in an episode filled with Rory being awesomely heroic?
I did rather get the feeling that Moffat has been watching the Star Wars films a bit too much. So many visuals that were straight out of the movies and the Headless Monks were completely Sith Lords complete with red light sabres. It's been a bit of a theme in several episodes so I think the set and FX guys are in on it, too. Not that it's a bad thing, provided Moffat doesn't take any hints from Mr. Lucas on dialogue. Moffat's dialogue is always lovely and clever. It's best not to mention Mr. Lucas' dialogue.
In conclusion, a thoroughly enjoyable episode that I think I'll need to re-watch a few times to get things detangled in my head. The only bad thing is that I have to wait three months before I get to find out how the Doctor rescues Melody/River and what happens to everyone.
Does anyone else want the Silurian and her pretty girlfriend to get their own spin-off show?
Having dwelt on the good science fiction, we now move onto the crack that is Holby City.
I am impressed with the way that Holby managed to hit nearly every suddenly!gay! cliche ever in those final couple of scenes with Malick, Dan and Chrissy. As soon as we had the stripping off shirts in the locker room, I was thinking "No, you won't go there, it's too cliched".
Nope, they went there. Kiss as a result of a fight, shocked look of horror from "straight" guy, running off to fuck his girlfriend in a closet (oh, the subtext of that alone...) - it was all there. It's the suddenly gay plot! We haven't seen this one before, nope not at all.
The only cliche they didn't hit was that Malick (our known gay guy) is not a compassionate caring blond nurse, but a tough, arrogant, occasionally violent black doctor with a terrible bedside manner. That is rather refreshing, but only if they find an interesting place to go with this story-line that takes advantage of who Malick is rather than doing the same plot that every show does. I'm sure this isn't even the first time Holby has done this plot.
historyterry pointed out one thing that I'd overlooked: the kiss was in super close-up, rather than the usual distance wide-angle shot. That did make the scene more shocking than I expected when I started the "I know where this is going" count down.Why yes, we do enjoy a weekly bitching about Holby section to our Skype chat. We're trying to work out the logistics of watching Holby and Skyping at the same time for extra bitching fun.
Part of me is hoping that they do something interesting and new with this plot. Then I remember that this is Holby and I don't watch it for the cutting-edge drama. I watch it for the crack.
So, the next episode will be filled with steamy and guilty looks between our heroes. Episode after that will be another confrontation, probably with another passionate kiss in the locker room. Second kiss probably won't be half-naked, given that we've already done the half-naked kiss. I'm giving it five episodes before angry sex happens, six before Chrissy finds out and is horrified. Seven episodes before she runs to Sasha in tears and broadcasts it to the entire hospital. In the meantime, Dan is going to be having horribly middle-class white man issues about whether he's gay, what his attraction to the gay black man means and how this will affect his rugby-loving life. His love for rugby is the only iota of personality his character has been given so far. He may occasionally also angst about Chrissy, but as he didn't sleep with her during several months of dating until he accidentally fell on Malick's lips, his Chrissy angst may be mainly "OMG, I'm not gay! What will I tell Chrissy?" angst.
And then, rather than the interesting exploration of bisexuality that T is hoping for, Dan will eventually admit that he's gay and run off with Malick into the sunset. As we'd both love to see Dan and Malick fall under a bus, this will be a happy ending for all of us.
Or Malick and Dan will both stay just to torment T and I, in which case they will stay and be horribly tortured about their history together without ever doing anything actually interesting.
I may be slightly cynical about this story-line. Come on, Holby writers, prove me wrong!
In other Holby news, I learned yesterday that two new nurse characters are arriving this week. This is a good thing because right now, three wards are sharing two nurses depending on which wards need a nursey subplot. I worry for the patients.
Of course, you couldn't pay me enough to get treated in Holby City hospital. The death rate! The patient neglect! The interfering butting in! But it does make for fun, mindless TV.
Apparently Rosie Marcel, who plays Jac, has Becet's (was bed-bound with it for two years) and the female form of haemophilia. Plus she was treated for stage 2/3 cervical cancer a couple of years ago without taking any time off filming Holby. Jac is one of my favourite characters already, a worth successor to Connie, but this makes me respect her actress a great deal as well.
I also learned recently that Amy Brenneman has ulcerative colitis. She was written a 'break' in Private Practise so that she could have a colectomy and be fitted with an ostomy bag. It's giving me a bit of hope for what might happen if I need to do the same - you really cannot tell that she's wearing a bag and she's skinnier than I am.
Why do we feel so much more respect for people once we know they've had to battle some kind of major health thing to get where they are? Hmm.
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-06 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-06 08:37 pm (UTC)In my time, we've done suddenly lesbian and I think there was another suddenly gay story either early when I was watching or shortly before I started watching.
I think my main issue was that this part of the suddenly gay storyline has been done so many times on so many shows in this exact way. Almost word for word. If I liked Dan and Malick a bit more then I might have been cheering, but Malick is still growing on me and Dan has so far had no personality.
I'm not discounting the idea that this might be the story that gets me to like Malick. Some of the characters that I've loathed the most when they were first introduced have ended up being my favourites.
What I'm really hoping for is that they do something new and interesting with this variant on the suddenly gay story line. Until I saw a couple of reviews I hadn't thought about the possibility that Dan was in love with his rugby friend and I think that could be an interesting development if they did something with it. I'm not overly optimistic because this is Holby, but they could still surprise me. I may need to re-watch the episode now that I know where they were going with it to see Dan's interactions with the rugby guy again.
Holby is pure crack. It really is :-)
no subject
Date: 2011-06-06 10:22 pm (UTC)*Grin*.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 05:15 pm (UTC)I don't usually watch Holby City (I was a huge fan of Casualty at the beginning though) but I did see this one and it was a bit like watching a fanfic. I'm very nearly tempted to continue watching, just to see how they handle it!
no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 10:22 pm (UTC)The next three months will be hard.
The Holby thing was very much like watching fanfic. While I quite like a bit of first time suddenly gay slash every now and again, I do expect a wee bit more subtlety in my teevees. Hopefully they'll go somewhere interesting with it now that's out of their system :-)