Doctor Who -- Waters of Mars
Apr. 9th, 2010 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficI've been lax on watching Doctor Who of late. And by "of late" I mean since the fourth season ended in 2008. What can I say--one episode every six months doesn't tend to hold my attention. But now that the new season has started, I am catching up. I may have gotten up early this morning to watch "The End of Time" part two.
CAPTAIN JACK DOES NOT NEED THE DOCTOR'S HELP TO GET LAID.
That is all.
Despite what others have said, I really liked the last few David Tennant episodes. Particularly The Waters of Mars.
I'll start with the bad stuff: I'm sorry, those water villains looked like crap. They were just...not scary. Compared to the vast array of alien-body-takeover zombie creatures they've had (I've said before that the main theme of Doctor Who seems to be zombies), these were pretty far down on the list.
Also, I do not see how that woman shooting herself in her house can inspire the same kind of following as her dying heroically and mysteriously on Mars. But whatever, whatever, handwave, handwave, I'll just assume the Doctor hid the body.
But here's what I did like: This was a totally realistic disaster scenario. Yes, I know, alien water beings, not so realistic. But the way that minor flaws in the system cascaded to a major disaster? That was realistic. They lost a filter and had no replacement. The seals on their doors weren't sufficient. Once the cameras stopped working, they had no way of monitoring what was going on. The base was laid out in such a way that it took far too long to get from one section to another, making it difficult to know what was going on. And their emergency evacuation plan took three hours to prep. There was also a realistic portrayal of the human reaction: a consistent underestimation of the severity of the situation, and, once they got focused on a plan, no one paying attention to the warnings on the control panel in time to react to a new threat.
I've been reading a lot about disasters recently, and this played out in exactly the same way as airplane crashes and submarine disasters I'd read about. The linking together of a number of minor errors to create catastrophic failure.
Having watched a lot of Star Trek lately, where the disasters are always a single technobabble cause solved with a single technobabble solution, it was enormously gratifying to see something that felt like a real disaster. (Suddenly I have an urge to reread Jurassic Park...)
I love Doctor Who most when it shows how monstrous the Doctor can be. And this was a double whammy. First it showed it monstrous he was to turn away from frantic cries for help when he could save them, and then how monstrous he was to save them. I mean, to me it's really not a Doctor Who episode unless he's saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," before sending someone to their death.
I was pondering this a bit this morning, how the Doctor will empathize with and truly love people and still say no when they beg him for help. In a way, he is like a conception of the Christian god--loving everyone, but still letting them suffer, usually for reasons wholly inexplicable to them. Perhaps that's why I like that part of the character so much. I've always been a sucker for redressed Christian mythology in fiction. Jesus complex says what?
I'll start the new season this weekend. I am tentatively hopeful. I will reserve my jedgment on eleven until I see a few episodes. Though I am not as enamored of David Tennant's Doctor as some, I'm still really going to miss ten.
CAPTAIN JACK DOES NOT NEED THE DOCTOR'S HELP TO GET LAID.
That is all.
Despite what others have said, I really liked the last few David Tennant episodes. Particularly The Waters of Mars.
I'll start with the bad stuff: I'm sorry, those water villains looked like crap. They were just...not scary. Compared to the vast array of alien-body-takeover zombie creatures they've had (I've said before that the main theme of Doctor Who seems to be zombies), these were pretty far down on the list.
Also, I do not see how that woman shooting herself in her house can inspire the same kind of following as her dying heroically and mysteriously on Mars. But whatever, whatever, handwave, handwave, I'll just assume the Doctor hid the body.
But here's what I did like: This was a totally realistic disaster scenario. Yes, I know, alien water beings, not so realistic. But the way that minor flaws in the system cascaded to a major disaster? That was realistic. They lost a filter and had no replacement. The seals on their doors weren't sufficient. Once the cameras stopped working, they had no way of monitoring what was going on. The base was laid out in such a way that it took far too long to get from one section to another, making it difficult to know what was going on. And their emergency evacuation plan took three hours to prep. There was also a realistic portrayal of the human reaction: a consistent underestimation of the severity of the situation, and, once they got focused on a plan, no one paying attention to the warnings on the control panel in time to react to a new threat.
I've been reading a lot about disasters recently, and this played out in exactly the same way as airplane crashes and submarine disasters I'd read about. The linking together of a number of minor errors to create catastrophic failure.
Having watched a lot of Star Trek lately, where the disasters are always a single technobabble cause solved with a single technobabble solution, it was enormously gratifying to see something that felt like a real disaster. (Suddenly I have an urge to reread Jurassic Park...)
I love Doctor Who most when it shows how monstrous the Doctor can be. And this was a double whammy. First it showed it monstrous he was to turn away from frantic cries for help when he could save them, and then how monstrous he was to save them. I mean, to me it's really not a Doctor Who episode unless he's saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," before sending someone to their death.
I was pondering this a bit this morning, how the Doctor will empathize with and truly love people and still say no when they beg him for help. In a way, he is like a conception of the Christian god--loving everyone, but still letting them suffer, usually for reasons wholly inexplicable to them. Perhaps that's why I like that part of the character so much. I've always been a sucker for redressed Christian mythology in fiction. Jesus complex says what?
I'll start the new season this weekend. I am tentatively hopeful. I will reserve my jedgment on eleven until I see a few episodes. Though I am not as enamored of David Tennant's Doctor as some, I'm still really going to miss ten.