Doctor Who -- Waters of Mars

[ivyfic]

I'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.

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I liked the creeping inevitability of water zombies--there's just no way to be safe from water. As you say, it mimics a realistic disaster because water is, without alien lifeforms in it, pretty damned powerful, yet insidiously innocuous-seeming most of the time. You could buy that it would get in. Eventually. Which? Is the scariest part. Not the being chased but the being penned in, waiting for the end.

But I hated the Doctor in that episode like I haven't hated him ever before. Normally, I like when the Doctor has to make the hard choice. In this case, it was letting those people die. Seeing him having to suffer, to sit aside and fail to be the hero and not be able to do anything else is necessary. I like seeing him have to bow to history some of the time. Instead, he waited just long enough to doom everybody and then he decided "Screw history!" That's bullshit. I'm sorry. My least favorite trope is the person having a last-minute change of heart. You know what would have been better? If you'd changed your damned mind before everyone was doomed, fuckhole.

And I get that David Tennant is beloved and everything, but I could have done without the fifteen minutes of goodbyes. There were better Doctors (blasphemy! I know) and they were just as beloved and missed in their departing for those goodbyes being short. How am I supposed to feel bad for Ten leaving if he got to, literally, wrap up every last bit of business with which he, alone, in this sole incarnation, was involved? I feel worse for Doctors who died in the middle of doing something, who died without being able to say "boo" much less goodbye. Bah, good riddance, I say. I'm not psyched by Eleven, but we needed to boot Tennant, especially after these irritating movies and that most self-satisfying ending. Bah.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

you say, it mimics a realistic disaster because water is, without alien lifeforms in it, pretty damned powerful, yet insidiously innocuous-seeming most of the time.
Exactly. I mean, I've been reading about things like the sinking of the Ocean Ranger, a deep sea oil drilling rig, which sank because the porthole in the ballast control room was regular glass, with no covers, and it got broken in a storm, which shorted out the ballast controls. Or there was a plane that crashed because the landing gear light wasn't working and the pilots put it on autopilot and were crawling around under the panel and no one noticed they'd bumped the controls and the autopilot had turned off. That's how disasters happen, and that's how this disaster happened, and it's far more tragic than the way anything ever goes on Trek. But then it's Trek. They don't really go for tragic most of the time. And Doctor Who definitely does.

but I could have done without the fifteen minutes of goodbyes.
I agree. Especially considering that those fifteen minutes are what made me late this morning. (I woke up at 7:07 and was like, if I start it now, I'll just have time before work! And then it kept going...and going...)

Also, the thing with Jack... Okay, I get that that's pretty much all you can do with thirty seconds and that character. But after Children of Earth, he's kind of pretty much destroyed. Because he murdered his own grandson. And yes, lost Ianto. But--MURDERED HIS GRANDSON. And since the Doctor wasn't there for any of that, I would think Jack would be pretty fucking pissed next time he sees the Doctor, whether that anger's deserved or not.

So I'm going with my fan wank idea, that after COE, Jack committed suicide the only way he could, by taking enough retcon to erase the last fifty years or so. So he's in an alien space bar and a random guy he doesn't know gives him the name of another random guy. So of course he takes the second random guy home. That totally makes sense to me.

Also, is it just me or is John Barrowman starting to get that craggy hot older man thing going? Cause he looked pretty old there, and Alonso...really young.

Yeah, the making the decision after half the people had died was annoying and emotionally manipulative, but I totally buy the Doctor going why the fuck am I following these rules? I can do whatever the fuck I want! Especially since he's clearly depressed at this point, as he always gets when he's companionless.

Also, why did ten get all these speeches about how he's going to die and he's regenerating, but he's still dying and he doesn't want to die. Nine got none of that. He died in medias res. But Tennant has been the Doctor for a really long time, even though it hasn't been many episodes. He's been the Doctor for years, so I understand giving the fans a bit of closure before moving on.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

I won't go into all the problems with End of Time. Far easier to go into the good points, which were few and far between. As far as Captain Jack, he should have gone away after CoE and stayed gone. For good. Period.

But I did like most of Water of Mars. Despite the magic wand that used to be a sonic screwdriver, and despite the craptastic ending. I agree with trinityvixen, he should have changed his mind at the start or not at all.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

That's what bothered me--do the hard thing and let them die or fight the power and save them. Don't do it halfway through and let the last person off herself so you got to save people but aren't responsible for the fact that they all died anyway ::grumbles::

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Count me as one of those who never understood Tennant's appeal. He had none of the sense of gravity that Christopher Eccleston brought to the role. Is he more the Doctor in the classic mold? To be sure, but in a way that feels like an imitation of what came before rather than his own character. I'd rather he'd done something different and fun than just ran around like a maniac. Blargh.

I also think Ten was bizarre above and beyond what we expect from the Doctor. He's already half regenerated before, so seeing him die is less emotional because he's beaten death before, and there's still one copy of him in the world. So it's hard to really miss him since he hasn't gone away.