Doctor Who: The Almost People
Sep. 14th, 2011 02:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabid1stWell, never say I don't admit to being wrong from time to time.
I will admit that I really enjoyed this episode of Doctor Who.
I also have to say that so far this season I have liked Amy Pond. I won't go so far as to say she's a great actress or even close to making my top ten favorite companions list, but I will admit that I think Gillian was indeed acting in Season 5. I, now, believe that she was intentionally acting as a precocious child might do in those circumstances, thereby reflecting the false reality of that entire season. And this season she is acting as a mature woman her age might and I find her much more palatable.
Also, I will admit that I loved Eleven in this episode. I hated him in the first part of the story though, so let's not get too excited by that confession. This makes 4 of the 18 episodes I've seen where I believed Matt as the Doctor.
And now to the plot points ...where I will be talking out of my ass if I speculate, because everyone who has seen the other episodes this season will know that I'm wrong about everything.
However, I will say that I loved the idea of plastic Amy taking the place of the one that is, perhaps, in that creepy asylum that nobody ever leaves. It took me by surprise and I quite enjoyed the fact that it fits. Of course, the lady with the eye patch is simply a bleed over from the original Amy to the faux one. The idea of Amy being a pregnant prisoner, also, intrigues me because that was exactly what we were exploring with Gum On Your Shoe...only Rose would have been the timey-wimey pregnant woman trying to escape from Ten 2.
And on the subject of Ten 2, I did notice the pensive face of the Doctor when Amy rejected what she thought was Plastic!Doctor. Is he thinking about her being Plastic!Amy or is he thinking you can't substitute people like that? I thought the shoe switch was rather obvious as a plot point and so I was aware of Amy dissing the real Doctor, but I will give Matt kudos because he did make me doubt myself once or twice. I loved the idea that while different regenerations squabble with one another, a direct copy gets along with himself. Or maybe it is just meant to be a reference to Eleven having a narcissistic personality. Yet another thing he has in common with Six? I don't know. I am aware of my tendency to over think the ramifications of canon. And there is a lot to over think here.
For example, was anyone writing or directing or acting in this episode, even remotely aware of the close parallels that the audience would have to draw between Plastic!Eleven and Ten 2? And then there is the Alt!Pete angle. Again we have the idea that was presented by RTD that a substitute father was better than no father at all. We have the idea that Amy at first rejected Plastic!Eleven but then later she saw him as a Doctor, too. Perhaps there is a hope there for Ten 2 lovers, but to me there is the obvious fact that this is a direct copy of Eleven and agrees with him on everything. Ten 2 by Ten's standards isn't the same at all. He makes different choices.
Also, it makes me cock my head to one side when I see the FleshCopy of a man understanding that the little boy needs his REAL father...that realization being his passport to acceptance as human. And yet, we are expected to believe that the Doctor lacks this capacity, since he felt that Rose would be happy with Ten 2. I suppose, looking back he might have regrets. Can we infer that he has come to see that he was wrong. People tell me that is reading too much into all of this. And it probably is. Probably this is nothing more than inconsistent continuity.
But the parallels between plastic Rory, who we assume is still a copy of the original, and the other copies is interesting. Nobody even thinks about Rory's choices in this light. But naturally he would want to believe that the FleshCopy people were REAL people. And what about the period that the Doctor puts to Plastic!Amy? If we are to believe that a copy is just as good as an original, then why execute the copy in her case? Perhaps it is because (like Ten would be for Rose) the original Amy is the one that the Doctor and Rory really love and they mean to rescue her. Talk about a double standard in a show. WOW! Or maybe it is just that the FLESH is the enemy and we just came to see that in this episode, but the Doctor has known all along.
Still, it was an episode that opened up some possibilities. And, of course, I think that eye-patch lady is The Rani. Why? Because that is just like me, to think the Rani is coming back. But this is just like her, experimenting on babies making them regenerate, etc. Though I assume the wonky read-out on Plastic!Amy was simply the TARDIS picking up on the original and then the copy, doing a sort of timey-wimey ultrasound on both of them at once. Don't tell me if I'm wrong, I'm finally enjoying this show again. Probably it won't last, but let me enjoy myself for a few days, yeah?
Rae
catching up on Doctor Who.
I will admit that I really enjoyed this episode of Doctor Who.
I also have to say that so far this season I have liked Amy Pond. I won't go so far as to say she's a great actress or even close to making my top ten favorite companions list, but I will admit that I think Gillian was indeed acting in Season 5. I, now, believe that she was intentionally acting as a precocious child might do in those circumstances, thereby reflecting the false reality of that entire season. And this season she is acting as a mature woman her age might and I find her much more palatable.
Also, I will admit that I loved Eleven in this episode. I hated him in the first part of the story though, so let's not get too excited by that confession. This makes 4 of the 18 episodes I've seen where I believed Matt as the Doctor.
And now to the plot points ...where I will be talking out of my ass if I speculate, because everyone who has seen the other episodes this season will know that I'm wrong about everything.
However, I will say that I loved the idea of plastic Amy taking the place of the one that is, perhaps, in that creepy asylum that nobody ever leaves. It took me by surprise and I quite enjoyed the fact that it fits. Of course, the lady with the eye patch is simply a bleed over from the original Amy to the faux one. The idea of Amy being a pregnant prisoner, also, intrigues me because that was exactly what we were exploring with Gum On Your Shoe...only Rose would have been the timey-wimey pregnant woman trying to escape from Ten 2.
And on the subject of Ten 2, I did notice the pensive face of the Doctor when Amy rejected what she thought was Plastic!Doctor. Is he thinking about her being Plastic!Amy or is he thinking you can't substitute people like that? I thought the shoe switch was rather obvious as a plot point and so I was aware of Amy dissing the real Doctor, but I will give Matt kudos because he did make me doubt myself once or twice. I loved the idea that while different regenerations squabble with one another, a direct copy gets along with himself. Or maybe it is just meant to be a reference to Eleven having a narcissistic personality. Yet another thing he has in common with Six? I don't know. I am aware of my tendency to over think the ramifications of canon. And there is a lot to over think here.
For example, was anyone writing or directing or acting in this episode, even remotely aware of the close parallels that the audience would have to draw between Plastic!Eleven and Ten 2? And then there is the Alt!Pete angle. Again we have the idea that was presented by RTD that a substitute father was better than no father at all. We have the idea that Amy at first rejected Plastic!Eleven but then later she saw him as a Doctor, too. Perhaps there is a hope there for Ten 2 lovers, but to me there is the obvious fact that this is a direct copy of Eleven and agrees with him on everything. Ten 2 by Ten's standards isn't the same at all. He makes different choices.
Also, it makes me cock my head to one side when I see the FleshCopy of a man understanding that the little boy needs his REAL father...that realization being his passport to acceptance as human. And yet, we are expected to believe that the Doctor lacks this capacity, since he felt that Rose would be happy with Ten 2. I suppose, looking back he might have regrets. Can we infer that he has come to see that he was wrong. People tell me that is reading too much into all of this. And it probably is. Probably this is nothing more than inconsistent continuity.
But the parallels between plastic Rory, who we assume is still a copy of the original, and the other copies is interesting. Nobody even thinks about Rory's choices in this light. But naturally he would want to believe that the FleshCopy people were REAL people. And what about the period that the Doctor puts to Plastic!Amy? If we are to believe that a copy is just as good as an original, then why execute the copy in her case? Perhaps it is because (like Ten would be for Rose) the original Amy is the one that the Doctor and Rory really love and they mean to rescue her. Talk about a double standard in a show. WOW! Or maybe it is just that the FLESH is the enemy and we just came to see that in this episode, but the Doctor has known all along.
Still, it was an episode that opened up some possibilities. And, of course, I think that eye-patch lady is The Rani. Why? Because that is just like me, to think the Rani is coming back. But this is just like her, experimenting on babies making them regenerate, etc. Though I assume the wonky read-out on Plastic!Amy was simply the TARDIS picking up on the original and then the copy, doing a sort of timey-wimey ultrasound on both of them at once. Don't tell me if I'm wrong, I'm finally enjoying this show again. Probably it won't last, but let me enjoy myself for a few days, yeah?
Rae
catching up on Doctor Who.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-14 11:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-14 03:27 pm (UTC)I just think he doesn't have the soul of the show in the basket along with his clever twists. If you look back you will see historically that Doctor Who was more a show with heart than a cleverly plotted show.
And I am rather creeped out by his Lolita issues.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-14 01:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-14 03:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-14 04:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-16 12:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-16 01:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-16 03:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-16 03:31 pm (UTC)I do wonder if I am liking Amy and Matt better this season simply because Moff is no longer as concerned with them in his long plot line. I do think that Karen was consciously playing Amy as a spoiled little girl, literally the center of her universe, in S1. This readily explains her sense of extreme self-importance, because the entire universe was a backyard pretend kingdom for her.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-15 11:28 pm (UTC)Honestly, I think Moff has forgotten that Rory is a copy.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-16 03:21 am (UTC)However, they say he remembers it all which would indicate that he waited for 2000 years. Unless that is a clue to something, it's a continuity error I think.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-16 11:58 am (UTC)Very true! But yes, I'm contrasting that against the whole he remembers thing that keeps coming up and feeling like Moff's forgotten that in order to wait Rory'd have to be as much a copy as Flesh!Amy was but he hasn't been treated that way which makes me wonder if we're really done with that whole thing.