I really ought to sit down and watch through the rest of the Eleventh Doctor stuff. I've skipped a lot of it. Karen Gillan and Matt Smith are horribly endearing to watch backstage -- they like to sit squashed together and pick on each other like they've been friends for much longer than they actually have, it's adorable -- but the whole Doctor-or-Rory-or-possibly-Doctor-and-Rory thing went on far too long and eventually got right on my last nerve. I mean, from a perspective within the fandom, I know full well why everyone wants to snog the Doctor, but for pity's sake, why does everyone want to snog the Doctor? He's nine hundred years old, alien, and weird, you'd think that would make at least a few people go, "...oh good God, no, I never thought of it like that."
I've also skipped a lot of the Tenth Doctor, despite loving Tennant in the role. Catherine Tate irritates me. I'm not sure if it's a personal preference or a cultural difference in humor. I've seen her sketch comedy and I don't find the 'am I bovvered?' thing funny, but I also wouldn't think it funny if it were an American banging on an equivalent social stereotype over and over again for three minutes before the piece ended. I was really hoping that was just a character, but if it is, she also uses it extensively when she appears as 'herself' -- I've seen her on stuff like Never Mind The Buzzcocks and she's just the same combination of slightly slow on the uptake and obstreperous about it. I really hope she's acting.
Clara, I haven't seen any of. I am almost afraid to. The theme of the Doctor inadvertently shaping the life of someone to the point that they imprint on him like a duckling is getting kind of old. I know that's not the only theory floating around, but it seems to be a running theme with the new series, and I'm going to be very annoyed if it's true again. Aside from getting repetitive, it seems out of character for the Doctor to accept this sort of thing as the status quo -- he's always been a big fan of free will, and if he found out that the universe or someone in it had been pitching living, breathing, sentient beings at him in the hopes of finding one that would mold itself exactly to his psyche, he'd be royally pissed, even if whoever was doing it had the best of intentions. Possibly even to the point of trying to send Clara away, regardless of his own loneliness, unless and until she made it clear that traveling with him was her choice.
(It's also been done, in the expanded universe. The Eighth Doctor tangled with Faction Paradox rather a lot and -- I think, none of the FP books are all that clear about what the fuck is going on -- managed to create, have created, or somehow trigger the universe to modify the entire life of Sam Jones, until she was the ideal companion for him, for I don't know nefarious reasons of some sort? I quit trying to make heads or tales of most of it after Interference and just resigned myself to the authors of the 8Doc range playing their own games of Break the Cutie with the Doctor, and Sam, and poor Fitz.
Also with the Eighth Doctor, the Big Finish audios devoted a couple of whole seasons to the universe trying to balance the books on the continued existence of Charlotte Pollard, whom he yanked out of the crash of the R-101. Charley was in many ways the ideal companion for him, although so far as I know this was just a case of 'right place, right time' and it was only her removal from the timestream that caused issues. He's so lonely he bends himself over backwards, forwards, and at right angles to reality to not let the universe snatch her back, even after Romana and the rest of the Time Lords get involved. Charley eventually makes the explicit declaration that she loves him, although it's plausibly ambiguous whether she means she's in love with him, or just that she found herself unexpectedly very fiercely attached, and refuses to leave him for reasons far beyond being afraid she'll cease to exist if she does -- as far as I can recall, she doesn't pick up the habit of trying to jump him like Amy did.)
The Doctor really doesn't like being lord and master of anyone else's life, politically, philosophically, or otherwise. Hell, the First Doctor locked Susan out of the TARDIS when it emerged that she'd fallen in love with someone but felt such slavish devotion to her grandfather that she'd follow him away rather than stay with someone who made her happy. To be fair, he did leave her with the key, and promised to visit. You never witness him doing so, but for him to have got from 750 as the Fourth Doctor to 900 as the Ninth, clearly he's in the habit of having adventures where we can't see them.
He's also quite pissed when other people take away his companions' ability to choose. The Fourth Doctor quasi-voluntarily dropped Sarah Jane Smith off in what he at least thought was Croydon because the last time the Time Lords called him home and told him he couldn't take his pets, he bitched, and they dumped both Jamie and Zoe back in their native times without any memories of their travels. The Second Doctor was not best pleased by this, nor with the reminder of it he got in The Five Doctors.
Would someone who has seen all of this care to enlighten me as to whether watching the Clara arc is going to have me yelling at the screen the entire way through?
It might? I personally don't see where it's going, and I've SEEN THE END of the current season. I just kind of sit there like "WTF, mate?" with most of her eps.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, I liked the arc of Donna Noble's story. She started out shouty and generally not a great person, but had several moments of redemption, and then... well, many of us felt it was quite sad and unfair in the end.
Just marathoned all of the Clara stuff. Her story does in fact make perfect sense, or as much sense as any of the show ever makes, although if you don't happen to have your head freshly-crammed full of classic series stuff, I can see where a lot of the refs would sound like red herrings. I should type up the list. Even aside from bringing back the classic monsters, there were loads.
DeleteThe new "Doctor" that the Doctor claims is not really the Doctor may make more sense if you consider that Clara saw "all of you", but specified eleven. That means her copies went knocking around all of space and time, but she's only been saving the Doctor as he has been up to the point she walked in on his own personal timeline. Time Lords get twelve regenerations, but she doesn't appear to know that -- if she saved all of him, she'd have saved thirteen. If not more. The "Valeyard" thing wossname brought up was supposed to be a distillation of the Doctor's evil side between his twelfth and final incarnations, as existed for blah blah handwave technical whatever, to put the Sixth Doctor on trial.