#Isolus

[chartmyfixations]

cris watches dr. who: s02e11 - "Fear Her"

"Everything's coming up Doctor!"

It being the 2012 Olympics is such a mindfuck: for me, it feels like the same past as 2006 (late high school/early student life), but here it's the semi-nearby future. I keep reminding myself they're not dealing with a Current Events Episode, but Semi-Future One

Hey! It's the PM's assistant from Love Actually

Hee. He put the TARDIS the wrong way around

Hey! The road worker is also from Love Actually

Angry barbed wire -- thank god these special effects are styllistically bad and not accidentally bad

Maybe they're still accidentally kind of bad

“Are you deducting?” Hee

Live Long and Dr!

The Dr doesn't like cats, Rose does. This will never work out

Hee. That stash of pencils must be the most innocent hidden stash in any kid's bedroom ever

Aw, a girl and her pickaxe. Go Rose go

You know, Isolus/possessed girl, if you'd drawn a smaller earth, your plan would have worked

Oh god, I just realized that this episode is the one where a little girl menacingly draws a picture of the earth

MOM! You're very useless, I must say

This is like a counterpart to the episode where Rose gets stuck in the telly. They're both pretty low budget, deal with family life and a pivotal, televised UK-event. Here, the Doctor gets sidelined, in the other one, Rose does. Also, they're both not particularly great episodes

Ominous foreshadowing! Is Rose leaving soon? But I've already fallen in love with her

Btw, what is with this string of bad, uninspired episode titles? This and the last one are super generic

5 out of 8 TARDES. It gets a pass, but just barely

[doctorwhogirlie]

Doctor Who: Fear Her

Series Two ✨ 2006 ✨

Doctor: 10th

Companions: Rose

Main Setting: London, 27 July 2012

Main Enemy: Chloe Webber's Father

Creatures: Isolus

My Personal Rating: 6/10

I don't mind this episode, I like that it's not really the alien thats the villain. It sounds basic, but I like this episode is really all I have to say, it's an alright episode, nothing too special about it, but I don't skip it either, if that makes sense. I do like the scene with the cat a lot however.

(Please don't take these too seriously, I am not a real life reviewer, just someone who likes the show)

[thingsasbarcodes]

Doctor Who 2x11 - 'Fear Her'

[ohmerricat]

(first time watcher here teehee) losing my mind over this exchange. the common consensus is apparently that this episode is below-mid grade filler, but i beg to differ, not even only because it would have been a lifeline to little withdrawn artistic autistic girl me had i watched it at chloe's age. just– look at the subtext. they're talking about themselves, each other, their own mutual codependency. sure, rose wasn't lonely before meeting him per se, but she had been living day-to-day unfulfilled and underappreciated. and four billion? that's close to the population of a decent sized planet. i don't know how many gallifreyans there were and i'm not delving into the wiki for this because it's about words, not numbers. words very particularly chosen. two lonely kids who needed each other, desperate to be loved. 'it' (the relationship, the symbiosis, the empathic link, the isolus as doctor and chloe as rose) will just keep pulling 'kids' in: people, lives. mostly strangers for now, apart from mickey, but it's as if the writers this whole series have been beating over the audience's head with the message... this is the story of a love doom(sday)ed by the narrative. the doctor gets more arrogant, rose gets more infatuated; the little inside jokes and side glances and sarcastic private detective duo dynamic they've got going on, so easygoing and carefree and invincible – it's all set to crash and burn.

[nerdie-faerie]

Idk I've seen people comment a couple of times that Rose was always a damsel in distress that she had no character development in series 2 and it just confuses me every time I rewatch. Because Rose Tyler? A damsel in distress? What like in Tooth and Claw where she freed the prisoners after learning of the werewolf's plan? Or in Satan's Pit where she took charge against the ood after the Doctor was left stuck in the pit? Or in Fear Her when she had to figure out how to get the isolus home and everyone back after the Doctor got taken and his gadget got destroyed? And then how to save Chloe and her mum from the drawing of her abusive dad? Okay

[doctorhomo]

there’s such a massive surge in hatred towards fear her recently and i really want people to stop coming up with bullshit reasons, because it’s pretty clear to me what the actual reason is.

all the criticism im seeing boils down to “annoying child actor”. is she annoying? or is her skin a shade too dark for you? there have been plenty of bad/annoying child actors in doctor who, but why is it that the episode that centres around a black family is so widely hated?

“the acting is bad” is it??? first of all, it’s got nina sosanya in it, shush, but second of all, ive literally never thought the child actor was bad. even as an adult, i think she actually does a pretty good job of being a child possessed by an alien, and we can see a definite difference in how she is after the isolus leaves her. there are very deliberate choices made, like how chloe never smiles while the isolus is still with her, and it does help show how happy she is to return to her own body and be with her mum again. why do so many people think she’s doing a bad job?

“the vfx is awful” it’s actually fine? it’s not any worse than vfx from the rest of series 2 (the abzorbaloff melting into the pavement comes to mind), and it has very little bearing on the story anyway since most of the stuff we see happens through drawings (which is actually a fucking cool storytelling method, but i never see anyone praising that)

long story short, there have been plenty of bad episodes in dw and plenty of annoying children, but none get as much hate (at least from what ive seen) as fear her. it’s worse recently bc of the huw edwards sitch, but it’s been going on longer than that. i think people should have the balls to admit the real reason they dislike fear her, because coming up with all these stupid reasons is just getting ridiculous

[nindeoronra]

So here me out: I'm rewatching "Fear Her" and I'm at the part where the Doctor is talking to the Isolus and there's the way he looks at Rose as he says, "While they are happy, they can feed off each other's love."

He pauses and gives Rose the most intense look as he says, "Without it, they are lost.'

JFC, how many times have I watched this episode and not pick up on that foreshadowing until just now?!?

[meta-squash]

I have a hypothetical/thought experiment about Torchwood potential episode reordering. I think it would have made so much more sense and been so interesting to place Fragments in between Meat and Adam.

Meat is a fairly innocuous monster-of-the-week episode with no throughline consequences/story arc for the most part. Except at the end of the episode Rhys is allowed to leave Torchwood, memories intact. This serves to establish a "new" precedent for Torchwood and emphasizes Gwen's sort of special treatment.

Now, we place Fragments next.

The intro/outro conflict would have to change of course (the building exploding/John Hart's message), because that has to come at the end of the series. So maybe instead the team (minus Gwen) get trapped in some other way. Maybe something like the Isolus in the DW episode Fear Her, something causes them all to "disappear" and get stuck somewhere. Or maybe there's some alien item/creature that traps them half inside walls and furniture, as if they phased through a wall and got stuck. You know, something that traps all the characters in one place so that the important plots playing out are their backstories, which we watch as each person gets free (like in the actual episode).

Maybe whatever traps them either sends them into the Void or into something void adjacent/void contaminated. They don't know this when they get free, and they destroy whatever it was that causes them to get trapped, or deactivate it and take it back to the hub.

Gwen does not arrive at the end of the episode like in the original. Instead, the new version of Fragments takes place a long enough time after Meat that Rhys is healed, which means she's on vacation with him in Paris (which is what seems to be implied in Adam). This allows the memory-based alien from the void the time to infiltrate the team, so that when Gwen returns from vacation the next day, the episode plays out the same.

The rest of the series also plays out the same, either replacing Adrift with something that reintroduces John Hart and ups the ante some other way, or having a little scene at the very end of Adrift maybe of Jack watching Gwen take down all her missing posters, and then he gets a threatening message from Hart. Or the reintroduction of Hart just gets shifted into the start of Exit Wounds.

But now that Fragments has come first, the rest of the series playing out the way it does normally allows for a whole lot of interesting character development.

In Adam, we get to see the drastic difference between everyone's backstories and who they became as we know them, and whatever Adam has done to manipulate them. It also means that we can see, for example, the difference between terrified and uncertain pre-Torchwood Tosh and the Tosh we know, and this confident fake-Tosh. We can see the difference between Owen before Katie's death, and Owen the loveable shithead, and this fake-Owen who's so awkward and nervous and sad in a completely different way. (And, as Tosh and Owen's personalities are essentially flipped in this ep, we have a better perspective on both.) We get to see the start of Jack and Ianto's relationship, how it's literally built on lies and manipulation from the start, and therefore how compelling it is that Jack is 100% certain that Ianto has been manipulated by some creature.

Seeing Owen's backstory makes his 3-episode death/resurrection arc more compelling, because we can see how much Katie's death broke him, we understand his self-destructive tendencies and their source better (especially with the little addition of his childhood lore at the end of Adam), and we can see why both death and undeath are upsetting for him. We get to see his interactions with Martha as two people who respect each other but also the way in which his flirting is less serious and more almost territorial. Then we'd also get to see his reaction to Maggie, whose tragedy is so similar to his, meaning that his support and encouragement toward her is really for both of them. In the original script for ADITD, when Owen is cleaning out his flat he also throws away photos; one photo could have been of him and Katie. It makes it more compelling: suddenly the audience (and Owen) has a moment of realizing that there's no afterlife and he'll never see her again.

Again in Something Borrowed everyone's backstories just make their actions in the episode a bit more compelling. Owen going to a wedding while dead means the audience keeps in mind that he was going to marry Katie but she died, and even if he could now he'd be dead, which emphasizes both the uniqueness of Gwen's wedding and the threat of it too (this could all be destroyed etc etc). Toshiko's loneliness is emphasized more, and again the audience is reminded that Tosh hasn't seen her mother in 4 years at least. And yet again, like Owen, we're reminded of Ianto's relationship with Lisa, but also his relationship with Jack.

From Out Of The Rain and Adrift don't have many moments that would be too affected by knowing everyone's backstories, except that I think seeing the effort Ianto went through to get into Torchwood to help Lisa makes the effort he goes through to save everyone and the way losing so many souls affects him seem to be a sort of linear line, in that From Out Of The Rain is an episode that mostly focuses on Ianto's feelings and vague backstory re: the Electro. Adrift happens, which everyone else is barely in, but we now understand the cruelty of past Torchwood and perhaps can be a little more sympathetic to Jack about it. Which makes it maybe a little bit clearer why Ianto did what he did pointing Gwen to Flat Holm.

We get from Adrift to Exit Wounds through whatever way (replacing Adrift, just a little scene at the end of Adrift, idk) and then Exit Wounds occurs the way Exit Wounds plays out in the actual series.

This arrangement just allows a lot more interesting character development and way more play (either for the actual writers or just viewer brains) with character motivations. Watching for the first time, I'd have felt Owen and Maggie's conversation was a lot more compelling if I already knew Owen's backstory. I'd have found Tosh's new confidence in Adam simultaneously unnerving and uplifting if I'd just seen her shaking and traumatized in Fragments. Jack's behavior throughout a lot of the series (both his ruthlessness and his mercy) would make more sense seeing the things he'd gone through in all his years at Torchwood, and the way in which he became leader. It also puts emphasis on how Jack never wanted to be a the leader of Torchwood, and despite his knowledge he's kind of bumbling and thrashing his way through it, which then explains his treatment of Owen in ADITD, or his decisions re: Flat Holm in Adrift.

So that's my theory on a hypothetical rearranging of episodes. Of course, at this point it doesn't matter at all because we've all watched the series a million times so we're aware of the backstories no matter what. But I just think it would have been more compelling storytelling for first-time viewing.

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

i was listening to the silt verses and listening to val (the saint who speaks things into reality) talk and it reminded me of some things damien the bright sessions (the mind manipulator) has said about his power, that once during a teenage tantrum he told his family to leave and they left and never came back

and it made me think about the isolus from fear her, the thousand year old children who play make believe so they dont go mad with boredom, not a subtle parallel for the doctor (and the master)

so im thinking about this pantheon and the doctor's domain of stories, and how his only weapon is his words. your make believe turns into reality, what you say is true, becomes true, the universe shapes around you

imagine the accidents. "the wrong word in the wrong moment". imagine trying to raise/steer/use a child like that

but also it seems the doctor isnt in control of this story anymore, its point of gravity has shifted. he can disappear, he can be written out. his love interest is a dnd player. it's real AND it's a game. "two things at once"

idk mostly im just rotating this concept of a deeply traumatised, unfathomably angry person with the power to change reality/minds (also to an extent reality in how much what we keep of reality is stored in memories, change memories -> change reality) but not necessarily complete control over this power, or even awareness of when theyre using it

the doctor who had him and the master swap memories and destinies and perhaps identities by telling death "take him". the master who takes things on tv to be real (why wouldnt he? he is on tv too). hypnosis. orders.

im also thinking about what happens when you yank the reins out of the hands of a control freak

[skyler10fic]

Angel

A little gift for my dear @isolus-girl amidst a big life change

Impatient. Passionate. Stubborn. Carol Danvers was no perfect angel. But Daisy used the pet name for her anyway.

“Good morning, my angel.” Soft morning pillow talk as Carol’s blonde hair seemed to glow in the heaven-like rising sunlight.

“Hey, angel! Get down here!” Teasingly as Carol flew illuminated bright with her superpowers.

“My guardian angel,” Daisy praised as Carol reminded her of something, or showed up right on time to make a quick getaway, or saved her life from an alien threat or boring meeting.

But when Carol was a devilishly sexy temptress? That’s when Daisy cried out, “Ohhhh God.”

[tinie-alien]

ABCs of Doctor Who - An agere board collection

The answer is Not Much! Because honestly I could not find that many "I" things aside from episode titles, all funnily enough from Season 2 only for some reason 😅

[doctorwhogirlie]

Doctor Who - Isolus

[ohmerricat]

i have a high tolerance for mediocre episodes because if they include even a smidgen of toxic doctor-companion relationship development i will lap that shit up, ignoring the fact that the episodic plot itself makes less than zero sense and involves an incredibly annoying kid or several. see: in the forest of the night when clara asks the doctor to leave her to die because she doesn’t want to end up like him; fear her where the isolus and chloe’s parasitic union is a foil for the tragic codependency tenrose have

your science sucks and your plotholes are many but a story is driven by the protagonists and boy are they getting along like a house on fire

[doctorwho-rewatch]

S2E11 - Fear Her

★★★☆☆

First, I do not remember this episode at all. Just, nothing was recognisable about it, so it really was like I was watching this for the first time.

The concept that a child, having experienced a dysfunctional and borderline abusive childhood, resorting to drawings to give herself an escape and an imaginary world of friends is promising. Chloe is not really discerning - random children, a ginger cat - are unsuspecting victims, up until the Isolus' power over Chloe strengthens and the Doctor and the TARDIS end up getting trapped.

And we have Chloe's embattled mother, now a single mother but having to deal with the fallout from her abusive husband dying, Chloe's mental trauma from her father and being at a complete loss as to what to do, that it's easier to pretend everything's normal and Chloe is okay. And she's not. So that moment when Chloe's fear is giving life to her demonic scribble drawing of her dad, and her mother is trying in vain to calm her, there's a sense of relief that finally mother is listening to her daughter. And now things are going to change for the better between the two.

So the fact that the backdrop to all of this is the 2012 London Olympics just seems confusing, and cheap. I think 3 stars is generous for the episode as a whole, given how obviously it was a filler episode, but the mother/daughter relationship really did give this story some heart.

QUOTE: "It only seems like yesterday a few naked Greek blokes were tossing a diskus about, wrestling with each other in the sand and the crowds stood about— No wait a minute. That was Club Med."

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

They say the Isolus returned to Earth today, but the details are sketchy.

Doctor Who Jokes and Incorrect Quotes for Monday by GIL

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[saecookie]

Happy Eurovision day to u and those who celebrate

You're right, happy eurovision to ME and to @isolus-girl and to @pia-writes-things and to @gay-impressionist and @goneadrift and @traumschwinge and MY ROOMMATE and MY BEST FRIEND and all those who celebrate!!!