#crazy how we treat minors like a different species that should respect everyone else but doesnt get respected. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

throwingideasatthewall · 3 years

Text

The Clone Wars The Zillo Beast Strikes Back

(Season 2 Episode 19)

I really thought the first episode was surprisingly good and I hope the quality con- tin ue s;

Moving on; Cost ly- Recap, getting real deep into the details ...... Good that shows commitment to the story .. And attention to the (good) details

. . [Also how yeah are they going to transport that beast?]

Who said spent a little more time explaining it to the natives [Why they needed a dead beast]

Still good still good,

Pretty

Okay

“Tensions Run high,”

Hey, that’s a reasonable reaction,

(They’re going to put extra security on it?)

How long till it breaks out.

[I mean thing might look tiny]

Look at all those buildings

[also this will be a nice scale

We really didn’t get much of it

On the desert planet

Cause there were no buildings around

After the destruction

(Neat Detail-)

That one trooper’s really excited

You think you want to be a zoo-logist?

Neat

Spiky and big but sleepy

Uhm. (Cute)

(Oh you stop with that death music it’s adorable)

As are most animals

Though that’s likely more so anticipation music . . So it’s Fine

But just look at ‘em,

Ador-able !

(I’m sorry I cannot take this seriously with him sleeping so peacefully)

Good for ‘em

*em

[Oh yeah [just] bring the Chancellor here.

Is he going to get Donkey Kong-ed? i’m sorry but just the idea. .

Of Sidious held hostage By a giant beast, On top of a building..

It’s just so hilarious.

(Not to mention his force lightning powers) Baby [An-imal] Possib ly . Okay, Right, Why would they stop.

Aight —- Okay - Good Ideas - A-ight.

Whelp, Good

Uhm, Right,

Okay ,

Now, Right,

Wh- Elp,

Uhm, Okay,

Right,

Nice

Okay

Chancellor isn’t having it

Look

At him

You ruined his evil diatribe, Windu

He isn’t having that “you should assume some accountability” argument..

Ruining the giant monster plot- - with his logic

Good times

[Palpatine’s going to dismiss him rudely isn’t he?

He’s pissed - Terrible war

Note; how he said nothing about the beast safety

Which is Windu’s main concern

[and his earlier gaslighting of Windu’s conscience

*Put Down * ? .

^ ^

Nice

Sleepy. .

Bean. (Pet Name- Light ly.]

Any way!

[There’s the scientist.]

Seems Nice.

She doesn’t have au-thority

Nor Do You. “Good care,”

Nice

Mace Is Humanitarian towards Ani- mals-

-also can we stop calling at the “beast”?

It’s an animal?

[’Beast’ is for when it’s attacking you And it’s not fully identified]

And it’s adorable

[as well as has an already established name]

[i’ll say call it whatever you want but this is assumed authority, And whoever names it first is king . . . . Seriously ? does no one care for it as a cute fluffy animal? (I know it’s scaly my point stands)

Like seriously everyone’s viewing it as a resource

[Makes me sad]

Starting to think that one clone trooper Should be in charge,

He at least seem-ed to give a -shit

Well treated

As a resource

Windu; i’m calling bullshit but alright

[is he going to spring him?

*em

I want Windu to spring ‘em for environmental justice

Ok, how long does the plotting bullshit goes down and they start tearing the scales off the thing?

Ma-jestic

He’s calling Heavy.. bullshit

Good for Windu..

(I like this character .very much.)

Nope [Death Music .]

Big

Good - Aight

Uhm .. Bu- ld

Obi-Wan shut up

[You are the worst character]

Not in character design

Just in being the absolute .worst.

Great

Neat

Al- right-

I mean- he could be studying it to find which climate would be best for it - I mean you can’t just drop a random Non native- Life Form - Onto a random planet- and Hope for the best-

And this is the closest thing to safe neutral controlled territory . . . that they have

So make sense that they bring him here to figure it out

[The chancellor able to manage who they have treaties with and which planets are inhabited

[and what uninhabited planets could be possibly viable environment . . . . Re-hom-ing locations-

For him *em

*Effort*

Oh yeah not worth the effort to make sure the very rare species doesn’t dare

[this is why you’re the fucking worst.]

In.uni.

Any Way-

Well that was a calm way of saying, He didn’t give me an explanation . . . Which is understandable and A pretty decent response,

. Try

Wait what?

Can we re-wind that again? ... Obi-Wan - no - All he said

“was that he didn’t get an answer,”

He-

Do not escalate the situation.

Do not send Anakin to badger the chancellor.

[If Windu wants to escalate the situation he will,]

You are not the responsible [least Toxic] Adult

Please just let Windu handle it

[I love how they cut away like you know Windu’s rolling his eyes

[Obi-won-

“]

]

Well, not too bad just seems tired

Planet acclim- ation - Or the sed- atives - Will do that to you)

Though admittedly it could be a less in-vasive environment-

With more com-patibility-

What?

Oh No!

[Don’t hold the fluffy bean!]

What is going on exactly?

Like don’t get me wrong I know there’s

slight discomfort

But how bad-

[like is what they inserted into them a sedative?

Enough,

Good-

That’s Good

But seriously

If you’re going to study an animal you shouldn’t do shit like that

Passive observation

Seeing if it sheds

Perhaps, Getting Samples

The only time those things to be taken off - ... them ... is upon death - with respect to the life cycle, And, the decomposition cycle-

Not going-

Toxic excessive-

And causing - pain

Sentient Bean-

Oh No.

Oh it is picking things up relatively quickly,

Surprisingly quickly,

figuring out that this was the one to Yell at ... despite there being Mryaid Of possibilities,

And would usually focus on the,

Pain- ful Ones,

Com

So take a small scrape sample. off the scales

Like you straight up tried to rip off the scales. ... Armor-

And not the Jedi’s?

Just thought -in the pecking order they’d be lower

Under tanks and

shielding

And protection to the higher ups ...

Centurion Armor.

First

Ok how about you don’t..

Or send her to the planet and wait to see if she sheds.

Like,no

Until the bean ... is dead (Un fortunate)

You can’t- be doing- .... Stuff- Like That-

- What the fuck?

Also; mace Windu a thousand miles away; I hope the fuck you do you be a dead son of a bitch,

Lady, just call the Jedi

Mace Windu is clearly an environmental - animalistic focus - Have him insta kick this bitch

(Which he can as his specialty)

Call tox

*Like Medic

And kick the bitch to accountability

* or semi accountability in this case

(’Cause if you get caught with a Spoon- -”

Pr-otest

Good

Mace Windu - Has a teammate-

Intelligent

Oh no-

Oh noo

That could’ve been possibly meant

“I thought that was just an extraneous detail”

👍

Animal

You’ve been calling it a Beast this whole time

Also, damn look at those sad eyes!

That Things 100% Sent.

You can’t do that!

Ok I need to plot this out

This living creature-

Is sentient enough To Un-der Stand

Lan-guage

And feel pain

Let me just play a few scene so I get the morality right

So, dude’s sleeping under ground,

(Those guys apparently just . Got injured by its sleeping movements,)

Then

It finds some guy

Tries to get it off him (Reasonable)

Those two guys flee (After Anakin spent multiple occasions getting in it’s way..

Clearly un-wonton and un-wanted

So clearly going over the “don’t bug others rule,”

Then these guys -definitely heck with it

By throwing bombs, And generally breaking every (rule). The liquid thing is kind of weird

That being the equivalent of pumping planet waste material Poison) So it pretty well fits under the attempt of harm /murder

And the guards clearly attempt to murder it.

So immediate accountability is in play

But they try to kill them

(Note I know the situation is bad but it’s Immediate Accountability

Not immediate death

(However, it’s really weird with non humans)

(Or even just humanoids,)

Because I know what another human could do

Humanoids have the same about structure

With minor ex -cessive- differences?

Like- how

(The standards are really different here)

I’m not sure she could have even picked them up without hurting them.

I really hope we get to see her talk

So we can get more info

Because that’s really fascinating.

Co-mment

Hey it noted that! ... That’s -really neat

[Also geez that must suck, Having to be moved from your planet... Against your will and things that you might not be able prevent. . Because some asshole won’t share the damn planet,

And everyone else is enabling.

(It’s the frozen planet thing All over again .but better.] This time the species might not actually have an option,

But doesn’t negate - it’s sentience,

Kill

Dude, seriously,

Like I’m not a fan of it but you could just sedate them,

Turn the fuel wanted some kind of solid (Point)

And

Argh-

(It brings me no moral pleasure to say this)

Cut the scales from the skin-

Without, too much pain

Assume

(Still should not do it)

Monster

(Also lady just call the Jedi)

You know one who’s against it

You don’t even have to mention the chancellor by name

Just say some crazy orders got brought down the line

And you need -some help

Oof

‘She ain’t having your bullshit’

Right

Okay

Whelp

Good scene setting.

You really feel how out of place Anakin is, -

Oof

The music’s really nice

Really helps set the scene

And the height Just-

Perfect (Sets a beautiful set of risk)

Oof and Obi-Wan questioning Am-idala

(The costume choice works very nicely here- Causing Amidala to stand out, From the variety, But still have the kind of muted sense of the situation,

(Lot of other senators wearing purple (-though more solid)

And the lighting is pretty nice too,

Looking pretty naturally with the setting-

Oh, no,

Aw, that’s kind of nice

A good bit of levity

(Possibly parodying the masters, Amidala and Anakin technically)

(Anakin did build CP3PO though)

Aight, Nice,

Pro B-

You know that actually would make sense

I was actually expecting the more blow it up solution

But just trying bugging the Senator (Chancellor) Palpatine . Is a pretty good (non-escala tory) First step . . . .

That would just let Senator Amidala see it, assuming she wouldn’t have an issue; and wouldn’t notice the smell rift. .. - Male-stare

‘ Mace Windu told you to leave it alone and let him handle it, And you decided fuck that I’mma gonna screw things up, Didn’t You?”

Ch-ancellor

Oh that’s actually a smart plan - Gang up on the chancellor . Never mind A second pair of eyes might be helpful in case he tries that hologram shit again,

(Never mind the fact that Ami-dala- doesn’t go missing under mysterious circumstances,”

It’s a good plan

Kinda

That’s- pretty damn fair- - Voice- - That’s- a little too environmental but I get the point

(As in it’s ignoring the fact that the Zilla beast does have a voice, Just no one‘s listening

Or reading its body language, Like a good sentient would

(The issue is it’s accountability -The ability to hold others accountable-

Which it doesn’t seem to be capable of doing to the fine degree of other humans-

Other humanoids-

“ Be it’s accountability,” Is More accurate a phras- ing

Also geez can you imagine that sit-uation?

Like either force-d to kill another sentient species or be submitted to this?

I give the Zilla beast a lot of damn credit-

For the re-straint

Real shit . .. Sit-

Neither have you,

Seen your -self

In action!

Like yeah dude you pull out a laser sword, When someone threatens you,

(Pretty damn unaccountable)

At least the Zilla beast has a damn good excuse,

Life

Yep-

Warr ant a discussion

No, It warrants the envir-onmental focus- Kicking the offender, Straight to accoun-tability And every one else, Lea-ving the damn thing alone, (Bastards) .... ?

I mean-

That’s kinda fair-

Heck not every- one-

Heck- not every generation- Has an environmental focus

And, animals are damn weird-

But- I’m going to say if you see a puppy kicked- You should tell that dude to fuck off,

And no I do not resent that-

Even if it’s food

(Which no one should be messing with in the first place)

But fair-

Chan-cellor

Still don’t like this-

Stop being a complaining dick and eit -her do it or don’t-

Oh does he have a hesitation from his previous experience?

Secrets do not stay secret

Mate you deployed the military, Who have to answer to the council,

Not to mention all of the Internal law and military enforcement On planet That saw this shit go down

(Would probably be defensive of you holding a dead creature)

Also yeah it’s Obi-Wan’s fault

(How he knows about something he didn’t witness. Idk, Guess someone told him.”

Anakin?

What- ever.

Aight

Called out

No the point of democracy is to form a hierarchy of authority And with some people’s decision matters more than others There was very little ability to self determined,

And often times ends up just arguing over basic human decency,

Doesn’t have to involve subterfuge

But things can escalate for the worst with toxic behavior

*enabling espec

Die

Oy!

Any -one paying attention to that?

(Dude, blown cover! )

No, better option just go straight to Windu,

You thought he was being held for a tests ... He wasn’t , Time to get the ass kicking squad in for questioning,

Windu

*Not Obi- Won- -

That was damn threatening

Aight,

(Also yes, you do, Go tell Windu.)

Here’s the conversation;

‘Ok, I’ll just relay that to Master Windu-”

“Wait, no - don’t do that- !”

(Done jokingly)

The conversation’s fine,

War is never going to be won until someone assumes accountability

Both points of “feck you”

Well at least Anakin isn’t hail-ed as the “enabling Savior”,

And does sorta take Amidala ’s Side, , Re- asonable

[call Windu]

Shit ...

Also “your groomer has groomed you well”

To never pick a side . .. Ex- Cuse- Me- - Help ing ... He noticeably switched his body over to your side,

And his “both sides thing,” .... . Was is clearly a ‘feck you,

Appro -priately

No he DOESN’T!

And Anakin isn’t innocent here,

So knock off the tone

No puppy dog was kicked,

Anakin fully knows what he’s advocating is wrong

And appro -priate tone should be applied

‘That was malicious

You can’t hoodwink an adult,

Productives are well aware of common decency Rules,

Selectives know their shit

This is an act of malician . . . And should be framed as such . yeah I have no idea what’s going on with him either

[Doing that unaccountable juice again.)

Oh, hi, , Wait you’re just gonna straight up gas ‘em-

But-

(Does this turn them into a super angry pissed off monster?)

Zilla

Stop enabling this!

[Character Yell,]

Bitch,

Kill em’

‘I will grab the thing , but I’m still asking you to do the thing,”

This is why ‘sorry is bullshit,’

. .

Um Whelp, Time to see the baby get kicked,” - “I’m Sorry,”

We talked about how that doesn’t excuse actions ... I swear if they pull that they said they were sorry, so that means everything’s ok every episode,

[I will strike every episode]

Til the mark

Any way.

Begin procedure . And with that she is undoubtably irredeemable, . ...

(I swear to god if they play happy music of an ending where she is supposedly redeemed

Or enabled)

Calling heavy bullshit,

A puppy killer runn -ing free With No Ch -ance Of even the slightest bit of come uppance, .... Isn’t happy - - - Any Way, Even worse that it’s sentient - Going to switch from “That’s A Puppy!” to “THAT’S A SENTIENT!”

(Both are equally frick-ed up)

De- served-

Yeah-

Turns out when you threaten someone’s life they immediately going to assume accountability mode

(Not)

I’m just really angry

At the characters in the universe

But yeah, Damn,

Poor Zilla,

Got tears in my eyes

[Like imagine that bullshit]

Like either she was restrained her self enough so she didn’t kill people

Or the situation was so bad it literally caused an adrenaline like situation

Free- ing herself

Seeing as she doesn’t seem to be a bad “pers’-

[The accountability scale- still un-established,” [Selective accountability?

Involuntary accountability?

Does her body just flare up into attack mode when stuff like that happens)

Just-

Whoa-

No-

Don’t shoot the baby ! sent ient!

I don’t like the sound of that,

You’re not going to like

what they did to her?

[also wait, what are the properties of that gas?

Like what does exposure do to her?

[I know they said it was poisonous, But that was coming from the assholes that thought stabbing her was a good idea,

*em

Any Way,

Good point

Like how dude’s backing away . Good trooper

I hope he was the Zoologist One . seems to be smart,

Oof

(Dude didn’t even get to see the Zila,)

Oof

It doesn’t even attack anyone!

(It goes away from the tanks)

My Damn heart,

Oof

I hurt

Good

(Oh geez, she probably didn’t even know they were still out there.”

Oof,

Okay, fakers,

Also she took out was the beams screwing with her,

There was like one guy,

(I remember I thought about commenting, “Karma,”. at that moment,

If Lady’s on the ground it’s her own fault,

Zilla, didn’t do anything to her

Dick,

Oy, Bullshit,

She, went the other direction

And seemed very specific about avoiding things

I’m calling very light (Cir-cum stantial-) Bull shit

There must be a fire Oh no

(Yeah the structure-

Must suck

To be sp-

How is he reaching her

after her thing was destroyed?

Damn

Also, wait

it’s night?

How long have they been standing there?

(Also Mace Windu is going to kick your ass.”

Also, look at that

She’s trying to go under the beams!

This is clearly not malicious,

And I mean it makes a lot of sense,

She’s a ground living creature, (Sentient)

She probably thought lower altitude was safe

And not with all this (non sense),

toxin

Oh yeah just gas the city! - with multiple in- habitants of different biological structure-

[Don’t bother turning it into a blade]

Or bullets]

Hurry

[Not try anymore practical solutions,]

Why...

Have you done this?

[Oh yeah don’t bother sounding the alarms for everyone,

Screw them

Only the servants matter,”

“Gen, No, don’t stay with General Kenobi, He will get you killed,

Now, I kno

Fun

- See, she gives them a warning yell!

She’s more-so tripping than malicious,

Also made if you saw a (malicious) beast coming your way and decided to stand near it

-That’s your own fault,

Like, Darwin’s law No Euth,

To be fair dude does give the orders. And that was her way of saying I don’t like that guy

I’m just really sad about her condition.

Tr-

High er Van Ta Ge

Point-

Also yeah that does seem like a smoother safer advantage point where she wouldn’t hurt anyone

Aight,

Okay, seriously how the fuck are there fires?

She hasn’t-

That’s just something completely different,

[Like- I don’t know if I wanna know the story but that is intriguing]

Aw, Small,

See now she’s sticking to sections where she can’t hurt people. .

Whelp

“Also everyone get to your rooms,

These frickers;

Like there was an alarm earlier right?

There was a siren ..

How?

No-pe

Yes you stay on top of that dome

Proud Of This Zilla’

Eva- Cute?

Also wait wasn’t she just in the scene below

Some One-

Dude all she did was yell at him,

Re- Strain T!

Gosh darn, Yoda - you fricking enabler

Also how long until Windu finds out she’s been injured and.. freaks out.

Lost

And, they were all given fair warning and if you’re not smart enough to get out of the way that’s your own fault

* Un accountable

Off

How’s Windu feeling?

Aight

Bullshit, you planned that-

Also why are you including everyone else?

That seems like a security hazard?

Toxin

De-stroyed

Clearly no

You should be glaring daggers at him

being like “bitch no,”

Padme Isn’t innocent

Pr-

[Windu is going to kick a bitch]

Hi,

Hey, want to talk to you

VALID

Good

OH NO

Fuck off Yoda

(Amoral-

You shouldn’t shoot them in the first place-

Also this is just establishing that Mace Windu is literally the only sane person,

Yoda literally only cares about the chancellor . . . and would’ve shot him

Dick, Don’t

(Feckin dammit Anakin,)

The Zilla Just Wants a nice talk.

Bad

Yes just let the Zila talk you irresponsible fuck

Like, seriously Now she’s going to have to try and catch you with her hands,

And if anyone gets hurt it’s their own damn fault.

Som-

Stupid

Damn- Just. Talk

with the damn Zila,

I swear..

I fuck-

She was already paying attention

you damn fuck

Zilla- catch- Whelp,

Dumbest freaking plan ever,

Zilla, Pick up

“ also you have to think about what Zilla- is thinking at them at this moment-

Like-

Oh- shit

They could possibly die! She just yells at them this entire time!

Damn...

Pretty sure that dude tried to shoot her...

Not-

Dick

Oh No,

This-

She gave dude five fucking warnings

De-press ....

I’m Go Write A Fluff Fic

0 notes

timeflies1007-blog · 6 years

Text

Doctor Who Reviews by a Female Doctor, Season 3, p. 1

Previously on Doctor Who: The stellar first season was followed by a pretty subpar second one, but this second outing did give us a chance to meet David Tennant’s quirky, charming Doctor. The show struggled to land on a consistent storyline for the Tenth Doctor and Rose, but it did embrace the joy and energy that both characters brought to their travels. That joy ended in tears, though, as Rose was trapped in the parallel universe with her family, leaving the Doctor once again on his own.

As this season begins, he is still very much in a state of grief over his separation from Rose, and this heightens his general sense of loneliness. The seasonal arc highlights this lonely state, as it relies heavily on his awareness that he’s the last of his species. The meticulously-planned Master plot works exceedingly well in bringing out this side of the Doctor, or at least it does until the last episode turns everything into nonsense. The Doctor’s obsession with his own aloneness doesn’t exactly help his relationship with his smart new companion Martha, though, as he tends to treat her like she’s getting in the way of his lamentations over his lost favorite. The Doctor can feel alone even with Martha standing right next to him, which is a good indication of the Doctor’s state of mind but is understandably frustrating for her.

In general, this season is erratic in terms of episode quality; the first couple of episodes are solid, then there’s a lengthy slide into mediocrity, then we get five great episodes in a row, and finally everything crashes and burns in the finale. On the whole, I like more of this season than I did of the last one, but the brilliant, thoroughly unappreciated Martha feels mostly like a missed opportunity, and that prevents this from reaching the heights that Davies’s first and fourth seasons attain.

The Runaway Bride: Some viewers find Donna annoyingly screechy in this episode, which I think is a bit harsh. She’s picked up at her wedding and flung onto the TARDIS without warning, which is enough to make anyone do a lot of shouting. To be fair, the episode occasionally encourages an uncharitable reading of Donna; the Doctor’s long list of reasons why she’s a surprising target, including the notion that she’s not special or powerful, is uncharacteristically mean, and the sequence in which she tells the Doctor of Lance’s insistence on their wedding while the camera cuts away to her begging Lance to marry her is especially unfunny. Still, to me she’s already a likeable presence, and her oversized personality feels appropriate for an extremely fast-paced and frequently ridiculous episode. Her efforts to pull the Doctor away from some of his “big picture” thinking also make a decent case for taking her at least somewhat seriously. The beautiful last scene mostly makes up for the mean-spirited jokes; Donna’s right, the Doctor does need someone to stop him sometimes, and the fact that she is the quickest to challenge him is one of the reasons why I see Donna as the Tenth Doctor’s best companion. This is definitely not her best episode, but we get plenty of glimpses of the marvelous character who will return in Season Four.

The other controversial element of this episode is the silliness of the plot, which is intensely goofy even by Doctor Who standards. The first third of the show, in which robot Santas kidnap Donna, is silliness done well. The car chase, which features the TARDIS pulling up alongside a Santa-driven taxi, is an especially fun sequence, and the two delighted children watching from the back of a nearby car make it even better. The Empress of Racnoss, however, is silliness done badly. She’s not quite as awful a monster as last season’s Absorbaloff, but she’s bad enough that I’m physically uncomfortable watching her scenes largely out of embarrassment for the actress playing her. It’s like the director told her “Do a bunch of different random goofy evil laughter things, and then we’ll pull the best ten seconds and cut the rest” and then they forgot to cut anything. We keep cutting back to this poor woman, covered in a giant spider costume, wriggling about and making weird sounds, until finally she shrieks “My children!!!!” about twenty times and then she dies. It’s completely cringeworthy, and I spend the whole scene just waiting for it to be over.

The serious side of the episode takes the form of the Doctor’s grief over Rose, which is generally very effective here. His memories of her from “New Earth” that are set off when he watches some dancing at the reception seem a bit random, but these moments are otherwise integrated believably into the story, and they reflect a form of grief that seems plausible for the Doctor’s personality. He’s clearly sad, but he hasn’t lost hold of his belief in Rose, and his assertion that she is “so alive” as he convinces Donna to leap into the TARDIS is a lovely display of his continuing love for Rose even in the midst of his sorrow. His angry response to the harm done by the Torchwood Institute is still very present, though, and his destruction of the Racnoss children just about makes sense in light of his devastation about losing Rose. The Doctor tends to get very self-righteous about the destruction of other species, even when they are trying to end the world, so it’s always jarring when he goes so definitively against his own principles like this. (Giving the Empress the choice to leave doesn’t really absolve him of all responsibility here in the way that he suggests, since he couldn’t give a similar choice to her children.) However, if we look at this as a release of the rage and sadness he’s been burying throughout the episode because he’s had a lot of crazy nonsense to take care of, I can understand why he would indulge in violence as much as he does here.

This is a pretty uneven episode; some of the humor works fantastically well, but other pieces of it fall completely flat. I do think that it’s the best portrayal of the Doctor’s sense of loss this season, as the episode gets across his distress without making him treat Donna with the fairly dismissive approach that he later extends to Martha. In the end, this is a significant episode mainly because its events give Donna a reason to go looking for the Doctor later on, something for which the Doctor and everyone else should be exceedingly grateful. B+/B

Smith and Jones: The first twenty minutes or so of this episode are an absolutely sensational debut to the regular season. We get a very charming glimpse of the Jones family dealing with an ordinary minor crisis, we watch rain going the wrong way, a hospital gets relocated to the moon, the Doctor is somehow even more charismatic than usual, and Martha keeps her head to an impressive extent in spite of being whisked away from Earth without warning. And then the Rhinoceros Police turn up! (I know that they’re called Judoon, but there’s hardly ever an opportunity to say Rhinoceros Police, so I’m not passing up the chance just for the sake of getting the right name.) It’s a glorious setup, both for Martha herself and for this story.

The rest of the episode doesn’t quite match the beginning, but it’s still a fun story, although the moon itself is disappointingly dull. I enjoy the Plasmavore, who calmly commits murder with a straw. The contrast between the hospital staff, who panic loudly, and the Judoon, who methodically catalog everyone with a cross on the hand, is also pretty funny. The Doctor gets a lot of comedic material in this episode, most of which works. There’s a tedious scene in which he hops around trying to get rid of radiation for what seems like half an hour, but his shouting about “Rhinos! On the moon!!” in an attempt to look human is adorably hilarious. Most importantly, Martha gets a lot of opportunities to show her scientific knowledge, probably more so here than in any other episode. She immediately impresses the Doctor with her understanding of how air would work on the moon, she makes a complicated machine work by reading the manual, she figures out what the Doctor has done to the Plasmavore, and she revives the Doctor when he seems to be dead. She is clearly excited to see the surface of the moon, but she’s much calmer than Rose, and she’s thinking more carefully about what she sees rather than just reacting emotionally. She’s definitely very different from her predecessor, and while she doesn’t quite have Rose’s immediately captivating presence, it’s exciting to see a companion who responds to a crisis by reading the operator’s manual.

I do think that the ending of the episode is a letdown in several respects. The Doctor’s supposed death gives Martha a chance to put her medical knowledge to use, but is still one of the dullest fakeout deaths we’ve seen on this show. Both the business with the scanner and the last-minute return to Earth as the hospital runs out of air fall pretty flat for me, and Martha’s family gets reduced to silly squabbling instead of the much more engaging tensions that we saw in their earlier scene. The Doctor’s effort to prove that he’s a time traveler by going back to that morning and taking off his tie is a fabulous moment, but Martha’s actual TARDIS entrance is pretty underwhelming. The camera seems to be going for a pan of the control room, but somehow lands on jumping into a corner of the ceiling and staying there, which doesn’t exactly support Martha’s “bigger on the inside” moment. Once she gets into the TARDIS, the Doctor suddenly decides to stop being the lovely, charming figure he’s been all episode in favor of treating Martha like an intruder. I can understand that he might feel conflicted about inviting another woman into the TARDIS after losing Rose, but I’m not sure if the Doctor has ever shown quite this much resentment toward the new companion at any point in the show’s 50+-year history. (I guess he’s a bit annoyed with Jo at first because she’s not a scientist and she ruined an experiment, but he has an immediate change of heart, so it plays very differently.) It’s wonderful to see the first black companion on the show, and I’m thrilled that she gets a generally very strong debut episode, but it’s unfortunate that the first companion of color is the only one to be told “You’re not replacing her!” as she comes on board. Then she awkwardly flirts with him as a scowls at her, and I’m just left wondering if there’s a parallel universe out there in which the Doctor didn’t kiss Martha in his attempt to elude the Rhinos and this whole unrequited love plot was never set in motion. A full season of awesome, science-knowing Martha would have been much better than watching sad, mopey Martha wait for the Doctor to fall in love with her, and the origins of that storyline make for an irritating end to this otherwise great episode. Still, the most important thing for this episode to accomplish is the establishment of Martha as an interesting individual, and in spite of this unfortunate interaction with the Doctor, I would say it succeeds very much in that regard. A-

The Shakespeare Code: This marks the second installment of “The Doctor and Companion meet a dead writer in circumstances that resemble that writer’s works,” something that was nearly an annual tradition during Davies’s time on the show. The portrayal of Shakespeare is not as good as Simon Callow’s work as Charles Dickens two seasons ago, but he’s an enjoyable presence, and while the script sometimes goes obnoxiously overboard with the references, it’s fun watching the Doctor quote Shakespeare to the man himself. (A lot more than 57 academics would have punched the air if they saw Shakespeare flirt with the Doctor, though. Like, really a lot more.) As in “The Unquiet Dead,” the portrayal of the writer himself is better than the rather awkward incorporation of characters who resemble his own creations; the witches are entertaining enough, I guess, but keeping them for most of the episode as two clichéd hags and a generic attractive woman is not exactly an imaginative approach to these characters.

The story does pick up, though, when it focuses on the power of words, which is both a nice individual storyline and a good piece of foreshadowing for the season finale. The Doctor’s explanation of why words hold so much power is especially lovely: “a theatre’s magic, isn’t it?...Stand on this stage, say the right words with the right emphasis at the right time. Oh you can make men weep, or cry with joy. Change them. You can change people’s minds just with words in this place.” Martha’s observation that the theater is like the TARDIS, containing power that exceeds its apparent dimensions, is smart enough that the Doctor manages to be impressed with her in spite of his unappreciative behavior elsewhere in the episode. The climactic scene, in which Martha helps to banish the Carrionite by realizing that “Expelliarmus!” is the perfect rhyme that Shakespeare needs, is an absolute delight, made even better by the Doctor’s jubilant exclamation of “Good old J.K.!” I love that this Shakespeare-focused episode finds so much joy in language and performance, and this scene encapsulates that joy perfectly.

It’s a shame that this, probably their most appealing interaction, is placed into an episode that otherwise makes it difficult to enjoy them as a Doctor/Companion pairing. The previous episode ended on an unpleasant note, but featured a lot of great moments between them before that. This episode solidifies the problems, including the Doctor’s completely oblivious approach to racism. It makes sense to me that the Doctor might not quite grasp some of the nuances of Martha’s identity as a black woman; he’s seen so many species and been to so many times and places that I can imagine it would be difficult to keep track of exactly what power structures are in place at a particular moment in Earth’s history. Still, he’s spent a lot of time on twentieth and twenty-first century Earth, so his complete lack of awareness of her fears feels like a step too far. Responding to Martha’s concerns about slavery with the quip that “I’m not even human!” and the advice to “walk around like you own the place” is startlingly tone deaf—he may not be human, but he looks like an attractive, well-dressed white man, and that gives him an ability to swagger around that isn’t as available to Martha. It’s completely worth pointing out that there are more people of color in sixteenth-century England than we tend to see in movies, but using two extras with no lines to make this point, and then returning to Martha’s race only as a joke about the Shakespearean-era terms constituting “political correctness gone mad” is not the way to do this. The Doctor’s inability to quite grasp certain human things is worth exploring, but having him come across as completely unaware of the existence of racism just makes it look like he hasn’t been paying attention at all in his travels on Earth. The dynamic between these two gets even worse as the Doctor continues to treat Martha like a downgrade from Rose. It’s entirely possible to write a good unrequited love story; one-sided romantic feelings happen, and I don’t think that portraying a character as having these feelings necessarily weakens that character in any way. Framing an unrequited love story around jealousy of another woman is almost always going to go badly, though, and the Doctor’s unkind remark that “Rose would know what to do” sets in motion Martha’s understandable resentment toward her predecessor. During their interactions with Shakespeare, both characters show themselves to be wonderful, charming, witty people, but this episode does such a terrible job of setting up the relationship between them that it’s difficult to get excited about watching the two of them together. B

Gridlock: New Earth wasn’t very exciting to me the first time we saw it, but at least that episode had Tennant and Piper doing Lady Cassandra impressions (and Lady Cassandra herself being entertaining) to distract from the dullness of the planet. That’s gone here, in favor of “floaty vans get stuck in traffic.” It’s not a completely unworkable premise, but if I have to spend much of an episode trapped in an unmoving vehicle, I at least want to be trapped with interesting characters, and Martha and the Doctor manage to land in vehicles driven by the blandest beings of New Earth. Some of the other vehicles seem to contain more memorable individuals—I particularly liked the elderly lesbian couple keeping a close watch on the motorway’s many vehicles—but the four main minor characters are almost completely devoid of personality. The most interesting trait that I can think of to describe them is “child-bearing,” which is enjoyable only in the brief moments when we get to look at some kittens. Novice Hame doesn’t make much of an impression either, as I barely remembered her from “New Earth,” so her redemption didn’t mean anything to me, and the whole theme of “drugs are baaaaaaad” creates an awfully lukewarm center to the story.

The Face of Boe scenes make more of an impression, but I have trouble making sense of them, given the revelations later in the season. If this really is Captain Jack, as is strongly hinted at later in the season, why does this particular secret have such significance for him? If a character has a final truth that they need to tell before their death, I expect it to be something that’s meaningful to them, or at least to the person being told. Here, though, Jack spends his final moments giving the Doctor an unintelligibly vague clue about the existence of the Master, which the Doctor doesn’t really understand at this point and is going to find out about very shortly anyways. After everything that Jack’s been through in his life, the Doctor’s encounter with the Master later in the season doesn’t seem like something that would be resonant enough to Jack to form the center of his last moments before the death that finally sticks. It’s an interesting moment for the audience, as we are left wondering what the Face of Boe’s words mean, and it serves as an important clue to Yana’s identity in “Utopia,” although the Doctor could probably have pieced things together on the basis of the drumbeat and the watch. As the possible death scene of a beloved character (albeit one who was still alive and kicking on his very own spinoff) it just seems unsatisfying to frame it around the confession of a secret that doesn’t have a lot of personal significance to Jack and is too vague for the Doctor to understand.

Pieces of this story are somehow duller than actually being stuck in traffic, but the redemptive final minute prevents this from being a total disaster. As the people of New Earth sing a beautiful hymn, Martha convinces the Doctor to open up to her a bit, and he gives her a heartfelt description of his grief over the loss of his planet. He does genuinely seem to realize that she deserves better than the halfhearted welcome she’s gotten from him so far, and so the scene both lends a sense of specificity to New Earth that otherwise eludes it in this episode and gives us one of the best interactions between the Doctor and Martha. One scene can only do so much to improve a generally weak episode, but at least Martha’s first trip into the future ends on this stunningly hopeful note. C+

Daleks in Manhattan: The first time I watched this episode, I assumed that the TARDIS had somehow landed Martha and the Doctor in some parallel universe or a future era that was trying to reconstruct Depression-era New York, and that the climactic reveal would be their realization that they weren’t where they thought they were. The performances and production values are just so unconvincing that I figured there must be some sort of plot twist explaining them, but this is, in fact, just a poorly-realized story. It’s unfortunate because it’s the debut episode for writer Helen Raynor, the first woman to write for the reboot and, sadly, the only woman to write for the first eight seasons. Her script is mostly unimpressive here, but it’s made far worse than necessary by the completely incompetent direction. Doctor Who frequently deals with trying to do special effects without enough money, but most directors have either managed to somehow make the episodes look good, or to use the low-budget feel to create a sort of charming, B-movie atmosphere. Season One’s “Dalek” looks particularly low-budget, but the director makes it work amazingly well. The classic series had even more struggles with money, and while sometimes this results in disaster (i.e. “Underworld”), most of the time the cheap sets create a lovely, whimsical world for the Doctor and his friends. (“Invasion of the Dinosaurs” features dinosaurs that look like an elementary school art project, and it’s still one of my very favorite classic episodes.) Here, it looks like the director tried to film the episode on about 10% of the necessary budget and did nothing to account for the lack of money, and everything just looks shoddy. The acting is also weaker than usual here; the minor characters come across as forced attempts at campy humor, and the comedy just looks so effortful that it’s never actually funny. Worse, this two-parter is the one story in the reboot in which the Daleks don’t scare me even a little bit. Even in “Victory of the Daleks,” where we get the stupid color change, they are at least frightening in the earlier scenes of the episode. There is usually some sort of magic that makes Daleks terrifying in spite of being big pieces of metal with plungers and whisks attached, but here they actually come across as harmless and ineffectual as that description sounds.

The problems don’t lie entirely with the direction, as Raynor’s script has plenty of clunky moments. We begin with the Doctor’s efforts to explain the concept of homelessness to grown woman Martha Jones, and then we meet Obvious Moral Man, who pontificates on subjects like “I learned in the war that it’s important to stick together” and “It’s confusing that some people have money while other people don’t have money.” He’s not wrong, but the show usually manages to get across life lessons with a little bit less sledgehammering. Throughout the episode, the dialogue is pretty bad, weighed down by misguided attempts at 1930s colloquial speech and even worse attempts at irony (like Tallulah’s observation that men are pigs, but not her Laszlo, who has been turned into a pig. Yikes.) We also get some more attention to Martha’s unrequited crush on the Doctor, although at least it’s pretty brief here. As this first part draws to an end, everything is terrible, and there is still another half of the story left to go. D

Evolution of the Daleks: This one is not quite as bad as the first part, although it’s pretty close. We have to sit through the Human-Dalek, which delivers stilted dialogue in the most grating voice imaginable. We have to watch more of Tallulah, who is pretty much the pinnacle of blandness. We have to endure the Doctor shouting aggressively at the Daleks while thumping on his chest in what is arguably Tennant’s worst performance in his entire run on the show. (It reminds me, somehow, of the scene in The West Wing in which Josh starts shouting at the Capitol Building—a moment similarly grounded in an apparent desire to just throw lots of ANGRY! at a talented dramatic actor and hope it works out.) We have a plot that seems awfully reminiscent of the Dalek being corrupted by Rose’s DNA in season 1 but that is worse in every way. We have to hear another entry in the list of Martha’s laments about how the Doctor liked Rose better than her. We have to listen to Andrew Garfield’s terrible accent. And, in the end, it’s all for an experiment in linking Dalek and human DNA that makes them look utterly ridiculous and doesn’t properly work, resulting in the destruction of the whole project. After sitting through two whole episodes of the Daleks putting together this plan, it’s an awfully underwhelming conclusion, and calls into question whether it was worth trotting out the Daleks just to have them engage in this poorly thought-out adventure. There are a couple of nice moments, especially Martha weaponizing lightning against the pig people, but on the whole the story is a major disappointment. D+

#doctor who #female doctor #season 3 #tenth doctor #martha jones #david tennant #freema agyeman #russell t davies #reviews

0 notes