Oh hallelujah, FINALLY
Oct. 1st, 2011 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janne_dAll this series of Doctor Who I've been wishing for the Moff to just lay out River's timeline for us, in a DVD extra, or in my more ambitious wishes a special box set that does her episodes in the order she lived them.
And tonight, in Doctor Who Confidential, I got my wish! With narration by River even, which was better than I actually expected - if I seriously thought they would ever do it I could only envision Stephen Moffat rattling the events off in a big run-on sentence, possibly with stills added. This was so much cooler.
Oh, and there was a finale episode on too, or something...
Reactions in no logical order whatsoever:
- I adored the steampunk stuff in the messed up timeline so much! The steam trains running into the Gherkin and the pyramids and the balloons flying the cars, so cool.
- just how many alternate timelines have Amy and Rory lived through now? I've totally lost count. Isn't Amy up to something like 7 different personal histories?
- I very much liked Amy killing Kovarian. I like the acknowledgement (finally) that knowing River survived and grew up amazing does not cancel out having her baby stolen and I liked the ruthlessness of it.
- I also very much liked that River escapes to visit her parents, drink wine and gossip about the Doctor.
- I thought the idea about time being frozen at 5.02pm because River refused to kill the Doctor was an interesting concept too, and I loved the Doctor's expression when he fails to die at the lake.
- the skulls all turning to watch in the Headless Monk's repository thingy was really, really creepy, and the guy getting eaten by them was DEEPLY disturbing and if I'd seen that as a child I would have had nightmares for weeks.
- I liked the Doctor's investigation lots (yay, Dorian) and the flashback structure with the implications of Silence lurking as he tells it. Though I am a little confused about how the Doctor ended up a soothsayer in mixed up London and away from Utah and the rest of them... I suppose the explanation is "time disintegrating" but I would have liked a little more there.
- oh, oh, the bit where the Doctor is trying to evoke Amy's memories without realising she already remembers made me laugh.
- and the wedding that maybe wasn't a wedding that was not when River finds out his name at all... and the crack about where she spends her nights, that was cool.
- and the endless stream of doubles and duplicates finally paid off too, though not with a ganger!Doctor like everyone thought but the Tesselector Doctor with real Doctor inside to keep the fixed point. I knew when the reminded us about the Tesselector in the 'previously' bit that it had to come back but I still didn't guess that's what the trick was going to be.
As a general thing, I read someone talking about how Moffat writes and this episode is a prime example of it. He sets up these ongoing plots and signposts the how and the who - and yet somehow he still manages to be surprising in how they pay off. And to leave even more questions! Way back in Silence in the Library it was all pointing to River marrying the Doctor - and now she has. Only it was a lie, but she obviously still does later on... And then the crash of the Byzantium all pointed to River having killed the Doctor and gone to prison for it. And she has killed him - twice, even - the deaths just didn't take. And silence still hasn't fallen!
It will be interesting to see where they go with the Doctor now that he's said he's got too big and will be using his 'death' to recede a bit... Moffat has said in interviews he wanted to get to a different kind of storyline so I guess we will see.
And tonight, in Doctor Who Confidential, I got my wish! With narration by River even, which was better than I actually expected - if I seriously thought they would ever do it I could only envision Stephen Moffat rattling the events off in a big run-on sentence, possibly with stills added. This was so much cooler.
Oh, and there was a finale episode on too, or something...
Reactions in no logical order whatsoever:
- I adored the steampunk stuff in the messed up timeline so much! The steam trains running into the Gherkin and the pyramids and the balloons flying the cars, so cool.
- just how many alternate timelines have Amy and Rory lived through now? I've totally lost count. Isn't Amy up to something like 7 different personal histories?
- I very much liked Amy killing Kovarian. I like the acknowledgement (finally) that knowing River survived and grew up amazing does not cancel out having her baby stolen and I liked the ruthlessness of it.
- I also very much liked that River escapes to visit her parents, drink wine and gossip about the Doctor.
- I thought the idea about time being frozen at 5.02pm because River refused to kill the Doctor was an interesting concept too, and I loved the Doctor's expression when he fails to die at the lake.
- the skulls all turning to watch in the Headless Monk's repository thingy was really, really creepy, and the guy getting eaten by them was DEEPLY disturbing and if I'd seen that as a child I would have had nightmares for weeks.
- I liked the Doctor's investigation lots (yay, Dorian) and the flashback structure with the implications of Silence lurking as he tells it. Though I am a little confused about how the Doctor ended up a soothsayer in mixed up London and away from Utah and the rest of them... I suppose the explanation is "time disintegrating" but I would have liked a little more there.
- oh, oh, the bit where the Doctor is trying to evoke Amy's memories without realising she already remembers made me laugh.
- and the wedding that maybe wasn't a wedding that was not when River finds out his name at all... and the crack about where she spends her nights, that was cool.
- and the endless stream of doubles and duplicates finally paid off too, though not with a ganger!Doctor like everyone thought but the Tesselector Doctor with real Doctor inside to keep the fixed point. I knew when the reminded us about the Tesselector in the 'previously' bit that it had to come back but I still didn't guess that's what the trick was going to be.
As a general thing, I read someone talking about how Moffat writes and this episode is a prime example of it. He sets up these ongoing plots and signposts the how and the who - and yet somehow he still manages to be surprising in how they pay off. And to leave even more questions! Way back in Silence in the Library it was all pointing to River marrying the Doctor - and now she has. Only it was a lie, but she obviously still does later on... And then the crash of the Byzantium all pointed to River having killed the Doctor and gone to prison for it. And she has killed him - twice, even - the deaths just didn't take. And silence still hasn't fallen!
It will be interesting to see where they go with the Doctor now that he's said he's got too big and will be using his 'death' to recede a bit... Moffat has said in interviews he wanted to get to a different kind of storyline so I guess we will see.
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Date: 2011-10-20 01:21 am (UTC)