I have finally seen Doctor Who!

[lirazel]

YAY YAY YAY!

When I finally realized I'd gotten it all downloaded, I was like this:



And then I watched it, and I was like this:



And then like this:



It's not perfect. I've got some quibbles. But it was delightful.

And for once I have some thoughts before I read everyone else's! This is Lauren-reaction, concentrated.


Some thoughts I had while watching:

1. This episode was gorgeous. I don't know whether I just had a better quality download than usual, but it was so, so pretty. Such lovely colors! And so sharp looking! It fit the whole "sense of wonder" we're supposed to be getting from the show perfectly.

2. I kind of really wish that little Amelia was Eleven's companion instead of grown-up Amy. Not that Amy isn't going to be awesome. But how cool would it be to have the Doctor run around with this take-no-prisoners little girl? Who was perfectly cast, by the way! I would have loved that.

3. The figuring-out-his-tastes scene was adorable and awesome. "You're Scottish. Fry something." OH WOW. So, like, are Scots as totally obsessed with frying things as we Southerners are? WE SHOULD HAVE A FRY-OFF. Also, fish sticks and custard. Win.

4. The actual plot was just okay. It wasn't written as tensely as it could have been. But since the point was to get the characters introduced, that's okay. I forgive them.

5. I am totally confused about the whole Scotland-England thing. Okay, so in the first scenes, they're in Scotland, right? That's where Amy lives, and at the beginning he says something about crashing into Scotland. But then the rest of it happens and they're in England? WHAT? Her house is right there. Also, the Doctor says something about her having been in England for 12 years. What am I missing? I'm sure the answer is ridiculously obvious, but I'm not picking up on it.

6. I can't decide if Amy is really awesome and that's why I like her or if she just reminds me so much of my BFF whose names is also Amy and who has gorgeous pale skin and gorgeous-er shampoo commercial red hair and is snarky as hell. *ponders*

7. Nah, I think Amy's awesome. I was kind of shocked: has Moffat actually managed to create a well-rounded female character for the first time (to my knowledge) since Lynda in Press Gang? WE SHALL SEE.

8. Amy checking out Eleven while he changed made me lol so hard. There's potential that I might ship these two, which is kind of shocking, since DW is one of my non-shipping shows. (Yes! They actually exist!)

9. Sometimes when the Doctor starts talking really fast, I don't always catch everything he says, and it frustrates me because I'm sure it's something clever.

10. For no reason whatsoever, I kind of want Amy and Martha to be BFFs.

11. What's with the companion having a loser boyfriend trope? I mean, I liked Mickey, but haven't we done this already?

12. Everyone in this episode seemed very white to me. Am I right in thinking that everyone with a speaking line was white? Is Moffat going to have even more race!fail than RTD? OH GOD NO.

13. When she said the thing about being back before tomorrow morning, my heart sunk. AND THEN IT PANNED TO THE WEDDING DRESS. NO NO NO NO. We've done the Runaway Bride thing already! We married off Martha! WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE WHOLE WEDDING THING NO!!!!! For some reason, this really irked me.

14. Everyone in town knowing about Amy's Doctor was AWESOME.

15. Trying on ties! Yes! And settling on the bow tie! Yes! The only way that could have been better is if he ended up in a seersucker suit. (The boy-BFF from growing up wears seersucker suits and bow ties. And constantly makes me laugh at him for doing so. It's a thing.)

16. I was a bit worried about the Kiss-a-Gram reveal, because in nearly every interview I've read, Moffat has gender!failed hard, and I didn't want them playing up the sexy-sexy thing. But! They didn't! It ended up being funny with the old woman and the "I touught you were a nurse" "I can be" exchange.

17. One thing: Smith seemed a little too Tennant-y to me. I realize he's just changed over, but I don't remember Tennant being that much like Eccleston at the beginning (when I think of brand!new!Ten, I think of the Lion King speech. Which Nine would never have given). I really loved that Eccleston was so distinct and then Tennant was, and I hope Smith ends up taking this version of the Doctor in incredibly new directions. He's obviously a good actor, and I like him a lot: I'm just looking forward to seeing how he develops Eleven.

18. I am so going to end up writing my first not-a-drabble DW fic about Amy during those twelve years. I already know it.

19. It was such a Doctor-y thing to do to call the aliens back and get all up in their faces, even if I feel like it was kind of an excuse to scroll through the other Doctors.

20. Yes. I like this. I like it a lot. Yay!

Now if you want to link me to your response posts, I'd love to read them! *hint hint*

Comments

[ava-leigh-fitz.livejournal.com]

My response post is not heavy on the response bar general approval. And I'm going to go about this in reverse order!

It did feel a tad gratuitous but actually sort of laid the foundations for Eleven for me. I think he's going to be more confrontational than Ten but in a very nice, but hardline way if you know what I mean? I also think he's going to be off his nut. Which I look forward to.

I want this fic asap.

I think the reason Matt's a tad Tennanty is because the regeneration was very different. I can't speak for Classic Who but Matt regenerated into Tennant and kept running and so, I think there was a little bit of Tennant seeping through because it wasn't entirely out of his system? More over I actually think it's less to do with Matt himself and more that the writers are having to write for a new Doctor and they hadn't quite got that ironed out yet.

I was really worried about the short-skirted policewoman thing. But when she was revealed as a Kissogram it totally made sense. And usually, that would totally set my feminist alarm bells off but I felt that the reason she took the job is literally to pay the bills. I'm not entirely sold on Amy yet but she's sassy, she's confident ad most importantly, she's apparently very sexually confident which is nice to see in a young woman, because Rose, though I love her, was never really a sexual being, if that made sense? It was all romance. And Martha's fail was that she mooned like a 12 year old which was entirely unfair to what could've been an awesome, awesome character; whereas I think Amy, now as an adult, is part childhood worship and part 'Oh I fancy a bit of that'. I don't know, I saw it her job as less of a 'sexing up Doctor Who' move and more, 'this is a quick way to introduce Amy as being practical and confident'.

I loved that everyone knew about the Raggedy Doctor, I thought that was adorable.

I so called the wedding thing. I think it is hackneyed and silly but there's not much to be done about it at this point. I was hoping it wouldn't happen, but that seems to be the trait with the redheads.

I think the overly Caucasian was possibly part of it being set in a relatively rural, tiny village where there's been little influx of inhabitants over the years. From what I can tell, it shouldn't be that bad actually. I think there are a couple of POCs in The Beast Below from what I could tell of the trailer. But on that we'll have to wait and see. I'd like to believe in Moffat so giving him the benefit of the doubt.

I think the loser boyfriend was wonderful and sincerely hope he makes more of an appearance. Yeah it was a tad Mickey esque but I feel like the Doctor might like him? Idk. Again, hackneyed but nothing much to be done.

I so ship Amy/Eleven. Which I almost feel a little bit weird about but I sort of love it because I feel like, had Martha lived up to her fierce potential in early S3, we'd have this kind of dynamic. And I love this kind of dynamic.

See, I count Susan from Coupling as being quite well-rounded. By necessity everyone in that show is a stereotype but I loved Susan because she was confident, she was good at her job, she was sexually confident and devoid of embarrassment and generally a little bit awesome.

The Scotland-England thing was entirely badly explained. They were in England the whole time but he thought it was Scotland because she was Scottish. I think.

The plot was a bit fail but since it's primarily an establishing episode, I can deal.

LITTLE AMY WAS ADORABLE, I WANT HER BACK EXCEPT WE CAN'T BUT SHE'S ADORABLE. And they found out, at the first readthrough, that actually she and Karen are cousins. Which endlessly amused me.

I think it was shot in HD? It did look stunning. The director talked a lot during the Confidential and it's clear he paid attention to every single second so I'm really pleased. I mean it looked beautiful.

[anythingbutgrey.livejournal.com]

HI ISOBEL.

i love finding you random places on my flist. never leave me, bb.

oh i missed the race part of this post. bbc is usually BETTER about race than us tv is, but that is saying next to nothing. martha was awesome because, unlike with gwen on merlin, her status as a black woman was an explicit PART of her character but did not in any way hinder her character, and that was GOOD. i do dislike how gwen's blackness gets completely ignored, because i don't LIKE race blindness. SHE'S A PERSON OF COLOR AND SHOULD GET APPRECIATED AS SUCH GOD DAMN. even though gwen as a black person has never made sense ANYWAY but it was ballsy of bbc to do and i fucking love it. i just wish they carried it as well as they carried martha. because martha made passing reference to the fact that as a black woman the world judged her and then they made it explicit in human nature and it was beautiful and i love martha i wish they had treated her better.

/tangent.

[ava-leigh-fitz.livejournal.com]

hahahaha I've known Lauren since, forever. First LJer I ever met in real life in fact! ♥ you too.

That is the one thing they never fucked up with Martha which I have to say I do love. I mean, I have such issues with Martha (because a) Freema really wasn't the best actress back in the day and b) I was so looking forward to her being a no-nonsense, awesomesauce doctor who didn't fall for the Doctor's shit and was like fine 'don't want to shag me? I will find someone worthier of my time tyvm' but the show decided not to go there until like, the end of the series which frustrates me so much because GUYS SHE COULD'VE BEEN AWESOME AND YOU LEFT IT TOO LATE. See: Torchwood. She was excellent in that. /tangent) But they actually handled the race thing quite well. There's the slight issue of no-one making an issue of the fact that she was black when they saw Shakespeare but that was down to how much they wanted to make her the Dark Lady so, I sort of understand their ignorance of history there. But kjhsfhksdf Human Nature is fabulous, I love it so much.

Gwen on Merlin - I mean, colour-blind casting is all well and good and making a black Guinevere is huge and really interesting, as long as you actually do something with that. I love her principle, but her character is a huge example of showrunners doing a 'tell and not show'. Stop telling me she's good and wonderful and perfect ant show me that. OR, you could show her with the slightly confused morals and bordering on insanity that her current situation would undoubtedly leave her with. They do such a good job of making everyone else seriously questionable when it comes to their morals but somehow Gwen, who of them all in the myth has perhaps the most questionable morals (bar perhaps Morgana), comes out as some kind of paragon of virtue. Which again, I'd be okay with if I actually saw her being virtuous as opposed to being a servant girl that gets fallen in love with and falls over quite a bit.

SORRY I THINK THAT WAS ALL A MASSIVE RANTY TANGENT :(

[ineffort.livejournal.com]

had Martha lived up to her fierce potential in early S3, we'd have this kind of dynamic I always saw it as more the way they wrote Ten then to be more problematic than the way they wrote Martha. They deliberately made him hung up on Rose and whenever he felt at all close to Martha had him pull away and look all 0___o. Maybe I need to rewatch, but I didn't find Martha being taken with him the issue, more the fact that they kept pressing the ROSE/TEN TRUE LOVE FOREVER THING that made her interaction with him awkward. /comment crashing

[ava-leigh-fitz.livejournal.com]

Oh I agree that Ten was written in a very problematic way and to be honest, he was a complete arsehole when it came to actually appreciating Martha at all (the constant Rose comparisons irritated me endlessly because ok, I miss Billie Piper but ffs, Martha has her strengths if you'd let her play to them). That massively compounded the problem I think and that's not her fault. But as much as they dicked around with Ten, the writers were still stuck on 'all the girls love the Doctor' (thanks RTD) and Martha fell victim to that. I think the problem I had was that it was so passive and Martha, despite the occasional fail!acting, never seemed like a passive person to me. I actually would have had no problem if she had been overtly flirty, or made a move or made remarks, but there were a lot of pained looks and Martha being all sad and unrequited which I really didn't like.

And admittedly, I've not watched it recently so I could've built this up as being more prevalent than it was, but I do remember loads of little instances where he's rattling on and she's just looking at him like he's perfect and wonderful and all she could want when actually she's worth so much more than him and deserves better. I say that as someone who did like Ten but my god he was such a twat to Martha. I always felt that had Martha dealt with her feelings for the Doctor by episode 2, I would have enjoyed that season so much more. Eventually she did, she led the resistance, she left him, she got engaged (to TOM. BECAUSE I AM NOT OKAY WITH THE MICKEY THING) and generally did awesome. Which is why I much prefer the end of S3 when she's sort of got over it.

Does that make sense? I'm not sure it made sense. I need to rewatch S3. I need to rewatch a lot of things.

[ineffort.livejournal.com]

No, I totally agree with that. They should've killed the Rose/Martha comparisons in the first ep or two (or not have had them at all) and dealt with her crush on him earlier too. I actually would have had no problem if she had been overtly flirty, or made a move or made remarks I really wish she had and yes, it did seem odd that in that one respect that made her passive when her interaction with everyone else was anything, but.

MICKEY THING WILL NEVER MAKE SENSE. They don't know each other and bam they're married. The hell. And yes, DOCTOR TOM. I really really hate when shows drop things like that with zero explanation. Those two were perfect.

But no, I def agree that they should've had Martha react to him being an ass, which he was and not take it and let him know that. I was always half-expecting her to explode into a rant mid-episode and she never did.

Which is why whenever Donna let him have it I CHEERED.

OH DOCTOR WHO. I have too many feelings about you. And I know. Though really I should stop inhaling new shows left and right so I can do rewatches.