Doctor Who season premiere/impressions
Oct. 9th, 2018 07:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
auronluOh FRICKING GODS I am so glad Moffatt stepped down before this Doctor Who season started. I'm just sorry Capaldi didn't have a chance with a new showrunner; he was a great Doctor but most of his scripts did him no favors. But then they couldn't have cleaned house. A reboot as drastic as 1970 was just what was needed. It wasn't perfect, but:
(Vague, slight spoilers but nothing in detail)
Anyway. I feel like THIS is the Doctor Who I wanted, and haven't really gotten except maybe a little bit with Nine. It's not perfect, but it's definitely doing what it should be doing and striving for the things it should strive for. The showrunner hasn't boasted about diversity or any of the stuff the show's doing, it just... gets on and does it (eg first new composer since reboot? happens to be first PoC composer for Doctor Who in 55 years. About flipping time.) And most of all? It's fun. BECAUSE OUR ENTERTAINMENT IS ALLOWED TO BE FUN.
And damn, this Doctor is flipping AdORABLE. 99% of the responses I've seen have been variations of I LOVE HER.
*SLIGHTLY SPOILERISH BUT NONSPECIFIC COMMENT:
2 PoC characters die, as do 2 white characters, because there is a nasty out there that the Doctor must stop. But it's a little different when there's multiple PoC characters in lead roles and multiple in secondary/minor speaking roles (both of those that died were developed characters, at least a little bit, with personalities and established relationships and sympathetic characters, even though one was a fairly minor walk-on; but there was enough detail that it wasn't just some anonymous victim of a story they weren't a part of and didn't have agency in. In fact, both deaths had agency and were not simply victims; they were doing a thing they needed to do, knowing they might die). I'm still side-eyeing one. But I gather this is a plot point and it's SF and that is going to be a recurring character, so we'll see how that goes.
(Vague, slight spoilers but nothing in detail)
- Kicking out the grimdark; it is possible to have angst and bad things happen without gritty dystopia. Bad things are balanced with some FUN and joy and sympathetic, decent-hearted characters.
- Doctor MacGuyvering her way out of EVERYTHING; she arrives on Earth with empty pockets, no TARDIS, no sonic screwdriver, and spends a significant chunk of the episode jury rigging solutions out of junk (I think she uses 3 different blowtorches and a soldering iron, over the course of the ep)
- Doctor intense, focused, and fearless, smart (she lands, sees some humans in mortal danger, saves their asses in about TWO SECONDS, then tries to figure out who she is and what's going on)
- Doctor figuring things out on the fly, gathering data, adjusting theory when first one doesn't pan out. "I have a plan" "Do you?" "I will by the time we get to the top of this." And then she does.
- Doctor caring about people and knowing how to Human. She's a little alien, but she's not tone-deaf clueless about people's feelings.
- Expecting much of the friends she makes while also protecting them.
- Never once confronts a threat by boasting about her reputation as the Doctor, she flipping DEALS with it.
- She is always the lead, but her companions are active characters with their own lives and stories, their own skills, their own agency, and they go off and tackle parts of the story too.
- Did I mention fearless? (Okay, as the Doctor says there's a little panic involved, but mostly fearless). There's a couple times where she behaves in ways no normal person would, charging at danger.
- Sass, humor, and frenetic energy is 500% the Doctor. Brilliant smile, trademark of more than half the Doctors, is back (along with their eccentric fashion sense)
- Group of companions like the 60s and early 80s to get rid of unhealthy Doctor/Companion dynamics of Moffatt era.
- Companions/regulars: Yasmin Khan, young black (Indian descent) woman who's a junior cop on the totem pole usually assigned to traffic violations; Ryan Sinclair, young black man with dyspraxia who's at home on social media and blogs; and his somewhat timid step-granddad Graham who fell in love with and married his chemo nurse and has been cancer-free 3 years (Graham tends to take a backseat to the two younger companions)
- It takes place in Sheffield, which means not much to Americans, but it's a workingclass city up north (a lot of British fans were complaining about the northern accents) which normally NEVER is shown on British TV? Not that they'll be staying in Sheffield the whole time; it'll just be a "home base".
- Minor characters tend to be just random workingclass people. Most of them likable, from the drunk tossing salad out of his kebab takeout to the old night shift security dude talking to his granddaughter on the phone.
- A reasonable looks-like-the-real-world number of PoC characters and/or women: often all the characters onscreen just happen to be PoC and/or women. And when the Doctor is the lead in a scene, she's almost always got Yasmin and Ryan backing her up as her friends/teammates. There, was that so flipping hard?*
Anyway. I feel like THIS is the Doctor Who I wanted, and haven't really gotten except maybe a little bit with Nine. It's not perfect, but it's definitely doing what it should be doing and striving for the things it should strive for. The showrunner hasn't boasted about diversity or any of the stuff the show's doing, it just... gets on and does it (eg first new composer since reboot? happens to be first PoC composer for Doctor Who in 55 years. About flipping time.) And most of all? It's fun. BECAUSE OUR ENTERTAINMENT IS ALLOWED TO BE FUN.
And damn, this Doctor is flipping AdORABLE. 99% of the responses I've seen have been variations of I LOVE HER.
*SLIGHTLY SPOILERISH BUT NONSPECIFIC COMMENT:
2 PoC characters die, as do 2 white characters, because there is a nasty out there that the Doctor must stop. But it's a little different when there's multiple PoC characters in lead roles and multiple in secondary/minor speaking roles (both of those that died were developed characters, at least a little bit, with personalities and established relationships and sympathetic characters, even though one was a fairly minor walk-on; but there was enough detail that it wasn't just some anonymous victim of a story they weren't a part of and didn't have agency in. In fact, both deaths had agency and were not simply victims; they were doing a thing they needed to do, knowing they might die). I'm still side-eyeing one. But I gather this is a plot point and it's SF and that is going to be a recurring character, so we'll see how that goes.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-10 02:58 pm (UTC)I tend to count this stuff as I go, and I'm pretty sure that it worked out almost exactly 50% white vs POC speaking characters through the entire thing. And almost exactly 50% women.
Also re: spoiler
I have a sneaking suspicion that they wrote themselves into a corner with Nan, because they had their perfectly balanced Tardis team and there is *no way* she'd have stayed home, or Graham would have gone off on his own in other circumstances, so they suddenly had to do something with her, despite it being a waste of her character in many ways. But also, they didn't just handwave their personalities away to make it work, they had to introduce a Real Plot Reason.
It also makes a very good plot hook for Time Stuff later, of course. If it was Moffat, I'd just assume they intended us to think that and then it would never be resolved :D
Plotwise it was definitely a bit shaky and the pacing was off, but the *characters* were all amazing and I'll watch almost anything if the characters are good. I also like how Ryan's dyspraxia is going to force Yasmin to be the physical action hero a lot (I'm sure he'll have his moments in which it's a Big Deal, but she's clearly going to be the one who will be expected to do that sort of thing). And you can see what their character arcs are probably going to be; Ryan will learn self confidence, Graham will learn How To Adventure, and Yasmin will get to not be bored and fulfill her potential.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-15 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-10-16 10:24 am (UTC)I think you will enjoy the latest episode. I will say nothing, except there's some queer content that's easy to miss if you tune out - a very brief mention of a woman's wife. And given it starts out feeling like there might be a forced heterosexual romance, it was a very nice moment. Also the careful gender balancing continues ;D
no subject
Date: 2018-10-17 08:33 am (UTC)And I did enjoy it.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-10 08:21 pm (UTC)