Upon Completing Three Seasons of Doctor Who: Raw Impressions

I actually liked the show. Which surprised the Hell out of me, really, as 99% of the time I'd really like to see something new rather than see something old rehashed. Overall, I think SF fandom spends too much time resurrecting and fawning over its old favorites and turning to comfort food (Star Trek, I'm looking at you) rather than creating the new, new voices and images and stories to fit a changing world (thinking of Cowboy Bebop, especially, with its funny / action packed / sad / poignant / human-centric stories, which Firefly touched on a few years later). Even if the building blocks are familiar, it seems important that they be combined in interesting, new ways to open up new panoramas of vision, scope, focus, even beauty. Seems to me that's what SF is about.

(And here's where some smartass comments on my love of classic works of the genre. Those works did what they did first--note the use of the word "resurrection" above.)

But back to Doctor Who. It's pulpy and fun, and doesn't take itself very seriously despite the fact that it takes some of its underlying themes and philosophy rather seriously. It's reminiscent of my favorite kinds of fiction in having such a BIG playground and toolbox that just about anything and everything can happen. (As opposed to the all-too-often train wrecks where anything and everything does happen.)

Christopher Eccleston is impressive, both in his intensity and his childlike delight. About the only time he failed to impress was, and this is memorable, every time he'd go on about being the last of the Time Lords. And really, that's just bad scripting--show, don't tell, people. You could almost read the script in those scenes, as if it was projected onto the screen like subtitles:

DOCTOR: (with a vaguely distant and hollow, shellshocked look) I'M THE LAST OF THE TIME LORDS. THE REST ARE ALL GONE, LOST TO THE LAST TIME WAR.

Every. Blanking. Episode. Yes. We get it.

In contrast, in scenes where Eccleston has to communicate everything merely by his expressions, like his feelings for Rose, he's unbelievably effective. Likewise, when he's allowed to rant and vent his anger and rage.

David Tennant can really chew the scenery, but he does so in such a whimsically entertaining and delightful fashion that you cannot help but giggle right along with him. He's having so much damn fun that it's infectious--you have to play along with him. It's imperative.

Rose was such a good companion. Really. She had balls and spirit and chutzpah, even in the earliest episodes. I really miss her.

Martha Jones is such a BAD companion. Really. She whines and moons over the Doctor incessantly, playing like some incompetent Mary Sue* who's only purpose in the script is to serve as the writer's stand-in for mooning over the Doctor. The character lacks (or, at best, merely badly mimicks) Rose's best qualities. Worse, the character, and thus clearly the writer, is actually conscious of this fact, drowning the audience in annoying rather than simply giving the character some purpose and personality. While I'd hoped that Martha would be enveloped in a fiery ball of sudden good sense, alas, a brief Internet search revealed that she's slated to appear in the fourth season. Such is life.

The third season episode Blink is genuinely one of the most effectively creepiest, scariest shows ever made. Ever. If it didn't win every major award it was eligible for, it was robbed. "The angels have the phone box," indeed.

Doctor Who does not so much solve mysteries, as pull the answers out of his ass. When the show and character were initially described to me, it seemed that the Doctor spent a lot of his time solving mysteries. It even appears to be the case on the show. However, the show doesn't feature solving mysteries so much as an illusion of mystery, in which the solutions could only have been figured out by the vast knowledge available to a Time Lord, and are thus pulled out of thin air with a flourish of eureka and pseudoscience. Still, the illusion is entertaining enough that I don't mind.

Doctor Who is not humanist. At least, it doesn't appear so to me. Granted, the Doctor (and the scriptwriters) seem fascinated with the spirit, courage, beauty, endurance, ingenuity, blah blah blah etc., of humanity. The Doctor says so every episode. But it seems to me that, inherent in the definition of humanism is humanity's ability to save itself and figure out its own problems.

In contrast, Doctor Who features a humanity and universe that would be utterly lost without an immortal, seemingly all-knowing being, a being who stands outside of space and time and uses technology so advanced its indistinguishable from magic, constantly saving us, or at least giving us detailed instructions on how to help him save us.

Thus: The Doctor is God, and the Companion is his prophet.

*blinks*

I am going to have a T-shirt made with that.

The Lesson of the Day: If you can't sleep, blog.


*Yes, I do realize that Mary Sues are typically ultra-competent stand-ins for the writers. It still fits.