Doctor Who: Going back to "The Last of the Time Lords..."

[fajrdrako]

auriaephiala came over this evening and we watched three Doctor Who episodes she'd never seen before: "The Sound of Drums", "The Last of the Time Lords" and "Tooth and Claw".

Which means I got up the nerve up to see "The Last of the Time Lords" again, and it was easier on the nerves, and easier to watch, and more coherent, than it seemed the first time round. It was fun both times, but the first time round was a bizarre combination of pleasure and horror. Maybe it was because I'd been feeling unwell when I'd first watched it, or because I hadn't expected it to be as bizarre as it was, or maybe it was improved by knowing exactly what to expect. Maybe it was that I now know that Martha Jones will come back after the Christmas special and I know her story isn't over. I was certainly able to relax and enjoy Captain Jack more.

But the substitution of ancient/gnomish creatures for beautiful David Tennant? Nothing makes that okay! Nothing!

A few quick thoughts:

1. One of the things that bothered me the first time round was that the fate of the Master seemed paradoxical/contradictory to me. Initially, I was under the impression - from what fragments I knew, or thought I knew, of Doctor Who continuity - that the Master's bad attitude came from the fact that he was at his final regeneration and didn't want to die, so he wanted someone else's less-used-up body. So theoretically the Master would be on a final regeneration, right?

And then, first the Doctor says he wouldn't kill himself - okay, that fits what I knew - and it seems to be true because the Master surrenders to him. Then Lucy shoots him and the Master refuses to regenerate and I'm thinking WTF because this looks like suicide - which the Doctor said the Master wouldn't do - but it seems he will do it just to spike the Doctor, and that seems nicely in character too. And the Doctor might just have been wrong. Then we see the bit with the ring at the end, and I conclude he has somehow managed to regenerate into the ring without the Doctor's knowledge. And that fits too, because he said the Time Lords resurrected him - a resurrection isn't the same as a regeneration, even with Time Lord technology (or magic). So maybe he starts over will a dozen lives now stretching ahead of him.

Or maybe this is a retcon to show us that the number of regenerations a Time Lord can have is open-ended.

Or maybe there's just scads of background there that I know nothing about.

2. From everything I'd heard, the Master used to be scary. Here... I didn't find him scary at all. I found the situation he created to be scary, but that's different. He still reminded me of some of the Batman antagonists, but I find the Joker, for example, much more terrifying.

3. Though there isn't enough of it, I liked the interplay between Jack and the Doctor.

4. I tried to get a good look at Lucy's hands through the episode, and it was tricky, but she does seem to have bright red fingernails, so I return to my first impression that she is the one who has the ring.

5. I liked seeing Francine and Clive get together again, I really did. They had to go to hell and back to do it but it was cool.

6. beccaelizabeth and others were wondering about the logistics of the TARDIS and the Paradox Machine - how the Doctor could fix it when the Master couldn't, and so on. This time that didn't bother me at all: I am perfectly capable of believing that where his TARDIS is concerned, the Doctor can sabotage the the mechanism with a wave of the sonic screwdriver and a bit of psychic power, and then convert it back to itself from being a shot-to-bits Paradox Machine, because he is just that good. Really. And all that psychic power has to count for something.

7. I conclude now that when the Doctor told Jack and Martha that he had a plan, he also told him that it involved Jack living in chains and eating much for a year (with TLC from Tish), and Martha teleporting all over the world while the people of the Earth were being killed wholesale. And that they were okay with that because the Doctor said it was the right thing to do. Myself, I'd probably have gone back to Jack's original plan of 'break the Master's neck'. It would have prevented a lot of suffering, even if that suffering was sort of re-imagined out of existence in the end.

8. So... after the Paradox Machine was destroyed, the Paradox couldn't happen, and that year never happened even though the Doctor and Jack and the Jones family can remember it, so that means... what? That nobody went to Utopia a hundred trillion years from now? Or they went to Utopia and there was no Master to greet them so they all lived happily ever after and recreated the universe? or found a new one? or just died?

9. What happened to Leo Jones?

10. Didn't Jack say he was from a place called Boe Sheng? Or was I mishearing because that's the only name I know offhand that begins with "Bo"? Bo Sheng is a character in Karin Lowachee's novel Cagebird.

11. Russell T. Davies has no sense of restraint at all. After we watched it, auriaephiala said to me, "Aren't the British supposed to be reserved?" They claim to be, but, really, it's totally a lie. Totally.

12. Watching "Tooth and Claw" right after "The Sound of Drums" and "The Last of the Time Lords", the Doctor seemed very different, but I was having trouble pinning down what the differences were. Hair? That he is less manic, less frenetic? The humanizing influence of Rose? I'm still not sure. Big different, however elusive.

Comments

New DW Fic: Royal Blue: A Dark Fairytale

[raissad.livejournal.com]

After TLotTL, I got to thinking about Rose, Bad Wolf, and what certain S3 events would play out like in the Alt-Universe. So, I wrote Royal Blue (http://www.geocities.com/rdefc/misc/royal.html). I took elements from the Classic Who Ep., Planet of the Spiders, to beef up certain characterizations, as I had issues with how RTD wrote the Empress of the Racnoss and her backstory. Enjoy!

Re: New DW Fic: Royal Blue: A Dark Fairytale

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Of - good idea! I'll read this tonight.