You're Napoleon Brandy...
Nov. 20th, 2007 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fajrdrakoOne of my favourite things is John Barrowman, and another favourite thing is the music of Cole Porter, so put them together and I'm very happy indeed. And I often listen to John Barrowman's CD of Cole Porter songs with joy and delight.
Maybe too much. For the past twenty-four hours I can't get MYou're the Top out of my head. It is, as the French would say, de trop.
At least I know now that I know all the lyrics.
Gotta find something to listen to that will put this out of my head....
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 04:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 01:48 pm (UTC)I can see the relationship between Santa Claus and Jack as being something like the relationship between the Ninth Doctor and Jack. Santa would pretend to be crusty but he'd still let Jack charm him. And Jack would be sweet.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 02:04 pm (UTC)I've been looking for a theme for a Christmas story. I might write that.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 02:08 pm (UTC)That'd be fantastic :D
.. Right. I'll go and work on my second random recap ramble and then post that now..
Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-21 04:14 pm (UTC)I love that scene - and that whole episode.
I'll go and work on my second random recap ramble
Good! Go for it!
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-21 04:24 pm (UTC)Posted the random recap ramble *bounces* that was a whole lot of work, I can tell you. Just over three thounsand words and.. Oh, I don't know, 70-something screencaps x_X
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-21 04:26 pm (UTC)Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-21 04:30 pm (UTC)Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-21 04:37 pm (UTC)But. That line about the red bicycle made me totally identify with and love Rose. When I was ten I had a bicycle, and used it all the time, and loved it - though I probably wouldn't have put it in those terms. But that bicycle gave me a freedom to get around that I'd never had before. I used it for years.
It was blue, not red.
But that line really made me relate to Rose, and enhanced Rose's reality for me. I could just see her at ten, exploring the world. And Jackie being pleased that she loved the bicycle, but worrying about her safety.
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-21 05:06 pm (UTC)I can't say I like her much. I haven't figured out yet why I don't like her as much as others do, but she just doesn't work well for me. Martha, on the other hand, I find absolutely awesome. And Donna again, Donna only annoyed me. I'm weird like that. One day, I'm actually going to sit down and figure out what makes me like a character and what makes me dislike a character. So far, I haven't been able to find any kind of system.
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-21 09:23 pm (UTC)I adore Martha, but so far I don't know what her story is. She herself is awesome. I'm hoping for a resolution to her story that I like. As it is, she's - open ended. I really look forward to seeing what she's like in Torchwood.
Donna annoyed me, too. I didn't hate her but when the Doctor invited her to join him in the TARDIS and she said "no", I thought, "Oh, thank goodness, I wouldn't want to have to put up with her for much longer." And now - groan! - she's coming back. I hope the scripts are good and that's she minimally irritating.
I'd love to know Martha in real life. I don't think I'd have anything to say to Rose or Donna - we don't have much in common.
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-22 02:46 pm (UTC)I'm very much looking forward to Martha in Torchwood and Season 4 of Doctor Who, too. She's absolutely awesome and I really like her. Can't wait to see more of her interaction with Jack, too :D
Yeah. I'm not looking foward to Donna, either. She was rather annoying, but apparently, a lot of people loved her. Sigh.
She's the kind of woman I'd want to get away from in real life. Rose, I don't know, 'cause I don't know her very well, but Martha would be absolutely awesome to know.
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-22 04:09 pm (UTC)Another thing I liked about Rose is that she loved Jack, too. Admittedly she forgot him pretty fast in season 2, but she had things on her mind.
She was rather annoying, but apparently, a lot of people loved her.
Not the people I know. Not even the British people! I guess Russell T. Davies loved her.
Now, she wasn't so annoying that I won't give her a chance. But there are dozens more peripheral characters on the show that I liked better than Donna.
I wish I did know Martha. She'd be wonderful to know personally.
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-22 04:26 pm (UTC)Okay. Well. The girl who got me into Doctor Who and Torchwood in the very first place absolutely loves Donna (I really don't get it) and finds her hilarious.
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-22 05:14 pm (UTC)Why should you? She's gone. Some fans loved her, some hated her, some (like me) didn't like her and were converted. Now you've got Martha so you can happily forget Rose!
I guess Donna has her fans. We'll see what they do with her. I hear so many fans hoping she'll put the Doctor in his place - I'm not hoping that, I just hope he'll sort himself out and she won't have to.
No, really, I'm just hoping for good stories and good scripts.
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-22 05:26 pm (UTC)Good stories and good scripts will make me a happy person, too. But, really. I'm rather easy to please.
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-22 06:21 pm (UTC)Whatever it is, Doctor Who and Torchwood are currently doing it for me - most of the time. And the times they don't? That's fun to poke at as a fan, to either complain or fix it as the spirit moves me.
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-23 02:19 pm (UTC)Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-23 05:01 pm (UTC)So every year I watch one or two shows, maybe two or there in a (rare) good year. And most stuff beyond that I have only seen once, or for a few minutes before turning it off in disinterest, or not at all.
I'm a bit of a television ignoramus.
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-23 05:07 pm (UTC)I actually have to be forced to sit down and watch a show or a movie unless I'm already obsessed with it...
But, still. A well written show will always appeal to me. You'll have to force me to sit down and watch it, but if it's well written I'll like it.
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-23 06:30 pm (UTC)And I don't even think Torchwood is as well written as I want it to be, though its concepts are great and it has attributes that compensate.
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-23 07:35 pm (UTC).. Maybe it's good writing in combination with characters I can obsess about. Though I'm still trying to figure out what makes me obsess over a character. There's no single matching criteria.
The more I re-watch Torchwood for my random recap rambles, the more I notice that it's not actually all that well written or at least that parts of the writing don't agree with me. Gwen, for example.
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-23 07:46 pm (UTC)I will tolerate things in Torchwood (and enjoy them) that would make me turn off another show.
I am certainly enjoying Heroes and Battlestar Galactica, both well written (on the whole) but don't feel the same passion to watch episodes more than once, or write about the characters, or to think, talk and anlyze them till any sane person would be overdosed.
So while there are things about Torchwood that I don't like - Abaddon, for example - and the way so many stories only occur because of criminal acts or absurd stupidity on the part of one of the Torchwood team - somehow this doesn't even affect my general delight in the show. My total lack of boredom. You'd think after almost a year of obsessing I'd be a little more casual about it, wouldn't you? But no.
It's similiar with my love of Doctor Who, though I don't love Ten as I loved Nine, and "The Last of the Time Lords" shook my faith to the core. (In an interesting sort of way.)
Re: Red bicycle...
Date: 2007-11-23 07:53 pm (UTC)Actually, I've been meaning to ask. What exactly was it that shocked you so much in that episode?
Re: Red bicycle... first wheel
Date: 2007-11-23 09:18 pm (UTC)I've been trying to analyze it, or to find a way to explain why it bothered me so much.
It has to do with my interpretation of the characters and what brought me into the show - which was primarily the relationships between the Doctor and his companions, and specifically between the Doctor and Jack: I loved the slash, but it went a little beyond that, to the live-journey Jack was undertaking, and the way he went from rootlessness to discipleship. I also loved the notion of the Doctor as champion of earth, crusty protector and lover of humans. I had a certain mindset of how I wanted the characters to be, how I wanted things to go.
"The Last of the Time Lords" shattered my hopes and illusions for these reasons:
- the Doctor did not love Jack, but treated him coldly. This was okay in "Utopia", I liked that a lot - I thought it was a story of the Doctor overcoming his prejudice. But at the end of TLOTTL I don't think that really happened - the situation between them was left ambigiuous, not resolved. I wanted to see a 'thank you' from the Doctor to Jack, or a sense that he understood or appreciated all Jack had done for him - dying on the Game Station, waiting/searching for him for 138 years, living for a year in bondage because the Doctor wanted to keep the Master alive.
I would have been happy with a smile or a hug or an assurance (however tenuous) that Jack still loved the Doctor. But the focus of the episode was entirely on the Doctor's love of the Master. He is indifferent (or callous) to Jack's repeated death and discomfort, but full of concern for the Professor's headache. He is distrustful and brusque with Jack. If Jack was returning to do his duty at the end (which I like a lot, just as I liked it at the end of "Captain Jack Harkness") I wanted a hint that it wasn't a casual choice, that he wasn't doing it because he was indifferent to the Doctor.
- I loved Martha, and wanted the Doctor to love her, too; in fact, I am convinced he did love her, but couldn't express it, or allow himself to acknowledge it, for various reasons, including his love of Rose and what happened to Rose. At the end, again, it was all about the Doctor's love of the Master, which didn't satisfy my sense of romance with regard to Martha and Jack. Instead, the Doctor talks about how he is eternally alone and has *no one* - with Jack and Martha standing right there.
- I wanted the Doctor to be protector of earth, but in TLOTTL he was the protector of the Master at Earth's expense. He set in motion a series of disasters for humans - the return of the Master to Earth (because he had the TARDIS), the subjugation of earth (because the Doctor wouldn't let Jack kill the Master), the creation of the Toclafane, the return of the Master to our time, the decimation of Earth, etc. - but the Doctor's level of responsibility was not addressed at all. And he didn't save the day: it was the faith of the people of Earth who saved the day, with Martha's heroic help. And the Doctor forgave the Master, which he had no right to do on behalf of Earth, however much he meant it personally. That the Doctor loved the Master, I can understand. But as a moral choice, to my eyes, he betrayed his friends and the people of Earth to a madman who was making them suffer.
to be continued...
Re: Red bicycle... second wheel
Date: 2007-11-23 09:18 pm (UTC)I could have rationalized all of the above, until the Doctor broke the Vortex Manipulator and trapped Jack on 21st century Earth, which he had no right to do - and the reason he gave implied insult and/or punishment when Jack had done so much for him, and heroically.
Bottom line: the Doctor fell from the pedestal I had him on, and failed to appreciate Jack or Martha. I like a dysfunctional hero, but I like a show to be clearly heroic, and the way the Doctor was venerated on the one hand, and equated with the Master on the other, discomforted me.
Basically, now, I can't reconcile my Jack/Doctor love with what happened in that episode, so I'm left with a paradox, an insoluble dilemma - which may be resolved in the show next season. I hope so. I'd be happy with very little. A smile and a hug would do it.
Meanwhile, I deal with it by separating Nine and Ten in my mind as separate entities. Nine was wonderful, dangerous, foolish and wise; he loved Jack and Rose. Ten is wonderful, dangerous, foolish, and random: his ability to love is broken.
Hmm. This was not brief. I hope it was coherent.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-23 09:29 pm (UTC)Only, I never saw the Doctor as the protector of the earth or anything. To me, he only ever was a character, loveable and crazy and alien and dark, all those things. Ten added dysfunctional to it in ways that Nine didn't, but that only adds to my love for him 'cause I like dysfunctional. I really do.
I think the difference is that I only very recently got into this fandom at all and I watched a large number of episodes in a very short period of time and only after I started designing a picture of the Doctor in my mind.
So the way I see the Doctor? Combines all these things and therefore, I don't have a problem to reconcile anything. His relationship with Jack is broken and dysfunctional, as is the Doctor in general. He's wonderful and foolish and funny, but he's also very, very broken.
.. Does that make sense?
I really need a Doctor!icon... >_> I need more icon space. Meh.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-23 11:12 pm (UTC)And yes, I'm trying to see it as broken but continuous.... So far I haven't put the picture together in a way that works for me, but I think it will come - depending what they so in season 4. Or, of course, beyond.
I know also that what I want to see (i.e., more relationshippy stuff between Jack and the Doctor and Martha and the Doctor) isn't necessarily what other fans want to see. Because I have a pash for the Doctor myself, I want to see it vicariously gratified through them. I want them to pander to my love of Jack/Doctor slashiness - functional, dysfunctional, or otherwise.
Doctor icons are wonderful things, but Jack icons are even better.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 05:12 pm (UTC)(John Barrowman inna vest. Cutest ever!)
no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 05:33 pm (UTC)Yes, I love the vest. I love the whole look he's put together.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 05:52 pm (UTC)There's something about the period look that suits him. He also wears sweater vests well, as evidenced by De-Lovely. Guh.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-20 06:11 pm (UTC)Alternately, it would be fun to see him in different eras, when he was still time-travelling.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-21 07:52 pm (UTC)