Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2011-08-18 04:04 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2011-08-18 04:04 pm
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Happy flailing about a Ten/Rose episode, what is wrong with me.
Back from New York! And doing some more scattered out-of-order Who rewatches. Up recently: Aliens of London/World War Three (which I had not seen before, somehow, and eeeee Harriet Jones be my BFF and also character development for Mickey and Jackie and I wish RTD had built off of Nine and Mickey's awkward-dudebro-bonding moment at the end instead of falling back on "Mickey the idiot" and all the quasi-facetious trashtalking and--yeah). And then Impossible Planet/Satan Pit.
I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT THOSE EPISODES. SO MANY FEELINGS. I DID NOT KNOW I HAD ALL THESE FEELINGS. They were, IIRC, the first ones I watched on my own after the weekly group Who-watching nights disintegrated, and at the time I was too caught up in frantic new-fandom fangirling to pick these out specifically, but in retrospect I am pretty sure they precipitated my headlong slide into watching three and a half seasons in two weeks. It is weird that a two-parter where half the cast dies gruesomely at the hands of a dodgy Satan monster should make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but it sums up so much of what I love about this show. Exploration, and belief, and there being more things in heaven and earth, and people--plain old human beings at their worst, at their best, people fucking up, people trying to put things right, people clinging to whatever gives the universe meaning for them. In this case, people at their best. Fallible, terrified humans pulling themselves together in the face of the unknown to become heroes, taking that leap just because it was there, using the last of their oxygen to say oh, I'm going to die down here, but if you could only see what I've found and how beautiful it is. And Ten and Rose, who all too often turn into adolescent brats as a team--here we see them making each other better people. And the sudden reappearance of the TARDIS has shades of Tolkien's eucatastrophe, the eleventh-hour act of grace that turns the tables just when it looks like everyone's about to die, without ever turning into a cheap deus-ex-machina trick because the characters are the ones who did all the legwork.
And mushy capital-R-Romantic stuff aside, they are just such great episodes. Okay, I still think the Satan monster is a bit dodgy, mostly because it's far too closely modeled on a very specific European concept of the devil, but this time around I'm willing to accept the "whatever it is, it's probably the origin of devil myths across the cosmos" handwaving. But I love the whole idea of the planet in impossible orbit around the black hole, I love the balance struck between explanation and leaving some things a mystery, I love how many plot and thematic and character-development threads are woven together at the same time and how none of them get dropped or mangled. I love the design, I love the gritty-future aspect, I love the soundtrack, I love the tone struck throughout, and on top of all that I am just a sucker for base-under-siege episodes. Can we please get Matt Jones to write more Who? Pleeeease? Impossible Planet/Satan Pit might now be among my favorite DW eps ever--they're certainly among the few saving graces of season 2. And IMO both Rusty and Moffat could take lessons from them in starting with an incredibly ambitious concept and then doing it full justice.
(Re: subject line: I love Rose and I love Ten's stupid face and I am not a huge fan of character- or ship-bashing and I do ship it, in a way, but that way is very very different from RTD's, and I have so many problems with how Ten/Rose played out in canon.)
I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT THOSE EPISODES. SO MANY FEELINGS. I DID NOT KNOW I HAD ALL THESE FEELINGS. They were, IIRC, the first ones I watched on my own after the weekly group Who-watching nights disintegrated, and at the time I was too caught up in frantic new-fandom fangirling to pick these out specifically, but in retrospect I am pretty sure they precipitated my headlong slide into watching three and a half seasons in two weeks. It is weird that a two-parter where half the cast dies gruesomely at the hands of a dodgy Satan monster should make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but it sums up so much of what I love about this show. Exploration, and belief, and there being more things in heaven and earth, and people--plain old human beings at their worst, at their best, people fucking up, people trying to put things right, people clinging to whatever gives the universe meaning for them. In this case, people at their best. Fallible, terrified humans pulling themselves together in the face of the unknown to become heroes, taking that leap just because it was there, using the last of their oxygen to say oh, I'm going to die down here, but if you could only see what I've found and how beautiful it is. And Ten and Rose, who all too often turn into adolescent brats as a team--here we see them making each other better people. And the sudden reappearance of the TARDIS has shades of Tolkien's eucatastrophe, the eleventh-hour act of grace that turns the tables just when it looks like everyone's about to die, without ever turning into a cheap deus-ex-machina trick because the characters are the ones who did all the legwork.
And mushy capital-R-Romantic stuff aside, they are just such great episodes. Okay, I still think the Satan monster is a bit dodgy, mostly because it's far too closely modeled on a very specific European concept of the devil, but this time around I'm willing to accept the "whatever it is, it's probably the origin of devil myths across the cosmos" handwaving. But I love the whole idea of the planet in impossible orbit around the black hole, I love the balance struck between explanation and leaving some things a mystery, I love how many plot and thematic and character-development threads are woven together at the same time and how none of them get dropped or mangled. I love the design, I love the gritty-future aspect, I love the soundtrack, I love the tone struck throughout, and on top of all that I am just a sucker for base-under-siege episodes. Can we please get Matt Jones to write more Who? Pleeeease? Impossible Planet/Satan Pit might now be among my favorite DW eps ever--they're certainly among the few saving graces of season 2. And IMO both Rusty and Moffat could take lessons from them in starting with an incredibly ambitious concept and then doing it full justice.
(Re: subject line: I love Rose and I love Ten's stupid face and I am not a huge fan of character- or ship-bashing and I do ship it, in a way, but that way is very very different from RTD's, and I have so many problems with how Ten/Rose played out in canon.)
Re: moar essay!
Which could be awesome to play with, except it played out in the episode like some sort of creepy reward for Rose's loyalty or something, and that won't attract the right sort of people to play with it.
Plus bringing Rose back in felt like a sop to fanbrats. I kept screaming at the tv, "Billie Piper quit! Deal with it, people!"
Rose/Ten, and especially the way she kept trying to get back to him rather than figure out her life in the alternate universe, made perfect sense. Ten/Rose, however, never actually got supported. So 10.5 was not really gonna be all that much more helpful, actually. I sort of wonder if he's just an animate body pillow - the inanimate version would serve her just as well, I suspect. He'll inevitably be disappointing because there is no TARDIS, there are no adventures, and that's what Rose desperately wants (the sex was supposed to be a side dish to the adventure, not the main course).
Which is what brings us back around to Jackie/Alt!Pete. These aren't the people they married, but they're similar, and those similarities are what are going to be both most comforting and most maddening. And that'll be Rose's issue - he has the personality and the memories, but there's a whole gap of time they were apart, in which awesome stuff happened that she wasn't part of, and the future isn't going to be at all what she predicted/wanted out of the relationship. And it may be easier for Jackie and Pete, who in both timelines have the similar history and acknowledge that they aren't the same people as their previous spouses. 10.5 is supposedly 10, but this'll prove whether Rose was in love with the Doctor or the Time Lord. (and if 10.5 really is Ten in memories, feelings, etc., he has the same feelings for Rose and would have come up with the same idea, since he is Ten and would likely have the same thought processes, so I'm not sure there's a lack of consent there. Or more specifically, I'm not sure his consent needs to be voiced - I don't think that was the creepy aspect about it. He isn't a stranger in the image of Ten. I think it was lazy plotting and fucking stupid writing for him to exist, but I don't think he's getting sold by Ten as a Doctor-shaped sex slave to Rose.)