Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2011-09-23 09:51 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2011-09-23 09:51 pm
Entry tags:
Rambliiiing and meta outbursts.
Okay, so. I guess sleep deprivation was just making me anxious and unstable. Because while I'm still going through the new-hire dance of "how quickly should I be picking this stuff up? how often should I be checking in with the guy training me? am I coming off as high-maintenance or as overly prone to slinking off into the corner and doing my own thing when I should be seeking guidance?" it is not actually that bad, and I am doing real work on a real project (data-processing wizardry for the DHS Côte d'Ivoire survey) and thus not feeling like a useless tool. Also, have totally seen the occasional person come in to work in a flowery shirt and blue jeans--nice jeans, but still jeans--so I figure that even if Crayola hair and tattered black lace are out of the question I can CorpGoth it up a little bit. Waistcoats and jewel-toned blouses and pocketwatches, here I come.
Still prone to random short-lived outbursts of meta or general enthusiasm, but it might just be all of my geekish energy getting bunched up in the evenings instead of spread throughout the day. I apparently do not have the dedication to do a full review of The God Complex, but I will say that my bitter disappointment about what happened to Rita was not enough to keep me from loving this episode. It did so many things right, tugged so many dark undercurrents out into the light and called them on what they were, played along with tropes just long enough to turn them on their heads, and refused to victim-blame. With the caveat that it always sucks to see more minority characters kicking the bucket by the time the end credits roll and this is a pattern that writers should be more aware of so they can stop fucking contributing to it, Rita's death didn't push my rage buttons, just my bitter-disappointment "goddammit, she was AWESOME" buttons. Because this was an episode full of bad shit happening, not just unpleasant things happening to the characters on the screen, but sketchy and unpleasant narrative threads getting played straight long enough to be subverted or criticized. And one of those threads was the Doctor's little fridging problem and how it plays into his hero complex. Not only does Toby Whithouse seem to be aware of that, he has Rita call Eleven the fuck out on it, and then when she does die she refuses to let it be a fridging--she flat-out tells him she's taking what control of the situation she can, he is not responsible for her, he is not responsible for saving her, under no circumstances is he to feel guilty, and please turn the TV off if you don't mind because I don't want you to remember me as a victim. And frankly, that scene was beautiful: her strength and dignity in opting out of the Doctor's hero narrative intertwined with the beautiful treatment of her faith and how it helped her maintain her strength and dignity; the way her criticism and her actions were the turning point in subverting the hero narrative right at the same moment as the same scene reversed the fear-and-faith assumption; the reveal that faith was what fed the monster coming from a scene that demonstrated the power of faith at its best. It would've been so easy to go "don't fix your belief too hard on anything, kiddos, or you're monster food!" but no. Rita didn't die because she was religious. She died because she was trapped in the fucking alien Hotel California with a predator that happened to feed on something she had a lot of. I wanted her to fucking live and be the next companion, but I gotta say, what a way to go.
...also I just love this episode because it makes the rest of the season so much richer and makes me want to go hunting for meta material in previous episodes, and also calms some of my lingering doubts. Mostly about whether Moffat & Co were aware of what they were writing--I am fully A-OK and on board with disturbing implications and tragic flaws as long as they're being written as such, and come on, those of us who take sadistic glee in schadenfreude and days of reckoning haven't had this much satisfaction since Waters of Mars. And since I trust Moffat not to drop narrative threads much more than I'd ever trust RTD, there is a good chance we will finally get closure on things that have been left hanging since WoM. Maybe not in the exact same way any of us thought (I have been 100% convinced that Moffat was setting Eleven up for a fall since, uh, the season opener? but God Complex did not call him out on exactly the things I expected even if the themes were similar), but closure all the same.
What I don't have, at this point, are any expectations that the plot will make a lick of goddamn sense. Moffat will probably lead us to a rousing finale, and will mash all his foreshadowing together in a way that does more-or-less lead us there, but examine the intricate latticework of showy plot twists too closely and you will discover that it's mostly held together with handwaving, duct tape, and the goodwill of the audience. I figure that as long as you assume from the get-go that you're not getting a perfectly-fitted puzzle-box plot like Blink, you're getting something that was fueled by equal parts amphetamines and acid and should probably be enjoyed in similar fashion, there won't be too much disappointment.
Still prone to random short-lived outbursts of meta or general enthusiasm, but it might just be all of my geekish energy getting bunched up in the evenings instead of spread throughout the day. I apparently do not have the dedication to do a full review of The God Complex, but I will say that my bitter disappointment about what happened to Rita was not enough to keep me from loving this episode. It did so many things right, tugged so many dark undercurrents out into the light and called them on what they were, played along with tropes just long enough to turn them on their heads, and refused to victim-blame. With the caveat that it always sucks to see more minority characters kicking the bucket by the time the end credits roll and this is a pattern that writers should be more aware of so they can stop fucking contributing to it, Rita's death didn't push my rage buttons, just my bitter-disappointment "goddammit, she was AWESOME" buttons. Because this was an episode full of bad shit happening, not just unpleasant things happening to the characters on the screen, but sketchy and unpleasant narrative threads getting played straight long enough to be subverted or criticized. And one of those threads was the Doctor's little fridging problem and how it plays into his hero complex. Not only does Toby Whithouse seem to be aware of that, he has Rita call Eleven the fuck out on it, and then when she does die she refuses to let it be a fridging--she flat-out tells him she's taking what control of the situation she can, he is not responsible for her, he is not responsible for saving her, under no circumstances is he to feel guilty, and please turn the TV off if you don't mind because I don't want you to remember me as a victim. And frankly, that scene was beautiful: her strength and dignity in opting out of the Doctor's hero narrative intertwined with the beautiful treatment of her faith and how it helped her maintain her strength and dignity; the way her criticism and her actions were the turning point in subverting the hero narrative right at the same moment as the same scene reversed the fear-and-faith assumption; the reveal that faith was what fed the monster coming from a scene that demonstrated the power of faith at its best. It would've been so easy to go "don't fix your belief too hard on anything, kiddos, or you're monster food!" but no. Rita didn't die because she was religious. She died because she was trapped in the fucking alien Hotel California with a predator that happened to feed on something she had a lot of. I wanted her to fucking live and be the next companion, but I gotta say, what a way to go.
...also I just love this episode because it makes the rest of the season so much richer and makes me want to go hunting for meta material in previous episodes, and also calms some of my lingering doubts. Mostly about whether Moffat & Co were aware of what they were writing--I am fully A-OK and on board with disturbing implications and tragic flaws as long as they're being written as such, and come on, those of us who take sadistic glee in schadenfreude and days of reckoning haven't had this much satisfaction since Waters of Mars. And since I trust Moffat not to drop narrative threads much more than I'd ever trust RTD, there is a good chance we will finally get closure on things that have been left hanging since WoM. Maybe not in the exact same way any of us thought (I have been 100% convinced that Moffat was setting Eleven up for a fall since, uh, the season opener? but God Complex did not call him out on exactly the things I expected even if the themes were similar), but closure all the same.
What I don't have, at this point, are any expectations that the plot will make a lick of goddamn sense. Moffat will probably lead us to a rousing finale, and will mash all his foreshadowing together in a way that does more-or-less lead us there, but examine the intricate latticework of showy plot twists too closely and you will discover that it's mostly held together with handwaving, duct tape, and the goodwill of the audience. I figure that as long as you assume from the get-go that you're not getting a perfectly-fitted puzzle-box plot like Blink, you're getting something that was fueled by equal parts amphetamines and acid and should probably be enjoyed in similar fashion, there won't be too much disappointment.
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I want to get this fucking FRAMED. Also, I approve of this post generally but am too tipsy and tired to make actual coherent responses.
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...it should've happened, dammit.
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In any event: this. All of this. Including the waistcoats. But especially faith was what fed the monster coming from a scene that demonstrated the power of faith at its best. Yes yes yes.
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Ohhhh, that scene. In an episode that was so much about destroying Amy's blind faith in the Doctor and probing his need for people to believe in him, it would've been so easy to be heavy-handed. Instead faith is what you make of it: blind or well-considered, misplaced or mysterious, overruling rational thought for the nerdy guy but helping Rita stay calm and rational under stress. This episode needs to sit down for tea with Impossible Planet/Satan Pit and chat about belief while Russell T Davies sits in the corner and fucking listens and takes notes.
(edited because goddammit, they had to have one episode called Impossible Planet and one called Impossible Astronaut and confuse us all.)
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