Re: The Idiotic Lantern (spoilers)

Uncle Mikey wrote:
First of all: to expect completely logical, sensible plots from /Doctor
Who/ is nonsense all by itself. It's not that the series is incapable
of it. It's just that it's never been what the series is about. If the
series, as a whole, can be said to be about anything, it's about taking
ordinary people, putting them into situations that are outside their
experience and often beyond their control, and watching how they react.
Those situations don't *have* to make complete sense, and very often
haven't, even if the Doctor's taken time to explain them (and sometimes
make MORE sense BEFORE the Doctor explains them, because sometimes the
explanations are just technobabble). The most important facility for
enjoying /Doctor Who/ is and always has been a disbelief that's easily
suspended.

I agree, to a point. That point comes when a fantasy idea is beached,
far away from the waters that could sustain it. This story used
realistic settings, attempts at genuine human psychological insights,
and a real event in recent history. You couldn't ask for a worse place
to drop your weirdy-beardy fantasy trip about faceless people! I love
THE MIND ROBBER, but as that story makers clear with its 'destruction
of the TARDIS' and 'we are nowhere' intro, context is all.

I can kind of understand the basic reason for the face-eating bit.
Someone (maybe Gatiss himself, maybe someone else) probably felt that
there needed to be some obvious, visible sign that someone's mind had
been sucked out and that they weren't just normally catatonic or
something. The Wire doesn't really eat faces; she eats minds. She's an
energy creature, so she consumes energy.

It's just not good enough to visualize a concept so wide of its
intended mark. Perhaps if the faceless people had only appeared
faceless to themselves when they looked in a mirror; or even to their
friends, whose minds were partly 'in synch' through familiarity
(suggesting a borderline psychic connection between close friends), it
could have worked. But the whole idea of the face as representing the
soul is silly, and actually quite offensive. Tell that to the Elephant
Man!

Then there's the Doctor. This week I finally have to admit that he can
get on my nerves.

I don't think there's ever been a version of the Doctor for whom this
isn't true. Most of them are really irritating people when you come
right down to it.

I disagree. They have irritating traits, occasionally (well, always, in
cases 6 & 7). But I've never thought of any of the first five as
"irritating people" per se.

the Doctor and Rose march in and begin their character assassination
with barely a hint as to his nature.

The Doctor's always had a nose for bullies, and loves to pull them
down.

But with virtually no real observation, and in front of theman's
family? Family dynamics are incredibly complex - how did the Doctor and
Rose know that to humiliate the man wouldn't anger or trauamatize the
son? It's not as simple as 'dishing out punishment for bullies' - the
family is complicated.

room for in the script. Another bad moment came when the Doctor
responded to Connelly's shouting with AN EVEN BIGGER SHOUT!

Tom Baker used to do this all the time. And he had a very penetrating
voice, so he was almost always the better shouter.

The only real throat-tearing shout I can rec al is in The Pirate
Planet. The rest come under the heading of 'raising your voice', IIRC.

accept such a suggestion, and by what right does Rose feel empowered to
make it?

Um...hello. Rose. Dead father. Except in the alternate universe, where
she did, in fact, go after her Dad. Didn't really turn out very well,
but it's still in her nature.

It's in her nature to interfere in other people's emotional family
lives when she has virtually no experience of them, and when she's
manifestly poor at managing her own emotional affairs? This does not
make me applaud her actions. The ending was simply a trite attempt to
end on a not-quite-so destructive note, after the Doctor and Rose had
basically helped destroy a family.


The Bronze

.

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