Last week's Dr`Who

[green_amber]

Late but.. wow.

That short section where they narrate the fates of the Family.. wow. Better than Gaiman. Was that straight from the novel? And the last scene.. I'm not much for glorification of war.. but. A wonderful sense of fatedness - or is it defiance of fate?.
This was really very very good. Yay to Paul C for the first really good episodes this season. Small sob.

Comments

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

If you stop and think about it, however, Latimer could not have known to dive to the right at one minute to seven pm because the Doctor was not present in the trenches with him. Ergo, the watch would have had no memory of the event, either.

But you intrigue me with your reference to Gaiman. Is the Family lifted from one of his fictions (prose or graphic)?

And two further questions, about what we saw rather than any connection to Gaiman: did I blink, or was the father really dropped into a cell in the basement of the Tardis? (Scope there for a follow-up story when he breaks loose, obviously!) And can you remind me of the daughter's fate? I find that I've quite forgotten it.

But oh yes. The last few seconds at the memorial service for the fallen were very fine. A slight moistness of the eyes there, if I dare admit to such a thing....

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

No it wasn't that I was implying any connection with Gaiman as usch, but there was a narrativity, a sense of written sagas about the abbreviated account of the fates of the Family that did remind me of gaiman (who is just the foremost current genre writer who adopts this style, of course.) It goes back to Treece and Renault and Garner, and the Greeks and the Norse and the Bible.

The daughter was trapped in every mirror, everywhere. Whenever you ctach sight of someone in a mirror.. it's her. Wonderful.

And yes the meorial service. they will never age, except they do , if they lived - and the Doctor doesn't. But they had love and life and children, and he doesn't. Very moist (and again reminiscent of the bargains offered by the Ggds).

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

ps I thought the implication of the Latimer trenches scene was not that the Doctor's powers remained with the watch, but that Latimer's own psychic powers would keep him safe and the watch was just a lucky totem.

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

I came out of the first of this two-part episode thinking that Latimer would be joining the Doctor in the Tardis. How else to put his intuitions to use? But what was left unexamined, of course, was what he really felt on being left behind -- if I'd been in his position, I'd know, having had a glimpse of what the Doctor had been through, that I'd want to join him in the Tardis. Instead, we got Latimer first dismissing the Doctor altogether ("You're as bad as them") before repenting and seeking him out so that he could hand back the watch. Very inconsistent.

(Yes, I am pedantic and logical about things like plausibility and continuity. How did you guess? ;-))

And thanks for (a) the expansion of your reference to Gaiman (the sense of immense sagas which extend far beyond our species history -- yes yes yes!) and (b) reminding me of the daughter's fate. How could I have forgotten -- I have mental recall of those clips right now....

(I do agree that these two episodes were far and away the best of this series. So far. Four more to go, of course!)

[bellinghwoman.livejournal.com]

I'mn not much for glorification of war.. but. A wonderful sense of fatedness - or is it defiance of fate?

In the book, Latimer is a conciencious objector, who joins the Red Cross, which is how come he ends up at the front as an ambulanceman rather than a soldier. At the memorial service the poppy he is wearing is white.

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

There's a book? Can you elaborate for those of who don't read Dr Who novelisations? (Unless this is a Doctorisation of another novel about someone else entirely, in which case I want even more elaborations!!)

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

The two-parter was based on Paul Cornell's earlier Seventh Doctor novel Human Nature, which the BBC has kindly put online for everyone to read.

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

Muy gracias!

[bellinghwoman.livejournal.com]

Complete with lots of notes from Paul Cornell, including how he adapted the story for tv.

[bellinghwoman.livejournal.com]

That short section where they narrate the fates of the Family...[...] Was that straight from the novel?

Absolutely nothing like the novel - which was one of the significant changes that was made.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

In that case I am ever more impressed - it has such a *literary* quality about it..

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Wow! Someone with exactly the same reaction to those two scenes as me. In fact, I rate the "fate of the family" sequence as one of the most well, mythic (which relates to your Gaiman reference, of course), of any I have seen in TV SF (which includes watching Who since An Unearthly Child. The last scene made me cry, which is also a first for Who.

That does not mean the two episode sequence was perfect, but I will forgive it the unscary scarecrows, the lapses in pacing and logic, and the occasional mawkishness for those scenes. By far the best of this season.