Doctor Who: The Girl In The Fireplace

[kerravonsen]

Okay, so now I've seen it.

Good:
The hauntingness of an imaginary friend, a lifetime of popping in and out, the slow path, the quick path, the lonely angel.

Doctor: Even monsters have nightmares.
Rienette: What about?
Doctor: Me.
(I've heard that before, I think it was in one of the New Adventures novels)

Rose and Mickey wandering off when they'd been told not to, I mean, the way they did it.

The cool clockwork droids.

The angst of just missing her by five minutes and five years. But that does seem to happen to the Doctor a lot. And he should have realized that the time portals weren't stable, since it had happened like that before. Ah well. It's angst!

The twist of the reason why the clockwork droids picked Mme De Pompadour. The fact that it was all cold computer error, rather than malice.

Bad:

They can build time portals and they can't repair their own ship?
They can build parts out of human organs and they can't repair their own ship?
Well, I guess that's computer error for you.

Why clockwork? (Mind you, it was very cool clockwork.)

How did the horse get there? I mean, yes, it obviously came through a portal, but how? And how long had it been on the ship? It can't have been long.

The usual level of handwaving, but it was Sufficiently Advanced.

Did they alter history or didn't they? Mind you, if he'd managed to steal away Rienette as a travelling companion, he would surely have altered history.
And why Mme De Pompadour? (Why not?)

It had style. I can understand why some might have wanted it to be a two-parter, because the character development might have been a but rushed, but on the other hand, frenetic pace keeps up the urgency of the peril.

Comments

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Just watched it tonight!

And he should have realized that the time portals weren't stable, since it had happened like that before.

Yes! I was yelling at the screen when he did that. [sniff] It was so sad.

I loved that very last scene with the ship's name; it was also a nice explanation for why she was the one they listened to and obeyed up to a point. BTW I think she was called Reinette which means 'little queen'.

Why clockwork?

I think that was because they were fixated on her and her time, and they had very impressive clockwork mechanisms back then, so they considered it the correct and proper way.

All in all, that was an excellent ep and the best of this season so far.

[kerravonsen]

it was also a nice explanation for why she was the one they listened to and obeyed up to a point

Well, I got the impression that it was also because, since they were planning on making her brain the ship's brain, they'd already tuned themselves to obey her.

and they had very impressive clockwork mechanisms back then

Yes, that would be a way of not being anachronistic.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I loved it when she picked up on the Doctor's lonliness.

[kerravonsen]

They seem to be pushing that theme: "the lonely god" in "New Earth", the loneliness of a (near) imortal last week, and this week "the lonely angel".

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I watched it a second time specifically hoping to work out about the horse, but it wasn't really explained. He met it near the portal to the garden, so presumably it had come in that way, but why would an unattended horse have been wandering round an formal garden? Maybe, just possibly, a horse with a rider, and the robots had already cannibalised the rider but didn't think the horse's organs were compatible?

Another thing that puzzled me was that the one time there didn't seem to be a significant time gap when the same portal was used a few minutes apart was when Reinette came through to the ship and then returned to Versailles. OK, we didn't actually see her return, and maybe Louis XV was standing there gasping "Where have you been?" Or maybe the fact that she was Mme de P made the portal stable.

And if the fireplace portal went offline when she moved it, how could they hear her calling for help through it?

I loved the robots, both the clockwork and the grinning masks, but the Doctor did seem right about them being thick. They evidently had some knowledge of Mme de Pompadour's dates to have picked the right century (and locations), so you'd have thought there were simpler ways than brain-scanning to establish that a seven-year-old child in the 1720s probably wasn't the 37-year-old from the 1750s they wanted.

[kerravonsen]

so you'd have thought there were simpler ways than brain-scanning to establish that a seven-year-old child in the 1720s probably wasn't the 37-year-old from the 1750s they wanted.

(handwave) computer error (handwave)

[kerravonsen]

And if the fireplace portal went offline when she moved it, how could they hear her calling for help through it?

Good point.

[kerravonsen]

It occurs to me that it can be explained by the Doctor's remark: "faulty circuit". If the fault was an intermittent fault (as these things can often be) then it could have been that it was online when she called, and then went offline.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

The twist of the reason why the clockwork droids picked Mme De Pompadour. The fact that it was all cold computer error, rather than malice.

Which seems to be becoming a pattern with Stephen Moffat episodes, since the same was true of The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.

This was a marvellous episode. I am now hopelessly in love with Sophia Myles, made even more hopeless by my learning today that she and David Tennant are apparently currently an item (no wonder the snog was so convincing!).

[reveilles.livejournal.com]

"I snogged Madame de Pompadour!" was priceless. :)

Yes, knowing they were an item certainly made their interactions a lot more satisfying.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

"Snog" was certainly the word for it. Calling it a kiss wouldn't have done it justice.

[reveilles.livejournal.com]

"a kiss" just sounds too refined, too chaste. We needed something lower-brow than that.

Loved how she backed him up against the wall. :)

[kerravonsen]

*snerk*

[kerravonsen]

Oooh, a bit like Four/Romana, then.