Doctor Who 4x11 "Turn Left"
Jun. 29th, 2008 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kerravonsenI am sorely tempted to sit down and make myself a new Donna icon, because I don't like the one I have. But that won't give me time to watch the next episode, so I'll just use my Donna + Doctor icon instead.
I'm impressed. RTD actually managed to write an episode with a good plot. Amazing.
Excuse me for burbling. I'm not really sure how to make this a coherent post.
I liked the plot because:
*Decision points, and all the things that came from it
*Sort of a recap of the last season, one thing after another
*Just when they thought it couldn't be worse, it got worse.
*One hero after another, Our Heros, sacrificing their lives to save the world, being the heroes that they were inside even without the Doctor there:
--Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith
--Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, Jack Harkness
The fact that the Doctor wasn't there... it was kind of the complete opposite to The Christmas Invasion, where everyone spent the whole time falling to pieces without the Doctor, weeping and moaning. No, here we had heroes anyway. Things were much much worse without him, yes, but Our Heroes weren't wimps.
*I liked the twist that the Adipose decided to set up in the USA; makes sense, considering that Britain was on hard times. Another example of "just when they thought it couldn't be worse, it got worse".
*Them making use of the TARDIS, but just rigging something together.
*The lack of the Doctor was a feature, not a bug. The best Doctorless episode ever.
Donna was rivetting. Not because she was the Super Temp, but because she wasn't. Trying so hard to ignore the strangeness, trying to ignore all the strangenesses around, probably because she really wanted to ignore her own strangeness most of all. Insisting that she was nothing special. And then, at the last, realizing that she really was going to have to die, to sacrifice herself; desperate heroism.
And the oh-so-creepy "There is something on your back!" So now we know what that was about. And very important it was.
I liked all the little bits of characterisation. The way Donna's mother became a shadow of her old self... and how she still considered Donna a dissappointment, after all that; suffering didn't give her empathy.
Donna's grandfather, trying to make the best of it, and then, when the Italian family was taken away, his horror. Didn't need to be spelled out, anybody who knew history would know what he was talking about. Oh, how far they had fallen.
I liked how Rose pointed out how similar she and Donna were in the thinking they were ordinary stakes, and then finding more in themselves due to the Doctor; "he changes things, he makes them better". Now that is how I like to see the power of the Doctor expressed, not in Fairy!Doctor or Flying!Jesus!Doctor. It's in changing people's lives that he is actually the most Christlike.
The creepy bug thing. "Part of the Trickster Brigade" the Doctor said. Interesting. This is the second monster we've come across that feeds on Time/changed history (the other being the Weeping Angels).
I suspect that people will complain about racism regarding the Italian family, but that was the point: it was supposed to be horrifying.
Questions, speculations...
I know I'm going to be watching the next ep, but I'd like to ponder before I find things out for sure. And I haven't seen the shorts for next episode either, I don't want to be spoiled.
1) What is the Darkness?
- accelerated entropy (ref Logopolis)
- an enemy, destroying the stars in its wake
- all the parallel universes collapsing; either fallout of the Time War, or fallout from Doomsday.
- the End of The Universe (year trillion whatever) is pouring into the past, a-la the Toclafane
2) What's with Rose appearing and dissappearing? I mean, she appears in a flash, okay, but she seems to fade out.
Is it a machine (Alt!Torchwood alien tech)? Or has Rose found in herself the ability to universe-hop? Some lingering trace of Bad Wolf?
3) Does Donna really warp probabilities? What did the Doctor mean about Donna in the Library? Did I miss something?
4) An increasing number of parallel universes?
5) Bad Wolf!
I guess we'll find out what that means sooner or later.
6) The TARDIS is not only ringing the cloister bell, but it's red inside, which harks back to the Paradox Machine.
Is the TARDIS broken? Is it causing paradoxes? Has the Master returned? (I don't think so, it would have leaked)
The TARDIS has been messed with twice in New Who: once when Rose opened the TARDIS and became the Bad Wolf, and second when the Master turned it into a Paradox Machine. Could the Bad Wolf reference have something to do with this? Are things leaking/broken/warped in the TARDIS?
Okay, now I've seen the shorts.
Daleks. (sigh) Why does it have to be Daleks? Oh well.
Companion super-fest! Yay! Except that there's so many people, I expect the plot will be rather incoherent.
I assume that the TARDIS is not broken because I assume that the Doctor and Donna manage to get back into the thick of things.
Let's see... maybe putting the Daleks into the Void wasn't such a good idea after all? They came out again? Or else it's the old "leave one Dalek alive and he'll build an army of billions" trick. I'm getting rather sick of this. Really.
And I still think Donna's going to die. She's proved she's got it in her to sacrifice herself; maybe "Turn Left" was a practice run. I won't be happy about that, not at all. 8-(
Now I'm going to read other people's reactions.
I'm impressed. RTD actually managed to write an episode with a good plot. Amazing.
Excuse me for burbling. I'm not really sure how to make this a coherent post.
I liked the plot because:
*Decision points, and all the things that came from it
*Sort of a recap of the last season, one thing after another
*Just when they thought it couldn't be worse, it got worse.
*One hero after another, Our Heros, sacrificing their lives to save the world, being the heroes that they were inside even without the Doctor there:
--Martha Jones, Sarah Jane Smith
--Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, Jack Harkness
The fact that the Doctor wasn't there... it was kind of the complete opposite to The Christmas Invasion, where everyone spent the whole time falling to pieces without the Doctor, weeping and moaning. No, here we had heroes anyway. Things were much much worse without him, yes, but Our Heroes weren't wimps.
*I liked the twist that the Adipose decided to set up in the USA; makes sense, considering that Britain was on hard times. Another example of "just when they thought it couldn't be worse, it got worse".
*Them making use of the TARDIS, but just rigging something together.
*The lack of the Doctor was a feature, not a bug. The best Doctorless episode ever.
Donna was rivetting. Not because she was the Super Temp, but because she wasn't. Trying so hard to ignore the strangeness, trying to ignore all the strangenesses around, probably because she really wanted to ignore her own strangeness most of all. Insisting that she was nothing special. And then, at the last, realizing that she really was going to have to die, to sacrifice herself; desperate heroism.
And the oh-so-creepy "There is something on your back!" So now we know what that was about. And very important it was.
I liked all the little bits of characterisation. The way Donna's mother became a shadow of her old self... and how she still considered Donna a dissappointment, after all that; suffering didn't give her empathy.
Donna's grandfather, trying to make the best of it, and then, when the Italian family was taken away, his horror. Didn't need to be spelled out, anybody who knew history would know what he was talking about. Oh, how far they had fallen.
I liked how Rose pointed out how similar she and Donna were in the thinking they were ordinary stakes, and then finding more in themselves due to the Doctor; "he changes things, he makes them better". Now that is how I like to see the power of the Doctor expressed, not in Fairy!Doctor or Flying!Jesus!Doctor. It's in changing people's lives that he is actually the most Christlike.
The creepy bug thing. "Part of the Trickster Brigade" the Doctor said. Interesting. This is the second monster we've come across that feeds on Time/changed history (the other being the Weeping Angels).
I suspect that people will complain about racism regarding the Italian family, but that was the point: it was supposed to be horrifying.
Questions, speculations...
I know I'm going to be watching the next ep, but I'd like to ponder before I find things out for sure. And I haven't seen the shorts for next episode either, I don't want to be spoiled.
1) What is the Darkness?
- accelerated entropy (ref Logopolis)
- an enemy, destroying the stars in its wake
- all the parallel universes collapsing; either fallout of the Time War, or fallout from Doomsday.
- the End of The Universe (year trillion whatever) is pouring into the past, a-la the Toclafane
2) What's with Rose appearing and dissappearing? I mean, she appears in a flash, okay, but she seems to fade out.
Is it a machine (Alt!Torchwood alien tech)? Or has Rose found in herself the ability to universe-hop? Some lingering trace of Bad Wolf?
3) Does Donna really warp probabilities? What did the Doctor mean about Donna in the Library? Did I miss something?
4) An increasing number of parallel universes?
5) Bad Wolf!
I guess we'll find out what that means sooner or later.
6) The TARDIS is not only ringing the cloister bell, but it's red inside, which harks back to the Paradox Machine.
Is the TARDIS broken? Is it causing paradoxes? Has the Master returned? (I don't think so, it would have leaked)
The TARDIS has been messed with twice in New Who: once when Rose opened the TARDIS and became the Bad Wolf, and second when the Master turned it into a Paradox Machine. Could the Bad Wolf reference have something to do with this? Are things leaking/broken/warped in the TARDIS?
Okay, now I've seen the shorts.
Daleks. (sigh) Why does it have to be Daleks? Oh well.
Companion super-fest! Yay! Except that there's so many people, I expect the plot will be rather incoherent.
I assume that the TARDIS is not broken because I assume that the Doctor and Donna manage to get back into the thick of things.
Let's see... maybe putting the Daleks into the Void wasn't such a good idea after all? They came out again? Or else it's the old "leave one Dalek alive and he'll build an army of billions" trick. I'm getting rather sick of this. Really.
And I still think Donna's going to die. She's proved she's got it in her to sacrifice herself; maybe "Turn Left" was a practice run. I won't be happy about that, not at all. 8-(
Now I'm going to read other people's reactions.
