Doctor Who

[lilacsigil]

First, They Might Be Giants!

They call him Doctor Hand!
He's not a real Doctor,
But he is a real hand.
He is an actual hand!

That was extremely disappointing, and I'm glad to see RTD leave. He's obviously run out of creative directions in which to take the show and is entirely wrapped up in making the characters give metacommentary, to the exclusion of plot. That's one of the things that I want to see in fanfic. Creating canon is not the same as fanfic - if I want speculation on what the Doctor has done to his Companions, I want to see that from the fandom (or in interviews), not declared at top volume in the episode itself, by Davros. It was completely unconvincing, and yet it was one of the few moments of the episode that actually moved forward. Actually, this was one of my problems with later seasons of Buffy - Joss couldn't let the metaphors and meanings grow from the plot and characters anymore, but forced meaning onto the situation - see the whole Willow-is-addicted plot, for example.

kattahj wrote: A good emotional moment for me grows out of the plotline, but RTD will steer away from the natural ones...and twist the plot to give him the emo moments he needs.

This was the real problem for me, and it was shown up tremendously in this episode by the complete lack of anything resembling plot or character development. The Companions had face-time, but accomplished nothing. They were total filler, but I was still glad to see them because the moments between Jack and Mickey, Martha and Jack, and Sarah Jane and K-9 were lovely, and untainted by RTD's meta-ramblings.

I did not like the Rose/Doctor shenanigans, but told myself that this means that Rose is Laurie, the Doctor is Jo, and Doctor Hand is Amy - she can't have the one she wanted, so she'll take the not-so-interesting little sibling instead. What's more, I always thought that Laurie wanted to be a March sister, not marry one, which extended my comparison to mean that Rose wanted to be that magical traveller, not date one. Then I was happy. For about 30 seconds.

If it was necessary to unmake the DoctorDonna, why was it necessary to only unmake the Donna-section? Why does one half get to live, and grow, and learn from its mistakes while the other half is stripped of her agency and experience? It makes no sense. It makes me nauseated with anger. It means that everyone who is not caught up by chance (or "destiny") is insignificant. That they (or, I should say, "she") cannot learn or grow, just coast along with life, whether that be high adventure or temping drudgery.

Good riddance, RTD. Go away and write some plot. If you contemplate your own navel anymore, it might implode.