Rewatching Doctor Who

OK so I have been rewatching the later half of season 7 of Doctor Who with Clara in the lead up to the 50th Anniversary and I’ve been skipping a few episodes because they’re actually really terrible. It’s sad just how terrible a lot of things are. Even the Neil Gaiman episode was disappointing (probably because either the script or the director was under the misunderstanding just how old the kids were meant to be and thus Angie seems oddly old for her behaviour) and even worse: two whole episodes were written by Mark Gatiss! Ugh. Normally he only writes one terrible episode per season at the most.

But the thing is I have unpopular opinion  regarding the episode The Rings of Akhaten and that is that it is actually really good. People go “oh ugh it’s so stupid, they sing to appease the star and it eats a leaf and the day is saved” but that’s really just an over simplified misinterpretation. The thing is it works with pre-established canon about how magic in the Doctor Who universe works. Spells are emotional energy which are induced through words, chants, songs, etc. This is classic era stuff, back in the 3^rd doctor with The Daemons or 7^th doctor with the pseudo-vampires repelled by the psychic energy of faith in the cross not the actual cross itself in The Curse of Fenric. If you want a solely new-Who example of this then this is present in The Shakespeare Code. Admittedly that episode wasn't that great but the idea isn't necessarily what makes it bad, especially when in The Rings of Akhaten it is done so much better.

Then there’s the idea of eating the energy of a potential story. Clara manages to "defeat" the God-Sun, Akhaten, by over satiating it with her leaf, the leaf that led to her creation, and holds the potential of her entire life which is seemingly infinite. "Oh that's silly too!" Well we've already established that this is a completely legitimate idea within Doctor Who canon with the weeping angels. The weeping angels were an invention of Moffat back when everyone adored him and thought him amazing thanks to his creep-tastic and quite solid episodes like The Empty Child and Blink. Remember how everyone loves Blink? Yeah. A BAFTA and Hugo award went to that and no one complained that the premise of an Angel was complete nonsense.

See, this episode doesn't want to make up something new to justify itself, it already is present in an already established framework that dates back over 40 years. It actually tells you all the ways it works and explains itself all the way throughout. That by itself means the entire episode is quite solid as far as plot goes, unlike a lot of the other episodes which rapidly resolve themselves in the last few minutes through poorly explained reasons and care more about the drama of the premise than the actual logical resolution of the conflict. This episode actually takes time to introduce the conflict, make you interested, give you a protagonist to care about, a world with nuance and charm to get to know, and builds towards its climax and resolution in an actually structured and ordered way instead of BAM! Buiild build build oh wait we’re running out of time RESOLUTION SOMEHOW! Which I hate about a bunch of other recent episodes. 

It also has a stellar performance from Matt Smith whose speech against Akhaten as he encourages them to take everything is so emotionally charged. He manages to express deep emotion even when the shot shows a near silhouette from behind him, not showing any facial features at all, simply his body language alone can convey the emotions of the scene. He’s telling Akhaten to take his life. Not his physical breathing and hearts beating but the experience of life, the very essence of being, the things that make him the sentient being he is now and that’s powerful. It is one of the most dramatic and emotionally powerful speeches of that season (part 1 and 2). He's facing off with a God and combating it with the sorrows of his life.

"I watched universes freeze and creations burn, I have seen things you wouldn't believe, I have lost things you will never understand - and I know things, secrets that must never be told, knowledge that must never be spoken..."

Just ooooh. Shivers. That's but a section of the speech and it is so powerful. It is summing up the darker part of the Doctor's existence: sad, destructive, shrouded in mystery, empathetic and a survivor of endless disasters. It's effectively the 11th Doctor's version of the "he's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun" speech, delivered with all the weight and eloquence that proves why Matt Smith is playing The Doctor to begin with.

Then comes in the leaf. Now the leaf seems stupid because oh, just a leaf, but it works because of the pre-established canon of potential energy. There’s the potential existence of a whole person placed within that leaf and that by itself was awesome but when you go back and watch it with the fact of who Clara is in mind you understand that leaf isn’t just potentially massive but potentially infinite. She isn’t just a singular person but spread out through time and space over and over, different incarnations all over the place, living different lives over and over to save the Doctor throughout time and space. She is almost infinite and thus the leaf is more than just the infinite potential of a single person but the infinite potential of a whole myriad of beings with potentials all the way through time and space. By itself it is a pretty solid and cool episode but working within the grander scheme of the overall series arc it serves as  a pretty epic reminder that the idea of Clara is more powerful than it seems. It is not just a leaf, it the catalyst for a massive cosmic event. Clara is so much more than just one person and the potential of a life not lived can satiate even a God.

Cool, huh?

So the episode gets a lot of hate for being silly but I think it's actually one of the cooler episodes in that debacle of weak episodes strewn together for series 7b. It just has a bit of an unconventional mythology to its central conflict which people didn't want to accept but once you realise it is completely legitimate within the working canon of the show then it vastly improves. So I encourage everyone to rewatch it with that in mind and hopefully you'll think more positively of it.

My Sister's Doctor Who Wedding

My sister got married on Saturday! Woo! Congratulations to her and her wonderful husband Lyndon. They're very happy together and I wish them much more happiness in the future.

It all started months ago when I received this invitations inspired by The Impossible Astronaut, the first episode of the 6th season of Doctor Who:

Doctor Who wedding invitations! TARDIS blue envelops and inside there is a time, date, and GPS co-ordinates (blurred here so you can't go back in time and stalk the wedding). That was the beginning of the nerdiness.

The last time I was at a wedding I was... 5 probably, so didn't really remember what was involved. Turns out weddings are way shorter than expected. The face on Lyndon when Isobel walked down the isle was amazing. He looked stunned, amazed, like he could barely contain his happiness. When she stood in front of him it was like the rest of the room wasn't there and it was beautiful to see his big dopey smile. Gosh it was wonderful.

Then... reception time! Now I was the one who drove the bridesmaids to our local church with my car, but then it all shifted around and I was driving the newly weds in Lyndon's car. The thing is, Lyndon's car is an automatic which is... weird. And I'm not really used to them what with having a real license for a real car (real cars have clutches and I don't care if you say I'm body shaming cars). I'd only driven it once and ended up making a vlog about how Automatic Cars are for Lazy People.

Basically I wasn't really sure how to work the thing very well and after a little bit of figuring out what to do next I reversed. Facing the exit of the carpark I rolled down the window and yelled "I'VE NEVER DRIVEN AN AUTOMATIC BEFORE!" to the concerned faces that watched on as I drove off with the married couple.

"I sure hope you know where we're going because I don't..." I inform them (quite truthfully).

Don't worry we survived. In one piece too. Though they did start discussing how they could now have sex in the back of the car... That sentence sounds ambiguous. "Do you mean they were discussing, while sitting in the back of the car, how they could have sex now that they were married? Or do you mean they were discussing having sex in the back of the car while you were driving?"

The answer is yes to both.

THAT'S NOT WHAT I NEED TO HEAR ABOUT GUYS.

The reception was nice. The tables were all named different Doctor Who monsters (I believe I was on Nimon) like Dalek, Rutan, Sontaran, Cybermen etc... and Cardassian (to see who was nerdy enough to catch that it was a Star Trek reference instead of a Doctor Who one, but not everyone would recognise old school references like Rutan and probably assumed it was yet another thing from the 70s).

Then this happened:

These little Daleks were remote controlled and made their way to the dance floor in advance of the newly weds entering the reception. It was awesome.

Dad made a speech about how we have a bookcase of sci-fi at home and how when she heard that my sister had found someone who was into sci-fi they knew he'd fit in just fine with our family and he does. He's awesome. I approve whole heartedly of Lyndon, who has so many books that he has shelves attached to his walls where he can't put bookcases and still that isn't enough. Now I can say "come at me bro" at him and try and challenge him, despite the fact that he's taller than I am.

There, of course, was Gangnam Style played at the wedding because the playlist was not entirely programmed by the Bride and Groom but the DJ as well (so there were a few things that Isobel said "I would definitely not have picked this..." to). More appropriately in character was a Nirvana's Smells like Teen Spirit mash up with Rick Astley's Never Going to Give You Up.

Yes. They rickrolled their own wedding.

Then as the reception came to a close the guests made a tunnel by making archways with their arms by finding a partner. The married couple walked through it as the Red Dwarf theme played and it was awesome.

Doctor Who Season Finales

Hey, so those Whovians who have been watching the new series will have noticed that the season finales always have to be bigger, grander, more over the top than the previous one. This is a bit ridiculous... how will Season 6 end after having to top Season 5's finale with the Pandorica?

Well here is a run down of the finales so far and my prediction for this new season.

• Season 1 - Rose looks into the heart of the TARDIS, is given the power to destroy an entire fleet of Dalek ships trying to invade earth before The Doctor absorbs the power and regenerating. Also the Daleks have come back from the very brink of extinction just before this.
• Season 2 - Daleks and Cybermen simultaneously try to invade Earth, killing lots of people and ending in Rose being banished to an alternate universe. Turns out the Daleks weren’t extinct, they were just hiding in the void in prison and the Cybermen have managed to find a way to travel between universes.
• Season 3 - The Master has taken over the Earth with the help of the remains of the human race 100 trillion year into the future, (The TARDIS is cannibalized to prevent a paradox from tearing the whole of space-time apart) killed a huge amount of people and is building missiles to destroy hundreds of planets. The Doctor reverses the effects of being forcively aged through the combined psychic powers of the entire human race and The Master is killed, leaving The Doctor as truly the one and only of his entire race. Time is reversed a year to undo the destruction and conflict caused by The Master.
• Season 4 - The Daleks resurrect their frequently killed off creator, Davros, and this is a convenient time for every single companion in the new series to bunch together into one spot (with the cast of Torchwood and Sarah Jane adventures thrown in for the sake of being completely OTT). Rose literally tears a hole between universes to be back, Jack is busy being immortal, Harriet Jones sacrifices herself to call The Doctor into the spacial distortion that puts tons of planets that have been stolen by the Daleks, Sarah has a warpstar with which to threaten to explode everything with, and Martha has the Ostenhagen key just because the world has nuclear bombs in it’s core of course. Oh yeah, also the Daleks have a device (the “reality bomb”) that threatens to destroy all matter in the entire universe. There’s also a prophecy by a crazy Dalek that death will ensue for one of The Doctor’s companions. This prophetic Dalek wasthe last Dalek but no, the Daleks have come back from being extinct (except for that just one) for the 3rd or 4th time just to destroy the entire universe… Also, Donna manages to cause a (very big word thing) which grows another Doctor to live with Rose in an alternate universe.
• Season 5 - EVERY BAD GUY EVER builds the most unescapable prison, the Pandorica, to imprison Matt Smith's incarnation of The Doctor for all eternity because they foresee the end of the entire universe (and that's not allowed to happen unless they are the ones who do it). The plan backfires and the entire universe ends. This is caused by some unseen dark force that hijacks the TARDIS and causes it to explode, creating time altering cracks in time that eventually consume everything. All of time and space is no more, reality collapses, and the rules of causality no longer applies as Amy Pond’s older self exists outside of her personal history (her younger self ceases to exist, along with everyone else except The Doctor, River Song, Rory and of course that one Dalek that never dies no matter what. They have to become near-extinct at least once per season to fill a quota). Needless to say, The Doctor restarts the entire Universe with The Big Bang 2, but as his personal history rewinds, he sacrifices himself by being on the other side of the cracks - meaning the entire universe is rebuilt with the exception of him. Amy’s amasing mind remembers him and he is brought over back into reality once again through sheer force of Stephen Moffat says so shut up.
• Season 6 (Upcoming) - Everything blows up 10 times. The Daleks come back and so does Jesus, who is really a space raptor from another universe. Also, every universe blows up at least 7 times even the one with Rose and 10.5 in. Stephen Moffat himself is called into the Whoniverse and breaks the 4th wall because every universe breaking just wasn’t enough. Rory also reveals that he is secretly Chuck Norris and round house kicks the multi-verse back into existence because he freaking can OK? 

Well that’s my prediction anyway.