Doctor Who - "Thin Ice" and "Knock Knock"
May. 7th, 2017 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat[Prior to my review, was thinking about something the other day -- while jumping about the net looking for info on a favorite Marvel character that no one appears to like but me, and realized why being involved in a fandom isn't always...workable. I can't think of the right word. I mean what happens if you are "fannish" about something, and everyone you come across really isn't? I suppose you could find someone who loves it...but it can take a bit of doing. Buffy was easy -- when I joined the fandom, 75% of the people I ran across seemed to agree with me. We were simpatico for the most part. Oh there were a few here and there that didn't but generally speaking...it worked out okay. Hmm...this may be why Buffy is the only fandom I've managed to join or stick with for a length of time. It's not that I don't get fannish about things, it's just that I find it hard to find people who are like-minded about it. And don't get me wrong, I do like disagreement here and there, but it does get exhausting and it would be nice if you didn't have to do it all the time.
I think this is why I struggled with getting too involved with the Doctor Who fandom. What turned me on doesn't appear to turn on other people. For example? Everyone loved "The Girl in the Fireplace", I kept falling asleep during it. (Reminded me a little bit of how everyone loved "Lost in Translation" and I kept falling asleep during it.) While I adored "Forest of the Dead" and "Silence in the Library", but fans were skeptical. I loved the witty dialogue and banter. And the layered metaphors, also the monster in Forest was...not evil, just hungry. I can still remember both episodes vividly, and have seen them multiple times, along with "Let's Kill Hitler", "Impossible Astronaut", "A Good Man Goes to War", "Blink"....while fanfavorites such as the whole Rose Tyler/Master arc tended to bore me.
I mention this, because I think it has happened again? The fans online seem to adore "Thin Ice" and think it is amazing. I thought it was rather repetitious and preachy, and could use better dialogue not to mention a touch of humor. Plus my attention kept wandering during it. It's the only episode this season in which I found myself wandering off to do other things while it was on. And like "Girl in the Fire Place" -- it took place during the 1800s. Apparently Doctor Who episodes that take place in the 1800s don't quite work for me? I feel like I've seen it before. I like the message, I like the philosophy, but my attention wanders. Meanwhile, "Knock Knock" -- fans apparently thought was boring and derivative, while I loved it and found it entertaining. Very witty in places with great banter.
And interesting insights into both Characters. I found out new things about both, and kept rewinding.
So...what I've managed to glean from this experience is: I appear to be at odds with the fandom. This was true of the X-Men as well. I figured out rather early on that I couldn't discuss the X-men online effectively...because I wasn't reading the same thing everyone else was. We were at odds. It's no fun being at odds with people. BTW -- you are NEVER going to change someone else's perspective on a television series, movie, book, or item of entertainment that they love. Don't try. They want love you for it. In fact they will probably despise you and want to tar and feather you, particularly if they adore it. This is probably true of politics, philosophy and religion. People are very stubborn about the things that they a)believe in, b) love, and c) think are true. The only way I've ever been able to change anyone's mind or they've been able to change mine, is if they came at it sideways...or left of center, or at it in a round about manner. Not head on. Hmmm, in way I think that's what stories do, try to change our minds and perspectives about things...but in a round about way. Not by telling us, but showing us.
Because, I think that's the only way you can change someone's mind about something they hold dear to their heart -- for them to experience or see it for themselves. (ie. You can't just tell your friend her/his husband/wife is a cheating, murderous fraud -- you got to show them or have them see it for themselves. They have to experience it personally.) ]
Okay that was rather long. I sort of went off-tangent. So went back to put it behind a cut.
1. Thin Ice
Was rather disappointed in this episode, after all the shining reviews of it online. They were touting it as the best episode so far. (Hmmm, see above. But this is should be a warning to me, whenever the fandom or the critics LOVE a Doctor Who episode, I appear to find it rather boring and derivative...wondering WTF are they smoking? Yes, folks, I'm at odds with the Doctor Who fandom apparently. This happened with The Vincent Van Gough episode (which I can't remember and did not understand the appeal of), Girl in the Fire Place (ditto), the whole Rose Tyler arc, most of Donna's arc with the exception of Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead -- which I thought were the best episodes ever, and everyone else didn't. Yes, I'm definitely at odds with the fandom. Oh well.)
Anyhow...what I liked about the episode, there's a reiteration of this season's apparent theme, which is "things aren't evil, they are just hungry or wanting to survive". Also a reiteration of the theme in Moana -- although I liked how Moana expressed it much better. (Which is ...man's greedy impulses destroy what is freely given. Harnessing a creature of nature for his own needs, makes man the monster not the creature.) Actually I think the only monsters we need to fear are ourselves. Which seems to be a theme that Doctor Who is reiterating this season.
In this episode, a privileged man harnesses a creature beneath the Thames for his own financial gain. The episode takes place in the 1800s during the Frost Fair. It's pre-Victorian times, although there is a heavy Victorian vibe in it or Dicksonian one. We have the poor kids of the streets making money pick-pocking and getting people to come to the Frost Fair. If a few wonder out on the ice and get grabbed by the creature. Oh Well. Their proprieter is a rich bastard, the latest Sutcliff heir, who like his father before him and on down the line, has kept a big sea monster captive beneath the Thames and feeds it people. The fish grinds them up, and the by product or remaining raw material is a fuel that burns better than coal and highly profitable.
Clear metaphor there -- sacrifice life or enslave it, to fuel our lifestyle. And just in case you haven't figured it out, the Doctor states it in a lovely speech, which I can't quite remember, but the gist is ' life, any life, no matter how small, has value. And those with privilege are responsible for those lives...that's their privilege to care for lives that are without the privileges in which they've been born."
He also reiterates through Bill, that the man holding the monster captive is the monster, not the monster. The big fish is not the monster, it just does what it does, it is merely hungry. It has no real choices in the matter. Once freed, it leaves the Thames for colder climes...no longer feeding off its inhabitants. Eating isn't evil. Using or rather enslaving someone, regardless of who or what they are, to fund your financial empire on the other hand is.
There's also some clear references to slavery and racism, although I'm not entirely sure a big monsterous fish is a good analogy to slavery or racism.
Overall not a bad episode. I was a bit bored during it and thought it could have been better paces. Also it got a bit didatic and preachy in places. (Characters stopped everything and gave long speechs that didn't really propel the action and weren't really required. They were nice speeches. But, I'd heard it before. In fact when Bill asks the Doctor if you have to live a thousand years to give a speech like that. I thought, uh no, he gave one more or less just like it when he was just 600 years old.)
2. Knock Knock
Found this episode far more entertaining. Don't know who wrote it. Noticed a woman wrote the last episode, which was nice. We have women writers now. Maybe we always did on Doctor Who and I just didn't notice? I felt guilty for not liking her episode better than this one. Solidarity and all that. But I wouldn't worry about it too much, apparently everyone else including the critics felt the opposite.
I thought this one was rather clever. (Although the bug bit felt repetitive. Haven't we done that before? I feel like I've seen it somewhere...just can't remember where? Oh well, there's no new plots, I've pretty much seen everything done somewhere before...so doesn't really matter. But I kept trying to figure out what television show or episode did something similar.)
And the dialogue/banter between various characters was hilarious in places. I did have to put it on close caption, because between the songs, sound-effects, and the thick British accents, I was having troubles making out what the characters were saying -- particularly in The Thin Ice episode.
The whole bit about the little beetles turning people into wood, was rather scary and well done. And I liked the set up. By the way, was that Derek Jacobi playing the landlord? It looked like Derek Jacobi.
So we have the quintessential haunted house, the six freshman students that...don't realize this is way too good to be true. I mean come on, if you can get a huge house, with big rooms, great windows, and dirt cheap...there must be something wrong with it. The Doctor keeps looking at Bill and her friends, and saying with his eyes..."really? you picked this place? silly kids."
Capadali's take on the Doctor is a nice twist from Matt Smith's frenetic and joyful sense of adventure, and Tennant's sense of power and let's be heroes, this Doctor seems a bit more reluctant and cautious. He's also, more questioning, less...certain.
There are some great bits in here...
Bill: He's my grandfather.
The Doctor: Grandfather? I don't look THAT old. I am not you're grandfather.
Bill: Yes you are.
The Doctor: At least let me be - your father. That's reasonable...
(He's 2000 years old, seriously...grandfather is rather kind.)
Or...
Student: Are dryads aliens?
The Doctor: No, I doubt it. Don't really know really. I suspect they are probably native to your world.
Student: Have you seen any dryads before?
The Doctor: No. Have no idea what they look like. Have you?
Student: Then how do you know they are dryads.
The Doctor: I don't. I'm just calling them dryads. Can't very well call them lice now can I?
LOL!
House: Creeeakkk, tappp, tapp, creeak..
Shireen: Stupid freaking Scooby Doo House!
See, gotta love the dialogue. They should combine writers, the one's with the nifty speeches and the ones who know how to write great dialogue.
Anyhow... the set-up is that the landlord of the place tried to save his dying daughter (actually the twist is that it's his mother, because the woman is 70 years old, if he were her father, he'd be dead or an alien, which Bill figures out.) As a boy he brings a bunch of insects he'd found in their garden to his ailing mother to cheer her up. Unfortunately they turn her into wood. So to save her, he starts sacrificing people to the beetles, which revitalizes his mother. He does this over a period of almost 70 years. The people are turned into wood by the insects and become part of the house, in a sense devoured by them. The insects are controlled by a tuning fork or music -- specifically high-pitched sounds.
The Doctor convinces the mother to save the day. She tries to convince her son to give up his game and go out into the world -- but it is too late for him. He asks the Doctor if he would sacrifice anything to save his Mum, the person who brought him into the world? What price would he pay?
By the Doctor and Bill's silence, he figures he has his answer. But his mother does not want to live this way, she's horrified, and stops it -- taking him into herself and allowing the beetles to devour them and spit out the five roommates of Bill's in the process. Bill regains her roommates, the house tumbles in on itself, and the two disappear.
The Doctor tells Bill and her roommates that they have to go back to the drawing board. While the Doctor Assistant informs him..."see, you don't have to go wandering about the universe or off planet to find monsters that can kill you, you can find them here, on earth. And keep your oath."
The Doctor dismisses him and knocks on the heavy doors that his Assistant has been monitoring -- the gateway they both have been monitoring. Someone is playing a piano behind the doors. His assistant leaves him and the Doctor ventures in. We don't know who is behind the doors. (I'm guessing Clara or the Master, although I'm hoping it's River Song. The foreshadowing leads me to believe it's his Mum.)
There's a heavy metaphor about "knocking on wood" - the superstition "knock on wood" to keep from jinxing yourself comes to mind, or the joke "knock knock, who's there?", or code "knock two times if it is you.." == it's a game the students play, until it isn't. And it was the ending of the previous episode, "Thin Ice" where something knocked twice on the gateway that the Doctor's Robot Assistant was monitoring.
Also being sealed inside the walls of a house is an old horror trope dating back to Edgar Allen Poe and the Fall of the House of Usher and other tales. It also reminded me of the twisty House of Leaves, and The Haunting of Hill House...where the walls breath. And the heroine is at the end...swallowed up by the house. It takes her, more or less -- she dies on its grounds and becomes it's latest resident.
I liked the fact that this was not a ghost story but one about an infestation...wood mites or dryads, creatures of the wood turning humans into wood, devouring them. They, in of themselves, are not evil and have no evil purpose. They just do what they do. The landlord/woman's son, however, becomes evil when he sacrifices the lives of children to his mother for her to survive, much like the villain in Thin Ice. Except this villain was a bit more complicated and not quite as moustache twirling. Here, he'd slowly gone insane...never leaving the house, wracked with guilt and the desire to save his mother. It was the noblest of causes, but had gone horribly awry. He was killing the many to preserve the one he loved. In this case children.
There's also a nice theme about renting houses in college or any time really. The renters pay with their lives, and sign over them, when they sign the lease -- which of course no one ever reads. I'm not sure landlords read it.
Rather enjoyed this one. Overall? A good episode. Not as good as "The Pilot" but I think a notch better than the last two.
I think this is why I struggled with getting too involved with the Doctor Who fandom. What turned me on doesn't appear to turn on other people. For example? Everyone loved "The Girl in the Fireplace", I kept falling asleep during it. (Reminded me a little bit of how everyone loved "Lost in Translation" and I kept falling asleep during it.) While I adored "Forest of the Dead" and "Silence in the Library", but fans were skeptical. I loved the witty dialogue and banter. And the layered metaphors, also the monster in Forest was...not evil, just hungry. I can still remember both episodes vividly, and have seen them multiple times, along with "Let's Kill Hitler", "Impossible Astronaut", "A Good Man Goes to War", "Blink"....while fanfavorites such as the whole Rose Tyler/Master arc tended to bore me.
I mention this, because I think it has happened again? The fans online seem to adore "Thin Ice" and think it is amazing. I thought it was rather repetitious and preachy, and could use better dialogue not to mention a touch of humor. Plus my attention kept wandering during it. It's the only episode this season in which I found myself wandering off to do other things while it was on. And like "Girl in the Fire Place" -- it took place during the 1800s. Apparently Doctor Who episodes that take place in the 1800s don't quite work for me? I feel like I've seen it before. I like the message, I like the philosophy, but my attention wanders. Meanwhile, "Knock Knock" -- fans apparently thought was boring and derivative, while I loved it and found it entertaining. Very witty in places with great banter.
And interesting insights into both Characters. I found out new things about both, and kept rewinding.
So...what I've managed to glean from this experience is: I appear to be at odds with the fandom. This was true of the X-Men as well. I figured out rather early on that I couldn't discuss the X-men online effectively...because I wasn't reading the same thing everyone else was. We were at odds. It's no fun being at odds with people. BTW -- you are NEVER going to change someone else's perspective on a television series, movie, book, or item of entertainment that they love. Don't try. They want love you for it. In fact they will probably despise you and want to tar and feather you, particularly if they adore it. This is probably true of politics, philosophy and religion. People are very stubborn about the things that they a)believe in, b) love, and c) think are true. The only way I've ever been able to change anyone's mind or they've been able to change mine, is if they came at it sideways...or left of center, or at it in a round about manner. Not head on. Hmmm, in way I think that's what stories do, try to change our minds and perspectives about things...but in a round about way. Not by telling us, but showing us.
Because, I think that's the only way you can change someone's mind about something they hold dear to their heart -- for them to experience or see it for themselves. (ie. You can't just tell your friend her/his husband/wife is a cheating, murderous fraud -- you got to show them or have them see it for themselves. They have to experience it personally.) ]
Okay that was rather long. I sort of went off-tangent. So went back to put it behind a cut.
1. Thin Ice
Was rather disappointed in this episode, after all the shining reviews of it online. They were touting it as the best episode so far. (Hmmm, see above. But this is should be a warning to me, whenever the fandom or the critics LOVE a Doctor Who episode, I appear to find it rather boring and derivative...wondering WTF are they smoking? Yes, folks, I'm at odds with the Doctor Who fandom apparently. This happened with The Vincent Van Gough episode (which I can't remember and did not understand the appeal of), Girl in the Fire Place (ditto), the whole Rose Tyler arc, most of Donna's arc with the exception of Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead -- which I thought were the best episodes ever, and everyone else didn't. Yes, I'm definitely at odds with the fandom. Oh well.)
Anyhow...what I liked about the episode, there's a reiteration of this season's apparent theme, which is "things aren't evil, they are just hungry or wanting to survive". Also a reiteration of the theme in Moana -- although I liked how Moana expressed it much better. (Which is ...man's greedy impulses destroy what is freely given. Harnessing a creature of nature for his own needs, makes man the monster not the creature.) Actually I think the only monsters we need to fear are ourselves. Which seems to be a theme that Doctor Who is reiterating this season.
In this episode, a privileged man harnesses a creature beneath the Thames for his own financial gain. The episode takes place in the 1800s during the Frost Fair. It's pre-Victorian times, although there is a heavy Victorian vibe in it or Dicksonian one. We have the poor kids of the streets making money pick-pocking and getting people to come to the Frost Fair. If a few wonder out on the ice and get grabbed by the creature. Oh Well. Their proprieter is a rich bastard, the latest Sutcliff heir, who like his father before him and on down the line, has kept a big sea monster captive beneath the Thames and feeds it people. The fish grinds them up, and the by product or remaining raw material is a fuel that burns better than coal and highly profitable.
Clear metaphor there -- sacrifice life or enslave it, to fuel our lifestyle. And just in case you haven't figured it out, the Doctor states it in a lovely speech, which I can't quite remember, but the gist is ' life, any life, no matter how small, has value. And those with privilege are responsible for those lives...that's their privilege to care for lives that are without the privileges in which they've been born."
He also reiterates through Bill, that the man holding the monster captive is the monster, not the monster. The big fish is not the monster, it just does what it does, it is merely hungry. It has no real choices in the matter. Once freed, it leaves the Thames for colder climes...no longer feeding off its inhabitants. Eating isn't evil. Using or rather enslaving someone, regardless of who or what they are, to fund your financial empire on the other hand is.
There's also some clear references to slavery and racism, although I'm not entirely sure a big monsterous fish is a good analogy to slavery or racism.
Overall not a bad episode. I was a bit bored during it and thought it could have been better paces. Also it got a bit didatic and preachy in places. (Characters stopped everything and gave long speechs that didn't really propel the action and weren't really required. They were nice speeches. But, I'd heard it before. In fact when Bill asks the Doctor if you have to live a thousand years to give a speech like that. I thought, uh no, he gave one more or less just like it when he was just 600 years old.)
2. Knock Knock
Found this episode far more entertaining. Don't know who wrote it. Noticed a woman wrote the last episode, which was nice. We have women writers now. Maybe we always did on Doctor Who and I just didn't notice? I felt guilty for not liking her episode better than this one. Solidarity and all that. But I wouldn't worry about it too much, apparently everyone else including the critics felt the opposite.
I thought this one was rather clever. (Although the bug bit felt repetitive. Haven't we done that before? I feel like I've seen it somewhere...just can't remember where? Oh well, there's no new plots, I've pretty much seen everything done somewhere before...so doesn't really matter. But I kept trying to figure out what television show or episode did something similar.)
And the dialogue/banter between various characters was hilarious in places. I did have to put it on close caption, because between the songs, sound-effects, and the thick British accents, I was having troubles making out what the characters were saying -- particularly in The Thin Ice episode.
The whole bit about the little beetles turning people into wood, was rather scary and well done. And I liked the set up. By the way, was that Derek Jacobi playing the landlord? It looked like Derek Jacobi.
So we have the quintessential haunted house, the six freshman students that...don't realize this is way too good to be true. I mean come on, if you can get a huge house, with big rooms, great windows, and dirt cheap...there must be something wrong with it. The Doctor keeps looking at Bill and her friends, and saying with his eyes..."really? you picked this place? silly kids."
Capadali's take on the Doctor is a nice twist from Matt Smith's frenetic and joyful sense of adventure, and Tennant's sense of power and let's be heroes, this Doctor seems a bit more reluctant and cautious. He's also, more questioning, less...certain.
There are some great bits in here...
Bill: He's my grandfather.
The Doctor: Grandfather? I don't look THAT old. I am not you're grandfather.
Bill: Yes you are.
The Doctor: At least let me be - your father. That's reasonable...
(He's 2000 years old, seriously...grandfather is rather kind.)
Or...
Student: Are dryads aliens?
The Doctor: No, I doubt it. Don't really know really. I suspect they are probably native to your world.
Student: Have you seen any dryads before?
The Doctor: No. Have no idea what they look like. Have you?
Student: Then how do you know they are dryads.
The Doctor: I don't. I'm just calling them dryads. Can't very well call them lice now can I?
LOL!
House: Creeeakkk, tappp, tapp, creeak..
Shireen: Stupid freaking Scooby Doo House!
See, gotta love the dialogue. They should combine writers, the one's with the nifty speeches and the ones who know how to write great dialogue.
Anyhow... the set-up is that the landlord of the place tried to save his dying daughter (actually the twist is that it's his mother, because the woman is 70 years old, if he were her father, he'd be dead or an alien, which Bill figures out.) As a boy he brings a bunch of insects he'd found in their garden to his ailing mother to cheer her up. Unfortunately they turn her into wood. So to save her, he starts sacrificing people to the beetles, which revitalizes his mother. He does this over a period of almost 70 years. The people are turned into wood by the insects and become part of the house, in a sense devoured by them. The insects are controlled by a tuning fork or music -- specifically high-pitched sounds.
The Doctor convinces the mother to save the day. She tries to convince her son to give up his game and go out into the world -- but it is too late for him. He asks the Doctor if he would sacrifice anything to save his Mum, the person who brought him into the world? What price would he pay?
By the Doctor and Bill's silence, he figures he has his answer. But his mother does not want to live this way, she's horrified, and stops it -- taking him into herself and allowing the beetles to devour them and spit out the five roommates of Bill's in the process. Bill regains her roommates, the house tumbles in on itself, and the two disappear.
The Doctor tells Bill and her roommates that they have to go back to the drawing board. While the Doctor Assistant informs him..."see, you don't have to go wandering about the universe or off planet to find monsters that can kill you, you can find them here, on earth. And keep your oath."
The Doctor dismisses him and knocks on the heavy doors that his Assistant has been monitoring -- the gateway they both have been monitoring. Someone is playing a piano behind the doors. His assistant leaves him and the Doctor ventures in. We don't know who is behind the doors. (I'm guessing Clara or the Master, although I'm hoping it's River Song. The foreshadowing leads me to believe it's his Mum.)
There's a heavy metaphor about "knocking on wood" - the superstition "knock on wood" to keep from jinxing yourself comes to mind, or the joke "knock knock, who's there?", or code "knock two times if it is you.." == it's a game the students play, until it isn't. And it was the ending of the previous episode, "Thin Ice" where something knocked twice on the gateway that the Doctor's Robot Assistant was monitoring.
Also being sealed inside the walls of a house is an old horror trope dating back to Edgar Allen Poe and the Fall of the House of Usher and other tales. It also reminded me of the twisty House of Leaves, and The Haunting of Hill House...where the walls breath. And the heroine is at the end...swallowed up by the house. It takes her, more or less -- she dies on its grounds and becomes it's latest resident.
I liked the fact that this was not a ghost story but one about an infestation...wood mites or dryads, creatures of the wood turning humans into wood, devouring them. They, in of themselves, are not evil and have no evil purpose. They just do what they do. The landlord/woman's son, however, becomes evil when he sacrifices the lives of children to his mother for her to survive, much like the villain in Thin Ice. Except this villain was a bit more complicated and not quite as moustache twirling. Here, he'd slowly gone insane...never leaving the house, wracked with guilt and the desire to save his mother. It was the noblest of causes, but had gone horribly awry. He was killing the many to preserve the one he loved. In this case children.
There's also a nice theme about renting houses in college or any time really. The renters pay with their lives, and sign over them, when they sign the lease -- which of course no one ever reads. I'm not sure landlords read it.
Rather enjoyed this one. Overall? A good episode. Not as good as "The Pilot" but I think a notch better than the last two.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 02:55 am (UTC)As I noted on kds' "Knock Knock" post, this wasn't my cup of (high) tea. I get impatient with haunted house tropes if they're served up too straight, and I've seen too many horror movie victims get sucked into the walls for that to really pique my interest.
Now I did like how the Doctor's current situation--reluctant warden of a dangerous prisoner--is paralleled in the relationship between the landlord and his mother. Wish they'd hit that harder.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 12:40 pm (UTC)I get impatient with haunted house tropes if they're served up too straight, and I've seen too many horror movie victims get sucked into the walls for that to really pique my interest.
You appear to be in the majority. I was the exact opposite -- the haunted house trope is a favorite of mine. But the poor trapped Elsie the sea monster trope and the Dickensonian Oliver Twist kiddies bores me to tears and has been done one too many times.
So it's basically pick your trope.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 06:40 am (UTC)The Davies era only had Helen Raynor, who wrote some episodes in the third and fourth seasons. Moffat had no women writers until Catherine Tregenna and Sarah Dollard (who wrote "Thin Ice") last season.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 12:42 pm (UTC)Thank you.
I think there's a woman on my reading list/flist who told me once that she'd written for Doctor Who at some point. So I knew there were women who wrote for the show, just not how many. (I don't think the woman who wrote for it is the one who wrote Thin Ice, or at least I hope not. )
no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 12:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 01:21 pm (UTC)They didn't really specify. All they said was they'd written for Doctor Who and was aware of the process and the difficulties of writing for an established show...I was discussing the television script-writing process at the time. (shrugs)