OK, here's your usual Doctor Who discussion post for this week's airing-in-the-US episode, "Silence in the Library."
I'd remind you all about not giving out spoilers for later stuff, but I think the episode itself does a pretty good job of that for me.
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"I'd remind you all about not giving out spoilers for later stuff"
ReplyDeleteSo you're requesting silence in the blog. :)
Heh. Only to the extent that it's not possible to discuss this one without spoilers. Which it may not be. :)
ReplyDeleteCliffhanger!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI have to admit the episode was great but the implied "I'm The Doctor's lover" crap got on my nerves.
She seems to have been kind of "love it or hate it" for most people.
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of on the "love" side, actually, because I thought she was a great character, and I love the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey idea of the Doctor meeting people out of sequence. And I let go of the idea of the Doctor being monk-like quite a while back. Although you'll notice that they don't actually saying anything about the nature of their relationship explicitly.
I loved the character, too -- I thought Alex Kingston was great -- and agree there's nothing explicitly stated about their relationship. They just obviously were (or rather will be) extremely close. I also love that Moffat's one of the few to really play with the time travel aspect of the show -- first with "Girl in the Fireplace," then "Blink," and now this.
ReplyDeleteIt's really tough to discuss this episode, though, without also discussing the next one, the second half.
Yes, Moffat's really good at that, not least because he has a clear understanding of the logic of time-travel stories and does things with them that make perfectly good internal sense. (This is actually pretty rare. I think most TV and movie time travel plots break down into complete nonsense the moment you start thinking about them too hard.)
ReplyDeleteI always thought the original series kind of missed a bet by not doing more with the time travel aspect of the premise. The only examples I can think of where the "timey wimey stuff" was actually part of the plot are "Mawdryn Undead," which takes place in two different time periods at once, the earlier of which has consequences for the later one, and "Battlefield," in which the Doctor does meet people who know him but whom he hasn't met yet and deals with consequences of stuff he hasn't done yet. I adored that idea, but it wasn't dealt with in anywhere near as complicated and thorough a fashion as it is here.
And, yeah, the first part of a two-parter is always hard to discuss without those pesky spoilers. Which even the Doctor has to avoid. :)
Alex Kingston reminded me so much of Dr. Elizabeth ? on ER. Is she the same?
ReplyDeleteReally good episode. As said before Donna has great timing with her lines.
I've never watched ER, but yes, apparently that was her.
ReplyDeleteAnd Donna is never not wonderful.
I'll admit, it's taken a while for Donna to really grow on me, for me to see her as more than the intentionally brash and sort of annoying comedic relief. These past few episodes have definitely turned me around on that -- enough so that I recently re-watched "The Runaway Bride" and realized that, whadya know? Catherine Tate was really great there, too.
ReplyDeleteShe was! I feel so smug. I saw it even then. :)
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, I saw that they aired "The Unicorn and the Wasp" immediately before the new episode, instead of Charlie Jade. It had me so worried that Sci-Fi changed the schedule again without warning, I almost threw my VCR off the balcony.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I did have two moments where I started thinking about this time travel stuff. How could the professor/archaeologist claim, "He hasn't met me yet," when they actually are meeting at that point? (It was just that one item, but I thought about it twice.)
And, yeah, she's a good character, but the implicit lover/closeness angle was irritating. I also didn't like it when she implied that she replaces Donna as the Doctor's companion. Of course, we know that it could be millenia in the future (the Doctor's eyes are, apparently, quite young in this episode), but Donna hasn't quite realized that the Doctor's companions are relatively ephemeral, so even though she knows that Rose and Martha aren't around any more, Donna forgets that she likely won't travel with him forever, either.
The Sci-Fi Channel frequently makes me want to throw things. :)
ReplyDeleteHow could the professor/archaeologist claim, "He hasn't met me yet," when they actually are meeting at that point?
She's not as literal-minded as you, that's how. ;) She just means that he hadn't met her before that point, of course. Time travel can breed sloppy language habits.
I also didn't like it when she implied that she replaces Donna as the Doctor's companion.
I'm not sure they are implying that, actually. I get more of an impression that they just meet up and hang out a lot at various points on their personal timelines.
Donna forgets that she likely won't travel with him forever, either.
When this episode first came out in the UK, I remember the general fan outcry being something along the lines of, "Oh, Donna! No, don't say you're going to stay forever! As soon as Rose did that, she got ditched!" :)
The look on River's face when she asked about her future is actually quite troubling, though.
Saw an ad on TV for a Showtime series called "Call Girls". Sure looked like Billie Piper to me. Any thought from you?
ReplyDeleteSecret Diary of a Call Girl. Yep, that's her! Not a show suitable for kids, this time. :)
ReplyDeleteHaven't seen it, myself, though.