6x10, "The Girl Who Waited"
Sep. 12th, 2011 00:20![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyTechnically brilliant, narratively highly questionable.
I think I'm somewhere between t'wings' bitter disappointment andrecessional's wondering whether the show (i.e. Moffat) will actually have the balls--and I use the metaphor consciously--to follow through in the end, by the end, with what we seemed to be promised in 6x01, when the Doctor said it was time for him to stop running, and then, in the nine episodes since, has…kept running. The most egregious example of his cowardice is surely this episode, when he slams the door on aged!Amy and then tells Rory that it's his choice, his decision, his fault. Rory quite rightly rejects this and tells the Doctor to stop trying to make him, Rory, like him, the Time Lord, but then of course it's okay, aged!Amy agrees to be sacrificed. Bullshit. Telling error: I originally mistyped "aged!River" in that last sentence.
I refuse to believe that this is a zero-sum game, telling Amy's story versus the Doctor's (and Rory's! will the show ever consistently remember that Rory spent 2000 years in a box waiting around for Amy and the Raggedy Man?), even for a show called Doctor Who. It's all the more frustrating because this was easily one of the three best episodes of the season, and as TV, as scifi, as a story about these characters, I loved it. But stepping back and looking at the bigger picture is not salutary.
Bah.
I think I'm somewhere between t'wings' bitter disappointment and
recessional's wondering whether the show (i.e. Moffat) will actually have the balls--and I use the metaphor consciously--to follow through in the end, by the end, with what we seemed to be promised in 6x01, when the Doctor said it was time for him to stop running, and then, in the nine episodes since, has…kept running. The most egregious example of his cowardice is surely this episode, when he slams the door on aged!Amy and then tells Rory that it's his choice, his decision, his fault. Rory quite rightly rejects this and tells the Doctor to stop trying to make him, Rory, like him, the Time Lord, but then of course it's okay, aged!Amy agrees to be sacrificed. Bullshit. Telling error: I originally mistyped "aged!River" in that last sentence.I refuse to believe that this is a zero-sum game, telling Amy's story versus the Doctor's (and Rory's! will the show ever consistently remember that Rory spent 2000 years in a box waiting around for Amy and the Raggedy Man?), even for a show called Doctor Who. It's all the more frustrating because this was easily one of the three best episodes of the season, and as TV, as scifi, as a story about these characters, I loved it. But stepping back and looking at the bigger picture is not salutary.
Bah.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-12 08:24 (UTC)I loved Future!Amy and was so pleased they were actually giving Amy something like character development...until they took it away. About the only thing that would make that better for me is if they do define this moment as the Doctor's desire to not be responsible for failure destroying something wonderful. For bonus points, it could explain River's behavior despite 'growing up' with Rory and Amy: Amy's hero worship stories would be all the more motivation to complete her mission if she had any inking of an unpleasant end to the relationship.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-12 16:48 (UTC)I tend to think we're supposed to read River's killing the Doctor (because she totally does/did) as conditioning rather than choice, at least going by what we've seen thus far, but I also think the Ponds are becoming less willing to follow the Doctor blindly. We'll see how things end this season.