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Doctor Who 177: "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday"
Some kind of switch flipped after "The Age of Steel" and suddenly I love Rose, despite her flaws. Which are definitely less glaring once she and Mickey acknowledge that they're over and Mickey decides to stay in another universe to fight the Cybermen. As one does. She still doesn't look 19 though, or even 20.
Which, of course, makes these episodes even more difficult, especially because until quite late in the game it's not at all clear how or why Rose will be forced to renege on the choice she herself has made to stay with the Doctor. Jackie has grown on me, but I found her "but who will you be? You won't even be human in 50 years!" lines at the beginning of the episode…annoying. My real, genuine question is, "Who cares?" or "Why should Rose care?" She has the right to make that choice for herself, and the right to leave her humanity behind, if that's what it comes to.
I really, truly enjoyed all the stuff with the Cybermen and the Daleks (the Daleks are always hilarious, even if in a very morbid way), but the stuff with Torchwood has aged less well, or maybe it's just that it's still uncomfortably relevant. As I said on Twitter, Yvonne is basically the Ghost of Brexit Yet to Come, and as I said previously, I don't actually think the concept of Torchwood is that wrongheaded on its face. But Yvonne says the quiet part loud when Jackie tells her there isn't a British Empire and Yvonne's reply is a succinct "Not yet." It was never about Earth; it was always about Britain, and when people like Yvonne say "Britain" they mean "England." (Sidebar: I continue to think that the Doctor is completely wrong to so thoroughly mistrust Harriet Jones, in any universe.) Perhaps the saving grace of Torchwood is that they keep fucking things up so badly, except that so many people get hurt in the crossfire.
Viz Rose herself, and the Doctor too. I actually rewatched "The Price" before I wrote up this entry, because I thought their unwilling parting was not as full of emo manpain as it could have been, and sure enough, the vid assures me that there is more emo manpain to come. It's manifestly unfair to Rose; the Doctor makes a series of choices intending to get what he gets. The show also tries to have it both ways: the Doctor and Peter conspire to keep Rose in the other universe, Rose valiantly jumps back, and at the last possible second Peter snatches her into the other universe out of the jaws of the void itself. So she is unquestionably better off than where she would have been at the end, but that isn't necessarily saying much. I'm sure she'll wind up running Torchwood in her new world sooner rather than later, and I also think that the universes are manifestly too close for there not to be a Doctor in the one where she's wound up. But of course, they won't be her Doctor, whoever they are. In a weird way, she winds up sharing Jack's fate: at Torchwood, in love with the Doctor, but never crossing paths with the right one.
"She knows," the Doctor says when he's contemplating leaving one last message for Rose in "The Satan Pit." Which isn't wrong! But it would have been good for her to hear it out loud for once, all the same, my dude.
Finally, I want to shout out the Doctor Who transcripts site I've been using, as David Tennant does not enunciate and my Blu-Ray rips don't pipe the sound mix correctly into my speaker bar.
Which, of course, makes these episodes even more difficult, especially because until quite late in the game it's not at all clear how or why Rose will be forced to renege on the choice she herself has made to stay with the Doctor. Jackie has grown on me, but I found her "but who will you be? You won't even be human in 50 years!" lines at the beginning of the episode…annoying. My real, genuine question is, "Who cares?" or "Why should Rose care?" She has the right to make that choice for herself, and the right to leave her humanity behind, if that's what it comes to.
I really, truly enjoyed all the stuff with the Cybermen and the Daleks (the Daleks are always hilarious, even if in a very morbid way), but the stuff with Torchwood has aged less well, or maybe it's just that it's still uncomfortably relevant. As I said on Twitter, Yvonne is basically the Ghost of Brexit Yet to Come, and as I said previously, I don't actually think the concept of Torchwood is that wrongheaded on its face. But Yvonne says the quiet part loud when Jackie tells her there isn't a British Empire and Yvonne's reply is a succinct "Not yet." It was never about Earth; it was always about Britain, and when people like Yvonne say "Britain" they mean "England." (Sidebar: I continue to think that the Doctor is completely wrong to so thoroughly mistrust Harriet Jones, in any universe.) Perhaps the saving grace of Torchwood is that they keep fucking things up so badly, except that so many people get hurt in the crossfire.
Viz Rose herself, and the Doctor too. I actually rewatched "The Price" before I wrote up this entry, because I thought their unwilling parting was not as full of emo manpain as it could have been, and sure enough, the vid assures me that there is more emo manpain to come. It's manifestly unfair to Rose; the Doctor makes a series of choices intending to get what he gets. The show also tries to have it both ways: the Doctor and Peter conspire to keep Rose in the other universe, Rose valiantly jumps back, and at the last possible second Peter snatches her into the other universe out of the jaws of the void itself. So she is unquestionably better off than where she would have been at the end, but that isn't necessarily saying much. I'm sure she'll wind up running Torchwood in her new world sooner rather than later, and I also think that the universes are manifestly too close for there not to be a Doctor in the one where she's wound up. But of course, they won't be her Doctor, whoever they are. In a weird way, she winds up sharing Jack's fate: at Torchwood, in love with the Doctor, but never crossing paths with the right one.
"She knows," the Doctor says when he's contemplating leaving one last message for Rose in "The Satan Pit." Which isn't wrong! But it would have been good for her to hear it out loud for once, all the same, my dude.
Finally, I want to shout out the Doctor Who transcripts site I've been using, as David Tennant does not enunciate and my Blu-Ray rips don't pipe the sound mix correctly into my speaker bar.