'Who' Thoughts and A Rant You Can Feel Free to Ignore
I have to say, on second viewing, some aspects of these episodes wear thin. The Sliveen’s (sp) zipper effect is amusingly cheesy the first time you see it, but by the, oh, tenth time it’s enough already.
And let me get this straight, the national defense system can be hacked with the password Buffalo? Typed over and over again? I have batter password protection on my e-mail! Give us a little credit dear writers.
I know many people watching for the first time find Jackie rather annoying. I actually empathize with her a lot more this go round. Her daughter is traveling with a nine hundred year old alien she doesn’t know in a phone box through the galaxy and when she asks for some guarantee for her daughter’s safety she can’t get one. It’s understandable that Rose would desire an escape from her mundane life and choose to go on this great adventure, but it also makes sense that Jackie would be greatly concerned and voicing her opinion strongly and loudly.
As quick to condemn as the Doctor can be, once again, we see him show compassion and sympathy for the pig. Why? I think it comes down to innocence for him. The pig was taken from the life it knew, tampered with, and put into a situation it didn’t understand. The Doctor sees the same vulnerability, confusion, and fear within us – hence his determination to protect the human race. We don’t know what’s out there and how to deal with it when it hit’s home or Big Ben in this case. (And after seeing too many landmarks trashed in disaster movies, I really appreciated The Doctor’s “Hitting Big Ben, come on.” because it’s just too improbable and obvious.)
And the Doctor came off a bit unlikable at the end of WW3. He screwed up returning Rose home so it seemed as if she was missing for a year and he’s about to run off with her again after nearly causing her death and he can’t be bothered to sit down for tea with her mother? How rude! Though I think the root of his selfishness is self-preservation – trying to avoid too many connections and the emotional baggage that comes with them.
Favorite line: “You’re a very violent young women.” I think I’ve heard that myself once or twice. ;)
To anyone else who has paid any attention to those commercials for the Who DVDs coming out in July, why does it say "The Complete First Series" on the box? Isn’t this like the twentysomethingth series?
And the next series premieres this week?! Hopefully I’ll have my downloading skillz perfected by then. I was trying to download ‘Prison Break’ (somehow an ep that won’t air for two weeks is making its way around the internet). The third try was the charm, but the first attempt never got going and the second turned out to be a zip file which needed to be converted (not a problem) and then needed the password to open. Password? Yeah, the guy who uploaded it also uploaded a Read Me document that informed me I had to register at a forum to get a password and that by me not doing so already meant I was lazy and how he needed to track who was downloading his torrents. Now I have no way of uploading shows myself, but I try to do my part by leaving the torrent on my computer as long as possible to share with others. Maybe I’m overreacting, but it just seemed like this guy was on a little power trip trying to make people jump through hoops for his torrents. And considering there are numerous ones out there for this particular ep it seemed rather ridiculous.
Although most of the older fans of the show are calling it the twenty-seventh, they (meaning the PTB) officially began the count over with the Ninth Doctor. Meaning this past one was the first series, the coming is the second, after that is the third, and so on.
I think there were also some numbers, and the Doctor just told Mickey to use the "buffalo" password as shortcut the second time? Which is not to defend the use of "network" "security" in this episode, which was awful. A real password designed by real ops guys would be something more along the lines of DoC2oRW0ho, except with a bunch more letters and numbers and case changes. You should see what I have to type in just to build our documentation website. It takes like ten minutes.
I love Jackie to pieces. She is who she is, and she has pretty reasonable reactions to what she sees, given her experience. But I didn't for a minute expect the Doctor to give Rose's family and friends the time of day. He's very quick to become outraged on the behalf of those who can't defend themselves, most especially when they're sentient and show some promise, but he doesn't really think too highly of most of them individually, except for those that particularly catch his fancy. He's quite capable of defending the human race as a whole and not wanting to actually spend any time with 99.99999% of them. They're like a particularly intelligent and lovable pet. I don't think his selfishness is self-preservation in situations like that; it's genuine boredom, and a mind that functions on a scale of time and history far different from ours.
I am so disconnected from so much of my flist in regards to this show, since I saw so many older episodes when I was younger. It's not like my views are more credible or authoritative, but I think I don't expect the same kinds of storytelling and behavior. The Doctor is ineffably alien and old in my view, and has had so many companions before Rose, and I just feel like I have an entirely other take on the character.
I do think the "Series 1" thing is just marketing to Americans, though. And stupid. And expensive.
ooh, i like that you point this out. i think eccleston does a pretty good job of being credibly annoying at times and at others benevolent and goofy.
and though the doctor has had many companions before, i don't recall the others being as important as rose is in the stories, yes?
The show has never, ever gone into letting there be this much chemistry between a dDoctor and companion, at least not in my viewings of it. And I think that has a lot to do with storytelling paradigms--the old show was about telling a rip-roaring sci-fi tale, and the new series are about telling more complex, character-based stories. But I think it's really interesting that the creators of the new series did explicitly choose to go there, and go there obviously.
Hmmm...I need Doctor Who icons...
Apparently they were involved as real people not just characters (married and everything!)
Check the companion section here:
You also make an interesting point with the Doctor about wanting to defend humanity as a whole because of our potential, yet being rather bored with many individualy. I think my view of him is colored by what I saw of him later after his little change, but I shall say no more to avoid spoilage.
I've seen various eps of various Dr.'s and I've noticed that not only is their appearance different but the personalities change as well. As an actor, each must have been given the "thumbs up" to make the character their own with a minimal set of must haves.
What Wiki says about The Dr.
and here's a 'canon" site here