(no subject)

[catslash]

Doctor Who.



Ever since "Journey's End" angered me so much that I actually went out drinking, I have had a policy:

Do not watch Russell T Davies finales sober.

This served me well enough with Children of Earth: Day Five, as sotto_voice can attest - we watched it together, and I haven't watched it since, and that suits me just fine. I've tried to watch CoE in its entirety a couple of times since then, and I can't. It's partly because some of it is just too much, and partly because I can't fucking take any of the governmental shit seriously since I found The Thick of It. I just can't. Peter Capaldi's presence has nothing to do with this; I just have a hard time buying what CoE is trying to sell.

So anyway. I applied this policy tonight as well, via the expedient of not Bailey's, since I determined that my sister's gift was best not spent on exasperation, but a cheap bottle of wine picked up on the way home from work. And then, after downloading the ep, I watched it in chunks, so that an hour+ of DW took me at least two hours to watch.

Which is all by way of saying that I don't fucking remember most of what I just saw, and I don't actually know what happened to, like, the Master and the Time Lords. (But I do remember that I'm starting to wish that I had picked a different world for Cal to go to in Milliways, because wtf canon I hate you.) I would like to say that I'll eventually write a proper review once I'm fully sober, but I can't even promise that - I said it will CoE Day Five and have I done it? Noooo.

I would like to comment on stuff like Martha/Mickey and whether it is totally awesome (a pairing I never knew I needed until now, trufax) or totally fail (wtf happened to Tom? and is it racially awkward to split the biracial pairing in favor of pairing the black characters?), or the joy of seeing Alonzo one last time and Jack at some indeterminate point in his future, clearly having healed and moved on from his past. And I guess I kinda just did, but I feel like there's more to say there. I bet my flist covered it - I haven't read any posts yet, I never do before I write mine. So we'll see.

But most of all, I want to say goodbye to Ten.

I first discovered Doctor Who in May 2007. This is relevant and yet not - I started with the Empty Child episodes, then dove headfirst into series one, so Ten was not my first Doctor. Nine was. Nine is my Doctor, make no mistake about that.

But I was unemployed for two months that summer, and Doctor Who was a lifeline to sanity for me. The thing about being unemployed is, not only are you eternally broke, you are eternally BORED. Entertainment these days costs money, and when you aren't working, even a matinee movie ticket in a small state like mine is a dream beyond your grasp. So Doctor Who was a godsend. It gave me something to watch, to think about, and since I was DLing it mostly from MegaUpload, the download limits kept me to only so many episodes per day, so I couldn't burn through it as fast I wanted to. And that was also a blessing. It drew out the experience.

I don't remember exactly which was my first "live" episode. I think it may have been "Blink," because I remember being glad that I didn't have to wait for the resolution of "Human Nature." And I know that after "Blink," I was downtown gazing warily at the many statues Portland has, because the ep was still fresh in my mind.

So. Nine may be my Doctor, but Ten . . . Ten was the first Doctor I waited for. We had a tempestuous relationship, Ten and I. It took me a long time to really and truly warm up to him. I'm not sure it even happened until sometime during series four. I had a hard time accepting David Tennant, because his performance never seemed truly effortless to me. Whenever Ten went through something intense, I couldn't quite feel as though I were watching the Doctor; it felt more like I was watching Tennant be an Actor.

But the bond clicked, eventually, and I fell for Ten in my quiet way. He became the Doctor for me, and I - well. There's a moment toward the end of "Waters of Mars," with Ten in the grips of madness and the space station exploding around them, and Adelaide is beginning to worry as she starts to piece things together. And Ten smiles. It's that grin of his, the one that has become so much a part of the character, and even as he fell apart, I saw it and I thought Trust that smile. I knew better, and still I had faith in it, because Ten is the Doctor and the Doctor always makes things right. Even when I could see he was fucking it up potentially beyond repair, I couldn't control the instinct to trust in him.

So, obviously, somewhere along the way, things fell into place. And while it didn't sadden me to hear that Tennant was moving on, and while I'm excited to meet Eleven, and while frankly that bottle of wine served its purpose and made things difficult interesting to keep track of at times - I still had to pause during the regeneration while I cried. Oh, Ten. Clinging to your fractured existence till the last moment. You didn't have an OFF switch. You came into being without one and you never found it. Nine's ending was peaceful and filled with joy - "You were fantastic. And you know what? So was I" - but Ten's was as broken as his beginning.

"I don't want to go."

I'm sorry, Ten. Goodbye.

Comments

[twoseamfastball.livejournal.com]

You know, all I could think about in that final scene was the difference in last lines. "You were fantastic, and you know what, so was I," vs "I don't want to go." Nine definitely had the better sendoff there.... can't help but feel his was more true to the spirit of the Doctor as we've known him in the modern era. And that joyful line turned into Ten, who for the most part exhibited that manic joyfulness... so when we end a Doctor on a SUPER EMO moment, makes me a little nervous for Eleven. Especially when he already has the Emo Hair going.

IDK. I probably need more time to process this. I'm gonna miss the Master. And the Time Lord stuff was ENTIRELY unnecessary. Fuck RTD. But Martha with big guns! Jack in the bar from Star Wars!

[catslash.livejournal.com]

I look forward to Eleven, and hope for his sake that he has regained that whole "mental stability" factor that Ten did not so much possess.

. . . I do not actually remember what happened to the Master. Or the Time Lords. Or . . . yeah, most of it prior to the Doctor's rescuing Wilf from being melted like Owen is pretty much a blank. Mm, cheap wine.