The Girl in the Fireplace

[coalescent]

So close, and yet so far. Given Steven Moffatt's pedigree, it wasn't hard to predict that at some point he'd succumb to the lure of a non-linear time travel plot. Given his pedigree, it should have been wonderful. Given the toys he gave himself to work with--clockwork robots, a time-traveler's courtesan who is destined to be Seria Mau--it should have been spectacular. And yet ...

The good: the vertiginous "3000 years later", and the fact they were two-and-a-half galaxies away from Earth. "What's pre-revolutionary France doing on a spaceship? Have some perspective, Mickey", and "Didn't want to say 'magic door'" and a lot of the rest of the dialogue. The pacing, which managed to make the Doctor/Reinette relationship believeable in a single episode. The aforementioned clockwork robots and the cyborg spaceship. Leaving space in the script to show us Rose's reactions to what the Doctor was doing.

The bad: the direction. The music. the logic. Or rather, the lack thereof, particularly at the end of the episode. The last five minutes or so are a triumph of convenience and character over the integrity of the story, and what makes it worse is that from the second the Doctor's horse crashes through that mirror you know exactly what's going to happen. You know that there'll be a touching scene between the two of them in which the Doctor explains he is resigned to his fate, you know he'll end up going back through the fireplace, and you know the fireplace will conveniently skip forward more years than it has in a comparable time for the rest of the episode, just to lay the tragedy on a bit thicker. (While I'm at it: of all the portals on the ship, the fireplace is the one which they shouldn't have been able to have conversations across.) And once you're snapped out of the moment, you start to notice the ways in which the episode draws attention to the problems with the way Doctor Who handles time travel. To be blunt: he has a time machine, and the hand-waving is not convincing enough to justify its non-use. (I was also hoping he'd make more use of the fact that Reinette was able to go through the portals to the future, but alas.)

The verdict: frustrating, because this time the problems are not conceptual, they're in the execution. Moffatt is probably still the most interesting writer the show has, but this just felt like it needed another draft.

Next week: zeppelins. I would say that there's no way this can suck, but I said that about a spaceship crashing into Big Ben last year, and look what happened.

All the other posts ever:
palatinate here.
iainjclark here.
nhw here.
apotropaism here.
communicator here.
surliminal here.
blackbeltbarbie here.
andrewducker here.
ang_grrr here.
pikelet here.
wg here.

(And people wonder why I'm still watching.)

EDIT: O anonymous adder of tags: "flocking"?

Comments

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

(Edited for typos!)

I don't feel this at all. I agree about Tennant's bittiness in New Earth, but since then I feel that the different aspects of his personality have been more integrated and the transitions smoother. These last couple of weeks he's felt like a real character. In some ways, Eccleston's sudden goofy!Doctor moments felt more forced; more self-consciously "acted."

I was a bit worried about the season after the first episode but since then I've felt that the episodes have been very successful in different ways, and this week's episode was just excellent. Yes, as always a couple of plot-holes mar the thing, but as always a couple of plot-holes matter little to me if the story and the emotion is there. I really feel that all the flaws getting debated in this thread are genuine but very, very minor.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

In some ways, Eccleston's sudden goofy!Doctor moments felt more forced; more self-consciously "acted."

True, but Eccleston nailed the character's serious moments - you believed that this was a very sad, very wounded person. Tennant hasn't managed to sell me on tragedy yet - he comes across as whiny and self-pitying. There was definitely some progress this week, but the character has yet to gel as far as I'm concerned.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Tennant definitely doesn't get the darker bits right - or not as right as Eccleston. He can get away with this a bit since this is a Doctor who (sic) has healed and moved on a little, but he needs some more gravitas. I do think his performance settling down nicely: from his overplayed "I'm Being Angry Now" in New Earth to something resembling actual anger when facing off against ASH, but he's not there yet.

Both actors have taken the character in valid directions and both feel like different slants on the same character - particularly the Doctor of the Tom Baker era. At times it's almost as if someone took Tom Baker and put him through a nasty transporter accident: Eccleston got more of the alienness and the weight of the universe on his shoulders, Tennant got more of the eccentricity and verbal diarrhea. What Tennant does get right, and where Eccleston was less consistent, is in the whimsy and charismatic charm. He's the distracted professor, the magpie child captivated by the newest shiny thing to pass into his field of vision.

There's a lot of overlap between the two, but so far I think Eccleston's gravitas means that he wins out for me. I'd be hard pressed to say that Tennant won't feel equally iconic by the end of the year, though.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

Both actors have taken the character in valid directions and both feel like different slants on the same character - particularly the Doctor of the Tom Baker era.

Obviously I don't have your frame of reference (and, once again, I'm tickled by the different ways in which new and old Who fans approach the show) but I do agree that there is an obvious common ground between the two characters.

It occurred to me the other day that the qualities in Tennant's performance (and, indeed, in the character as it is being written) that are frequently mentioned as being particularly Doctor-ish - zaniness, fast talking, funny outfit, love of knowledge - are precisely the ones whose absence in the Eccleston Doctor's character was so striking to old Who fans. Having written a thoroughly un-Doctor-ish Doctor, Davies seems to be trying to write a thoroughly Doctor-ish one. I wonder why.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Having written a thoroughly un-Doctor-ish Doctor, Davies seems to be trying to write a thoroughly Doctor-ish one.

I do think Tennant has an indefinably more "Doctor-ish" quality than Eccleston, but I wouldn't say that Eccleston was "thoroughly un-Doctor-ish" - indeed he was quite superbly Doctor-ish at times!

I actually think the two incarnations are written more similarly than it first appears, with a lot of the distinctiveness added by the performances. After all, Eccleston did gabble and go off on rambling asides; it's just that Tennant does it with a certain breathless charm that's becoming a trademark characteristic. (I'm not sure how far in advance the scripts were written, so it's possible the writers have started responding to Tennant's performance and emphasising the whimsy.)

[palatinate.livejournal.com]

I think that may well be the case.

Whether or not the details of the character's evolution and the actors' performances are smooth, I believe the overall trajectory is right. Eccleston as character was damaged in himself and seeking purpose, whilst still being able to see the wonder of the universe (remember the speech in "Rose" and the various "Fantastics".)

Tennant is still stabilising after regeneration but has managed to release a lot of that burden and as you say has the more upbeat, self-confident air. The self-doubt over his purpose has largely gone.

In a way Eccleston was like someone in depression or bereavement - the underlying character was still there, and occasionally poked through, but mostly the joy of life had gone. And now he's moved on and the underlying character is coming out again. Certainly the more "traditionally Doctorly" whimsy of Tennant fits with that.

What also should not be forgotten here is that this was not a normal TV show where one actor replaces another but we should expect continuity. When the Doctor regenerates his character always changes to a degree; and not only that but canon shows that there's some instability for the period immediately thereafter. We *should* expect this Doctor to be different. And I think the cares of the Time War to some degree have been sloughed off, like an insect growing into a new skin, with the regeneration.

[palatinate.livejournal.com]

Ah, a fellow spirit at last!