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

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

Why are you still watching?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Because everyone else is, and I'm a sheep. And because of the occasional flashes of potential.

BAAA!

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you admit your sheepdom.

now admit it about Mitchell

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

Once upon a time, when I was young, Dr Who ran stories in 4-part (or even the occasional 6-part?) series. Those stories were, IIRC, far less complex than the recent ones. So why can't a story like this one be expanded to allow its potential to be proplerly explored?

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

ps please dont tell anyone I commented on TV skiffy, I once had a reputation, you know...

Re: BAAA!

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

David Mitchell Is Smarter Than You. :p

Re: BAAA!

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

And yet, still not a good writer.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, and you know how the rest of the quote goes.

(Is that an M John Harrison reference up there?)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, and you know how the rest of the quote goes.

But it's better than agreeing with Dan, right?

(Is that an M John Harrison reference up there?)

Yep. (And the fact that I had that story in the back of my head as soon as I realised they were planning to plug in her brain probably made the episode more effective.)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Oh, don't be ashamed. It's the noughties; media sf is in.

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

I forgive this episode a lot, the music (which I found a constant bugbear in season one) was not an issue. The direction was nothing like as good as episode two (which looked fantastic!) but if you don't buy the not using the TARDIS to solve the problem by time travel conceit you may be a little stuck giving Dr Who the loving some of the rest of us have.
Still, you've never seen Ghost Light (which this episode reminded me of), have you?

Still waiting for a Dr Who episode as polished and confident as anything that Life On Mars had earlier in the year.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

but if you don't buy the not using the TARDIS to solve the problem by time travel conceit you may be a little stuck giving Dr Who the loving some of the rest of us have.

To be clear about this: if it's just a background assumption that the TARDIS doesn't get used, then that's fine. And if the story that could be solved by the TARDIS is compelling enough in its own right, that's also fine. The problem comes in when the story doesn't quite hang together and in doing so draws attention to the fact that use of the TARDIS could basically solve everything.

And no, not seen Ghost Light.

Still waiting for a Dr Who episode as polished and confident as anything that Life On Mars had earlier in the year.

I suspect you may be waiting for a while...

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

I suspect you may be waiting for a while...

Like Scottish football, it's the hope that kills us.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

But it's better than agreeing with Dan, right?

Honestly, I'm not sure. Can't I just disagree with both of you all the time?

[pikelet.livejournal.com]

The problem comes in when the story doesn't quite hang together and in doing so draws attention to the fact that use of the TARDIS could basically solve everything.

Right, I've seen this in a few places, and it's actually starting to grate now.

Given that, once the TARDIS arrives in a location, it's been repeatedly established by both the old and the new series that the subjective timestream of the TARDIS occupants cannot be retrospectively altered for the duration of their visit, why are people viewing this as a plot hole?

[andrewducker]

Fantastic. The first thing I said to surliminal, when I sat down to watch it for the second time (and her 1.5th time) was "I really like the music in this one."

Which, I think, just goes to show.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

They don't have to alter their subjective timestream. They could, for instance, use the TARDIS to go to France at a point after the latest time portal they went through.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I didn't hate the music later in the episode, but the plinky-plonky nonsense we got for the first twenty-five minutes really grated.

[pikelet.livejournal.com]

But the King says to the Doctor specifically that Reinette died without ever seeing him again. Hence, he can't go back and suddenly make it so she did see him.

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Flocking. Is it that hard to grasp?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

No, look: instead of using the horse to jump through the mirror, use the TARDIS to materialise in the ballroom, then break the portals, from the France side.

(Although even if we go with the fixing-it-after-the-fact argument, the Doctor doesn't have to see her: Mickey or Rose could do it.)

[andrewducker]

And it was, of course, that bit I really liked. It was the surreal silliness of it all that I appreciated.

I find that I like Dr Who most when I view it as pure kids TV, and thus the best when it's at it's most childlike - all sensawunda and atmosphere without bothering to make more than passing sense.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I just automatically parse it as to do with Games Workshop.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

I concur - this is why they could not fix it when Rose was disappeared for a year - once it has happened you cannot undo.

Totally nothing new.

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Maybe Xander the King lied!