Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder & The Giggle
Dec. 9th, 2023 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rosanicusThe specials are over! Roll on Christmas and Ncuti Gatwa as THE Doctor.
Wild Blue Yonder
I missed doing a post on WBY last week but my overall takeaway was: Hm. And it continues to be!
The specials in general have been fun but this episode more than ever I was really aware of the specific type of Whostalgia they are trying to hit, and since I am one of those contrarian fans who has Tennant low in their Doctor rankings it's not quite working for me. So a two-hander with Tennant and Tate is more of an interesting exercise for me than something I've been waiting for for years like a lot of Series 4 fans might have been.
Either way I really enjoyed the setup of WBY, especially the shot of the robot off in the distance and the drama of the HADS being set off. I love the HADS dearly, and have ever since I first encountered it in Classic Who. The actual reveal of the body doubling aliens was also fun, and the CGI was just naff enough to be enjoyable. If DW ever gets photorealistic CGI it'll all be over for me to be quite honest. The final chase to make it out before the ship blew up was also wonderful, although I'm not sure Fourteen getting the wrong Donna was tense enough for me since they'd already done one Donna death fake out the week before.
I also enjoyed the reveal of the ship's captain and the ultimately unresolved mystery of the beings from beyond the universe. It was a scary visual and a fun scene when Fourteen had to stop thinking and simply Could Not Do It - extremely relatable to be honest. I think perhaps the monsters were given a touch too much explanation, not on a mechanical level but more in the sense that I understood too much about why they were doing what they were doing, which made them less scary. Blah blah M.R. James blah blah Rosie is picky.
Overall it was a fine episode but I'm not quite on board with some of my twitter mutuals who were giving it 9 or 10 out of 10.
The Giggle
The return of the Toymaker!! I did in fact find the German accent incredible, and as my partner noted while we were watching it was insane that his accent slipped back to neutral just as he was doing a racist microaggression. It feels like RTD might have been trying to recontextualise the entire persona of the 1966-era Toymaker as an extra-dimensional being deliberately dressing in a culturally appropriative way, which is kind of amazing as a decision to be honest. Especially since the Toymaker had allegedly never been to Earth at all when they first met, even though he had evil Billy Bunter as one of his minions (I've only seen the one surviving episode of TCT, and heard the original audio of That One Part...). Either way I loved all the Toymaker's outfits in the episode, especially the inexplicable pilot's outfit complete with scarf while he was shooting Fourteen with a big laser.
I also liked spotting all the Bristol filming locations, although I was sad to realise that it was Bristol doubling for London instead of actually being set in London. There are other cities, Doctor Who! You just had multiple series where the Earthbound stories were set in the North! I did enjoy UNIT showing up and helicoptering the TARDIS along with Fourteen and Donna up to the UNIT Avengers tower they now have. I imagine the Brigadier would be annoyed at having to deal with central London traffic on his commute but I suppose it makes sense to have a more central location even if the council tax would be dreadful.
The cold open with the invention of television was deliciously creepy. I really enjoyed the reveal of what The Giggle meant and the scene where Kate deliberately shuts hers off and starts spouting a lot of paranoid nonsense, although I couldn't done without the ableism being so quickly dismissed. It wasn't really clear if the things she was saying were exaggerated versions of her real thoughts or being made up from whole cloth.
NPH was fantastic in role as the Toymaker and his chemistry with Tennant was excellent. His puppet show with so many companions having their strings cut was beautifully sinister, although I did think the opportunity to make a Rory Williams death joke was really passed over. Or to have some Thirteen and Yaz dolls kiss </3.
Ncuti Gatwa's debut was wonderful. However I do think that bigeneration is a big old fashioned copout and while I liked the eventual fallout of Fourteen having the sort of gentle Earthbound story as copperbadge's 11/Brig classic In Geneva, I also think that it's going to result in even more stupid bad faith arguments about Gatwa's "legitimacy" as the Doctor than have already polluted the internet. I liked the idea of the Toymaker playing himself by killing Fourteen and ending up with two Doctors instead of just one, but then the game itself was a little underwhelming.
I think that this episode (rightfully) gave a lot of credit to Mel (MEL!!!!! <333) and Donna being intelligent and good at computers and then sort of forgot that the original game played by the Doctor and the Toymaker was a logic puzzle. I'm very confident that they could've made a suitably visual logic puzzle or indeed a life size board game and the fact they ended up playing catch was sort of. Boring? At the very least they could've gone to a pocket dimension and karate-chopped a lizard man (thank you The Three Doctors for my life).
Anyway, it was very good! I really liked the Emporium and Donna's encounter with the dolls, which had a delightfully Victorian music hall vibe (I've been reading Lucy Worsley's A Very British Murder which has some great photos) and was creepy and funny in equal measure.
P.S: This is the first time I've ever been interested in reading Doctor x Doctor fic. I think something might be in the water.
Wild Blue Yonder
I missed doing a post on WBY last week but my overall takeaway was: Hm. And it continues to be!
The specials in general have been fun but this episode more than ever I was really aware of the specific type of Whostalgia they are trying to hit, and since I am one of those contrarian fans who has Tennant low in their Doctor rankings it's not quite working for me. So a two-hander with Tennant and Tate is more of an interesting exercise for me than something I've been waiting for for years like a lot of Series 4 fans might have been.
Either way I really enjoyed the setup of WBY, especially the shot of the robot off in the distance and the drama of the HADS being set off. I love the HADS dearly, and have ever since I first encountered it in Classic Who. The actual reveal of the body doubling aliens was also fun, and the CGI was just naff enough to be enjoyable. If DW ever gets photorealistic CGI it'll all be over for me to be quite honest. The final chase to make it out before the ship blew up was also wonderful, although I'm not sure Fourteen getting the wrong Donna was tense enough for me since they'd already done one Donna death fake out the week before.
I also enjoyed the reveal of the ship's captain and the ultimately unresolved mystery of the beings from beyond the universe. It was a scary visual and a fun scene when Fourteen had to stop thinking and simply Could Not Do It - extremely relatable to be honest. I think perhaps the monsters were given a touch too much explanation, not on a mechanical level but more in the sense that I understood too much about why they were doing what they were doing, which made them less scary. Blah blah M.R. James blah blah Rosie is picky.
Overall it was a fine episode but I'm not quite on board with some of my twitter mutuals who were giving it 9 or 10 out of 10.
The Giggle
The return of the Toymaker!! I did in fact find the German accent incredible, and as my partner noted while we were watching it was insane that his accent slipped back to neutral just as he was doing a racist microaggression. It feels like RTD might have been trying to recontextualise the entire persona of the 1966-era Toymaker as an extra-dimensional being deliberately dressing in a culturally appropriative way, which is kind of amazing as a decision to be honest. Especially since the Toymaker had allegedly never been to Earth at all when they first met, even though he had evil Billy Bunter as one of his minions (I've only seen the one surviving episode of TCT, and heard the original audio of That One Part...). Either way I loved all the Toymaker's outfits in the episode, especially the inexplicable pilot's outfit complete with scarf while he was shooting Fourteen with a big laser.
I also liked spotting all the Bristol filming locations, although I was sad to realise that it was Bristol doubling for London instead of actually being set in London. There are other cities, Doctor Who! You just had multiple series where the Earthbound stories were set in the North! I did enjoy UNIT showing up and helicoptering the TARDIS along with Fourteen and Donna up to the UNIT Avengers tower they now have. I imagine the Brigadier would be annoyed at having to deal with central London traffic on his commute but I suppose it makes sense to have a more central location even if the council tax would be dreadful.
The cold open with the invention of television was deliciously creepy. I really enjoyed the reveal of what The Giggle meant and the scene where Kate deliberately shuts hers off and starts spouting a lot of paranoid nonsense, although I couldn't done without the ableism being so quickly dismissed. It wasn't really clear if the things she was saying were exaggerated versions of her real thoughts or being made up from whole cloth.
NPH was fantastic in role as the Toymaker and his chemistry with Tennant was excellent. His puppet show with so many companions having their strings cut was beautifully sinister, although I did think the opportunity to make a Rory Williams death joke was really passed over. Or to have some Thirteen and Yaz dolls kiss </3.
Ncuti Gatwa's debut was wonderful. However I do think that bigeneration is a big old fashioned copout and while I liked the eventual fallout of Fourteen having the sort of gentle Earthbound story as copperbadge's 11/Brig classic In Geneva, I also think that it's going to result in even more stupid bad faith arguments about Gatwa's "legitimacy" as the Doctor than have already polluted the internet. I liked the idea of the Toymaker playing himself by killing Fourteen and ending up with two Doctors instead of just one, but then the game itself was a little underwhelming.
I think that this episode (rightfully) gave a lot of credit to Mel (MEL!!!!! <333) and Donna being intelligent and good at computers and then sort of forgot that the original game played by the Doctor and the Toymaker was a logic puzzle. I'm very confident that they could've made a suitably visual logic puzzle or indeed a life size board game and the fact they ended up playing catch was sort of. Boring? At the very least they could've gone to a pocket dimension and karate-chopped a lizard man (thank you The Three Doctors for my life).
Anyway, it was very good! I really liked the Emporium and Donna's encounter with the dolls, which had a delightfully Victorian music hall vibe (I've been reading Lucy Worsley's A Very British Murder which has some great photos) and was creepy and funny in equal measure.
P.S: This is the first time I've ever been interested in reading Doctor x Doctor fic. I think something might be in the water.
