Sunday 25 October 2015

The Woman Who Lived (time shift)

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
- Plato

Or, if you want to be all obvious about it:

Inside every older woman is a young girl wondering what the hell happened.
- Cora Harvey Armstrong

Me:  Ye?  Ye?  Must we have that?

Him:  No, 'Me'.

Me:  Oh, 'Me'.  Yeah, okay.  Well, Ashildr's going to kill Clara and...  Osgood's going to die next week, I reckon.  I hope that they're quite careful with the way that they deal with what's obviously going to be stuff that got raised as a result of Robot of Sherwood last year.  Anyway, let's talk about-

Him:  What d'you mean?

Me:  It's...  It's going to be about ISIS. 

Him:  You sure?

Me:  Yeah, because I've seen Battlestar Galactica

Him:  I didn't think Battlestar Galactica was about ISIS.

Me:  It wasn't at the time, but-

Him:  "But it is now!"

Me:  Yeah.  Erm...  Right.  So, that was the Clara-lite episode, which means that later on there'll be an episode that's largely just got Clara in it.  Probably around about episode ten I would've thought.

Him:  It still felt like it had Clara in it.

Me:  Yeah, at the end.

Him:  Clara was in about, y'know, one fifth of the plot.

Me:  Ha!  Yeah, it felt surprisingly slight. 

Him:  It felt really short.

Me:  Which usually means you've enjoyed it. 

Sea-badger!


Him:  No, I...  I don't feel tired either, so maybe it did actually go by shorter.  Maybe that's time dilation in action.

Me:  Ha!  Could be.

Him:  That must be it.  It was moving at one-tenth the speed of light.

Me:  The start wasn't very strong.  The way it began... uh...  wasn't great.  It was better written than last week's.  Most of the dialogue was pretty good and delivered well.  I though the scenes between-

Him:  What abou-

[SCENE MISSING]

Me:  I'll cut all that.  I'd better edit all that out.

Him:  Yeah.  Because-

[SCENE MISSING]

Me:  Well, I don't want him reading it.  What did you think about the sonic shades?

Him:  I'm not a fan of the sonic shades. 

Me:  Did you think that when The Visitation got a mention there that the sonic shades were going to go the same way as the sonic screwdriver? 

Him:  They did that last week.

Me:  Yeah, but they'd come back.

Him:  They can't break them every week!  It can't be, "Oh my God!  They broke my sonic shades!"

Me:  I thought that, apart from some duff editing, it was well directed.  Some of the scenes between Maisie Williams and Peter Capaldi were really nicely played.  Felt quite strong.

Him:  Even with Murray Gold going DUM DE DUM DUM MURRAY MURRAY MURRAY DUM DE DUMM DUM?

Me:  Yes, Murray Gold, Murray Gold, Murray Gold, Murray Gold...  I think that someone might need to mention that not everything is improved by making it sound like Gremlins.  You don't need to have that much music going over everything, unless it's a cartoon. 

Him:  I still think they should just replace it all with music from Legend of Zelda.

Me:  I reckon they should get Peter Capaldi to do the music.  There's no subtlety with it.  It's really annoying.  Um...  Hades and the Underworld.  So, Clara's going to die and the Doctor's going to have to go back and get her and blah.  That's going to come up because this is... It's the whole problem with mortals and gods.  In many ways, what happened there is you've got Ashildr's - or Me's-

Him:  Ha!

Me:  She reflects the Doctor's immortality.  The two of them reflect each other back.1

Him:  But he's not immortal.  He's dying, remember?

Me:  He was at the start, but that's because Clara's not dead yet.  Although, I dunno.  Osgood's death - 'cause that's set at an earlier time...  Or it'll turn out to be the Osgood Zygon...

Him:  Maybe she gets better.

Me:
  If Osgood dies before Missy kills her, then that's going to mess up everything, isn't it?  But I think they're going to have to be very careful how they deal with it.  I'm...  I'm a little bit concerned that the time it's going out...  It feels a bit as though they're aiming, consciously, at an older audience, which is a very careless and dangerous thing to do, because this is not a show that can grow with its audience. 

Him:  Or eventually they will die.

Me:  Yes, exactly.  Y'know, 2000 AD's lifespan isn't going to be forever because it's tried to age with its audience.

Him:  They didn't think it was going to last anywhere near as long as it did, whereas Doctor Who should have a fairly good idea that it's not going to...  die anytime soon.

Me:  The themes of death and responsibility and immortality and life and living life to the full-

Him:  It's better than good versus evil.

Me:  The whole thing about mayflies and ageing...  being repeated constantly.  It feels tonally a little more confused than I thought it was.  Purple being the colour of death...

Him:  Purple's the colour of death.

Me:  Poor Prince. 

Him:  Gween is the colour of monsters.

Me:  True, yeah.

Him:  And yellow is the purple of defying death...  Or...  A portal closing.  Or...  Lion...

Me:  Did you enjoy that?

Him:  It was... More enjoyable than last week's.

Me:  Yeah, it was.  It looked good.  I dunno.  That didn't really work for me.  Okay.  So on that bombshell.

Him:  I don't even feel tired.

1.  I'm going to write a longer piece about...  stuff... so I'll keep this brief and just mention Hob Gadling, mostly to make sure that Neil Gaiman's Sandman series has been flagged up.  There are a lot of similarities between this current series and that one.2  Which is fascinating for a variety of reasons.  And, let's not forget Greek Tragedy, kids.  Or Sandman.  Or no good deed going unpunished.

2.  Anyone else reckon that the fellow from Thundercats'd watched The Unquiet Dead?  Just me then.

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