Review of Idiot's Lantern

[owl]

I wasn't really grabbed by this episode. It was enjoyable, but not addictive. Perhaps it's because I've spent the past fortnight immersed in Lois McMaster Bujold's books, which are far and away richer in character and continuity. Ah, well.

The Downtrodden 1950s Housewife Becomes Emancipated theme didn't do much for me, because I could see how it would go from the beginning. Rose and the Doctor, with their 2006 attitudes, would come in and inspire her to stand up for herself blah fishcakes.

Having said that, when the Doctor and Rose did come in, I loved the bits about the Union Flag and the right way to hang it and Queen and Country. And they weren't Bloody Annoying this week, either, yay!

The way that the secret of the faceless granny was kept from the viewer for so long was effective. Featureless faces are especially scary to me because of that story of the man who hitches a lift on a country road and tells the driver how he's just escaped from a farmhouse of people without faces, and then the driver takes off his scarf...

I liked Rose investigating on her own, unphased by the fact that she's just lost the Doctor. And the copper of the old school, and then the Doctor's WOE! as faceless!Rose is brought in. although that ruined the tension, because you know that Rose has got to be all right again.

The faces trapped inside the television were traumatic, the way they kept calling out soundlessly. And I loved King Doctor of Belgium, and his rubber-soled gutties saving the day, and inventing the video tape. Had to be Betamax, didn't it?

I hope that Tommy goes to college; he has to do electrical engineering now, doesn't he? And Rose telling him to go after his father. Whoa, character continuity! And the Doctor has become mellowed towards 'domestic', I see. And no hubris this week, comparatively. I almost miss it; it's a character in its own right by now!

I think this one might improve on re-viewing, but I can't do it this week because I've promised to lend the tape to someone.

Oh—where was the Torchwood reference? I missed it in Girl in the Fireplace and Age of Steel, too.

Comments

[parma-violets.livejournal.com]

I love the fact that things like the Royal Family being werewolves and the Doctor inventing Betamax are now canon. Why, I cannot say. Overmedication?

I agree with more or less everything you've said, apart from the bit about the hitch-hiker with no face. This is largely because I never heard that story; if I did, I would have been scarred for life.

[book-addict.livejournal.com]

Thing about the flag ... I thought that it was rotationally symmetric. Which means that there wouldn't be an upside-down, unless by upside-down one meant sideways.
Maybe I'm missing something there...

[richenda.livejournal.com]

It's something to do with the broader white diagonal of the St Andrews cross - this has to be the upper or the lower or nearest the flagpole. Whic was it, I wonder?

Flying it the other way was rumoured to be a distress signal

[book-addict.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your response. I've figured it out.

I'd been thinking of hanging a flag upside down in the same way one would hang a poster upside down, which would involve a 180 degree rotation. Which doesn't affect the Union flag.

However -- and this is what I'd missed -- a flag has a reverse, and can only be hung at one edge, so by hanging it upside down, you'd be essentially performing the same operation as hanging a poster with the wrong side to the wall. Which would make it look wrong.

Make sense?

[ashteth.livejournal.com]

*nods*

Electrical Apprenticeship for Tommy! And after putting up with the Doctor he won't bat an eyelid when they send him for A Long Stand, or Sky Hooks.

his rubber-soled gutties saving the day - ah, so that's the reason for those shoes!


Featureless faces are especially scary to me because of that story of the man who hitches a lift on a country road and tells the driver how he's just escaped from a farmhouse of people without faces, and then the driver takes off his scarf...

eep! *hides behind the sofa*

Where's that from?!