Family of Blood
Jun. 2nd, 2007 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlWell, that lived up to last week's promise, all right. There were a couple of moments where I was almost crying. Over Doctor Who, yet.
TIM LIVES! I'm not quite sure how the watch saved his life, however. The scene with the Doctor and Martha at the Remembrance Day service was incredibly sad. And the line Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn being read as Tim looks up and sees them was very neat. Because the Doctor, like Tim now, is a war survivor and so old and full of memory, but it applies equally well to him: he doesn't age either. Tim is definitely a Doctor-avatar, isn't he?
The slight flaw in this, for me, was the speed with which the school went to war. Even in jingoistic times, it seemed a little fast to go straight from mysterious happenings, even murder, to machine guns without finding that the phone line was down first. But I liked the boys doing their what-passing-bells-for-those-who-die-as-cattle thing in the courtyard, and the bully crying (and I liked that Tim saved his life in the trenches, too). And the way they broke and ran for it when John Smith told them to pull back. They aren't soldiers yet—see the relief when they realise the enemy wasn't alive, so they haven't killed anyone. But of course they will, in a year or two. Those scenes tap into the great cultural memory of all those war films and Remembrance Days and the war poets, and it's worse because they're even younger than the boys who died in the trenches.
Martha was less superfluous in this than Rose was in last series's DOCTAH FALLZ FOAR HUMAN WOMANZ episode. She gets to escape her hostage situation and evacuate the other hostages, and tell the others what to do. "Try it and we'll die together." Oh, Martha, I think I am a bit in love with you myself. Let's steal the TARDIS and go off through time and space together. I loved that she got John Smith out of the situation where he had to make that choice.
I really felt her frustration when no-one at the school will listen to her because she's only a housemaid, and black at that. She's trying to save everyone, and they won;t let her. I'm not sure what I think about the part where she loses it with Joan and rhymes off the anatomy of the hand, when Joan's getting ready to provide medical attention (not that there's anything left to provide it to, but still...). It was a great moment the way she was throwing her knowledge like a weapon, but people are getting zapped as you speak, you know? They're a bit spotty with Martha's doctoring-people instincts sometimes; does she fight or does she fix people?
John Smith really was a complete average human; he's not good at thinking on his feet, he's completely confused by the crisis, he leaves Martha with the family—Martha and Joan both PWN him in the village hall scene. Shows how he picks the extraordinary human womanz, I suppose, even when he's John Smith. I loved that moment when he's standing there with the gun and lowers it and offers to end it—the Doctor coming through. And he did chose, at the end, to die, as Joan said.
So what does John Smith get to do that the Doctor doesn't? Ten has emo already, but I think that John Smith gets to lose the self-control, the pretending everything's fine (Lot of that in this series, isn;t there?) He gets to panic and to really cry, not just the Single Emo Tear. And he gets to forget.
I started really believing Joan in her two scenes along with John Smith/the Doctor in this episode. The first one: she's losing the man she loves, again. Ans she has to encourage him to it, and let him go, because that's her duty. And she's not likely to get a third try at a husband and family, not with all the men that are about to die in the Great War (although that little boy in the vision would have been nicely aged to catch it in the next one, which is probably why they had more girls.) Poor Martha and Tim, though. I don't know who's comforting who outside.
And then he comes back as the Doctor and he has the same face, but now Joan's in Martha's position. He's not her John. And he thinks he can invite her along (though what he thinks Martha's going to do...) and that will make it better, for he loves everybody, and all the companions are in love with him nowadays, and I don't think he gets 'monogamous', and that's what Joan wants. And she calls him on the trail of death and destruction he leaves behind, oh, ow.
Oh, poor Martha. Talk about baring your soul. And that 'protest too much' bit at the end, ow. I think he does remember. She got a very nice hug, though (Anyone cap it?). She's been so great at coping in these episodes. Martha >> Everyone. He does love you, really!
What the Doctor did to the Family—that sent shivers down my spine, especially the daughter in the mirrors (although how does he do his hair if he only looks in a mirror once a year?), and the son standing guard over the fields of England, considering that Baines would very probably have died guarding England if the Family hadn't got there first. That's the Doctor who said 'I used to have so much mercy...' That's the Oncoming Storm. You gave them what they were wanting, in a ruthless and ironic way, you git. Your lonely god is showing again, where did you leave Martha, who usually reduces your hubris? Perhaps he was so hard on the Family because of the all the trauma and damage of being John Smith, leaving Joan bereft and those people dead? But it was a pay-off of all those lines of Tim's about how damn scary he is. And wonderful, don't forget wonderful.
TIM LIVES! I'm not quite sure how the watch saved his life, however. The scene with the Doctor and Martha at the Remembrance Day service was incredibly sad. And the line Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn being read as Tim looks up and sees them was very neat. Because the Doctor, like Tim now, is a war survivor and so old and full of memory, but it applies equally well to him: he doesn't age either. Tim is definitely a Doctor-avatar, isn't he?
The slight flaw in this, for me, was the speed with which the school went to war. Even in jingoistic times, it seemed a little fast to go straight from mysterious happenings, even murder, to machine guns without finding that the phone line was down first. But I liked the boys doing their what-passing-bells-for-those-who-die-as-cattle thing in the courtyard, and the bully crying (and I liked that Tim saved his life in the trenches, too). And the way they broke and ran for it when John Smith told them to pull back. They aren't soldiers yet—see the relief when they realise the enemy wasn't alive, so they haven't killed anyone. But of course they will, in a year or two. Those scenes tap into the great cultural memory of all those war films and Remembrance Days and the war poets, and it's worse because they're even younger than the boys who died in the trenches.
Martha was less superfluous in this than Rose was in last series's DOCTAH FALLZ FOAR HUMAN WOMANZ episode. She gets to escape her hostage situation and evacuate the other hostages, and tell the others what to do. "Try it and we'll die together." Oh, Martha, I think I am a bit in love with you myself. Let's steal the TARDIS and go off through time and space together. I loved that she got John Smith out of the situation where he had to make that choice.
I really felt her frustration when no-one at the school will listen to her because she's only a housemaid, and black at that. She's trying to save everyone, and they won;t let her. I'm not sure what I think about the part where she loses it with Joan and rhymes off the anatomy of the hand, when Joan's getting ready to provide medical attention (not that there's anything left to provide it to, but still...). It was a great moment the way she was throwing her knowledge like a weapon, but people are getting zapped as you speak, you know? They're a bit spotty with Martha's doctoring-people instincts sometimes; does she fight or does she fix people?
John Smith really was a complete average human; he's not good at thinking on his feet, he's completely confused by the crisis, he leaves Martha with the family—Martha and Joan both PWN him in the village hall scene. Shows how he picks the extraordinary human womanz, I suppose, even when he's John Smith. I loved that moment when he's standing there with the gun and lowers it and offers to end it—the Doctor coming through. And he did chose, at the end, to die, as Joan said.
So what does John Smith get to do that the Doctor doesn't? Ten has emo already, but I think that John Smith gets to lose the self-control, the pretending everything's fine (Lot of that in this series, isn;t there?) He gets to panic and to really cry, not just the Single Emo Tear. And he gets to forget.
I started really believing Joan in her two scenes along with John Smith/the Doctor in this episode. The first one: she's losing the man she loves, again. Ans she has to encourage him to it, and let him go, because that's her duty. And she's not likely to get a third try at a husband and family, not with all the men that are about to die in the Great War (although that little boy in the vision would have been nicely aged to catch it in the next one, which is probably why they had more girls.) Poor Martha and Tim, though. I don't know who's comforting who outside.
And then he comes back as the Doctor and he has the same face, but now Joan's in Martha's position. He's not her John. And he thinks he can invite her along (though what he thinks Martha's going to do...) and that will make it better, for he loves everybody, and all the companions are in love with him nowadays, and I don't think he gets 'monogamous', and that's what Joan wants. And she calls him on the trail of death and destruction he leaves behind, oh, ow.
Oh, poor Martha. Talk about baring your soul. And that 'protest too much' bit at the end, ow. I think he does remember. She got a very nice hug, though (Anyone cap it?). She's been so great at coping in these episodes. Martha >> Everyone. He does love you, really!
What the Doctor did to the Family—that sent shivers down my spine, especially the daughter in the mirrors (although how does he do his hair if he only looks in a mirror once a year?), and the son standing guard over the fields of England, considering that Baines would very probably have died guarding England if the Family hadn't got there first. That's the Doctor who said 'I used to have so much mercy...' That's the Oncoming Storm. You gave them what they were wanting, in a ruthless and ironic way, you git. Your lonely god is showing again, where did you leave Martha, who usually reduces your hubris? Perhaps he was so hard on the Family because of the all the trauma and damage of being John Smith, leaving Joan bereft and those people dead? But it was a pay-off of all those lines of Tim's about how damn scary he is. And wonderful, don't forget wonderful.
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-02 09:00 pm (UTC)I think it shows him how he could die then, and gave him the opportunity to avoid it.
Exactly my little sister's reaction.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-02 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-04 09:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-02 09:12 pm (UTC)This is a really good analysis of the episode; I think you've summed up pretty much everything I felt about it. I keep seeing you on friends' journals, and I hope you don't mind if I Friend you?
no subject
Date: 2007-06-04 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-03 02:03 am (UTC)Explains a LOT, actually...
Seriously, great recap. That was a superb two-parter.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-03 04:08 am (UTC)And yes, that was totally the Oncoming Storm in the fairy tale punishments. Seven often made me believe he was that dangerous under his whimsy, Nine not so much -- even when he told the Daleks he was 'the Oncoming Storm', it sounded like he was trying to spook them, not owning the fact of it -- but Ten did it here.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-03 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 12:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-05 10:09 pm (UTC)