A few more thoughts on Family of Blood
Jun. 6th, 2007 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owl...which I keep typing as Family of Blodd.
This is a (slightly) deeper review rather than a reaction post, veering a little into meta territory.
I can't help thinking there is some meta significance in Joan's choice of refuge: a domestic scene complete with teapot. Admittedly a domestic that has just been destroyed by the Family of Blood—the episode in miniature?
Why 1913? Did the TARDIS chose it? Is this a hint that she doesn't like Martha very much?
IMO, David Tennant Brought It this episode. I didn't realise how different John Smith was from the Doctor until the Doctor was back. You can tell whether it's Smith or the Doctor just by expression and body language.
The difference in the voices—a little more Estuary, a lot more babble—the first time you hear them juxtaposed it's startling, and the second time the relief is overwhelming.
I have obviously read too many old novels and biographies for this episode. Beatings, fagging and OTC—this is an English public school in 1913, why is Confidential insisting I'm shocked?
What the Doctor did to the Family is deeply disturbing. Ten hasn't been pulling the Lonely Oncoming Storm God since the Christmas Special, has he? Probably Martha doesn't realise yet how cruel the Doctor is when he goes his length because he doesn't do it when she's there. It's obvious from the episode that Martha doesn't know at the time what he's doing (he's on his own with a time machine, after all), and there wasn't space in the last three minutes for her to ask and then deal with the answer. Of course I want Martha to step on all pretensions to godhood, but I have a sad premonition that it will be forgotten about by next week as per usual. If they turn Martha into a yes-woman I shall be raging. Perhaps she did ask, but he lied, or blocked her off like he did about Joan.
I hope that it'll be come back to bite him at some point. Didn't Ten learn anything from the whole Torchwood fiasco? I thought that was supposed to be his punishment for hubris. I really hope he doesn't get away with it because it's coool.
Tim ending up a soldier instead of a CO in the Red Cross like in the book- I wonder why they changed it. Except perhaps Ten isn't really a good person to teach people to be pacifists? I don't think that Cornell would write two episodes hammering in what a useless bloody waste WWI was only to do a 180 in the last 5 minutes. Perhaps Tim meant that he had to go to save the other boy, because he'd seen it he knows it has to happen? Or--he said we not I--perhaps he meant that the war would be inevitable considering all the jingoism of the population, that the war was the only way the Empire would die? Not a necessary or a just war, but an unavoidable one?
I suspect it may have something to do with being a Doctor-avatar, right down to having Nine's line about being a coward (but then that's inconsistent with the one about having to fight, gah). The Doctor doesn't shoot people, but he's committed multiple genocide. It would all have been so much simpler if they'd stuck a Red Cross armband on Tim, however.
I'm not bothered by the Doctor wearing a poppy because I don't see it as glorifying war-it's the rivers of blood in Flanders and the boys' bodies in the mud. It's remembering the dead even if they died for nothing. And I do know about the white poppy, but most of the viewers wouldn't.
Has anyone a cap/icon of the Doctor and Martha hugging at the end of the episode? I can't decide whether I prefer the shot where you see her face over his shoulder, or the one with his over hers.
This is a (slightly) deeper review rather than a reaction post, veering a little into meta territory.
I can't help thinking there is some meta significance in Joan's choice of refuge: a domestic scene complete with teapot. Admittedly a domestic that has just been destroyed by the Family of Blood—the episode in miniature?
Why 1913? Did the TARDIS chose it? Is this a hint that she doesn't like Martha very much?
IMO, David Tennant Brought It this episode. I didn't realise how different John Smith was from the Doctor until the Doctor was back. You can tell whether it's Smith or the Doctor just by expression and body language.
The difference in the voices—a little more Estuary, a lot more babble—the first time you hear them juxtaposed it's startling, and the second time the relief is overwhelming.
I have obviously read too many old novels and biographies for this episode. Beatings, fagging and OTC—this is an English public school in 1913, why is Confidential insisting I'm shocked?
What the Doctor did to the Family is deeply disturbing. Ten hasn't been pulling the Lonely Oncoming Storm God since the Christmas Special, has he? Probably Martha doesn't realise yet how cruel the Doctor is when he goes his length because he doesn't do it when she's there. It's obvious from the episode that Martha doesn't know at the time what he's doing (he's on his own with a time machine, after all), and there wasn't space in the last three minutes for her to ask and then deal with the answer. Of course I want Martha to step on all pretensions to godhood, but I have a sad premonition that it will be forgotten about by next week as per usual. If they turn Martha into a yes-woman I shall be raging. Perhaps she did ask, but he lied, or blocked her off like he did about Joan.
I hope that it'll be come back to bite him at some point. Didn't Ten learn anything from the whole Torchwood fiasco? I thought that was supposed to be his punishment for hubris. I really hope he doesn't get away with it because it's coool.
Tim ending up a soldier instead of a CO in the Red Cross like in the book- I wonder why they changed it. Except perhaps Ten isn't really a good person to teach people to be pacifists? I don't think that Cornell would write two episodes hammering in what a useless bloody waste WWI was only to do a 180 in the last 5 minutes. Perhaps Tim meant that he had to go to save the other boy, because he'd seen it he knows it has to happen? Or--he said we not I--perhaps he meant that the war would be inevitable considering all the jingoism of the population, that the war was the only way the Empire would die? Not a necessary or a just war, but an unavoidable one?
I suspect it may have something to do with being a Doctor-avatar, right down to having Nine's line about being a coward (but then that's inconsistent with the one about having to fight, gah). The Doctor doesn't shoot people, but he's committed multiple genocide. It would all have been so much simpler if they'd stuck a Red Cross armband on Tim, however.
I'm not bothered by the Doctor wearing a poppy because I don't see it as glorifying war-it's the rivers of blood in Flanders and the boys' bodies in the mud. It's remembering the dead even if they died for nothing. And I do know about the white poppy, but most of the viewers wouldn't.
Has anyone a cap/icon of the Doctor and Martha hugging at the end of the episode? I can't decide whether I prefer the shot where you see her face over his shoulder, or the one with his over hers.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-06 03:03 pm (UTC)I especially like your comment about Martha not knowing the fate of the Family - I'd like to see that confrontation!
Re Tim: someone said it would have taken too much time at the end of the epiosode to explain about COs, but I like your idea of the Red Cross armband.
And I don't have a problem with the poppies either. As you say, it's about remembering, not glorifying.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-06 09:13 pm (UTC)