tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post6078229239943817568..comments2024-03-27T08:49:38.786-03:00Comments on Siskoid's Blog of Geekery: Doctor Who #1006: ResolutionSiskoidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08266365376486695812noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-70973326164789818672019-01-10T21:20:19.983-04:002019-01-10T21:20:19.983-04:00"Yaz being close to a non-entity"
I hav..."Yaz being close to a non-entity"<br /><br />I have to agree, unfortunately. Yaz could contribute a lot more, if they just let her.<br /><br />"the Doctor having less to do than any modern Doctor"<br /><br />I'm pretty happy with how the Doctor's been. One thing I've noticed is how she approaches things a lot like a well-trained first responder. Like in the season finale and the Return Of Tim Shaw, when they met that starship crewman (was he the captain? I forget), the Doctor spoke to him the way you'd want a policeman to respond to a person with mental health issues. I really liked how the Doctor asked his permission to put the neural thingie on his his neck and showed him that she's wearing one.<br /><br />... I wonder if they couldn't give some of that material to Yaz? It's great coming from the Doctor, but it also seems like it'd be in Yaz's bailiwick too.<br /><br />"Not to mention the fridging of one woman"<br /><br />Ooof, I never thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right, it was a fridging. Maybe not a shock value fridging like the trope-namer, but yeah, Grace was introduced just to be killed as motivation for the guys.<br /><br />I can't tell you how much I would have loved to see Grace on the TARDIS somehow. Though I get the feeling she'd have stolen the show. I admit it, I fell for Grace almost immediately, and I will fight anyone who objects.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-61128558172397114422019-01-10T11:08:30.082-04:002019-01-10T11:08:30.082-04:00" And the character stuff surrounding Ryan an...<i>" And the character stuff surrounding Ryan and Graham has been Series 11's strength; it is again. (Which is not to say it's off the hook for sidelining the ladies. Series 12 needs to build them up.) "</i><br /><br />I read an article about this, basically calling the show out on how it's treated the girls vs the boys. The argument is that, basically, if we weren't being dazzled with "we have a woman Doctor now!" then we might notice that almost all the character stuff has gone to the men, with Yaz being close to a non-entity and the Doctor having less to do than any modern Doctor, including the hands-off 9th incarnation. Not to mention the fridging of one woman to motivate the men (which, like everything else, is fine if done carefully, but when it's added to everything else). It's not great.LiamKavhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01996095233681105682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-20800521868702034442019-01-10T11:02:01.858-04:002019-01-10T11:02:01.858-04:00"I wasn't bothered by the Dalek using bru...<i>"I wasn't bothered by the Dalek using brute force, but now that you mention it, yes, a clever Dalek would have been better." </i><br /><br />I wasn't that bothered either. It was fine. But that's the problem both with this episode and with the season at large. It's fine. The bit from "Dalek" strikes me as someone going "okay, so we've got the Dalek killing everyone, but is there a way we could make it more memorable, more clever, stand-out more?" And with this season as a whole I keep feeling that there's no-one going "okay, that's good, but can we make it <i>better</i>?"LiamKavhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01996095233681105682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-5852535787297439272019-01-10T09:49:04.896-04:002019-01-10T09:49:04.896-04:00"It reveals it has missiles built in that it ..."It reveals it has missiles built in that it built (?)"<br /><br />Yeah. If you want to go the route of missiles -- IF -- then that gets back to my idea of the Dalek reassembling itself and getting ahold of its advanced tech.<br /><br />I wasn't bothered by the Dalek using brute force, but now that you mention it, yes, a clever Dalek would have been better.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-49884594366010038732019-01-10T09:26:09.128-04:002019-01-10T09:26:09.128-04:00A comparison of how two different episodes show th...A comparison of how two different episodes show that a single Dalek is in fact incredibly dangerous.<br /><br />"Dalek": the eponymous creature is faced with a large number of soldiers pointing their weapons at it. It hovers, settings off the sprinkler system so that everyone ends up covered in water. It then fires at the water, which arcs from person to person, killing everyone in a single shot. This shows that the Dalek is powerful, but also <i>clever</i>. It can strategise on the fly and use the surrounding environment to take out its enemies with minimal effort.<br /><br />"Resolution": the eponymous create is faced with a large number of soldiers pointing their weapons at it. It reveals it has missiles built in that it built (?) and blows everything up. This shows that the Dalek has missiles and stuff. LiamKavhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01996095233681105682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-85723968838628663662019-01-10T09:20:25.487-04:002019-01-10T09:20:25.487-04:00This episode has another example of the slightly t...This episode has another example of the slightly tone-deaf messaging that's been going on all season. One is understandable, but it's happened over and over again. This time it's the message that you should try and forgive bad parents. No. No you should not. It's not your responsibility. If they've let you down again and again you do not have to talk to them. You do not have to listen. Sometimes it would be nice to have a program that says "some people are toxic and you should shut them out of your life, even if they are family".<br /><br />(The previous message I disliked was "giving up your kids for adoption is a cowardly thing to do" which I was appalled by but gave a pass by saying it was Ryan who believed that rather than the program. Again, though, I'd like an episode to say "some people might not be capable of currently being a parent, and acknowledging that by having your child adopted is in fact an incredibly mature and brave thing to do.")<br /><br />(And let's not get started on whatever the message was in "Kerblam!")<br /><br />"I guess we have to... talk to each other". HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh man, no-one has EVER done that joke before! Brilliant. LiamKavhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01996095233681105682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-60919531284393842922019-01-10T06:47:50.152-04:002019-01-10T06:47:50.152-04:00In terms of Yaz and her police officer status, it ...In terms of Yaz and her police officer status, it really doesn't need to be technically resolved; she meets the Doctor, goes traveling with her for a while and returns to civilian life (and her day job)in Sheffield, the day she technically left. What isn't reconciled, however, is her complete lack of moral authority to see justice done. Despite the focus yet again being on Ryan's family, Yaz could have been actively utilized storywise being the conduit between the Doctor and the local police force, ensuring Lin isn't summarily gunned downed. It could have easily been accommodated within the space used for the two non-essential cut-aways (UNIT helpline/WiFi Family), keeping the general pace of the story up and providing greater focus. The same applies to Arachnids in the UK, there's been plenty of occasions since the opener for Yaz to assert her tangible authority in modern day Sheffield, yet the writers seem completely oblivious to the benefits of her basic character design. I think one of the reasons for the state of affairs is the character was never really developed properly in the first place. There's no quirks or foibles written into her backstory, therefore, she's reliable and dependable, a dramatic non-event - there's nothing there to assert herself within any given scene. It's the 'Problem With Susan' re-imagined, although she technically outranks the Doctor in local civilian authority, she's not allowed to be the adult (provisional police officer status or otherwise).dafthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01856043212391450682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37940560.post-17329030998924639612019-01-09T09:17:03.079-04:002019-01-09T09:17:03.079-04:00I am a simple creature and I am happy with a "...I am a simple creature and I am happy with a "Doctor Who" story if the Doctor does Doctor things, the rest of the cast does the things they're supposed to, and the story ends up more or less where it needed to. So I was happy with this episode.<br /><br />But I had a ton of questions about the legend, and I feel like the whole legend business should have been drastically rewritten. Let's begin:<br /><br />- Okay, so there's an army of people from all over Eurasia and possibly Polynesia assembling to fight a Dalek in England? That's unlikely enough that there'd better be a big payoff. There wasn't.<br /><br />- So one of the warriors made it to Siberia, another to a Pacific island. But the third one was killed on the road in Sheffield, and his body was never moved off the road, and apparently people just sort of walked around the corpse for decades and decades until sediment had collected all over it?<br /><br />- I appreciate the explanation that the Dalek body parts teleport; I sure didn't pick up on that in the show.<br /><br />- So where's the payoff in the fact that the Dalek was split in three? Three locations, that pretty much demands traveling to the other locations, plot-wise. Didn't happen.<br /><br />- Likewise, those guardians amounted to nothing.<br /><br />- Oh, and the ancient scholars drew a Dalek with enough detail that nerds could complain the windows were the wrong size ... and nobody noticed that it was a Dalek? Canary Wharf, anyone?<br /><br />Here's how Anonymous would redo that legend:<br /><br />A group of Anglo-Saxons and Danes already on Albion teamed up to defeat an armored demon (depicted like a metal tower with lightning in the old scrolls). Once they stopped it with chains and fire, they hacked it open, and burned the demon inside. From there, they disposed of the Dalek in three locations: the charred remains in a sealed sarcophagus in a secret location, some of the housing in another secret location, and some more of the housing in another secret location.<br /><br />So in the 21st century, archaologists find this unmarked sarcophagus and open it, and subject it to ultraviolet light. Unbeknownst to them, those remains include a little bit of cybernetic technology that, once powered up, allows the Dalek to regenerate. The Dalek's goal of course is to find the rest of its parts and continue its mission. So the Doctor is left chasing the Dalek to location two, fails to stop it from getting the tech that's waiting there, and then finally has the final confrontation after the Dalek reassembles itself at the third location.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com