The Neil Gaiman Episode

[clocketpatch]

Because the title is probably a spoiler.

But you know what? I have no words. None. For that was the most epic and wonderful thing ever and may well be my favourite episode ever. SQUEE!!!

I WAS RIGHT AND IT WAS EPIC!!! And I love the anti-grav corridors and bunk beds and the acting was so good I was laughing and crying and nibbling my nails down to stubs and I can't believe they got away with that and doesn't next week look great? And the quotes were so amazing that I could quote the whole episode and not stop and THEY KILLED RORY AGAIN!! It's getting to be like Kenny from South Park, I mean... he's been "shot", drowned, aged to death, killed by old people, shot again and eaten by the universe, turned into a Roman and had the universe blow up around him... Oh Rory

BUT THIS EPISODE I CAN'T EVEN IT WAS SO GOOD!

ALIVE!! ALIVE! ALIVE!

I needed that.

;D ;D ;D ;D

[eve11]

Aw, they didn't really kill Rory. Just a shade/fake Rory. Still, D:

But yes, that was a very pleasant episode. Best line hands down was "Did you wish really hard?"

[aquabluejay]

That was unspeakably awesome! ^^

I totally yelled "Did they just kill Rory AGAIN," right at that part too...

[johne]

]
"I'm thinking that all of my sisters are dead. That they were devoured, and that we are looking at their corpses."

It didn't quite make me cry, but the thought of all those Time Lords dying one by one, presumably having first had their own TARDIS avatars die in their arms, waiting for help that would never come... yow.

Also, I'm sorry that we'll never meet the Corsair.
[
I think the Confidentials suffer from the 45-minute length, I do, really. Clips of Hartnell and Troughton are all very squee-worthy, but a comprehensive feature on the location catering van cannot be anything other than barrel-scraping ;D It's not as if there was some stunning revelation about it (eg: It's run by CMOT Dibbler or Nodar Borgle, or it has its own space/time engines to get to inaccessible quarries).

[clocketpatch]

You know, I might be reading a bit into it, but I'm wondering if there isn't a sub-theme to this episode about possession and ownership paired against freedom with all of it contrasted along the stark line of life versus death. It's also past one and why the heck aren't I in bed? Communication is probably a theme as well...

There's Auntie and Uncle who both have some kind of power over Idris and Nephew. Nephew, being an Ood, a <i>converted</i> Ood at that was at some point a slave (possibly Auntie and Uncle's slave) and is still a slave to House... as are Auntie and Uncle.

The TARDIS belongs to the Doctor, except that the Doctor belongs to the TARDIS, and you begin to wonder if he's got any choice in the matter. After all, she's a telepathic being and she's not giving him back.

Except she can't talk. The Ood can't talk either. House can't talk except through possessed bodies, and then through the TARDIS's shell. If House can talk inside the TARDIS one wonders why the TARDIS herself can't talk. The Doctor gives some brief explanation to Rory which relies heavily on "spacey-wacey" but...

Well, the TARDISes are living beings and the Time Lords use them in a way which is probably easier for the Time Lords (or most Time Lords anyway) if their vehicles aren't talking back. Remember, in 'An Unearthly Child' Ian recognizes that the TARDIS is alive immediately, but in 'The Edge of Destruction' the Doctor is fascinated and almost in denial over the thought that his ship could be a living, reasoning being... almost as if he has been taught otherwise and was astounded when the obvious struck him in the face.

Make of all that what you will.

Back to communication... I think that Amy and Rory clearly need to start communicating better because they've clearly got some fears about their relationship which House was exploiting. And, as JJ pointed out in his excellent lj reaction post, we haven't seen Rory and Amy have a conversation about those years he waited yet have we? Though maybe that's meant to be more implied...*

[jjpor]

Well, I liked it quite a lot, as I said lengthily on Livejournal when I should have been supporting DbyA by doing it here...

But to pick up a couple of points from above:

*I think that's a pretty discussion-worthy point, Clocket - if TARDISes are alive and fully sentient, as it seems they certainly are (I mean, we must surely have known this to be the case since, as you say, One's early stories, even if it was never spelled out in so many words), then how are they different from the Ood? I mean, even assuming they're "artificial" life created by the Time Lords, they're still living beings, made to serve.

Having said that, I think we see that the Doctor/TARDIS relationship at any rate is different - they stole each other. It's a mutual "ownership" and control and you know, the "wife" metaphor in the title doesn't seem too wide of the mark. Not in a slightly worrying sexual sense or anything, but in terms of two lives bonded together as one and so forth, and the love they have for each other. It is interesting to consider who is actually in charge, or whether anybody is. I thought one of the things that was really interesting was the idea that the TARDIS doesn't take the Doctor where he wants to go but where he needs to go. That puts a different complexion on all those times the Doctor landed in a random location and then immediately stumbled on some injustice that needed righting, didn't it? And notice that Seven, who seemed to be actively seeking out wrongs to right, had possibly the surest control over the TARDIS of any of the classic series Doctors. You know, because the TARDIS presumably didn't have to steer him into things.

I think it was also noteworthy that the TARDIS, with her perspective outside of time, where past, present and future all seem clear to her, seems to know everything before it happens. Does she ever warn him about things in advance? Or do the "rules" prevent her from giving any warning more explicit than the Cloister Bell??

Another thing to consider - are all Time Lord/TARDIS relationships so positive and mutually beneficient? Or did some of the less unconventional Time Lords really consider their TARDISes to be slaves/tools/machines bent to their will (see Clocket's remark above about Edge of Destruction)? I also can't help thinking that I really, really wouldn't want to be a TARDIS piloted by the Master...

And agreed also johne - some of the stuff here was darker than dark, when you thought about it. All those Time Lords, dying alone and in despair with their TARDISes, the TARDISes devoured and the distress calls used to lure in the next victim? The patchwork people existing as playthings for the House? Some seriously bleak stuff there. I wonder if House was one of those spacetime-devouring super-entities beloved of Who like the Chronovores or something, or whether "he" was some sort of Dalek (or Time Lord?) weapon from the Time War or some other universal-scale conflict like that? You know, a nasty TARDIS-killing booby trap that developed delusions of godhead?

I think the thing that made the biggest impression on me, though, was the nasty games being played with Amy and Rory aboard the House-controlled TARDIS. It didn't get enough screen time or development to have the impact it could have, but the aged/dead Rory with all of his bitterness and hatred, and then that graffiti "Hate Amy" "Kill Amy" etc, that was quite strong stuff I thought. Stronger than I expect from NuWho, where the scares are in most cases quite enjoyable scares. This cast Amy and Rory's relationship (or at least Amy's secret fears about it) in a new, quite disturbing light. As Clocket says, they need to talk about some of this stuff. Rory doesn't seem like the type to really harbour that sort of resentment no matter what ups and downs their relationship might have, but Amy is clearly subconsciously terrified that he might.

So, the more I think about it, some quite interesting talking points in something that I initially thought of as lovely but quite slight fanw*nk. I was pleased, actually, by the very respectful, clearly loving, attitude Gaiman's script took to Doctor Who. This story, with its promises to mess with some of the deepest premises of the show or whatever the pre-publicity has been claiming for months, was quite worrying in some ways, going in, but I needn't have worried at all. I was just really...pleased with the way it turned out in the end. *

[eve11]

Regarding House, I'm wondering if he didn't end up outside the universe directly as a result of trying to eat a TARDIS the wrong way, first. Idris/TARDIS says, "But he can't just delete a TARDIS matrix, that would blow a hole in the Universe..." Maybe House started off as a weapon or something in our universe, tried to eat a TARDIS, blew open the plughole and got sucked through, then spent a while accumulating himself a hard outer shell and some playthings before he could try again.

[jjpor]

I like that idea a lot, Eve! Makes a great deal of sense, because *obviously, the arrangement he had on the asteroid (and I wonder whether the hard outer shell was actually just the accumulated debris of all the TARDISes he'd killed when he was in reality just that green mist that occupied the TARDIS?), it wasn't the only thing he could do. He had to have some plan of how he was going to feed himself once he got back to our universe, even if he assumed there were still TARDISes about for him to prey on?*

A purely cracky fanw*nk theory I just thought of, not supported by any evidence:

*House was originally a TARDIS himself, and got "vampirised" by the Great Vampires during the war described in State of Decay, and so became a kind of undead thing that preyed on TARDISes? Somehow.*

[johne]

May 18, 2011 12:06:31 GMT eve11 said:

Maybe House started off as a weapon or something in our universe, tried to eat a TARDIS, blew open the plughole and got sucked through, then spent a while accumulating himself a hard outer shell and some playthings before he could try again.

]I like this idea a lot. Particularly if the House was engineered by the Time Lords' enemies in one of the Time Wars.[

[Stripes]

Dear Neil Gaiman

I see you and I have VERY close views about Amy. For this you have officially been put in book of awesome.

Newton

No really. Neil is the only writer to
A. Not make Amy the centre of attention

B. Brought up some issues on how Amy treats Rory which Moffat seems to ignore.

I loved the "YOU HURT ME AMY" and the whole Die, HATE, Kill Amy. If she continues to treat Rory like that he is going to stop loving her and start resenting her. She better get her act together.

C. Neil is SOOOOOOOOOOOO a Rory fangirl. He had the tardis call him the pretty one, he focused a lot on Rory, his actions and what he is feeling. ... And he called Rory the pretty one. If it was any other writer they would have Amy be the pretty one, Amy be the one to get the messages, it would be Rory being told he is a crap husband.

D. .. heavily ship Doctor/Tardis. I see Neil writing this story and being all "OMG TARDIS/DOCTOR MY OTP!!!!111!!!one!!! SQUEEEEE <3"

Pretty much this was Neils fan fiction and kind of did a F-U to Moffat and made Doctor Who they way he wants Doctor Who to be. Neil and I seem to have the same idea on how Doctor Who should be. Thus makes him awesome.

[clocketpatch]

I told you that you'd like it. ;D

I think that Amy grew on me a bit in this episode though, because that thing that happened with Rory... it happened in Amy's head, which means that she's afraid of driving him away and at least sub-consciously realizes she's doing it. Probably due to low self-esteem or something. Hopefully they can actually start communicating and getting into a healthy relationship instead of... whatever they've got at the moment.

Unfortunately, since drama makes good television that's probably not going to happen. bah.

DOCTOR/TARDIS FOREVER!!!