Doctor Who 7x06: The Snowmen
Dec. 26th, 2012 09:39 am![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laurashapiroWhile I am fully willing to concede that as MOTW-style storytelling, this episode had little in the way of plot, it was fannish catnip for me. The narrative force was driven by character and relationship, and I like that just fine.
The thing I'm happiest about is that Clara is Oswin. I loved Oswin so much when we met her in "Asylum of the Daleks," and I really grieved her death in what was for me the most gripping and moving episode so far this year (I was upset more by Oswin's departure than the Ponds'). I had been spoiled about the actor coming back, but I kept reading about a character named Clara, and I had little hope of seeing Oswin again. I could not be more pleased!
Clara is everything I look for in a companion: smart, competent, funny, brave, and full of surprises. Her sexual attraction to the Doctor I could normally do without, but it seems to me on first viewing that her feelings are quite definitely returned. That equalizes things nicely.
It's interesting to see Eleven respond to her here, and see how different he is not just from Ten, but from the Eleven we've seen before. The episode sets him up as solitary and cold, but he's warmer with Clara than he ever is with River (with whom there's always the tension created by her superior knowledge of their relationship -- and of him), and his response to Clara's kiss is less surprised and bumbling than his reaction to Amy's or River's. I've felt for years that Eleven was the easiest of all the Doctors to imagine in a physical relationship with a companion, because he seems somehow more physically approachable than other recent incarnations. Most of the time he lacks the prickliness and sniffy superiority of Nine, the weirdly cold manic energy of Ten. Eleven just seems more touchable, somehow, and you really see that here -- he warms right up to Clara. Boy howdy.
(Yes, I already ship them. Shut up.)
Naturally I loved seeing Vashta and Jenny again, and having their relationship made explicit. Having them be married was an excellent touch, especially as it's Vashta's greenness that freaks people out, not her gayness. It felt very RTD-era to me, having these characters be so awesome and having their relationship just be one more fact about them. I was less amused by the notion that they were the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes and Watson; that's a little too on-the-nose for me, to say nothing of the Doctor swanning around in a deerstalker. Yes, thank you, Steven, we all know about your other project.
I can't decide what I think about the Doctor's relationship with Strax. I don't love Strax being his servant. I can kinda see how a Sontaran, with their hierarchical social structure, would find it reasonable, but I'm not sure I see the Doctor going there. Strax calls him "Sir"! That seems wrong to me. OTOH, their dialogue was funny as hell.
I could watch the scene of Clara discovering the TARDIS forever. The TARDIS' location in the cloud layer, with the invisible ladder and the naked winding stairway, was such a gorgeous visual concept, a great metaphor for the Doctor's remoteness. Getting there would be scary and wonderful and breathtaking -- all the things life with the Doctor would be. I love how even when you reach the top of the stairs and you can see the TARDIS, you can't see where to put your feet. That must be what being a companion feels like.
no subject
on 2012-12-26 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-12-26 06:51 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-12-27 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
on 2012-12-27 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-12-27 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
on 2012-12-27 04:46 pm (UTC)The costumes were great, weren't they? The show doesn't often do them well, in my experience, but this was lovely.
no subject
on 2012-12-27 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
on 2012-12-27 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-12-27 06:22 pm (UTC)I always wished he'd taken Donna's grandfather. Or Rory's dad. That would have been cool. Or even Amy as a child (though, yeah, not the best thing in many ways, to take a child).
no subject
on 2012-12-27 06:41 pm (UTC)I would have loved to see Donna's grandfather as a companion! Especially as the Doctor incarnations are getting younger, it'd be good to have someone more mature to run about with him.
no subject
on 2012-12-27 02:10 pm (UTC)Yes! Yes, I was thinking this too when we were watching last night -- that the TARDIS in the clouds is a delicious metaphor for the ways in which the Doctor is currently standing "above" humanity, keeping himself distant, refusing to help. Which, of course, we all know is doomed to failure. :-)
I loved Matt Smith in this one. No surprise; I'd arguably love Matt Smith if he were reading the phone book. But I loved the way he played the Doctor's angsty detachment. And then, oh goodness, did he warm to Clara! I may have swooned a little bit. *grin*
I had complicated feelings about Strax, too. Though I couldn't help being amused by the Doctor calling him the potato one. <3
no subject
on 2012-12-27 04:50 pm (UTC)I do like the signs that Eleven has changed, though. He is maturing! It's interesting to see.
I may have swooned a little bit. *grin*
You are not alone!
I laughed at the potato line, too, but on reflection it's an uncomfortable display of bigotry. I don't like my Doctor to make speciesist remarks!
no subject
on 2012-12-27 05:11 pm (UTC)As far as Eleven's grief at the departure of the Ponds, I have two thoughts. The first is that this is his first time, in this incarnation, to be saying goodbye to a companion (or two), so maybe it's hitting him harder than it otherwise would. (When Ten first lost Rose, he was immediately distracted by the surprise presence of Donna, which maybe forestalled this sort of funk?) And the second is that if one is reading Amy and Rory and Eleven as a threesome, then his angst at losing them is a bit more justified. ;-)
In all seriousness, though, I'm glad they didn't string it out for very long. I thought Matt played it beautifully, but I was ready to see him all lit up with glee again.
no subject
on 2012-12-27 05:25 pm (UTC)I guess I have a hard time with it because it's something we've only seen sporadically, so then you have to sort out what's so special about THESE companions that would make him lose his shit so spectacularly, etc. As a fervent believer in the "he loves them all" mindset, it's something I struggle with. Even Ten's reaction to losing Rose seemed OTT (notwithstanding RTD's insistence that that really was an epic romance), but he didn't then go and hide in a cloud. Although arguably, the way he treated Martha was just as bad.
Anyway! I'm just glad that's all sorted and he has someone new to be interested in.