Oh, Doctor.
You know, there are significant parallels between Gaiman’s “The Doctor’s Wife” story from Doctor Who Season 6 and Morrison’s Bizarro two-parter from All-Star Superman.
Conniving sentient planetoids—each one a ramshackle junk-heap—rising from lower dimensions, using patchwork doll-people as drones or limbs, our heroes trying to escape with help from doll-people who don’t function like their fellows, allowed to have or develop higher brain functions and levels of awareness.
Dear Steven Moffat:
Sweetie, I know that you absolutely love hinging your plots on misdirects which are then revealed through more detailed flashbacks shot from slightly different angles meant to shock the audience with how clever you think you are, even when you’re not writing shows that revolve around time-travel or other science fiction devices like starships that look like normal-sized humanoid people, but it gets a bit old. You know, like over-reliance on Variations on the plot from The Time Traveller’s Wife.
Just don’t ask me why Mondas has the same continents as the Earth, or appears to have a day that lasts about two seconds, or how you can talk about something in space being ‘upside down’, or any of the other interesting science ideas from Kit Pedler.
“
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Andrew Hickey on “The Tenth Planet.” Soft science fiction. |
This is something that a lot of people have missed. There have been so many complaints that in a literal sense this story doesn’t make much sense (and it doesn’t – it’s trying to bash together too many different ideas about different things to make any kind of sense. The director thinks he’s making Doctor Strangelove for ten-year-olds, the writer thinks he’s telling a horrifying parable about the evils of technology, the script editor is trying out the new format for the programme, and the producer just wants to get rid of the star as quickly as possible. Making sense was not a high priority for any of them) that people seem to be ignoring that on a symbolic level everything fits perfectly. Critics claim, for example, that the Doctor’s regeneration is tacked on to the end. Nonsense. Who are the villains of the story? The Cybermen – a race we’ve never seen before, but who are evil because they use technology to extend their lifespans beyond what is natural, altering themselves drastically in the process. So what happens at the end (and in the first scenes of the next story, The Power Of The Daleks)? The Doctor dies, and comes back to life with the aid of the TARDIS, but completely changed.
how-to-kiss-distinctly-american:
I am shocked, Tumblr. Shocked.
I saw it pass by on my Facebook feed.
I’m pleased with the decision; as much as I liked them during Season 5, they didn’t feel as well-developed in Season 6 and companions always have to leave at some point.
