![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Next Doctor
I just watched the Christmas Special--and it really felt like one. :-D
I did enjoy that. It felt much more Christmassy than most specials, especially the rather nasty one last year with its predictably doomed ship and companion, many deaths, and offensive fat jokes which will prevent me ever watching it again. This one was fun: steampunk Doctor Who! So good it made up for it being Cybermen again.
Actually I think David Morrissey would have made a good Doctor, but I did guess who he was a bit before the Doctor did. I liked Jackson Lake and Rosita very much, and Dervla Kirwan (Dervla Kirwan, yay!) made a wonderful villain as Miss Hartigan. Someone said that Kirwan would play Servalan well, and she certainly could.
And what were those black hairy Cyberthings? I first thought they were dogs, then children, but they wouldn't have the strength to pull both men up the side of a building. I know! Were-Cybers!
Oh and the sonic screwdriver: hee! And extra points for hot-air balloons along with the steampunk. :-D
I thought Lake's son had been partially cybered at first when I saw him standing up there with staring eyes and spiky black (mascara'd?) lashes, but no: he seemed to be an ordinary child, if creepily silent. But then Victorians expected their children to be.
I loved the story, the Dickensian look, the steampunk, the Cyber King robotic ship, Miss Hartigan taking her revenge on all those stuffed-shirt Victorian men, and Jackson Lake being brave and tragic at once, but there were three things that concerned me:
- If Miss Hartigan's mind was so brilliant and powerful, why was she reduced to being a screaming cliché when the connection between her mind and the Cybermen was severed? I can imagine her seeing what she had done and being appalled, then destroying the Cybermen herself, but just sitting there screaming with mindless horror?
- Surely the Doctor's been thanked before. It was a nice moment seeing him hear the applause and cheers though.
- So the brave and resourceful Rosita is just going to be a nursemaid now? Feh. I know that Jackson Lake would have been sexist and racist because his society was, but he had a lot of the Doctor's memories, and he'd seen Rosita's courage and strength. Why didn't the Doctor say something? :-( I hope Rosita turns that little offer down and does something more interesting. I know it would be very hard to do in those days, but she's capable of so much more.
That said, this is still the most fun Christmas special so far, with "The Runaway Bride" coming in second. :-)
And yeah, Dervla Kirwan for Servalan!
And now I'm off to bed.
no subject
I read it much the same as you did. There's definitely a bit of "yeah, right.. nursemaid" about the Doctor's expression there, that I think it quite deliberate. For Jackson to have said anything else at that moment would have hit a jarringly hard-to-believe note for the time period, but I got the strong sense that we're supposed to come away with the impression that he's engaging in a bit of Victorian denial about what will doubtless be at the very least turn out to be a close companionship.
I'm actually a bit surprised to see so many people reading that as genuine racism, rather than as a subtle comment on that particular era's racism, but I suppose I shouldn't be.
no subject
No harder to believe, IMO, than the suggestion that he would ever hire her to look after his child (not because of her race but because of her background). I think the problem is that either Lake is meant to be a typical Victorian or he isn't, and the script is not consistent. If he is a typical Victorian, he can voice all the class, gender and race prejudices of his time and it'd be nowt but realistic. But up to that point, he has actually been a most untypical Victorian. Not only is he quite unconscious of Rosita's race, he is indifferent to her background - according to the actress she is meant to be a former prostitute and Miss H's crack at her also suggests that. Yet our respectable Victorian gent is happliy going about with her, apparently unconcerned about what People May Think - a thing that preyed on the minds of most of his class and time. Also, btw, Victorians were quite paranoid about prostitutes being disease-carriers and didn't think them morally fit to look after their own children, let alone those of "respectable" folks. Lake's nursemaid suggestion is actually positively redical.
But if he is actually so liberal for his time, then it does raise the question of why he ever makes that remark....
no subject
Anyway, the "nursemaid" thing really did sound to me very much like he was grasping for a justification to keep her around.
no subject
Oh blimey, so did I (and Greg)! RTD was strangely subtle if he intended to imply that. Was it the mention of her being on the docks (I think it was)?
no subject
no subject
no subject
He was! I think a lot of that was the influence of being the Doctor, and I thought more of that might have stayed with him at the end; he seemed a lot more open-minded than usual. He was taking up a post at the university, wasn't he? That last remark just didn't seem in character for someone who had absorbed so much of the Doctor's wide experience.
I rather like the suggestion from someone that "nursemaid" was just going to be the public term.
no subject
I thought it was more sexist than racist, as Victorians did have some respect for foreigners--esp those that stood up to them--but not really for women.
I suppose I don't cut RTD much slack after past offences.
no subject