RE: Timu's Doctor Who and Torchwood Reviews (spoilers!)
11-27-2023, 04:03 AM
dr14 s1 ep1
first of the 2023 specials, featuring the 10th Doctor as the 14th Doctor
first of the 2023 specials, featuring the 10th Doctor as the 14th Doctor
Show Content
Spoilerpreviously on doctor who:
the year is 2008 and it's the fourth season of doctor who, starring the 10th Doctor as the doctor and Donna as the companion.
Donna accidently mindmelds with the Doctor giving her the doctor's memories, but that's too many memories for a human mind so she's gonna explode unless the doctor blocks those memories.
effectively, donna has forgotten all about the doctor who and her adventures, and if she ever remembers it, she'll die.
Donna goes back to an ordinary life (or, from her point of view, just continued to have an ordinary life). her mom and grandfather know about the doctor and about what happens if she remembers. Donna gets married, and at the wedding the doctor gives her mom a winning lottery ticket as a wedding gift
Now, 15 years later, the 13th doctor has regenerated into the 14th doctor, who has the same face, personality, voice and actor as the 10th doctor, and Donna and her entire family (including the husband who only showed up for like two seconds) are all having their actors reprising their roles! and a new addition: Donna's 15 year old daughter. some dialogue subtly hints that the daughter is trans, and she is trans, and if it weren't for the dialogue no one would have known*. everyone rightfully treats her like any regular teenage girl and i think that's great. A+ portrayal, good job.
*asterisk
------
anyway, the episode begins with the tardis parking itself next to Donna. Fortunately, just seeing the Doctor's face isn't enough to suddenly bring back all those deadly memories. From her perspective, she's just meeting a slightly familiar weirdo for the first time. Throughout the episode there are many comedic moments where the Doctor and her mom are trying to keep Donna from remembering aliens and stuff. Comedy is great. love comedy. Good job
Anyway, a spaceship suddenly crashes nearby, and the UNIT army comes in to secure the scene. an escape pod has landed in Donna's neighborhood, and yoda is in it:
![[Image: Beep_The_Star_Beast_Ro3ds.png]](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/tardis/images/a/ac/Beep_The_Star_Beast_Ro3ds.png)
ALF is being hunted by the alien insect warriors, and hides with Donna's daughter, who is named Rose. Meanwhile, The UNIT soldiers are investigating ET's spaceship, and suddenly get mindcontrolled by it! Perhaps I would have criticized these guys for getting mindcontrolled so easily, but I don't think there's anything they could have done to protect themselves besides just not going up to the spaceship, but they gotta do that since they are earth's first line of defence against potential alien threats. so good job UNIT! you did your best. I do not blame you for anything.
The mindcontrolled guys go off to help protect Dobby, and a big firefight erupts between them and the Insects, right in Donna's living room. the Doctor and Baby Groot and the Donna family make their escape!
Once clear of the danger, the Doctor declares a zone for peace talks, where the Insects reveal that that Wall-E is actually evil! Dropping the Meep's adorable facade, the Meep pulls out the Meep's gun and starts blasting away and destroying london with the Meep's spaceship's murder engine. chasms of fire erupt throughout london, but everything will be fine as long as the Doctor can stop the countdown in time!
But he can't do it! an inconvenient glass wall seperates the two halves of the technobabble control room, with the Doctor on one side and Donna on the other! The Doctor can only access one half of the required buttons needed to stop the Meep! The Doctor says that there is a way to save London, but it will cost Donna's life. She's okay with that.
Doctor recites the last words she said before she lost her memories 15 years ago, and she remembers everything- all the locked away Doctor memories and thus she remembers how to technobabble the technobabble chamber and put the technobabbly in reverse!
all the chasms of fire close up perfectly like they were never there at all. it's silly. Silly is good. i love when Doctor who doesn't take itself seriously. Good job!
The Meep is captured and the Insects take the Meep off to space prison.
-------
But Donna is still dying- though slower than expected. Turns out her daughter inherited some of those repressed memories through the power of genetics. So they are both dying but slower. how is the doctor going to save them?
then they say "actually we have a solution to this problem. you as a male presenting doctor would never have thought of this, but since we are women we have this brilliant solution to the memories clogging up our human brains. we are just going to let them go. and then they do that and its fine and its wwhat?? what the fuck??? is this supposed to be feminism?? what the fuck just happened???
bad job. i think that was weird.
and another gripe i have with this episode is that, while Rose's portrayal and treatment as just a regular girl who happens to be trans was Great!... but then at the end they kinda bungled the whole thing.
I'm sure this wasn't the intention but I know that it can be easily interpreted that Rose is trans BECAUSE of the subconscious mindmeldy stuff. That's not good. people who already find transgender stuff to be a sorta 'alien concept' will just have that sort of reinforced? oops.
a good take I saw though is that the time lord memories just contributed to Rose's name (she knows that Rose is a name that is loved) and her etsy shop hobby (she makes plushies that resemble aliens that the doctor encountered) and that's about it. Supplementing her identity without just being her identity. With this in mind, good job, though i wish the episode itself reinforced this idea more.
This episode kinda tried to be 'woke' and feminist and that sort of stuff but at the end kinda did it in a way that made 'nonbinary rights!' and "girl power" sort of stuff like, a magical thing that you can use to save the world and have superpowers or something, and not just being a thing that should be a fact of life. Just stick to how you portrayed Rose in the first 90% of the episode, just a girl who deserves to be treated like a girl- without the asterisk in the last 10% of the episode where "being nonbinary is a superpower". it's not, it's not realistic to portray it as such. gender stuff is a part of life for many people. it is a fact, it exists. and superpowers don't exist. by making nonbinary the superpower, you are accidentally portraying nonbinary as a thing that just doesn't exist.
Rose can be nonbinary AND have superpowers, and that's how it should have been. This episode did great at the start but ended with a sorta tonedeaf swing-and-a-miss. that's my take. they could have done better.
------
Overall Review:
Main Villain: The Meep
Births: the DoctorDonna and the DoctorRose (the terms used to refer to them when they have the time lord memories)
Deaths: the DoctorDonna and the DoctorRose, two Insect Aliens, a bunch of UNIT soldiers
Total Birthrate: negative two and a bunch
Moral of the Story: Looks can be deceiving! Maybe that cute animatronic sitcom alien is actually a The Meep!
Overall Rating: 8/10. Honestly pretty good. Had its faults but it had mostly positives. I love comedy and that's what the bulk of this episode was.
In my summaries, I only talk about things I could make fun of or complain about, and talk about major plotpoints (and oops, minor plotpoints too, I'm a very rambler,), so I'm not going to go into the minutiae of all the fun little moments that make up 90% of this episode. so 8/10 is a Genuine rating.
Overall Rating: 8/10. would probably consider watching it again in a few years if i feel like rewatching some episodes
the year is 2008 and it's the fourth season of doctor who, starring the 10th Doctor as the doctor and Donna as the companion.
Donna accidently mindmelds with the Doctor giving her the doctor's memories, but that's too many memories for a human mind so she's gonna explode unless the doctor blocks those memories.
effectively, donna has forgotten all about the doctor who and her adventures, and if she ever remembers it, she'll die.
Donna goes back to an ordinary life (or, from her point of view, just continued to have an ordinary life). her mom and grandfather know about the doctor and about what happens if she remembers. Donna gets married, and at the wedding the doctor gives her mom a winning lottery ticket as a wedding gift
Now, 15 years later, the 13th doctor has regenerated into the 14th doctor, who has the same face, personality, voice and actor as the 10th doctor, and Donna and her entire family (including the husband who only showed up for like two seconds) are all having their actors reprising their roles! and a new addition: Donna's 15 year old daughter. some dialogue subtly hints that the daughter is trans, and she is trans, and if it weren't for the dialogue no one would have known*. everyone rightfully treats her like any regular teenage girl and i think that's great. A+ portrayal, good job.
*asterisk
------
anyway, the episode begins with the tardis parking itself next to Donna. Fortunately, just seeing the Doctor's face isn't enough to suddenly bring back all those deadly memories. From her perspective, she's just meeting a slightly familiar weirdo for the first time. Throughout the episode there are many comedic moments where the Doctor and her mom are trying to keep Donna from remembering aliens and stuff. Comedy is great. love comedy. Good job
Anyway, a spaceship suddenly crashes nearby, and the UNIT army comes in to secure the scene. an escape pod has landed in Donna's neighborhood, and yoda is in it:
ALF is being hunted by the alien insect warriors, and hides with Donna's daughter, who is named Rose. Meanwhile, The UNIT soldiers are investigating ET's spaceship, and suddenly get mindcontrolled by it! Perhaps I would have criticized these guys for getting mindcontrolled so easily, but I don't think there's anything they could have done to protect themselves besides just not going up to the spaceship, but they gotta do that since they are earth's first line of defence against potential alien threats. so good job UNIT! you did your best. I do not blame you for anything.
The mindcontrolled guys go off to help protect Dobby, and a big firefight erupts between them and the Insects, right in Donna's living room. the Doctor and Baby Groot and the Donna family make their escape!
Once clear of the danger, the Doctor declares a zone for peace talks, where the Insects reveal that that Wall-E is actually evil! Dropping the Meep's adorable facade, the Meep pulls out the Meep's gun and starts blasting away and destroying london with the Meep's spaceship's murder engine. chasms of fire erupt throughout london, but everything will be fine as long as the Doctor can stop the countdown in time!
But he can't do it! an inconvenient glass wall seperates the two halves of the technobabble control room, with the Doctor on one side and Donna on the other! The Doctor can only access one half of the required buttons needed to stop the Meep! The Doctor says that there is a way to save London, but it will cost Donna's life. She's okay with that.
Doctor recites the last words she said before she lost her memories 15 years ago, and she remembers everything- all the locked away Doctor memories and thus she remembers how to technobabble the technobabble chamber and put the technobabbly in reverse!
all the chasms of fire close up perfectly like they were never there at all. it's silly. Silly is good. i love when Doctor who doesn't take itself seriously. Good job!
The Meep is captured and the Insects take the Meep off to space prison.
-------
But Donna is still dying- though slower than expected. Turns out her daughter inherited some of those repressed memories through the power of genetics. So they are both dying but slower. how is the doctor going to save them?
then they say "actually we have a solution to this problem. you as a male presenting doctor would never have thought of this, but since we are women we have this brilliant solution to the memories clogging up our human brains. we are just going to let them go. and then they do that and its fine and its wwhat?? what the fuck??? is this supposed to be feminism?? what the fuck just happened???
bad job. i think that was weird.
and another gripe i have with this episode is that, while Rose's portrayal and treatment as just a regular girl who happens to be trans was Great!... but then at the end they kinda bungled the whole thing.
I'm sure this wasn't the intention but I know that it can be easily interpreted that Rose is trans BECAUSE of the subconscious mindmeldy stuff. That's not good. people who already find transgender stuff to be a sorta 'alien concept' will just have that sort of reinforced? oops.
a good take I saw though is that the time lord memories just contributed to Rose's name (she knows that Rose is a name that is loved) and her etsy shop hobby (she makes plushies that resemble aliens that the doctor encountered) and that's about it. Supplementing her identity without just being her identity. With this in mind, good job, though i wish the episode itself reinforced this idea more.
This episode kinda tried to be 'woke' and feminist and that sort of stuff but at the end kinda did it in a way that made 'nonbinary rights!' and "girl power" sort of stuff like, a magical thing that you can use to save the world and have superpowers or something, and not just being a thing that should be a fact of life. Just stick to how you portrayed Rose in the first 90% of the episode, just a girl who deserves to be treated like a girl- without the asterisk in the last 10% of the episode where "being nonbinary is a superpower". it's not, it's not realistic to portray it as such. gender stuff is a part of life for many people. it is a fact, it exists. and superpowers don't exist. by making nonbinary the superpower, you are accidentally portraying nonbinary as a thing that just doesn't exist.
Rose can be nonbinary AND have superpowers, and that's how it should have been. This episode did great at the start but ended with a sorta tonedeaf swing-and-a-miss. that's my take. they could have done better.
------
Overall Review:
Main Villain: The Meep
Births: the DoctorDonna and the DoctorRose (the terms used to refer to them when they have the time lord memories)
Deaths: the DoctorDonna and the DoctorRose, two Insect Aliens, a bunch of UNIT soldiers
Total Birthrate: negative two and a bunch
Moral of the Story: Looks can be deceiving! Maybe that cute animatronic sitcom alien is actually a The Meep!
Overall Rating: 8/10. Honestly pretty good. Had its faults but it had mostly positives. I love comedy and that's what the bulk of this episode was.
In my summaries, I only talk about things I could make fun of or complain about, and talk about major plotpoints (and oops, minor plotpoints too, I'm a very rambler,), so I'm not going to go into the minutiae of all the fun little moments that make up 90% of this episode. so 8/10 is a Genuine rating.
Overall Rating: 8/10. would probably consider watching it again in a few years if i feel like rewatching some episodes
![[Image: egg005.png?raw=1]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/cm0pzbv31rhi5da/egg005.png?raw=1){kind=small}