opusculasedfera | Belated thoughts on Doctor Who

I have mixed feelings about the last episode. It was a pretty good ep in itself, the plot was interesting, drew on established mythos without being totally "Look!It's a reference to something we did before!", the ending was sad, but bittersweet. Mostly good things!

I just keep coming back to how it totally failed to live up to all the thematic stuff from the previous episodes about how having home to come back to is just as important as adventures. Because they had been building a life and they wanted to travel with the Doctor too and sure, they get to build a life in 1930 or whatever, but that's not their life. They had to leave behind all those friends and those jobs that they had established in the previous episodes as being important to them and the show just didn't deal with it. It acted like the Doctor was just no longer able to come visit them in whereever they were living in the previous episode.

And I can't tell if I'm just overidentifying here and assuming that they would feel the same way I would about wanting to actually live in the past. Personally, I would time-travel any day, but FUCK NO to actually having to live in any time period in the past, and I can't get over my feeling that, despite Amy and Rory having had a happy life in the past, it was not a neutral change. It was a shitty situation they had to make the best of, which is not exactly what I want from their end on the show, especially as we were clearly supposed to take it as a happy ending for the two of them and only a sad ending for the Doctor.

I did like a lot of it, the ending just made me sad and uncomfortable. River was great. I adore everything about her relationship with her parents, and her obvious love for the Doctor as well her acknowledgement of the way that it is fucking difficult to be in a relationship with him. The Angels were creepy as usual and the writers remembered that they are at their best when the audience can't see them move either. I did like that Amy and Rory are obviously aging between adventures and this ep is clearly happening some substantial length of time after the last one. I just have nagging questions.

On a more cheerful note, I accidentally caught the end of the 1940 Laurence Olivier Pride and Prejudice movie which is amazingly tone-deaf. The actors were trying very hard, but they had to contend with a script that had cut huge swaths of the book in favour of adding extra scenes that made Darcy into way more of a dick, for no apparent reason. First, he doesn't go off to find Lydia until some considerable time has elapsed and his sister reminds him that it's a hilarious scandal - which also makes him seem a fool, if he did not know that upon immediately hearing the news. This is made especially hilarious because, directly after he hears the news and gives his vague promises of friendship to Elizabeth, she comes over all remorseful about having misjudged him and insistent on her newfound love for him, the guy who is apparently doing fuck-all about her immediate and terrible problem! Secondly, Darcy sends his aunt in to feel out Elizabeth's opinion of him, after having saved Lydia! Well done, romantic hero. Of all his faults in the book, this at least was not one of them there! Overall, not a good movie, but it was pretty funny if you were willing to sit there and baffle at the choices the director made and try to place the variety of mismatched period costumes the costume department had found.