if i could just leave my body for a night/then we could be dancing
I haven't watched it a second time, yet. But I have watched the last scene between the Doctor and Idris about 10 times. (Also this morning I watched all of Michael Sheen's episodes of 30 Rock, which I have watched probably more times than any 30 Rock, what is WRONG with me. "GANGWAY FOR FOOTCYCLE!" The WINK. "Excellent pantomime is SUPPOSED to look idiotic.")
I have made it clear, through my years of writing hyperbolically about television, that I love acting. I love acting so much. I love studying performances, and delighting in how actors can transform from role to role, and most of all, I love it when actors surprise the fuck out of you. Matt Smith. Matt goddamn Smith. I was tearing up as he was tearing up (AND HIS LOWER LIP UNCONTROLLABLY TREMBLING) but when he opened his mouth and said, "Please..." it tore through my heart like a fucking sneak attack...like a sneak attack rusty nail/jagged splinter and I think I gasped and sobbed at the same time. And then, "I don't want you to." His voice is just so quiet, and completely shattered and broken, and it surprised me so much, hurt so much to hear. It hit me exactly like that moment in The Suitcase when Don Draper, on the phone, said: "That's what they say..."
I've talked about how I wanted someone to vid Eleven and Amy to Animal Collective's In The Flowers and how the moment at 2:31 when the song explodes could be perfectly synced with that early promo when the ground explodes beneath them...but since I think about this a lot I'd started to introduce the TARDIS into it. Especially as the sounds at the beginning and the end definitely sound like it (her). Well then Sunday I was listening to the song and remembered how the original lyrics before the explosion had been "I guess sometimes I have to miss my wife" and my brain went WAIT WHAT HOLY SHIT. The lyrics are so insanely dead on for Doctor/TARDIS, more than they ever could be construed as for Eleven/Amy. Couldn't stop that spinning force has always been the TARDIS, but then the lyrics that are my subject line kind of exploded out at me with their amazing accuracy, and then the end of the climax: And I wouldn't feel so selfish/I won't be this way very long/To hold you in time...ugh, it breaks my heart.
That's the main thing that stays with me from this episode, a kind of bittersweet heartbreak. I am not so much a Gaiman fan as a plebe who loved Stardust and Coraline a whole lot, and always meant to read his stuff but life is hard. And busy. But from the moment I heard he was going to do an episode, I got extremely excited. This episode didn't surpass my expectations, rather, it took my expectations and laughed at them. I'd heard glimmerings that Idris might be the TARDIS, but I also saw pointed out that everyone always thinks that someone is going to be the embodiment of the TARDIS, like, say, Astrid from Voyage of the Damned. So I wished for the next best thing, that The Doctor's Wife would be an Our Mrs. Reynolds sort of situation. (Which should still totally happen. Maybe even with Christina Hendricks.)
Instead it was this lovely, dank, atmospheric, Gaiman-y love story (with a good bit of horror thrown in). I just keep thinking back to last week, when Eleven, Amy, and Avery find the sick bay. "Toby!" "Rory!" "THE TARDIS!" and he runs over to her and fondles her in relief. There were all sorts of appropriate and hilarious jokes about the Doctor wishing really hard, and "Sexy," but in the end it was the culmination of the love story between a Time Lord and a TARDIS who stole each other 700 years ago, and ran away to see the universe together.
"Look at you pair. It’s always you and her, isn’t it? Long after the rest of us have gone. The boy and his box off to save the universe."
And there were some rather traumatizing parts, too. First of all, the beginning cannot go without being addressed. House forcing Auntie and Uncle and Nephew to kill Idris so she can be consumed by the soul of the TARDIS. That's...pretty awful. I mean, I suppose she was just as fractured and doomed as Auntie and Uncle were, or at least would have become so, but it was still fairly disturbing. And then House forcing Amy and Rory to entertain him by running around in corridors (hah). While I would have loved to see all the rooms of the TARDIS, watching them run around in the same halls gave it that perfect house of mirrors/maze feel. Something I read pointed out how perfectly House's torture illustrated Amy's insecurities with Rory. That he'll die, or she'll leave him, or betray him, or that he secretly hates her and resents her for all of those same reasons.
Some more things: THE OOD! I love the Ood. "Another Ood I failed to save," perfect, Eleven, perfect. I love that the first thing Idris wanted to do upon seeing the Doctor was to kiss him and then bite him. I loved Idris' description of the graveyard of TARDISes, her classification of Rory as "the pretty one" (and the camerawork during that scene!), and the Doctor and Idris building a ramshackle TARDIS together. I love that it was designed by a child, too. The episode whose name we dare not speak (cough, Love and Monsters) had a villain designed by a child in another Blue Peter contest, a fact I didn't realized until I finally watched the Confidential for it last year. I remember being super annoyed by the stupidity of the Absorbaloff so when I found out its origin everything made perfect sense. However, this TARDIS was childlike in all the most wonderful ways so discovering it was an actual child's design delighted me. I loved (and was chilled by) the messages from the Time Lords, and the Doctor's tales of the Corsair (OMG, AND WHEN SHE WAS A GIRL...TWICE), and his fury at being tricked. Oh, and I loved seeing Nine/Ten's TARDIS. That was certainly a mindfuck.
Most of all, I love that no one ever addresses the title of the episode, that the closest we ever get is: "You're not my mother!"/"And you're not my child!" But it is the story of the day the Doctor got to spend with his TARDIS, always alive but always just out of reach. Seven hundred years together, if that's not a marriage, I don't know what is. While I completely and utterly am down with the whole Doctor/River thing that we've got going, I do not in any way belief that she is actually is his wife. This episode, essentially, is exactly what I needed to explain why.
In conclusion, needed more Michael Sheen's face and less of his voice being distorted beyond recognition. In further conclusion, I am totally going to go watch that last scene again right now, if not the entire episode.
NEXT WEEK! Um, the trailer was edited very differently, and very OH MY GOD WHERE IS A SOFA TO HIDE BEHIND so I am certainly even more excited than I was before when I all I knew was that it was A) written by Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes' Matthew Graham, and B) featuring Marshall Lancaster (CHRIS SKELTON!) and Party Animals' very own Jo Porter, aka Raquel Cassidy aka one of the 5 billion older women Matt Smith has insanely good chemistry with. So, props to all that. And then after that two parter comes episode 7 and then THE ENTIRE SUMMER DURING WHICH MY HEAD WILL IMPLODE FROM ANXIETY. Thanks a lot, Steven Moffat.
In conclusion, here is a picture of Matt Smith wearing a Blur (PARKLIFE!) t-shirt. Shut it down. All he has to do now is talk about how upset he is over the Stripes' breakup or talk about the James Blake show he was just at or wear the cover of This Is Hardcore on a tee (you know he would) and I will probably just start crying on the spot.
I have made it clear, through my years of writing hyperbolically about television, that I love acting. I love acting so much. I love studying performances, and delighting in how actors can transform from role to role, and most of all, I love it when actors surprise the fuck out of you. Matt Smith. Matt goddamn Smith. I was tearing up as he was tearing up (AND HIS LOWER LIP UNCONTROLLABLY TREMBLING) but when he opened his mouth and said, "Please..." it tore through my heart like a fucking sneak attack...like a sneak attack rusty nail/jagged splinter and I think I gasped and sobbed at the same time. And then, "I don't want you to." His voice is just so quiet, and completely shattered and broken, and it surprised me so much, hurt so much to hear. It hit me exactly like that moment in The Suitcase when Don Draper, on the phone, said: "That's what they say..."
I've talked about how I wanted someone to vid Eleven and Amy to Animal Collective's In The Flowers and how the moment at 2:31 when the song explodes could be perfectly synced with that early promo when the ground explodes beneath them...but since I think about this a lot I'd started to introduce the TARDIS into it. Especially as the sounds at the beginning and the end definitely sound like it (her). Well then Sunday I was listening to the song and remembered how the original lyrics before the explosion had been "I guess sometimes I have to miss my wife" and my brain went WAIT WHAT HOLY SHIT. The lyrics are so insanely dead on for Doctor/TARDIS, more than they ever could be construed as for Eleven/Amy. Couldn't stop that spinning force has always been the TARDIS, but then the lyrics that are my subject line kind of exploded out at me with their amazing accuracy, and then the end of the climax: And I wouldn't feel so selfish/I won't be this way very long/To hold you in time...ugh, it breaks my heart.
That's the main thing that stays with me from this episode, a kind of bittersweet heartbreak. I am not so much a Gaiman fan as a plebe who loved Stardust and Coraline a whole lot, and always meant to read his stuff but life is hard. And busy. But from the moment I heard he was going to do an episode, I got extremely excited. This episode didn't surpass my expectations, rather, it took my expectations and laughed at them. I'd heard glimmerings that Idris might be the TARDIS, but I also saw pointed out that everyone always thinks that someone is going to be the embodiment of the TARDIS, like, say, Astrid from Voyage of the Damned. So I wished for the next best thing, that The Doctor's Wife would be an Our Mrs. Reynolds sort of situation. (Which should still totally happen. Maybe even with Christina Hendricks.)
Instead it was this lovely, dank, atmospheric, Gaiman-y love story (with a good bit of horror thrown in). I just keep thinking back to last week, when Eleven, Amy, and Avery find the sick bay. "Toby!" "Rory!" "THE TARDIS!" and he runs over to her and fondles her in relief. There were all sorts of appropriate and hilarious jokes about the Doctor wishing really hard, and "Sexy," but in the end it was the culmination of the love story between a Time Lord and a TARDIS who stole each other 700 years ago, and ran away to see the universe together.
"Look at you pair. It’s always you and her, isn’t it? Long after the rest of us have gone. The boy and his box off to save the universe."
And there were some rather traumatizing parts, too. First of all, the beginning cannot go without being addressed. House forcing Auntie and Uncle and Nephew to kill Idris so she can be consumed by the soul of the TARDIS. That's...pretty awful. I mean, I suppose she was just as fractured and doomed as Auntie and Uncle were, or at least would have become so, but it was still fairly disturbing. And then House forcing Amy and Rory to entertain him by running around in corridors (hah). While I would have loved to see all the rooms of the TARDIS, watching them run around in the same halls gave it that perfect house of mirrors/maze feel. Something I read pointed out how perfectly House's torture illustrated Amy's insecurities with Rory. That he'll die, or she'll leave him, or betray him, or that he secretly hates her and resents her for all of those same reasons.
Some more things: THE OOD! I love the Ood. "Another Ood I failed to save," perfect, Eleven, perfect. I love that the first thing Idris wanted to do upon seeing the Doctor was to kiss him and then bite him. I loved Idris' description of the graveyard of TARDISes, her classification of Rory as "the pretty one" (and the camerawork during that scene!), and the Doctor and Idris building a ramshackle TARDIS together. I love that it was designed by a child, too. The episode whose name we dare not speak (cough, Love and Monsters) had a villain designed by a child in another Blue Peter contest, a fact I didn't realized until I finally watched the Confidential for it last year. I remember being super annoyed by the stupidity of the Absorbaloff so when I found out its origin everything made perfect sense. However, this TARDIS was childlike in all the most wonderful ways so discovering it was an actual child's design delighted me. I loved (and was chilled by) the messages from the Time Lords, and the Doctor's tales of the Corsair (OMG, AND WHEN SHE WAS A GIRL...TWICE), and his fury at being tricked. Oh, and I loved seeing Nine/Ten's TARDIS. That was certainly a mindfuck.
Most of all, I love that no one ever addresses the title of the episode, that the closest we ever get is: "You're not my mother!"/"And you're not my child!" But it is the story of the day the Doctor got to spend with his TARDIS, always alive but always just out of reach. Seven hundred years together, if that's not a marriage, I don't know what is. While I completely and utterly am down with the whole Doctor/River thing that we've got going, I do not in any way belief that she is actually is his wife. This episode, essentially, is exactly what I needed to explain why.
In conclusion, needed more Michael Sheen's face and less of his voice being distorted beyond recognition. In further conclusion, I am totally going to go watch that last scene again right now, if not the entire episode.
NEXT WEEK! Um, the trailer was edited very differently, and very OH MY GOD WHERE IS A SOFA TO HIDE BEHIND so I am certainly even more excited than I was before when I all I knew was that it was A) written by Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes' Matthew Graham, and B) featuring Marshall Lancaster (CHRIS SKELTON!) and Party Animals' very own Jo Porter, aka Raquel Cassidy aka one of the 5 billion older women Matt Smith has insanely good chemistry with. So, props to all that. And then after that two parter comes episode 7 and then THE ENTIRE SUMMER DURING WHICH MY HEAD WILL IMPLODE FROM ANXIETY. Thanks a lot, Steven Moffat.
In conclusion, here is a picture of Matt Smith wearing a Blur (PARKLIFE!) t-shirt. Shut it down. All he has to do now is talk about how upset he is over the Stripes' breakup or talk about the James Blake show he was just at or wear the cover of This Is Hardcore on a tee (you know he would) and I will probably just start crying on the spot.