"The Girl Who Waited" Or: "Why I Started Watching Doctor Who To See How Bad It Gets
...Before They Cancel The Series."
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.
For a while now, I've been watching Doctor Who in the hopes that it will somehow get better. "The Doctor's Wife" sparked some of that hope, but the most recent episodes killed it. Now, I'm just watching to see how ridiculous it will get before somebody at the BBC finally has the good sense to put what was once an amazing series out of its misery.
First of all, I can't remember exactly which episode this happens in, but did anybody else seethe with rage at the Doctor being apologetic for having saved the universe multiple times? "Oh, I'm so sorry I hurt you, baddies! I feel just awful for that, I really do!" I mean, I understand that it was a sort of, "I started a fight with these guys and they ended up hurting a lot more innocent people," type of thing, but shouldn't the blame for that rest with the people who were doing the actual harm, not the guy who was trying to stop them? It's as if the Allies said, "You know what? We were wrong to try to stop the Nazis, because a bunch of people died in the process. We're sorry." It doesn't make sense!
Now, on to the second-to-most-recent episode. The one with the alien kid who was trapping people in the dollhouse. This premise could have worked very well, but they fucked it right the hell up.
First of all, they didn't go into detail about cuckoos and brood parasitism. That would have taken maybe ten seconds. If you didn't catch the Doctor's one throw-away line about cuckoos, or you didn't know anything about how they breed, you were lost. This may be common knowledge in England, but I only found out about it from reading Sandman.
Then. THEN. After all is said and done, they've convinced the alien-kid that no one's going to abandon him, and everyone is released from the dollhouse... the Doctor leaves the alien child, who has already been shown to be dangerous, with the human parents, who have no clue what to do about this. "Hey, your kid's really an alien! Take care of him! KTHXBAI." WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SHIT?? What are they supposed to do if something bad happens to the family, and the kid gets upset again?
Ok, now that that's out of my system, let us move on to "The Girl Who Waited," shall we? This episode was one of the worst things I've seen on television in a very long time, possibly ever. It was pure, unadulterated, manipulative tripe. I'd say it was horseshit, but horseshit at least has some value as fertilizer.
The Doctor lands the TARDIS on Appalappalachia. (Where are they going next, Ozaozarks?) As soon as he opens the door, the Doctor knows something is amiss, but he's not sure what. So instead of admonishing his companions not to wander off, as most of his incarnations have been known to do, he lets Amy go back into the Tardis for her cellular while he and Rory wander off. Of course the boys get seperated from Amy, and Amy needs to be rescued. (Can I just say? This show really needs some Self Rescuing Princess action.)
As it turns out, Amy is stuck in another time stream. The planet is infected with some sort of disease which causes those infected to die in twenty four hours, (SCI-FI GEEK ALERT: I would really like to see some planets that don't operate on Earth Standard Time.) so there's two seperate time streams that allow visitors to watch their dying family members live out full lives. I'm still not entirely clear on how this is supposed to work, because when Rory and the Doctor are talking to Amy through the giant magnifying glass, everyone seems to be on the same page regarding how quickly time is passing. It's only when they're NOT watching her that she jumps a week. Or something.
The Doctor and Rory need to figure out how to get Amy back. Further complcating matters, the Doctor can't actually go in to the facility where she's trapped, as the disease that kills you in twenty four hours only effects people with two hearts, like Appalappalachians and Time Lords. The Doctor can get Rory to the correct time stream, but Rory has to figure out the rescuing himself. The Doctor instructs Amy to go into the main part of the facility, and wait for rescue.
Here's the part where things REALLY stop making sense. Amy enters a lobby, and sees...no one. There's some rows of chairs, like a waiting area. This spot is right next to the door that Rory will be coming through in order to rescue her. She has no reason to continue in to the facility, so why doesn't she wait right there? Instead, she wanders further into the facility, making it all the more difficult for anybody to come rescue her, which is what she specifically asked the Doctor and Rory to do. Why is she making things more difficult?
She enters the facility, and it turns out that there are robots everywhere trying to give her medication to destroy the unknown bacteria in her body. Thing is, the medication they're trying to give her will kill her, since she's a human.
Amy finds a place to hide, and waits. Apparently, for 36 years. The Doctor managed to find the correct time stream, but dropped Rory off at the wrong point.
The only positive things I have to say about the episode is that they did a pretty good job with the Old!Amy makeup, although there's one shot of her arm that completely takes me out of it, and that I kind of love Old!Amy as a character. She's badass, she takes care of herself, she doesn't *need* rescuing.
This, however, is where things go straight to hell. I really can't figure out why Old!Amy and Rory leave the safety of that boiler-room place and go to the garden. Did they mention the reason, and I just missed it? Things got convoluted; I got confused. Eventually, the Doctor figures out how to get Original!Amy back, but he can only do it with Old!Amy's help, for some reason. Understandably, Old!Amy doesn't want to help, because that means she won't exist any more. Original!Amy manages to convince her to do so by mentioning her (their?) love for Rory. (JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. We get it. Amy and Rory love each other very much. Can we PLEASE give these characters more dimension already?)
Rory flips some switches, Amys think about their first kiss with Rory (AUGH), and Original!Amy appears.
THIS. This is the part that makes me fume with rage. FLAMES. Flames! On the side of my face! According to Doctor Who cannon, according to EVERY SCI-FI TIME TRAVEL CONVENTION from Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, to Star Trek, to Back to the Future, this is the point where Old!Amy should have disappeared in a puff of logic. She only exists because Original!Amy was never rescued. Now that has been un-done, and the timeline that created Old!Amy will never happen. WHY THE FUCK IS SHE STILL THERE?
Old!Amy wants to come along and travel in the TARDIS with everyone else. There's some pretty funny moments where she and Original!Amy say the same things at the same time. Thank god that dropped that nonsense when they did, because it was about to get really old.
At any rate, they all get back to the TARDIS, Old!Amy kills a bunch of robots with her katana (which, where the fuck did she get a katana?), Rory and Orignal!Amy get into the TARDIS, Old!Amy gets locked out. The Doctor says he lied when he said she could come with, the two Amys being in the TARDIS at the same time would blow shit up.
Rory now has to choose between his wives. This scene is trying SO HARD to be emotionally manipulative, but it just fails. I swear, the look on my face while I was watching this crime against storytelling would have whithered goats. That's how bad it was. How can you expect people to have an emotional connection to a character that shouldn't exist, whose death won't matter ANYWAY because the original version of her is safe inside the TARDIS? Why the fuck should I give a shit that she's being left behind? Why should Rory? Why are we even having this conversation?
They leave Old!Amy behind, of course. She dies a rather painless death, from what we can tell. The Doctor completely fails to explain why the hell she still existed after they rescued Original!Amy, and the episode ends.
It's like they're not even trying anymore. I know there's a shit-ton of cannon to keep up with when you're writing Doctor Who, but could we at least obey the laws of logic? Can we maybe give the characters more, well, character? Could we maybe stop beating dead horses?
I remain convinced that Steven Moffat is the Master.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.
For a while now, I've been watching Doctor Who in the hopes that it will somehow get better. "The Doctor's Wife" sparked some of that hope, but the most recent episodes killed it. Now, I'm just watching to see how ridiculous it will get before somebody at the BBC finally has the good sense to put what was once an amazing series out of its misery.
First of all, I can't remember exactly which episode this happens in, but did anybody else seethe with rage at the Doctor being apologetic for having saved the universe multiple times? "Oh, I'm so sorry I hurt you, baddies! I feel just awful for that, I really do!" I mean, I understand that it was a sort of, "I started a fight with these guys and they ended up hurting a lot more innocent people," type of thing, but shouldn't the blame for that rest with the people who were doing the actual harm, not the guy who was trying to stop them? It's as if the Allies said, "You know what? We were wrong to try to stop the Nazis, because a bunch of people died in the process. We're sorry." It doesn't make sense!
Now, on to the second-to-most-recent episode. The one with the alien kid who was trapping people in the dollhouse. This premise could have worked very well, but they fucked it right the hell up.
First of all, they didn't go into detail about cuckoos and brood parasitism. That would have taken maybe ten seconds. If you didn't catch the Doctor's one throw-away line about cuckoos, or you didn't know anything about how they breed, you were lost. This may be common knowledge in England, but I only found out about it from reading Sandman.
Then. THEN. After all is said and done, they've convinced the alien-kid that no one's going to abandon him, and everyone is released from the dollhouse... the Doctor leaves the alien child, who has already been shown to be dangerous, with the human parents, who have no clue what to do about this. "Hey, your kid's really an alien! Take care of him! KTHXBAI." WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SHIT?? What are they supposed to do if something bad happens to the family, and the kid gets upset again?
Ok, now that that's out of my system, let us move on to "The Girl Who Waited," shall we? This episode was one of the worst things I've seen on television in a very long time, possibly ever. It was pure, unadulterated, manipulative tripe. I'd say it was horseshit, but horseshit at least has some value as fertilizer.
The Doctor lands the TARDIS on Appalappalachia. (Where are they going next, Ozaozarks?) As soon as he opens the door, the Doctor knows something is amiss, but he's not sure what. So instead of admonishing his companions not to wander off, as most of his incarnations have been known to do, he lets Amy go back into the Tardis for her cellular while he and Rory wander off. Of course the boys get seperated from Amy, and Amy needs to be rescued. (Can I just say? This show really needs some Self Rescuing Princess action.)
As it turns out, Amy is stuck in another time stream. The planet is infected with some sort of disease which causes those infected to die in twenty four hours, (SCI-FI GEEK ALERT: I would really like to see some planets that don't operate on Earth Standard Time.) so there's two seperate time streams that allow visitors to watch their dying family members live out full lives. I'm still not entirely clear on how this is supposed to work, because when Rory and the Doctor are talking to Amy through the giant magnifying glass, everyone seems to be on the same page regarding how quickly time is passing. It's only when they're NOT watching her that she jumps a week. Or something.
The Doctor and Rory need to figure out how to get Amy back. Further complcating matters, the Doctor can't actually go in to the facility where she's trapped, as the disease that kills you in twenty four hours only effects people with two hearts, like Appalappalachians and Time Lords. The Doctor can get Rory to the correct time stream, but Rory has to figure out the rescuing himself. The Doctor instructs Amy to go into the main part of the facility, and wait for rescue.
Here's the part where things REALLY stop making sense. Amy enters a lobby, and sees...no one. There's some rows of chairs, like a waiting area. This spot is right next to the door that Rory will be coming through in order to rescue her. She has no reason to continue in to the facility, so why doesn't she wait right there? Instead, she wanders further into the facility, making it all the more difficult for anybody to come rescue her, which is what she specifically asked the Doctor and Rory to do. Why is she making things more difficult?
She enters the facility, and it turns out that there are robots everywhere trying to give her medication to destroy the unknown bacteria in her body. Thing is, the medication they're trying to give her will kill her, since she's a human.
Amy finds a place to hide, and waits. Apparently, for 36 years. The Doctor managed to find the correct time stream, but dropped Rory off at the wrong point.
The only positive things I have to say about the episode is that they did a pretty good job with the Old!Amy makeup, although there's one shot of her arm that completely takes me out of it, and that I kind of love Old!Amy as a character. She's badass, she takes care of herself, she doesn't *need* rescuing.
This, however, is where things go straight to hell. I really can't figure out why Old!Amy and Rory leave the safety of that boiler-room place and go to the garden. Did they mention the reason, and I just missed it? Things got convoluted; I got confused. Eventually, the Doctor figures out how to get Original!Amy back, but he can only do it with Old!Amy's help, for some reason. Understandably, Old!Amy doesn't want to help, because that means she won't exist any more. Original!Amy manages to convince her to do so by mentioning her (their?) love for Rory. (JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. We get it. Amy and Rory love each other very much. Can we PLEASE give these characters more dimension already?)
Rory flips some switches, Amys think about their first kiss with Rory (AUGH), and Original!Amy appears.
THIS. This is the part that makes me fume with rage. FLAMES. Flames! On the side of my face! According to Doctor Who cannon, according to EVERY SCI-FI TIME TRAVEL CONVENTION from Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, to Star Trek, to Back to the Future, this is the point where Old!Amy should have disappeared in a puff of logic. She only exists because Original!Amy was never rescued. Now that has been un-done, and the timeline that created Old!Amy will never happen. WHY THE FUCK IS SHE STILL THERE?
Old!Amy wants to come along and travel in the TARDIS with everyone else. There's some pretty funny moments where she and Original!Amy say the same things at the same time. Thank god that dropped that nonsense when they did, because it was about to get really old.
At any rate, they all get back to the TARDIS, Old!Amy kills a bunch of robots with her katana (which, where the fuck did she get a katana?), Rory and Orignal!Amy get into the TARDIS, Old!Amy gets locked out. The Doctor says he lied when he said she could come with, the two Amys being in the TARDIS at the same time would blow shit up.
Rory now has to choose between his wives. This scene is trying SO HARD to be emotionally manipulative, but it just fails. I swear, the look on my face while I was watching this crime against storytelling would have whithered goats. That's how bad it was. How can you expect people to have an emotional connection to a character that shouldn't exist, whose death won't matter ANYWAY because the original version of her is safe inside the TARDIS? Why the fuck should I give a shit that she's being left behind? Why should Rory? Why are we even having this conversation?
They leave Old!Amy behind, of course. She dies a rather painless death, from what we can tell. The Doctor completely fails to explain why the hell she still existed after they rescued Original!Amy, and the episode ends.
It's like they're not even trying anymore. I know there's a shit-ton of cannon to keep up with when you're writing Doctor Who, but could we at least obey the laws of logic? Can we maybe give the characters more, well, character? Could we maybe stop beating dead horses?
I remain convinced that Steven Moffat is the Master.