apparently this is an all-Rory, all-the-time blog now

Jul 16, 2015 20:47

So here I am, sitting in the box office and kicking back during Act I of tonight's show, keeping on with my rewatch of Doctor Who. I just finished the second Flesh episode and started "A Good Man Goes to War," and two thoughts IMMEDIATELY popped to mind ( Read more... )

thinky, doctor who

Leave a comment

Comments 11

tempestsarekind July 17 2015, 04:10:56 UTC
…I think there might have been a line somewhere about the fact that Flesh!Amy was never an independent being, unlike the gangers, so when the Doctor severs the connection between Flesh!Amy and real Amy, Flesh!Amy just dissolves. I think it's more like a hologram, if that helps. :)

But as for Rory and Amy: YES. And this is actually why Moffat's narrative sleight-of-hand there has never bothered me, because Moffat actually did too good a job on the key emotional Amy/Rory beats in "The Impossible Astronaut" (that little, shattered "Rory, what do we do?" from Amy always breaks my heart) and "Day of the Moon" for the trick to work. Moffat has already done that switch, back when Rory assumed that Amy was talking about the Doctor with her whole "I know you think it ought to be him", "get your stupid face where I can see it" speech. And Amy's response, when Rory admitted that, was this totally disbelieving, even kind of grossed-out, "you thought I was talking about the Doctor???" So there's no way that Amy could have meant that the Doctor ( ... )

Reply

sadcypress July 19 2015, 14:54:46 UTC
YES, ok, that makes sense re: Flesh!Amy. It also makes me feel better that I hadn't given that element the stinkeye initially. Phew!

Plus, you know - I said this back when the episodes first aired, I think, but the really telling thing with "Day of the Moon" is that Amy has to ask whether the Doctor is out there listening, but when she's talking to Rory, she doesn't even bother asking, because she knows he's listening to her.
Please picture me rolling around on the floor, wailing and beating my breast over this detail. Carry on.

Reply

tempestsarekind July 19 2015, 16:45:14 UTC
I am quite happy to picture this. :)

Reply


tempestsarekind July 17 2015, 04:31:30 UTC
(starting a new comment instead of editing the other one a bunch of times)

So Amy gets these periodic speeches and voiceovers, right? There's the "when I was a little girl, I had an imaginary friend" one that opens "The Beast Below," the big one at her wedding, the "Lone Centurion" bedtime story to Melody in AGMGTW, and the final one: "this is the story of Amelia Pond." I love this because it makes the whole storytelling motif even more explicit, and makes Amy herself the teller of her own story - but the thing I was thinking just now is that if her first two speeches are about learning to believe in the Doctor, this one is so much about the fact that she's learned to be not just someone who can have faith in Rory - faith is Amy's specialty, she's the Girl Who Waited - but someone who can accept the faith and steadfastness of Rory. The Amy we met at the beginning of S5 ran away from that kind of devotion. And it's not a perfect process; especially after Demons Run, she has to relearn some of that, has to figure out how to believe ( ... )

Reply

sadcypress July 19 2015, 15:01:12 UTC
Yeah, I think that makes so much sense as a factor in their divorce. Amy's faith in herself is so deeply wounded after Demon's Run that she doubts so, so much that she always took for granted. Rory is the most beautiful man she's ever known, but Amy? She knows (with her imperfect self-knowledge) that she's broken and selfish deep inside and whatever Rory thinks he loves about her, it's not really true, not deep down where it counts. I just watched "The Girl Who Waited" last night, and my heart just breaks for that Amy, the one who hated the Doctor (or thought she did), but never stopped loving Rory. She has so much anger inside of her and it hurts to watch it- she's so brilliant and brave and remarkably strong, doing all these things we never could have imagined, but when she sees Rory again, it all starts to break down.

I don't know where I'm going with that except to say that I LOVE MY PONDS.

Reply

tempestsarekind July 19 2015, 16:57:23 UTC
PONDS FOREVER.

That's so true about Amy, the way the shell she's built up around herself starts to break down in "The Girl Who Waited" - the way she laughs at Rory's jokes as if she hasn't laughed in years just *guts* me. Rory is the thing that makes her vulnerable, which is true in S5 a bit, as well. Amy has taught herself to stop hoping for or expecting anything, after the Doctor abandons her as a child, so when she thinks he might be dead (in "Vampires of Venice"), she just swallows and says flatly, "Is he…" as if, whatever happens, she is going to face it bravely. But when Rory dies, she just comes apart - and even when she can't remember him, the loss of him makes her cry. I have SO MANY feelings about that, the way some part of her is grieving even though she doesn't know why.

(In S6, Amy can weep for the Doctor - and then goes catatonic, the way she does: "Why are you still talking? He's dead" - but it makes so much sense that in "The Girl Who Waited," she might have shut her heart on those feelings for the Doctor, but Rory ( ... )

Reply


arcadiaego July 21 2015, 22:17:46 UTC
I never really thought about it before, but MY GOD, the morality of his choice to destroy Flesh!Amy is QUITE dodgy, isn't it? There was a lot of anger about this at the time (and I thought that his actions contradicted the entire episode) but it was confirmed afterwards that Flesh!Amy wasn't a person like the gangers. However it was definitely one of those times when the writer's intentions didn't come across clearly because the plot was moving too fast, which is a big issue with Moffat's Who ( ... )

Reply

sadcypress July 22 2015, 03:17:08 UTC
I think River Song is an almost impossible role to play- it can be hard to track her arc with all the leaping around in time, and her blithe self-assurance becomes smug very easily. I liked her best when Eleven first met her, just because they played up how much she made him feel uncomfortable. But every now and then, I really love River, and so I try and remember those times as much as I can ( ... )

Reply

arcadiaego July 22 2015, 14:18:33 UTC
Urg the idea that Eleven has forgotten is just...I mean Ten deals with it by either moaning or doing terrible things like torturing The Family of Blood for all eternity. Just because Eleven decided to stop whining about how it's so awful for him all the time!

Reply

sadcypress July 22 2015, 16:10:57 UTC
UGHHHH, TOO RIGHT. I saw a headline that Moffat regretted bringing Gallifrey back and I hope it's a dirty lie- it's such a precious gift to have it back in play, to have that horrible weight off of the Doctor's shoulders after so long.

Reply


Leave a comment

Up