Starting stats: 12.1, Robot
Doctor: Four
Companions: Sarah Jane, Brigadier-General Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, Harry Sullivan (barely)
The first thing I must say about Robot is that it's certainly the best-paced Classic episode I've yet seen (out of, y'know, two and a half, including itself.) Better plotted than Ark in Space, but not as quotable, I fear. Which leaves me a bit lost, as I'm not Jacob and I still don't know how I want to write these things. But ah well.
The regeneration sequence was a bit of a non-event--just a bleeding of one face into the other, no muss no fuss. I kind of like the modern Golden Light of Goooooold way of doing it better, I think. The Brig just mumbled "well, here we go again" and that was that. (I LOVE the Brig, by the way. His mustache is magnificent and his sense of humor is so wry and dry and... Iiiiiiii love it. [parentheses within parentheses to groan about how not-clever I am with the rhyming.] Anyway. He reminds me a lot of Martha, sometimes-- or, I suppose, Martha is an awful lot like the Brig. And not just for the UNITyness. They've just a way about them.)
Four sits up, babbling nonsense, and he's clutching Sarah Jane's arm so hard she's probably bruising under his grip. Sarah's plenty empowered and all, but every time I see her, I react the same way I did when I first saw Amy Acker as Fred on Angel-- which is to say, I repeatedly gasp, "but she's so small! look at how LITTLE she is!" every time she comes on screen. I don't mean it to be mean-- in fact, it's terribly endearing. But the point is, she really is just a slip of a thing, and the Doctor mustn't be so rough with her.
Oh my god the special effects are amazing. It's relatively easy, this time around, to get pulled into the story and kind of gloss over how awful the things you're actually seeing look, but if you pause it and come back to it? Oh my god, that robot. It's terribly impressive considering their budget and time period, but... oh, show. (They actually pull a Nosferatu with the cheapy-ass robot claw, too. I realize it's a classic suspense/horror technique, but... faaail.) (Oh, and THEN it steals a plain manila envelope stamped, in big letters, "TOP SECRET." Oh, show.)
Brig: "You realize, Miss Smith, that all of this is top secret?"
Sarah: [amused] "Then why are you telling me?"
Brig: "Well, be-bec--because there's no one else I can tell."
They're SO CUTE.
LOL FOUR. His face when he sees the TARDIS for the first time. A++++, I wish I had a screencap. And he snuck away from the Med Bay when he wasn't supposed to, of course, so he's in a dressing gown. Striped, obviously, as that's the way the Doctor prefers his jim-jams.
[Lis Sladen, in the commentary: "Very good lurking, there, Tom! Solid lurking."]
Harry Sullivan (a navy doctor, which they discuss more in Ark in Space) comes in to, y'know, apprehend the runaway and remind him he's supposed to be healing and all, and then the Doctor uses his still-canon extra regeneration energy to karate-chop through a (clearly balsa wood) brick and then SKIP ROPE, WITH HARRY. I cannot describe this scene with mere words. Just know that it is awesome. The two of them, face to face, maybe three inches apart, hopping to the time of the Doctor doing some creepy-as-fuck children's rhyme. Amazing. Oh, show.
And then, knowing Harry will only get in his way, the Doctor stuffs him in a closet. (Sarah finds him later. She walks into the empty lab, hears a vague muffled plea for help, says "Cupboard!" and finds him straight away. Doesn't even stop to think. Love that girl.)
[picking a new outfit: viking attire]
Doctor: "Do you think I might attract attention?"
Brig: "Just possibly."
(love. him.)
There's plot stuff and sneaking about stuff and blah, Sarah uses her reporter cred to get a visitor's pass to some sekrit military base... science... thing. "HEYA WHAT'S IN HERE?" she basically asks, barging right into a door that, I swear to god, is marked "Positively No Admittance." Oh, SHOW. While in the garage/lab where the phlebotinum was made, she notices a musty smell (and later, an oil spill) right off. She's such a good companion. (Also later off, she brushes the oil with her hand and gives it a sniff, and I have been watching too much Ten because I was terrified, for a moment, that she would lick it.)
Also also (I'm rubbish at linear thinking, apparently, so do try and keep up) later, she has to sneak back into the Lab. Her visitor's pass is about to expire, so she drives up to the gate guard all "I've forgotten my notebook-- I still have ten minutes left on my pass, can I pop in and get it?" and when he turns his back to phone a superior, she ABANDONS HER CAR, then HOPS A FENCE and RUNS ACROSS SEVERAL LARGE LAWNS to her destination. In a skirt suit and terribly absurd boots. LOVE THIS GIRL.
And then, just when I thought she couldn't get more awesome, she channels Rose. The crux of this story is a robot (big surprise) but it's a surprisingly adorable one, which doesn't want to hurt people can gets all conflicted and wobbles when confused. (Like a pokemon.) And Sarah's all "How can you be sure it doesn't have feelings?" and then asks the robot if it's alright, and pets it. And it's all very Dalek and god I love companions. They are the best.
[the Absent-Minded Professor is babbling about solar energy and pollution]
Doctor: "I know; humans. They can't see that what's under their noses is over their heads!"
[A-M P babbles on; Sarah Jane, in the background, laughs appreciatively at the Doctor's joke and then, realizing her faux-pas and seeing the Brig's poker face, half-heartedly tries to turn it into a cough, still smiling]
There's a wonderful moment, later in, when the Brig, the Doctor, and Sarah sit around in the Doctor's lab talking through the clues together. Not only do Sarah and the Doctor totally have an "Are you deducting?" moment, but I just... I love what an odd yet efficient little team they make. It's one thing to SAY Sarah's an investigative journalist; it's quite another to give her the mind of one. (In the commentary, the producer says "We very deliberately didn't make Sarah Jane an assistant--we made her an investigative journalist so she could, you know, start things on her own." To which Terrence Dicks replied "Yes-- assistants are for tying to train tracks!" and oh, that was so close to being inspired. But then Lis Sladen laughs and says "I never got that one-- it was the one I wanted!" which only further proves how awesome she is.)
But anyway. Sarah goes home to get some sleep (and change into an UTTERLY RIDICULOUS outfit, involving a scarf tied around her head for no reason) leaving the Doctor and the Brig to flail around and be useless in her absence:
Brig: "Doctor, what are we going to do? Or shall we just leave it all to Miss Smith?"
And later, when the Doctor types a note [a) on a typewriter and b) with super-speed] and tapes it to the TARDIS, explaining where he's run off to and what he's doing, he addresses it to Sarah Jane, and not the Brigadier. Even though he's parked in the UNIT lab and he has every reason to think the Brig would find it first.
"Please do not resist" says the polite, morally conflicted Robot. It's starting to become clear that he's adopted a King Kong style crush on Sarah Jane. Later, he will get hit with a ray gun and grow many stories high, and then he picks her up and carries her around. Well, a terrible doll of her. The SFX at that point at quite appalling.
[A-M P and Sarah want to sneak into a Sekrit Meeting of Bad Guys]
Soldier: "But the Brigadier would go spare-- so would the Doctor!"
Sarah: "Well, one's away and the other's asleep!"
Soldier: "Then I'll go wake the Doctor and see what he says--"
Sarah: "--DON'T YOU DARE. He had a nasty knock on the head and he needs to rest."
Soldier: "Well in that case miss, it's just not on. I'm sorry."
Sarah: "Oh, I--" [pause, then: epiphany] "MISter Benton,* are we members of UNIT?"
Soldier: "Well, no, of course not."
Sarah: "Are we under arrest?"
Soldier: [seeing where she's going with this; defeated] "No, miss."
Sarah: [beams the smile of Triumphant Feminine Wiles] "Well then, what we do and where we go is none of your business, is it? Come along, professor!"
Soldier: "Now, wai-"
Sarah: "No, you just go and [something british that I absolutely cannot interpret but is quite clearly a double entendre so I laughed] your rifle or something."
(... yeah, it kind of got away from me at the end, there. Moving on!)
WOOHOO Four drives Bessie! And it's awesome.
"James Bond" Sarah hisses derisively at a caught undercover Harry (having just been caught herself.)
Four uses the sonic screwdriver for the first time. Lots of things explode. It's fun.
[mutually trying to untie each other's handcuff bindings]
Harry: "How're we doing, Miss Smith?"
Sarah: "Ooookay?" [it's all in Lis's delivery, really.]
Robot kills A-M P and then laments, loudly, in his robot voice: "ohhhhh! I have killed the one who created me!" and then he drops to his knees before collapsing completely in a pathetic heap. [my hand-written notes for this section read: 'LOL LOL LOL LOL FOREVER']
[upon noticing Sarah Jane is missing]
Soldier: "Well we thou-- we thought she'd gone home."
Doctor: "Gone HOME?!" [I adore Baker's delivery on this. one part "are you fucking crazy?", one part "lol, have you met this girl?" and one part "because now, Detective Inspector Bishop, there's no power on this EARTH that can stop me."]
(It is at this point that the Lis Sladen stand-in dolly does its Fay Wray impression.)
After it all, Sarah feels pretty down about the death of the robot:
Doctor: "Sarah? Sarah...? ... Would you like a jelly baby?"
It's the first time he ever offers. (Of course it's to her.) Initially, she refuses.
[on the robot]
Sarah: "It was so human."
Doctor: "It was a *wonderful* creature. Capable of great good... and great evil. ... yes, I think you could say it was human."
Then he paces and babbles and offers her a trip in the TARDIS instead, and my god, nothing ever really changes, does it? He whines about staying, and the paperwork UNIT would make him do, and he says "I won't I won't I WON'T!" and goes to karate chop another brick... only to practically break his hand. (Sarah Jane does her best not to laugh at him, bless her.)
Sarah: "Doctor, you're being childish."
Doctor: "Well of course I am! There's no point in being grown up if you can't act childish sometimes." [pauses, lets his hat cast a bashful shadow over his eyes as he looks away, offers the white bag again] "Are you coming?" (he won't look at her.)
[She breaks into a wide grin and eagerly pops a jelly baby into her mouth, as if he'll rescind the offer if she doesn't eat it fast enough. He grins at her, and she laughs at him, and it is quite possibly the cutest thing you'll ever see. Rusty owes a hell of a lot to this relationship, I'm starting to learn.]
And then, of course, Harry wanders in. Bah! He offers Harry a jelly baby, and he takes two.
Doctor: "We're taking a trip!"
Harry: "Wot, in that old police box?"
Doctor: [snatches back the other jelly baby, offended] "YES in that old police box!"
He doesn't, unfortunately, say "it's bigger on the inside" but we do hear his incredulous "I say," and Sarah giggles.
God I love this show. Even when it's bad, it's good. And Sarah/Four is SOCUTE.
Ending stats:
Jelly baby offers: 3
Displays of unrestrained physical affection: 0 (closest facsimile: when Four comes back to his right mind, he shakes the Brig's hand and then Sarah's. Then he gets distracted, but keeps holding Sarah's hand in both of his own as he talks. Cute, but not a hug.)
Speeches by the Doctor about how awesome humans are: 1ish.
* totally reminded me of Roses's "MISter Jefferson, SIRRR" from Satan Pit, but I didn't have a handy way to link to that. So, you get a footnote!
Showing posts with label Classic Who. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Classic Who. Show all posts
Friday, April 2, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
1.1.1 "An Unearthly Child" Reaction Post
Amy informed me that the whole first season of Doctor Who was on youtube. Naturally, I couldn't leave that well enough alone, so I thought I'd start at the beginning...
Starting Stats: 1.1.1, An Unearthly Child
Doctor: One
Companions: Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
So... whoa. I'm watching the first ever episode of Doctor Who.
I love that we meet the companions first, before we meet the Doctor—or rather, I love how RTD kept up that tradition in Rose. Human connection! Fantastic.
"Susan Foreman—she your problem too?" Oh, of course she'd be a troublemaker. But I won't say that's my girl just yet.
Ian: "That's your problem, eh? Whether to hand over your class to her, or—"
Barbara: "No, not quite."
I already really like Ian.
Barbara: "I asked if I could work with her at her home, and she said that would be absolutely impossible, as her grandfather didn't like strangers."
Ian: "He's a doctor, isn't he? That's a bit of a lame excuse."
Awwh, come on, Doctor! PARTY IN THE TARDIS! It could be fun!
Hee. The address they gave the school is a junkyard.
Ian: "Hmm. That's a bit of a mystery. Well, there must be a simple answer."
Barbara: "What?"
Ian: "Well, we'll... ah, have to find out for ourselves, won't we?"
Barbara: [biting back a smile] "Thank you for the 'we.'"
I LOVE COMPANIONS.
... AHAHAHAHAHA THAT'S SUSAN? She's not at all how I imagined her. Hair done up in a beehive, listening to that newfangled rock and roll music. I thought she'd be all petite sweetness and light, like Sarah Jane. But she's clearly got a bit of a bite to her. Love that.
[Barbara lends Susan a book]
Susan: "Thank you very much! I'll return it tomorrow."
Barbara: "Oh, that's not necessary—til you've finished it."
Susan: "I'll have finished it."
And now Susan is... hand-drawing a Rorschach blot? I don't even know.
Hee! Barbara—or rather, Jacqueline Hill—flubbed a line but they kept it in. It's so cute and low-budget!
... okay, now I'm starting to get annoyed. They're just listing all the ways Susan's freaky and smart and... well. It's making her come off all freaky. xD Get to the point, show! And let me love her!
[watching her enter an empty warehouse]
Ian: "She is fifteen, you know. She could be meeting a boy. Did that ever occur to you?"
Barbara: "I almost wish she were. It would be so normal."
(Teehee Jimmy Stone. And now back to your regularly scheduled Classic episode).
They've found the TARDIS!
Ian: "Feel it! Do you feel that?"
Barbara: "It's a... faint vibration."
Ian: "It's alive!"
Well that's an interesting conclusion to jump to, Ian. Nice to know you earned that degree in science.
And there's the Doctor! In a funny hat and a funny scarf. Ohhhh, Doctor.
Okay, One's a grumpy curmudgeon. Which I knew, but... come on, Doctor, where's your sense of wonder?
And ohhhhhh, welcome to the TARDIS. Go on. Go on, then. Say it. Someone say it.
Barbara: "Is this really where you live, Susan?"
Susan: "Wh—yes."
Doctor: "And what is wrong with it?"
Ian: "It... it was just a box—"
Come on. One of you has to say it.
IS NO ONE GOING TO SAY IT'S BIGGER ON THE INSIDE?
Susan: "The TARDIS can go anywhere."
Barbara: "I don't know what you mean, Susan."
Susan: "Oh, I made up tardis from the initials-- Time And Relative Dimension In Space. I thought you'd both realize when you came inside and saw the different dimensions from outside!"
Close enough. (Also: Susan named it? Awwwwwwh.)
Susan: "Why won't you believe us?"
Barbara: "We just want you to tell us the truth."
Doctor: "You have heard the truth! We are not of this race. We are not of this Earth. We are wanderers in the four dimensions of space and time, cut off from our own planet and our own people by eons and universes and a power beyond the reach of your most advanced sciences."
I like the "I can feel the Earth turnin'" speech better, methinks.
... oh, shoot. Is he going to KIDNAP Ian and Barbara? Is that how this goes down? Susan's begging for him to let them go. This is not okay.
"I was born in the 49th century," says Susan. Good to know!
Oh, come on. Really? The Doctor just laughed an evil laugh. Oh, show.
This is... really upsetting, actually. The Doctor zapped Ian, and Susan's all upset and crying, and it's all... argh. This is not what I signed up for. Where are the speeches about how awesome humans are? Where's the sense of adventure? One is so not My Doctor.
There are three more parts to Unearthly Child, but I honestly don't think I can get through them right now. Eesh. I guess I'll just have to take One in very small doses.
I need some dancing Bernard Cribbins to cheer myself up.
That's better.
Starting Stats: 1.1.1, An Unearthly Child
Doctor: One
Companions: Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
So... whoa. I'm watching the first ever episode of Doctor Who.
I love that we meet the companions first, before we meet the Doctor—or rather, I love how RTD kept up that tradition in Rose. Human connection! Fantastic.
"Susan Foreman—she your problem too?" Oh, of course she'd be a troublemaker. But I won't say that's my girl just yet.
Ian: "That's your problem, eh? Whether to hand over your class to her, or—"
Barbara: "No, not quite."
I already really like Ian.
Barbara: "I asked if I could work with her at her home, and she said that would be absolutely impossible, as her grandfather didn't like strangers."
Ian: "He's a doctor, isn't he? That's a bit of a lame excuse."
Awwh, come on, Doctor! PARTY IN THE TARDIS! It could be fun!
Hee. The address they gave the school is a junkyard.
Ian: "Hmm. That's a bit of a mystery. Well, there must be a simple answer."
Barbara: "What?"
Ian: "Well, we'll... ah, have to find out for ourselves, won't we?"
Barbara: [biting back a smile] "Thank you for the 'we.'"
I LOVE COMPANIONS.
... AHAHAHAHAHA THAT'S SUSAN? She's not at all how I imagined her. Hair done up in a beehive, listening to that newfangled rock and roll music. I thought she'd be all petite sweetness and light, like Sarah Jane. But she's clearly got a bit of a bite to her. Love that.
[Barbara lends Susan a book]
Susan: "Thank you very much! I'll return it tomorrow."
Barbara: "Oh, that's not necessary—til you've finished it."
Susan: "I'll have finished it."
And now Susan is... hand-drawing a Rorschach blot? I don't even know.
Hee! Barbara—or rather, Jacqueline Hill—flubbed a line but they kept it in. It's so cute and low-budget!
... okay, now I'm starting to get annoyed. They're just listing all the ways Susan's freaky and smart and... well. It's making her come off all freaky. xD Get to the point, show! And let me love her!
[watching her enter an empty warehouse]
Ian: "She is fifteen, you know. She could be meeting a boy. Did that ever occur to you?"
Barbara: "I almost wish she were. It would be so normal."
(Teehee Jimmy Stone. And now back to your regularly scheduled Classic episode).
They've found the TARDIS!
Ian: "Feel it! Do you feel that?"
Barbara: "It's a... faint vibration."
Ian: "It's alive!"
Well that's an interesting conclusion to jump to, Ian. Nice to know you earned that degree in science.
And there's the Doctor! In a funny hat and a funny scarf. Ohhhh, Doctor.
Okay, One's a grumpy curmudgeon. Which I knew, but... come on, Doctor, where's your sense of wonder?
And ohhhhhh, welcome to the TARDIS. Go on. Go on, then. Say it. Someone say it.
Barbara: "Is this really where you live, Susan?"
Susan: "Wh—yes."
Doctor: "And what is wrong with it?"
Ian: "It... it was just a box—"
Come on. One of you has to say it.
IS NO ONE GOING TO SAY IT'S BIGGER ON THE INSIDE?
Susan: "The TARDIS can go anywhere."
Barbara: "I don't know what you mean, Susan."
Susan: "Oh, I made up tardis from the initials-- Time And Relative Dimension In Space. I thought you'd both realize when you came inside and saw the different dimensions from outside!"
Close enough. (Also: Susan named it? Awwwwwwh.)
Susan: "Why won't you believe us?"
Barbara: "We just want you to tell us the truth."
Doctor: "You have heard the truth! We are not of this race. We are not of this Earth. We are wanderers in the four dimensions of space and time, cut off from our own planet and our own people by eons and universes and a power beyond the reach of your most advanced sciences."
I like the "I can feel the Earth turnin'" speech better, methinks.
... oh, shoot. Is he going to KIDNAP Ian and Barbara? Is that how this goes down? Susan's begging for him to let them go. This is not okay.
"I was born in the 49th century," says Susan. Good to know!
Oh, come on. Really? The Doctor just laughed an evil laugh. Oh, show.
This is... really upsetting, actually. The Doctor zapped Ian, and Susan's all upset and crying, and it's all... argh. This is not what I signed up for. Where are the speeches about how awesome humans are? Where's the sense of adventure? One is so not My Doctor.
There are three more parts to Unearthly Child, but I honestly don't think I can get through them right now. Eesh. I guess I'll just have to take One in very small doses.
I need some dancing Bernard Cribbins to cheer myself up.
That's better.
12.2 "The Ark in Space" Reaction Post
So because I'm totally obsessed, I'm going back and watching Classic Who on Netflix, to widen my knowledge. I could go in order, but that would require a whole lot of effort, because One and Two stories are terribly hard to find... so Netflix instant play it is. (And to be honest, I'm a hell of a lot more interested in Four anyway.)
Anyway. I'm documenting my watching experience here mostly because I just like talking about stuff, but partly so that I can eventually go back and put all my thoughts in order, re-arranging all of these posts to the way they should be, so that I can get a proper sense of narrative arc.
This is going to be a running commentary, as I'm writing down my thoughts while I watch. It'll be some quotation-collection, some character analysis, and some MST3K-style sarcasm, I'd assume. But I'm not Jacob, so don't expect, y'know, mentions of the other side of grace, or any kind of coherency. I assume it will be disjointed at best.
A warning: this has spoilers (duh) for the episode in question, as well as New Who.
Another warning: I'm doing this—going back and watching the old series—not because I really love cheesy contrived plots and bad special effects, but because I'm terribly interested in the Doctor's past, and because I freaking love Companions. They are my favorite type of people. So this "recap" (if you could call it that) is going to be very Sarah Jane-centric, because that's where my focus was.
Starting stats: 12.2, The Ark In Space
Doctor: Four
Companions: Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan
(This is, perhaps, a bit of an awkward place to start. It’s the second "episode" in Four's first season; I maybe should have began when he did. Too late now. In any case, it makes certain things much clearer: for example (and by that I mean "the only thing I care about stemming from that statement is"), the Doctor's relationship with Sarah Jane would obviously be, if not strained, then a bit uncertain. Which makes me feel better.)
We open on a long shot of a space station, which is quite obviously a miniature on a string in front of black felt with holes poked through it. I will never complain about the CGI in End of the World again.
Doctor: "Not a lot of oxygen… still. Nothing to worry about." [starts playing with a yo-yo]
Sarah Jane: "Suffocation is nothing to worry about?"
Awwwh. He was using the yo-yo to test for gravity.
Doctor: "We're obviously on some kind of satellite; now isn't that interesting?"
Sarah Jane: [has done this before] "Not very."
Doctor: [delighted] "Well I think it is!"
(I already adore them.)
*a door opens*
"Hey, Doctor--"
"Hold on."
"But, Doctor--"
"In a MINUTE, Sarah."
*Sarah wanders through door while the Doctor is distracted*
Three guesses what happens next, first two don't count.
Aaaaaaand now she's suffocating. Well done. (And he called Rose jeopardy-friendly?)
Doctor: "Where is she?"
Harry: "In the TARDIS?"
Doctor: "Couldn't be; I've got the key."
Oh, Doctor. You've got to share your keys. Keys are trust and keys are affection. And keys are also a way home. Let her in.
Moving swiftly onward.
… Well, on the bright side, they've found her. The downside is that now they're all trapped and suffocating. Oh, show.
And now, something I loved. Four is amused. He smirks and says: "heeeeee." It was so very Tennant. Or, I suppose, the other way around. But I love continuity like that.
[3/4/2010 5:31:37 PM] Leah: so Sarah Jane is kind of whammied right now—in a trance—and the Mysterious Voice was just like "greetings, lower being!" and she waved. and it's SUPER CUTE.
[3/4/2010 5:31:41 PM] Leah: *snuggles classic who*
[3/4/2010 5:33:31 PM] Leah: meanwhile, the Doctor is crawling around under a plastic box.
[3/4/2010 5:35:38 PM] Marlena: of course he is
Doctor: "Don't you realize what this is? I—aren't you feeling better?"
Harry: "No, I'm not."
Doctor: "Well pull yourself together, man, this is FASCINATING!"
Awwwwh, Harry is starting to ask Excellent Questions! And the Doctor is proud of him! ...almost. ("Your mind's beginning to work!" he says. "All my influence, of course, you mustn't take any credit.")
[upon finding Sarah Jane "dead" for all intents and purposes]
Doctor: "Sarah—oh, Sarah Jane..." [stands completely frozen]
Doctorrrrrrrrr.
By this point, Sarah Jane is most definitely my favorite part of the show. Lis Sladen is reallysupercute. (Though she kind of has to be, in order to balance all the wtf and the cheese). Admittedly she's kind of all over the place, but in a rational, "do I contradict myself? Well then I contradict myself. I contain multitudes" human, sense-makey way. Scared of a giant bug one moment (and who wouldn’t be?), poking about and showing it to other people the next.
Also, yeeeeeeah, Sarah's definitely totally in love with the Doctor. *pets her* And I give her lots of credit for putting up with him; he was so much more rude back then.
...Oh my god is that bubblewrap? It is. The villains of this piece are rapidly-mutating insects (Wirrn) that… can turn humans into members of their species? Or perhaps just need to lay their eggs inside living flesh? They're a bit inconsistent on that front. Anyway, slime and membrane is depicted via dark-green bubblewrap. Oh, show.
[Random Engineers gape as the Doctor spews technobabble]
Sarah Jane: "He… he talks to himself, sometimes, because there's no one else who understands what he's talking about."
[Harry has been ordered to stay behind. The Doctor exits.]
Sarah whispers: "Good luck!" and scoots, but then, from off camera:
Doctor: "and Sarah? You stay behind!"
She huffs.
Unrelated note: I love Tom Baker's hair. The swoops and swirls of those curls… wonderful. I also highly approve of his eyes. He's not a looker in the conventional sense, certainly, but he's not without his bit of pretty.
Wow. The ray gun/particle gun effects are particularly awful. I could do better on iMovie. (But not, to their credit, MS Paint.)
Awwwwwh Sarah saved the Doctor! Several times. She also has quite a set of pipes on her. She's got Rose's devotion but only a fraction of her cheek—she lets him intimidate her. But... the way she always looks to the Doctor, the way she always finds his eyes... her hyperawareness and silent support may not be as adorable as the hand-holding, but the essence remains. (Unrelated: she must weigh, like, two pounds, because both Four and Harry are able to pick her up like it's nothing.)
There's a moment where the Doctor has to go off by himself, and Sarah Jane stays behind. But Lis Sladen does a very clever thing—she takes one step forward, as if her instinct is to follow, before pulling back. It's a tiny moment, but it gives Sarah a little bit more spunk. I doubt it was in the script.
(Heeeee. But then after the cliffhanger before Part 4, he's saved by a shot from Vira's gun. Sarah made her follow him. That's my girl.)
Harry Sullivan, by the way, is sweet but unmemorable. And also a bit of a chauvinist.
Harry: "Something must have happened to them."
Random Engineer: "And if we go out there, it will happen to us."
Harry: "Well I want to investigate!"
Hee. Okay, two points, Harry. I love companions.
"Anyone for a jelly baby?" It took almost an hour and twenty minutes for the first offer! Good job, Doctor.
AHAHAHA and then Sarah Jane figured out the mystery. Again with the "Doctor—but Doctor, LISTEN—" stuff, which could get old fast, but I like that she's clever and I like that he has to be reminded. It makes me think of The Idiot's Lantern—how Rose saw the solution to the problem (the TV aerials) straight away, and mentioned it to the Doctor, and he wasn't paying attention. Of course, then she had her face stolen and he guilt tripped like crazy, but it's a nice bit of character continuity. And the fix Sarah suggests—rerouting the separate power supply of a shuttle into a fried system—was used again by the Captain in The Satan Pit. Oh, show.
However, while in Satan Pit the process was as easy as a flip of a few switches, in Classic Who it's all analog—the cables need to be connected by hand, through cramped ducts. But how? Well of course:
Sarah Jane: "Why don't I take the cable through, I’m about that wide." Oh, that's my girl.
"That's hardly a job for you, Sarah—" shut up, chauvinist Harry.
Angle on the Doctor, eyes widening in a bit of surprise and no small amount of pride: "Good girl, Sarah."
Harry: "How're you doing, old girl?"
Sarah Jane: "How do you THINK I'm doing, twit?"
(See, some of Sarah's lines—she said "vamoose" earlier—well. She could choose to be a lot harder than she's coming off. It all feels like good-natured ribbing, which I like.)
The piping is miserable, by the way. It’s a good thing Lis is teeny tiny. I wouldn’t be able to slip through.
Sarah Jane: "I don't think I can go on much longer—I keep getting stuck."
Harry: [to the Random Engineers] "That's the thing about old Sarah. Terrific sense of humor."
[Sarah rolls her eyes]
She hears the Doctor at the other end, gets stuck. Whimpers. And then Four does something I expected, but wished he wouldn't:
"Stop whining, useless girl!"
"Oh, Doctor!"
"'Oh Doctor,' is that all you can say for yourself? Stupid, foolish girl. We should never have relied on you, I knew you'd let us down. That's the trouble with girls like you: you think you're tough, but when you're really up against it you've no guts at all. Hundreds of lives at stake, and you lie there blobbing."
"You—wait—till—I—get—out!"
He's grinning now, moves to help her out as she emerges. She flails. "I CAN MANAGE I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP."
(He's never loved her more.) "Yes you do. Yes you do. Yes you do." Smiling widely, he wraps her arms around his shoulders and yanks her down.
"You've done marvelously, I'm very proud of you."
"What?!" [realizing] "Conned again. You're a brute."
"Brute? Don't be ungrateful, I was only encouraging you. Come on."
(And here's where they should have hugged, but didn't.)
I get why he does it. Nine might've, too. But I wish he weren't so abrasive.
"Your resistance is useless!" Oh, villains. Oh, Britain. Oh, show.
Sarah Jane: "I dunno if it's my imagination, but it's getting a bit stuffy in here."
Doctor: [dismissively] "It's your imagination."
Sarah Jane: [muttering] "You'd say that anyway."
[And then there's a whole business with getting the Wirrn onto the shuttle and setting it off, and it requires the Doctor and a Random Engineer to be in the blast zone:]
Doctor: "No point in both of us being killed. Get back inside!"
Random Engineer: "You'd get in trouble with the Space Technician's Union, Doctor. That's my job!" [knocks out the Doctor, puts him in safety lock, finishes flipping switches]
Awwwh, human beings.
Vira: "They must have both died instantly..."
[Sarah just shakes her head.]
Harry: "Now come on, Sarah, he'd have wanted you to be brave."
[She tries not to cry; a helpless twitch of the mouth that’s trying to be a smile.]
And then the Doctor stumbles in. It's all very Satan Pit.
"Doctor, you're safe—" she goes to him, ecstatic, clutches at his arms, but... still no hug. Why no hug? This very same situation made for the most adorable hug in series two of New Who, observe:
But here... nothing. And it's not about shipping, not at all. It's about intimacy. (DAMN I promised I wasn't going to do that.) I know Four and Sarah are still kind of new to each other, so I hope this situation improves over time. I miss the physical affection. Without it, the Doctor seems that much more alien.
Doctor: [hands Sarah a key] "Fetch me a coat from the TARDIS, will you?"
She beams.
(That's more like it.)
[Three to beam down ala Trek, all in adorable coats and hats:]
Doctor: "I don't remember inviting you two."
Sarah Jane: "Ah... no. You didn't. But here we are." [beams at him. As we recall from Rise of the Cybermen, the Doctor is helpless against feminine wiles in the form of adorable smirks]
Oh, show.
All in all, this makes me very curious about Sarah Jane Adventures, and also makes me rethink some of the things that happened between her and Ten in School Reunion. I think I'll have to watch it again, after I've seen a bit more Classic.
Ending stats:
Jelly baby offers: 2 (and a third reference by Harry)
Displays of unrestrained physical affection: 0
Speeches by the Doctor about how awesome humans are: 2.5
Anyway. I'm documenting my watching experience here mostly because I just like talking about stuff, but partly so that I can eventually go back and put all my thoughts in order, re-arranging all of these posts to the way they should be, so that I can get a proper sense of narrative arc.
This is going to be a running commentary, as I'm writing down my thoughts while I watch. It'll be some quotation-collection, some character analysis, and some MST3K-style sarcasm, I'd assume. But I'm not Jacob, so don't expect, y'know, mentions of the other side of grace, or any kind of coherency. I assume it will be disjointed at best.
A warning: this has spoilers (duh) for the episode in question, as well as New Who.
Another warning: I'm doing this—going back and watching the old series—not because I really love cheesy contrived plots and bad special effects, but because I'm terribly interested in the Doctor's past, and because I freaking love Companions. They are my favorite type of people. So this "recap" (if you could call it that) is going to be very Sarah Jane-centric, because that's where my focus was.
Starting stats: 12.2, The Ark In Space
Doctor: Four
Companions: Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan
(This is, perhaps, a bit of an awkward place to start. It’s the second "episode" in Four's first season; I maybe should have began when he did. Too late now. In any case, it makes certain things much clearer: for example (and by that I mean "the only thing I care about stemming from that statement is"), the Doctor's relationship with Sarah Jane would obviously be, if not strained, then a bit uncertain. Which makes me feel better.)
We open on a long shot of a space station, which is quite obviously a miniature on a string in front of black felt with holes poked through it. I will never complain about the CGI in End of the World again.
Doctor: "Not a lot of oxygen… still. Nothing to worry about." [starts playing with a yo-yo]
Sarah Jane: "Suffocation is nothing to worry about?"
Awwwh. He was using the yo-yo to test for gravity.
Doctor: "We're obviously on some kind of satellite; now isn't that interesting?"
Sarah Jane: [has done this before] "Not very."
Doctor: [delighted] "Well I think it is!"
(I already adore them.)
*a door opens*
"Hey, Doctor--"
"Hold on."
"But, Doctor--"
"In a MINUTE, Sarah."
*Sarah wanders through door while the Doctor is distracted*
Three guesses what happens next, first two don't count.
Aaaaaaand now she's suffocating. Well done. (And he called Rose jeopardy-friendly?)
Doctor: "Where is she?"
Harry: "In the TARDIS?"
Doctor: "Couldn't be; I've got the key."
Oh, Doctor. You've got to share your keys. Keys are trust and keys are affection. And keys are also a way home. Let her in.
Moving swiftly onward.
… Well, on the bright side, they've found her. The downside is that now they're all trapped and suffocating. Oh, show.
And now, something I loved. Four is amused. He smirks and says: "heeeeee." It was so very Tennant. Or, I suppose, the other way around. But I love continuity like that.
[3/4/2010 5:31:37 PM] Leah: so Sarah Jane is kind of whammied right now—in a trance—and the Mysterious Voice was just like "greetings, lower being!" and she waved. and it's SUPER CUTE.
[3/4/2010 5:31:41 PM] Leah: *snuggles classic who*
[3/4/2010 5:33:31 PM] Leah: meanwhile, the Doctor is crawling around under a plastic box.
[3/4/2010 5:35:38 PM] Marlena: of course he is
Doctor: "Don't you realize what this is? I—aren't you feeling better?"
Harry: "No, I'm not."
Doctor: "Well pull yourself together, man, this is FASCINATING!"
Awwwwh, Harry is starting to ask Excellent Questions! And the Doctor is proud of him! ...almost. ("Your mind's beginning to work!" he says. "All my influence, of course, you mustn't take any credit.")
[upon finding Sarah Jane "dead" for all intents and purposes]
Doctor: "Sarah—oh, Sarah Jane..." [stands completely frozen]
Doctorrrrrrrrr.
By this point, Sarah Jane is most definitely my favorite part of the show. Lis Sladen is reallysupercute. (Though she kind of has to be, in order to balance all the wtf and the cheese). Admittedly she's kind of all over the place, but in a rational, "do I contradict myself? Well then I contradict myself. I contain multitudes" human, sense-makey way. Scared of a giant bug one moment (and who wouldn’t be?), poking about and showing it to other people the next.
Also, yeeeeeeah, Sarah's definitely totally in love with the Doctor. *pets her* And I give her lots of credit for putting up with him; he was so much more rude back then.
...Oh my god is that bubblewrap? It is. The villains of this piece are rapidly-mutating insects (Wirrn) that… can turn humans into members of their species? Or perhaps just need to lay their eggs inside living flesh? They're a bit inconsistent on that front. Anyway, slime and membrane is depicted via dark-green bubblewrap. Oh, show.
[Random Engineers gape as the Doctor spews technobabble]
Sarah Jane: "He… he talks to himself, sometimes, because there's no one else who understands what he's talking about."
[Harry has been ordered to stay behind. The Doctor exits.]
Sarah whispers: "Good luck!" and scoots, but then, from off camera:
Doctor: "and Sarah? You stay behind!"
She huffs.
Unrelated note: I love Tom Baker's hair. The swoops and swirls of those curls… wonderful. I also highly approve of his eyes. He's not a looker in the conventional sense, certainly, but he's not without his bit of pretty.
Wow. The ray gun/particle gun effects are particularly awful. I could do better on iMovie. (But not, to their credit, MS Paint.)
Awwwwwh Sarah saved the Doctor! Several times. She also has quite a set of pipes on her. She's got Rose's devotion but only a fraction of her cheek—she lets him intimidate her. But... the way she always looks to the Doctor, the way she always finds his eyes... her hyperawareness and silent support may not be as adorable as the hand-holding, but the essence remains. (Unrelated: she must weigh, like, two pounds, because both Four and Harry are able to pick her up like it's nothing.)
There's a moment where the Doctor has to go off by himself, and Sarah Jane stays behind. But Lis Sladen does a very clever thing—she takes one step forward, as if her instinct is to follow, before pulling back. It's a tiny moment, but it gives Sarah a little bit more spunk. I doubt it was in the script.
(Heeeee. But then after the cliffhanger before Part 4, he's saved by a shot from Vira's gun. Sarah made her follow him. That's my girl.)
Harry Sullivan, by the way, is sweet but unmemorable. And also a bit of a chauvinist.
Harry: "Something must have happened to them."
Random Engineer: "And if we go out there, it will happen to us."
Harry: "Well I want to investigate!"
Hee. Okay, two points, Harry. I love companions.
"Anyone for a jelly baby?" It took almost an hour and twenty minutes for the first offer! Good job, Doctor.
AHAHAHA and then Sarah Jane figured out the mystery. Again with the "Doctor—but Doctor, LISTEN—" stuff, which could get old fast, but I like that she's clever and I like that he has to be reminded. It makes me think of The Idiot's Lantern—how Rose saw the solution to the problem (the TV aerials) straight away, and mentioned it to the Doctor, and he wasn't paying attention. Of course, then she had her face stolen and he guilt tripped like crazy, but it's a nice bit of character continuity. And the fix Sarah suggests—rerouting the separate power supply of a shuttle into a fried system—was used again by the Captain in The Satan Pit. Oh, show.
However, while in Satan Pit the process was as easy as a flip of a few switches, in Classic Who it's all analog—the cables need to be connected by hand, through cramped ducts. But how? Well of course:
Sarah Jane: "Why don't I take the cable through, I’m about that wide." Oh, that's my girl.
"That's hardly a job for you, Sarah—" shut up, chauvinist Harry.
Angle on the Doctor, eyes widening in a bit of surprise and no small amount of pride: "Good girl, Sarah."
Harry: "How're you doing, old girl?"
Sarah Jane: "How do you THINK I'm doing, twit?"
(See, some of Sarah's lines—she said "vamoose" earlier—well. She could choose to be a lot harder than she's coming off. It all feels like good-natured ribbing, which I like.)
The piping is miserable, by the way. It’s a good thing Lis is teeny tiny. I wouldn’t be able to slip through.
Sarah Jane: "I don't think I can go on much longer—I keep getting stuck."
Harry: [to the Random Engineers] "That's the thing about old Sarah. Terrific sense of humor."
[Sarah rolls her eyes]
She hears the Doctor at the other end, gets stuck. Whimpers. And then Four does something I expected, but wished he wouldn't:
"Stop whining, useless girl!"
"Oh, Doctor!"
"'Oh Doctor,' is that all you can say for yourself? Stupid, foolish girl. We should never have relied on you, I knew you'd let us down. That's the trouble with girls like you: you think you're tough, but when you're really up against it you've no guts at all. Hundreds of lives at stake, and you lie there blobbing."
"You—wait—till—I—get—out!"
He's grinning now, moves to help her out as she emerges. She flails. "I CAN MANAGE I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP."
(He's never loved her more.) "Yes you do. Yes you do. Yes you do." Smiling widely, he wraps her arms around his shoulders and yanks her down.
"You've done marvelously, I'm very proud of you."
"What?!" [realizing] "Conned again. You're a brute."
"Brute? Don't be ungrateful, I was only encouraging you. Come on."
(And here's where they should have hugged, but didn't.)
I get why he does it. Nine might've, too. But I wish he weren't so abrasive.
"Your resistance is useless!" Oh, villains. Oh, Britain. Oh, show.
Sarah Jane: "I dunno if it's my imagination, but it's getting a bit stuffy in here."
Doctor: [dismissively] "It's your imagination."
Sarah Jane: [muttering] "You'd say that anyway."
[And then there's a whole business with getting the Wirrn onto the shuttle and setting it off, and it requires the Doctor and a Random Engineer to be in the blast zone:]
Doctor: "No point in both of us being killed. Get back inside!"
Random Engineer: "You'd get in trouble with the Space Technician's Union, Doctor. That's my job!" [knocks out the Doctor, puts him in safety lock, finishes flipping switches]
Awwwh, human beings.
Vira: "They must have both died instantly..."
[Sarah just shakes her head.]
Harry: "Now come on, Sarah, he'd have wanted you to be brave."
[She tries not to cry; a helpless twitch of the mouth that’s trying to be a smile.]
And then the Doctor stumbles in. It's all very Satan Pit.
"Doctor, you're safe—" she goes to him, ecstatic, clutches at his arms, but... still no hug. Why no hug? This very same situation made for the most adorable hug in series two of New Who, observe:
But here... nothing. And it's not about shipping, not at all. It's about intimacy. (DAMN I promised I wasn't going to do that.) I know Four and Sarah are still kind of new to each other, so I hope this situation improves over time. I miss the physical affection. Without it, the Doctor seems that much more alien.
Doctor: [hands Sarah a key] "Fetch me a coat from the TARDIS, will you?"
She beams.
(That's more like it.)
[Three to beam down ala Trek, all in adorable coats and hats:]
Doctor: "I don't remember inviting you two."
Sarah Jane: "Ah... no. You didn't. But here we are." [beams at him. As we recall from Rise of the Cybermen, the Doctor is helpless against feminine wiles in the form of adorable smirks]
Oh, show.
All in all, this makes me very curious about Sarah Jane Adventures, and also makes me rethink some of the things that happened between her and Ten in School Reunion. I think I'll have to watch it again, after I've seen a bit more Classic.
Ending stats:
Jelly baby offers: 2 (and a third reference by Harry)
Displays of unrestrained physical affection: 0
Speeches by the Doctor about how awesome humans are: 2.5
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