It may have escaped your knowledge, but I’m not the biggest fan of Amy Pond and this happened to be an Amy Pond episode. Was I converted to the Pond fan group…err no, but that doesn't mean the episode's bad. I wasn't ever gonna like this one.
Ok, the episode over all wasn't for me but there were a couple of things I really liked about it; there was a good coffee shop based joke and Karen Gillan’s make up job as old Amy was top notch. But what I really liked came at the beginning of the episode when all the pieces had been put in place. When the Doctor figured out that Amy was in a faster time stream, I turned to my brother and cynically said “you’d need a time machine to fix that” under the assumption that the TARDIS would be somehow dismissed from the story by some technobabble. But as soon as we got back from the titles, the Doctor was all like ‘”this looks like a job for my time machine”. Above other things, it’s nice to see the TARDIS being used to solve a problem and not simply deliver the principle cast to this week’s destination.
To be honest I didn’t exactly agree with the pace of the episode – seemed annoyingly slow at times.
I liked how older Amy effectively hated the Doctor – I have recently witnessed a Russell T Davies episode of Torchwood and even that managed to include some unrequited, unending love for the godlike being that is the Doctor. This aspect of old Amy’s character reflects on the Doctor; he’s fallible and others suffer for it. This was something that cropped up in series three and went painfully unexplored - the issue of the Doctor abandoning Jack Harkness , leaving him scared and confused about how he was even alive. Jack waited a hundred years for the Doctor to appear for him, in which he built up a lot of resentment towards him…all of which is dealt with in a two minute scene, in which Jack calls the Doctor a racist and the Doctor laughs off his faults and puts his prejudices down to Timelord instincts and a difference of opinion about what a prejudice is.
In this episode, the issue is far better handled, with Matt Smith bringing a very real image of guilt to the surface of the Doctor and not just laughing it off.
Older Amy doesn’t seem to like her younger self that much - I like that about her - I’m not a woman or an expert on female behaviour (unless you count the trend of females avoiding me that I’ve measured), so I don’t really feel qualified to get into the whole female age and strength vs. youthful beauty thing, but just imagine only wanting to be somewhere with certain people, who just want to be in that same place with someone else who isn’t you – accept that person is you - just a preferable (and by default better) version of you. I challenge anyone not to feel a hell of a lot of resentment with those kinds of elements in play.
On a lighter note Rory’s good in this episode - a laugh out load moment comes with the line “I’m not alone, I’ve got my wives”
Not really much else to say – not exactly my cup of tea, but no one can say this episode is bad - sure some of the fight scenes go a bit over the top and would be better in a 300 parody, but the end is actually quite moving.
We don’t see old Amy die though…wow, you know if I was her and I somehow survived that and still existed afterwards, I’d be really pissed off with the Doctor – I mean really pissed off - I’d try and amass forces and use my knowledge of the events of his life to manipulate him and generally start waging an “endless, bitter war” against him…hmm…just...you know, if I was her...
No comments:
Post a Comment