Dr. Who: The Water of Mars--a belated review of awesomeness (spoilers)
Ken from Chicago
show, I love me some space opera. And DOCTOR WHO: THE WATERS OF MARS
delivers the goods.
To begin with it's blue collar future space. Spacesuits and high tech but
not too clean, not white collar future space, more Star Wars Classic than
Star Trek Classic. This is a future where fingernails get not only dirty but
chipped when not nibbled off. Did I mention my love of the space opera?
The Doctor shows up on Mars traipsing around in his orange spacesuit (from a
previous blue collar space episode) and runs into a gun-wielding commander
of a colony base and realizes he's in one of the rarely moments of time and
space where he can't save the people--for the greater good. So instead of
the Doctor whizzing thru solving the problem all cheekily, he must bear the
burden of knowing ... these
people are doomed, dead meat, ... and he must let it happen. He must live
not only knowing they are doomed but that he could have save them, but at a
far greater cosmic cost. To quote BABYLON 5, for all to be saved, some must
be sacrificed.
Yet he gets drawn into their day-to-day in spite of the knowledge he should
be going from the get-go. Ironically the small outpost crew are more than
willing to let the strange man leave. Typically he'd be trapped with the
doomed, but not so here, he must leave, and of his own volition. Yet he's
drawn into their immediate problems, knowing full well, This Will End Badly.
He can't bear to leave them to their doom yet he knows he can't help. Worse,
he fears revealing their doom for fear that would alter it somehow.
And he complains about the lack of land transport to save on the walking,
and running (hey this is a DR. WHO show, running will be involved), and
thus, to quote STARGATE SG-1, he is "hanging a lantern" on common trope of
the series. But better, the character fires back why no land transport, it
would cost far more in fuel to transport said land transport to Mars than
they could afford. Brilliant. Asked and answered.
Eventually the Doctor reaches the turning point, the point where he learns
why they are doomed, or at least what triggers the crisis, and at this point
he has to leave--only to be trapped like a rat in a can, for him to reveal
his special knowledge of them and why he has to leave. Knowledge that her
death spurs her granddaughter to lead Humanity into interstellar space,
proves some small consolation, before she unlocks the airlock.
Yet while the Doctor leaves, the base commander still orders evacuation,
only Things Start Going Badly (see above)--and the Doctor has to listen to
it over his spacesuit's comm channel, as he walks back to his Tardis. This
is a great bit of tragedy and character drama not so popular on tv here in
the States, where everyone is simply doomed and Our Hero must allow it to
happen.
But wait, there's more. The good Doctor has a change of heart and chuck
this, and chuck the ye ole time rules about "fixed points" in time having to
stand. He WILL save these people and the future be hanged. So the Doctor is
back, baby! Once again he's macgyvering salvation from the wreckage of
despair out of the jaws of defeat (yeah, worked on that metaphor a while
now). This is the Doctor we've known and loved weaving miracles out of
knowledge and science and technology and yes, once again he is triumphant,
saving the crew that survived for the Doctor's evacuation. He takes them
back in time, so the world thinks they are dead and history is maintained.
Brilliant.
But wait, here's where the real genius adds yet another twist. It reminds me
of the STARGATE SG-1, "Menace", where Jack and Daniel argue over how to stop
an invasion of Earth thru war or peace, thru guns or words. Yet when the
crisis is past, they still disagree about the methods and argue it out,
saying they'll never know for sure if the other side might have been right,
and actually ending the ep with them disagreeing and mad at each other.
And yet it turns out the Doctor has NOT hidden the crew in time to save
them. He's flat out taken them back to Earth, same time. He's flat out
altered history, not of some little person the public wouldn't know but of
exceedingly high profile people and he's doing it in the public. He's not
hiding his involvement. He's altering a "fixed" point in time and the future
will just have to take care of itself. But wait ...
The twist in this Dr. Who special is that having saved the day the commander
has the gall to disagree, not so much with his method of saving them or that
he decided to save them but that he had the ability to save them--seemingly
unchecked by ... anyone. Alfred confronts Bruce Wayne about him using a
weapon no one person to have to save Gotham in THE DARK KNIGHT, that it's
too much power for one person. Some would argue the same about nuclear
weapons. It was the central plot of the Lord of the Rings trilogy about
whether any person should have The One Ring, that such a weapon, such power
was too much, too corrupting.
The Doctor, the Last Timelord, has similar power, not only life and death,
but time and space, over the past, present and future, of her, her crew, her
planet, her descendents and ancestors of all the universe and history. She
rejects him and his gift because the price, one man, having such power to
arbitralily use is too much. "Tough," is the Doctor's curt reply. He's the
last Timelord, the winner, the Timelord Triumphant, and he will save what he
likes, who he likes, where he likes and most importantly when he likes and
she'll just have to like it or lump it. And to pour salt on the open wound
he flaunts his power and control over her by using his sonic screwdriver to
unlock the front door of her home that he brought the surviving crew to. And
he turns to go, leaving the ungrateful base commander to stew in her own
juices. Brilliant. But wait ...
The Doctor turns his back on her and as she walks up to her door ... she's
puts her hand on her gun she had in her back gun holster and prepares to
shoot the Doc-oh, false alarm, she's just seeing if it's still there, enters
her home and shuts the door--and shoots ... herself.
Up yours, Timelord Triumphant.
For all this the talking, running, shooting, fighting, arguing, running,
watering, running arguing about changing history, the mechanics of history
and time travel. This episode was NOT about that--mainly.
This episode was about Power:
The Doctor's unfettered power over history and thus the universe itself--and
displaying quite succinctly no, the Doctor is not God Almighty, his power is
not without limits, a person of great reknown or even, to quote the Doctor
in a very revealing and ominous verbal slip, one of "the little people" can
show him up. In so doing, it highlights the Doctor's fallibility--just
before the end, as in The End as in "The End of Time", the two-part final
episode starring David Tennant, The Tenth Doctor. Perhaps, the Doctor has
gone too far and too long.
Perhaps he does need checking from a higher or at least another power. The
reason of course is, not that power corrupts, because it doesn't. Power
magnifies. Step on someone foot and they sting for a minute. Step on
someone's foot with a ton of pressure per square inch and their foot is
gone. A simple mistake gets magnified tremendously with power--and the
Doctor is not perfect, and prone to make mistakes. And that little slip
about "little people" he could get quite careless in his view of humanity
and the universe and with said carelessness about his power might make a
little mistake that becomes magnified to cosmic scale with his power. This
episode underscores that point with a laser's edge. Well done. Well done,
indeed.
-- Ken from Chicago
P.S. "Answer me this, just one question, that's all. If the Doctor had never
visited us, if he'd never chosen this place ... on a whim ... would anybody
here have died?"--Jessica Hynes, 'Joan Redfern', DOCTOR WHO, "The Family of
Blood".
Captain Infinity
Ken from Chicago wrote:
>-- Ken from Chicago
TL, DR.
**
Captain Infinity
Ken from Chicago
"Captain Infinity" <Infi...@captaininfinity.us> wrote in message
news:1u0tj55jk72omn4ig...@4ax.com...
Huh?
-- Ken from Chicago
Default User
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TLDR>
Brian
--
Day 333 of the "no grouchy usenet posts" project
The Doctor
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--
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Merry Christmas 2009 and Happy New Year 2010
Tony Calguire
> Once Upon A Time,
> Ken from Chicago wrote:
>
>>-- Ken from Chicago
>
> TL, DR.
>
I like to call it "Kenarrhea". :-)
Jack Bohn
Basically, remember at the end of the Key to Time saga in 1979,
when the Doctor had assembled the key and stopped time? He
starts rambling on about the power that represents, ending with,
"Are you listening, Romana? Because if you aren't, I can make
you listen. I can do anything!"
Romana asks, "Are you all right, Doctor?" and he stops and says,
"Of course I am; but what if I wasn't?"
Here, he isn't.
--
-Jack
Arthur Lipscomb
"Default User" <defaul...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:7q7j65...@mid.individual.net...
> Ken from Chicago wrote:
>
>>
>> "Captain Infinity" <Infi...@captaininfinity.us> wrote in message
>> news:1u0tj55jk72omn4ig...@4ax.com...
>> > Once Upon A Time,
>> > Ken from Chicago wrote:
>> >
>> > > -- Ken from Chicago
>> >
>> > TL, DR.
>> >
>> >
>> > **
>> > Captain Infinity
>>
>> Huh?
>
> <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TLDR>
>
Oh.
Well, I thought it was a good read. Although a bit late. So is everyone
waiting for The End of Time part 2 before discussing part 1? Remember part
2 airs tonight.
Patty Winter
In article <hhnr4e$gp4$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
Arthur Lipscomb <art...@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
>
> So is everyone
>waiting for The End of Time part 2 before discussing part 1? Remember part
>2 airs tonight.
Actually, that same person posted a review of TEoT along with his
review of WoM. Since Pt. 2 of TEoT had only aired in the UK a few
hours previously, and he had just posted his comments on WoM, I
figured the second review would only be about Pt. 1 of TEoT, but
a partial glance at the first sentence revealed otherwise. Luckily,
I didn't see too much, although enough to know about some characters
who are coming back. And now I see that someone has posted a spoiler
right in the subject line. So I would suggest that you exercise
extreme caution around r.a.tv today. Me, I'm going to "!" it out
in my .newsrc until tonight.
Patty
Arthur Lipscomb
"Patty Winter" <pat...@wintertime.com> wrote in message
news:4b3f7ecd$0$1636$742e...@news.sonic.net...
>
> In article <hhnr4e$gp4$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Arthur Lipscomb <art...@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
>>
>> So is everyone
>>waiting for The End of Time part 2 before discussing part 1? Remember
>>part
>>2 airs tonight.
>
> Actually, that same person posted a review of TEoT along with his
> review of WoM. Since Pt. 2 of TEoT had only aired in the UK a few
> hours previously, and he had just posted his comments on WoM, I
> figured the second review would only be about Pt. 1 of TEoT, but
> a partial glance at the first sentence revealed otherwise.
I've decided to avoid potential spoilers so I'm going to avoid any reviews
that might pop up until I see part two. Seems to be a good idea.
Luckily,
> I didn't see too much, although enough to know about some characters
> who are coming back. And now I see that someone has posted a spoiler
> right in the subject line.
I'm *assuming* it's a fake spoiler. If it's not, don't tell me! I'll find
out soon enough.
So I would suggest that you exercise
> extreme caution around r.a.tv today. Me, I'm going to "!" it out
> in my .newsrc until tonight.
>
>
> Patty
>
I may do the same. Not like there's a lot of new stuff to discuss anyway.