Doctor Who 5x09, "Cold Blood"

[kindkit]

OMG RORY! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

*whimpers*

I have a feeling he's not gone forever, what with time being rewritable and all that. But I'm still sad.

[Also, "Gorgeous Rory!" Eleven is so not straight. The Moffat era so far hasn't been doing very well at including queer characters, but I think the implication of a not-straight Doctor is a welcome change from the tedious heterosexualization of the Doctor in the RTD era.]

Returning to the episode, I feel obliged to point out its complete moral incoherence. I mean, are we actually supposed to think that it was okay for Scientist Silurian to have been experimenting on human beings for hundreds of years (not to mention dissecting them while they're still alive and conscious!), so long as he didn't actually KILL THE PRECIOUS CHILDREN? He just, you know, took them away from their parents (I presume) and put them into suspended animation so they would age slowly and he could study them. Sure, that's perfectly okay! Even lovable! And why was the Doctor unbothered by Restak (?) the soldier betraying the agreement by trying to have four humans killed and then waking up all her fellow soldiers, but when Ambrose broke the agreement by killing one Silurian, the Doctor went all morally superior? Just as in the Silurian episodes from the classic series, we're asked to believe the Silurians are trustworthy when they consistently act in an aggressive and indeed genocidal fashion. Of course Restak's bad behavior doesn't mean all the Silurians are bad. But neither does Ambrose's, and that point--that humans are not all the same--was kind of glossed over.

Oh, and by the way, Chris Chibnall? THE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK IS NOT FUCKING UNINHABITED. NEITHER IS THE SAHARA. I was not happy to see the old colonialist trope of "empty land" resurrected, ick.

Besides its other problems, this episode also just wasn't very good as storytelling. Poor structure, no suspense, clumsy and obvious dialogue, mostly bad acting apart from Matt Smith. I liked the "The Hungry Earth," but "Cold Blood" just didn't hold together.

Next week looks fun. Vincent Van Gogh!!!!! But why are we going to be on earth again? In relatively recent history again? I'd like to see some other planets, please! Some non-human cultures! The distant past or the far future! This season has been weirdly unimaginative so far.

Comments

[dingsi]

THE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK IS NOT FUCKING UNINHABITED. NEITHER IS THE SAHARA.

Yeah, that bit made me go "... wait, what?"

Overall, I thought the episode was a letdown. It felt very rushed and confusing to me. Granted, I'm not a native speaker so watching UK or US TV will always require more energy (and lots of half-guessing) for me than for a native speaker who understands every single word, but still -- some episodes are easy on me, this one felt hectic and I had to rewind often.

Rory's death came out of left field for me and then I sat there wondering: so this is the moment where they jack up the angst level for the companion, right? It's not that Rory's death didn't upset me. (It did.) But how, during that moment, I couldn't really care about the characters that were left. Like someone was shouting at me to focus all of my attention on AMY AMY AMY while I was still going "... er, Rory? Over there? Can't we get back to--"
(And of course then they ERASE him, which means the pain is again on the DOCTOR's shoulders alone, and I started to worry that they would turn him into another angst-muffin like Ten, and... yeah. I'm a bit worried, is all.)

[kindkit]

Definitely a letdown, especially since I liked "The Hungry Earth." I think you're right that "Cold Blood" was hectic, but in a very odd way, because nothing that was happening was all that interesting or suspenseful, and little of it seemed to matter.

I'm not worried too much about the Doctor's pain, because I think Rory will be back. Probably in the last episode of this series, and probably (I'm completely unspoiled, so this is pure speculation) Amy will have to choose between saving/being with him and saving the world/universe. Which, okay, is a kind of story I like, but one that's starting to happen a bit too often on Doctor Who.

[lilacsigil]

I was totally prepared for both these episodes to be terrible, but the things that actually happened were not the one I expected. I'm trying not to think about it too hard, though, because I don't want to be cranky.