Doctor Who 5x11, "The Lodger"
Jun. 12th, 2010 06:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitI don't have a whole lot to say. It was a light and mostly fun episode. The Doctor's various failures at passing for a normal twentieth-century human made me laugh, although I wish he'd had a few more actual failures--did he have to be brilliant at cooking and football and Craig's job? I always enjoy seeing the Doctor be incompetent at something besides fashion.
The plot was odd in that it could have gone very grim (there was a serial-killer vibe to the way the machine lured people in by asking for help, and of course to the 17 people it had killed), but instead the focus was kept very much on sweet, goofy comedy. The resolution was ridiculous even for Who--why should Craig and Sophie kissing make the time ship implode???--but at least it was a bit easier to handwave than the similar moment in "Victory of the Daleks" when human emotions stopped a Dalek-designed cyborg bomb from exploding. (I get why Craig's settledness caused the machine to let the Doctor go, it's just the part after that that doesn't make even technobabble-y sense.) I'm willing to ignore the plotholes in favor of the good things, though, like seeing another of the Doctor's wonderful improvised machines, and the Doctor's sheer delightful overwhelming weirdness.
There were two things that did bug me, though: the "you look like your sofa" crack about Craig (DO NOT WANT FAT JOKES KTHX) and, well, Sophie. I wanted to like her, but the writer, Gareth Roberts, didn't give me anything to like. She had no discernible personality, and throughout the episode she was always placed on the fringes, in passive roles. She's a spectator at the football match, and at work she makes the damn tea and passes around the biscuits. Even her interest in working with animals came across as a pasted-on plot convenience rather than an outgrowth of Sophie's character. The closest she came to independent activity was at the end when she put her hand over Craig's on the time machine, but that also read as being essentially about Craig (specifically, Sophie's willingness to give up her dream of going away to save orangutans in favor of staying home with Craig). Sophie's role in the episode was "the love interest." She was Craig's motive; she existed, in storytelling terms, only in relation to a man. I expect better than that from Doctor Who.
Next week: the expected two-part finale begins. And River's back, no surprise there. Plus yet another "worst and scariest villain in the universe." I dunno. I'd like to feel sure Steven Moffat will write two fantastic episodes that will wrap up all the loose ends, do good character work, and generally blow my mind. But the overall mediocrity of the writing this season has shaken my faith in Moffat.
NOTE: I am avoiding spoilers. Please, please do not spoil me for the final two episodes. Please don't hint, or reassure, or warn, or make cryptic allusions, or say anything that's based on spoilers. Thank you.
The plot was odd in that it could have gone very grim (there was a serial-killer vibe to the way the machine lured people in by asking for help, and of course to the 17 people it had killed), but instead the focus was kept very much on sweet, goofy comedy. The resolution was ridiculous even for Who--why should Craig and Sophie kissing make the time ship implode???--but at least it was a bit easier to handwave than the similar moment in "Victory of the Daleks" when human emotions stopped a Dalek-designed cyborg bomb from exploding. (I get why Craig's settledness caused the machine to let the Doctor go, it's just the part after that that doesn't make even technobabble-y sense.) I'm willing to ignore the plotholes in favor of the good things, though, like seeing another of the Doctor's wonderful improvised machines, and the Doctor's sheer delightful overwhelming weirdness.
There were two things that did bug me, though: the "you look like your sofa" crack about Craig (DO NOT WANT FAT JOKES KTHX) and, well, Sophie. I wanted to like her, but the writer, Gareth Roberts, didn't give me anything to like. She had no discernible personality, and throughout the episode she was always placed on the fringes, in passive roles. She's a spectator at the football match, and at work she makes the damn tea and passes around the biscuits. Even her interest in working with animals came across as a pasted-on plot convenience rather than an outgrowth of Sophie's character. The closest she came to independent activity was at the end when she put her hand over Craig's on the time machine, but that also read as being essentially about Craig (specifically, Sophie's willingness to give up her dream of going away to save orangutans in favor of staying home with Craig). Sophie's role in the episode was "the love interest." She was Craig's motive; she existed, in storytelling terms, only in relation to a man. I expect better than that from Doctor Who.
Next week: the expected two-part finale begins. And River's back, no surprise there. Plus yet another "worst and scariest villain in the universe." I dunno. I'd like to feel sure Steven Moffat will write two fantastic episodes that will wrap up all the loose ends, do good character work, and generally blow my mind. But the overall mediocrity of the writing this season has shaken my faith in Moffat.
NOTE: I am avoiding spoilers. Please, please do not spoil me for the final two episodes. Please don't hint, or reassure, or warn, or make cryptic allusions, or say anything that's based on spoilers. Thank you.
