tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post8138800677049189975..comments2024-02-24T03:34:18.060-05:00Comments on Stealing Commas: Will Wildman has no patience for mechris the cynichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06872875475212333027noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post-30361686439434590912011-12-19T08:41:40.782-05:002011-12-19T08:41:40.782-05:00The thing about Donna is that it is not for me the...The thing about Donna is that it is not for me the most problematic moment of nuWho - although it is second. The most problematic would be by Rose, raping the TARDIS at the end of S1. Seriously, when you need to use a car to force a sentient being open to then do something <em>so terrible none of the Timelords would and the Doctor hasn't even considered as an option</em> against its consent (hence the car) I'm going to use the word rape as it's the closest thing I have that fits. And that was never dealt with in the course of the show.<br /><br />As for watching Who after that, that was RTD's last ever season finale (and I hated that, and Bad Wolf as I mentioned - and consider Tinkerbell Doctor of S3 the wrong sort of ridiculous and S2 pointless). And not long after the Doctor committed suicide-by-deathtrap that a bright six year old should have been able to avoid. For seasons 5 and 6, the head writer has been Stephen Moffatt who hasn't reached the highs he reached in Seasons 1-4 (The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, Silence in the Library/The Forest of the Dead).<br /><br />S5 is IMO better than any of S1-4 if you don't mind that the Doctor has a mysogenistic side, Matt Smith's playing someone only slightly different from himself turned up until the knob falls off (and he already starts at 11 from what I hear) and outside her range (scream, pout, hair flip) Karen Gilian's acting ability is ... generally unimpressive.<br /><br />S6 I'd say falls back to RTD-series levels but without the spectacularly good actors that centred the RTD stories. That said, in place of Moffatt providing a truly brilliant episode in the season for RTD, Neil Gaiman provided The Doctor's Wife for Moffatt.Francis Dnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post-55986080447386266722011-12-17T19:39:32.998-05:002011-12-17T19:39:32.998-05:00I found that extraordinarily disturbing as well, a...I found that extraordinarily disturbing as well, and honestly, I thought it was more disturbing in the episodes afterwards. In terms of character of the Doctor, he later shows explicit guilt in what he did to her. I think he thought it was "best for her at the time," but that was completely wrong of him to make that assumption and he realizes it. In a later sequence when he's trying to pull up an image of someone to talk to, he feels guilt at all of them, but it's clear that he by far feels the worst of all about her. <br /><br />In addition, several of the episodes following that one show him struggling with the extent of his powers in general. In particular, the Waters of Mars is about what extent he can change the rules of time. It doesn't go well. Unfortunately for Donna, he learned that lesson far too late. I keep hoping somehow they will get back to her, but they haven't yet. Even though the writers basically fridged Donna to do it (ugh), one thing I like about Doctor Who is that the Doctor is not always unambiguously right. Of course, Donna was the one to point that out most often.<br /><br />Also, if you don't know about it, Tardis Eruditorum is a fantastic blog breaking down a lot of the issues with Doctor Who by an unabashed fan: http://tardiseruditorum.blogspot.com/. He hasn't gotten to new Who yet, but I'm really curious what he'll have to say about it when he does.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post-88854821002563514222011-12-16T14:21:49.934-05:002011-12-16T14:21:49.934-05:00apparently I do have patience for such arguments
...<i>apparently I do have patience for such arguments</i><br /><br />I have noticed this, and I thank you for participating.chris the cynichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06872875475212333027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post-5321705384484102782011-12-16T12:56:25.126-05:002011-12-16T12:56:25.126-05:00It's sufficiently wibbley-wobbley that it caus...It's sufficiently wibbley-wobbley that it caused itself; Donna touches the hand because she's cross-temporally beckoned by her future self.<br /><br />I'm pretty sure they used 'meta' because it sounds fancy.<br /><br />You have definitely proven me wrong on my original statement - apparently I do have patience for such arguments, whether I'm convinced by them or not. I gave insufficient credit to the depths of critiques that could be levelled against the situation.<br /><br /><em>That's something worth complaining about in itself, even ignoring everything else.</em><br /><br />On this, we are fully agreed. Ten had some serious issues and that was a horrendously disturbing thing there. (There is maybe room to argue that due to the breakdown already occurring she was not in a fit state to determine consent, but since we have no explicit evidence of that, it would be a retcon and thus not applicable.)Will Wildmanhttp://narrowcrookedlanes.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post-21860566887859699352011-12-15T09:21:50.906-05:002011-12-15T09:21:50.906-05:00For me the problem that this was blatantly put in...For me the problem that this was blatantly put in to make people feel bad. It "smells of the lamp"; the bones of the story-telling technique are showing. Long-term consistency of character (of the Doctor or of Donna), the way similar problems have been dealt with at other times, all of these things are thrown out of the window in order to get a good hard pluck on the heartstrings.<br /><br />I don't watch the show to be manipulated.Firedrakenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post-83167751027852661272011-12-15T08:39:20.343-05:002011-12-15T08:39:20.343-05:00And footnote:
* The only thing unclear is why the...And footnote:<br /><br />* The only thing unclear is why the hell it was called a <b>meta</b>-crisis.<br /><br />Meta can mean beside, as in meta-story, meta-game, meta-post, meta-Buck. It can mean after, as in the Metaphysics (the stuff Aristotle wrote after the Physics.) Those are the most common meanings, I'm pretty sure, they don't seem to fit here.<br /><br />It can also mean "by means of", and I think (if we're not going to claim that one of the writers had a crisis and that was what caused the ending) that's what we're going to have to go with. Time Lord-Human by means of crisis. Because if it's after or beside crisis that doesn't make much sense.<br /><br />-<br /><br />Footnote here because apparently I'm too wordy for my own comments.chris the cynichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06872875475212333027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post-10780513201174357182011-12-15T08:33:46.419-05:002011-12-15T08:33:46.419-05:00Wibbley-wobbley biological meta-crisis.
Not that ...<i>Wibbley-wobbley biological meta-crisis.</i><br /><br />Not <i>that</i> wibbley-wobbly. It's actually one of the most clearly stated things in the series*. She can't use the Time Lord part of her, if she does, she dies.<br /><br />That was pretty damned clear. It's not just a bad idea, it's literally stated that it cannot be. Which means that if Donna uses the Time Lord parts of her she cannot be. She dies. It is that simple.<br /><br />Donna can explicitly use the parts of her that govern the accessing of memories. That doesn't burn her up and kill her. That means those parts of her are still human. That means that the relevant parts of her as at least as human as Jack was at the time.<br /><br />Also, looking at a transcript for exact words, it is so much worse than I remembered.<br /><br />The Doctor doesn't just not try to get Donna's consent, he gets the opposite of consent:<br /><br />All of this is after she admits that she knows not undergoing the procedure will kill her:<br /><br /><i>No! Oh my god... I can't go back. Don't make me go back. Doctor, please, please don't make me go back!<br /><br />No, no, no, please!<br /><br />Please, no, no!<br /><br />No!</i><br /><br />Seven "no"s, two "don't"s One of those "don't"s had two pleases associated with it. There were two instances of multiple "no"s being associated with a "please".<br /><br />She begged him not to. I didn't remember that.<br /><br />There's a reason the Doctor isn't a medical doctor, there's a reason the Doctor has never been certified as a lifeguard or passed a wilderness first aid course. They train you not to do anything remotely like what he did there.<br /><br />If someone doesn't consent you don't treat them. For as long as they are capable of indicating what their choice is, if their choice is not to accept treatment you don't provide treatment. Even if it means their death.<br /><br />It's not a major concession, it's really only the tiniest little bit of respect when you think about it -letting someone have a modicum of control over their own life and death- but apparently the Doctor refuses to give Donna even that much.<br /><br />For that matter, her first words after she realized she was going to die were that she wanted to stay in the Tardis and live out the rest of her life there.<br /><br />That would be like someone saying, "I don't want to go to the hospital, I want to live out my life in this house. Which I love."<br /><br />And a doctor responding, "Screw you. I'm dragging you to the hospital against your will and knocking down your house to do it," except that analogy requires us to believe that knocking down someone's house is as big of a violation as ripping out their personality.<br /><br />As I said, it is so much worse than I remembered.<br /><br />I know that "mind-rape" is an often used term, but did they have to make it so ... explicit? I was going to go into slightly more detail about the parallels drawn, but it makes me want to vomit. So I won't.<br /><br />I mostly wrote this to say, the parts of Donna's mind governing the retrieval of memory are clearly indicated to be human because if they were not the fact that she is retrieving memories would kill her according to the the statements about what timelordy minds do to human people.<br /><br />So either that part of her is human or the Doctor and Donna were both lying about how the meta-crisis works.<br /><br />Also, I sort of buy Ana's idea that when judging a work retcons shouldn't be taken into account. Even if later on it turns out, "No, it was all bullshit, it was just a trick to fool the people who planted bugs in the Tardis and Donna's house," it was still highly problematic when it aired.<br /><br />Even knowing that staying meant almost immediate death, Donna begged not to go back. She begged repeatedly. She continues begging for it not to happen during the act itself.<br /><br />That's a problem.<br /><br />That's something worth complaining about in itself, even ignoring everything else.chris the cynichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06872875475212333027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post-69308554431159624572011-12-14T22:47:56.651-05:002011-12-14T22:47:56.651-05:00Wibbley-wobbley biological meta-crisis. Jack had ...Wibbley-wobbley biological meta-crisis. Jack had two years' worth of his memories erased, but he was probably still a normal human during that time - Donna is no longer fully human, having had a freak accident implant a secondary timelord mind into her head. Timelords being the complex extradimensional beings that they are, it can't simply be erased, only blocked off from the rest of her mind. The memory wipe was because the blocking-off is imperfect and if she specifically remembers any of the events that led up to the metacrisis, it will reintegrate and she will burn out.<br /><br />That's technobabble that I've extrapolated from the technobabble we were actually presented with, but I think it holds up.<br /><br />(You haven't seen it, but we meet Donna one more time, in David Tennant's final episodes. It's explicitly stated that on a subconscious level, she's still having more complicated thoughts than she is fully aware of, and she's safe. It's only once aliens start running around that she has to be sedated to prevent burnout.)Will Wildmanhttp://narrowcrookedlanes.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post-10726383677772252442011-12-14T22:15:34.019-05:002011-12-14T22:15:34.019-05:00So you're arguing that the Doctor ripped her p...So you're arguing that the Doctor ripped her personality out along with her memories of the sheer joy of it?<br /><br />Also, I'd have to go back to exact phrasing, but I'm pretty sure that it was that she couldn't <i>be</i> that person. Otherwise there would be no problem with her growing new memories of things like time time travel, aliens, and the like. New memories are not like old memories, so if the problem were just the memories the Doctor could reintroduce himself and help Donna through this difficult time in her life, what with the amnesia and all.<br /><br />Instead the implication is that if she does anything like her old self, like say travel through time or be courageous, she'll burn out. If the problem were merely one of memory she wouldn't have even needed to stop being a companion, Jack can't remember two years of his life (iIrc, it has been a while) and it hasn't hindered his ability to tag along.<br /><br />If the problem is remembering instead of being, then the problem everyone should be objecting to is the Doctor abandoning her for no reason whatsoever.<br /><br />That he does abandon her implies that the problem is in Donna's present, not her past. The technology to make sure memories don't recur is definitely available to a time traveler and it isn't as if the Doctor had moral qualms when it came to messing with her mind.chris the cynichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06872875475212333027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post-21273209117847714302011-12-14T22:03:01.536-05:002011-12-14T22:03:01.536-05:00Strongly argued, but I think your premises are fla...Strongly argued, but I think your premises are flawed. Explicitly, Donna can't remember any of the things that she did - time travel, aliens, having a Time Lord mind - but the Doctor says nothing about the kind of person she can be. There's nothing on which to base the claim that she'll overload if she shows too much compassion or courage. For that matter, the Doctor nearly commands her family to show Donna more support and encouragement, not to protectively stunt her growth.Will Wildmanhttp://narrowcrookedlanes.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com