Robot of Sherwood/Listen
Sep. 15th, 2014 09:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiSo after two awful episodes, we get two really good ones. I'm not totally shocked about "Listen," since standalone horror tends to be a good genre for the Doctor and for Moffat, but I'm really surprised at the first one.
Putting everything beneath one tag for simplicity, since it's hard to separate out speculation.
Robot of Sherwood:
The good: Loved everything about Clara/Doctor this week. His skepticism was balanced perfectly against her dreaminess at the beginning, and they felt like they've achieved that perfect level of chemistry.
The hewing-to-the-archetypes of the Merry Men (and the Sheriff) was tremendous, and made the plot work. If we'd have a postmodern Robin, or a tough-guy Tuck, or whatnot, it wouldn't have had the right impact on the Doctor and Clara. Or on the audience; the point here was to make us sympathize with the Doctor and assume that the Merry Men were robots or dopplegangers somehow. The guy who played Robin, in particular, was perfect.
And all of the dialogue and interactions were great, from the spoon/sword fight as a replacement for the classic Little John battle to the Doctor's attempts to analyze the characters (one of whom has a depressing fate in store, alas). A great use of a classic legend to advance the worldviews of the two main characters.
Oh, and how do you not love the punny title (which also helped mislead the nature of the baddies)?
And the overall theme, in which we have The Doctor confronted with the notion that A) real heroes become legends, and B) the archetypes are sometimes dead on. And makes you wonder about how he views his legacy.
The bad: Honestly the only thing I really disliked was the fucking stupid "shields as laser-repellents" thing. Especially since the shields were about three inches around, and even the world's stupidest robot could probably figure out that lasers work best when fired at the rest of the body (oh, and lasers, being made of light, can't really be blocked with fast reflexes). I'm assuming this is the fault of Moffat or the director, as I'd imagine Gattis wrote something either better or at least more vague in the script.
Listen:
The good: Everything Clara here (minus one thing below). We see her doubting herself, we see her not trusting The Doctor with her personal life, we see her normal chipper self established as something often done to hide her own insecurities, hell, we fucking get her as a real person for once.
And that entire Date From Hell. Two people, both of whom clearly like each other, both of whom keep stepping in it, over and over. And it gets worse when Clara steps in it in a way that's not just explainable by her stumbling over words or not filtering. And Danny is just delightful, even as he's just as nervous as Clara.
And the scene in the barn. Wow. Just so good. This was a top-to-bottom Clara episode, letting her shine in a way that the stupid "impossible girl" shit never did.
And let's talk about the actual horror. So many wonderful bits, all told in such a way that we never know the true nature of the "evil." We're talking about something unseen, about ghosts, about something that could be a prank by a schoolmate or a ship buckling. So much more scary than if we were forced to watch something disappointing emerge. And Clara being the hand that grabbed the Doctor when he was little (and for him to never know) is just a lovely touch.
I snark at Moffat a lot, but he wrote this episode, and it's damned tight, and effectively scary at times. Up there with "Midnight," and "Blink" for creepiness.
The bad; Okay, so the TARDIS will interface with Clara's complete history. Which, last I checked, includes the whole "impossible girl" bullshit where she was everywhere in the Doctor's timeline. At this point, it sounds like Moffat's just going to pretend that last season never happened, which is generally fine by me (especially if we pretend the whole "Statue of Liberty as Weeping Angel" thing never took place), but since he's the fucking writer behind last season, speaks volumes about him.
The only other bad thing is that we've had two episodes in a row without Missy. Yes, they were both better written and tighter, but it's hard to run a thread through things if you don't, well, run that thread. Granted, "Listen" didn't offer a true opportunity (in fact, it's another "nobody dies" episode, ), but surely someone on RoS could have been used (the Sheriff, a robot, one of the zapped townsfolk, depending on exactly where Missy's running with her plotline). Also, you just can't have enough Michelle Gomez.
The speculation: Alas, not a whole lot. Robot doesn't offer much at all other than another robot talking about the "Promised Land." Assuming we're past the Nine-era stuff of "bad guys displaced by the Time War," I'm not sure where they're going here, but it's possible that this actually refers to Missy's "Heaven."
Likewise, "Listen" pretty skinny on the arc-related stuff, so the real speculation here is whether Clara met her own grandchild. And at this point, it's literally just a guess.
Next week, we get a "heist" plotline. I love heists. I have no reason to believe Moffat's the sort of careful writer who can pull one off well, but I have every reason to believe that what starts as a heist will morph into something else.
Putting everything beneath one tag for simplicity, since it's hard to separate out speculation.
Robot of Sherwood:
The good: Loved everything about Clara/Doctor this week. His skepticism was balanced perfectly against her dreaminess at the beginning, and they felt like they've achieved that perfect level of chemistry.
The hewing-to-the-archetypes of the Merry Men (and the Sheriff) was tremendous, and made the plot work. If we'd have a postmodern Robin, or a tough-guy Tuck, or whatnot, it wouldn't have had the right impact on the Doctor and Clara. Or on the audience; the point here was to make us sympathize with the Doctor and assume that the Merry Men were robots or dopplegangers somehow. The guy who played Robin, in particular, was perfect.
And all of the dialogue and interactions were great, from the spoon/sword fight as a replacement for the classic Little John battle to the Doctor's attempts to analyze the characters (one of whom has a depressing fate in store, alas). A great use of a classic legend to advance the worldviews of the two main characters.
Oh, and how do you not love the punny title (which also helped mislead the nature of the baddies)?
And the overall theme, in which we have The Doctor confronted with the notion that A) real heroes become legends, and B) the archetypes are sometimes dead on. And makes you wonder about how he views his legacy.
The bad: Honestly the only thing I really disliked was the fucking stupid "shields as laser-repellents" thing. Especially since the shields were about three inches around, and even the world's stupidest robot could probably figure out that lasers work best when fired at the rest of the body (oh, and lasers, being made of light, can't really be blocked with fast reflexes). I'm assuming this is the fault of Moffat or the director, as I'd imagine Gattis wrote something either better or at least more vague in the script.
Listen:
The good: Everything Clara here (minus one thing below). We see her doubting herself, we see her not trusting The Doctor with her personal life, we see her normal chipper self established as something often done to hide her own insecurities, hell, we fucking get her as a real person for once.
And that entire Date From Hell. Two people, both of whom clearly like each other, both of whom keep stepping in it, over and over. And it gets worse when Clara steps in it in a way that's not just explainable by her stumbling over words or not filtering. And Danny is just delightful, even as he's just as nervous as Clara.
And the scene in the barn. Wow. Just so good. This was a top-to-bottom Clara episode, letting her shine in a way that the stupid "impossible girl" shit never did.
And let's talk about the actual horror. So many wonderful bits, all told in such a way that we never know the true nature of the "evil." We're talking about something unseen, about ghosts, about something that could be a prank by a schoolmate or a ship buckling. So much more scary than if we were forced to watch something disappointing emerge. And Clara being the hand that grabbed the Doctor when he was little (and for him to never know) is just a lovely touch.
I snark at Moffat a lot, but he wrote this episode, and it's damned tight, and effectively scary at times. Up there with "Midnight," and "Blink" for creepiness.
The bad; Okay, so the TARDIS will interface with Clara's complete history. Which, last I checked, includes the whole "impossible girl" bullshit where she was everywhere in the Doctor's timeline. At this point, it sounds like Moffat's just going to pretend that last season never happened, which is generally fine by me (especially if we pretend the whole "Statue of Liberty as Weeping Angel" thing never took place), but since he's the fucking writer behind last season, speaks volumes about him.
The only other bad thing is that we've had two episodes in a row without Missy. Yes, they were both better written and tighter, but it's hard to run a thread through things if you don't, well, run that thread. Granted, "Listen" didn't offer a true opportunity (in fact, it's another "nobody dies" episode, ), but surely someone on RoS could have been used (the Sheriff, a robot, one of the zapped townsfolk, depending on exactly where Missy's running with her plotline). Also, you just can't have enough Michelle Gomez.
The speculation: Alas, not a whole lot. Robot doesn't offer much at all other than another robot talking about the "Promised Land." Assuming we're past the Nine-era stuff of "bad guys displaced by the Time War," I'm not sure where they're going here, but it's possible that this actually refers to Missy's "Heaven."
Likewise, "Listen" pretty skinny on the arc-related stuff, so the real speculation here is whether Clara met her own grandchild. And at this point, it's literally just a guess.
Next week, we get a "heist" plotline. I love heists. I have no reason to believe Moffat's the sort of careful writer who can pull one off well, but I have every reason to believe that what starts as a heist will morph into something else.