{"id":17226,"date":"2010-04-26T20:59:23","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T02:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=17226"},"modified":"2010-04-26T20:59:23","modified_gmt":"2010-04-27T02:59:23","slug":"doctor-who-the-beast-below","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/04\/26\/doctor-who-the-beast-below.html","title":{"rendered":"Doctor Who:<\/i> “The Beast Below”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n

Please don’t hate me … but I didn’t love this episode.<\/p>\n

Spoilers below …<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Okay, so this wasn’t a bad <\/em>episode.\u00a0 It even had a lot of elements to recommend it. That is, perhaps, why realizing that the sum of the parts was greater than the whole is such a disappointment.<\/p>\n

There is perhaps no Doctor Who <\/em>trope more common across the length of the series than “The Doctor and his Companion wander through a decrepit starship \/ colony and try to discover why things have gone wrong.”\u00a0 This could make it a cliche, but it also lends it a level of familiarity upon which to build the new Doctor upon.\u00a0 A fine choice.<\/p>\n

There’s a ton of neat stuff in the episode, too.\u00a0 Elizabeth the 10th (and her reigns)?\u00a0 Uber-creepy multi-faced heads in cabinets? A Beast Below (with a poem to match)?\u00a0 All good stuff.\u00a0 And the sheer awesomeness of the idea that populace individually votes whether to maintain (forgotten) the Horrible Secret, or to reject it (and pay the consequences) is wildly wonderful.<\/p>\n

And that is, perhaps the problem. There’s too much good stuff here — at least an episode-and-a-half, if not two full ones.\u00a0 As a result, the last third or so of the episode (once they reach the Tower) ends up feeling rushed, the horrible decision to be made forced, the brilliant solution grabbed too much out of a hat (while, at the same time, being force-fed through flashbacks).’<\/p>\n

A more fundamental problem is that the whole Doctor-Companion relationship feels even more manipulated here.\u00a0 Amy goes from being delighted, to outraged over being in her nightgown, to trying to figure out what’s going on, to being the wild and crazy B&E artist, to making the Big Decision on behalf of the Doctor (and did she therefore actually make that recording herself just before her “forgetting”?), to helpless prisoner and browbeaten nasty human, to genius Gordian Knot-slicer and hugger of the Doctor. And the Doctor kind of just goes along for the ride. What he does (and ends up not doing) is defined by his Companion.\u00a0 She turns out to be the brilliant one, while he makes the hard decision (which she knew he’d have to make) and turns out to be (potentially) tragically wrong.<\/p>\n

It’s too fast, too pushed, and too soon.\u00a0 And the whole “oh, an elder being, last of their kind, helping the children” was just too trite for words.<\/p>\n

There are some other things I didn’t care for.\u00a0 For all that the kids were a key part of the solution (the raison d’etre, <\/em>so to speak), for the most of the show (even during the solving) they were sort of lumps.\u00a0 After giving us a fabulous Amanda in the first ep of the season, we get very little in the way of interesting kiddies here.\u00a0 Mandy, the young girl, seems along in the episode mostly to be in place for the climax, acting\u00a0 as a set piece.<\/p>\n

So, overall, lots of cool bits, and even some interesting Doctor-angry-at-humanity, but the pacing is off, the timing within the series seems off, and it just doesn’t … quite … work for me.<\/p>\n

(Allow me to note that watching the show via BBC America is entailing a commercial break every 5-7 minutes or so. Ugh. I really don’t want to either bit-torrent the series down from the UK, or wait for the DVDs, but the viewing experience is pretty darned awful.)<\/p>\n

Still, eagerly awaiting (for a change) the Daleks next time<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Please don’t hate me … but I didn’t love this episode. Spoilers below …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-tv-doctor-who"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":20841,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/23\/a-brief-doctor-who-series-6-premiere-episode-comment.html","url_meta":{"origin":17226,"position":0},"title":"A brief Doctor Who Series 6 Premiere Episode comment","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 23-Apr-11 11:21pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Stated below the fold just to be absolutely non-spoilery. ... Leave it to Steven Moffat to make the scariest thing in the world be not remembering the scariest thing in the world. That said -- well, plenty of horror, and some very cool near-history bits. A great Nixon White House,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Doctor Who"","block_context":{"text":"Doctor Who","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/media-tv-doctor-who"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/tardis.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11270,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/10\/07\/doctor_who_the_last_time.html","url_meta":{"origin":17226,"position":1},"title":"Doctor Who: “The Last Time Lord”","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 7-Oct-07 10:03pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Series 3 Finale!\u00a0 Final Wrap of the Big Story Line and Resolution of Lots of Dangling Arcs (Martha, Jack) and Stuff Like That!\u00a0 And ... ... and ... .......","rel":"","context":"In "Doctor Who"","block_context":{"text":"Doctor Who","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/media-tv-doctor-who"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/tardis.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9990,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/10\/01\/tenth_doctor_second_serie.html","url_meta":{"origin":17226,"position":2},"title":"Tenth Doctor, Second Series, First Impressions","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 1-Oct-06 8:21am","format":false,"excerpt":"Watched Doctor Who: The Christmas Invasion and the \"New Earth\" episode of Doctor Who on the DVR last night. Okay, so David Tennant isn't bad. He hasn't established a...","rel":"","context":"In "Doctor Who"","block_context":{"text":"Doctor Who","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/media-tv-doctor-who"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/tardis.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":44558,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/23\/the-new-doctor-2.html","url_meta":{"origin":17226,"position":3},"title":"The New Doctor","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 23-Aug-14 10:44pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Hmmmm.Well, the episode was not quite what I expected -- though that's not necessarily a bad thing. ......(Spoilers, sweetie, though mostly at a high level.)...Capaldi channeling Matt Smith for about the first half of the episode was also unexpected, but brilliant (and in keeping with the personality issues each of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/1.jpg.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":137581,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2019\/01\/02\/the-doctor-who-new-years-special.html","url_meta":{"origin":17226,"position":4},"title":"The Doctor Who New Year's Special","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 2-Jan-19 11:34pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I will try to avoid spoilers.This end of the year episode (and the only DW fix we're going to get in 2019, alas) is emblematic of everything that worked and didn't work in the current series of the Doctor.I love Thirteen. Jodie Whittaker is wonderful, and this outing is no\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/doctor-who-resolution-ending-explained-review5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/doctor-who-resolution-ending-explained-review5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/doctor-who-resolution-ending-explained-review5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9889,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/10\/15\/tv_reviews_doctor_who_and.html","url_meta":{"origin":17226,"position":5},"title":"TV Reviews: Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 15-Oct-06 5:44pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Doctor Who's Series 2 continues to improve by leaps and bounds. \"School Reunion,\" the most recent episode, is a classic, in a couple of ways. First off, there's the...","rel":"","context":"In "Doctor Who"","block_context":{"text":"Doctor Who","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/media-tv-doctor-who"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/tardis.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}