redfiona99

Set during the long night before Amy's Wedding, this is an Eleventh Doctor and Amy story, where they encounter interesting aliens and humans.

There was a lot I liked about this book; the Sittun, the gyre, the background to the story, but I felt that a couple of the characters were too obviously just there to be killed off horribly, and a few of the allegories were a little too heavy-handed (and if the person who still doesn't see the Aslan = Jesus thing thinks your metaphors are heavy-handed, they are sledgehammer heavy).

Enjoyable but not essential.

( Only 6 LibraryThing Suggestions )

And I've read one of them. I also suspect I may have one of the others.

Apollo 23 is an Eleventh Doctor and Amy adventure.

I really enjoyed it. It reminded me a lot of an Old School Who episode, sinister goings on at an isolated base, with the Doctor blundering in.

The book has lots of really neat touches, like the Doctor's child-like glee at getting to ride in an Apollo spacecraft, and something which feels like the author using descriptive flannel turns out to be a vitally important detail.

It catches the Doctor just right, I particularly like the line about "I've got a different ridiculous plan to defeat you". Amy is also nicely done, as are the rest of the characters. The creepy bits are suitably creepy, and the atmosphere (or lack thereof on the moon) is well rendered.

Definitely worth reading.

( LibraryThing Suggester )

Good suggestions, especially as I've already read two of them :)

Hold on, 12's only just got here.

Actually, given the speed at which I answer these things, I suspect that this was asked when 10 was leaving.

I'm very easy going about this, I don't mind. I'd just like them to be able to do clever and/or alien.

( Other Days )

I'm aware that some of the early Doctor Who episodes have issues, and that the 'Talons of Weng Chiang' has issues above and beyond "just ignore the rat." I had my little rant about 'The Impossible Planet' two-parter over here (http://redfiona99.livejournal.com/895400.html), so I shall rant about 'Tooth And Claw' instead.

There were good things about 'Tooth And Claw', the werewolf was better than anything that Warner Brothers came up with in Harry Potter. And the actor playing the owner of the house does a bang up job, as does Pauline Collins as Queen Vicky. The opening bit with the werewolf host is suitably eerie. Other than that ... not so much.

The plot doesn't make any sense. The history is off in oh so many ways (guess who got tasked with making a timeline about Queen Victoria when she was 11). The logic behind the werewolves is iffy.

This is all stuff I can happily and easily forgive.

What I can't forgive is how callous Rose and the Doctor seem. Now Who has done silly before, it's done silly and people dying before, but those deaths aren't treated with levity (examples would be Karensky's death in 'City of Death' or Lamia's death in 'The Androids of Tara'), here everything seems to be geared to getting the "I am not amused" punchline and it grates. I'm fine with the Doctor being unsympathetic (hello, 3 is my Doctor) but there's a different between unsympathetic and having a callous disregard for the people around him. And Rose, Rose who is supposed to be the audience proxy/surrogate, Rose who is supposed to be nice (because that's quite often what the companion's job is, to stand as a contrast to the alien doctor, which is one of the many reasons why the Ponds are interesting [as is Turlough. I don't think Turlough would have worked with the more alien Doctors but he works with 5.]), Rose is doing the same thing.

I can't entirely blame Queen Victoria for how she is at the end, and I think it's less a sign of having been bitten by a werewolf than basic human decency.

( Other Days )

As I said, I'm here for the aliens and the Ood are my favourite of the Nu-Who aliens.

There's just something about them.

I think it's partly the dichotomy between their appearance, which is pretty much straight out of sci-fi horror central - hairless, weird tentacly mouths, boiler suits - and their generally placid nature. This is best exemplified by their first appearance where they were crowding in on the Doctor and Rose going "we must feed, we must feed, we must feed ... you" which was then blamed on a translator globe malfunction at the time.

Then you've got their greatest vulnerability, their brains and their telepathy. The second, exposed, brain renders them so vulnerable, and people, particularly humans, keep taking advantage of them. The telepathy makes them vulnerable to things like the Beast, and I suspect that it was why Nephew swung so much between violent and docile in 'The Doctor's Wife', seeing as how House could do terrifying things to the Ponds's minds. I'm also intrigued because I can see also sorts of evolutionary disadvantages to exposed brains but I can see how and why it makes the Ood quite so community-centric. It must be very hard to kick someone if you can feel them going "ow".

The other interesting thing is that they don't seem to hold a grudge. For instance, the executive in "Planet of the Ood" who they turned into an Ood, you know he'll be safe with them despite all the terrible things he's done to other Ood.

"Planet of the Ood" in an interesting episode because it's so clearly a response to the justified criticism of the Doctor's behaviour in the Impossible Planet two-parter (no, I will never forgive 10 for turning a blind eye to slavery in those episodes. This is not my Doctor.) and in many ways it harkens back to older Doctor Who, where the Doctor blunders in to someone else's story and just tries to aid the forces of good (and keep his companions alive).

But yes, mostly they intrigue me.

( Other Days )

Not a fansite as such, but my first port of call when I want to check out something Who-related is the BBC's Classic Who site - http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/index.shtml

I'm also quite fond of the TARDIS wikia - http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Doctor_Who_Wiki

If you're after fanfic, there's A Teaspoon and an Open Mind - http://www.whofic.com/

( Other Days )

There's actually remarkably few female biologists in Doctor Who, certainly few that aren't evil mad scientists, and I am not evil. This is even more clear with the companions/assistants, where I've got a choice between Liz Shaw, Nyssa and Martha. And on the topic of the last two ladies, like all biologists, I am most definitely not a medic (never have I been so upset about a character's actual occupation as when it turned out that Owen the Slappable in Torchwood was actually a medic). Which leaves me with Liz. Which isn't too bad, even if she's mostly a physicist, and I am barely a biophysicist.

It's actually an interesting point, because I understand why people get annoyed that a lot of the companions are not brainiacs, that they tend to be the heart of the team, but, for writing/story-telling purposes, it's a lot easier when you have it structured as the person doing the telling and the person being told (see also, Holmes and Watson, Poirot and Hastings), and while it's undoubtedly possible to split these roles, it's difficult. That, to me, was one of the advantages of the shorter but more of them nature of the Old Who Serials, because you could split the Doctor and his companion(s) up, and then give everyone something to do.


( Other Days )

Now I am less fond of the demented pepper-pots than most people. I don't know why, possibly because they don't scare me, but I've never seen them as being *the* villain, and I'm certainly less fond of them than the producers of NuWho. I wonder if it's because, when Davros isn't about, there isn't one central focus point for the Doctor's interactions with the Daleks.

That being said, one of my favourite Who-related memories is spending an entire day arguing with A and N about which was the best Dalek episode. I was, of course, pulling for Genesis of the Daleks, which hits my narrative preferences because it's got a lot of world building and shades of grey (and I don't just mean the endless corridors). A was campaigning for Destiny of the Daleks, because he thought it was cool (hovering Daleks etc) and he really liked the Movellans. N's choice was Remembrance of the Daleks because of the general air of sinisterness and explosions and again, a certain tendency towards shades of grey.

There we were, three 15 year olds, spending out precious break time on a school day arguing about which of the three episodes was the best.

A wouldn't listen to reason, when we both pointed out that that wasn't how robots worked. And I refused to acknowledge that there were far too many long, lingering shots of grey corridors in Genesis and it was a bit slow-paced. I can't remember exactly what our objection was to Remembrance. Probably "why would the Daleks need to do the thing that did?"

So yes, if nothing else, I enjoy remembering talking about Daleks.

( Other Days )

Not sure if it's my favourite ever, but it's definitely one I like a lot:

Boots (2010 words) by JaneTurenne
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (1963)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: implied Doctor/Master
Characters: The Master (Simm), Jo Grant
Additional Tags: Jo's Boots, Women Being Awesome
Summary: In the earliest days of the Year That Never Was, Jo Grant pays a visit to the Valiant.

( Other Days )

I want one thing known. I am not scared of Daleks.

No one has bothered to tell my subconscious this though so I have a recurring nightmare where Daleks and the Aliens (from Aliens) team up to subjugate and destroy humanity. Yeah, I don't understand it either.

The Gas-Mask child from "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" scared the pants off me, like proper could-not-sleep-terror but he wasn't a villain.

( Other Days )