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jjporSo, er...interesting.
I mean, I liked the opening sequence, hard boiled private-dick-on-a-case Sam Garner's somewhat dodgy Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk accent aside. I liked Sam Garner, in spite of this. Guy didn't deserve to go out like that. Even better to have Mike McShane out of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves/Whose Line Is It Anyway? amongst other things playing the "Fat Man" figure. The noir stylings and even the music showed that someone's seen one old Humphrey Bogart film too many. Loved it. And I liked the way the script used the fact that anybody who's been watching Who even in a semi-dedicated way over the past couple of years is thoroughly familiar with the Angels and their "M.O." to create storytelling and tension as Garner walked unwittingly to his fate.
I guess what I'm saying is that I prefer the version of this Stephen Moffat wrote in some parallel universe in which sybaritic Chandleresque crime boss Mr Grayle was the main villain, with the Weeping Angels sort of playing the Autons to his Master and S. Garner in the River role. And more noir and stuff, and people getting called "gunsels" and "broads" and stuff. No, maybe not "broads". "Dames", perhaps.
Liked Grayle's enjoying-it-far-too-much henchman (would someone in his line of work be a "torpedo" in noir-talk?? Or is that something else?) [Tossing the matches at Rory]: "It's funnier."
Hey, isn't River's story more or less over by now, after the Wedding episode? I mean, she was probably included here because it seemed right in light of her parents' role in the story, but she didn't do anything noteworthy I thought, other than spout some very dodgy perspectives on the Doctor-companion relationship. I kind of like it whenever Moffat (unintentionally?) drapes another layer of deeply unpleasant dysfunction over her relationship with the Doctor, while at the same time being quietly dispirited by the knowledge that those deeply invested in Doctor/River won't see it that way at all.
Some people are probably going to love this story; some people are going to hate it. I think I generally liked it as a story, but was ambivalent to its place as some sort of game-changing end of an era piece. It didn't live up to that, I don't think. I just can't get over the feeling that the Ponds, probably for my money the best companions NuWho has seen thus far, with the possible exception of Donna, deserved a more emphatic send-off. Not something with two climaxes, the latter seemingly tacked on just for the purposes of generating some good old, patented, Ten-era type angst.
Seriously, it was like one of those 70s crime films where the anti-hero, having thought he'd got away with that one last job, gets suddenly killed out of leftfield, almost at random. Sometimes it works. Sometimes, like here, it seems like they only did it that way because 70s crime films always have to have downer endings (or because Amy and Rory have to leave, one way or another, and preferably in a way that'll get the fans all sloppy and emotional rather than, say, them just retiring to that nice house with the blue door and calling it a day. To think I sneered at the people who got so overwrought about RTD killing off Ianto in Torchwood: Children of Earth (I still do actually, kind of - I'm more nonplussed/vaguely annoyed than moved by it).
And is it really so bad, getting "killed" the way the Angels kill people? I guess from the point of view of not seeing your family and friends again, it is, but there are definitely more horrible ways to go. It's Rory's Dad a.k.a. Petersen Out of Red Dwarf I feel bad for - he's going to blame himself forever for telling them to go with Eleven at the end of the last episode, isn't he? :( I'm assuming Amy and Rory weren't confined to an apartment for the rest of their days after the "battery farm" got paradoxed. She was writing hard boiled detective fiction and getting it published for gawd's sake...
I can't begin to make sense of my thoughts on the bigger meta issues here and what they mean - there's been a lot of stuff like that in the past few episodes. I think some re-watches and rambly fan-w*nk postings may be in order.
One thought: I know Lady Liberty can't move when people are looking at her (which would probably, statistically speaking, be practically always, so how does she move at all?), but doesn't anybody notice her now standing immobile in the middle of a residential street?!
Anyway - only so many shopping days left to Who's return and a fresh start, which is probably needed at this point. Can't wait. And then 2013, which I still feel needs emphatically marking somehow, by us, even if the BBC's efforts don't come up to snuff.
I mean, I liked the opening sequence, hard boiled private-dick-on-a-case Sam Garner's somewhat dodgy Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk accent aside. I liked Sam Garner, in spite of this. Guy didn't deserve to go out like that. Even better to have Mike McShane out of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves/Whose Line Is It Anyway? amongst other things playing the "Fat Man" figure. The noir stylings and even the music showed that someone's seen one old Humphrey Bogart film too many. Loved it. And I liked the way the script used the fact that anybody who's been watching Who even in a semi-dedicated way over the past couple of years is thoroughly familiar with the Angels and their "M.O." to create storytelling and tension as Garner walked unwittingly to his fate.
I guess what I'm saying is that I prefer the version of this Stephen Moffat wrote in some parallel universe in which sybaritic Chandleresque crime boss Mr Grayle was the main villain, with the Weeping Angels sort of playing the Autons to his Master and S. Garner in the River role. And more noir and stuff, and people getting called "gunsels" and "broads" and stuff. No, maybe not "broads". "Dames", perhaps.
Liked Grayle's enjoying-it-far-too-much henchman (would someone in his line of work be a "torpedo" in noir-talk?? Or is that something else?) [Tossing the matches at Rory]: "It's funnier."
Hey, isn't River's story more or less over by now, after the Wedding episode? I mean, she was probably included here because it seemed right in light of her parents' role in the story, but she didn't do anything noteworthy I thought, other than spout some very dodgy perspectives on the Doctor-companion relationship. I kind of like it whenever Moffat (unintentionally?) drapes another layer of deeply unpleasant dysfunction over her relationship with the Doctor, while at the same time being quietly dispirited by the knowledge that those deeply invested in Doctor/River won't see it that way at all.
Some people are probably going to love this story; some people are going to hate it. I think I generally liked it as a story, but was ambivalent to its place as some sort of game-changing end of an era piece. It didn't live up to that, I don't think. I just can't get over the feeling that the Ponds, probably for my money the best companions NuWho has seen thus far, with the possible exception of Donna, deserved a more emphatic send-off. Not something with two climaxes, the latter seemingly tacked on just for the purposes of generating some good old, patented, Ten-era type angst.
Seriously, it was like one of those 70s crime films where the anti-hero, having thought he'd got away with that one last job, gets suddenly killed out of leftfield, almost at random. Sometimes it works. Sometimes, like here, it seems like they only did it that way because 70s crime films always have to have downer endings (or because Amy and Rory have to leave, one way or another, and preferably in a way that'll get the fans all sloppy and emotional rather than, say, them just retiring to that nice house with the blue door and calling it a day. To think I sneered at the people who got so overwrought about RTD killing off Ianto in Torchwood: Children of Earth (I still do actually, kind of - I'm more nonplussed/vaguely annoyed than moved by it).
And is it really so bad, getting "killed" the way the Angels kill people? I guess from the point of view of not seeing your family and friends again, it is, but there are definitely more horrible ways to go. It's Rory's Dad a.k.a. Petersen Out of Red Dwarf I feel bad for - he's going to blame himself forever for telling them to go with Eleven at the end of the last episode, isn't he? :( I'm assuming Amy and Rory weren't confined to an apartment for the rest of their days after the "battery farm" got paradoxed. She was writing hard boiled detective fiction and getting it published for gawd's sake...
I can't begin to make sense of my thoughts on the bigger meta issues here and what they mean - there's been a lot of stuff like that in the past few episodes. I think some re-watches and rambly fan-w*nk postings may be in order.
One thought: I know Lady Liberty can't move when people are looking at her (which would probably, statistically speaking, be practically always, so how does she move at all?), but doesn't anybody notice her now standing immobile in the middle of a residential street?!
Anyway - only so many shopping days left to Who's return and a fresh start, which is probably needed at this point. Can't wait. And then 2013, which I still feel needs emphatically marking somehow, by us, even if the BBC's efforts don't come up to snuff.
