Doctor Who: Pirates 'n' Papercuts
May. 8th, 2011 06:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinI've said in a previous review that I suspect the uneven quality of Doctor Who has become part of its charm for me. I'm guessing I'm not the only one who feels that way, because the AV Club reviewer who tackled the latest episode finds a lot of fault with it and gives it a B-. That's about where I am, too.
I particularly have to agree with that review (Dr. Song's injunction still applies) insofar as finding the whole thing from the CPR on to be the low point of the show. Even for TV-land CPR it didn't make a lot of sense.
If the Emergency Medical Hologram's problem was that it didn't know what to do to fix a human body beyond stabilizing it in stasis, why not have Rory the nurse teach it? He could have either given it a quick crash course in what's supposed to be going on or once it was aware he had a bunch of data in his brain on human anatomy and the like it could have done some sci-fi brain scan thing. All the CPR scene gave us was predictable, drawn out, and overblown drama.
There's also a bit of a hole in the fact that the Doctor, Avery, and Amy were transported to an empty area of the ship and left to their own devices. Despite the "injuries" they used to attract the Siren's attention, they were not restrained and put in stasis. Did all the pirates with paper cuts panic and end up being sedated/restrained for their own good? It would have made more sense to me to have all trivial injuries healed in the transfer process and most of the crew... everyone we saw taken but Rory and Toby... healthy and awake and cared for by other automated systems, but unable to leave, with Rory and Toby in stasis due to their life-threatening injuries.
(Incidentally, this would also have connected the marooned alien vessel with other sea-faring myths like "Fiddler's Green".)
The very end of the ending pulled out of the nose-dive a bit. The "goodnight" scene, apart from touching base with the series arc, helps establish the TARDIS as being lived-in... as did the Doctor indicating the bathrooms to Captain Avery. I have to say, I honestly hope that in all of Moffat's run they never show us anything but the console/control room while constantly making references to the libary, swimming pool, kitchen, bathrooms, etc. I find that sort of thing terribly amusing.
Quibbles with the last act aside, I thought it was a bang-up "anthology" episode. I liked the monster and the explanation of the monster. I liked the lampshade hanging on the way the Doctor's understanding of what was going on and what they were up against evolved as the episode went on. (Summed up in the exchange that went somethign like "Disregard everything I said up to this point." - "We stopped paying attention a while ago.")
I have a weakness for the intersection (or collision, in this case) of nautical stories and space-going ones, possibly due to the fact that one of my earliest memories of Doctor Who is the Peter Davison serial about the yacht race. I can't definitively say that this was the first episode I saw... I was pretty firmly in the behind-the-sofa demographic at the time, so my memories of old Doctor Who are more disjointed than my memories of other early 80s media. But those episodes stuck with me.
I can forgive the unhistorical plank-walking bit because I can imagine the Doctor himself insisting on it, going by how into it he seemed to be and the fact that he was coaching them on other aspects of the ritual. Would the pirates have cooperated? I don't know. It would have been what they assumed to be his last request.
To sum up: not a terrible episode, great concept, some good bits, but with a poor showing in the last act.
I particularly have to agree with that review (Dr. Song's injunction still applies) insofar as finding the whole thing from the CPR on to be the low point of the show. Even for TV-land CPR it didn't make a lot of sense.
If the Emergency Medical Hologram's problem was that it didn't know what to do to fix a human body beyond stabilizing it in stasis, why not have Rory the nurse teach it? He could have either given it a quick crash course in what's supposed to be going on or once it was aware he had a bunch of data in his brain on human anatomy and the like it could have done some sci-fi brain scan thing. All the CPR scene gave us was predictable, drawn out, and overblown drama.
There's also a bit of a hole in the fact that the Doctor, Avery, and Amy were transported to an empty area of the ship and left to their own devices. Despite the "injuries" they used to attract the Siren's attention, they were not restrained and put in stasis. Did all the pirates with paper cuts panic and end up being sedated/restrained for their own good? It would have made more sense to me to have all trivial injuries healed in the transfer process and most of the crew... everyone we saw taken but Rory and Toby... healthy and awake and cared for by other automated systems, but unable to leave, with Rory and Toby in stasis due to their life-threatening injuries.
(Incidentally, this would also have connected the marooned alien vessel with other sea-faring myths like "Fiddler's Green".)
The very end of the ending pulled out of the nose-dive a bit. The "goodnight" scene, apart from touching base with the series arc, helps establish the TARDIS as being lived-in... as did the Doctor indicating the bathrooms to Captain Avery. I have to say, I honestly hope that in all of Moffat's run they never show us anything but the console/control room while constantly making references to the libary, swimming pool, kitchen, bathrooms, etc. I find that sort of thing terribly amusing.
Quibbles with the last act aside, I thought it was a bang-up "anthology" episode. I liked the monster and the explanation of the monster. I liked the lampshade hanging on the way the Doctor's understanding of what was going on and what they were up against evolved as the episode went on. (Summed up in the exchange that went somethign like "Disregard everything I said up to this point." - "We stopped paying attention a while ago.")
I have a weakness for the intersection (or collision, in this case) of nautical stories and space-going ones, possibly due to the fact that one of my earliest memories of Doctor Who is the Peter Davison serial about the yacht race. I can't definitively say that this was the first episode I saw... I was pretty firmly in the behind-the-sofa demographic at the time, so my memories of old Doctor Who are more disjointed than my memories of other early 80s media. But those episodes stuck with me.
I can forgive the unhistorical plank-walking bit because I can imagine the Doctor himself insisting on it, going by how into it he seemed to be and the fact that he was coaching them on other aspects of the ritual. Would the pirates have cooperated? I don't know. It would have been what they assumed to be his last request.
To sum up: not a terrible episode, great concept, some good bits, but with a poor showing in the last act.