Not talking about the actors here, just the writing…
But, I always found Ten’s sanctimonious morality irritating. “Wah! Davros called me the ‘Destroyer of Worlds.’ Who cares about all the people who were killed when I decided to ditch the Shadow Proclamation because I’m so importantly awesome? What’s really important is that my precious universe-destroying, planet-stealing Daleks were harmed!”
And looks like we’re back to this again. “Oh, no! I created a Dalek who’s going to kill other Dalek’s.” How about showing some concern for the humans who were killed? Twelve is another self-important, sanctimonious twit.
I don’t hear that as being upset over the probability that the Dalek will destroy other Daleks … more the fact that what the Dalek saw when he looked into his soul was hatred. “Am I a good man?” he asked Clara (and by extension us.) The Dalek gave him one answer: “You are a good Dalek.” An “I don’t know.” and a “You are a good Dalek.” - not likely what he was hoping to hear.
Yes, he is self-important … but at least they are off the “Do you know I am? Do you really want to mess with me? Yeah that’s right, run!” level of arrogance. Self-important but also very unsure of the quality of his morality and his soul (if he believes he has one).
I like the style and the only reason I can see for setting up this Doctor’s disrespect for soldiers is to establish a character growth and dynamic as he later deals with Pink and whatever guilt Pink is grappling with regarding the apparent “not soldiers” he has killed.
I was reminded of the Star Trek:TNG episode when Hugh the Borg showed up. In it, the plan is for the crew to send Hugh back to the Borg with a dangerous program hidden inside him that will spread like a plague. I was kind of thinking that The Doctor and friends were going to send Rusty back to the Daleks so that his plague of goodness could spread. Not that it was going to turn all the Daleks good, but it probably would be disruptive.
I think I’m just sick of his “I’ve got to save the Daleks’ souls” shtick. While he’s arrogantly playing redeemer (which he’s not even capable of doing with the Daleks), tons of people get killed. It’s no wonder everyone and their mother declared war on Eleven.
My feelings were mixed on this one, but overall I thought it was very good. I liked the way he dealt with Ross having to die - instead of standing around moaning philosophically and posing like previous Doctors would have, he made the most of it and tossed him a tracker. (At least, that was my interpretation of it - the tracker didn’t cause the antibodies to attack him. If it did, and the Doctor sacrificed him to save the group, that’s even more utilitarian). I hope that calculating practical-ness will become a feature of 12 (and if you call it “inhuman,” well, he is an alien).
The only problem is that the cavalier attitude towards innocents dying clashes, at least for me, with his concern over being “good”. Which isn’t to say 12 can’t have strong morals, but getting into a tizzy over ethics seems to be more of a 10 or 11 trait.
And yes, I’m liking Clara a LOT more this season. Pity her scripts get good right when she announces she’s leaving. Oh, and I definitely feel that the whole disgust for soldiers will be something for the Doctor to change his position on - Clara, as someone mentioned above, seems to be who the audience is meant to connect most with, and she obviously thinks the Doctor’s prejudice is wrong.
I liked the ending just because in the back of my mind, I think a friendly Dalek K9-ish companion would be awesome. Maybe after Clara leaves? Pretty please with a cherry on top?
She’s seen what he is capable of, the good and the bad. Even the hugglesome squeee-worthy Tenth Doctor committed at least one genocide, and used his power to punish the Family of Blood in some very inventive and sadistic ways. The Doctor is alien (but a bit of a softy too when it comes to humans, granted). Would you trust him? Absolutely?
I was more annoyed that they spent the entire first episode getting her to accept that he’s the same person as he had been before, then immediately puts her into boyfriend-finding-mode, since the Doctor is no longer BF material.
They also slamfisted Mr. Pink in on us. There was no obvious reason for her to hunt him down and force him to go out with her, and while I suspect that he was supposed to seem a bit creepy/mysterious, their presentation of him as creepy and mysterious only makes me find it even less plausible that she would be so immediately attracted to him.
The “Why?”, “To be funny”, “Why?”, “I just do that.”, “Why?”, “I don’t know.” bit is pretty odd. I don’t see many women getting turned on by being stared down for having made a joke.
They use a lot of clinical camera angles and presentations of him, like Robin Williams in One Hour Photo (though not that extreme).
And, I guess maybe just due to poor acting on the part of the actor, but he’s basically got a blank face through every conversation he has. It’s a bit like watching Chance from Being There trying to channel Will Smith.
Yeah, there is definitely Something Going On with Mr. Pink, but damned if I know what it is for right now. I don’t feel like Clara was particularly in “boyfriend-hunting” mode, though; she just happened to bump into a nice candidate and pursued. Nothing particlarly “slamfisted” (what is “slamfisted”?) about that.
I’m curious about how the line is drawn on who gets to go to “heaven” and have tea with Missy. It’s not even particularly difficult to argue that every single soldier who died did so because of the Doctor’s actions, not to mention the other Daleks that Rusty took out, and oh yeah, the male soldier that he turned into a tracker for the antibody whatsiz. But only not-Journey female soldier turned up for tea with Missy, so far as we were shown.
The theory I’ve seen is that it’s everyone the Doctor convinces to kill themselves. He didn’t directly tell this soldier to kill herself, but the tone of the conversation was pretty obviously that it was a suicide mission and she was going to die.
So, are there any ideas/theories yet on where we’re heading with this whole revisiting of past themes? I mean, this is the second episode (of two so far) clearly mirroring plot elements of an earlier episode (when we met Clara—Oswin—she was in the ‘head’ of a Dalek, of course), and there were numerous allusions (though more so in the first episode, or I didn’t catch those in the second) to something in the past that the Doctor seems to try to ‘tell himself’, with choosing a face that he’s seen before, e.g.
Personally, I got nothing. It’s probably tied to Missy somehow, which makes me think she’s likely someone/something that popped up before rather than something new, and of course, stories that are much like but not quite like earlier stories, alternate versions of these stories, perhaps, always carry the suggestion of parallel universes, but none of that seems to click yet.
What a bizarre observation. “Why would a young, single woman want to take an attractive man who has a good job and likes working with children out for a drink? What possible motive could she have?!” I dunno, Sage Rat. Maybe it’s mind control.
The similarity between his last name, and the last name of the soldier fighting the Daleks, is probably not a coincidence. In the opening, you don’t get a real good look at her brother, wounded in the seat next to her. Could it be the same guy? There’s a lot of people being snatched away from certain doom in this series. Maybe someone grabbed him at the same time the Doctor grabbed her, and has deliberately set him in Clara’s path?
I’d argue that. The plan to miniaturize a team and put them into the Dalek wasn’t the Doctor’s idea - the soldiers already had the plan, they just didn’t have anyone qualified to do it. The soldiers were also sent along against his wishes, explicitly to kill him if he got up to anything funny. And the first guy to die, died for doing something stupid, again against the Doctor’s wishes. The second soldier who died deliberately sacrificed herself so the Doctor’s plan could succeed.
It’s also not entirely clear if the last soldier actually died, or not. The first guy is full on disintegrated - the second soldier screams, there’s a bright light, and then she’s in “heaven.” She could have been grabbed away at the last moment, the same way the Doctor did to Journey.