A Farewell to Ponds
Sep. 30th, 2012 01:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadydaveSo. "The Muppets Daleks Angels Take Manhattan". This episode felt really meh to me, and I couldn't figure out why: the writing was good, the acting was good, the Weeping Angels acted more like their original incarnation than in "Time of the Angels"/"Flesh and Stone", Amy and Rory left but didn't die... But something was missing.
Awesome.
Seriously, though: there was nothing Amy and Rory did remotely comparable to the epic greatness of rebooting the universe and the Doctor with the power of imagination, or guarding the Pandorica for 1900 years, or starting a mother-daughter secret agency in the pyramids of Giza to bring down the Silence, or punching Hitler in the face.
(Not that their sacrifices weren't cool. They just weren't AS cool -- and in Amy's case, nothing we hadn't seen before in "Amy's Choice".)
Without the bits of air-punching exhilaration, there was nothing to distract me from obsessively analyzing the plot. While the episode was still on. And it's really hard to handwave when you are making FISTS OF RAGE at the soulless manipulation of the plot (I HATE horror movie story arcs), so that definitely didn't help with the suspension of disbelief.
Honestly? It's Amy "If we're going to die, we're going to die looking like a Peruvian folk band" Pond and her superhero husband! A lack of awesome is practically out of character. I was already sad that they're gone, but I would be even more sad if the episode itself had shown all the amazingness we're going to miss with their departure.
Awesome.
Seriously, though: there was nothing Amy and Rory did remotely comparable to the epic greatness of rebooting the universe and the Doctor with the power of imagination, or guarding the Pandorica for 1900 years, or starting a mother-daughter secret agency in the pyramids of Giza to bring down the Silence, or punching Hitler in the face.
(Not that their sacrifices weren't cool. They just weren't AS cool -- and in Amy's case, nothing we hadn't seen before in "Amy's Choice".)
Without the bits of air-punching exhilaration, there was nothing to distract me from obsessively analyzing the plot. While the episode was still on. And it's really hard to handwave when you are making FISTS OF RAGE at the soulless manipulation of the plot (I HATE horror movie story arcs), so that definitely didn't help with the suspension of disbelief.
Honestly? It's Amy "If we're going to die, we're going to die looking like a Peruvian folk band" Pond and her superhero husband! A lack of awesome is practically out of character. I was already sad that they're gone, but I would be even more sad if the episode itself had shown all the amazingness we're going to miss with their departure.
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no subject
Date: 2012-10-01 12:35 am (UTC)I mean, I enjoyed the Rory/Amy love and also the acknowledgement of their daughter and son-in-law, but there were some distinct problems.
Namely, that neither the Doctor nor River realized that the only fixed thing at the end was that Rory and Amy ended up buried together in that graveyard (or heck, that their HEADSTONES ended up in that graveyard). That there was ABSOLUTELY NO REASON they couldn't visit in the interim, as long as they passed their later years in a manner that lead to that.
(the Doctor has a giant blind spot in this category; it is similiar to his issues in Water of Mars. HAVE SOME CREATIVITY MAN).
Therefore, I reject Moffat's canon and introduce my own, where Amy and Rory Pond reunite with the Doctor and continue travelling with him, have Mycroft and Sherlock either by futue infertility treatments and/or adoption, and have many exciting family Christmas dinners.
(we are also not going to dwell overmuch on on the "oh look we're saved/no we're not Carrie's hand is reaching up from the grave"
Or something)
no subject
Date: 2012-10-02 01:20 pm (UTC)Or something)
The problem with horror movie-type storylines is that they take away a lot of a character's agency, because they get stuck in "react" mode or pick up the idiot ball to increase the peril (RORY, WHY WOULD YOU JUST WANDER INTO CREEPY BUILDINGS?? AND WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR SENSIBLE FLASHLIGHT??). I mean, there's also a lot of running, which fits into DW's sensibilities perfectly, but at the expense of a character making choices and doing awesome stiff. WHICH IS NOT AN IDEAL CHOICE IF IT'S THEIR LAST CHANCE TO DO SO.