For some reason, it took me forever to finish this, but the ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
legsofsciencere-watch of Spearhead gave me the incentive I needed.
I most certainly did not get repeatedly distracted by Inferno and The Mind of Evil. I don't know what you're talking about.
So, without further ado, collected thoughts on Spearhead from Space, wherein I lavish love on Liz and the Brigadier.
Next up on the meta-ing list: The Mind of Evil, wherein I flail over the Doctor and the Master, really really overanalyze Three (to make up for my relatively scant analysis here), cheer for Jo, and possibly use even more dashes, semicolons, and parenthesis than I just did.
Random note of geekery: I really, really, really want to do Doctor Who cosplay now, for some reason. I think, with the judicious use of hair pins and duct tape, I could get away with being Five - I mean, plenty of women cosplay as Ten, and no one says anything about that. What I'd really like to do is gather a group of nine friends and somehow cosplay as ALL the Doctors, though. Not sure how we'd do that, but wouldn't it be awesome? We could be in character and everything!
< /geekery>
legsofsciencere-watch of Spearhead gave me the incentive I needed. I most certainly did not get repeatedly distracted by Inferno and The Mind of Evil. I don't know what you're talking about.
So, without further ado, collected thoughts on Spearhead from Space, wherein I lavish love on Liz and the Brigadier.
-----
I’m going to start saying that to people when they wake me up in the morning. Hee.
Anyway, I enjoyed this serial thoroughly. It’s got plenty of humor (such as the aforesaid expression), excellent banter between the Brigadier, Liz, and the Doctor, and quite a few tempting bits of characterization for all involved.
A few parts of the serial did feel a little bit slow-moving to me, such as when the UNIT personnel are hunting for the ‘meteorite’ – I get why it had to take so long, I really do, but occasionally I just wanted them to find it already so the plot could move along. As with “Axos”, though, things pick up once all the exposition’s done and the Doctor finds his way back to the UNIT HQ, and the latter half of the story moves along nicely.
Actually, if I may film-geek at you for a moment, what I really liked about this serial was the scene transitions – many of them are handled very smoothly, following the old cinematic adage of “come [into a scene] late, leave early” and thus minimizing any extraneous activity. One of particular note: In the second episode, when one of the UNIT personnel (whose name I don’t remember) shows the Brig a picture of Channing, he remarks that there was “something odd about their faces” – referring to the people who abducted the Doctor. The scene then suddenly cuts to the plastic factory, and the moulds for the plastic doll faces. In effect, the scene transition tells us what’s wrong with them and who they are exactly – but you might not notice unless you already knew who the monsters were for this serial. Very subtle cue right there.
Speaking of the Autons, I thought they were effective enough as monsters, but it was Channing that I found the creepiest bit of the whole serial. Sallow-skinned, dead calm, didn’t seem to blink nearly enough – all appropriate considering what he turned out to be. On second viewing he almost seems to have a plastic, artificial sheen to his skin, though I’ve no idea if that’s intentional. Best part is, he seems to be ever-present – he’s constantly watching from a doorway, or behind a glass wall. He never goes away, which means the Autons are never far behind him.
Now, to move on to the main characters…
First off, Liz Shaw is made of awesome. I love how sarcastic and dry she is with the Brig at the beginning, and how amused she seems at his totally straight-faced statements about alien invasions. And then she goes and mocks him right to his face in front of General Scobie – “It’s not really a police box. It’s a space ship.” And then, of course, “You were about to open it?” “Yes.” “I think you should; there might be a policeman locked inside.” Snerk.
Noteworthy: Liz makes no secret of how much she doesn’t want to be there, but she saves her sharpest disdain for the police box and the Doctor, whenever the Brigadier mentions him but before he actually shows up. The meteorite shell, while puzzling, is at least actual and real and in front of her at this moment, but she’s got no reason to believe that the TARDIS is anything other than a broken old police box.
Which is why I’m mildly puzzled that she gets along with the Doctor as well as she does when he finally appears. More to the point, when he starts claiming that he has sophisticated scientific equipment hidden away in the TARDIS, she doesn’t assume he’s full of it the way she does with the Brig. I’d also make the point that he’s way more condescending to her than the Brig ever was (I didn’t stop to count the number of times he said something along the lines of “It’d take too long to explain” or “you wouldn’t understand”). What’s so different about him?
Well, on the first point, perhaps it’s because, when she meets the Doctor, her skepticism is allayed, just a bit. The Brig’s already mentioned the Doctor, and even though he doesn’t seem to recognize the man in the hospital as the Doctor, all the medical data indicates that he isn’t human. She’s seen just a hint that it might not all be science fiction. She’s not entirely convinced, not yet, but she believes enough to work with the Doctor and steal the TARDIS key for him.
Of course, I like to think the moment that her skepticism really dies is not when she first sees the Auton, but when the TARDIS starts emitting smoke and strange grinding noises. Police boxes aren’t supposed to do that. :)
On the second point…yeah, that I can’t answer. Maybe she just doesn’t take it personally, since he talks down to everyone? I don’t know.
Really, I spent the whole serial in awe of how competent and collected Liz was. She really seemed like a scientist and a professional, not a cute female sidekick who knew something about science. She seemed startled by the Autons and the Nestene Consciousness (who wouldn’t be?), but she also kept her head about her and handled the situations as though she’d been doing so for years. And she rescued the Doctor, which always equals bonus points.
Gratuitous Nu Who Connection: Liz Shaw = spiritual precursor to Martha Jones without the neediness? Also, Martha/Liz = completely plausible given the “Blink” timeline and someone needs to write it like yesterday, y/y?
Moving on, I rather like the Brigadier. In fact, I rather like him a lot. He left very little impression on me in “Axos”, since, as I said, he got to do very little in that serial except be under arrest, but he was excellent here, sardonic and authoritative and a lovely foil for both Liz and the Doctor. When Liz first arrives at UNIT, he essentially gets to play the same role that the Doctor does later – a slightly smug Mulder to her unconvinced Scully (she says like she has any idea what the archetypal X-Files relationship dynamic was like). There’s something very intriguing about how pleased he looks with himself when he’s informing Liz that yes, actually, aliens are real, and they have invaded Earth, and I am most certainly not making this up, Miss Shaw. It’s the one time in the episode that he gets to hold all the cards, know all the information, in effect have the upper hand.
What I like most about him, though, is how nonchalant he is. Nothing seems to surprise him anymore, even the Doctor’s completely different appearance; once he gets it through his head that it’s the same man (sort of) that he’s talking to he spends very little time dwelling on the how or why. Not that I’d expect him to be anything different – you hardly ascend the ranks of the quasi-military UN organization by being panicky – but it sort of sets the tone for the Earth-bound UNIT stories, and is a nice change from the Companion as Audience Stand-In (not that I don’t like the Audience Stand-In, mind you, but the Three-Liz-Brig serials were a whole era of subverting that, and I love ‘em for it).
The Doctor and the Brigadier’s relationship also gets off to an interesting start here, and at some point I really am going to watch these serials in some sort of chronological order so I can see it develop properly and not just stitch it together from what I remember of later serials. (In fact, if I was really hardcore, I would’ve watched The Invasion first and started with Two and the Brig, and watched how it changed from there. Actually, The Invasion might have just been bumped up a notch on my to-watch list. After The Dalek Invasion of Earth and The Silurians and Pyramids of Mars, of course, since I need those for ficcing purposes.) The Brig clearly respects the Doctor’s scientific expertise, but at the same time he’s willing to effectively keep him on a leash if that’s what it takes to get his help, not trusting him to help of his own accord – note that he won’t turn over the TARDIS key. And why should he? The Doctor makes it quite clear that he’s leaving as soon as he can, that he’s not particularly attached to UNIT or Earth or any of them. Part of which, as I said, might be aversion reaction to the fact that he has to be there, but still.
Which brings me to the Doctor, because I win at segues like that.
First off, the daring wheelchair escape, the request for a roadster, communicating with one’s eyebrows, and disguising oneself from hospital personnel by stripping naked and singing in front of them rank very highly on the list of Most Lulz This Series Have Yet Brought Me. Hee.
Second, I’ve already meta-d about my first impressions of Three, so I don’t suppose there’s much left to say here at the beginning – later serials provide me with a bit more opportunity for commentary. I did find a few of his initial lines intriguing, notably when the Brigadier hands him the mirror: “Oh, this isn’t me at all…” Hmm – doesn’t the Doctor normally know he’s regenerated? I suppose a viewing of The War Games is also in order, so as to clarify this point. The line does, however, lend further credence to the idea that, due to the forced nature of his regeneration, the Doctor might not think of this new body as ‘himself’ at first. (Also, eponymous_rose? Thank you so very much for pointing me to that fic.)
eponymous_rose? Thank you so very much for pointing me to that fic.)Also of note is how quickly he gets along with Liz, practically ‘adopting’ her as a companion from their first scene together. Not surprising; the first time they interact, it’s over an examination of the Nestene’s meteorite shell, which provides the Doctor with a puzzle to solve – not as good as exploring time and space, true, but something to pique his curiosity at least. Liz, in a way, becomes tied to/associated with what few adventures his prison can still offer him, while the Brig and UNIT become tied to the exile itself – stand-ins that he reacts to accordingly. (Although I strongly suspect that’s applying a too-human analysis to him; it’s obviously not that simple, but it does give their respective relationships a starting ground, at least.) Also, their conversation over the meteorite shell allows the Doctor to witness how sparklingly brilliant Liz is, thus finding in her a peer and a source of intellectual connection.
After he convinces her to steal the TARDIS key, of course. I’m of the opinion that she didn’t for a second buy his “I left my highly complicated molecular-analysis-doodad in my spaceship” story; she stole the TARDIS key because she wanted to know if the thing really was a spaceship, and the Doctor’s giving her the opportunity to find out. After all, the Doctor turned out to be real. Maybe the teleporting police box is too. But that’s just my personal theory. :)
-----Next up on the meta-ing list: The Mind of Evil, wherein I flail over the Doctor and the Master, really really overanalyze Three (to make up for my relatively scant analysis here), cheer for Jo, and possibly use even more dashes, semicolons, and parenthesis than I just did.
Random note of geekery: I really, really, really want to do Doctor Who cosplay now, for some reason. I think, with the judicious use of hair pins and duct tape, I could get away with being Five - I mean, plenty of women cosplay as Ten, and no one says anything about that. What I'd really like to do is gather a group of nine friends and somehow cosplay as ALL the Doctors, though. Not sure how we'd do that, but wouldn't it be awesome? We could be in character and everything!
< /geekery>
geeky
(no subject)
My memories from Spearhead are clouded in how completely insane Three was. "Unhand me madam" was a joy. That is totally the best Auton episode for showcasing their rather sharp eerie qualities. And I was totally surprised when I heard people talking about how Liz saved the world in this episode, because I was way distracted by the Doctor's entanglement in tentacle porn. (How does a disembodied consciousness have tentacles, again?)
I love Mind of Evil. My first arc and I keep pimping it. Just made somebody else watch it as their first classic arc, too. It was really surprisingly beautifully put together for a show I kept hearing was campy and cheap and basically foolish (which I've come to disagree with pretty thoroughly).
(no subject)
This episode was just full of lulz on Three's part - and yet it still managed to be quite creepy when it needed to be. I think the shifts in tone were negotiated very well in Spearhead, which is one of the reasons I loved it so much.
How does a disembodied consciousness have tentacles, again?
No idea. Pretty sure they just did that for the tentacle porn. (I've noticed that almost every Three serial I've seen has involved him being tied up or chained up or handcuffed or something. I do not believe this to be a coincidence.)
I kind of wish I'd started with Mind of Evil, actually. The prison setting and the fact that the 'alien' is mechanical really help to dispel any camp atmosphere. Since I've got two of my friends hooked on Four and ready to explore a few other Doctors, it's a toss-up between Spearhead and Mind of Evil for their first Three serial.
(no subject)
(no subject)
Thank you for reminding me, though. I meant to link to this on