stunt_muppet

Bits and bobs from the week thus far:

1. Watched Team America: World Police on Saturday, which I'm not sure I was really ready for. I enjoyed it, but I also spent about 25% of the movie staring at the screen in mute horror, so make of that what you will.

Also movie-related: I may be hitting a movie this weekend, and to be honest I'd rather see Hellboy II than The Dark Knight. I'm well aware that The Dark Knight is supposed to be awesomecakes, a redefinition of the superhero movie, Heath Ledger's finest performance, et cetera, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it once I do see it, but it also looks to be a two-hour-long symphony in the key of DEEEEEATH. Hellboy II would actually be, you know, fun.

Also, not one but TWO reviewers have already spoiled me for the appearance of Two-Face in the movie. And these weren't online reviewers with clearly marked spoiler warnings that I ignored at my peril, either. These were actual legit newspaper reviewers, one of which alluded to Two-Face's presence in a bleedingly obvious way and the other of which just said outright that he appeared. Worse, both of them made said references in a way that made it ripely obvious just who was going to end up with those two faces.

Look, maybe every faithful comic-book reader already knows that Harvey Dent is Two-Face, but I didn't. I would've liked the surprise.

That said, it does kick up my anticipation a little wee bit more, because not only do we get Heath Ledger as the Joker, we get Aaron Eckhart as Two-Face? Awesome. All they need to do now is give Uma Thurman!Poison Ivy a proper movie!

Oooh. That's a thought. What would such villians as Ivy and Mr. Freeze and their ilk look like in Christopher Nolan's Dark!Batmanverse? Because I tell you, if Nolan decided to bring in The Animated Series' Clayface I don't think I'd be able to watch without crying.

Clayface gave me fucking NIGHTMARES. Shut up.

Tangent: I vote that, if this trend of 150-minute movies where every second contains something crucial to the plot continues, I cast my vote to reinstate intermissions at the movies. Because I don't want to wriggle there in abdomen-straining agony out of fear of missing the best part of the movie, that's why.

2. So I was going to finally cave and download "Yes" from Viva la Vida - yes, random-arse "Chinese Sleep Chant" and all. Only it turns out that, on iTunes, you have to download the entire album to get "Yes". It's not available as an individual track.

You keep just missing your chances, Coldplay.

But never fear! My iTunes allowance is not wasted, for I've discovered that the audio versions of the burninated Doctor Who serials are available as audiobooks in iTunes! Now it's just a matter of whether it's Power of the Daleks (I've got Evil of the Daleks already), The Highlanders, or The Web of Fear that I shall splurge on. Troughton on mah iPod, hurrah!

3. On a lark, I bought a fedora at Target yesterday. It was cheap, it was black, it was pinstriped, it was the only one left, and I've wanted a fedora for a long time.

Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to wear it to. I'm tempted to put on the Joe Cocker cover of "You Can Leave Your Hat On" and dance about in high heels and underwear, but then I remember that I live in a house with other people in it.

4. Ficcing still coming slowly, but I'm not nearly as depressed about it as I used to be. More apathetic than anything, really, which...isn't a good feeling either, but is better than being sad and self-pitying.

Of course, ficcing's sure to slow anyway, because I've got actual things to do at work again and, for the past week or so, I've had little to do at work and thus have been able to engage in desultory ficcing in my off hours. I may not have such spare time for a few days.

5. So I'm still tearing my hair out over that Three/Jo thing, which I should have anticipated, really, because I can't get inside any Doctor's head for very long on a good day and that's exactly what this requires. Anyway, part of my 'research' as such includes the last episode of Planet of the Spiders.

I...have conflicted feelings about Planet of the Spiders. I want to like it, since it's the last hurrah for Three and I don't want to dislike his last episode, but...no matter how much I try to think otherwise, I'm forced to admit that Planet is really one of the weaker regeneration stories, and it's only after picking at it on a meta-ish level that I start to like it (whereas a story like, say, Frontier in Space or The Silurians or The Mind of Evil makes me squeeful even if I don't examine it at all).

I am glad, however, that that spoiler about the "something" on Donna's back being a Metebilis III spider did not materialize, since I really don't need to see that in 2008 spit-and-polish CGI. *shudders*

The reason I examine the last episode specifically is because of the conversation that the Doctor has with Kan'po, where Kan'po tells him he has to put back the blue crystal he stole in The Green Death, even though doing so will kill him. Kan'po finally persuades the Doctor to go back to Metebilis III by asking him "what he most fears". The Doctor thinks this over and says he understands, then heads back to Metebilis III and faces the Great Spider.

Honestly, that sequence confuses me. What, precisely, is the Doctor supposed to be afraid of? Death (which seems a bit more plausible when you consider that he needed Cho-je's help to regenerate, implying that the radiation of Metebilis III might normally be enough to kill a Time Lord permanently, which doesn't make a great deal of sense, but whatever)? Returning to Metebilis III? Owning up to his actions (in which case there were way, way more significant junctures at which this could have come up)? Surrendering? Fecking enormous psychic spiders (hey, I'd be scared of 'em)? Nothing seems to jive with the one other glimpse we've got of what scares him (The Mind of Evil, natch).

But. But. If I think about it for a little bit longer, the imagery that the Keller Machine conjured up was mostly of helplessness, inevitability, and loss of control (meta'ed about at extreme length here). One could, if one wanted to, incorporate that into his return to Metebilis III. By the end of Planet of the Spiders, the Doctor's got himself into a situation that he can't solve, and the only way to fix anything is to die (by returning). Perhaps it's not the death itself that's significant, but the fact that there is no choice, no other way out. Perhaps facing fear, here, means facing and accepting inevitability - which is strange, given the series' continuous balance between interfering and not interfering with history, and what is and is not inevitable.

Or maybe, in a way, this all ties in with Three's overall arc, and with his exile? After all, Season 7 was one long failure on the Doctor's part to accept the limits imposed upon him (he's still referring to himself as a free agent in Inferno). And this Doctor does seem particularly persistent in finding another way, in seizing control of a situation, of jumping in and giving orders and if you would just listen to me we could all walk away from this sensibly. There's a sense of straining against, well, inevitability - against the idea that there's nothing he can do about a given situation.

And perhaps that's what the end of Planet of the Spiders is supposed to be about - letting go of that struggle, learning what you can and cannot change. Or, possibly, it's late and I'm not making any sense.

My laptop's battery is starting to go, and it's late, and I'm tired, so the other stuff I'd planned to talk about will have to wait for the morning. Good night to all.