Snow and Doctor Who Selective Rewatch

[amberfocus]

Sometimes I feel like fall/winter is one big cold interspersed with a day or two here or there of actually feeling well.  My mind has pretty much shut down this week, although there have been brief moments of clarity where I did some writing.  LoF is squeaking along slowly but surely.  I've got 3 fics I need to beta but honestly every time I even think about it my mind goes, "Focus?  What focus?"  So hopefully I'll get around to it.  If any of you want to send them to other people I won't be offended.  I'm just so out of it.

It snowed Friday night.  We had about eight inches by Saturday morning.  Now it's mostly just cold and ice with snow on top.  We were pretty much snowed in all weekend because they didn't plow our road until about 4:00 p.m. today.  I went out and got snow boots for T.  He walks home from school so he definitely needs them.  Also waterproof gloves and a hat.

There is just about nothing funnier than watching chickens walk in snow for the first time.  It was hilarious.  The general consensus is that they don't like it.  We scattered some hay on the surface of the snow and they seemed to like that better, but spent most of the weekend in the coop.  The ducks didn't mind it, as long as the ice was broken in their little pond, they were happy.

We spent a lot of time in front of the tube since we were snowed in and it was so cold outside.  We watched all of the kick ass Martha episodes of DW, which means Human Nature/Family of Blood and Utopia/Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords.  Then we watched End of Time parts one and two (Martha was so, so pretty in that ending scene with Mickey and oh, squee that moment with Rose!) and then the first seven episodes of season Five.  Rose had only seen the first two and T had only seen the first one.  You know what?  I really, really loved season five this time.  Even the Skittle Daleks episode (which was still bad science wise and history wise, but it was way more fun watching it with my children than on my own.  Part of that might have been my daughter's comments.) was enjoyable.

I think it's because I'm so far away from my expectations now.  When it first came out I had such high hopes and such eagerness for it to finally be on the air, and of course a lot of that was disappointed, but it was such a fun romp and I saw so many subtle nuances in it that I missed last time.  There are far, far more allusions to Rose and Donna than I ever saw last time around and even one that I noticed to Martha.  And there is a surprising amount of subtlety to Matt Smith's acting that I didn't notice before, either.  I'm seeing a lot more hidden pain in the Doctor.  If you really watch his eyes and these micro expressions he makes, you see it.

I'm not nearly as annoyed by the big crack either.  It's still omnipresent and in your face, but because I've seen it all play out I don't mind it so much.  I did notice some things referred to in End of Time that came to pass in season five, especially the weeping angels of old reference.  River continues to grow on me.  I find myself falling in love with Amy again.  She's smart (maybe a little unbelievably sometimes) and quick and clever and that's good, usually.  I fell out of love with her towards the middle of the season before, but I'm seeing a lot of little things in her character that I missed before.  Not massive character development, mind you, but knowing how the season ends I am firmly convinced now that that was on purpose.  And Rory, of course, is love and always will be.  We're going to watch the rest of it over the Thanksgiving holidays and I'm actually anticipating it, though I'm not sure if anything will overcome my dislike of the Silurian episodes.

The kids have dentist appointments tomorrow, so that's going to be one big two hour block of boring.  I need to remember to take a book.  I've got some Doctor Who books I've never read so I'll grab one of those.   My son's conference is Tuesday.  I hope they've plowed the parking lot.  I don't want to try to walk two blocks to his school in the ice when I've got a bum knee.  It's doing fine, but if I do anything to twist it or torque it or fall down, who knows what will happen?  They don't expect it to start melting here until Wednesday with rain on Thanksgiving.  Which reminds me, I need to take the turkey out of the freezer.  Better go do that now.  Hope everyone's weekend was nice.

Comments

[kilodalton]

There are far, far more allusions to Rose and Donna than I ever saw last time around and even one that I noticed to Martha.

Like what? =) I know about the Rose pic in "The Lodger" but that's it. Please share, I really really dislike s5 and actively need reasons to stop hatin' on Moffat XD

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

I watched seven episodes in a row with a fever. I don't have specifics I can point to. It was just little moments where something was said and you'd go, "Oh, he's thinking of Rose, there. Or Donna." And once it brought Martha to mind. Lots of little things I didn't notice the first time.

[juliet316]

Hope you get your brain back. I hate it when the brain just shuts down on account of illness.

I do like S5 a bit more upon rewatch (watched the two BBCA marathons last week). It'll never be my favorite season and I still miss Ten terribly, But there is a bit more too it upon rewatch. Matt Smith, towards the end of S5 started to define his Doctor a bit, so hopefully that will continue in S6 and he won't seem so much like Ten - lite to me. I love Amy/Rory and their ultimate cuteness. Amy becomes a lot more defined to me when she's with Rory. And seeing River become absolutely badass is always fun. Speaking of which, have you seen the Christmas Special trailer yet? I won't say anything else if you haven't.

If you have one, grab a small notebook as well, so that if you get any ideas in the waiting room, you can jot them down and not forget them. That's what I've done when I've had to do the waiting room thing.

Have a good Thanksgiving!

[londoca.livejournal.com]

Season 5 was a complicatef plot that was a hard do for Moffatt's first season especially because everyone was missing 10 so much. I see 11 has a tired and guarded version of the Doctor. Yes his the mad man in the box but he's not going to feel again partialky because it hurts too much and partially because he already gave his hearts away. How he channelling his romantic nature is he cant bare to see any couple not work. He is trying so hard to fix them all. If you have noticed he keeps playing matchmaker and not just with Amy and Rory. Im not too sure about what River is because neither is he. And Amy was deliberately crippled from character grow as you said but Moffat was able to write for her better than the rest of the authors except for the Vincent episode.

Take some time to get you head back. Youve had a hard injury and a hard time. Basically what your muse is tell you is you need dwntime to recover. It will be back. Just enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas. Your muse will be back in the New Ayear.

[got_swagger]

I adored S5, probably because it IS so different from S1-S4. Also? Eleven. And Rory. And Star Whales. For realsies.

Personally (and YMMV for sure), what I found with Eleven (and Series 5) in general, isn't that he lacks emotional range, but that his ways of expressing his emotions can be far more subtle than we were used to from Nine and Ten. Eleven is closer to Nine in his emotions (he broods well, doesn't go emo) and Matt plays it very daringly, in a way. A friend of mine here on LJ said it well "...Eleven's emotions are usually so subdued that it's really easy to miss if you're not careful or are made of stone. They show up in a twitch of his jaw or in teary eyes... As big and theatrical as Eleven can be, his emotions play really small, and you feel like you're just seeing the tip of the iceberg and it's just... sad, or frightening, or both." I kind of find that an excellent viewpoint. Matt Smith can play his emotions very close to his chest, and it's that quality that just has me on the edge of my seat when he's on screen, because I'm always waiting to see what he's going to do next because I just don't know. There's just this exciting element to Eleven and Matt Smith for me that I can't really define.

Moffat does tend to focus on plot rather than characters (who RTD excelled at), but when he does go for the emotional angle, it is pretty subdued (Amy's tears in VatD, TPO, TBB; Eleven's defeat in TPO & TBB), but not really less effective. RTD, on the other hand, tended to rip your soul out, destroy it, then hug you and let you know it would kind of be okay and if the plot was sorta coherent, a monster got destroyed and the earth saved, yippee. I see the emotion there in all the writing, but the way the showrunners bring it across is completely different. (That said, I owe RTD my soul for Doctor/Rose and Donna and tend to prefer him over Moffat.)

I'm incredibly excited for S6 and what it will bring. Especially moar Rory. Because we need Rory in our lives. A lot. And because I'm hoping for another brilliant moment like this:

[stillbrainfried.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I hope you get better soon.

I definitely can relate to the 'Help, I can't focus on anything', mostly because I've got too much to do to concentrate on anything properly.

It's threatening to snow here as well this week (in Germany, in November, just 400m above sea level). Where is global warming when you need it? Oh, I know: It'll just wait for Christmas to show up, like it did in the last couple of years ;)