Monsters of Television

“If you forget him, you’ll lose him forever.“

To be fair, this sort of thing happens in Rio, too.

This two parter is what I imagine a lot of the older (pre-relaunch) Doctor Who episodes played like. I say this though my knowledge of Who prior to the relaunch extends, essentially, to the very first episode (painful) and the 8th Doctor’s American movie (pretty bad in that mid-90s Fox sort of way).

But it still felt like an old episode. It could’ve been the heavy-handed message of xenophobia, seeing past differences, and then human beings screwing the entire thing up. I think that’s probably what it was. It was very classic sci-fi themes, with very little in variation on those themes.

Oh, and, you know, the ending of “Cold Blood.” That was different.

First off, it should be said that characters in Doctor Who shouldn’t be allowed to drill places. Bad things happen every time characters drill on this show. They stir up weird alien lifeforms or, you know, Satan. And then no one’s happy (especially if it’s Satan) (Yes, I really hated that episode.).

We're talking about xenophobia! MESSAGE!

But the episodes overall weren’t so much about the dangers of drilling (timely though the message may’ve been) as it was about seeing past your differences for the greater good, about being the best example of your race that you could possibly be. The episode hammers this home pretty heavily, and the only thing stopping Ambrose from not bringing an army down to the Silurian city is that she doesn’t have one (Restac has no such limitations). And while neither character has to deliver the “Were not so different, you and I” speech, the audience can pretty much deliver it themselves.

So, yes, the Silurian story was pretty by the numbers, complete with hope for the future in the little Elliot. What I did like about the Silurian plot in the end was that it wasn’t a fixed point in time, like the events from Waters of Mars. Here was a chance, as the Doctor noted, for Earth to completely change history. Clearly we know this won’t happen (we need the Silurians to still be villains!), but I like the show returns to these chronological tipping points every now and then, it gives the stories some more urgency than that might not otherwise have.

But let’s talk about dear, sweet Rory, because that’s ultimately what matters here. While I don’t think Rory has been a drag on the stories since he joined, he’s never been fully integrated into the mix (three’s a crowd on this show unless you’re a bisexual con man). On the one hand, I’m a bit annoyed with Rory’s death, as it seems largely unnecessary except to up the stakes of the cracks to a very personal level for Amy and for the audience (and we already killed Rory in “Amy’s Choice”). So while Gillan and Smith play the hell out of that last scene was Amy struggles not to forget Rory,it still feels kind of lessened by the fact that we’ve done this already.

On the other hand, allowing the crack to erase Rory from existence allowed me to kind of get a firmer grip on the nature of the crack that had been lacking up until now. It didn’t really click that it could potentially devour the entire history of the show, entire characters, entire events, erasing them forever. Feasibly, it makes one wonder: does it erase all the Doctor’s regenerations as well? Does he start from zero if they never existed in the first place? Exactly how many faces does River Song have in her little blue book?

As I discussed with Jeremy Mongeau when these episode aired in Britain (I’m watching ahead of the BBCA schedule, as is Jeremy, so be careful clicking there), the crack is incredibly meta-geeky thing to have as your arc: it’s an ever-encroaching retcon, and that’s a very exciting idea, to have the retcon be the danger of the season. It actually makes me interested in the overall scope of the crack, something I’ve been ambivalent about most of the season.

It, at the very least, has me excited to see what’s next about the crack’s role in the season.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• I’d be pleased as hell if Nasreen and Tony show up again. I was really grooving on Nasreen, and I think the Doctor was, too (they’re a bit closer in age, after all).
• Was I the only one thinking Reptites during “Cold Blood,” or are other people that nerdy as well? Reptile-like race that thinks humans are apes and want to control the planet themselves…? No one else? Really? Okay.