Maureen Flynn - Author
Ah, Mark Gatiss. What variable episodes you write. I always like his period piece Who episodes best, and back in the day I loathed The Idiot’s Lantern. Maybe it was just that the previous two-parter was so, so terrible, but this time around I didn’t…
Oh, man. Warning to all: I loved this two-parter as a teen when the show first aired, but oh my how the suck fairy visited this two-parter in Ben’s and my re-watch. I was so disappointed by how much I disliked this. On the plus…
The second Moffat story for New Who! In which all of his later series themes are laid out for us. Plus bonus The Time Traveller’s Wife riff, a great historical fiction revisionist slant on Madame de Pompadour and the chick who played Beth in Spooks. What’s not to love?
Image by Tom Newsom (I think).
The pre-title sequence
Maureen: Wow this episode is visually beautiful. Versailles, France, is wonderfully brought to life and we’re back into horror fairy story territory with Reinette telling us her clock on the mantle is broken as she calls for help from The Doctor.
Ben: This episode really opens with a bang doesn’t it! We get screams, panic, talk of love, duty, and a beautiful woman pleading for The Doctor to come and save the day! You gotta hand it to him, Moffat sure knows how to write an intro.
Maureen: Yes, I’ve always admired Moffat for his combination of rug-pulling against expectation and intriguing hooks to his episode openings.
The Companion/s
Ben: Rose and Mickey are definitely on the backburner this episode, but you can really see the formings of Rory and Amy in their pairing. Or at least, Rose and Mickey gave me strong Amy and Rory vibes.
Maureen: I’ll talk about this again later, but I definitely see The Girl in the Fireplace as Moffat’s thesis for his entire approach to New Who. Having said that, I didn’t get an Amy/Rory vibe from Rose/Mickey so much as I got a Reinette being the precurser to Amy vibe. Reinette waits many times for The Doctor, just as Amy did with, ‘you said five minutes.’ I wonder if anyone has written the Reinette/Amy fan fic. I’m there! There are elements of River Song’s relationship with The Doctor in Reinette too. Both pairings love is doomed to tragedy. And the fairy story visuals are here too. But back to Ben …
Ben: I love Rose’s makeup and hair this episode.
Maureen: I liked Rose and Mickey toting guns around.
Ben: I also loved Mickey’s shock that the TARDIS can even translate French.
Maureen: I love Mickey’s TARDIS joy.
Mickey: I got a spaceship on my first go.
Rose: Mickey Smith. Meet the universe.
Ben: Rose and Mickey are really good together, quietly exploring the ship, even if they do find some pretty horrible facts out. And Rose get’s to do something of substance! Her scene with Reinette was particularly sweet. If anyone can relate to what Reinette is going through, it’s Rose.
Reinette: I’m very afraid, but you and I both know Rose … The Doctor is worth the monsters.
Maureen: I liked that we got a Series One Rose this time around too who knows to ask the pertinent question/s. This time, why the aliens want Reinette in particular.
Ben: Onwards to Reinette who really is at this episode’s heart as a companion who never was. The inquisitive child was a great way to introduce this character, in my opinion. Kids and the Doctor in general do well. They can accept things that shouldn’t be much better than adults can. The child actress playing her did a pretty good job, and was suitably terrified at the monster The Doctor found under her bed.
Maureen: Talk about an The Eleventh Hour parallel. Instead of a crack in a child’s wall, it’s a clockwork creature.
Ben: Yep, next time we meet Reinette she’s an adult.
Maureen: Yep, just like Amy …
Ben: And boy does she know how to sweep a Doctor off her feet. What a brain she has too! You can practically see the sparks flying between the two as she steals a kiss from The Doctor. And then we find out her true identity! Madame de Pompadour, future Mistress to the King of France and all around overachiever. It’s hard to imagine who would be the more formidable in that pairing.
Maureen: I’d love some Big Finish spin-off, but what if Reinette met River Song? Also, I googled Madame de Pompadour after viewing this episode and what an interesting woman in real life!
Ben: We get to see snippets of Reinette’s life like her strolling through some magnificent gardens and such. Then, the clockwork robots made another appearance, and we get some more information: the clockwork robots need her, specifically her 37 year old brain, to repair their ship. The Doctor looks through her memories to try and find the answer, and in doing so opens the door for Reinette to look through The Doctor’s memories.
Reinette: Such a lonely boy. Lonely then and lonely now. Dance with me … Doctor who? It’s more than just a secret.
Maureen: I may have killed this episode a little by re-watching it so very much, but it has some beautiful scenes and quotes and the one you mention Ben, was definitely one of them. The scene also reveals another Moffat interest, the real identity of The Doctor and the metaphor of his name. It became a central theme in Series Six and Seven under Moffat. I also loved the throwback to Series One and The Doctor Dances with:
Ten: What did you see?
Reinette: That there comes a time, Time Lord, when every little boy must learn to dance.
I don’t think she was talking just dancing, either!
Ben: At the final clockwork confrontation, Reinette is as fiery as ever, commanding silence of her audience.
Reinette (to the crowd of panicking noblemen and women): Kindly remember that this is Versailles and we are French.
The Doctor saves the day magnificently, but then Reinette goes and saves The Doctor! What an excellent twist.
Maureen: Yes. There was such quiet beauty in Reinette when she tells Ten:
Reinette: So here you are. My lonely angel. Stuck on the slow path with me.
Even now she knows he has a way out and she loves him too much to stop him from going.
Ben: She really is his equal, which makes me all the sadder that in the end she dies before getting to travel with The Doctor. Her final letter absolutely ripped my heart out. I’m not used to this level of tragedy from Doctor Who!
Maureen: Yes, even having viewed this episode many a time, I still felt emotional. *I’m not crying, it’s raining on my face*. And the Rose/Ten exchange killed me too.
Rose: You all right?
Ten: I’m always all right.
What a terribly sad lie!
The Doctor
Ben: The Doctor really gets into things quickly this episode! General Doctoring is dispensed with in the first few minutes, consoles are poked at and the scene is set on a spaceship AND on Versailles. And then appears our Girl in the Fireplace! I actually looked up the reference about August of 1727 and there’s nothing of significance that happened, that we know of at least. Maybe it really was just awful weather that month. Then we get to the first amazingly creepy scene of the episode, when the Doctor notices the ticking noise that shouldn’t be. This scene really reminded me of a scene or two with Mr Are You My Mummy back in season one and is really scary stuff. I loved the quick exchange he and Reinette had before the end of the scene. She might have nightmares with monsters in them, but monsters have nightmares with him in them. That’s the kind of imaginary friend you want as a 7 year old.
Maureen: I also found The Doctor’s response to the clockwork creature interesting. He acknowledges its alien beauty even as some of Nine’s anger shines through, showing that Moffat at least, hasn’t forgotten about The Doctor’s bitter past.
Ten: You’re beautiful. I mean it. You’re gorgeous. It would be a crime to dissemble you, but that won’t stop me.
And then I just loved the scene after The Doctor and Reinette ‘danced’ where Rose and Mickey are surrounded by clockwork aliens with Rose about to get sliced up and a drunk Doctor turns up going on about inventing banana daiquiris early and defeating the clockwork alien by pouring wine into its parts. This version of Ten is one I can really get behind!
Ben: It’s not often the Doctor encounters someone who can hold their own against him and really sweep him off his feet in that way. The measures The Doctor goes to to save Reinette’s life are, I think, a testament to the feelings The Doctor has for her, even though he’s only known her for half an hour. Plus his smarmy “oh yeah? Well I’m the lord of Time” response when introduced to the King of France said a lot. Anywho, breaking the time window was a hell of a way to defeat the clockwork robots, but it came at a cost – there’s no way back. Plus, Rose and Mickey are stuck on the ship, unable to fly the TARDIS without him. Whoops.
Maureen: I personally found Ten riding a horse through a wall into the royal court of Versailles a bit full on, but having said that, it was a bombastic and brash moment that had probably been earnt by the quality of the rest of the episode. I loved The Doctor’s manic expressions as he realised Reinette’s fireplace could return him to his TARDIS and it’s telling that he’d forgotten all about his relationship with Rose in the presence of Reinette.
Ten: Pick a star. Any star.
Alas, he came back for Reinette too late. Time was the boss of him and he’d just missed her death carriage. Ten’s expression as he read Reinette’s letter was truly sad. All of that guilt and loneliness and love was locked up tight, and not even Rose could get Ten to confide in her of his secret pain.
The Alien of the Week
Ben: Clockwork robots! What an excellent concept. The French costumes just add to their terror, quite frankly. And then we get to the real horror when we discover the ship The Doctor and his crew are on is running on human body parts mixed with machinery! A human eye in a surveillance camera, a human heart in the midst of some circuitry. And then the central mystery: why has this spaceship 3000 years in the future punched so many holes in space and time to follow the life of Madame de Pompadour? The grand reveal? The spaceship was damaged, these clockwork robots are repairbots and they used the crew to repair the ship. And Reinette is the last part!
Maureen: In RTD era Who, Moffat doesn’t do straight evil villains. In his Series One two-parter, the aliens were also repairbots of a kind, albeit little microbes that healed all they came in contact with even if their understanding of what was and wasn’t healthy was impaired. Similarly, the clockwork aliens are just trying to make sure their spaceship continues on. Programmed to repair, when they ran out of parts they had to make do with what materials they had available to them … too bad that was their human crew.
Ben: The clockwork aliens meet something of an ignoble end, separated from their ship with no way to wind up their gears again. Scary as they were, it’s hard not to feel sorry for them in the end. And that final moment of the episode when the camera zooms out and you see the name of the ship? The Madame de Pompadour? Why, that’s the cherry on the top of this episode. In the end, just as the clockwork robots had claimed all along, Reinette and the robots were indeed linked.
Maureen: Yes, that was such a clever touch! The ship was named Madame de Pompadour so for fix-it alien types, it made sense that they thought Reinette’s brain could re-boot the ship.
Final Thoughts
Ben: This episode was both wondrous and wondrously sad by the end. Moffat really is incomparable in writing these standalone episodes. This combination of whimsy and horror with a little dash of steampunk is exactly the kind of episode I love from Doctor Who. It’s about as close to a perfect episode as you can get, in my opinion. I’m giving it a 10/10.
Maureen: I’ve re-watched this episode more times than I can count and as a result, its lustre has worn off a little over time. It’s probably my least favourite Moffat episode of RTD era Who. Which given how good his other episodes are, isn’t saying much. I kept teetering between a 9 and a 10, but if I’m honest, this is a pretty wonderful Who episode and the first time someone saw it, I can really see how they’d be blown away. I’m sitting with 10/10 inky stars for now.
YAY!!! THE SARAH-JANE SMITH MEETS BUFFY GILES EPISODE. IN A SCHOOL. I wonder where Clara and Class got it from? Also, K9. Oh, and Mickey and Rose are somewhere in the episode. Don’t forget them! The Pre-title Sequence Ben: It’s what’s his face from BBC…
Ah yes. The episode where Torchwood begins. Where Rose spends an episode trying to get Queen Victoria to say she is not amused. Where there’s werewolves and it’s 2006 when the Twilight Saga is huge! Bring it, baby! The Pre-Title Sequence Ben: This was a…
Let us launch into the new Doctor’s Series proper with a return of an old foe, an old friend and some ‘interesting’ fan fic style script shenanigans. Again, this is one of those episodes I’ve always remembered from high school. I didn’t like it then and I like it even less now so if you want a love fest review, this post may not be for you. Don’t say I haven’t warned you dear reader choosing to read on…
Can you sense the fan fic yet?
The Pre-Title Sequence
Maureen: Ok, Ok, I may be a softie, but I never get bored of a new Doctor and companions excitement as they navigate the universe. Take this exchange:
Rose: Where are we going?
Ten: Where we’ve never ever been.
Stop right there, RTD. No further hook needed.
Ben: I liked that Mickey and Jackie got a proper goodbye from Rose in this opening! None of this vanishing for a year business again. Although Mickey is back on the loving Rose bandwagon, despite his revelation last season that Rose was bad for him.
Maureen: Ah Mickey. What a wasted companion. I’m so glad Moffat essentially fix it fic’d Mickey through Rory! I found it terribly sad that Jackie walked away from The TARDIS before Mickey did. And I know that this isn’t what RTD intended, but the shot of Ten and Rose in the TARDIS with big grins and The Doctor caressing his console made me more sad rather than exultant.
The Companion
Ben: ‘Cassandra Rose’ is the best incarnation of Rose in my opinion, but only because of Billie’s acting. The Rose at the start of the episode was just horribly sappy and making love heart eyes at the Doctor. Her makeup was full on, and her outfit was pretty booby too, definite fanfic material.
Maureen: I don’t think that the overbearing make-up and the sexy clothing is a problem. I think the issue is that RTD was trying to objectify Rose in this story line. He wanted her to be noticed as an object of lust. I mean, why else have the wet shower scene (which if you are still in doubt about the intention of this scene, also featured bonus wind behind Rose’s billowing hair like she was in a shampoo ad)? But while Rose can be an object of lust, she can’t be overtly sexual, because that detracts from her as the personification of the perfect woman Mary Sue. Perfect women are young virgins, remember? They aren’t allowed to feel sexy and wield that sexuality. Hence why so many people complained about Amy Pond. How dare a companion wear short skirts? (But this is a rant for another post… see my Doctor Who and feminism essays if you’re interested). Anyway, from the episode’s opening where The Doctor and Rose lie in apple grass, I got the impression RTD was trying too hard to force Ten/Rose down the viewer’s throats.
Ben: Really, the whole body-swapping storyline with Cassandra was pretty silly.
Maureen: Come on, it show cased some great acting from both Billie Piper and Zoe Wanamaker, but you have a point. Really the body-swapping was just another excuse to paint Rose for the viewer as someone worthy of earning The Doctor’s love. ‘Cassandra Rose’ even unbuttons Rose’s shirt to showcase Billie’s breasts to the viewer as much as to The Doctor. This actually made me start to feel uncomfortable in terms of the level of male gaze happening on screen.
Ben: Rose was surprisingly mean to Cassandra in their first meeting! I guess considering their prior encounter that makes sense.
Maureen: Yeah, but what is with the trend of Rose being bitchy to any other woman The Doctor comes across? This too is starting to make me uncomfortable. I get Rose is an immature teen, but fuck, she is really needy and jealous and yet the show still paints her as a perfect woman. Just… yuck.
The Doctor
Ben: The Doctor was, I guess, in standard Doctor form this episode? Although I’m not liking how preachy this one is. I know Nine had his moments too, but he was always banging on about how humanity can be so much better than it is. Ten is just holier-than-thou.
Maureen: It’s so weird. Sometimes Ten is great; full of wild zanyness and mad cap schemes (as in most of The Christmas Invasion) and other times he’s this annoying, sanctimonious, mansplainy brat. He was the latter this episode and more’s the pity.
Ben: The scenes with the Duke of Manhattan were pretty funny though, with his overwrought walking disclaimer of an assistant interacting with Ten. And then the foreshadowing with the Face of Boe – that he’ll impart a great secret to The Doctor at the moment of his death was intriguing. But that all ended rather disappointingly too. Boe was literally there to be foreshadow-y. Boo.
But as soon as The Doctor stops having fun wandering around and figures out The Sisters of Plentitude’s plan he gets preachy. This is the same Doctor I hated in The Christmas Invasion, who didn’t like what Harriet Jones did to protect the Earth and punished her for it.
Maureen: I couldn’t agree with you more, Ben! My note on the big reveal scene is ‘ah. Sanctimonious Doctor returns to mansplain to cat lady alien.’ That’s not to say The Sisters of Plentitude were necessarily right to create lab rat humans, but I feel like in reality, the situation was far more nuanced than The Doctor wanted to believe. I felt RTD also copped out badly by scripting that the ‘lab rats’ could understand what had been done to them. Would The Doctor still have been the big hero if they hadn’t understood a thing? Let’s move on…
Ben: Just like with Rose, Cassandra taking over The Doctor’s body was pure fanfic material. Suddenly the Doctor is all slim and foxy and flirting the house down.
Maureen: Ha! I loved the ‘oh baby. I’m beating out a samba,’ line. My note on the line was, ‘how very fifty shades of grey.’
Ben: And then we get to the really, truly awful resolution to the plague-ridden humans. The Doctor soaks himself with intravenous cures for every disease in the galaxy, and somehow through the magic of touch, the lab rat humans manage to spread these cures among themselves without using intravenous methods? At least The Doctor gets to make an emotional speech about saving the day and creating new life and whatnot. Hooray for him.
Maureen: I love the whole intravenous meds thing. I mean how easy would that plot-hole have been to fix? Delete the word intravenous and the episode’s denouement would have been right as rain! Also, I’m going to quote my notes again because they are a bit funny…
Maureen’s notebook: The Doctor disinfects the lab rat humans bathed in a sea of light. The start of Doctor deification? Fuck off! Also, Ten’s speech delivery gets on my tits. He sounds like a mansplaining dick.
Also, re the Face of Boe telling The Doctor that he learnt to look at the universe anew thanks to him, I penned, ‘enough with the deification.’
Ben: The Doctor does do a nice thing by taking Cassandra inhabiting Chip’s dying body back in time to meet the real Cassandra so she can be the last person to tell herself she looks beautiful before dramatically passing away. But to be honest, I though this was just a ploy for Cassandra to take over young Cassandra’s body and live her merry life again. All in all, a very fanfic ending to a fanfic heavy episode.
Maureen: I didn’t mind the ending, but more on that later…
The Alien/s of the Week
Ben: The Sisters of Plentitude started off well; mysterious cat doctors who could treat any illness. And then things took a turn for the worst when The Doctor discovers the Sisters use artificially grown humans as test subjects. I had hoped RTD would go further down the ethics and philosophy road with this story line. Yes, the Sisters have cured the incurable, but at what cost? And these artificial humans, this flesh that they’ve grown, what is it that gives them consciousness? How do they have speech and reasoning if they’ve lived their whole life in isolation? We get a bit of that thanks to Cassandra, when she goes into one of the flesh and realises they just want to be touched, but that’s it.
Maureen: I wonder if this episode would have worked better as a two-parter? That might have given more space to the cat nurses as well as the Cassandra body swap story line? In terms of Cassandra, I’ve always enjoyed Zoe Wanamaker as an actress. She’s great as Ariadne Oliver in Poirot. I especially enjoyed her end scenes, where she got to play a Cassandra with humanity thanks to her Gaimanesque friend, Chip. She is able to tell her younger self she is very beautiful. Also, Zoe can be very funny. I loved her delivery in the below:
Cassandra on Rose: The dirty, blonde assassin!
Final Thoughts
Ben: Look, I hated this episode. It started off strong, if a little fanfic-esque, and then completely went off the rails. The solution was plain bad. For starters, intravenous medication needs to be applied into the veins! It’s not a topical skin cream! Medicine doesn’t work like that! And the fan fic elements were overbearing, Rose didn’t get to do anything of significance, other than act as a vessel for Cassandra, and this new Doctor just isn’t impressing me. It’s a 0/10 for me.
Maureen: Wow, that’s harsher than I’d go. I agree with you, but I think we need to acknowledge how wonderful Billie’s acting was in this. It can’t have been easy playing herself played by someone else played by herself! Zoe Wanamaker is always good value too. Finally, I quite liked the end scene with Cassandra. It’s not enough to salvage the sexist overtones and The Doctor playing the sanctimonious arsehat card though, so it’s a 1/10 inky stars from me.
Ah, the infamous Christmas specials of Doctor Who, loved and loathed in equal measure, but this time was the first time. We were innocent and knew not what was coming that first Tennant Christmas when Santas’ and trees and Sycarax came calling… The Pre-Title Sequence…
Strap on your seat belts! It’s finale time! Given how much I disliked Bad Wolf I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Parting of the Ways. Yes, even with the RTD literal deux ex machina and a host of Daleks playing the big…
NB: This discusses the whole series in detail. There are massive spoilers. You have been warned.
I’m not an obsessive Marvel fan. I thought Winter Soldier was really, really good. I thought Iron Man 1 and 2 were kind of subversive and really good fun. I thought The Avengers was near perfect popcorn entertainment in the same vein as Star Wars or Pirates of the Caribbean. I’m quite happy to leave the rest of their catalogue alone though, thanks very much. There’s only so much SFX and caped crusading and fight scenes I can take before it all starts feeling same old, same old, and altogether too safe. However, so many people chimed in on how good Marvel TV is, and how good Jessica Jones is in particular, I had to give in and give the show a go.
Jessica Jones is about a female PI with unnatural strength gained in childhood. Years ago she was involved with another person with powers, a person who has the power of mind control. Whatever Kilgrave commanded, people obeyed. Unquestioningly. The series also is the story of Jessica’s residual trauma as a result of living with Kilgrave (Jessica was forced to live with him and allow him to rape her to feed his delusion that she loved him) and of her subsequent hard exterior, drinking habit and emotional coldness which she cast around herself as a protection from everything that happened to her under Kilgrave’s care. This is, of course, legions darker than most superhero subject matter. Some of the themes reminded me of Sandman. The commitment to moral ambiguity and pushing misuse of a so called ‘super power’ to its natural horrifying conclusion proved to be both wholly original and an effective stake raiser for most of the series.
Because this is such a character piece, much rested on the shoulders of those acting main parts. I thought Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones was excellent: the right mix of bottled up and barely suppressed anger at an unfair world and emotional fragility. Hope, Hogarth, Patsy and Malcolm are all excellent. David Tennant as the antagonist, Kilgrave, was also brilliant and I agree with those who say he may well be one of Marvel’s scariest and most complex villains yet. Certainly, he gets points for being one of the smartest about using his powers to get what he wants.
David Tennant is an actor for me who often misses. I find that he is typecast in similar ‘angst hero’ roles which usually make me want to punch the TV (an unpopular opinion but there we go). Ironically, I thought this stereotype only bolstered his appeal in Jessica Jones. Because he was the antagonist, it grated far less when Kilgrave white man angst’d (My brother just described Tennant’s acting career as Sir Angsty McAngst-alot and it’s kind of true) his way to audience pity. Of course, it helps that the show never truly let him off the hook for the many terrible things Kilgrave did, from kidnapping Hope, raping her to the point she is pregnant with his child, making her kill her parents, making a man give up his kidneys, compelling Jessica to live with him again, making Jessica’s neighbour slit his own throat, causing a neighbour to blow herself up… the list goes on.
Jessica Jones is more film noir than it is Marvel, at least for three quarters of the series. And it’s more psychological thriller/horror than it is action set pieces. It is also a character piece about the title character and her relationships with the people who have shaped her life (for good and bad). It’s more anti-hero than super-hero throughout, yes, even when the show does start treading stereotypical Marvel waters. All of this was to the good. I don’t normally binge watch tv, but this was one show I did marathon.
As to the show’s themes: there were a few. The series does one of my favourite things which is mirror characters against the title hero. It is no coincidence that Kilgrave’s latest victim’s name is Hope. She represents Jessica’s literal chance at redemption and forgiveness. Save Hope and save Jessica. Hogarth represents who Jessica could become if she doesn’t let herself feel. As does Kilgrave. The series also asks questions about power: not about superpowers, though that is a vehicle for exploring this theme, but rather the power people have over each other; emotional, physical, mental ties and how people manipulate each other using that power.
This is all a dark place for a superhero series to go. Unfortunately for me, just when I thought Jessica Jones wasn’t going to let audiences off the hook with easy wins and easier moral answers, the writers suddenly remembered they were a Marvel franchise and kill off Hope and then let the story meander for four episodes until Jessica finally defeats Kilgrave. The problem with this is that once Hope is killed there is no discernible reason for Jessica not to kill Kilgrave immediately. It also renders Jessica’s hero’s quest impossible to fulfil. Jessica has failed in achieving redemption. She couldn’t save Hope from Kilgrave. I understand that this is in tone with a nihilistic series, but it didn’t feel like the natural conclusion for me given the show’s earlier focus on Hope as the mechanism to remind Jessica to ‘give a shit.’
The choice to bring evil scientists and experiments and fist fights into the mix right at the end of the series was very Marvel, but it didn’t actually feel very Jessica Jones. The need for ongoing series and opportunities for Marvel cross-over proved greater than the urge to write consistent drama. Jessica Jones could have been dark and brutal and hard hitting and morally bleak in the same vein as British drama Line of Duty especially if there had been eight episodes instead of thirteen in the series. Instead, it felt like a hybrid: stuck halfway between chilling character drama and Marvel blockbuster in a TV format. From 1000 Cuts onwards, it is to the shows detriment. I’ll still be tuning into Daredevil though…
Jessica Jones episodes 1-9: 10/10 inky stars
Jessica Jones episodes 10-13: 7/10 inky stars