Marta's Mathoms

I am, in a not so subtle way, falling head over heels back in love with Doctor Who. I feel like my fannish life is so given to extremes it must be almost cliche, but honestly: where has this show been for the last several years?

I had plowed through series six and seven in the run-up to Capaldi's debut and gotten a bit burned out. I still have some series issues with how he talked about the women characters, turned making fun of them into a joke and not even a particularly good one, but I think a lot of that was just getting a belly-full of it too quickly. Also I've always liked the stand-alone episodes much more than the ones trying to develop some deeper plot, which the end of S7 definitely trended toward. The upshot being I watched "Deep Breath" and was just so burned out I never pushed forward.

WHat is it now, two years away, and it's a bit like a field lying fallow. "Into the Dalek" was just wonderful! Campy sci-fi fun, it had something of the feel of "The Unquiet Dead" (the Charles Dickens episode fro way back in series one), but with some really deep moral quandaries too. It was dark, really dark but without feeling dark, or at least without feeling heavy, leaden. It's our Doctor the eternal optimist facing some really dark material, and it's brilliant. Even if te ending left me a bit uneasy. I'd love to dig into that, but I'm not quite sureow you could without "breaking" it.

And yes, I'm trying to avoid spoilers here. Are spoilers a concern so far out?

"Robot of Sherwood" is magical in another way. It's a history episode, filled with all the romance of an Arthurian legend. I say romance and think other people hear, you know, love story in the modern romcom sense, but what I really mean is a tale of sentiment and idealism, something that gets the spirit moving. Romance in the older sense. And this just had me smiling from start to finish, because it's such of all of that. There' beauty and light and adventure, a tad overtold in parts (it is writtten by Mark Gatiss, and it shows in the best way) but really just a rich character story. Reminds me a lot of the S5 theme of "we're all just stories in the end," and that being enough to conquer something even more final than death. About being a legend vs. being "real."

Which got me thinking about Sherlock, and something I've bemoaned a bit since the last series there: Mary's "who you really are, doesn't matter" line. Because I think this episode gets at a lot of what Mark and Steven were aiming for in that comment, and in a way that seems much more satisfying to me. In the DW episode, Robin Hood is supposed to be just a legend, not real, to the point the Doctor can't believe he's not an illusion or some sort of alien deception. A real Robin Hood is impossible to him. The episode ends with Robin challenging him on this point: they're both "the story behind the legend" in a sense, both are being mythified, and that myth serves a bigger purpose than reality. And in Sherlock we've seen that happened not once but twice in S4: Mary's post-mortem "life" standing in such stark contrast to the character we got to see when she was alive, and John's and Sherlock's increasingly dark and even abusive relationship being repurposed a the final cout of appeals, the heroes bursting forth from Rathbone Place in those final frames.

What puzzles me is why I find the Whovian version so encouraging and upliting and even beautiful, while the Sherlockian version just depresses me. Is it level of investment (me personally, I mean) in Sherlock and John as "real" people rather tan just as an encouraging myth? Is it genre, fantasy in the truest sense versus the hyper-realism of the detective/mystery genre? Just the fact that this is one beat in a show I enjoy as opposed to the final beat in something I probably loved in a much truer, certainly deeper sense? I honestly don't know, but that distinction still fascinates me.

This entry was originally posted at http://marta-bee.dreamwidth.org/1016.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

So I'm rewatching Doctor Who (the new series, not classic Who) and I have this custom of when I do something like this, I'll pick out a favorite quote from each episode and post it to Tumblr. If you like, you can follow these posts by bookmarking this Tumblr page and checking in, adding this RSS feed to your RSS reader, or by friending martadocwho this LJ account.

Though if you do the LJ route, there's a way to comment but I won't actually see it. Probably best to drop me a comment on a recent post here, even if the post is unrelated. Also, I add tags to the Tumblr post explaining why I liked the quote so much, and those only show up on Tumblr. That means if you're only reading things on LJ or through RSS, you're probably only getting half the fun.

So. If you like LJ and want to join me in reliving Doctor Who, I suggest: friend martadocwho and that way when I post a quote it will show up in your friends' feed. Then click the link to Tumblr to see the tags I add to the quote, basically my commentary on why that bit is a favorite. You don't have to interact on Tumblr, of course. And then if you want to talk about the quote or the episode or whatever else, just leave a comment on the most recent marta_bee post, even if the post has absolutely nothing to do with Doctor Who.

Or, you know, don't if you're not interested. But I know some of you are Whovians so I thought I'd let folks know I was doing this.

(No spoilers for "Deep Breath," though I will be talking about some of the Matt Smith Doctor Who episodes, so as River Song would put it, spoilers...)

Leading up to the new Doctor Who episode, I ended up watching rewatching most of the Matt Smith DW episodes, including some Christmas specials which I'd never seen before. there may be such a thing as consuming too much story out of Team Cardiff, and it really may be as simple as siting through the better part of three series in the last week. But at the moment I really have one thought running through my head It would be so, so nice if Team Cardiff could stop making woman-bashing into a joke.

I try to be realistic. I know that sometimes it makes sense for a certain character, for them to have a less than positive view of women, and I can run with that. But in the years since Steven Moffat's taken over as the show-runner, there's been a serious uptick in jokes made about how awful women are. They're not even particularly good jokes - it's like the mere presence of a woman is enough to earn a cheap laugh. A few examples that jump to mind: the bit in "Let's Kill Hitler" where the Doctor says on top of being a psychopath, River Song is a woman so of course she'd behave irrationally; the description of River Song in "The Wedding of River Song" as "hell in high heels"; the way the monk crosses himself at hearing the person reaching out to the Doctor in "Bells of st. John's" is a woman; and other cheap one-liners like that. I wouldn't mind these so much if they actually wored at some level, if they told us something about the Doctor, but they just don't add anything at all to the story. Casual misogyny seems to be what the current DW crew thinks is funny. And it just doesn't match with the Doctor we've seen so far.

The weird thing is, I actually like what they did with Amy Pond's character. I found her easily the most compelling of the companions, psychologically; the only one I found who really came close was Martha, and it was less that I liked her arc as much as there was just something about her spunk and the fact that she actually had her life halfway together that I found compelling. River Song, too. I found her an exciting, fun character when she wasn't a wreck over the fact that she had to kill the man she loved. But I'll admit on both fronts, I got pretty frustrated pretty quickly with how the Doctor tried to shoehorn them into those roles, of emotional lover and mother-figure. I thought "The Asylum of the Daleks" was one of my favorites once it got started, but I really, really really hated what they did with Amy's and Rory's relationship. The whole idea that she couldn't have kids so she wasn't entitled to marital happiness was bad, even if Rory denied that he'd ever have wanted anything like what she was doing there. And the fact that Amy was suddenly a professional model was just... yeah. I've watched that opening enough times to suspect I'm never going to be able to make sense of it. I don't know what they were thinking there, because on top of sexualizing her (this is the only possibility once you strike off motherhood?), but it also made seeming like successful fashion model was something any kissogram from Leadworth could just kind of stumble into with no connections and no work-up to it? It infantilizes women - I mean, you'd never accept Rory turning up as a professional football player in the same time window, even if Rory was the naturally athletic type.

There's also this sense that women are supposed to be natural carers. This can be in a good sense -- Clara is the governess and the girl who cared so much she can't be turned into a dalek; the mother in the WWII-era Christmas special is strong precisely because she is a mother; etc. -- but also in a bad sense. I'm thinking of the way River Song's not wanting to kill the Doctor even if it means time itself ends in "The Wedding of River Song," where the Doctor basically tells her to pull it together, compared to the way we get a very similar scene in "Big Bang" (or was it "Pandorica"?) where Rory basically says that Amy does matter more to him than all those other people who will die if the Doctor takes the time to save her, which is treated as a sign that Rory's back to his true self. I definitely felt my love for Amy taken a notch or two down the longest they focused on her pregnancy and missing child (and in the way it was always Amy asking after her daughter and being upset by that more than Rory).

I don't know. I feel like I'm complaining quite a bit here and still haven't listed everything about the way this creative team is handling women that really, really goads me. I think at some level it's a loss of faith, though. I can't trust these people to handle a woman as something other than a very specific type (love with a strength strong enough to melt carnivorous snow; have kids or be defined by the lack of that ability; be the caring, emotional one but not too caring and be ready to be corrected by the clear-thinking man when necessary). That means that when a female character does have a fault my mind will read it as bad writing rather than a seriously flawed character. It's actively getting in the way of my ability to connect with the story, and that's a Problem with a capital P.

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On a more personal note, I had a viewing party for "Deep Breath" tonight,but didn't actually get to watch it. The neighbor who usually watches the small kids of the people I was having over had to do a work thing. She let me use her apartment but I had to do the hostess thing and do the actual babysitting myself while my friends watched the episode in my flat. I have the copy I bought off Amazon, though, so I can wath it tomorrow. It's actually just as well. I'll benefit from a bit of breather and a cleansed palate, I think. As it is, I'm more frustrated with Team Cardiff than anything and not feeling ready to really open my heart to what they've got in the pipeline.

In otehr-other news, I still haven't written. Second day I've had a ficlet all but planned out in my head (fleshing out a friend's headcanon re: John, Sherlock and bees). The file has been open. I want to write it. But it's just not happening, no matter how hard I try. Ah, well. Maybe tomorrow.

Somehow I'd missed out (until today) on the fact that Team Cardiff had produced a Doctor Who minisode starring both Tennant and Davison as the doctor. I imagine it would be even funnier if I knew Classic Who, but even without that, it's really fun to watch it. Very campy, I guess, a bit self-indulgent but the kind of thing I don't think any Whovian should miss. Check it out if you haven't already.

I've been rewatching some of the old Doctor Who episodes, by which I mean parts of the first two series of the Who reboot. Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who is apparently the entertainment equivalent of comfort foods, which I've also been doing a bit of. This sickness finally seems to be on its way out (*crosses fingers*) but I still feel thoroughly walloped and mentally not all there. That last point may be a touch of dehydration, so I'm pushing the fluids and hopefully it will be better in a few days. We'll see. I did get a prompt over at come_at_once and tried to write it but my brain's simply not up to doing anything creative.

But anyway, getting back to Who and Sherlock parallels, one thing I was struck by was how Rose's relation to Mickey after she goes off adventuring kind of parallels the position John is in with Sherlock after he gets married. Spoilers for Doctor Who through (and especially for) Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel, and I guess for Sherlock series three as well.

Right. So Doctor Who opens with the Doctor getting entangled with Rose while trying to save the Earth from these aliens wanting to take it over, and then Rose runs off with him to have adventures. She leaves her boyfriend, Mickey Smith, behind though he comes through on more than one occasion when they're back on Earth. He eventually goes along with the two of them in the TARDIS, though he only gets one adventure before they all crash-land into a kind of alternate reality. London but with added Zeppelins - a world where everything is just like their own London, but with things a little different. And after the main plot has run its course and the Doctor is getting ready to go back to the right reality, Mickey announces he's not going back with them. His reasoning:



What struck me about Mickey's and Rose's relationship is that by the end, they're not properly dating. Her life is with the Doctor (he asked her not to go back in the pilot and throughout the rest of it gets increasingly frustrated that she is so drawn to life on the TARDIS) and while he expects her some day to come back and settle down in London after her travelling is done, by the end he realizes as long as the Doctor will have her, she's always going to choose him. Rose, though, seems to really like the idea that Mickey is waiting for her, that he's there for her to go hang out with when she decides to go home. She likes him being there for her whenever she needs or wants him, but doesn't seem very committed to doing the same for him. And that's fine until the point when being there for her is going to cost him big - because if he stays in the alternate reality, not only is there important work to be done but his only real family, his grandmum who died a while earlier, is still alive for him to be with.

I happen to ship Sherlock and John, and Rose and Mickey clearly were involved romantically at one point, but I don't think you have to read the characters romantically to see the problem. John gets very jealous of women he perceives as being romantically involved with (Janine and Irene), there's also a line on his blog where he gets mad that Sherlock "replaced me with Molly Hooper and started solving cases" -- and while I know some people ship Molly and Sherlock, I don't see any evidence that John sees them as romantic interests the way he does Irene and Janine. But whether you see John and Sherlock as romantic or not, there's still this sense where John has this relationship with someone else that's central to his life, we see it in the opening of HLV where the script-writers give him and Mary that iconic John-Sherlock exchange of "You're not coming" --- "Then you're not going", where John has that central relationship and still wants to be friends with Sherlock but he's resentful when Sherlock seems to have other relationships in his life.

That's one heck of a convoluted sentence, so let me boil it down. John seems to want an exclusive relationship with Sherlock, but a one-sided one. John seems to want both Mary and Sherlock, but John doesn't want Sherlock to have Janine, or Irene, or even Molly. And there's something about that lack of symmetry, the "good for me but not for thee," that I don't think can ever be allowed to stand. It's like with Mickey: he's okay with the unequal relationship but only so far as it's not getting in the way of something that's better for him. It lacks the equal footing, the being fully committed to each other that true friendship (or romance if you prefer) that really binds people together. I'm not even sure it counts as a real friendship if you're willing to let someone give you something good but hold back from giving it back to them in kind. It seems to lack reciprocality, which seems key to a good relationship. I'm not saying that John has to divorce his wife and start up a romance with Sherlock, or that they should have a platonic but exclusive relationship, or whatever else. But if there's anything the Rose/Mickey relationship seems to teach, it's that that kind of disconnect, where both people aren't committed to each other in the same way, just can't work longterm.

Or maybe I'm babbling. Still stuck in head-cold land which makes everything seem to make sense until the moment I try to explain it. Ah, well. Thought other people might find the connection interesting anyway.

An early happy fourth of July to my fellow Americans. Have Tom Hiddleston playing Loki playing Captain America.

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(Goodness, but he is such a Shakespearean. You can just see it.

And also a happy belated Canada Day. Have Captain America as Captain Canada.

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And as a bonus, here's some lovely Avengers fanart of Steve, Bucky, Tony, Bruce, Thor, Loki, Natasha, and Hawkeye... reimagined in the style of the artist, a Muslim woman, so complete with hijabs and modest clothing. Love it!

And lest the Brits feel left out, here's one of my favorite moments from the Doctor Who episode "The Idiot Lantern":

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Today was a fairly nice day. The two stories I'm currently making progress on are both open on my computer, though not a word was written today. No resumes were sent off. I didn't even get around to the *eep* bit of feedback I promised another Sherlockian yesterday and then completely forgot I needed to look at. Tomorrow, you, I really 100% promise on the off-chance you're reading this.

I did, however, have a lovely day of fannish consumption. By which I mean reading and watching, not the illness with the blood-spotted handkerchiefs. I read the first three chapters of Study in Scarlet to (hopefully!) get ready to discuss it over at sherlock60, and went absolutely 100% fangirly over Watson's observations of Holmes in the second chapter, after they've just moved into Baker Street (here @ Tumblr). I read some of the holmestice fics, which I thoroughly enjoyed even when they broke my heart; specifically:

1. Well Met by Midnight, Lestrade/Mycroft (guh! such atmosphere)
2. By the Rivers of Babylon, John/Sherlock (guh! such beautiful writing)
3. The Scientific Method of Biological Clocks, John/Sherlock (good God, who gave parentlock permission to be this deep?)
4. Cygnet, Mycroft + Sherlock (guh! such heartbreak)
5. Finally, Lestrade/Mycroft (guh! such... well, guh. Erotica with a touch of humor, beautifully done)
6. Dim Sum, John/Sherlock (guh! so visceral, so funny and hot and alive and I can't even begin to do it justice at this hour, but... yeah, just guh. Though not for quite the same reasons as the last one.)

At which point I probably began to sound like that Doge meme. Really, though, I am really enjoying reading the contributions to this meme and basically spent the day losing myself in it. I also learned how to keep Netflix from automatically advancing to the next episode, but only after watching from "Father's Day" through Chris Eccleston's regenration on "Doctor Who." ("Just this once..."; also, how did I miss the quiet depth of "Boom Town" the first several times I saw it? Wonderful.) To my credit, I did manage a shower at some point, but as I just crawled back into my pyjamas and read more fic, I'm not entirely sure that earns me much growed-up credit.

Tomorrow (by which I mean today) I will do the responsible thing again. By which I mean I'll brave the job boards or at least actually work at the fic. But today (by which I mean yesterday) was really very much needed and went quite well. As was the aloe vera for sunburn - for someone with a Mediterranean complexion, I do the lobster impression entirely too easily, and there's a reason I didn't want to put back on scratchy clothing and undergarments in addition to sheer laziness.

Under the cut, two pics from Manhattan yesterday: an entertainingly-named beer hall in midtown I chanced upon while developing said sunburn, and a shot of Manhattan across the bay as I was riding the school van into Manhattan:

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I'm getting into the Clara episodes, which have so far been underwhelming, but then again I only really "get" DW episodes on a second or third viewing. Anyway, I've noticed a certain similarity between Clara's look and behavior and CAL, the little girl who saves everyone in the "Silence in the Library" two-parter. Am I seeing things that aren't there, or is there actually supposed to be some kind of a connection between these two characters?

and I'm not talking about the Bowman of Laketown here. This calls for Tom Hiddleston reciting Shakespearean sonnets:



And perhaps some Tom Hiddleston working Shakespearean lines into an actual commercial:



Or maybe some timey-wimey snark is called for?



And because where Hiddleston is around, Cumberbatch should not be far away, have Benedict with a skull. A Hamlet skull, this time. The Cumber-cupcakes by Vereentjoeng are a bit of a thing in the Sherlock fandom, and I quite like them.



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dreamflower02, this came across my Tumblr page and I thought of you.

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