#peej lb

[martindykewood]

will schuester and sue sylvester are kind of cloth mother and wire mother

[martindykewood]

if i was buffy summers and i found out my little sister had not only picked up shoplifting, but stole a magnificent learher jacket for me, i would simply be so proud of her

[martindykewood]

i say this every single time i rewatch buffy but the way that the Soul works in there is so fucking funny. angels got a curse that restores his soul. sure ill take that. a moment of pure happiness will ruin it. ill buy that too. i will even believe that your first time having sex with someone you love could be that moment of pure happiness. but you cannot honestly tell me that that translates to “if he ever has an orgasm again he loses his soul” like. truly i think he could do whatever he wants forever and the fear of losing his soul would taint the happiness enough that it would never happen again. i know that im overanalyzing and intellectualizing too much and they needed the stipulation that he cant be with buffy again to create drama and angst but its just so duuuuumb sorry im shutting up.

[martindykewood]

so the thing about the empty child/the doctor dances is that it is a masterpiece one of the greatest works of art on television and it exemplifies everything thats so good about doctor who it literally stands as a perfect testament to all that this show was at its best and all that good science fiction should be and honestly i may have to rerewatch these two eps before moving on in my rewatch

[martindykewood]

g-d the fact that rose tyler was just like….i want to help. the doctor said humans don’t pay attention to any of this shit bc they’re so self-absorbed they don’t care about the rest of the universe and rose tyler said i care and i’m paying attention and i want to help. she’s so special but she’s also so normal bc she’s not an exception to the doctor’s view of humanity, she’s the one who reminds him that on the whole, humans are good and worth loving. rose tyler literally is the blueprint for a new outlook that he’s building from the ground up after losing everything. jesus christ

[martindykewood]

i would literally take a bullet for rose tyler jesus christ. i would die for her she is so smart shes so fucking smart !! like. okay i appreciate the cleverness and the wit of the doctor like the fast talking fact spouting kind of smarts thats fun for television! but rose tyler is genuine and she knows things bc shes been living and learning and she sees things that the doctor completely misses bc hes thinking so big and shes just a person! shes just a person and thats the most important thing in the universe!

[martindykewood]

ok take all of this w a grain of salt bc im typing w my eyes closed and my brain scrambled but as we all know i have a ton of opinions about doctor who and i will subject you to them or die trying

like the thing is. the doctor isnt special bc hes smart. hes not special bc hes clever or mysterious. he has advantages over ordinary humans bc he has alien knowledge and he has the time and space travel and regeneration and all that. but those advantages dont make him any better than them, fundamentally, and he knows that, and thats the core of his character. thats why the master, one of his greatest recurring antagonists and narrative foils, firmly believes that humans should be subjugated under time lords.

what makes the doctor special is how much he cares about people. what makes him special is that he uses his advantages to save people and to help people and to meet people bc he likes people. he loves people. thats the POINT. and ik this started as a rant about that one line from evangelista but it was always a rant about how that one line is indicative of everything thats wrong w moffat.

and i just think its funny that those two moffat eps (which are, on the whole, really good eps. but still Moffat Eps) are followed immediately by midnight, which is not only one of the best eps of the entire show, but specifically really really good at that human element that moffat just keeps missing. bc what gets to all those people, what worms its way into their brains, is just fear and ego and pride and letting their differences divide them.

like, professor hobbes is the perfect example of someone who thinks hes better than other people bc of how smart and learned he is. and the ep makes it very clear that this is asshole behavior on his part and not a good trait to have. and when the doctor does try to "pull rank" so to speak, he is doing it bc he genuinely has the best chance of actually solving the problem, and bc hes panicking a little bit himself. and they dont listen to him bc they think that hes acting superior, but hes not. hes not just arbitrarily deciding that hes in charge bc hes smarter than them, hes saying that he has the experience and the ability to figure out whats going on.

and the thing is, the humans on that bus dont have the experience, but they have deductive reasoning (actual regular ass deductive reasoning, not bbc sherlock deductive reasoning) and they are able to figure it out, given all the preceding events and everything the doctor said. after it gets to the doctor, after hes out of commission, dee dee and the hostess both see the truth and try to tell everyone else whats going on, and theyre only unable to convince them bc everyones too worked up and scared. also theyre both black women but i think im not gonna give the show enough credit to say they were making a Statement with that.

anyway silence in the library/forest of the dead is a fantastic story, really, i love those two eps, but there are flaws, and i think all of those flaws are moffat-typical flaws. its a decent group of people, but not a great one; the one-off characters are. how do i put this. theres some nuance, but theyre not necessarily complex. and their lives mean very little, and their deaths mean even less (which is a thing that moffat does).

to the doctor its a big deal, and to river its a big deal, but to the audience? maybe this is just me, but i didnt really feel anything for any of them except at the most emotional moments (evangelista as a data ghost, and anita asking the doctor for reassurance). i feel sympathy for them when theyre dying horribly, but thats it.

contrast that with midnight, which has a brilliant cast of characters where every person is a person. where the most devastating moment is when they realize that none of them know the name of the woman who sacrificed herself to save all of their lives. where i feel connected to several characters and their journeys and their personalities, not just bc theyre in mortal danger, but bc theyre good characters. where i can understand all of their strong emotions and how that leads to their morally questionable decisions.

basically, if i may be permitted an oversimplification, midnight is an episode that illustrates what would and should happen if people responded realistically in a situation where everyone is in danger and confused and scared. moffat had some of that with lux, some of that instinctual push back against the doctors assumed authority, but it was bc lux himself had personal demons, not bc thats just how a human being reacts in a situation like that. bc moffat has trouble conceptualizing characters who dont see the doctor as some mysterious magic guy with all the power and knowledge.

its like. you know that scene in the impossible planet, where the doctor is like "yeah but you trust me dont you? go on look me in the eye. yes you do, i can see it. trust." and zach agrees to let him go bc frankly zach doesnt have much of an ego and zach is a really good guy, and the doctor isnt trying to take control hes offering to help, and most importantly, zach is desperate and working with a skeleton crew where everyone who hasnt died already is in danger of doing so very soon.

so like, yeah, theres something to be said for the doctors ability to use clever words to manipulate people into letting him help. theres a lot to be said for the fact that he often cant get people to trust him unless he flat out lies to them, bc the truth is so fantastical. and when it comes down to the big moments, like that little speech he gives in voyage of the damned, people are either going to believe him and trust that he knows what hes doing or theyre not. and obviously i dont have any real statistics to back this up but i think moffat has a really hard time writing characters who dont believe the doctor and trust him. and when he does write those characters, he likes to humble them by showing off how brilliant and clever the doctor is, rather than admitting that trusting the doctor is realistically the harder option for most people.

[martindykewood]

super fucked up how close jon and melanie came to being friends. unbelievable. absolutely unconscionable in my opinion