Whovian. TopGearKnob. Tomorrow When The War Began. Part of the Port Adelaide Football Club Tumblr family. Occasionally German, always FC Bayern. Multifandom with a love of British drama and anything musical. I write reviews of Doctor Who episodes. I love people who love their shows. Banner by abossycontrolfreak.
Alright the most common comments are “but not McGonagall and Hagrid!!” and “Molly and Arthur have never let anyone down ever!!” and “Remus Lupin is perfect fight me!!1!” but let me remind you that what I said was “every adult let us down” NOT “every adult fucked up in an earth shattering way”
That being said, McGonagall and Hagrid and Molly and Arthur /did/ let Harry and others (and by extension, us as readers) down
Let’s start with McGonagall and Hagrid
Both of their disappointing actions happened in HP1
McGonagall didn’t believe Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s claims that someone was trying to steal the Stone and dismissed them. If she had just listened and perhaps written to Dumbledore explaining their concerns then the trio would’ve never felt the need to go down the trapdoor
Hagrid unwittingly gave up the secret of how to get passed Fluffy because he wanted an illegal dragon egg
Which eventually hatched and he refused to deal with it until it was left to Harry and Hermione to bring it to Charlie’s friends, costing Gryffindor 150 points and a detention that put Harry in front of Voldemort
Also despite knowing just how awful the Dursleys were, neither of them really argued with Dumbledore about placing Harry with them and then just not checking on him for the next 10 years
Harry’s letters were addressed to “the cupboard under the stairs” ffs
Although neither of them could’ve known that their actions would end so terribly, they still did and that’s rather disappointing coming from adults that Harry (and us as readers) trusted more than most other adults in the series
Moving on to Molly and Arthur Weasley
Arthur, like every other adult Harry trusted with his suspicions that Malfoy was a Death Eater and was trying to kill someone, dismissed his claims as a “school rivalry” and didn’t take him seriously
Molly, despite having good intentions, would minimize the Twins’ accomplishments and would chastise her children (Charlie for working with dragons and not marrying; Bill for dressing differently and marrying Fleur) because they weren’t doing what she considered to be “acceptable”
She also was rather rude to Fleur who was a guest and her son’s fiance, although, Fleur was pretty awful to the Weasleys in return (especially to Ginny who she babied and criticized) even though she was an uninvited guest in their house but back to Molly and Arthur
Molly had a tendency to overstep boundaries especially when it came to Harry, invalidating Sirius’ role as Harry’s legal guardian
Also after finding out that Ginny had been possessed by Lord Fucking Voldemort for /a year/ they first yelled at her for being stupid and “trusting something when you couldn’t see where it kept its brain” instead of insisting that she be given medical attention and yelling at Dumbledore for not seeing that one of his students was being possessed by a Dark Lord sooner
They’re rather small things but they’re still disappointments
In the case of Remus Lupin there are a few disappointing moments
The first being the most obvious one: He tried to leave Tonks and Teddy the minute he found out she was pregnant
Now I really don’t care what you think about Remadora and how Wolfstar is your life because Remus tried to leave his pregnant wife because he didn’t want to face the potential consequences of his actions
Not only that but he tried to guilt Harry into letting him come along hunting Horcruxes by using Harry’s dead father against him (”James would’ve let me come”)
Also, and I know it wasn’t entirely his fault, He never tried to contact Harry
And I’m not just talking about before Harry came to Hogwarts (although that must have been a slap in the face to Harry to learn that there was someone out there who was best friends with his parents and yet never tried to look for him) I’m more referring to after Harry’s third year.
Harry finally has 2 direct links to his parents and only one of them will talk to him and even that is vague and sporadic at best.
Imagine how much that must’ve hurt Harry to think that maybe Lupin didn’t actually like him and maybe he was just being a bother wondering about his parents
Imagine how differently the aftermath of Snape’s Worst Memory would’ve gone if Remus had been the adult here and reached out to Harry to tell him more about Lily and James
Anyway my point behind this post is that the vast majority of the adult’s in the Harry Potter Series didn’t fuck up horribly and they weren’t manipulative assholes but they, like every other adult in the series, still did let Harry and others down, which is so important because it showed that adults are capable of making mistakes and messing up and being an adult doesn’t automatically make you better and wiser
Overnight, London is enveloped by a mysterious forest. A strangely apathetic TARDIS team must solve the mystery, while getting a class of Coal Hill students home after a school excursion.
2 stars
Written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce
"Do you like the forest being in Trafalgar Square? I think it's lovely." - Maebh Arden
I don't think this is lovely. I'll warn you, this review is a bit negative. It's not often that my dislike is the most interesting thing I have to write about an episode, especially one which is so popular in both the TARDIS Eruditorum set and the Moffat love community. And I don't actually believe this episode is objectively bad. However - and perhaps this is just my personal philosophy clouding things - this hits a very sour note with me.
On the surface, it's fantastic. It's very pretty, and with Maebh, it's also cute. It's a William Blake reference which pays tribute to fundamental British myths. The author lampshades this interpretation when the Doctor refers to the situation as a dark fairy tale. But this fairy tale cannot stick to me the way Torchwood's encounters with faerie did, because I feel no sense of history, no sense of danger.
Instead, the forest is pretty, and that’s pretty much it.
The characters' reactions are that it's pretty, which is why it doesn't ring true to me. I love neglected and ruinous landscapes, the ordinary world turned inside out, and usually an overgrown city symbolises age and neglect and most often some long-gone catastrophe. The presence of faerie and the underworld is usually inseparable from the history of a place. This forest is different. In this case, the forest is something magical, but a magic that feels benign no matter how much the dialogue insists it is not.
Perhaps the failure of the aesthetic is as simple as there's not enough of the old world in it. The buildings are completely obscured, and the animals they encounter are clearly CGI. The world is both emptied of humans and threatened by them. Even the flamethrower people seem unreal, which isn't great as they symbolise the true threat. The forest could be a symbol of accelerated time, but instead it feels like the kind of story which ends with "it was all a dream". Unsurprisingly, that's how the Doctor says humankind will remember it. It's a story that works on dream logic, and could be seen as a bizarro episode like Amy's Choice or the Pandorica: but it doesn't fully commit to that, keeping its stakes and actions firmly global rather than personal.
Even the characters seem to barely care whether the forest is a miracle or threat, although this is used for some good humour: "it does not seem that the pitch will be ready." Danny, in particular, is written as the everyman. However, some of his lines overplay his everymannish nature so far they stretch credibility: "has he even been CRB checked?" Clara's reactions are the only ones in the early part of the episode which ring true for me; everyone else's reactions, especially Danny's, are bizarre.
Most of these reactions are pervaded by a studied done-ness at the prospect of anything strange: "There wasn't a forest, then there was a forest. Nothing surprises us anymore." I find it dulling to watch. We don't need to be told how to think as the audience. However, we need the show to help us explore how we feel. It's one of my pet hates in speculative fiction when something happens which is so overwhelming that the audience could never comprehend it, but there is no reaction from the characters. How often do you see cities and planets destroyed in the movies without giving it a second glance? These are huge, heartbreaking things. But when the heroes brush it off, so do we.
Doctor Who, usually, is different. Both RTD and Moffat, with all of their differences, do share a great care for the weight and consequences of their stories. Many of the most convoluted and bizarre episodes of Doctor Who use the characters' reactions to signpost how the audience should react to plot points and threats. Notice how The End of Time uses a fatalistic mood from the characters to illustrate to the audience that there will be no deus ex machina saving grace for Gallifrey. And notice how, in The Day of the Doctor, a pervasive mood of optimism from the supporting cast illustrates that this time around, there just might be. Given these events are ultimately defined not by technobabble or past canon but by the choices of our characters, it's no surprise that it's their feelings that guide the plot.
So here we've got a bizarre genre mish-mash episode which can be taken in multiple ways, and we look to the characters to work out how we should feel."Nothing" isn't a great answer. I know that Clara's character development in this episode relates to her cognitive dissonance between seeing the forest as "cool" and seeing it as a "disaster", which isn't how Danny thinks she should behave. But with the episode giving us so little signposting of how we're meant to react, who are we to judge whether Clara's reactions are acceptable? In this context Danny's criticisms of Clara, almost developed into something meaningful by the previous three episodes, seem childish again. The problem of Clara losing touch with the real world is mismatched to the episode, because the episode encourages us to lose touch with the real world with her.
There's a touching scene at the end in which Clara tells the Doctor she doesn't want to be the last of her kind. It's beautifully delivered by both Capaldi and Coleman, but I still don't believe it. Because it comes out of nowhere. Five minutes earlier we were walking through a dreamscape, and now, somehow, Clara's already deeply considered the extinction of humanity. The cold formality of "don't make me say it" might work in a bunker in an RTD two-parter, under siege by Daleks, with three or four failed attempts to save the world already behind them and no hope left. But here, in this forest of fairytale, Clara can't encompass the contradictions of being the Doctor, the hope and despair, the wonder and terror. It's perhaps the closest she's ever been to being the Doctor, and she looks like an empty shell.
Maebh's answer, her plea to the world, is to do nothing. Fear less, trust more. Stand back and watch the world turn. But if this is really what is needed, why did Maebh need to make that phone call? Because only they had managed to understand the trees. Reaching out, listening, considering, explaining, evangelising: these are emotions and actions. It's not fear that stops the TARDIS team from solving the mystery here, to the point where the Doctor - in a very out-of-character moment - gives up and flies away. It's their lack of curiosity, their muted, apathetic reactions, that mean it takes so long for them to work it out.
All along, the story follows Danny Pink and his aesop-counterpart in Maebh's mum, who encourage us to focus only on what is right in front of us, to just get the kids home safe. It's a nice thought, but when it's on a government scale, that's why they used the defoliating agents. So I think Maebh's message to the world could be rewritten. No "be less scared, be more trusting". It should be "care more". Be like Maebh, and like Clara at her best. Listen, reach out, try to understand. Embrace fear, and embrace wonder. They're superpowers after all. They help you realise what's important.
It might not have been explored in the episode, which - as with most of the Clara and Danny arc - is about Clara getting over her issues so she can make herself acceptable to Danny. However, I'd like to believe it's Danny who realises some things during this episode. I want to see this episode as Danny changing, making himself ready to hear the truth about Clara and maybe understand. At least the episode finishes on such a bright note: Clara and the Doctor staring out at the forest, sharing a moment of fear and incomparable wonder.
Like, Moana just did so well from a feminist perspective. Passes the Bechdel test. Literally doesn’t even mention the fact that they don’t have a romantic interest. No one questions the legitimacy of a girl training to become the next chief. All the women in her life empower her to follow her destiny. She has a more realistic physical figure. She literally battles a demon and learns advanced navigational skills which she then teaches to her entire tribe. She grabs a demi-god by the ear and tells him to fix his shit. Like, dayum. Well done Disney.
on the one hand i agree with this but on the other hand one of my coworkers rented an alpaca from a petting zoo and brought it to work because my boss said she wanted an alpaca sweater but the guy didn’t hear her say sweater and didn’t want to upset her by asking why the fuck she’d want an alpaca
I think that highlights a good genre difference: miscommunication in drama is frustrating, overused, and just kinda shit. Miscommunication in comedy is fucking hilarious.
No weakness, you know, admitting your loss. I can’t. Not yet. Too big. Feels like it’s going to consume you. Well, the trick is to keep on living while it does.
do you ever just wanna sit next to someone and listen to everything they could possibly say about anything ever just because you like their face and their voice and their general existence
Well, to quote steven moffat “that’s a thing”. Certainly shameless to re-blog but thank you scriptscribbles - such an ego-blowing gifset, I’m not below (above?) that type of squee’ing and saluting myself. And thank SuperWhoLock fandoms for making it a ‘thing’. I salute you and thank the supporters for all the kindnesses
holy shit and all those goddamn fireworks timed with the notes in the back half of the song. this track is 15 years old and has been a meme at least three times how did it go off this hard
