DOCTOR WHO: SPACE/TIME
First class and fancy free
She's high society
She's got the best of everything
What could a guy like me
Ever really offer?
She's as perfect as she can be
Why should I even bother?
But somehow I can't believe
That anything should happen
I know where I belong
And nothing's gonna happen
CAUSE SHE'S SO HIGH!
HIGH ABOVE ME!
SHE'S SO LOVELY!
SHE'S SO HIGH!
LIKE CLEOPATRA, JOAN D'ARC
OR APHRODITE!
Making up for the shameful lack of CiN specials since David Tennant was the Doctor, the New Moffat Empire finally hauls up some extra material of dubious canonicity that lacks the lethal bollocks saturation point of the Season Fnarg trailer. For the first time in twelve years, Doctor Who has something to do with Red Nose Day. And, by a staggering coincidence threatening the very laws of probability, it's also written by Steven Moffat.
It's got the usual restrictions - the TARDIS set, the tiny cast, the homage to the Peter Davison era, gratuitous technofanwank (the thermo-couplings! Remember them? No? Can't blame you...) and more than a slight screw-you to the death loving fascists what jack off to Midnight and Turn Left for being all dark and evil and have not an ounce of joy in their diseased palsied husks!
Ahem.
It's the usual JNT set up. The Doctor's fiddling with the console and arguing with his companion(s), but in a nice break from form, it's the blokes ganging up on Amy and pointing out her control freak tendencies - for example, a determination to be the one who drives the car or fly the TARDIS, despite the fact she's rubbish at both and only got her licence by slutting it up to the examiner. This then leads to Rory perving at Amy through the glass floor of the console room and the Doctor jamming his face into Pond's crotch for a disturbingly long period of time.
Finally, our heroes... and writer, apparently... tear their gaze away from the ginger scot's panties and notice that the TARDIS has blown a fuse and landed inside itself. Yes, just like Logopolis or The Time Monster. Thankfully, unlike the latter the console room is big enough so the police box doesn't take up the whole room, and unlike the former modern CGI and split screen allows the Doctor to step through one doorway and out of another simultaneously without taking up a whole episode for padding.
The Doctor declares that they are in a space-loop, unable to leave the TARDIS ever again! Clearly, he and Rory will have to fight to the death for who gets stuck with Amy, but thankfully at that moment ANOTHER Amy appears and gives us her slightly-too-forced-and-trying-to-be-cool-to-actually-work catchphrase about how things are now going to get REALLY complicated.
Slightly undermined by the fact it's been completely straightforward till now.
I hate it when people use catchphrases without thinking, like the Doctor's "Allons y" suddenly transforming into an all-purpose warcry like Little John's "today is a good day to die!"
Anyway, onto episode two.
The TARDIS is drifting apart, so stepping through the doors causes a time delay, basically a sort of Future Echo type of deal. But who cares when we now have an Amy Pond sandwich on offer? Yes, it's like a XXX-rated version of The Big Bang or that BBC Novel, with the Verkoff factor of 12! Again showing her terrible hypocrisy, Rory gets slapped for thinking of a threesome, but Amy herself seems more than up for a bit of cross-temporal masturbation in a sequence clearly ripped off my own work, D-Day, where Rose Tyler does something similar. It says so much that out of everything I've written, only that moment was considered worthy of the Moff's attention unlike his predecessor who stole everything not nailed down.
"This is how it ends," the Doctor groans. "Pond flirting with herself. Love at first sight. True love at last. Sorry, Rory."
Rory, drooling with lust, gasps, "Absolutely no problem at all..."
No sooner has present-Amy buggered off to become future-Amy and sort out the ontological paradox, a double-double-future Amy and Rory arrive. You know, there was a time when I could describe a Who plot without using the expression "just like in Red Dwarf"...
The Doctor has a cunning plan - which, now I come to think about it, is also disturbingly similar to my own work The Michaelmas Evasion - which involves hoping his future self turns up to tell him which button magically resets the situation. Personally, I think the Doctor knew exactly which one to go for, but only chose this course of action to piss off Lawrence Miles, which is an honorable enough intention.
The universe is saved and Amy is ordered to wear something from waist down from now on. The tone is kind of like a cross between the end of City of Death and Drawn Together. Which is not a bad thing.
Ah, I tell you, this little skit will have huge implications. Whole generations of the as-yet-unborn will probably be conceived because of the mental images conjured up in these five minutes. It might be the most successful CR skit ever... depending on how many viewers were able to donate one-handed. Hot-Karen-Gillan-on-Karen-Gillan action? I'm waiting for the revelation that the raging hormones triggered by such a thought weren't responsible for the destruction of Tokyo (and, since my cousin is in the middle of said disaster zone, I'm allowed some black humor so don't write in and complain. That's what my facebook page is for!)
So, for the closest TV will ever get to showing us the Charles Danielsverse...
5/5
Next Time: Look Behind You, It's The Impossible Astronaut In The Year of the Moon Because Stetsons Are Cool... Part One.
7 comments:
To be honest, if only that where true. A lot of people seem to be bitching about it.
I'm confused.
WHAT were true?
WHAT are people bitching about?
A- Amy flirting with someone who wasn't her husband...
B- Rory being distracted by Amy's knickers.
C- Amy slapping Rory (even though this is kind of a predestination paradox since she may not have slapped him until she had been told she was going to slap him)
D- More Wibbly Wobbly.
I think that a lot of people just don't like Amy Pond. Yes, she is a lot more aware of her sexuality than Rose or Martha, but if Captain Jack had been doing what Amy had been doing in the two CHARITY MINI-EPISODES, I think that the same people would chuckle and go 'Oh, Captain Jack, you're so wacky.'
What I wish was true was that people watched Amy flirt with Amy and then... have lots and lots of kinky sex after donating money to charity.
A- Amy flirting with someone who wasn't her husband...
...it was herself!
Unless it's about the driving instructor, which was before they got married. And Rory wasn't betrayed by it, just that she thinks she's cleverer than she is...
B- Rory being distracted by Amy's knickers.
Bollocks. SHE WASN'T WEARING ANY! That's the whole point - why else is she wanting a private chat with the Doctor? She's run out of panties and is forced to go commando! And the story ends with her getting told to wear trousers!
Not exactly subtext!
C- Amy slapping Rory (even though this is kind of a predestination paradox since she may not have slapped him until she had been told she was going to slap him)
Well, she's shown to reconsider her position visavis the "Amy Pond Sandwich" concept...
D- More Wibbly Wobbly.
Mmm. OK. But it IS a five minute skit on one set. That needs to be funny and entertaining. Give the guy a break.
I think that a lot of people just don't like Amy Pond.
It took me a while, but you've got to remember
a) she's a manic depressive with half her life missing and a history of suicide attempts
b) doesn't mean half of what she says
She's kind of like Avon in a way, she doesn't like admitting her true feelings and much prefers strutting around in provocative kinky outfits until someone she cares about is in danger in which case she will go thermonuclear.
Yes, she is a lot more aware of her sexuality than Rose or Martha,
Rose, remember, ended up being chaste since her mum went through a second childhood and seemingly bonked every bloke on the estate.
Though, in her very first episode she drops round Mickey's place to have sex with her boyfriend ("Kit off!" as they said).
And Martha was unsurprisingly repressed given her family being composed of hormone explosives...
but if Captain Jack had been doing what Amy had been doing in the two CHARITY MINI-EPISODES, I think that the same people would chuckle and go 'Oh, Captain Jack, you're so wacky.'
You know, it struck me Jack isn't HALF as omnisexual as people think. Far a few flirty comments, he barely considers sex with anyone. No wonder he was retconned as coming from a backwards hicksville planetoid of rednecks by 51st century standards...
What I wish was true was that people watched Amy flirt with Amy and then... have lots and lots of kinky sex after donating money to charity.
Is that not a dream worth having?!
Stephen Moffat seems to have an inordinate amount of love for the adjective "wibbly", doesn't he? "Wibbly-wobbly", "wibbly lever", etc...
Good mini-sode; I only wish the Fnarg prequels would be available on the BBC site in my country.
:-/
Ahem.
That was the worst Nixon impersonator I've ever seen; he looked more like J. Edgar Hoover... :-S
HOWEVER, the flapping on the soundtrack was VERY effective, and that reveal at the end?
*shivers*
I'm pumped.
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