Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Specials, part 3: the rest, not least.

Part One: The Day of the Doctor and prequels

Part Two: An Adventure in Time and Space

 

There were two other specials, less official in nature, that were nevertheless absolutely delightful and I think my favorites overall. I'll write about the Peter Davison comedy short and move on to The Light at the End audio play.

Peter Davison, as 5th Doctor, was known to me as Celery Guy in my youth when I stole occasions to watch Doctor Who on PBS in English and usually never managed to watch an entire serial. It turned out in the end that Celery Guy was only slightly less insane as a person than Tom Baker, which gives us a nearly endless series of grumpy and/or funny and/or wacko quotes. His recent diatribe on why there should not be a female Doctor being a case in point, marrying illogic and entitlement beautifully. Suffice it to say that I find him hilarious. His history with Doctor Who also didn't end with his dismissal. His daughter Georgina Moffett played Ten's daughter in The Doctor's Daughter, fell in love with David Tennant and married him. They have a child and everything. With all this meta happening, and rumours going around that all the living Doctors would appear in The Day of the Doctor, something was bound to happen.

What happened was The 5(ish) Doctors Reboot. I do not want to spoil this short, but it is extraordinarily funny. It stars Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker, Peter Davison, Paul McGann and Tom Baker (ish), in which they try to be a part of The Day of the Doctor. I will leave it there. Watch it. Moffett, Tennant, Smith, Moffat and others, also appear.

It would not have been a proper 50th Anniversary celebration without a proper Big Finish audio play. They were responsible for continuing the adventures of most of the Doctors after their dismissals from the show and from the 1980s on were, lets be frank, the only good source of Doctor Who material out there. Big Finish made Paul McGann as the 8th Doctor and The Night of the Doctor would simply not have been possible were it not for Eight's adventures (most of which were great and are now cannon!). Their contribution to the 50th Anniversary was The Light at the End, starring all first eight Doctors, though primarily the living ones, Sylvester McCoy, Colin Baker, Peter Davison, Paul McGann and Tom Baker, and their (living) companions (i.e. no Sarah Jane). Something happens on 23 November 1963 to ordinary, everyman Bob Dovie that affects all the first eight doctors in a capital way. Time is collapsing unto itself around the Doctors and they must work together to solve the mystery, save Dovie's family and themselves. Of course, the Master is involved. If you are familiar with the voices of the classic Doctors, this thing is very fun. If you are only familiar with Nu Who, you might have a harder time sorting everyone out. This said, as with most Big Finish Doctor Who productions (and there are a gazillion of them) The Light at the End is a very good Doctor Who episode and the reunion many fans was hoping for.

Fin de session

Ouf.

Les cours sont terminés depuis un petit peu plus d'une semaine et j'ai presque terminé mes corrections. Je dois dire que mon cours fut un grand succès. Des étudiants intéressés et engageants. Les discussions étaient intéressantes et généralement les étudiants avaient lu les textes (ce qui est beaucoup plus rares que vous le croyez). Surtout, ils ont remis de bons travaux. La moyenne finale est A-, ce qui est un record. Deux étudiants m'ont demandé de leur écrire des lettres de référence pour la maîtrise et une autre va s'inscrire à un programme d'histoire orale pour la maîtrise en raison du cours. Je m'attends à lui écrire des lettres aussi. De plus, au moins deux étudiants ont changé leur programme la session prochaine pour prendre mon cours d'histoire matérielle. En somme un grand succès.

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Personnellement, je suis épuisée. Je suis en retard sur tout et n'ai accompli que la moitié que je voulais faire depuis le mois d'août. Mon épuisement n'aide pas les choses. Je suis franchement frustrée de la situation. Je me mets au clavier et je n'y vois plus rien après une demi-heure.

Au moins, les achats de Noël et les décorations sont terminés, ce qui me libère un peu pour les deux prochaines semaines.

Ouf.

FUCK CANCER, mais il y a de bonnes nouvelles

Mises à jour santé:

Mamou prend des suppléments de fer depuis un mois et son anémie est disparue. Il semble que le problème avait une mauvaise réaction à son médicament pour le diabète. Il a changé de médicament, a eu froid pendant quelques semaines, mais il va vraiment mieux.

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Le Chaton semble avoir une allergie aux acariens. J'ai commandé une housse pour son matelas, qui n'a toujours pas été livrée*. Il va déjà beaucoup mieux. Nous devions voir son médecin aujourd'hui, mais le rendez-vous est repoussé à demain. Nous voulons discuter des problèmes de défécations du Chaton. 

Ma tante J. a été opérée et elle va déjà beaucoup mieux. On lui a enlevé plus de 30 centimètres d'intestins et cureté le reste, mais elle a recommencé à marcher et manger normalement dès le lendemain. Il y a de la chimiothérapie, mais le prognostic est prudent, mais bon.

Notre ami S. a reçu son allo-greffe il y a un peu plus d'une semaine. Mamou lui a parlé mardi dernier pendant quelques minutes. S. était épuisé, ce qui est normal, mais il n'y avait pas d'indications de rejet ou d'infection. Mamou devrait appeler dans quelques jours. Les risques de décès avec une allo-greffe sont énormes, mais comme c'est le seul traitement qui offre un tout petit pourcentage de guérison, pour un homme dans la quarantaine, un petit espoir est mieux qu'une certitude de mort à moyen terme.

Donc, dans l'ensemble, plus de bonnes nouvelles que de mauvaises.

C'est Noël dans ma maison!

Une courte entrée présentant les décorations de Noël dans ma maison, édition 2013.

 

Calendrier de l'Avent, fait maison.

Calendrier de l'Avent, fait maison.

Courtepointe de Noël, fait main, nouveauté de 2013.

Courtepointe de Noël, fait main, nouveauté de 2013.

Arbre à cartes en date du 7 décembre.

Arbre à cartes en date du 7 décembre.

Crèche de Noël, nouveauté de 2013, en bois.

Crèche de Noël, nouveauté de 2013, en bois.

Arbre de Noël, édition 2013, tout en couleurs.

Arbre de Noël, édition 2013, tout en couleurs.

Bas de Noël, pour ceux qui passeront les Fêtes avec nous. Oui, le vert est plus gros et est pour le Chaton.

Bas de Noël, pour ceux qui passeront les Fêtes avec nous. Oui, le vert est plus gros et est pour le Chaton.

Couronne de Noël dans la chambre du Chaton, faite par Marraine Gillian.

Couronne de Noël dans la chambre du Chaton, faite par Marraine Gillian.

Petit arbre de Noël dans la chambre du Chaton.

Petit arbre de Noël dans la chambre du Chaton.

Petit arbre de Noël dans ma chambre

Petit arbre de Noël dans ma chambre

Couronne sur la porte en avant de la maison.

Couronne sur la porte en avant de la maison.

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary specials, part 2: An Adventure in Time and Space

Previous: The Day of the Doctor and related prequels.

 

The short of it: An Adventure in Time and Space was pretty darn good. There were problems, but it was good.

Bringing back the very beginnings of the series for the Nu Who fans who are generally ignorant of what was what back in the old days was a marvellous idea. Mind you, I don't blame the Nu Who fans for their ignorance, I just don't understand why so many of them have not even tried to get informed about it. Anywho.

For the most part, the movie was sweet and emotional, without being sappy and the performances were excellent. David Bradley was extraordinary as Hartnell. He did something with his face muscles that made him look nearly indistinguishable from Hartnell. Lesley Manville as Heather Hartnell was as sweet and subtly smart as she was rumoured to be. Sasha Dhawan as Waris Hussein was endearing, but having never seen him in interview ever, I cannot judge the performance. Jessica Raine as Verity Lambert was a little but too tame for me. Lambert was known for being a marvellous bitch of a woman, but Raine played her as almost meek at times, which did not gel with what I remember seeing and hearing of her. Simply stating in dialogue she was "piss and vinegar" is not enough. As for Brian Cox as Sydney Newman, he was all wrong. Newman was Canadian and cultured. Cox played him with a grotesque American drawl and a wet cigar (though he did smoke cigars). Reece Shearsmith as Patrick Troughton, for all the five seconds we see him, was all wrong as well and the wig was inexcusable. The other characters were generally fine, not notable in any way, positively or negatively. 

Mark Gatiss's scenario was generally strong. The difficulty was to show the birth of DW in context, while making it an engaging story and not a docudrama. The challenge was to make a movie about a show, but to have that story carried by the people around the show, not the show itself. This was generally a success. Using the Tardis chronometer as a means to indicate the passage of time was a good conceit. Using the cast photo shoots to indicate the changes in the series over time was also smart. Overall, where it not for Bradley, though, An Adventure in Time and space would have been much less interesting. He carries the whole thing. His presence makes the movie less disjointed than it inevitably would be. To stop the movie when Hartnell leaves DW was the only way to go. The movie also manages not to glorify the original Doctor Who creators; they are likeable but they are all very flawed, except for Hussein, who is shown as perfect. Being a gay, Iranian man in 1963, it would have been bad form to vilify him in any way considering he is shown as being discriminated against. This is also probably why Lambert is shown as more likeable than she actually was.

In short, An Adventure in Time and Space was touching and a good homage to the artisans that created Doctor Who all those years ago. Were is not for the extremely tacky silent appearance of Matt Smith as Eleven smiling knowingly at Hartnell (a barftastic scene if you ask me), I have rather little negative to say overall. Even the wrong bits felt right in the context of the movie, within the limits of what good movie making demands.

I will watch it again.

Next: The 5(ish) Doctors Reboot and The Light at the End

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Specials, part one.

Now that the 23rd of November is past, it's time for a spoilery recapitulation of my impressions of all the specials. I want to look at not only The Day of the Doctor itself, but also its two short prequels (I hate that word), An Adventure in Time and Space, the Big Finish audio play The Light at the End and the (kind of) spoof The 5(ish) Doctors Reunion. That is a lot to look at (and to write about) so I'll take two posts at least to go through everything.

In this post, I'd like to tackle The Day of the Doctor and the two prequels first. That way, if you don't want to read about all the other stuff, you can just ignore the other entries.

Spoilers beyond this point.

 

 

I am not going to talk about the thirty-second promotions for the Anniversary celebrations, most of who features Strax, because I did not see them all and those I saw were inconsequential and, frankly, unnecessary.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter remember that The Night of the Doctor left me in quite a state. I was reduced to onomatopoeias for a couple of hours. I do believe I watched it about ten times on that day. First of all, McGann. McGann! Bringing back the 8th Doctor during the heart of the Time War, in the last moments before he chooses to get involved in the conflict, was brilliant of Moffat. Naming all his Big Finish companions, therefore making them canon, was nothing short of wonderful. In many ways, it was all fan service, but what appreciated fan service. It was making McGann a proper Doctor finally, not just the unfortunate victim of the godawful Fox tv movie that so many of us are trying to remember differently than the swill that it was. On top of that, The Night of the Doctor is very well constructed. For a film coming just short of seven minutes, it packs a punch. It brings together Classic Who and Nu Who beautifully, linking The Brain of Morbius, a couple of Big Finish adventures and the Time War right quick. Having Eight come back to Karn (I don't remember the title of the Big Finish where Eight was there), choose to become something else than the Doctor, allows the story to flow, ties up loose ends and introduces the War Doctor. This way, even if Eccleston is not there to be the 9th Doctor, we get a satisfactory explanation of his transition from Eight. Plus, McGann!

The Last Day, in opposition, is much less grandiose and less important for the Doctor himself, though it is very important for the Time Lords. In those short four-some minutes, we see the horrific lengths to which the Time Lords went to fight the Daleks, as well as their sheer arrogance, their sense of superiority. We see the first minutes of the Fall of Arcadia, Gallifrey's second city. This introduces the sets for the planet that well be seen in The Day of the Doctor, as well as important details about this day necessary to understanding a key element of the special.

And what a special! Let's be frank, most Doctor Who Christmas specials and all of the anniversary specials so far have been at best meh (A Christmas Carol, the Three Doctors) or at worst horrifically bad (the 25th anniversary special crossover with Eastenders). Among the specials, I only have love the The Next Doctor, which I find simple but totally delightful (the Red Nose Day's Doctor parody with Rowan Atkinson The Curse of the Final Death was funny, but does it count as a special?). I don't know that I love The Day of the Doctor, but I was bowled over by it. As I have read a lot online: "So many feels!"

The story is again one mostly based on time travel as a story vector rather than a conceit, which is typical of Moffat's doctor. It plays with what time travel does to time in order to drive the story and without time travel, much would simply not be resolved. The Three Doctors present at the heart of the narrative, the War Doctor (an extraordinary John Hurt -- is he ever bad?), Ten and Eleven, find solutions to the issues at hand because they have time-based technologies. The Moment, the weapon used by the Doctor to burn Gallifrey and the Daleks is too a time-based technology, so advanced, it's developed a conscience, which takes the form of the Bad Wolf, i.e. Rose Tyler. Still a little bit of fan service there, but clever enough not to be tacky. it is clear from the script and dialogues that the War Doctor was supposed to be Nine and that Eccleston's refusal to participate (his rightful choice) forced Moffat to work even more on the script to make everything work. How do you have thirteen doctors and yet sill have Matt Smith's Doctor be Eleven and Capaldi's still Twelve? It's a little stretch of logic, but he makes it work. The War Doctor is still Eight, but not quite, and becomes Nine at the very end of the special.

Most importantly, how do you reconcile the fact that the Doctor burned Gallifrey to end the war, that he was irreparably hurt by his actions, but that the planet and the war were time locked in The End of Time and accessible enough to emerge in Earth's sky? If the Time Lords has been destroyed, how could they have been there to haunt the Master for so long and emerge from the broken time lock? And how come Nine, no matter how hurt, does not chose to die, but rather live with the pain of having destroyed his people.

Because he did not destroy them. He time locked them and does not remember that what he did. So their reappearance in The End of Time, however illogical, makes sense to him, because he believes this illogical reality. That is a smart way to reconcile everything, even this blatant paradox in the canon.

Another quite interesting thing about the special is how it treats the three Doctors present in most of the story. The War Doctor is war scarred, but not yet plagued by the actions he thinks he will have to take. Ten is still dealing with the pain, defined by his regret of both the Time War and of having left Donna behind. On the other hand, Eleven is four hundred years older, he admits he readily, and has managed to move on, mostly by forgetting, but still. It makes their interaction even more poignant than the three actors already make it by their on-screen chemistry.

There are lots of fine touches, some fan service, sprinkled in there as well. That all thirteen doctors (One to Twelve, plus the War Doctor) come to Gallifrey to time-lock it is a nice touch; we see them all, though from stock film, except for Capaldi's eyes. That a mysterious British Museum custodian, who may or may not be Four, appears at the end would be unbelievably tacky were it not for the fact that Tom Baker chews the screen like there is no tomorrow. Anyone else would not have been able to carry this otherwise ridiculous scene.

Everything else is fine and cute. Opening the special with the original opening credits was brilliant. I still don't like Clara, but that she's become a teacher in the school built beside the junk yard from The Unearthly Child was great. Plus, she saves the day, which is what companions do and should continue to do. The B plot with the Zygons is fine, though we never do find out how they negotiate a final peace in the end. It's all clever but not profound. This allows the War Doctor's A plot to carry relatively without distraction.

See Part Two, An Adventure in Time and Space.

See Part Three, The 5(ish) Doctors Reboot and The Light at the End.

Dimanche, c'est décembre. Puis-je me mettre à hurler?

Avouez que le temps passe vite et que cela fait trop longtemps que je n'ai pas écrit une ligne dans ce blogue. Vous saurez que j'ai trois entrées en cours de rédaction qui ne sont pas terminées parce que j'ai été malade, mon fils a été malade, mon amour fait de l'insomnie (ce qui me tient réveillée aussi) et c'est la fin de la session. Vous voyez le principe?

Ceci dit, il se passe beaucoup de choses. Ma tante J. est toujours malade, mais a été opérée avec succès. On lui a enlevé plus de 30 cm d'intestin et cureté le reste, par laparoscopie. Elle va bien et devrait commencer une chimiothérapie sous peu, bien que je n'ai pas de détails.

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Je n'ai pas de détails parce que mon père est malade. Il a la diarrhée depuis plusieurs jours et est très faible, mais refuse d'aller à l'hôpital, où un homme de son âge avec le flux devrait aller. Ma mère est hors d'elle-même, comme vous le déduisez. J'ai un peu d'information à travers ma soeur, mais c'est un peu comme le jeu du téléphone; les détails se transforment.

J'espère terminer la première mouture de mon article en retard depuis septembre au plus tard la semaine prochaine. Je pense que je l'enverrai dès que j'aurai corrigé les fautes, sans trop d'autres modifications. Je laisserai au correcteur et à l'édition le soin de mettre de l'ordre dans le tout. Un article en retard avant Noël avec des défauts est mieux qu'un article l'année prochaine mais parfait.

Au moins, mes cadeaux de Noël sont tous achetés. C'est ça de bon. Je compte envoyer les cartes de Noël en fin de semaine. Elles sont prêtes et pour la plupart ne doivent qu'être adressées. Les décorations de Noël sont choisies (dans ma tête du moins), mais je n'ai pas encore fait l'inventaire. Nous devons nous débarrasser d'un nombre non négligeable de boules de plastique et de cossins du Dollorama, qui ont depuis été remplacées pas des décorations de meilleure qualité ou faites mains. Il y a des limites. Je ferai cela samedi 6 et dimanche 7. Je voulais un peu plus de flexibilité pour le calendrier de l'Avent, alors j'en ai fait un autre. Nous avons toujours les 24 petites chaussettes numérotées, mais elles prennent de la place. J'ai donc cousu 24 petits sachets que j'ai numérotés qui sont accrochés sur trois branches rattachées à une corde. Je l'accroche samedi soir pour que cela soit une surprise pour le Chaton. Dans les sachets, j'ai alterné des petits chocolats, des dés (verts), des petites voitures (surtout vertes) et deux zambonis (dont une verte). Le Chaton est mieux d'aimer parce que je me démène pour lui, le Chaton.

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