[Doctor Who] 6.04 "The Doctor's Wife"
Confession time: This was actually the first major work of Neil Gaiman's I'd seen.
That said, can we get him back for some more stuff? Or maybe it won't work a second time. But man, I dug this episode.
If I have one major criticism of the episode, it's that it felt like fanfic. Maybe even crackfic, but the sort of crackfic that is so good you're like, "This is totally cracked out and insane but I can't even bring myself to care, I just want to know what happens!" Of course, that may have been because it basically was fanfic, it's just that the writer is rather a bigger name than the rest of us and actually gets to have his fanfic aired as part of the series.
A few other minor criticisms: script felt a little dense, mostly because it was packed with so much good stuff that it was like repeatedly being hit over the head with a mallet made of awesome, the "You want to be forgiven!" / "Doesn't everyone?" moment was way overplayed, the science of it made no sense even by Doctor Who standards, reference to current arc plot very awkwardly shoehorned in.
Other than that, it was super, and I really loved Gaiman's grasp of the characters and relationships, particularly Rory. Can we always have Neil write Rory? Like, can he submit all Rory's pages from Minnesota? Especially coming after his total uselessness last week, it was awesome seeing Rory be the one to figure House's game out and take care of Idris as she was dying. It felt like Gaiman did a much better job of balancing the group and giving everyone moments to shine. Some other episodes (last week, I'm lookin' at you) tend to come off as "The Doctor has this plot, Amy has this plot, Rory . . . aw fuck I forgot about Rory again" and as a result he winds up useless or dead again.
Anyway I was going to go through and make a list of everything I thought was great but it was starting to get unwieldy so I removed it. Probably this has been my favorite episode of the season so far -- "Day of the Moon" had much more of a wham factor but this one was just more enjoyable.
Hat count: Holding at 2 total
Eye Patch Lady sightings: If there was one I missed it; 2 total
Rory deaths: i, hallucination caused by evil TARDIS-stealing entity (3 + 3i total)
Amy: Mercifully they decided only to beat us over the head with one arc plot this time
Urgh. I hate imaginary numbers. Never doing the count that way again.
Next week: Appears to be a Doctor Who/Deep Space Nine crossover. The Founders are invading!
That said, can we get him back for some more stuff? Or maybe it won't work a second time. But man, I dug this episode.
If I have one major criticism of the episode, it's that it felt like fanfic. Maybe even crackfic, but the sort of crackfic that is so good you're like, "This is totally cracked out and insane but I can't even bring myself to care, I just want to know what happens!" Of course, that may have been because it basically was fanfic, it's just that the writer is rather a bigger name than the rest of us and actually gets to have his fanfic aired as part of the series.
A few other minor criticisms: script felt a little dense, mostly because it was packed with so much good stuff that it was like repeatedly being hit over the head with a mallet made of awesome, the "You want to be forgiven!" / "Doesn't everyone?" moment was way overplayed, the science of it made no sense even by Doctor Who standards, reference to current arc plot very awkwardly shoehorned in.
Other than that, it was super, and I really loved Gaiman's grasp of the characters and relationships, particularly Rory. Can we always have Neil write Rory? Like, can he submit all Rory's pages from Minnesota? Especially coming after his total uselessness last week, it was awesome seeing Rory be the one to figure House's game out and take care of Idris as she was dying. It felt like Gaiman did a much better job of balancing the group and giving everyone moments to shine. Some other episodes (last week, I'm lookin' at you) tend to come off as "The Doctor has this plot, Amy has this plot, Rory . . . aw fuck I forgot about Rory again" and as a result he winds up useless or dead again.
Anyway I was going to go through and make a list of everything I thought was great but it was starting to get unwieldy so I removed it. Probably this has been my favorite episode of the season so far -- "Day of the Moon" had much more of a wham factor but this one was just more enjoyable.
Hat count: Holding at 2 total
Eye Patch Lady sightings: If there was one I missed it; 2 total
Rory deaths: i, hallucination caused by evil TARDIS-stealing entity (3 + 3i total)
Amy: Mercifully they decided only to beat us over the head with one arc plot this time
Urgh. I hate imaginary numbers. Never doing the count that way again.
Next week: Appears to be a Doctor Who/Deep Space Nine crossover. The Founders are invading!