episode 2
Doctor Who was awesome. Seriously. Awesome.
House was awesome too, but I want to talk about Doctor Who for a minute.
I\'m in awe of Russel T Davies. I was before, but moreso now. On the surface of it, he put together a fun little adventure. Great jokes, witty dialog, fun characters... But really, there\'s a lot of pathos there. My mom wrote back ( after I made my parents watch it) \"I think it was kind of sad :(.\"
I\'ve always been happy being a solitary fan. But at this point, I really want somebody to be all fannish at. They blew up Gallifrey! And in a tiny, off-hand backstory mention, too. (It\'s not really a spoiler if you haven\'t seen it. I doubt it would mean much to many people reading anyway. If you\'re just starting with the new series, it\'s just a bit of the Doctor\'s backstory now, that may or may not be unresolved).
So the Doctor\'s really alone now. He\'s always been alone. Adrift and homeless. But now the place he comes from is gone. He can\'t go back.
Fictionally, this is a good move. Gallifrey was always problematic in the old series. And it reemphasizes the Doctor as something special. He\'s not just another Time Lord. He\'s the last Time Lord. The only Time Lord.
Even if it makes sense, it\'s still a loss. Which is fitting. The episode talked a lot about loss.
I tried rummaging through the Outpost Gallifrey forum to see what the fan reaction was. Most of it was \"Woo! Cool!\" And yeah, I admit, kinda. That wasn\'t exactly what I was looking for. Gallifrey\'s been blown up before (in one of the BBC books... I haven\'t read many of those). Other books have talked about what it means for the Time Lords to go to war. Think about that for a minute. It\'s not pretty.
(Okay, after digging a little further I found the \"RTD is screwing everything up! The new series suxx0rz!\" posts. That\'s a relief).
I\'m very eager to see where he\'s going with all this. The Doctor\'s more distant, more alien, and more dangerous now. More than the original series, anyway, if not the books. And it\'s clearer now that the new series is going to be about Rose finding out who the Doctor is, and coming to terms with that. About what she means to him. And about how it\'s all going to change her.
And it\'s going to be about fun adventures too. And that\'s just as important as all the other stuff.