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capri0mniWhile my f'list is a-sploding with reactions to the Who episode it watched last night, I'll give my reactions to the episode I watched last night (don't worry, I'll be brief).
First, the bits I loved:
The Doctor's reaction when the Kaled dome was blown up, when he thought Sarah and Harry were inside, and he had sent them there. The way he just sort of slumped.
And yet, a bit later, when he was leaving, and met the crowd of rejoicing Thals in the corridor, he was bouyed by their joy for just a moment, even though he knew it to be misplaced. They were joyful, and he let himself share that joy for the two seconds that their paths crossed, period. That struck me as a very Doctorish sort of thing.
And then, of course, his joy and relief when he met them again in the wasteland.
And when Wazzisname, Davros's Goebbels!guy, used the word "meglomaniac" -- how many tv shows for eight-year olds today would use that kind of vocabulary? That whole scene in the lab was wonderfully done, dramatic-tension wise.
Now the bits that annoy me:
Granted, this is not really fair as a criticism of this particular serial, perhaps, because Doctor Who has always held a magnifying mirror up to our culture's history!Memes, clarified and ennunciated for the young, so that the memes may continue, whether they're accurate or not (and I made a similiar complaint in the discussion of Part Two). But:
I really hate that Davros is there to artificially create the Daleks, and to deliberately remove all conscience and emotion. And yes, I know that the Daleks are a metaphor for the Nazis, and Davros is their Hitler. But that's why this annoys me so much. The Nazis were not inhuman monsters -- they did have emotions. Hitler loved children and puppy dogs as much as the next doting father. And yet, he, and the people around him, were still capable of great evil.
As I said, above, Doctor Who is meant, first, to be a children's show -- and such complex philosophical questions, and the graying of the line between Good and Evil don't really have a place in bedtime stories (Which Oldschool DW, is, really). But it still bothers me when I see it as an adult.
And I guess it also bothers me that the Kaleds/Daleks are drawn as such close paralells to the Nazis (even down to the war medals on the Kaled uniforms -- I suspect they were borrowed from the Beeb's historical drama dept.), that there's no room for them to be anything else: Daleks = Nazis when they might have been written as Daleks > Nazis.
I had a wee debate in the reply thread to my last episode reaction about whether Hitler really like Davros as a sole creator of the evil of the Holocaust. I might post a separate post of speculative alternate history about anti-semitism and whether the Holocaust would have happened if Hitler had never been born, or if he had ended up going to art school like he wanted and became a famous painter, instead. But that's for a seperate post, and I'd want to go have another look at some history books, I have before I do...
First, the bits I loved:
The Doctor's reaction when the Kaled dome was blown up, when he thought Sarah and Harry were inside, and he had sent them there. The way he just sort of slumped.
And yet, a bit later, when he was leaving, and met the crowd of rejoicing Thals in the corridor, he was bouyed by their joy for just a moment, even though he knew it to be misplaced. They were joyful, and he let himself share that joy for the two seconds that their paths crossed, period. That struck me as a very Doctorish sort of thing.
And then, of course, his joy and relief when he met them again in the wasteland.
And when Wazzisname, Davros's Goebbels!guy, used the word "meglomaniac" -- how many tv shows for eight-year olds today would use that kind of vocabulary? That whole scene in the lab was wonderfully done, dramatic-tension wise.
Now the bits that annoy me:
Granted, this is not really fair as a criticism of this particular serial, perhaps, because Doctor Who has always held a magnifying mirror up to our culture's history!Memes, clarified and ennunciated for the young, so that the memes may continue, whether they're accurate or not (and I made a similiar complaint in the discussion of Part Two). But:
I really hate that Davros is there to artificially create the Daleks, and to deliberately remove all conscience and emotion. And yes, I know that the Daleks are a metaphor for the Nazis, and Davros is their Hitler. But that's why this annoys me so much. The Nazis were not inhuman monsters -- they did have emotions. Hitler loved children and puppy dogs as much as the next doting father. And yet, he, and the people around him, were still capable of great evil.
As I said, above, Doctor Who is meant, first, to be a children's show -- and such complex philosophical questions, and the graying of the line between Good and Evil don't really have a place in bedtime stories (Which Oldschool DW, is, really). But it still bothers me when I see it as an adult.
And I guess it also bothers me that the Kaleds/Daleks are drawn as such close paralells to the Nazis (even down to the war medals on the Kaled uniforms -- I suspect they were borrowed from the Beeb's historical drama dept.), that there's no room for them to be anything else: Daleks = Nazis when they might have been written as Daleks > Nazis.
I had a wee debate in the reply thread to my last episode reaction about whether Hitler really like Davros as a sole creator of the evil of the Holocaust. I might post a separate post of speculative alternate history about anti-semitism and whether the Holocaust would have happened if Hitler had never been born, or if he had ended up going to art school like he wanted and became a famous painter, instead. But that's for a seperate post, and I'd want to go have another look at some history books, I have before I do...
