You could take bottle tops off with these

[sovay]

Last night's dreams, including but not limited to: something about the ruins of high bridges and making love with the male-bodied version of someone I know as biologically female. Also they had small fanlike fins in the hollows of their hips, but that sort of thing is not uncommon in my dreams. I hope they don't mind.

I passed out before making any notes to myself on "Deep Breath," which derspatchel and I finally got the chance to watch last night, long after my friendlist had exploded about it. Short course: I expected to like Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor and I did. His erratic scenes post-regeneration worked much better for me than Eleven's manic madcap antics and his later shyness felt genuine rather than sympathy-rigged, especially now that he has some sense of himself and his recent actions rather than hands he doesn't recognize and difficulty not flirting with tyrannosaurs. I'm not sure I'm a hugging person now . . . He's the first Doctor in a very long time who looks as though human is not his default setting; he has some birdlike movements, a springy, wary fierceness which every now and then becomes something as bizarrely normal and diffident as an offer of coffee and chips. I find myself thinking tiercel when I look at him. (Of course he's dangerous; when was the Doctor ever not?) I am just hoping that the question of why this face is not really being set up as a series mystery; it answers itself pretty quickly. Capaldi ranting about his eyebrows is delightful. They probably want to secede from my face and set up their own independent state of eyebrows!

I was less endeared by the meta-plot of the episode, which seemed to feel the audience needed to be talked into accepting Capaldi's Doctor as strongly as Clara with her imprinting on youthful Eleven, stressing continuity with his predecessor rather than offering the latest iteration on his own terms. I believe it's a valid issue for Clara, but personally I was looking forward to Twelve; I don't need to be argued out of my bias against wiry grey hair and cantankerous brows. (I did like the Doctor being puzzled by his own reflection, lined with experiences he didn't live through; hearing the words out of his own mouth a beat too late to look away. You probably can't even remember where you got that face from.) The phone call was really pushing it. I am also decidedly unsure about the random jags of slapstick and not just one, but three characters casually condemning Clara's personality flaws. I don't like her much as a character, but that has to do with how thinly she's written, not because I think she's an emotionally needy passive-aggressive egomaniac or any of the other labels the script suddenly felt the need to hang on her. It was like reverse fan service. "Nothing is more important than my egomania!" is a great line, but a cheap shot. If it was meant to build up to her moment of bravery among the clockworks—which was well done—I think it backfired.

All through the episode I thought the clockwork leader looked familiar; I should have recognized him as the deserter Jacob from A Field in England (2013). To be fair, he had a beard there. And part of his face wasn't a naked metal frame.

I am all for seeing more of Jenny and Vastra as a marriage. It feels a little like cheating that their first kiss onscreen (that I've seen, anyway) is a life-saving sharing of breath rather than a moment of passion or everyday affection, but maybe people don't ever just kiss on Doctor Who. Anyway, lesbian ninja lizard-human couples: rock on.

I'm not sure what it is with Moffat and theatrically flirtatious female antagonists. I hope Rob is right that she's the Rani, who has not yet appeared in New Who. Maybe the umbrella's because she watched a lot of The Prisoner the last time she was on Earth.

I was really sad about the dinosaur.

Comments

scarf, familiar face

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

Did you catch that he considered having a long scarf and rejected it as "silly?"

I assume that his face looked familiar because the Doctor has seen it twice - Capaldi was in the episode about Pompeii, as well as playing a recurrent character in Torchwood (John Frobisher, a definite slimeball). Maybe it was a tease, and we'll never hear it mentioned again. I don't think I knew before that he has a choice about his regeneration face/body. Is that new, or have I been oblivious for decades? I'd hate to think that it's the Doctor's choice to always be a white guy.

[sovay]

Did you catch that he considered having a long scarf and rejected it as "silly?"

I did! Alas. I think everyone could use a long scarf sometimes.

I assume that his face looked familiar because the Doctor has seen it twice - Capaldi was in the episode about Pompeii, as well as playing a recurrent character in Torchwood (John Frobisher, a definite slimeball).

Hey! He's where I started noticing Capaldi!

Maybe it was a tease, and we'll never hear it mentioned again.

I'm really hoping. Yes, we the audience know the actor already appeared on the show; it doesn't need to be a brain-teaser for the characters. The Twelfth Doctor is not John Frobisher is not Lucius Caecilius Iucundus. All separate people in their world, unless we're going to start breaking the fourth wall after fifty years. Put down the lampshade, Steven Moffat. Or at least leave it on the lamp where it belongs.

I don't think I knew before that he has a choice about his regeneration face/body. Is that new, or have I been oblivious for decades? I'd hate to think that it's the Doctor's choice to always be a white guy.

To the best of my knowledge, conscious choice of regeneration has never been an option outside of "The Night of the Doctor," and there it was only by the intervention of the Sisterhood of Karn. "The Day of the Doctor" leaned heavily on the implication that the Doctor's feelings and emotions inform the regeneration process, even if he can't see it at the time—Ten and Eleven turned out as protractedly juvenile as they did in part because they were running from the guilt and grief of the Time War, from age and responsibility and the deeply buried ways they remember it all went wrong. (See comments in link to swan_tower, above.) Which is why I think there's no mystery about the age of Capaldi's face: he's the sign that the Doctor can move forward now. He doesn't have to distract himself from his own past; he's not playing at being more innocent than he is. He looks like a cranky older man because, well, that's one of the things he is. Older, anyway. Cranky is perfectly understandable under the circumstances. I agree that there is no reason the Doctor should always be male and always white, especially in a universe that has lesbian lizard people just casually hanging out with their families in London, but since Capaldi is the Doctor we've got for the time being, I am invested in Moffat writing him well. And that includes not burying the character work under unnecessary mysteries.