earlgreytea68 | A Mish-Mash of Thoughts on the New Who

Because I am home at the moment, I don't have a ton of time to do my nice, organized Doctor Who reaction posts like I usually do. However, I do have thoughts! They are as follows:

As I very briefly noted, I enjoyed The Bells of St. John, not as much as The Snowmen but more than Asylum of the Daleks. I thought it had its clever moments and its fantastic lines, which is good because that is what I expect from a Moffat episode. I loved what the bells of St. John turned out to be, and I loved the Doctor's line about "I can't predict the future, I just work there," or whatever it was. I actually liked the recurrence of "run you clever boy" in the mnemonic. It didn't even occur to me that the episode resembled The Idiot's Lantern until I read other people's reactions, although I do see that now. I will say I thought it could have been a lot creepier. There were some ideas I liked, but others that completely perplexed me. I loved the lady reverting back to a little girl at the end (*that* was creepy) and I loved that it was use of social media that brought the whole thing down, because, honestly, I keep trying to warn my students not to have so much information on social media. CAUTIONARY TALE.

I thought The Rings of Whatever was basically a mess. I have no idea what the plot of that episode was even supposed to be. That solar system's sun was...a sentient being? Who ate souls once every thousand years? I just had no idea what was happening in that episode, and I thought that it was kind of terrible, honestly. They completely wasted the Vigil, which I found totally freaky and something should have been done with them beyond whatever that nonsense was. And I will forgive a lot of plot mess if the dialogue amuses me, but even the dialogue was terrible in that episode (aside from quoting Lewis Carroll). I will say that the one thing I liked was the Doctor saying that, when you have something precious with you, you run. Given the meaning of the word "run" in the Doctor Who universe, I really liked that line. I liked the idea that the Doctor has been running so hard to try to protect precious things. (Actually there was a lot of stuff about the value of things, like memories and the people we meet and the lives we lead and the stories we tell, and it all felt like set-up for the larger and somewhat meta story of the 50th anniversary.)

I know there has been a lot of discussion about the TARDIS not translating things, but I feel like TARDIS translation has always been inconsistently written (the Doctor spoke Martian and Judoon and those fish things Martha encountered in "The Doctor's Daughter" weren't translated), so I'm not sure it's really meant to be meaningful. But who knows, maybe it is.

I. Love. Clara. I can't quite explain what it is about her, but I love her. She won me over completely by the end of the first episode, and she was the thing that made the second episode as bearable as I found it. I love how adventurous she is, I love how she seems to be pretty fearless, I love how she jumped in with both feet. And I *like* her. She just seems nice to me, somehow. I don't know, I want to be her friend, or something. Probably a lot of credit goes to the actress, I think she just comes across on the screen as very charming and warm. Whatever it is, she's completely drawn me in. Her clinging to her cup of tea throughout the first piece of the wi-fi adventure was probably what sealed the deal for me, let's be honest.