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d_r_meta asked the following question: It's time to talk The Girl in the Fireplace. Does this episode fit into the overall arc of the series? How about the characterizations?My answer follows. It's longer than I intended, so I wanted to put it behind a cut. Not knowing how to do that in a comment, I posted it here and will link back to it on the forum. :)
No, I do not think this story fits into the overall arc of the series. The Doctor acts completely out of character, and here are my specific examples for backup.
1 - He would not get that giddy star-struck over a girl that fast. It may have been a lifetime for MdP, but for the Doctor it was a matter of minutes. Intrigued, yes, but falling for her in a few minutes, when he's been so obviously slowly building up to admitting his feelings for Rose? That portrays him as very fickle and completely irresponsible. I say no to this.
2 - He would not leave Rose and Mickey to their own devices on a ship that he knows is patently dangerous just so he can go party with MdP. Again, irresponsible and completely out of character. No way! He would either bring them with him, or he would say thanks but no thanks to MdP. You cannot convince me otherwise. And then to be gone for hours without checking on them? They are his companions - he knows the ship is dangerous. He simply would not do this.
3 - Here's a point a lot of people might overlook because it's a throwaway line. When they ask why they can't pop into the ballroom with the TARDIS and save the day, his answer is "No, we're part of events now" - um. Let's discuss this point. As a writer (as most of y'all are if not all), you know sometimes you want to have a certain moment in a story, but the rest of the plot leads you in a direction where that moment might not make sense, so you force the action of the story to fit the setup for that moment, even if it means abandoning all logic of the established story to do so. Was the Doctor stupid enough to think that clockwork robots were okay in that period of history, but not the TARDIS? Absolutely not! The writer simply did not want to use the easy solution, because he was hoping for the dramatic ride-through-the-mirror sequence. The TARDIS could have gone there easily and they could have saved the day that way, but it wasn't what the writer wanted, so they dismissed the obvious, easiest option.
4 - The ride through the mirror. Going first back to point 2 in my list here, the Doctor would UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES abandon 2 companions on a lifeless spaceship in the middle of nowhere with no way of getting home. Sure they have the TARDIS, but do they know how to pilot it? Do they know how to do a single thing on that ship without his help? He left them there to get trapped in time, and he simply would not do that. Also, he's not going to separate himself so easily from the TARDIS for all time, is he? Even if you want to go with the writer's attempt to say that his relationship with Rose didn't matter that much (if he's so easily drawn away by MdP), his relationship with the TARDIS is paramount and he would not leave the ship behind so easily, either.
5 - Rose. After all this time we've come to love her as a strong woman who is not easily marginalized. Why, then, is she allowed to run along like a good little companion and SHE GOES ALONG WITH IT? She's just mumbling to Mickey about how slightly annoyed she is at the whole thing. Her character is just kind of a side note in this story, and that's not what Rose was ever intended to be in my opinion. AND, there's this weird parent/child thing going on between the Doctor and Rose that just doesn't make sense. One minute the Doctor is all "Run along now, children," which he would NEVER DO TO ROSE, and then the next Rose is chiding him like a naggy fishwife "Look what the cat dragged in, the Oncoming Storm", and then like a mother "You're not keeping the horse!" Their dynamic is off and weird and does not fit at all.
So, yeah, that was a bit of a long post. Sorry.
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Date: 2011-10-16 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-16 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-16 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-16 09:20 pm (UTC)He most certainly didn't pay for that floor. But I do agree with you. Not a big fan of the episode.
It does seem like he was pushing Rose away after the Sarah Jane incident. That lasted all of, what, a day? I know we aren't told how much time passes between GITF and AOS/ROTC but it goes from "sure Mickey you can come along despite Rose being ever so subtle and mouthing 'no' to me. You see I've realized that she's gonna age and die some day so maybe if I piss her off enough she'll turn to you and live a normal life" to "OMG SNUGGLES AND LOLZ ON THE JUMP SEAT!" in one episode.
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Date: 2011-10-16 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-16 03:34 pm (UTC)Not much to add... I did post a rambling post over on thet Meta.
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Date: 2011-10-16 03:58 pm (UTC)1 - I've never watched this episode as the Doctor being in love with Reinette the way he ends up being in love with Rose. He's attracted to her, certainly (hardly the first time he's met a girl and flirted even with Rose right there). And he obviously loves her the way he loves Adelaide Brooke; she's an important historical figure who has done something to prove to him that he was right to think her brilliant. And he feels just as guilty for failing her as he does with anyone who dies for him or dies waiting for him. YMMV but even in the height of my indignation about this episode, I never really saw it as him replacing Rose with Reinette or loving her more than he ever did Rose.
3 - Moffat, and this ep, is by far not the only one to use the 'part of events' excuse. Much like the sonic screwdriver, I believe the show's general rule is that the TARDIS can do anything unless it solves the episode (although they break this rule sometimes, obviously). It's clunky writing to throw the TARDIS aside like this, but that doesn't make it any less canonical that in certain situations they can't use the TARDIS to cross their timeline without causing major problems.
4 - Moffat himself answers this issue in Silence in the Library. Emergency Program One activates once a companion has been alone inside the unmoving TARDIS for a certain amount of time. They would have made it back to London in their own time. Not a perfect ending for Rose and Mickey, certainly, but no worse than in Parting of the Ways or Doomsday. In that sense it fits into the rest of canon incredibly well, actually.
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Date: 2011-10-16 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-16 04:25 pm (UTC)You just know he didn't have this explanation in mind and only mentioned it two seasons later JUST BECAUSE people complained about this exact thing. Silly Moff. I can only justify his crazy to a point.
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Date: 2011-10-16 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-16 07:34 pm (UTC)If he'd changed it to work without needing to manually activate it between the two episodes, we should have been told. Moffat went back and added Mickey's line about not knowing how they were going to get home later on, so why not throw in a line about EP 1? Like you said in another comment, as it is, it makes it seem like he wanted it to appear as though they were stranded, but after getting so much crap about it from fans he decided to throw in a line in Silence of the Library so he could be all "See? See?"
Which in my case pisses me off more, lol.
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Date: 2011-10-16 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-16 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-16 05:26 pm (UTC)http://kelkat9.livejournal.com/103854.html
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Date: 2011-10-16 07:02 pm (UTC)I agree with moffat with not wanting to use the TARDIS but i would have done about it differently like having Mickey ask about the TARDIS and Rose say something like "what, and risk his driving?" that way it's not convoluted and you can avoid taking the easy way out.
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Date: 2011-10-16 07:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-16 10:14 pm (UTC)I can also see why he wouldn't use the TARDIS. There are different times/timezones all over the ship, this could cause more problems when coming out of the vortex.
Whereas Moffat did a good job inserting the Doctor (history wise) in MdP's life, he also (unfortunately) proved the point that certain things can't be changed in Time.
It was a rather clumsy episode in many, many ways - though I think some of the zanier elements were highlighted to show how insane the whole situation was. But it was one that I enjoyed - not one of Moffat's best to be sure, but the effort was there. As always, though Moffat's name was on it, I'm sure it went through several hands and changes before hitting the actor's hands - and even one or two lines being changed can change the feel of the whole episode!
There were quite a few things that could have been/should have been tweaked to make it better though. But I will say one thing - his infatuation with MdP was just that...infatuation - and sadly he used it as he always does - to run. He was scared of his feelings for Rose and he tried to immerse himself in a relationship that couldn't go anywhere to prove to himself that he couldn't HAVE one...if that makes sense.
Sorry...you can throw tomatoes now, lol!
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Date: 2011-10-16 10:18 pm (UTC)That makes a great deal of sense, actually. That makes it much more palatable to think of it that way. See, I throw nothing. :) Debate can often serve to improve perspective on both sides of an issue. :)
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Date: 2011-10-16 10:54 pm (UTC)Very much so! I always believe in good debate. I just have some differing opinions on Who and I'm always afraid of getting stuff thrown at me, lol!
*HUGS*
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Date: 2011-10-18 03:42 pm (UTC)re your point #3. This! This is one of my biggest problems with the ep, aside from all the massively OOC behaviour of almost everyone. Mainly because, despite the dialogue claiming otherwise, they WERE NOT part of events at that point.
According to canon, you become part of events once you're there, so if you land in the middle of a crisis, you can't go backwards an hour/day etc and change events leading up to it in order to change the outcome.
But at that point they weren't actually in France, they were still on the spaceship watching through a portal, and therefore were not part of current events.
As far as I can tell that means there was absolutely NOTHING stopping them from going in the TARDIS, other than the fact Moffat wanted his lead actor crashing through a sodding window of course, lol
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Date: 2011-10-18 03:59 pm (UTC)What the Doctor should have said was "Well, yeah, if you wanted to do it the EASY way, but I want to be a boss and ride through a mirror and ratchet up the contrived dramatic tension by letting people think I'll be stuck in the past for a couple of minutes."
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Date: 2011-10-18 06:46 pm (UTC)Saying they couldn't use the TARDIS and using the "part of events" excuse, well that just had me doing something that sadly SM has caused me to do many times since then due to his sloppy writing, yell at my TV.
It also caused hubby to mutter something about me being a geek and understanding how time travel worked better than the guy writing the damn thing did, but that's a whole other conversation, lol
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Date: 2011-10-18 06:51 pm (UTC)lol it just means you LOVE your fandom, which you should. Did you ever watch Heroes? Mr. Timelord and I were on our feet screaming at the television at the way they broke their own rules. :)
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Date: 2011-10-18 07:25 pm (UTC)Hubby is quite the geek himself on a lot of things sci fi and horror, and he has one of those minds that seems able to store endless facts like directors names and who did the score and, well you get the idea, but he defers to me on anything Doctor related
I watched the odd ep of Heroes, but never really got into it, plus it clashed with something else when it was first shown here, so I would have had to work at it to try to keep up, and I wasn't invested enough to try