DW 5x09 - Cold Blood

[caz963]

Well. That was… a pretty fantastic final ten minutes.



I thought Cold Blood was another okay episode, but it was pulled up by its bootstraps in the last ten minutes or so. The actual plot was a bit too full of coincidences to be convicing. I mean, how fortunate was it that there happened to be a big-wig Silurian on hand who didn’t want to wipe out the apes, and who readily accepted the necessity to try to find a peaceful solution.

I can’t listen to Stephen Moore without hearing “Life. Don’t talk to me about life…”


This is a bit disjointed - random thoughts and observations, really.

Amy falling asleep during the negotiations was probably because she wasn’t the centre of attention.

Did Ambrose kill Alaya with a 9 volt battery? ‘s what it looked like to me.

I didn’t get why Ambrose was so dead set on her contingency plan. Everyone was alive down there, she’d seen her son was alive and all they had to do was go down and bring everyone back. I suppose she was worried about what would happen when the Silurians discovered that Alaya was dead, but… I don’t know, that part really jarred for me.

Again, very convenient that Marvin Silurian big-wig whose name I've forgotten immediately suggests shutting down their city again by making all the warriors go back to their pods under threat of poison gas – and agrees to come back in a thousand years. I quite liked the part where the Doctor told everyone that it was up to them to spread the word and make sure that future generations were prepared for the fact that they’d have to share the Earth in the future. The power of words and prophecy.

And then… oh, Rory!! I’ve stayed fairly spoiler-free, but after I read the synopsis in this week’s Radio Times, I suspected he was going to die. Why, oh, why did they have to kill off the one character I’ve actually managed to warm to so far this series? Although he’s been absorbed by the crack… which is perhaps significant. (And means he'll be back, right?)

It’s the first time I’ve had a lump in my throat and tears pricking in my eyes this series – the bastards.

The scene afterwards in the TARDIS where the Doctor is begging Amy to remember was… I don’t know, it should have been epic and felt more emotionally charged than it did. I can’t quite find the right words to say what I want to – but I just felt it should have been more. Amy was hysterical – or supposed to be, but Gillan didn’t sell it. Eleven was… Eleven, focused on the job at hand, trying to make sure Amy didn’t forget Rory. We’ve seen this trait of his before – his “I know you’re about to die but shut up while I think”, so his actions made sense. He’s clearly emotionally repressed when it comes to being the last of his kind and all the other baggage he’s carrying – but he also tends to shove it all aside and sit on it while he tends to the business at hand, which is very much something that some of the Doctors in the Classic era did. Which means that it was down to Gillan to convince us of her distress and carry the emotionality of that scene – and she didn’t. Not that I’m all that surprised, because she’s just not all that good. Her “no pressure there, then” moment as she and Nasreen are about to commence negotiations made me want to throw someting at the telly. She has three expressions and two tones of voice – whiny and sarcastic.

When the Doctor and Amy are thrown to the floor in the TARDIS, there is a clear shot of the ring box in front of him, and you can see him looking at it – but nothing is made of it.

If that was Amy ten years in the future – why did she appear to be wearing the same outfit?

The bit with the broken TARDIS sign was creepy. Shrapnel, indeed.

Intriguing that the Doctor said that removing the human bacteria from his system would take away half the things that are keeping him alive. What??!

The use of the voice-over in this episode was strange – I wonder why it was used in this and not the first part. Unless it was to get in the line about all the Doctor’s losses - past, and yet to come. Looks like he's still a tragedy magnet.

Something of a timey-wimey nature occurred to me during the week. River Song remembers the opening of the Pandorica because she was there. So obviously, the Byzantium adventure is in her future at that point. SO. In F&S, she's already survived the opening of the Pandorica and knows the Doctor survived it. And she must know that before she meets him in ToA because she knows to send him the message and the co-ordinates to pick her up, because if she thought he was dead, she'd have (presumably) come up with another escape plan.

But that means WE know that the Doctor survives it, too, otherwise how can he be in her future?

Gah, my head hurts again now.

Wibbly-wobbly...

Oh - and some nice little references to All the Strange, Strange Creatures from Murray Gold, although the use of a cue from TRB whtn the Doctor put his hand into the crack made me grin.

Comments

[vervet-monkey.livejournal.com]

But if their timelines cross over surely she could just be assuming that some incarnation of the Doctor will pick it up? She doesn't know that the only incarnations she will ever meet must be after 10 until she dies.

[caz963.livejournal.com]

Possibly, but the point is that she knows he lives, regardless of which version he is.

I admit, I'm trying to stay away from too much thinking about the timey-wimey because it makes my head hurt!

[vervet-monkey.livejournal.com]

Mine too...

Why does mean that she knows he lives? Can't she just assume that a version of his past will come save her, regardless of whether he is alive in her timeline?

Yep, head hurts...

[loreley-se.livejournal.com]

I've given up trying to get my head around timelines...I'm quite simply too stupid for it!

I'm gutted that Rory is dead, and even though I like Amy by far not as much as Donna, I'm annoyed that they kind of played this "forgot about the good stuff" thing on her as well.

Agree on Karen - not particularly impressed with her acting.

[caz963.livejournal.com]

Amy gets on my nerves, big-time. I'm not sure if it's just the fact that Gillan is a poor actress - I think it's also in the way she's written. I mean, what was her comment about Rory being clingy supposed to mean? And last week's about being surprised that she and Rory were still together in ten years' time, when she was going to marry him? I'm not sure if she's being deliberately written as an insensitive, self-obsessed teenager or if it's the fact that her Gillan's range and tone are so limited.

/bitchy.

[back2real.livejournal.com]

Good question on Amy's wardrobe at the end, bit annoying, though maybe we should assume at this point that it's a different version of Amy (since Rory is gone, maybe this is the 'Amy from 2 days from now' as opposed to the 'Amy and Rory from 10 years in the future'. But...I'm not going to break my head over it, either!

IMO the Doctor should be wise enough to realize that the human race is not ready to share the planet (and since the idea that Earth houses TWO species has NEVER come up in any other future-time DW episodes I've seen, I don't know how to interpret that.)

I agree, a so-so episode, Karen's acting still is completely unconvincing and troublesome. I was first annoyed in this episode by her lack of expression when she sees the little boy all hooked up to the wires and such, it only got less impressive from that point on.

Also agree about River knowing that the Doctor (and probably Amy as well) survives the opening of the Pandorica since it's in her past. Must be entertaining for her to see him running around not knowing what's coming!

[eviltigerlily.livejournal.com]

MO the Doctor should be wise enough to realize that the human race is not ready to share the planet

Well, if this were real(and in the context of the show it is), whether we are ready or not would hardly matter. Sometimes there is no choice. But the time the was between the two civilizations was finished, the Earth may not be capable of supporting even one species.

As for sharing the planet, by the time they wake up we would have moved out into space. That should help. We were apparently at war with the Silurians sometime in the future (as per Warriors of the Deep), but that timeline could have changed since. They were around in the Expanded Universe.

[caz963.livejournal.com]

the Doctor should be wise enough to realize that the human race is not ready to share the planet

Hm. I think he probably does realise that, but the alternative is a blood-bath, which he's trying to prevent.

The crack timey-wimey is eating my brain...

[foxyhlc.livejournal.com]

I so want to be moved by this series so I am a bit jealous that Rory's death brought tears to your eyes.

I love Doctor Who and have done my whole life. I still think it's good but I'm not emotionally involved and that is making me sad.

[caz963.livejournal.com]

I love Doctor Who and have done my whole life. I still think it's good but I'm not emotionally involved and that is making me sad.

Yeah, me too. I wrote a big post about that last week - and it seems there are quite a few of us feeling that way. I'm trying to tell myself that the fact that the writers made me care enough about Rory to be upset at his death means that hope is not lost and that maybe I will be able to care about these characters in the future. Interestingly, none of the Rory eps was written by Moffat.

I think the next two are probably going to put all this on the back-burner again, like the Venice one did after the events of the Angels two-parter. The thing is, all this is doing is making me want to get to the end of the series quicker because I want to find out what the hell is going on. In previous years, I've NOT wanted to get to the end. That also makes me sad :(

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

I'm intrigued by this idea that memories can keep people in existence. It keeps coming back to Donna in my mind - if she ended up in a universe where the only way to bring the Doctor to life would be to reactivate her memories of him, what a fascinating scenario that would be.

Amy, for me, has become the main problem with this whole series. Would she really forget Rory that quickly? It suggests that she's very shallow in my opinion. And I found it very painful to watch the Doctor putting all that effort into doing the precise opposite to what he did with Donna.

Other than that, how cool would it be to have Nazreen as a companion? Please?

[caz963.livejournal.com]

I admit that the part being played by memory in all this is interesting, and seems definitely to be a theme running through the series. Mind you, I don't quite understand what the difference is between Amy remembering the Clerics and not remebering Rory. I went back and watched that bit again, because my daughter asked me "how can she renember the soldiers with the Angels and not Rory?" - and though the Doctor came out with something to the effect that it's different because it's HER personal history, it still didn't make a lot of sense. Mind you, when has DW ever made a lot of sense?!

Sometimes I think that Moff is completely unaware of what happened to Donna and at others I think he knows but doesn't care. How can we NOT think of her when so much is being made of memory? We know that Moff isn't going to bring anyone from the RTD era back, but that's a great idea. It would give the Doctor some peace, too, for Donna to have her memories restored, but yeah... ain't gonna happen, unfortunately.

Amy IS very shallow. You only have to think of the way she was sitting through the "negotiations" with her head on the desk, and of the way she reacted to Eliot... and loads of other things.

Nasreem would be an awesome companion. I think I said after last week's episode that we should start a campaign!

[eviltigerlily.livejournal.com]

I don't see a problem with the time line. Even if River thought the Doctor died there she could still be counting on a Doctor from before then picking up her signal. Also, the Doctor may have said something to her about the thing on the Byzantium at that time.

mean, how fortunate was it that there happened to be a big-wig Silurian on hand who didn’t want to wipe out the apes

That seems to make sense. I presume the scientist woke someone in authority he knew would not side with the warrior..woman...lizard. Him later agreeing to go back into hibernation is indeed convenient.

[caz963.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I'm sure the time line thing will be explained... it's just something that occurred to me that I hadn't seen anyone mention before.

[patorisha-4.livejournal.com]

The only problem I had with the episode was that everything seemed to fly by so fast given it was a two parter, for me the pacing was all wrong particularly in the second part.

Amy's escape was quick, The Doctor getting a round-table together. It was just so quick compared to the almost laboured first part.

I don't really hate Rory but I don't really care at all if he is dead or not. He isn't by the way. I am 100% sure Moffat has taken a leaf out of RTD book when it comes to making dead things came back to life.

Gillian is a fine actress. Blame the script and more importantly the direction for any "bad" acting on this one. The whole thing was just rushed to death. Rose got like 10 mins to weep over things, Amy gets two seconds!

[caz963.livejournal.com]

I think the fact that Rory was "absorbed" by the crack is significant, definitely, which is why I'm hoping he'll be back.

We'll have to agree to disagree about Karen Gillan - it's not just here; her performances throughout have been one-note, IMO.

[houselover87.livejournal.com]

I also am not crazy about Amy Pond. But I adored Rory, and like you I had tears falling. Not a lot but they were there. Also I think I remember hearing somewhere that the Doctor had a human mother...maybe?

[caz963.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wasn't blubbing - but there was definitiely a *sniff*!

[promethia_tenk]

>>Intriguing that the Doctor said that removing the human bacteria from his system would take away half the things that are keeping him alive. What??!

Well, if you removed all the human bacteria from our systems, you would remove half the things keeping us alive--our systems are in a full-on symbiotic relationship with millions of bacteria that help us digest things, kill off other bugs, etc. I'm assuming that the decontamination procedures were carefully calculated to kill off the bacteria harmful to humans/Silurians but not the ones we need, since it didn't seem to hurt Amy. I'm guessing, therefore, that there are bacteria that are germs to humans but helpful to the Doctor, and the Silurian scientist, assuming the Doctor to be human, was killing them off.

[caz963.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, that's a good point! It was something I hadn't expected at all, given the Doctor isn't human; maybe there are human bacteria that have replaced the Gallifreyan varieties he needs :-)