a fic rec and yet more Doctor Who babble

[rusty_halo]

Fic rec: A nifty Doctor and Donna adventure, Leap in the Dark by nonelvis. This is the kind of story that could easily be an episode. It uses time travel in an original way, plus has a really cool setting and great characterizations of the Doctor and Donna.

***

Happy Birthday, jaydk!

Tonight, we're going to see Patrick Stewart in "Macbeth." I am super excited. :)

We had another Doctor Who night on Saturday, in which we watched:

* The latest Torchwood. I like it slightly better when it just runs with the cracked out nonsense instead of attempting to be serious. That said... I'm still slightly horrified to see "I like" and "Torchwood" in the same paragraph. (Also, jaydk promised me it would be like Evil Dead. It was not like Evil Dead! I want blood spewing everywhere and possessed evil hands and Bruce Campbell hamming it up and Ted Raimi as a witch! Don't try to lure me in with Evil Dead references and then not deliver.)

* Old Doctor Who. We tried starting from the beginning, so we watched Barbara and Ian following Susan to the junk yard, and then a bunch of interminable caveman politics (how many arguments about fire can you have?!!) and then some really creaky Daleks, and the whole thing was permeated with this weird sexist 60s thing where Susan and Barbara were cowering while Ian yelled at the Doctor. And um, it was so boring we had to stop in the middle of the Dalek episodes, sorry. (Even though the old Daleks were really cute.)

I'm close to giving up on old Who entirely, although paratti recommended some Master episodes, so I'll try those first.

* Continuing our new Who rewatch: "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit." I really love these episodes; they almost feel like a full-length movie, the way the ensemble is so well-written. It totally feels like you're jumping into a group of people who already know each other and have their own relationships and conflicts.

I also love the Doctor in these episodes, that he sees the good side of having his beliefs challenged because it means he has more to learn. One of my favorite things about him is that he's so open to new knowledge and experience. I'm so sick of anti-intellectual heroes; the Doctor is a great contrast in that he's so unashamedly intellectually and philosophically curious.

It's cool that these episodes aren't just action; they really spend time on that interesting philosophical conversation between the Doctor and Ida. And it's amazing that the climax is just David Tennant yelling at a silly CGI beastie, but Tennant's performance is so good that you never get bored.

I keep hearing people say they want Ida back, but I vote for Zach. Especially after seeing the excellent chemistry between Shaun Parkes and David Tennant in Casanova. Plus, I think he's the best of the characters; in just two episodes he gets a whole character arc, where you see him growing from uncertain about his authority to confident as a captain.

Oh, and I love the Ood! I can't figure out which are cuter, Ood or Daleks. I just want to squee over them both.

***

I'm finally finishing my re-read of Dorothy Dunnett's Queens Play. (I know, it's been months. I've been reading in tiny increments on the subway). And it finally hit me that the scene at the end, where Lymond smashes his fist through the glass, is probably his first migraine. He starts to put his hand to his head for no (explained) reason, and right before he punches through the glass he thinks something strange is happening to him and he doesn't know if his eyes are open or closed.

And there's no way you'd know what's going on unless you've read the rest of the books and realized he has these blinding migraine episodes. I'm getting so much more out of the re-reads than I got the first time around. Dorothy Dunnett, you are sneaky!

(I also couldn't help thinking about the Doctor during that whole conversation between Lymond and O'LiamRoe at the end, which is all about how Lymond inspires people to hero worship him, then they try follow his lead and become better people, but half the time the danger gets them killed and Lymond feels all guilty. And there's the whole question of how much responsibility he has to the people who follow him. And his whole "I can't let myself get close to anyone because it hurts too much to lose them"--is Christian Stewart his Rose?)

***

Also, LOL:

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Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

How did you like Patrick Stewart? I know it had tremendous reviews but I have to say I was not greatly impressed. He has some good moments but other parts he just threw away - I was especially disappointed with 'Out brief candle' and the overall result felt very uneven.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

I agree that it was uneven. I usually empathize with Macbeth, feel trapped in a downward spiral with him, but here I felt removed because he was kind of just weird/crazy from the beginning. (Although he was funny at some moments where he usually isn't, so that was good, though it was an uncomfortable socially awkward kind of funny.)

I thought the "Out brief candle" was okay--he really downplayed it, which was better than taking it too over the top. But it didn't have a huge impact as it should have.

I really liked Macduff--in comparison, HIS sorrow I totally felt.

And I ADORED the witches. They were by far my favorite version of the Macbeth witches, actually. They looked like they'd been snatched out of a Nine Inch Nails video, with the strobing visuals and loud industrial noises and the rhythmic way they chanted the lines. Usually the witches are kind of sexed-up cliches, but here they were kind of unsexual mechanized zombie nurse witches, which I thought was far more disconcerting and cool.

I thought a lot of the loud noises were over the top and drowned out the actors, unfortunately. But that part worked really well with the witches.

I enjoyed it overall, but it was nowhere near as awesome as Ian McKellen in "King Lear."

[queenofthorns.livejournal.com]

I thought Macbeth was played a little too sarcastically (and I was talking about this with KoT afterwards: the Stalinist symbolism in which this show was drenched sort of constrained Stewart, I thought. Because the point is that Macbeth doesn't start out as a bloody tyrant - he starts out as a good and trusted soldier, who's drawn ever more deeply into murder until he becomes a murderer and not a soldier any more. And his murders are very personal betrayals of friendship and family - not really comparable to Stalin, IMO!) I thought the Bean version I saw was much better at emphasizing how someone like, well, Sharpe, could go so badly wrong. (And I thought Bean and samantha Bond had much more of the necessary sexual chemistry and Stewart and this Lady M. did.)

The witches were AWESOME - I loved how they were the servers at the banquet and in one vision they're holding knives behind their backs while in the next version, they're just servers. That part was great.

And although jaydk said she didn't like Macduff, I thought he was excellent! (And very nice - we ran into him at a coffee-shop afterwards and chatted with him for a while.)

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a good point about the limitations of the Stalinist symbolism. Because, yeah, I usually feel the emotion of it more strongly--that Macbeth is a good guy who makes mistakes and ends up caught in this spiral of evil. But I didn't feel the tragedy of it here because he was never very sympathetic to begin with.

I loved how they were the servers at the banquet and in one vision they're holding knives behind their backs while in the next version, they're just servers. That part was great.

I know! So cool. And I love how they appeared throughout the play, like they were lurking in the background (observing? manipulating?) throughout. >:)