the pandorica opens

May 30, 2011

Three Act Tragedy

Jack Grahamamy's choice, christianity, clash of civilisations, culturalism, dream lord, entropy, father ted, hitchens, last of the time lords, liberalism, rtd, series 3, simon nye, the big bang, the master, the pandorica opens, the sound of drums, toclafane, utopia0

And so it came to pass that Series 3 ended with a trilogy. And Jack looked upon the trilogy. And Jack saw that it was… umm… er…

‘Utopia’

Good stuff; the Master’s return at the end is the least of it. We have to put up with some of the obligatory “gee, aren’t humans just neat?!” stuff from the Doctor, but it passes soon enough. Yana is a touching, melancholic figure. Chantho is one of my favourite characters in all Who. The scene where the Doctor and Jack finally discuss Jack’s immortality is beautifully scripted and acted. The desolated conglomeration is beautiful.

The whole set up is pregnant with intricate, sombre, uncomfortable implications. At the end of everything, with even the galaxies disappearing… amidst a wasteland, haunted by a dead city and one lone survivor (who still clings to her obsolete cultural norms)… amidst all these things, there are two groups of humans… the unreasoningly fierce and cruel “futurekind”, with their gnashing sharp teeth, their flaming torches and their mindless desire to destroy… and the refugees who huddle together for warmth; who value family and friendship; who have created structure and purpose out of bits of scrap, food and dreams of impossible deliverance… and the Futurekind want to smash these aspirations for no real reason, while the refugees keep building even as they near the point of maximum entropy.

This is ‘Gridlock’ part II… but it’s less comfortable than ‘Gridlock’. More bleak. More gloomy. More fully liberal. Hence, more reactionary.

The faith of the refugees is in a better world, like the faith of the gridlockers… but they refugees have given it a name that has political rather than religious associations. ‘Utopia’ is usually thought of now as representing some age-old impossible dream of social perfection and total human equality. In the mainstream discourse, to be Utopian is to share the putative mistakes and delusions of the founders of the 20th century totalitarians. Lenin wanted to make a paradise; that’s why he ended up making Hell on Earth. (This isn’t my view, by the way. It is as simplistic and ahistorical as it is popular.)

‘Utopia’ is one of those stories that I love despite the fact that it’s highly open to a reactionary reading (like ‘Frontios’ for example, with which it shares some ideas).

In ‘Utopia’, the supposed dual nature of humanity is externalised in the form of two seperate tribes (who fight for no reason, as tribes always do in this view of the world), one of which is ‘civilised’ and one of which is ‘barbarous’ for no real reason. There is no reconciling this ‘clash of civilisations’. The nice people, who are associated in the text with science, technology, modernity, family life, democracy (via the concept of Utopia itself), must fight and/or escape the barbarians (with their medieval ways)… or be destroyed.

In the end, they simply have to leave the Futurekind behind (to die) as they blast off in search of Utopia. At least this story holds out some hope that Utopia (i.e.…

May 28, 2011

The Big Squib

Jack Grahamautons, daleks, JN-T Day, steve gallagher, steven moffat, the big bang, the pandorica opens, whinge0

Acres of irrelevant grumbling about the Series 5 finale.

Oh great. River’s back. Again. Un-yippee and un-hurrah. Still, Moffat must have his opportunity to present female characters as self-involved, smug enigmas who lead men around by their noses, put them through hell for the sake of hapless devotion, boss them about and remain pretty little puzzleboxes that men have to try and solve. In these episodes, he does this with no less than two man/woman couples.

The first episode is just loads of portentous narrative procrastination, albeit to a less egregious extent than ‘End of Time’ Part 1. There is some pleasure to be taken in the cobwebby, Indiana Jones-film look of the underground chamber, and River’s pleasantly spooky trip to Amy’s empty house… but, really, how generic is all this? A secret chamber under Stonehenge? An ancient artefact that has something scary inside it?

Mind you, they could’ve turned it around if the contents/purpose of the Pandorica hadn’t been so obvious right from the start. I can honestly say that I knew, ages before we were told, that the Pandorica would either have the Doctor inside it, or would be empty and waiting for him (especially since this story seems to owe so much to Alien Bodies). The only thing worse than what we got would’ve been a gateway into another universe (a universe of evil, natch), which lets loose unspeakable ‘Old Ones’ or some other ‘horror from before time’ when opened. So it could’ve been worse. But could also have been much better.

Sadly, we are soon confronted with a huge alliance of returning monsters who, in line with Moffat’s usual disinterest in evil, are trying to save the universe… by locking the Doctor up in a box rather than just killing him. For some reason.

The Doctor indulges in his now customary bit of ludicrous, embarassing and deeply inappropriate macho posturing. What a bad-ass I am, he essentially shouts to a sky full of heavily armed battle cruisers. Laughably, they bottle it rather than just zapping him. This is so dumb it defies description. I mean, I know the Doctor always wins… but surely they don’t need to be scared of him when he’s standing in plain view under their laser beams, waggling his weaponless hands? Just zap the silly sod! You don’t even have to go anywhere near him!

On the subject of that speech… really, when did the character turn into this kind of person? When did this become the point of him? I hate this depiction of the Doctor as a bumptious, boastful, mouthy, showoff incredibly aware of himself as a Hero. I realise the scene in question is meant to show him bluffing, but still…

The Doctor always used to occasionally be a bit big headed (i.e. “he’s almost as clever as I am” etc) but it always seemed like self-mockery or good humour. These days the Doctor seems to seek out opportunities to talk like a lame-ass ‘tough cop’ cypher (i.e.…