"Amy's Choice"
May. 15th, 2010 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skywaterblueHm. One that probably looked like a better idea on the page than it did on the screen.
I once said to a friend that the reason I thought many of the Doctor Who companions stories were underwhelming was because of the fundamental differences between a girl's narrative and a boy's narrative. Boy characters become men through trials, girls become women by confronting their sexuality and the responsibilities that come with it.
Hence why the female companions will always have to grow out of the Doctor - he's a dead end for a woman's narrative. Anything less will always feel unfinished and wrong unless you purposefully know what is going on and find a way to subvert it.
(I should say here that I do not think this is always true or points to some inherent truth in gender essentialism or whatever. Just that it's a trope that seems to have some power to it, and a very long lasting one at that.)
So anyway, pretty easy to figure out the appeal of this one: Amy is forced to choose between two men. One is like a sexual father figure who promises an endless girlhood of wonder, and the other is a boy-still-becoming-a-man who promises the adult life of settling down and having children. I never thought Amy was that underwritten because I thought this was the conflict all along, it's just that here they finally put really big highlighters on it. YMMV about if this solves your issues with Amy's writing.
I will point out that Amy chooses Rory, because life seems unimaginable without him, but actually (for now) gets to keep both worlds. Since both are imaginary. Think about it. I think it's a bit clever.
Ultimately, in a narrative, the only choices you can really have is for the character to either become more adult or to circle endlessly in delayed adolescence. Only one is really forward movement, though. Comics are a good example of what happens to the narrative if you force the main characters to perpetually relive their youth. (AKA: all the characters become unforgivable assholes because they are never allowed to learn, because learning is growth and growth is aging and change.)
Interesting stuff: the main characters commit suicide twice to get out of the dreamworlds. And perhaps the episode is better understood if you view it from the perspective of the Doctor, who is ultimately the bad guy here. A lot of people point out that the 'Dream Lord' being the Doctor is oddly like the Valeyard. Who would have thought that Moffat would allow a writer to actually go there?
The problem with this season is not that Moffat is allowing the other writers to have free reign - it's that right now his mandate for this season feels more like every episode is a correction to Russell T. Davies era. No more perpetual childhood with no one learning anything in THIS Doctor Who. It's just that you're left feeling empty because it's still a responsa to something that happened previously. His Doctor Who is not yet its own thing.
I once said to a friend that the reason I thought many of the Doctor Who companions stories were underwhelming was because of the fundamental differences between a girl's narrative and a boy's narrative. Boy characters become men through trials, girls become women by confronting their sexuality and the responsibilities that come with it.
Hence why the female companions will always have to grow out of the Doctor - he's a dead end for a woman's narrative. Anything less will always feel unfinished and wrong unless you purposefully know what is going on and find a way to subvert it.
(I should say here that I do not think this is always true or points to some inherent truth in gender essentialism or whatever. Just that it's a trope that seems to have some power to it, and a very long lasting one at that.)
So anyway, pretty easy to figure out the appeal of this one: Amy is forced to choose between two men. One is like a sexual father figure who promises an endless girlhood of wonder, and the other is a boy-still-becoming-a-man who promises the adult life of settling down and having children. I never thought Amy was that underwritten because I thought this was the conflict all along, it's just that here they finally put really big highlighters on it. YMMV about if this solves your issues with Amy's writing.
I will point out that Amy chooses Rory, because life seems unimaginable without him, but actually (for now) gets to keep both worlds. Since both are imaginary. Think about it. I think it's a bit clever.
Ultimately, in a narrative, the only choices you can really have is for the character to either become more adult or to circle endlessly in delayed adolescence. Only one is really forward movement, though. Comics are a good example of what happens to the narrative if you force the main characters to perpetually relive their youth. (AKA: all the characters become unforgivable assholes because they are never allowed to learn, because learning is growth and growth is aging and change.)
Interesting stuff: the main characters commit suicide twice to get out of the dreamworlds. And perhaps the episode is better understood if you view it from the perspective of the Doctor, who is ultimately the bad guy here. A lot of people point out that the 'Dream Lord' being the Doctor is oddly like the Valeyard. Who would have thought that Moffat would allow a writer to actually go there?
The problem with this season is not that Moffat is allowing the other writers to have free reign - it's that right now his mandate for this season feels more like every episode is a correction to Russell T. Davies era. No more perpetual childhood with no one learning anything in THIS Doctor Who. It's just that you're left feeling empty because it's still a responsa to something that happened previously. His Doctor Who is not yet its own thing.
