on Doctor Who 6x06 "The Almost People"

[xparrot]

A few brief words. The ep itself didn't quite work for me - echoing others on my flist, Jen's transition from innocent girl to crazed monster was unconvincingly abrupt; it's not that it was totally implausible so much as it felt like we were missing a couple hours of character development somewhere. And I called the Doctors' switching shoes about the moment the shoes were mentioned (though I did enjoy the fun of the duo Doctors, hee!) Was also confused by the self-sacrifice at the end; why did they have to be the ones who stayed behind, other than for plot purposes? Couldn't the not-Flesh!Doctor have just screwdrivered the monster and then stepped into the TARDIS and be off? Since the end made it quite clear that the melting effect is relatively harmless for not-Flesh flesh... (Okay, I admit that's a pet peeve, the forcing of a noble sacrifice for plot purposes. Especially in situations where it's obvious that the main chars would've gotten out unscathed and the only reason anyone dies is for the drama.)

Re: the monster - someone watching Carpenter's The Thing, eh? (hey, if you're going to go creepy you might as well poach from a master!)

And then, the end...the twist of Amy having actually been in a Flesh-suit was clever (and it's rather a useful technique, really, if you want to abduct someone's body but don't want anyone to know you've abducted them - even the abductee themselves!) and I'm curious what enemies could be powerful enough to have been transmitting her consciousness across both space & time. (And when was she abducted? Before she first started feeling morning sickness in the first episode...? Is this why she & Rory were inexplicably at home at the start, rather than in the TARDIS?) Was a little disappointed that Rory listened to the Doctor and stepped away, because I'd have expected him to be more loyal to Amy than that (especially when the Doctor is making it pretty clear that he's been hiding things from them). And then the end...arrrrgh. Okay, I get it, sci-fi writers, that human beings are mammals who have live births is an awe-inspiring concept, and that the female body can support a parasitic fetus for 9 months is one of the many things that makes women so freakish and incomprehensible - but really, haven't you explored this concept enough? Can we take a break from it? Just for a little while?



I can count the number of times I've seen a not-freakish pregnancy in genre shows on one hand - twice that I can think of, Teyla in SGA (and she still ended up strapped to a table, so it's only borderline - but at least the kid wasn't artificially impregnated but came from good old-fashioned consensual sex, and was a perfectly ordinary baby once born) and Fox in Gargoyles (who did have significant family problems after the baby was born, but a 100% normal, healthy, abduction-free pregnancy and birth.) Really, it's not that there's anything wrong with having an unusual insemination, or pregnancy, or birth, but it'd be nice to see it treated as a normal biological process for once, rather than always the stuff of nightmares.

ETA: B5 has another borderline case, though it's not fully explored at any rate...

ETA2 from friendshipper: Keiko O'Brien in TNG! She wasn't a main character so I'm not totally counting it, but it was a completely ordinary pregnancy and only standard TV shenanigans with the emergency birth, nothing sci-fi or supernatural. ...That was going on 20 years ago now (and her second pregnancy on DS9 did not go so simply). Come ON, TV...!

(At least One Piece's abnormal pregnancy was entirely the woman's choice - yay for agency!)

Comments

[immicolia.livejournal.com]

Didn't Zoe wind up pregnant at the end of Serenity? Or does that not count since we didn't get the follow-through? (plus that was the movie and not on the series proper but I class the two and pretty much one and the same anyway. But otherwise oh god you are so right)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Hmm, did she? I honestly can't remember ^^; At any rate I wouldn't really count it because we didn't see how it turned out (and Joss Whedeon's track-record for monster-births in Angel: tS is not good!)

[immicolia.livejournal.com]

I may be getting my fanon and my canon confused but I think it was implied because obviously that movie wasn't sad enough without Joss piling on more "I'm an emotionally manipulative bastard" points. Then again I haven't seen it in forever so I could be completely wrong. (I'm not sure I want to think about Zoe and Wash somehow having a monsterbaby. That's just goddamn weird XD)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

XDXDXD Wash & Zoe would've only had a monster baby if Joss could've figured out how to wring more AAAAAANGST from that, rather than from a regular kid. But yeah, it might've come out ordinary, if the series had continued (...I'm kind of glad it didn't, really, knowing how it probably would've gone for everybody. ...I may have issues with Whedon :P)

[rheanna27.livejournal.com]

I always felt Teyla's pregnancy started out refreshingly well but hit a lot of the usual fail later -- didn't Michael claim the baby was special, possibly because of something to do with Teyla's Wraith genes? I forget now. Still, they got some points back by having her be the one to throw him off a high building, in the end.

Good point about Rory, especially given that he's always been just a little bit less trusting of the Doctor than Amy.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Teyla's pregnancy was always right on the edge for me - Michael wanted it because he wanted to use its hybrid genetics in his own experiments (since both Teyla and Kannon were Wraith-listeners), but I don't quite count it because Michael didn't breed the child himself or otherwise instigate it, and Teyla's Wraith-genes were already established, so it wasn't totally coming out of the blue that her baby would be genetically unusual. Also that the baby when born was in fact totally ordinary, and survived, and Kannon stayed around to be her house-husband, won major points with me, so! (That's actually the one thing I think that SGA might've done better than any other scifi show I know of...)

I love Rory quite a bit, so am becoming rather sensitive to his portrayal, I admit! And while I like him being friends with the Doctor...putting him above his wife, ehh, that didn't seem like the Rory I know.

[amalthia]

Wasn't River also feeling sick too in the first two episodes of this season?

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Hmm, yes...at the time I thought it was a red herring for Amy's pregnancy vs the Silents...but now I wonder!

[sholio]

And then the end...arrrrgh. Okay, I get it, sci-fi writers, that human beings are mammals who have live births is an awe-inspiring concept, and that the female body can support a parasitic fetus for 9 months is one of the many things that makes women so freakish and incomprehensible - but really, haven't you explored this concept enough? Can we take a break from it? Just for a little while?

Heh, I was just whining about this over at rheanna27's LJ. I am SO sick of the pregnant-woman-strapped-to-lab-table trope. SO SO SICK OF IT. And it doesn't help that Fringe just did something along those lines (though at least in that case, it's JJ Abrams and that's just a thing he does, so it wasn't like it was totally unexpected ...).

I loved that about Teyla's pregnancy, too! I am willing to overlook several aspects of that storyline that did fall into the trope's territory because, all in all, it was a pretty normal pregnancy and she ended up with a normal baby (DELIVERED BY RODNEY, HEEEE~!) and got to keep it, so ... yeah, my expectations are low, but it was pretty good in the end. (Okay, now I'm trying to think of others besides Fox. Keiko O'Brien on Star Trek TNG, maybe? I don't remember much about it, except that she did have at least one kid and I don't remember anything weird about her pregnancy. SRSLY, TV, THIS SHOULD NOT BE SO HARD.)

On the other hand, the reveal that Amy wasn't really Amy gave me happy chills all the way down to my toes. I love it when shows pull those reversals of expectation. And I totally did not see this coming at all.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Yeeeeah, I was just commenting on Rheanna's post myself and saw you there ^^ Really, it is so irritating. But Teyla was handled well! Oh, and I forgot about Keiko - she was a minor enough char in TNG that I wouldn't totally count it, but yeah, nothing weird. (As I recall, the birth itself was, as is TV's wont, an emergency during a hostage situation - I believe Data presided? - but it wasn't sci-fi crazy. ...And then her second baby ended up swapped into Kira - a transporter accident or something?? - which is a different take on wacky scifi pregnancies, at least...)

The reveal with Amy was pretty nifty - I guessed that she was being held somewhere but was trying to figure out if their world was somehow VR and she was the only one who could see it, didn't realize she was the virtual one! ...Though I don't know why the Doctor didn't tell her sooner - at least give her the slightest idea of what was going on at the end, before he melted her Ganger?

[mis-mariposas.livejournal.com]

I actually think the thing with Rory was an interesting choice of character development. The whole time Rory has been with the Doctor he hasn't really been a companion to the Doctor, he's been there for AMY who just happens to be with the Doctor. I think this is the first time he really truly acted like a companion, which is to say he put his faith in the Doctor even though it made no sense. He did hesitate though, and yes it was a really scary jarring moment because his entire world has always been about Amy.

I'm actually really interested to see how Rory and the Doctor interact with Amy gone. I know we had the time earlier with the silents, but Rory was also viewing the Doctor as a rival for Amy's affection at that time, which he isn't now. Also, Amy's voice was present and now there's no connection at all.

As to why the Doctor didn't explain things and just made cryptic statements that freaked everyone out: maybe he was trying to not tip off the people on Amy's end before he broke the connection? He, and we, have no way of knowing how much they know about what's going on with Amy's mind, so maybe he said things that would make sense once the connection was broken to Amy, but wouldn't immediately raise specifc red flags.

I'm rambling, but that's my 2 cents.

[mis-mariposas.livejournal.com]

Although I don't see why the Doctor couldn't have soniced the flesh while Rory was standing by it.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the thing is, I've been wanting to see more of a connection between Rory and the Doctor - and I am curious to see how they're like together without Amy! - but I wish there'd been more of it before this? Like, I wish we'd first seen Rory trusting the Doctor in a situation that didn't require him betraying Amy. --Or, otherwise, a sign that Rory himself had started doubting that Amy was really Amy; I could've believed that, that if Rory was already feeling something was off about her, and then the Doctor confirmed it, he'd listen to the Doctor. But this way I hard time buying it; it feels OOC to me. YMMV, obviously. ^^

He, and we, have no way of knowing how much they know about what's going on with Amy's mind, so maybe he said things that would make sense once the connection was broken to Amy, but wouldn't immediately raise specifc red flags.

Hmm, I hope this is the case...(though him breaking the connection deliberately like that is bound to raise red flags already, one would think, at least let them know he's onto them...so why couldn't he have told Amy a bit more?)

And yeah, I was wondering myself why Rory had to step away, rather than just having Ganger!Amy melt in his arms. Other than for dramatic effect, of course!

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

The only reason I can think of to have Rory step away (other than bad plotting/CGI convenience) is if Rory is plastic Flesh as well. Which would still be bad plotting, because position didn't save the Flesh!Doctor from the melting signal (which, as you point out, was itself bad plotting since there was no reason to set that scene up anyway). This episode gives me a headache. And that's not even mentioning the things I've seen passing reference to about the most recent episode, since I'm trying to stick to the US schedule. If what I saw was accurate, barf.

[beege22.livejournal.com]

I can't believe I never thought about this before you pointed it out, but yeah - more proof thst sci-fi is mostly written by men who are clueless about women (comics are equally terrible - you don't want to know what marvel does with this trope). Keiko doesn't really pass the test either because her second kid wound up in Kira's womb who was then abducted by an old war enemy just as she was about to give birth! To judge by TV women hospitals might as well not have maternity wards - clearly women always give birth in elevators/the office/the middle of a crisis.

Zoe being pregnant and having Wash's baby after his death is fanon, not canon.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't remember now when I noticed the recurring themes of crazy pregnancies in scifi, or if it was pointed out to me, but it's one of those things that once you see you can't stop seeing. Some of it is just TV hyperbole (like how no one ever just gets headaches on TV, it's always a brain tumor) but it ends up singling out for bizarre treatment a very normal part of life. The majority of women have been or will be pregnant at least once in their lives - but few female chars in scifi have ever given birth, and often a pregnant female character is treated like something entirely different from other female characters, or any characters.