Whoa

[eve11]

I had zero expectations for this episode but it was alien and freaky and well and truly scary. Wow. I loved the alien that was so, so, alien and creepy doing nothing but repeating. Wow. The humans were a little stock, but it still worked well. I wonder if we'll ever find out anything more about them. For a tiny bit I was wondering if maybe the alien thing was, like, the Valeyard coming in to take over the Doctor. Apparently not.

(ETA: I will add that it seemed a bit... off-putting... to me that all of the minority characters in the episode were sub-serviant; trainee, hostess, secretary/student. It's like RTD has decided that black people are always in service roles and well, of course, they all deserve better because they are the smartest ones who know what's going on, etc... but that's like saying eg, "behind every successful man is a successful woman" or some such. Just, dude, why not have the Professor be black? Or the family?)

Part of me likes that they didn't explain everything, and part of me is kind of put out. But I'll take it. Kudos to Rusty for exceeding my expectations.

Comments

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

I liked the episode. There was good tension, wondering exactly what was going to happen next. And an interesting exploration of the human psyche, or at least one writer's vision of the human psyche; how quickly we all descend down into the lizard brain, the fight or flight instinct turning to fight when there is no flight option available, how threatened we all feel by the person that looks like they should be normal but just aren't, somehow, whether that's Skye Sylvestre repeating everyone's words or the Doctor with his just so slightly left-of-center behavior (and I really need a term that is more four-dimensional than 'left' there).

This was also a good one for pushing even the Doctor well beyond his comfort zone, forcing him to deal with something that threatened him in a way that most of the physical dangers he usually faces never do.

Yep. I liked it. :)

[eve11]

It reminded me a little bit of "Sphere" by Michael Crichton (the book; I haven't seen the movie), in that the alien was so alien you had no idea what they really were or why what was happening was happening. *is creeped*