Netflix!

[eve11]

I got a Blu-ray player and a netflix subscription for Christmas, which is fab. Last night, I watched the Curse of Fenric, as I realize Seven is the only Doctor I've not watched any episodes for (although I've listened to all the audios), and Fenric was the only Seventh Doc episode that was on instant download:



Wow, that was a bit crazy, wasn't it? After watching it, I'm pretty sure of two things:

1) There was a cool story in there somewhere
and
2) It would have scared the pants off me as a child

The murderous Haemavores, the storms, the rampant killing of characters they did try to get us to know, the surrounded-by-zombies claustrophobia, the leaving of soldiers to die... all added up to something that I would actually think twice about showing to anyone under the age of eight, to tell you the truth. There were some seriously adult themes in this one, culminating with Ace's love/hate relationship with her mom, and a very symbolic diving scene at the end.

At the same time, for at least the first 40 minutes of this episode I was shaking my head going... "Wait, what? What? Where? What the hell is going on?" Also did I miss a past episode where the Doctor trapped this Fenric thing with a puzzle, or was all of that done off-screen? Was there a past episode (that I missed) that dealt with Ace's relationship with her mom?

Really, can you imagine the writer's meeting for this one? "Okay guys, we have an hour and a half to tell a story. Let's make sure we incorporate all of the following:"

- Vikings
- Vampires
- Nazis
- Mentally unhinged commanders
- Code-breaking Computers
- Russian spies
- Killer fish aliens
- Oriental Treasure
- Poison gas
- a Firing Squad
- Vicars with a crisis of faith
- Creepy Swimming Holes with Bad Reputations
- Ancient evil bodysnatchers
- Scientists with a tumultuous past
- Secret Laboratories
- Babies

And I'm sure I've missed a few.

Also let's make sure we fully develop and grow the character arcs for:
- *the Russian Captain
- the Widowed War Bride
- *the Crippled Scientist
- *the Crazy Commander
- *the Vicar
- *the Killer Fish Alien
- *the Two Girls from London
- the Bolshevik and the English Soldier
- Ace

(*) We will also kill them off

We will also have a few other characters strewn around (like the old lady and the nurse) to further the character arcs of these guys. So, now we're off to tell a coherent story!

Right. So I think they might have bitten off a little bit more than they could chew with this one. Some things worked well, I think. But because there was so much going on, I don't think they had enough time to develop anything to the point where it made sense in the bigger picture. Why did the Russians let the Doctor and Ace go? Why did the Doctor not warn the Brits about the Russians (and thus let all those soldiers get killed)? What was up with the undersea welding clamshell things? How did the Doctor get from the poison hangar bay to the fish monster to tell it about fenric? What was that bit about the Russian dude also being a viking? Why did the fish monster kill the rest of the haemavores?

There were a lot of mini character stories floating around that seemed in one sense tacked on: the vicar, the war bride, the Russian commander's friend, the professor being humiliated at the hands of his nurse, the backstory between the professor and the commander. On the other hand, they certainly made it more impactful when each of those characters (aside from the war bride) met with an unsavory end. I must say, the Haemavores were genuinely scary, when they were not complete and utter camp (thinking about the girls luring that Russian into the water, lol). I loved the zombie-apocalypse feel that they had, and the shot of all of them rising up and coming out of the water was totally creepifying, as was their inexorable thinning of the human characters.

I would have liked to have seen more about the Doctor and Ace; I particularly liked the part where she challenged him about never telling her what really was going on, and how she kept undermining the Doctor's plans without knowing (explaining the logic diagram to the professor, giving up the solution to the puzzle at the end). But on the other hand, why try to cram so many stories into just that one story? It seems like the conceit was that all the pieces should have slotted into place at the end, but for me it still seemed like a bit of a jumble. Partly I think this was due to direction and editing, but part of it was just due to the fact that they threw the catchall drawer and the kitchen sink into this one.

Comments

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

One of my favourites! XD I love it quite a bit, not as much as Remembrance of the Daleks or Happiness Patrol or Survival, but it's up there, somewhere... I totally agree about there being a hell of a lot happening - I think it rewards rewatches, as do quite a few of the Seven stories, which is arguably a failure on the part of the writing. It's positively transparent compared to Ghost Light mind you! ;D

Another thing I strongly agree with is that there should be more Seven n Aceiness - there should ALWAYS be more Seven n Aceiness! ;D

I think Remembrance might be a good one to watch, though, if you want to get into Seven. It's ace, as Ace would say, with Daleks and fake-UNIT and stuff, and possibly clearer on a first view than some of the ones that came after.

People say Season 24's bad - I agree it is subpar compared to S25 and S26, but it has its moments.

I am, however, an enormously biased Seven fanboy, so take anything I say on the subject with a healthy pinch of salt! :)

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

Man, I love Ghost Light, too. Right up there with Fenric. Ghost Light was just a fantastic thematic exploration on the nature of change. That, I think, is part of what makes the pacing hugely different on a lot of Seven stories, particularly the later ones; they're not straight action stories, but very allegorical and doing a great deal through implication and allusion, so they read very differently from other seasons of Who. It's fantastic storytelling, some of the best I've seen on a TV show - but what I love about it is that it's super-dense and keeps you on your toes about actively interpreting what you're watching, with a huge amount of thematic and character development. So I don't personally think it's a failure for it to reward rewatches; I think it means they're doing it right. :) (S25/S26 is, in many ways, the Sandman or Watchmen of Doctor Who, and I think, from interviews, those were actually conscious influences on how they were changing the storytelling from a straight time-travelling SF show to a much more experimentally mythic, allegorical, meta-aware/pop-culture-aware/politically-aware show.)

I would also recommend Remembrance as the gateway drug of Seven; it's sort of an homage to Who, being the anniversary episode, so it's a bit nostalgic in content and structure, and, as the first real Seven/Ace story, it's a much gentler sort of intro to the type of storytelling they ended up doing. Much as I love Ghost Light, it probably does deserve some warning labels, because it does contain a fairly high level of insanity. :)

[eve11]

OMG you're a boy??? ;) j/k I knew that.

I am definitely going to track down more of these via DVD. Possibly even in the right order. I am now intrigued by Ghost Light... or maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

I would recommend going in order if possible; it's not strictly necessary, because they're not strongly story-arced, but it does work better that way, because they are revealing some character stuff throughout.

Ghost Light is fantastic, but it definitely makes Fenric look straightforward. (Partly because the version that was aired was about 25%+ shorter than they'd planned, so it moves damn fast; partly because it's sort of an elaborately woven-together story anyway. Fenric is really a very classic British WWII drama at its core, despite all the vampires and added genre nonsense, but Ghost Light is one-of-a-kind.)