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

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

They reused a chunk of the Cartmel Masterplan for a few New Adventures novelizations - there were a bunch of throwaway comments in S25 particularly about the Doctor knowing people he shouldn't have known on Gallifrey, and having some secret past that he didn't want revealed (and also the crazy Gallifreyan stuff he shouldn't have had access to when he did), which were designed to retrofit this more mysterious, slightly mythic past. One of the script-writers did a couple of novels where they wrote that bit up. (They also sort of tried to do the Ace bit as best they could, being somewhat hampered by the alternate stuff the novels had already done with her by that point. Overall, though, not that satisfying how they handled Ace in the end, in the NA novels.)

[leaper182.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing about the novelizations, and also hearing about what they did to Seven and Ace, and even I could find any of them to read, I don't think I'd want to? I don't want Seven and Ace to break up that way. :(

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

Some people feel that way, for sure. I'm cool with Who as a multitude of possible canons, and don't feel too tied to the reality of it. It was Who with a very mid-to-late-90s sensibility, they basically did that to kick up the gritty action!grrrl quota, which at the time was a bit more fashionable for its own sake. (I personally think it came off as trying a bit too hard, but I see why they were doing it.) And they don't quite break up; it's more sort of on-again-off-again (after a few good old-fashioned 7/Ace adventures). And then they try and end it with a nod towards the Masterplan, where Ace does kind of take up a little Doctorish apprenticeship thing.

[leaper182.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I guess I'm more tied to the TV canon, and what the people had intended for the series and that kind of deal. Just hearing about Seven and Ace having troubles in the novels made me frown a bit. Granted, if you were looking at their relationship realistically, there would come a point where Ace would get tired of the manipulations and such -- Curse of the Fenric really could be seen as a beginning for that kind of behavior, especially if Seven went unchecked. The trouble is, I would've wanted Ace to act as a check for that, because she's one of the few companions that likes saving the universe and getting into trouble.