my theory / questions for this episode

clue: i am mad

the attempt not to free yrself from conformism led to a bigger trap! the campervan ppl made the right choice!

the "dr = deity" element is surely a feature rather than a bug of the preimise of doctor who (ie there is no ep it does not apply to --- HE CAN TRAVEL IN TIME and DOES NOT DIE): what would the doctor's role be in a story where they freed themselves without him even operating as a catalyst? (non-causative observer?)

one of things i really liked about this story -- which reminded me of a lot of 60s WRITTEN "new wave" sci-fi -- was that it sketched a closed and not-very-like-us (ie alien) society, with its own culture and goals and mode of coping; yes, it required a bunch of highly implausible (not to say deliberately funny) gizmo-devices to set it up, but i think that's acceptable in a one-off non-extended-story ep

another thing i liked -- Ho-for-RTD time BUT I LIKED IT -- was the way we were suddenly aware of an aspect that, yes, the doctor rescued us from, which is not so much companion-in-peril as the fragility of life-as-we-quite-enjoy-it... one moment martha and the doctor are charging around having fun in an exotic locale; then something unexpected (but apparently minor) intrudes; five minutes later, she is unreachably distant down below the traffic flow, facing imminent death, and there's no way to go back on what happened or to say goodbye or to know, even, if what happened to you is going to be known -- the fact that we the who-viewers knew she (and everyone else) was going to be saved doesn't get in the way of the poignancy of a more generalised sense that sometimes (suddenly) there's no going back, that awful things can happen and we can be entirely conscious qand powerless and isloated -- the intimation of how not everyone is always saved, despite far stronger bonds of care than the doctor had for martha

but then i *like* the way RTD moves from light triviality to genuine emotional weight to cheese to parody to...

Re: clue: i am mad

(possibly relevant: i have very strong memory of/feelings about THREE separate times when someone* i am close to swam TOO FAR OUT FOR COMFORT at sea, and only got back to safety with the utmost effort, close-run thing blah blah --- the sense of the traffic-flow as a streeam you could shout across, even see across, but not GET across, was the vector of dread for me... the doctor got back across it by catnurse-ex-machina, which to me intensifies the ordinary-life grimness of such situations, where there is no catnurse handy)

(*actually three difft people)

Re: clue: i am mad

The emotional cheese is what puts me off!. The first episode was genuinely enjoyable because it was fast-paced, witty and there was a lack of OH NOES THE FRAILTY OF LIFE OMG. I mean ffs, this is meant to be an enjoyable action/adventure series, right? A little bit of teary-eye (eg 'noes is X really DED?' 'hurrah X isn't ded at all lets go out clubbing') I can deal with but ongoing drippyness for more than 30 seconds at a time can fvck right off.

Re: clue: i am mad

The frailty of life came in at well under 30s here!

Re: clue: i am mad

yes it was more like a single semi close-up on martha thinking "OMG i will not get home"

i think what is to my taste is the moving in and out of a variety of genre comfort zones -- having things right next to each other that you have to apply incommensurable modes of seriousness and engagement-distraction to

Re: clue: i am mad

also fragility /= frailty!

the first hymn-singing (in the cars) was good - it made my skin prickle, bcz it was unexpected and odd, given the dreddishness of the world so far: a sign of coping and "warmth" but also a sign of something horribly wrong with the entire community

the second ("abide with me") was potentially horrible -- of course i teared up kind of pavlovianly anyway, cz of family associations, but it was still (actually) functioning somewhere between redemptive happy-ending yuk and continued creepiness (the new world damaged by what had happened in the old)

I loved the bit where the Doctor, Dougal-cat and missus were talking about moving but never going anywhere, and they gave us a view of the endless convoy top-down, looking like a million TARDISes. This restlessness is weighing on the Doctor a little hard, it appears. Coupled with the beautiful (and canonical? I'm sure I recognised it from a Hartnell episode! Though I'm not sure which one.) rememberance of Gallifrey, I think we're headed for episodes which address this directly...

The rug-pull - that the ruling class had saved the underclass rather than relegating them to keep them out of the way - was neatly done and unexpected. In some ways, I thought this was the best of the three this year so far.

Wasn't it Pat to Victoria, rather than Hartnell? But yes, albeit I think with some expansions - but they were entirely in the same vein, and equally lovely.

Could be - it was definitely a black and white episode that I've seen in the last seven or eight years, as opposed to when they were screened when I was about ten...

Did I miss the bit where they explained why people couldn't walk the few miles rather than drive? Pollution, but that is only on the motorway and only because of traffic jams. Are there no corridors/stairways that could have been opened?

There were big crabs at the bottom. But they must have been able to get to the corridors or the drug pushers wouldn't have had a market/Martha wouldn't have been kidnapped. Maybe they just don't want to miss their place in the jam.

Why do the Macra attack and destroy the cars? We know it isn't for food.

Sh1ts and giggles?

So they can drink the gas out. Yummers!

Who creates the drugz and who buys the drugz? We only see who sells the drugz. How did people start creating drugz again after the 7 minute (yeah right) epidemic that swept the world?