Doctor Who - The Runaway Bride

[mllelaurel]

- I found myself laughing out loud and cheering within the first fifteen minutes. Always a good sign, not to mention something I sorely needed today.

- The fake (yet convincing) tears, followed by the wink: that's when I knew I *liked* Donna. She is officially fab.

- The small reminders of Rose have so far been subtle, pertinent and lovely. I'm glad.

- So. Torchwood owns property. Competently, I hope; incompetently, I wager.

- The 'secret' floor's marked on the elevator? Some secret. (If this is a showcase of Torchwood competence, I'm going to laaaaaaugh.)

- Donna's a key? Well, her name *does* sound sort of like 'Dawn'... Thank goodness the two are actually nothing alike.

- Did I mention I adored Donna? Well, I do.

- I wonder if the planet's core thing is a callback to "Inferno"...

- Dude. Is that the extrapolator from Season 1?

- He finally said 'Gallifrey'! This fills me with unholy squeee! Yaaaaaay! If I analyze further, this probably says something about the Doctor, psychologically. I don't think he was able to refer to his home like that before. He can now. It's healing and it's progress.

- Ok, the snow thing is precisely what "The Christmas Invasion" undercut so beautifully last year. It's a bit disappointing to see Rusty resort to the cliche he once declined.

- I will say, I like the theme of the Doctor actually dealing. I could kiss Donna for asking for Rose's name. The Doctor's acknowledging the past now. Gallifrey. Rose. Sarah forced him to look back, in Season 2, and I bet Jack will do likewise in Season 3. *So* much more healthy than the dissonance our boy seems to prefer.

In conclusion, I quite enjoyed this, thanks mainly to Donna. There are, however, a few issues holding TRB back, making it not as good as the Christmas Invasion. For one thing, the villain brings the bwahaha and not much else. I just never found myself concerned over the fate of the Earth. Contrast that to the Sycorax. 'Bwahaha,' sure, but they also had an edge ('Sycorax rock'). Additionally, they showed no qualms about killing sympathetic characters and had an effective plan of conquest (the part where all those people are climbing up still gives me chills.) In contrast, the spider lady just didn't seem all that menacing or competent. I hate to sound bloodthirsty, but this is a case where more casualties really would have helped. Lance's death was too much just deserts to quallify.

We also had no reason to worry for the Doctor's wellbeing, but his illness in TCI isn't really something you can replay, so that's understandable.

My second qualm was the lack of secondary characters. I get that you can't have Mickey and Jackie without, well, having Mickey and Jackie. Still, I wish the people we saw in the first scene had wound up playing a bigger part. Donna's parents. Her bitchy friend (Nerys?). Lance's family - surely someone would have had to tell them that their son was evil and dead. It would have been heartbreaking, had it been dealt with on screen.

Regarding Lance himself, I do have to hand out a few kudos. He may have turned out to be a jackass, but his motivations were believable. We got where he was coming from.

Overall score: 2

However, this is a Doctor Who 2, rather than a Torchwood one. Higher standards; higher quallity. I'll very likely be rewatching The Runaway Bride, though I'll probably fast forward over the plot straight to the lovely Donna and Ten interaction. Here's hoping we get Donna as a guest star again. Hey, stranger things have happened.


Meanwhile, the previews look shiny! I'm drooling over the glimpses we get of the upcoming Season 3. Drooling, I tell you. Likewise for Sarah Jane Adventures (though I'm a bit scared of them using kid actors). Torchwood finale I'm both excited and fearful for, though I'll get a Tregenna episode along with it. That, and the preview actually makes "End of Days" look really intriguing, for all that it's Chibnall.

Comments

[nevacaruso.livejournal.com]

There were a lot of things about TCI that it would be hard to "beat," so I don't blame RTD for trying something different, in many ways lighter, even though the conflict between good and evil lost some of its dramatic edge in the process.

I agree - it's definitely good that the Doctor is learning to acknowledge the past little by little instead of running from it or letting it swallow him. I missed Mickey and Jackie, too, and how much love was there for Ten referring to those two - along with Rose - as his "family?" Maybe if Donna reappears in another episode, she'll bring her own family/friends along for the proverbial ride. And, yes. She was fabulous. ("Well, you can go ahead and lose me!" and especially "You need somebody to stop you." Because, as I think we've both agreed, he so does.)

As for Torchwood? Chibnall tries, he really does, and while I had a few issues with the plot and pacing, for the most part, the character stuff in the finale is quite good. I'll leave you to decide whether that saves the episode. Of course, maybe anything would have looked a little less shiny after the stellar preceding episode, which is pretty much everything we hoped for when we found out that Jack and Toshiko would be time-traveling together. Tosh, in particular, is at her best.

Looking forward to reading your reactions.

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

I *loved* that it wasn't just Rose he missed and his bond with the others was acknowledged.

<3 Donna. Bless her.

Yeah, putting Chibnall right after Tregenna may not have been the wisest move, but I'm glad to hear he's improving.

Now, to download and watch everything.