(no subject)

[sebastienne]

On re-watching "Let's Kill Hitler":

• The setting DOES make perfect sense; how else could we allow psychopath-Melody to kill and humiliate all those people? Moffat wants us to see that she is ruthless and dangerous, but doesn't want us to start hating River - so Nazis are an easy target!


• "I need to weigh myself" is even worse the second time round.


• The little robot people dish out justice to those who do not receive it in their lifetimes. So if they want Melody for the Doctor's murder, that means she is in prison for killing someone else.


• "The oldest question in the universe" sends me looking for an in-continuity answer, for some reason. "What was the first question asked in An Unearthly Child?", sort of thing. "Hidden in plain sight" - it just must be a lateral-thinking puzzle. "Who's Benjamin?" or "Doctor Who?" or something.


• Melody's transformation from psychopath to child-of-the-TARDIS is either very affecting, or very unconvincing; it took me a rewatch to work out all the subtleties of what must have happened off-screen. That's a lot of unconditioning in very little time.

Comments

[marrog.livejournal.com]

For the record, I'm not sure we're meant to think that she's totally ceased to be a psychopath just yet. Or indeed ever, properly...

[widsidh.livejournal.com]

The little robot people dish out justice to those who do not receive it in their lifetimes. So if they want Melody for the Doctor's murder, that means she is in prison for killing someone else.

That does not necessarily follow - those guys seem to have their own idea of justice and may not have considered the Storm Cage sufficient punishment.

However, someone on a different board voiced the suspicion that the good man in a A Good Man Goes to War is really Rory, so the good man who River kills...

I'm not saying I believe this (or not); I haven't got round to thinking it through properly, but it is intriguing. And Rory does seem to be a bit accident-prone.

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

I'm in head justifying the weight talk as an unfortunate side effect of growing up in our society.

I think we are going to see some of the time gaps (particularly the fish-fingers in custard) filled in by the series end. Coz the doctor stumbles out of the trades and almost immediately dies , so even given the time to change (possibly to take future river dancing?), he's got at least 20 minutes to kill.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

See, I can accept the dress-size talk as a side-effect of growing up in our society. ie, even a super-intelligent psychopath from the future will recognise that she is treated better if she appears to be within certain parameters of "attractiveness". But weight is such an arbitrary thing to fixate on.. someone over on my Facebook has suggested that she needed an excuse to get out of sight to put on poisoned lipstick, and I can certainly buy that.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I'd come to the same conclusion - it's not only the Teselecta which executes 'a perfect feint'.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

"What was the first question asked in An Unearthly Child?"

I think that would be some variation on "what's a police box doing here?" If we start getting ancient Gallifreyan history again, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Melody's transformation from psychopath to child-of-the-TARDIS is either very affecting, or very unconvincing; it took me a rewatch to work out all the subtleties of what must have happened off-screen. That's a lot of unconditioning in very little time.

That puzzled me as well. One theory I've seen is that after poisoning the Doctor, her conditioning weakened (since she'd effectively completed her task), and seeing him trying to save her parents/childhood friends made an impression on her, but it's not a particularly satisfying theory, so...