solitary_summer | (no subject) (Reply)

Really, really liked it. Maybe not quite as much as The Fires of Pompei, but it had some fantastic moments, the end was another of those scenes where I'm never quite sure whether to laugh or to cry or both, and it was visually breathtaking with the ice planet and swirling snow adding a poetic and sad quality to the drab and horrifying Ood factory setting.

Donna continues to be lovely (and on a more shallow note, gorgeous); getting her coat in the middle of one of the Doctor's 'Isn't that fantastic' speeches, and the Ferrari comment is still hilarious after last season's 'I've got a sports car, you've got a space-hopper'. And the scene with the dying Ood, from her reaction to seeing an Ood for the first time to 'It's all right. we've got you.... This is the Doctor. Just what you need.', and trying to talk into the Ood's communicator and apologising for it, to stroking his forehead 'There you go sweetheart. We were too late.' and wanting to bury him, and only then asking what an Ood is.

::sigh:: Somehow I find it a lot harder to write about DW than TW. There's an epic quality about the series and the themes it touches that works incredibly well on the show, but always leaves me scrambling for words.

The Doctor pushing Donna behind him and then Ood Sigma stepping in front of them both. And Halpen turning into an Ood. Yuck. But poetic justice. But, yuck. But also brilliant.

This season is getting seriously darker, though. Not the first episode, but last week's, and now this with the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire built on slavery and routine lobotomies, and the death camp images/associations... It's not only the whips and the casual mass murder that makes it so monstrous, it's also the little things like the Ood with the custom modified voices, and the publicity girl blithely pointing this out as a special feature. And judging from next week's trailer and from what we've seen about UNIT so far on TW the next episode isn't going to be flowers & sunshine & fluffy bunnies either.

This is from when they're watching Toshiko's video message and she tells Owen she loves him. Gwen's face barely changes except into a slight, tearful smile, but one kind of wonders if Ianto (whose eyes quickly move from the screen to Jack and back at 'You saved me.') has recorded/written a message like that somewhere, the way his eyes close briefly at 'you never knew'. And what is Jack thinking? He's smiling through the 'an instant with the toaster' part, and smiling and crying through her message to him, but at this point turns very serious, closing his eyes and looking away.

~~And I may have sorta kinda been scribbling TW fanfic [::facepalm::] Not that I'm going to post it anywhere, and least of all here, but it's kind of fun.~~