Bits and pieces
Feb. 23rd, 2013 01:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regndoftThe exam went... fine. Better than I expected? It hasn't been graded yet, but I know I passed. So that's good. The next course on Archaic and Classical Greece started today, and hopefully I'll be able to juggle this one better. Hopefully. Especially as I have so many fan projects to finish (though only the fic for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
unconventionalcourtship and my illustration for 50 Years of Whovians are things I've committed to/have proper deadlines).
Also since last: do you remember that short list of recipes I vowed to try? Well, I've made smoky roasted cauliflower twice since I posted that, so you should. Try that one. Because it's delicious, if you like cauliflower.
(Today there was almost no easily available food at home, so I whipped up some... tomato puré with onions and kidney beans and salsa in a pot. A culinary genius, I am not.)
As far as the F-List goes, hello F-List! Roughly a third of you have been back from Gally for almost a week now. :D It's been fun to see everyone having... well, fun. Though it does remind me how much I miss convention culture sometimes, especially now when I have close friends I would be comfortable with hanging out with.
Con culture in Sweden is 90% anime & manga-related, and the other 10 is mostly gaming, and the rest of Northern Europe isn't much better. I was never very good at the social part of conventions, but I do rather miss the idea, the atmosphere and the mere concept of an event aimed at fans, where you're surrounded by people who understand your interests. The closest place I could get to that these days would probably be somewhere in the UK, and I don't exactly have the resourced to pop over there. :/
So that's a bit sad. I guess I'll have to do with watchalongs and excessive imbibing of tea withing my own social circle for now. :P
Fan-wise I've found myself positively swamped by things to watch and listen to lately, Idek how I am getting through it all. It's almost becoming exhausting; whenever I'm not studying or online I'm trying to catch up on a billion Companion Chronicles, or Gallifrey audios, or watching Blake's 7... geek life is so hard, you guys.
And, because of a gifset of that one scene at the end of Planet of Fire, have some... weirdly disjointed Five!meta written past midnight?
Crossposting here in the vain hope someone will actually care, because meta on Tumblr is like screaming all my fandom thoughts into the dark abyss of the internet and hoping something echoes back.
"In a way, it is both a shame and strangely poignant that the fifth Doctor’s most important character development should occur in his last three serials.
The Doctor choosing to let the Master die, choosing not to flick that switch that would prevent him from burning to cinders is a character beat that can’t be underestimated, but is perhaps not seen in its proper context until you go back to Resurrection of the Daleks, where we see the return of Davros and the Doctor’s attempt (and subsequent failure) at executing him.
Despite having him at gunpoint, the Doctor can’t bring himself to kill the creator of the greatest scourge the universe will ever witness - and Davros proceeds to mock him for it.
“You are soft, like all Time Lords,” he says, “you prefer to stand and watch”. And perhaps it hits this regeneration harder than it would another, because he does not like conflict, does not crave the excitement and adrenaline in the same way as some of his earlier incarnation. Reactive, rather than active (or proactive, for that matter).
“Action requires courage. Something you lack.”
And in the end, he can’t go through with it; the Daleks are defeated but the Doctor never pulled the trigger. In the end, Tegan leaves him because she can’t live that kind of life anymore - and the Doctor points out he left his own people for similar reasons.
So the journey goes to Teneriffe, and from there to Sarn, where the Master waits. The Doctor couldn’t rid the universe of one evil; perhaps he hopes to redeem himself by letting another dissolve. Perhaps he needs to change, to harden; to not be like the rest of Time Lord society, the people he despises and ran away from in the first place.
Except he lets the Master die, and it’s a step further than he’d calculated. Suddenly he’s become a person he’s not comfortable with being.
“Better to quit while you’re a hero”, he tells Turlough when he hesitates to leave the Doctor for his own planet. But it’s not Turlough he’s talking about.
The journey ends on Androzani Major, and really, could that serial have ended any other way? When you’ve become a person you don’t want to be, it is time to change. This Doctor’s final action is to give up his own life to save someone else before he succumbs to regeneration.
And changes."
(I wish I could meta properly. If I could, I would write all my zomg!deep thoughts about The Curse of Fenric, which is lovely and meaty and which I watched for the first time since July today.)
unconventionalcourtship and my illustration for 50 Years of Whovians are things I've committed to/have proper deadlines).Also since last: do you remember that short list of recipes I vowed to try? Well, I've made smoky roasted cauliflower twice since I posted that, so you should. Try that one. Because it's delicious, if you like cauliflower.
(Today there was almost no easily available food at home, so I whipped up some... tomato puré with onions and kidney beans and salsa in a pot. A culinary genius, I am not.)
As far as the F-List goes, hello F-List! Roughly a third of you have been back from Gally for almost a week now. :D It's been fun to see everyone having... well, fun. Though it does remind me how much I miss convention culture sometimes, especially now when I have close friends I would be comfortable with hanging out with.
Con culture in Sweden is 90% anime & manga-related, and the other 10 is mostly gaming, and the rest of Northern Europe isn't much better. I was never very good at the social part of conventions, but I do rather miss the idea, the atmosphere and the mere concept of an event aimed at fans, where you're surrounded by people who understand your interests. The closest place I could get to that these days would probably be somewhere in the UK, and I don't exactly have the resourced to pop over there. :/
So that's a bit sad. I guess I'll have to do with watchalongs and excessive imbibing of tea withing my own social circle for now. :P
Fan-wise I've found myself positively swamped by things to watch and listen to lately, Idek how I am getting through it all. It's almost becoming exhausting; whenever I'm not studying or online I'm trying to catch up on a billion Companion Chronicles, or Gallifrey audios, or watching Blake's 7... geek life is so hard, you guys.
And, because of a gifset of that one scene at the end of Planet of Fire, have some... weirdly disjointed Five!meta written past midnight?
Crossposting here in the vain hope someone will actually care, because meta on Tumblr is like screaming all my fandom thoughts into the dark abyss of the internet and hoping something echoes back.
"In a way, it is both a shame and strangely poignant that the fifth Doctor’s most important character development should occur in his last three serials.
The Doctor choosing to let the Master die, choosing not to flick that switch that would prevent him from burning to cinders is a character beat that can’t be underestimated, but is perhaps not seen in its proper context until you go back to Resurrection of the Daleks, where we see the return of Davros and the Doctor’s attempt (and subsequent failure) at executing him.
Despite having him at gunpoint, the Doctor can’t bring himself to kill the creator of the greatest scourge the universe will ever witness - and Davros proceeds to mock him for it.
“You are soft, like all Time Lords,” he says, “you prefer to stand and watch”. And perhaps it hits this regeneration harder than it would another, because he does not like conflict, does not crave the excitement and adrenaline in the same way as some of his earlier incarnation. Reactive, rather than active (or proactive, for that matter).
“Action requires courage. Something you lack.”
And in the end, he can’t go through with it; the Daleks are defeated but the Doctor never pulled the trigger. In the end, Tegan leaves him because she can’t live that kind of life anymore - and the Doctor points out he left his own people for similar reasons.
So the journey goes to Teneriffe, and from there to Sarn, where the Master waits. The Doctor couldn’t rid the universe of one evil; perhaps he hopes to redeem himself by letting another dissolve. Perhaps he needs to change, to harden; to not be like the rest of Time Lord society, the people he despises and ran away from in the first place.
Except he lets the Master die, and it’s a step further than he’d calculated. Suddenly he’s become a person he’s not comfortable with being.
“Better to quit while you’re a hero”, he tells Turlough when he hesitates to leave the Doctor for his own planet. But it’s not Turlough he’s talking about.
The journey ends on Androzani Major, and really, could that serial have ended any other way? When you’ve become a person you don’t want to be, it is time to change. This Doctor’s final action is to give up his own life to save someone else before he succumbs to regeneration.
And changes."
(I wish I could meta properly. If I could, I would write all my zomg!deep thoughts about The Curse of Fenric, which is lovely and meaty and which I watched for the first time since July today.)
no subject
Date: 2013-02-23 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-23 12:24 pm (UTC)The irony is, of course, that by letting the Master burn the Doctor doesn't just become someone he doesn't want to be, but the decision almost seems to echo Davros words; it's by not taking action, not flicking that switch, that the Doctor condemns the Master to death. So perhaps he should have saved him, if he'd wanted to change for the better (not sure I actually believe that, but it's an interesting thought).
How this plays into Six's personality can also be speculated; I do find it interesting that while Six is less sensitive than Five, he's also arguably more emotional. Sure he's prone to bluster and criticism, but when he cares he cares very deeply. It's easier for him to commit acts of violence, but it's not something he does frivolously; it's always the means to an end. One could argue that he's tried all other options already and would rather tackle conflict heads-on than attempt to avoid it. Which could also be a prelude to Seven, who is the most proactive of the Doctors in terms of vanquishing his enemies - not just outsmarting them, but actively laying traps and leading them astray in order to annihilate them.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-24 10:14 am (UTC)in that i think the doctor only lets the master die because it's more of the same inaction. if he had to actually 'pull the trigger' (metaphorically or actually) he'd have saved him, but the fact that it would be an action to save him and that it's being drawn out means the doctor has to consider whether he should save him and would have to actively act against events in order so to do. and so he has to think (and he's got time to think) whether he's got the right to stop what is happening. (saving the master would be personal and the master makes that obvious by bringing up their personal connection, whereas the universe would be better off if he wasn't saved).
although i do agree that he might have veered towards the personal choice more if he hadn't felt so badly about what happened with the daleks the week before. and part of why he knows he did so badly there is that tegan left him becasue everything was bad, which i think also can't be ignored in this trail of episodes. to be fair, turlough says he doesn't want to go, but he still goes.
i also think it's interesting to think of it in terms of last-minute character development, becauese i watched these episodes so out of order that this probably happened for me quite early on. and now i just back-import this sort of reactive (and the possibly deeply upset but able to weigh his feelings against the fate of the universe) characterisation into early five, so it all works out fine for me as a late-to-Who fan :)
five is one of the most interesting doctors, for definite.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-25 09:27 pm (UTC)This is a really good point, and makes sense re: Five's characterisation.
to be fair, turlough says he doesn't want to go, but he still goes.
Turlough's situation is very different though; in the entire mess of events in PoF, he finds out he has a brother that's still alive, that the Trion civil wars are over and that he'd be welcome home... and going home was his main motivator behind working for the Black Guardian in the first place. Basically he's faced with a dilemma and forced to make a decision between two things he wants very badly very quickly. Whereas Tegan presumably had more time to reach her decision (and had already returned home once, albeit against her own will).
My Who-watching was also really jumbled at first, so when I did try to watch in something resembling an order I'd already watched almost half of Five's episodes. Resurrection and Caves were not among them though, so now I sort of wonder what difference they might've made...
True, true. It's strange I don't like him more (which is not to say I don't like him, because I do, just not as much as some other Doctors).