So, I was watching the 2005
Dr. Who Christmas Special. And it's funny and unselfconscious, but overall I am being a touch apprehensive about the general feeling that no-one can do anything about the incursion[1] without the Doctor.
And Rose Tyler and Harriet Jones (who I am rather liking) are dealing with the Sycorax (and while I want to say Mickey is too, he's written as more just there), vile anti-social alien beasties who have determined that since Rose arrived in the TARDIS, she is obviously worth listening to. And Rose, in an untenable position, steps forward to speak. Which is fine. But just before she does, there is a quick little squib of dialogue:
Mickey: Don't you dare.
Rose: Someone's got to be the Doctor.
Harriet: They'll kill you!
Rose: Never stopped him.
And dammit, I am just going to forgive this episode all its
deus ex machina by the Doctor, because Rose clearly has no idea what she's doing, and it's probably not going to work, but she has something to try for. More, she has someone to try to emulate--hell, given the fluid nature of the Doctor, you can say she has someone to try to *be*.
(Total Christmas Special material, here.)
That the Doctor is coming across like a cross between Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow and Dick Van Dyke as Bert (in
Mary Poppins). With this scatterbrained canniness.
...oh good god, I think he just started quoting
The Lion King. I do love the "baffle them with bullshit" element.
...right. I have become a fangirl.
Hm. I'm now drawing correlations between the Doctor and (of all people) Jack the Ripper--as he's often seen, not who he was. Abstract ideals. People of fluid identity but defined goals. Icons. Blanks. There's something there I could follow up on... Archetypes, maybe. The Doctor as an archetype given variable flesh, walking and talking among mortal men. Variable face, variable personality, variable history if you want to read the occasional amnesia that way, and yet consistently the
Doctor, perpetually Apollonian in effect, righting wrongs and thwarting monstrosities from one end of galactic time to the other. Because he *does* this.
(Viewing from behind the sofa is optional.)
EDIT: *Ow.* Okay. Retract the
deus ex machina assessment. Also, the presence of the Doctor's teeth are duly noted.
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[1] It's on Earth. I am actually suddenly not sure that there *are* any Dr. Who episodes set on Earth which don't involve an alien incursion, so I don't think it counts as a spoiler.