What is Jingo about? Is it just about war, about racism, about how during wartime lives of young men are lost without them even really knowing why? It's certainly all this, but I think it is also about why people fight and most of all about how wars could be avoided if only people wanted it hard enough.
The war didn't start because a politician decided in cold blood that it'd be useful to him and wanted it so much it was perfectly ok for him to sacrify his own brother: he was thinking of his interests, politicians do that. No, the whole thing started before any politician even knew a thing about it. It all started with ordinary men who jumped at the occasion to divide the world in two categories: US, the righteous, the brave, and THEM, without honor or courage, them who are not like us. People always embrace this 'fairytale' approach to life, it's easier, it's comforting.
The first half of the book always makes me angry, it really makes me want to go Aaargh, because in it I see no principles at all, no traditions to mantain to keep you safe, nothing to justify people's behaviour.
Jingo is not about politics (it plays a relatively small role), is about people and the will to fight people have inside. People have a yearning desire to find a group (a team, a country or whatever) to belong to, to believe in, to fight for, and if they don't have it they create one as soon as the occasion arises. In this case a whole island appeared from beneath of them.
Maybe it is because most people like the easy way, and that is=Us, on one side, good, sometimes victims sometimes heroes, and Them, always evil. That way is easy to know who the enemy is and who you can trust because they are all your friends: as always in real life is the hard-way the true one.
A group can also give people what they don't have alone: courage, means, and most of all reasons, excuses to fight. Jingo is full of them. Nobody really gave a damn about that island, someone just found a good excuse and hang onto it. It happens to everybody, even to the best of people, if they aren't enough careful. Colon jumps to it with all his racist comments, but he represents the ignorant people who like to think they know everything.
Vimes is the good guy in Terry Pratchett's books, the one who always tries at his best to do things right, and he falls for it too. He dislikes ALL powerful, rich or aristocrats people, in spite of having married one and being now the most rich man himself. After knowing Sybil he should know that you should NEVER generalise, but he always does it because, as he admits to himself: "if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that they were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, what did that make ME? After all I''m one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. Noone ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them who do the bad things " So wanting as always to go against the aristocratic rich scum he doesn't even consider the possibility that Prince Cadram might be behind the attempted murder until Ahmed tells him "TRULY treat all men equally. Allow Klatchians the right to be scheming bastards".
But not only Vimes, Carrot too!
Carrot, the one who is always "kind without thinking of it, who takes an interest, who makes space in his head for other people", the same Carrot who thinks D'Regs like city-gang members are just jolly-good-chaps underneath, at one point he becomes 'one of Us' being in the desert with the D'Regs and the watchmen altogether, and after having made the Klatchian prisoners strip off because "makes them bit of a laughing stock when they return, a blow to their pride", he declares his will to stay there and help them fight "against the bad Klatchians"=Them.
To help the excuse to grow, people enrich it with racist comments to make it easier to know who they are, but at a close look we see how every step of the way TP keeps showing us how the 'second cousin of a jackal, the perfidious untrustworthy sausage-eating madmen, may-you-be-consumed-by-a-thousand-devils you unclean sons of a dog of the femile persuasion' and the 'thieving foreign bastards, the treacherous greasy towel heads, bottom-feedin' scum that y'are!you camel eating, evil lying little devil' at the end of the day are pretty much the same thing= from the two fishermen's sons who share the same "galactic-size embarassement of having parents" to Vimes and Ahmed who both have the heart of a copper, right up to the descriptions Vetinari does of those who at the beginning of all this had gone to the island. He says that Ankh-Morporkians are "showing a brisk pioneering spirit and seeking wealth and additional wealth in a new land" while Klatchians "are a bunch of unprincipled opportunists always ready to grab something for nothing" because that's not what he thinks but is what people of A-M wants to hear, and when he says "I seem to have read those last two sentences in the wrong order" noone gets the sarcasm because noone wants to.
I also said that Jingo, like Monstrous Regiment, to me talks about how people could decide NOT to kill, how wars could be avoided if only everyone wanted it hard enough (but there are no Vetinari in the real world): it's clear in Vimes optimistic and naive words "I'm supposed to keep the peace, if I kill people to do it I'm reading the wrong manual", or in those of the Klatchian commander "I love the idea of giving in without a fight. I've fought for ten years and giving in without a fight is what I've always wanted to do". Vetinari himself tells Vimes that "there's always a chicken if you look hard enough", and that means that every war could be stopped if intelligent people really wanted it, but in the real world most people are ignorant, or stupid, or driven by greed for money, for power, or simply driven by hate. In the case of Elharib and Smale it is so in the Discworld too. If one says that a word in the holy book means god why should one care if another city translates it as man? Why does one even bother? Why live and let live is not an option? Why people have to die? Why does one keep on the same track even after so many have died?
Minor role in this book has the feminism (another form of prejudice), put there, other than to make us laugh with Nobby, also to make a point, then Terry Pratchett probably realised how many thick heads there are out there so he decided to try really harder to make his points and wrote Monstrous Regiment.
I liked Jingo for its contest anti-war, anti-racism, anti-prejudices in general; I also liked it because there's a lot of Vetinari in it, and if you knew me like I know me you'd know how much that counts ^_ ^ although I can't stand the fact that Carrot goes around doing what he wants and even commanding the Patrician!
martedì 26 agosto 2014
lunedì 25 agosto 2014
Doctor Who series 3
Continuing from when we left them, Donna has just been transported into the Tardis, and she wants to go back, she wants to get married. It's a very funny episode, I loved him when he said "I'm not..I'm no.. I'm not from Mars". She keeps shouting at him because she can't understand what's happening, and I loved every moment of this episode. The Tardis chasing the taxi with Donna driven by a robot-killer-Santa was spectacular, unforgettable. He was perfect in every shot, both funny and melancholic because he has just lost Rose. Another thing I loved this episode, that by the way was not the first but the Christmas Special, is that the people saved themselves, the Doctor was too busy saving Donna and the world. There is also the first naming of Mr Saxon! It goes almost unnoticed because at this time we don't know who he is and how important he is, but it's already there. It's such a great special, wonderful.
I loved Donna when she started laughing, making the doctor laugh, and then when she wanted to protect him, yelling that she won't let them kill him! Sweet thing! Anyway every word is brilliant! And the end, when he's losing it, and is risking their lives by staying there, and only because Donna is there he comes back to his senses and runs away with her. At the end, he asks her to go with him because he's now alone, but it has been too much for her that day, knowing about aliens, discovering her fiancèe betrayal, watching him die, watching the doctor killing the spider-aliens... so she says no. I was there looking at the screen shouting inside What??? It's David Tennant! It's the Doctor!! What do you mean, no???
Let's talk about the episodes now. If you're careful, you can spot the name of Saxon almost anywhere...
1 Smith and Jones The Doctor, on his own, is at a hospital where he meets Martha Jones. She's studying to be a doctor, she's beautiful, smart and brilliant: ske keeps cool when she sees what's going on and she even saves the Doctor's life; then the whole hospital gets transported to the moon by some alien searching for another alien, a murerer alien, so the Doctor is in a bit of a trouble there, and when he needs some time he thinks of giving her a bit of alien dna. So he kisses her. He kisses her telling her honestly that it doesn't mean anything, but ehi, seriously, can you blame her? One kiss, one little adventure, and our girl is madly in love with him. Of course she is, I understand...
2 The Shakespear code Just one trip, he doesn't need anyone, it'll be just one trip to say thank you, and to impress her they go back to meet Shakespeare, but it won't be nice and simple, because some witches-like aliens have a plan. It'll all end well with a bit of help from 'good old J.K.'.
Poor Martha, though, he can't help thinking and talking about Rose, he misses her, we know, we understand, in a way we miss her too, I loved them together because they were like teenagers when together :lol: but still is a bit heartless to tell Martha how Rose would always know the right thing to say or do.
3 Gridlock One more trip, and the Doctor takes Martha to the same place he took Rose: to New Earth, but this time is not so beautiful as we all remembered. There is no sun, it's all underground, and anyone who goes on the road never comes back.. Martha herself is taken prisoner by a young couple, and now on the road, and the Doctor feels guilty. There's the risk of losing her and he doesn't even know her: in his own words "I was too busy showing off": Yeah, we noticed actually. He will sort everything out with the help of the Face of Boe, the old friend. It's a very interesting story, fascinating, and David is so adorable as ever, with the smile and the kittens and... I mean, the Doctor is. Of course, that's what I mean. The Doctor.Yes.
4-5 Daleks in Manhattan - Evolution of the Daleks a two part story set in 1930s New York. Daleks again, always Daleks... they are kind of fun, but it breaks my heart to see how they hurt my Doctor, always surviving "while I lose everything" sic
6 The Lazarus experiment Mark Gatiss is Lazarus, an old man that invented a machine to make himself young again. Have you seen the film 'the fly'? Different reason, but no better results, I assure you. Martha's mother doesn't trust the Doctor. Martha's sister and herself are in danger, but the Doctor always knows what to do. (Like Buffy said "I always find a way!"
7 42 Not my favourite episode for sure, but the nice thing is the absolute faith of Martha in the Doctor. She always showd it in Gridlock , she shows it again now. The situation is bad, really bad, but she trusts the doctor will save her. Good girl, I feel for you.
8-9 Human nature - The family of blood This two parts-episode will remain in history. The Doctor makes himself human, hiding in England 1913, with no memory of who he was. There's a family of alien with very short life, that wants the Doctor to live forever. He wanted to hide until they wouldn't be a threat anymore, he didn't want to fight with them, but they find where he's hiding, and they kill to get to him.
Not knowing who he was, poor human John Smith really believed to be nothing more than a teacher, and fell in love... It was so intense, and David was really great. He really wasn't the Doctor anymore, he moved and talked different, he was so moving. He was great, and the screenplay was great. The speech at the end, about the Doctor just trying to be nice to the bad guys? wow. Didn't care much about the boy's plotline, honestly, it was completely superflous to me, bit boring, but the rest was great.
Episode written by Paul Cornell.
10 Blink This is a masterpiece. Written by Stephen Moffat. An absolute masterpiece, I love it so much, which is strange since we see the doctor for less then half the time. The protagonist of this episode is Sally Sparrow. Carey Mulligan was perfect as Sally. Perfect. Great episode! The story is that now Sally receives messages from the Doctor stuck in 1969, and is the only one that can help him, incidentally helping herself too. The Weeping Angels make their appearance, and they're scary.
This is also the episode that teaches us what Time is " it's like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff", and I can't tell you how much I love the Doctor when he goes technical "this is my timey-wimey machine: it goes ding when there's stuff". Oh, sure, don't need any more.
This is an episode that everyone should watch, fan of DW or not. I mean, it's perfect.
11-12-13 Utopia - The sound of drums - Last of the Time Lords Captain Jack wasn't dead of course, and never stopped looking for the Doctor. Why? Asks Martha, she knows well how knowing the Doctor means loving the Doctor. They are thrown far away and meet professor Yana, who seems such a nice old man, but unfortunately Martha notices a watch identical to the one where the Doctor had hidden his Time-Lord-identity, and just like Rose once touched a Dalek now Martha & the watch, and that's where it all starts! Professor gone, time lord here he comes! And there will be trouble! Now he calls himself Harry Saxon, and he's causing lots and lots of trouble. Reign of terror, with unknown aliens killing for him, and Martha's family and the Doctor himself his prisoners. A whole year, than Martha Jones comes back, and saves the world. How? By being brave, never too tired for her mission, by having faith in the doctor as she always had. She's not a warrior, she's a smart and very brave girl.
Both the special and episodes 1,3,11,12,13 are written by Russell T. Davies.
continues...
I loved Donna when she started laughing, making the doctor laugh, and then when she wanted to protect him, yelling that she won't let them kill him! Sweet thing! Anyway every word is brilliant! And the end, when he's losing it, and is risking their lives by staying there, and only because Donna is there he comes back to his senses and runs away with her. At the end, he asks her to go with him because he's now alone, but it has been too much for her that day, knowing about aliens, discovering her fiancèe betrayal, watching him die, watching the doctor killing the spider-aliens... so she says no. I was there looking at the screen shouting inside What??? It's David Tennant! It's the Doctor!! What do you mean, no???
Let's talk about the episodes now. If you're careful, you can spot the name of Saxon almost anywhere...
1 Smith and Jones The Doctor, on his own, is at a hospital where he meets Martha Jones. She's studying to be a doctor, she's beautiful, smart and brilliant: ske keeps cool when she sees what's going on and she even saves the Doctor's life; then the whole hospital gets transported to the moon by some alien searching for another alien, a murerer alien, so the Doctor is in a bit of a trouble there, and when he needs some time he thinks of giving her a bit of alien dna. So he kisses her. He kisses her telling her honestly that it doesn't mean anything, but ehi, seriously, can you blame her? One kiss, one little adventure, and our girl is madly in love with him. Of course she is, I understand...
2 The Shakespear code Just one trip, he doesn't need anyone, it'll be just one trip to say thank you, and to impress her they go back to meet Shakespeare, but it won't be nice and simple, because some witches-like aliens have a plan. It'll all end well with a bit of help from 'good old J.K.'.
Poor Martha, though, he can't help thinking and talking about Rose, he misses her, we know, we understand, in a way we miss her too, I loved them together because they were like teenagers when together :lol: but still is a bit heartless to tell Martha how Rose would always know the right thing to say or do.
3 Gridlock One more trip, and the Doctor takes Martha to the same place he took Rose: to New Earth, but this time is not so beautiful as we all remembered. There is no sun, it's all underground, and anyone who goes on the road never comes back.. Martha herself is taken prisoner by a young couple, and now on the road, and the Doctor feels guilty. There's the risk of losing her and he doesn't even know her: in his own words "I was too busy showing off": Yeah, we noticed actually. He will sort everything out with the help of the Face of Boe, the old friend. It's a very interesting story, fascinating, and David is so adorable as ever, with the smile and the kittens and... I mean, the Doctor is. Of course, that's what I mean. The Doctor.Yes.
4-5 Daleks in Manhattan - Evolution of the Daleks a two part story set in 1930s New York. Daleks again, always Daleks... they are kind of fun, but it breaks my heart to see how they hurt my Doctor, always surviving "while I lose everything" sic
6 The Lazarus experiment Mark Gatiss is Lazarus, an old man that invented a machine to make himself young again. Have you seen the film 'the fly'? Different reason, but no better results, I assure you. Martha's mother doesn't trust the Doctor. Martha's sister and herself are in danger, but the Doctor always knows what to do. (Like Buffy said "I always find a way!"
7 42 Not my favourite episode for sure, but the nice thing is the absolute faith of Martha in the Doctor. She always showd it in Gridlock , she shows it again now. The situation is bad, really bad, but she trusts the doctor will save her. Good girl, I feel for you.
8-9 Human nature - The family of blood This two parts-episode will remain in history. The Doctor makes himself human, hiding in England 1913, with no memory of who he was. There's a family of alien with very short life, that wants the Doctor to live forever. He wanted to hide until they wouldn't be a threat anymore, he didn't want to fight with them, but they find where he's hiding, and they kill to get to him.
Not knowing who he was, poor human John Smith really believed to be nothing more than a teacher, and fell in love... It was so intense, and David was really great. He really wasn't the Doctor anymore, he moved and talked different, he was so moving. He was great, and the screenplay was great. The speech at the end, about the Doctor just trying to be nice to the bad guys? wow. Didn't care much about the boy's plotline, honestly, it was completely superflous to me, bit boring, but the rest was great.
Episode written by Paul Cornell.
10 Blink This is a masterpiece. Written by Stephen Moffat. An absolute masterpiece, I love it so much, which is strange since we see the doctor for less then half the time. The protagonist of this episode is Sally Sparrow. Carey Mulligan was perfect as Sally. Perfect. Great episode! The story is that now Sally receives messages from the Doctor stuck in 1969, and is the only one that can help him, incidentally helping herself too. The Weeping Angels make their appearance, and they're scary.
This is also the episode that teaches us what Time is " it's like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff", and I can't tell you how much I love the Doctor when he goes technical "this is my timey-wimey machine: it goes ding when there's stuff". Oh, sure, don't need any more.
This is an episode that everyone should watch, fan of DW or not. I mean, it's perfect.
11-12-13 Utopia - The sound of drums - Last of the Time Lords Captain Jack wasn't dead of course, and never stopped looking for the Doctor. Why? Asks Martha, she knows well how knowing the Doctor means loving the Doctor. They are thrown far away and meet professor Yana, who seems such a nice old man, but unfortunately Martha notices a watch identical to the one where the Doctor had hidden his Time-Lord-identity, and just like Rose once touched a Dalek now Martha & the watch, and that's where it all starts! Professor gone, time lord here he comes! And there will be trouble! Now he calls himself Harry Saxon, and he's causing lots and lots of trouble. Reign of terror, with unknown aliens killing for him, and Martha's family and the Doctor himself his prisoners. A whole year, than Martha Jones comes back, and saves the world. How? By being brave, never too tired for her mission, by having faith in the doctor as she always had. She's not a warrior, she's a smart and very brave girl.
Both the special and episodes 1,3,11,12,13 are written by Russell T. Davies.
continues...
Doctor Who - series 2 - 2006
David Tennant!!! Now let's talk about Doctor Who. In this dvds (UK version, lovely black box set) there are lots of specials. Important is the Children In Need special, a few minutes episodes, that fills the empty space there was between end of season 1 and first special episode before series 2. It's a lovely mini-episode, in which we see Rose's first reaction to the new Doctor. He's just adorable.
Then there is the proper introduction of our new Doctor, My Doctor! The first Christmas Special "The Christmas invasion" in an incredible episode, where you see very little of the doctor because he's in bed not feeling well because of all the energy he absorbed to save Rose right before he regenerated; he managed to get back to Earth, and it's a great beginning of the episode: the Tardis crashing in London before Micky and Jackie's eyes, so this time it's her turn. David Tennant steps out of the Tardis in the same clothes that Christopher Eccleston used to wear as the 9th doctor, then he faints and Jackie asks where is the doctor, and Rose replies that the doctor is in front of her, that's The Doctor, and Jackie goes "what do you mean that's the Doctor? Doctor Who??" . I don't know why I like it so much but I like when someone says that! Of course it's right and proper not to overuse it otherwise it would lose its spark, it wouldn't be as special anymore.
It's fantastic, anyway, all of it, poor Rose crying because her Doctor left her, robots dressed as Santa Claus shooting around, a killer Christmas-tree and the doctor that, even in the state he is, will always help Rose in trouble, Harriett Jones that now keeps introducing herself as Prime Minister, and everyone telling her that they know who she is! I laughed when even the aliens were saying yeah, we know who you are...
I loved the moment when Rose and Micky are in the Tardis and think they are in London but instead they are on the alien ship, so she goes out all calm and screams as soon as they get her, and without thinking Micky runs after her, without knowing what's happening, and in seeing him Rose's first thought is to protect the doctor and the tardis and screams to close the door, and Micky does just that, without even thinking. Then in the moment of trouble the Doctor wakes up, and sorts everything out, with a long speech and a sword fight! Still in his pijama! But before the fight, he turns to look at Rose and asks "how do I look?" weeell, I could answer that! She obviously says "different" "good different or bad different" "just different" which is understandable. Absolutely adorable when he starts explaining to the alien how fascinating humans are, and he starts "from the day they arrived on the planet and blinking step into the sun, there's more to see than can ever be seen..." and I thought, I know these words...then he continues " more to do ...no wait ... sorry that's the lion king!" How can you not love the doctor???
First actual episode of series 2 is New Earth , where he takes Rose to New Earth, and New New York, because in its first trip the 9th doctor took her to see the end of Earth, and now the 10th doctor takes her to see New Earth. Nice huh?? We meet again Cassandra, and we see her spirit going back and forth from Rose' body to the doctor's. So funny!!!! There is the Face of Boe again, there are cat-nurses, and there is a sad story that ends well, with "I'm the Doctor and I cured them!!", all happy and smiling! Adorable!!!
2 Tooth and claw is lovely too, where they go to Scotland in Queen Victoria's time to fight a werewolf. I love the beginning, when the guards arrive as soon as they step out of the Tardis and he asks "Are we in Scotland??" my favourite line of the episode. Then he starts talking with a Scottish accent! Funny thing is, he's scottish but somehow it didn't seem to me his normal voice, his normal accent. It really seemed the doctor's making an accent, not David using his own voice, if you know what I mean. There is also the poor lord of the manor, forced to betray to protect his wife that he loves, but as soon as she is safe, he sacrifies his own life to regain his honor and protect his Queen and the doctor. Good character! The Doctor and Rose giggle and joke like teenager throughout the whole episode, to the annoyance of the Queen and the delight of the viewers, and David's face when he sees the werewolf and goes 'he's beautiful'!! Loved the way he rolled his eyes every time Rose tried to make the Queen say 'I'm not amused'.
3 School reunion was just a little bit lost with me because I had no idea first time I saw it that Sarah Jane Smith had been a companion of the doctor in a previous reincarnation, but it was touching anyway, it was all in their faces and in their voices. Sarah Jane and Rose meets, and for the first time Rose realizes she's not the first, and that many others have been important for the doctor and have loved him before she even knew him. She never thought of that "you were this close to her once, and you never even mentioned her!" He's so touching "you can spend your life with me, but I can not spend my life with you", and the way he says that with her was different, that it wouldn't be the same with her... *sigh* there is also K9 and Anthony Head that I'll always remember as Mr. Gyles, here playing the leader of the aliens. Really great when the two of them meet and talk. Really like that cool scene by the swimming pool. I also love the way the Doctor takes Sarah Jane's hand before running. That's totally Doctor-like!
4 The girl in the fireplace just broke my heart. No surprise it is written by Steven Moffat, right?? It was beautiful, with him taking Rose and Micky to a distant spaceship that appears abandoned, and finding portals that lead to different times of the life of the same woman, Reinette Poisson ada Madame de Pompadour. They stay on the ship, and he visits her not knowing each time how long has passed. it was all beautiful, I loved their conversations, it was touching when he tried to read her mind and she was able to read his, and said "so lonely, so very very lonely, how can you bear it?", and the end when he knew that to save her he would have to trap himself in the past, but goes anyway, with a smile. I loved when they all meet "this is my lover, the King of France" "yeah? I'm the Lord Of Time!"
It was really touching, when she saw the melancholy in his face and decided to help him. He was all happy to be able to go back to his time and his Tardis (and also Rose, but at this moment I'm sure he missed the Tardis more), and said Wish me luck! and as he is going she says No. And I could see the pain on both their faces, she really touched my heart because I could so understand her; she loved him, but understood that to be happy he needed to go back and she let him go, because she loved him. And I knew it, I knew it! as soon as he said go looking at the stars and I'll be back, I was like NO!!!! You know what happens, it happened already, you thought you had been away a minute, and it was months!!! Don't do it! But he did it, and didn't arrive in time, when he came back she was already dead. I cried. The doctor went back in the tardis with her letter, and Rose didn't know what to say or do "are you alright?" "I'm always alright" which is exactly the doctor's philosophy. He's never really alright, but he must go on, so says to everybody and to himself that 'he's always alright'. Fortunately there was Micky there who understood better the right thing to do and took Rose away, leaving him alone with his letter. It was so sad! Aaaargh - the evil Moff!
5-6 Rise of the cybermen - the age of steel are the two parts of the episode set in an alternative universe, a parallel Earth, where everything and everyone is the same but different, so Rose was never born, her dad and Micky's Granma are still alive, things like that. There is also the return of the cybermen, that the doctor obviously knows very well. It was a good story, but too much fighting and death. I liked the way Micky saves the situation finding the computer code, and of course was touched by the end, when Rose realises how very important Micky is and will always be for her.
7 The idiot's lantern this one is complicated, because in a certain way is kind of boring, but there are scenes that are so great, when the two of them go into the house of that family "HI!" and "I am talking!" "And I am NOT listening!!" . and the scene between the doctor and the policemen, that starts with the policeman standing in front of the doctor sitting down asking 'tell me everything you know' but at the end the roles are the other way around, and it's the doctor the one standing up asking 'everything you know'... great. Written by Mark Gatiss, did I say that??
8-9 The impossible planet - the satan pit are the two parts of the episode where we know the Oods. I liked it, I liked the other characters, like the captain and Toby and Ida, and it broke my heart when he said "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry" after the girl died, even if he had nothing to do with it, it felt like he was personally responsible... but personally I don't particularly like when they are in that orange spacesuit, you can see nothing of their faces and you can barely hear them. I'm not saying that they did it wrong, I'm say that it's the spacesuit, of course you see and hear very little!
10 Love and monsters I loved the first part of this episode, then they started dying. In the whole episode there will be like 5 minutes of the doctor. 5 great minutes though, with Rose angry that he hurt her mum, and the doctor funny and touching at the same time. Didn't like the monster and didn't like the end, though.
11 Fear her this was a great episode, fantastic, brilliant. An alien, a sort of little flower, went inside young Chloe Webber because she felt lonely like it, and now when she draws someone they are trapped in the drawing. There is also one of my favourite doctor moments, when everyone is shouting and suspecting everyone else, and the Doctor shouts "Fingers on lips" and anyone obeys. I love it so much. I have a picture of that moment. Funny thing is that it was 2006 and the episode was set in 2012, at the London Olympics. This is the episode when he revealed to Rose that he was a father once, but didn't say anything more.
I also like the scene when he understands that the thing that attacked Rose is made of pencil, and of course his conversation with Chloe-alien, how easily he understands the child attitude, and the loneliness both hers and of the alien.
12-13 Army of ghosts - Doomsday two parts episode finale. Back in London, the two of them finds it full of ghosts, and people quite happy to have them around. The Doctor comes out singing "I'm afraid of no ghost! Who you gonna call??" of course Rose knows the answer. Two kids, really!!
They go inside Torchwood, to find that the cybermen have taken over the world disguising themselves as ghosts, and that the sphere so misterious opens up to reveal Daleks!! What a finale. Daleks and cybermen together. Identify yourselves! - No, you will identify first! - state your identity! - you will identify first - Daleks do not take orders! - you have identified as Daleks ( sigh :-p ) of course they can not be allies, because to Daleks everyone else is inferior; there is only one thing "you are better at dying!" :-p
They have some help from the torchwood of the parallel Earth, so we meet again Micky and Rose' father. At the end, the doctor is forced to send and leave her with them there, to save her life. He gets rid of all Daleks and Cybermen, but is alone now. He can only say goodbye "I'm burning up a sun just to say goodbye", and they drove to Norway so she could say goodbye to him. She can't stop crying, and a lot of viewers with her. She says I love you, he says Quite right, and he has that melanchonic smile... then he starts saying something, presumably that he loves her too, but he never say it, because the communication is interrupted, maybe by chance maybe by him that can't bring himself to say the words, it would be even more painful in a way.
The episode ends with the doctor crying when she can't see him anymore, and all of a sudden a bride in her white dress in in his Tardis, shouting to his face. WHAT? :-p
Russell T. Davies wrote the special and episodes 1, 2, 10, 12, 13.
Rose is still Billie Piper. Micky is Noel Clarke, Jackie is Camille Coduri.
Then there is the proper introduction of our new Doctor, My Doctor! The first Christmas Special "The Christmas invasion" in an incredible episode, where you see very little of the doctor because he's in bed not feeling well because of all the energy he absorbed to save Rose right before he regenerated; he managed to get back to Earth, and it's a great beginning of the episode: the Tardis crashing in London before Micky and Jackie's eyes, so this time it's her turn. David Tennant steps out of the Tardis in the same clothes that Christopher Eccleston used to wear as the 9th doctor, then he faints and Jackie asks where is the doctor, and Rose replies that the doctor is in front of her, that's The Doctor, and Jackie goes "what do you mean that's the Doctor? Doctor Who??" . I don't know why I like it so much but I like when someone says that! Of course it's right and proper not to overuse it otherwise it would lose its spark, it wouldn't be as special anymore.
It's fantastic, anyway, all of it, poor Rose crying because her Doctor left her, robots dressed as Santa Claus shooting around, a killer Christmas-tree and the doctor that, even in the state he is, will always help Rose in trouble, Harriett Jones that now keeps introducing herself as Prime Minister, and everyone telling her that they know who she is! I laughed when even the aliens were saying yeah, we know who you are...
I loved the moment when Rose and Micky are in the Tardis and think they are in London but instead they are on the alien ship, so she goes out all calm and screams as soon as they get her, and without thinking Micky runs after her, without knowing what's happening, and in seeing him Rose's first thought is to protect the doctor and the tardis and screams to close the door, and Micky does just that, without even thinking. Then in the moment of trouble the Doctor wakes up, and sorts everything out, with a long speech and a sword fight! Still in his pijama! But before the fight, he turns to look at Rose and asks "how do I look?" weeell, I could answer that! She obviously says "different" "good different or bad different" "just different" which is understandable. Absolutely adorable when he starts explaining to the alien how fascinating humans are, and he starts "from the day they arrived on the planet and blinking step into the sun, there's more to see than can ever be seen..." and I thought, I know these words...then he continues " more to do ...no wait ... sorry that's the lion king!" How can you not love the doctor???
First actual episode of series 2 is New Earth , where he takes Rose to New Earth, and New New York, because in its first trip the 9th doctor took her to see the end of Earth, and now the 10th doctor takes her to see New Earth. Nice huh?? We meet again Cassandra, and we see her spirit going back and forth from Rose' body to the doctor's. So funny!!!! There is the Face of Boe again, there are cat-nurses, and there is a sad story that ends well, with "I'm the Doctor and I cured them!!", all happy and smiling! Adorable!!!
2 Tooth and claw is lovely too, where they go to Scotland in Queen Victoria's time to fight a werewolf. I love the beginning, when the guards arrive as soon as they step out of the Tardis and he asks "Are we in Scotland??" my favourite line of the episode. Then he starts talking with a Scottish accent! Funny thing is, he's scottish but somehow it didn't seem to me his normal voice, his normal accent. It really seemed the doctor's making an accent, not David using his own voice, if you know what I mean. There is also the poor lord of the manor, forced to betray to protect his wife that he loves, but as soon as she is safe, he sacrifies his own life to regain his honor and protect his Queen and the doctor. Good character! The Doctor and Rose giggle and joke like teenager throughout the whole episode, to the annoyance of the Queen and the delight of the viewers, and David's face when he sees the werewolf and goes 'he's beautiful'!! Loved the way he rolled his eyes every time Rose tried to make the Queen say 'I'm not amused'.
3 School reunion was just a little bit lost with me because I had no idea first time I saw it that Sarah Jane Smith had been a companion of the doctor in a previous reincarnation, but it was touching anyway, it was all in their faces and in their voices. Sarah Jane and Rose meets, and for the first time Rose realizes she's not the first, and that many others have been important for the doctor and have loved him before she even knew him. She never thought of that "you were this close to her once, and you never even mentioned her!" He's so touching "you can spend your life with me, but I can not spend my life with you", and the way he says that with her was different, that it wouldn't be the same with her... *sigh* there is also K9 and Anthony Head that I'll always remember as Mr. Gyles, here playing the leader of the aliens. Really great when the two of them meet and talk. Really like that cool scene by the swimming pool. I also love the way the Doctor takes Sarah Jane's hand before running. That's totally Doctor-like!
4 The girl in the fireplace just broke my heart. No surprise it is written by Steven Moffat, right?? It was beautiful, with him taking Rose and Micky to a distant spaceship that appears abandoned, and finding portals that lead to different times of the life of the same woman, Reinette Poisson ada Madame de Pompadour. They stay on the ship, and he visits her not knowing each time how long has passed. it was all beautiful, I loved their conversations, it was touching when he tried to read her mind and she was able to read his, and said "so lonely, so very very lonely, how can you bear it?", and the end when he knew that to save her he would have to trap himself in the past, but goes anyway, with a smile. I loved when they all meet "this is my lover, the King of France" "yeah? I'm the Lord Of Time!"
It was really touching, when she saw the melancholy in his face and decided to help him. He was all happy to be able to go back to his time and his Tardis (and also Rose, but at this moment I'm sure he missed the Tardis more), and said Wish me luck! and as he is going she says No. And I could see the pain on both their faces, she really touched my heart because I could so understand her; she loved him, but understood that to be happy he needed to go back and she let him go, because she loved him. And I knew it, I knew it! as soon as he said go looking at the stars and I'll be back, I was like NO!!!! You know what happens, it happened already, you thought you had been away a minute, and it was months!!! Don't do it! But he did it, and didn't arrive in time, when he came back she was already dead. I cried. The doctor went back in the tardis with her letter, and Rose didn't know what to say or do "are you alright?" "I'm always alright" which is exactly the doctor's philosophy. He's never really alright, but he must go on, so says to everybody and to himself that 'he's always alright'. Fortunately there was Micky there who understood better the right thing to do and took Rose away, leaving him alone with his letter. It was so sad! Aaaargh - the evil Moff!
5-6 Rise of the cybermen - the age of steel are the two parts of the episode set in an alternative universe, a parallel Earth, where everything and everyone is the same but different, so Rose was never born, her dad and Micky's Granma are still alive, things like that. There is also the return of the cybermen, that the doctor obviously knows very well. It was a good story, but too much fighting and death. I liked the way Micky saves the situation finding the computer code, and of course was touched by the end, when Rose realises how very important Micky is and will always be for her.
7 The idiot's lantern this one is complicated, because in a certain way is kind of boring, but there are scenes that are so great, when the two of them go into the house of that family "HI!" and "I am talking!" "And I am NOT listening!!" . and the scene between the doctor and the policemen, that starts with the policeman standing in front of the doctor sitting down asking 'tell me everything you know' but at the end the roles are the other way around, and it's the doctor the one standing up asking 'everything you know'... great. Written by Mark Gatiss, did I say that??
8-9 The impossible planet - the satan pit are the two parts of the episode where we know the Oods. I liked it, I liked the other characters, like the captain and Toby and Ida, and it broke my heart when he said "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry" after the girl died, even if he had nothing to do with it, it felt like he was personally responsible... but personally I don't particularly like when they are in that orange spacesuit, you can see nothing of their faces and you can barely hear them. I'm not saying that they did it wrong, I'm say that it's the spacesuit, of course you see and hear very little!
10 Love and monsters I loved the first part of this episode, then they started dying. In the whole episode there will be like 5 minutes of the doctor. 5 great minutes though, with Rose angry that he hurt her mum, and the doctor funny and touching at the same time. Didn't like the monster and didn't like the end, though.
11 Fear her this was a great episode, fantastic, brilliant. An alien, a sort of little flower, went inside young Chloe Webber because she felt lonely like it, and now when she draws someone they are trapped in the drawing. There is also one of my favourite doctor moments, when everyone is shouting and suspecting everyone else, and the Doctor shouts "Fingers on lips" and anyone obeys. I love it so much. I have a picture of that moment. Funny thing is that it was 2006 and the episode was set in 2012, at the London Olympics. This is the episode when he revealed to Rose that he was a father once, but didn't say anything more.
I also like the scene when he understands that the thing that attacked Rose is made of pencil, and of course his conversation with Chloe-alien, how easily he understands the child attitude, and the loneliness both hers and of the alien.
12-13 Army of ghosts - Doomsday two parts episode finale. Back in London, the two of them finds it full of ghosts, and people quite happy to have them around. The Doctor comes out singing "I'm afraid of no ghost! Who you gonna call??" of course Rose knows the answer. Two kids, really!!
They go inside Torchwood, to find that the cybermen have taken over the world disguising themselves as ghosts, and that the sphere so misterious opens up to reveal Daleks!! What a finale. Daleks and cybermen together. Identify yourselves! - No, you will identify first! - state your identity! - you will identify first - Daleks do not take orders! - you have identified as Daleks ( sigh :-p ) of course they can not be allies, because to Daleks everyone else is inferior; there is only one thing "you are better at dying!" :-p
They have some help from the torchwood of the parallel Earth, so we meet again Micky and Rose' father. At the end, the doctor is forced to send and leave her with them there, to save her life. He gets rid of all Daleks and Cybermen, but is alone now. He can only say goodbye "I'm burning up a sun just to say goodbye", and they drove to Norway so she could say goodbye to him. She can't stop crying, and a lot of viewers with her. She says I love you, he says Quite right, and he has that melanchonic smile... then he starts saying something, presumably that he loves her too, but he never say it, because the communication is interrupted, maybe by chance maybe by him that can't bring himself to say the words, it would be even more painful in a way.
The episode ends with the doctor crying when she can't see him anymore, and all of a sudden a bride in her white dress in in his Tardis, shouting to his face. WHAT? :-p
Russell T. Davies wrote the special and episodes 1, 2, 10, 12, 13.
Rose is still Billie Piper. Micky is Noel Clarke, Jackie is Camille Coduri.
The clocks by Agatha Christie
Poirot has retired, so there's very little of him in this book. We only meet him in three occasions, when he's presented with the case, when he's told all the details, and at the end when he gives us the solution.
Personally I prefer when we see more of him, it's more fun, but I'm still happy enough because I can say I got two mistery out of three solved in this case (the easiest ones, of course). Not bad.
I don't pay enough attention , otherwise I would have spotted the clue to the third mistery, it was right there.
PLOT
Secretary Sheila Webb is sent to Wilbraham Crescent n. 19 for a job, she goes there and finds a dead man on the floor that the owner of the house has never met - an old blind woman. Colin Lamb works for Secret Services, and he's around there looking for a spy he thinks might live in that road, house n. 61 because he saw a piece of paper with the number on it. He gets involved in the murder from the girl running out of the house out of her senses in fear. The second victim is a collegue of Sheila, Edna Brent, and we know there was something on her mind keeping her worried, that she went to Sheila's house looking for her advice but didn't find her, and the second she tried to talk to the detective but was told by a policemen to come back next day because the Inspector was busy at the moment I knew she was a walking dead, and not walking for long I was sure. Poor thing.
Now to the things I got:
SPOILERS just to warn you!
So I was saying, the things I got right: First thing first, the obvious one, that the 61 was actually a 19 and he was reading it upside down, and the spy was miss Millicent Pebmarsh, cold rational and very smart woman; the second thing was who killed poor Edna. When she said she didn't understand 'what she said', it was obvious to me that she wasn't talking about Miss Pebmarsh (they had nothing to do with each other), nor she was talking about Sheila. The only reason to go to her house instead of speaking to her at the office was that she had to talk about her boss, Miss Martindale. What could she had said so strange that Edna wouldn't stop thinking about it? Miss Martindale only talked about the phone call she had received at 13:59 asking to send Sheila to that house. During office hours it was Edna who always answered the phone, what if that day she had stayed in the office during the break instead of going out, and had heard no phone calls? I thought it was the only possible thing and I was right, so I have guessed right who killed Edna and who was the spy, but I had no idea whatsoever on who killed the man or about who he was.
Of course, as usual I don't stop to give my grey cells time to work as Poirot does, I simply go on reading. Had I done that, or if I had a better memory, or if I were able to actually concentrate I would have spotted that, at least a big part of it, because the story of that woman heiress to a fortune that doesn't want to leave England because 'all her friends and her sister are there, everybody they know is there' was a big big clue. I didn't notice, but it's true that the inspector talking about her had said that she had received a lot of money because she was his only relative. !! So that sister she just talked about shouldn't exist. This is one of those things we should all have spotted; had I paid more attention, had I acted like all good detectives and taken notes ! Even Columbo writes everything down! I don't, I never do. I just go on reading.
As always I love Christie's writing!!
It may be a bit too much that Colin recognizes in Miss Pebmarsh the mother Sheila thought had died when she was little. He said it was because of her eyes, and we can't see them obviously. Honestly, even if I could see them I doubt very much I could be able to tell that two women have the same eyes therefore must be mother and daughter, but afer all Colin in a secret agent, and his work consists on looking at people in a different way from mine (although he never realised till the end that a 61 could also be a 19!!)
ITA sfida a Poirot
Personally I prefer when we see more of him, it's more fun, but I'm still happy enough because I can say I got two mistery out of three solved in this case (the easiest ones, of course). Not bad.
I don't pay enough attention , otherwise I would have spotted the clue to the third mistery, it was right there.
PLOT
Secretary Sheila Webb is sent to Wilbraham Crescent n. 19 for a job, she goes there and finds a dead man on the floor that the owner of the house has never met - an old blind woman. Colin Lamb works for Secret Services, and he's around there looking for a spy he thinks might live in that road, house n. 61 because he saw a piece of paper with the number on it. He gets involved in the murder from the girl running out of the house out of her senses in fear. The second victim is a collegue of Sheila, Edna Brent, and we know there was something on her mind keeping her worried, that she went to Sheila's house looking for her advice but didn't find her, and the second she tried to talk to the detective but was told by a policemen to come back next day because the Inspector was busy at the moment I knew she was a walking dead, and not walking for long I was sure. Poor thing.
Now to the things I got:
SPOILERS just to warn you!
So I was saying, the things I got right: First thing first, the obvious one, that the 61 was actually a 19 and he was reading it upside down, and the spy was miss Millicent Pebmarsh, cold rational and very smart woman; the second thing was who killed poor Edna. When she said she didn't understand 'what she said', it was obvious to me that she wasn't talking about Miss Pebmarsh (they had nothing to do with each other), nor she was talking about Sheila. The only reason to go to her house instead of speaking to her at the office was that she had to talk about her boss, Miss Martindale. What could she had said so strange that Edna wouldn't stop thinking about it? Miss Martindale only talked about the phone call she had received at 13:59 asking to send Sheila to that house. During office hours it was Edna who always answered the phone, what if that day she had stayed in the office during the break instead of going out, and had heard no phone calls? I thought it was the only possible thing and I was right, so I have guessed right who killed Edna and who was the spy, but I had no idea whatsoever on who killed the man or about who he was.
Of course, as usual I don't stop to give my grey cells time to work as Poirot does, I simply go on reading. Had I done that, or if I had a better memory, or if I were able to actually concentrate I would have spotted that, at least a big part of it, because the story of that woman heiress to a fortune that doesn't want to leave England because 'all her friends and her sister are there, everybody they know is there' was a big big clue. I didn't notice, but it's true that the inspector talking about her had said that she had received a lot of money because she was his only relative. !! So that sister she just talked about shouldn't exist. This is one of those things we should all have spotted; had I paid more attention, had I acted like all good detectives and taken notes ! Even Columbo writes everything down! I don't, I never do. I just go on reading.
As always I love Christie's writing!!
It may be a bit too much that Colin recognizes in Miss Pebmarsh the mother Sheila thought had died when she was little. He said it was because of her eyes, and we can't see them obviously. Honestly, even if I could see them I doubt very much I could be able to tell that two women have the same eyes therefore must be mother and daughter, but afer all Colin in a secret agent, and his work consists on looking at people in a different way from mine (although he never realised till the end that a 61 could also be a 19!!)
ITA sfida a Poirot
The transporter
The first one. Not bad, it has his style. It's clearly a big toy, not serious stuff, but sometimes that's ok. It's clear from the beginning, when our 'transporter' has been paid to drive to safety 3 robbers, but four turn up instead, and he won't move because that was not their agreement, now the car is too heavy! He's satisfied only when one of the four shoots another one, and now they are only three and he can start the car exactly the same moments the police cars are arriving, and the chase starts. A crazy chase, where the robbers are so scared they scream and one of them gets sick. He's called Frank Martin, ex military now living in France, and in the scene of the fight in the rat-boss' house it really seemed like a French movie .-p
He has three simple rules: 1 never change the deal, 2 never say names 3 never open the packages
He always lives by those rules, but one day for a twist of fate (or twist of screenplay) he has to stop because of a flat tyre, and finds a girl in the bag he had to bring to its destination, the house of a boss that will subsiquently try to kill him with a bomb. Quite annoyed by this, he goes back to the house and starts a big fight, then steals one of the cars there and goes back home. Incidentally, he saves the girl, and takes her home with him. No more afraid of him now, she tries to use him to her purposes with some half-lies, but she's a good girl, it's her father the bad guy working with the boss. He helps her because she's very pretty, because after all he was a soldier, and because not only they put a bomb in his car that should have killed him, but also launched missiles against his house which exploded while Frank and Lai managed to escape.
He goes after them, more chases and more fights, and in less than a day everything's done and they saved a lot of chinese people prisoners of those human-traffickers.
It's a big toy, it makes no sense, and as usual the hero is such just because he's lucky! The bomb goes off when he stops for a drink, for example. So many men after him and no one uses a gun! We know they have guns, they even have missiles, apparently! But no, why should they use guns!! So when one of them is able to surprise him, he kicks him. I'm sure he regretted that!
It makes no sense, but many action movies don't, this is just a big toy for boys who likes cars and action, but for the girls there is Jason Statham without shirt half of the time. It was 2002, he was 35 and quite fit...
He's also quite nice, he plays tough-guy, but then stops to get her a drink and pulls gently her hair away from her eyes, and also stops to buy drinks for the two policemen that he bound and put in the car, not knowing that there was a bomb in there, so unfortunately they die.
In this film he drives a BMW, then he steals a Mercedes.
He has three simple rules: 1 never change the deal, 2 never say names 3 never open the packages
He always lives by those rules, but one day for a twist of fate (or twist of screenplay) he has to stop because of a flat tyre, and finds a girl in the bag he had to bring to its destination, the house of a boss that will subsiquently try to kill him with a bomb. Quite annoyed by this, he goes back to the house and starts a big fight, then steals one of the cars there and goes back home. Incidentally, he saves the girl, and takes her home with him. No more afraid of him now, she tries to use him to her purposes with some half-lies, but she's a good girl, it's her father the bad guy working with the boss. He helps her because she's very pretty, because after all he was a soldier, and because not only they put a bomb in his car that should have killed him, but also launched missiles against his house which exploded while Frank and Lai managed to escape.
He goes after them, more chases and more fights, and in less than a day everything's done and they saved a lot of chinese people prisoners of those human-traffickers.
It's a big toy, it makes no sense, and as usual the hero is such just because he's lucky! The bomb goes off when he stops for a drink, for example. So many men after him and no one uses a gun! We know they have guns, they even have missiles, apparently! But no, why should they use guns!! So when one of them is able to surprise him, he kicks him. I'm sure he regretted that!
It makes no sense, but many action movies don't, this is just a big toy for boys who likes cars and action, but for the girls there is Jason Statham without shirt half of the time. It was 2002, he was 35 and quite fit...
He's also quite nice, he plays tough-guy, but then stops to get her a drink and pulls gently her hair away from her eyes, and also stops to buy drinks for the two policemen that he bound and put in the car, not knowing that there was a bomb in there, so unfortunately they die.
In this film he drives a BMW, then he steals a Mercedes.
venerdì 22 agosto 2014
Doctor Who season 1 (the new series 1)
ep 11 - 12 -13 need expanding.
Ok, things are like this. I had never heard of Doctor Who at all until a few years ago, never heard of any of the actors that played it, had absolutely no idea of what it was. Then, one day, wandering on youtube, I saw an English show where the guest was David Tennant, and he was there for 5 minutes top, and he was saying he got the role as the new doctor, and in those five minutes he was so nice and adorable that I thought "I've no idea of what this doctor is, but if he's in it, I'll watch it sooner or later, when I can find it", so basically he's the reason why I started watching Doctor Who.
However, me being who I am, I didn't like the idea of watching a series from the second year, and I bought a box set with the first 4 series together, and started watching from the first.
And it blew my mind, the doctor IS fan-ta-stic ! And I think it tells much about the show-the actor-the character-the whole packet, that at the end of this series, when I knew that David was coming the next season, when it came the moment of his regeneration I still went 'what? no wait, I just met you!'. Of course, I was used to american series, when they do from 20 to 22 episodes a season, so when it ended at episode 13 it really was too early for me, it really felt like I had just started!
Cast:
Doctor: Christopher Eccleston
Rose: Billie Piper
Jackie Tyler: Camille Coduri
Micky Smith: Noel Clarke
1
- The first episode (Rose) was special for various reasons, for the way they introduced the Doctor, first showing his hand taking hers, then him saying 'run!', which is essentially the Doctor in a nutshell. Running, saving people, and taking people's hands quite easily, which is totally him, not just saving but also feeling close to people, caring.
I loved it. Sure the special effects might not be mind-blowing, but it's not important, the character is. The Doctor is funny, heroic, intense and light at the same time. I like Rose because she's like a normal girl, I mean, pretty but not a top model, she's not rich and she's not a fashion-victim, she's very much like a real person, if you know what I mean.
It goes like this:
Rose's day starts off at 7.30: wake up, kiss mom, take the bus and go to work, lunch break with boyfriend, back to work and...finally home? Not today, she has to stay back, and she's surrounded by moving dummies when 'someone' takes her hand, says 'run' and we meet the ninth doctor :-)
He tells her to go home 'I'm the doctor by the way. What's your name?'-'Rose'-'Nice to meet you Rose. Now run for your life' :lol: I already like this doctor character. Then the department store blows up and she runs away. Following the plastic track he shows up at her house. "You! Inside! Right now!" = yep, I like her too :-) He looks at himself in the mirror and says "it could have been worse... but look at the ears!" or something like that. Is this the first time he sees this incarnation? No time to find a mirror anywhere? Anyway. The plastic arm tries to kill them, then she runs after him wanting to understand what's going on. When he says he's "the Doctor" she replies "Doctor what?" :lol:
He tells her that he's just passing thru, a long way from home, and that they want to destroy humanity (simple as that), "do you believe me?" - "no" - "but you're still listening" :-) Yes, she is, without screaming or crying or whatever. Good. Thank you.
He tells her a bit of him, not much, then he tells her to forget him :-/ as if it was possible. She looks for information on him on the internet. She types 'doctor blue box' and the first site reads "doctor who?" :-) Micky drives her there on a yellow bug :-) (Micky's car?) and she meets Clive, and it was funny, I like how Clive and his wife talk. Well, she only says "she's a she??" but I like a lot how she says that. Clive shows her pictures with Nine's face in 1963, and with a family that cancelled their trip on the titanic and therefore survived, and again in the 19th century, and tells her stories about this mysterious man. Meanwhile Micky is outside being attacked by a plastic bin and replaced with a copy. He looks so plasticky now. At a diner he/it attacks the doctor, even after he tore its head off. I like that Rose immediately thinks of protecting the people inside and shouts for people to run away, get out. This is when she enters the tardis for the first time. They're running away and he simply enters there. It doesn't look very safe, a simple, little blue box, but once inside she's shocked. To see all that, to learn that the doctor is an alien... but it doesn't take her much to get real again and she thinks of Micky and cries believing that thing killed him. The doctor says he had not thought of that, which sounds a bit odd to me. Doesn't he care? How long has he been alone now?
He explains the plan, they run together holding hands :-) they reach this 'consciousness' and she runs to Micky who is still alive, and now the doctor says 'that was always a possibility' which makes me think that he always thought he was probably alive, and maybe what he didn't expect was the fact that Rose was thinking of Micky being dead while so many wonders were happening to her (plastic attacker, bigger-on-the-inside-box, doctor's an alien and all that).
The doctor tries to reason with this consciousness-blob, but it is not in a good mood and seems to be accusing the doctor of something. The doctor says "I was not attacking you, I'm here to help, I'm not your enemy. That's not true, I should know, I was there, I fought in the war, it wasn't my fault. I couldn't save your world, I couldn't save any of them" whatever all that means, at this point, right?
Then a signal goes out and all the dummies start moving and attacking people, and Clive gets killed. Sorry. Rose says "the end of the world" as if it was something strange, she'll get used to it. :-p
The Doctor is being held still by plastic things, and I like that Rose instead of panicking, looks around her, studying the situation, to see if there is something she can do. Micky is yelling for her to leave, that there's nothing she can do, but she goes sure she can, indeed. She helps the Doctor alright, and he takes them to safety in the Tardis. Once out, Micky is still in shock, while Rose calls her mom to see if she's ok. I liked this. The Doctor asks her to go with him, she says "I can't", he goes away but comes back "did I mention it also travels in time?" and she kisses Micky "thanks- for what? - exactly" :-) and then runs happily to the Tardis. I learn from the ending titles that those things are called Autons, they were probably present in some old episodes, but I had never heard of DW before this series, so I haven't seen any of them. Yet.
Can I say how much I liked the fact that Rose here was just a common girl with a common accent and common clothes on, and not some kind of top model who would have looked more alien than the Doctor? What I like about Rose is all here: her being normal, with curves and sweatpants on, her caring about people, her never panicking, her running happily, so young and fresh.
2
The second episode (the end of the world) was so-and-so, wasn't crazy about it and still am not, but I like the tree-lady, it makes me so sad when she dies. Funny thing is, this was the one time the Doctor didn't actually stop the end of the world, but had simply gone to watch it; he'll just have to stop a murderer.
It starts exactly where we left off. The Doctor asks Rose where she wants to go, she says "forward" and he takes her 5 billion years in the future, to the day the sun expands and the Earth dies, literally the end of the world.
Earth is empty now, of course, they are all gone. He shows his psychic paper as his invitation, then the trees come. I really like the trees. We also see the face of Boe for the first time, and Lady Cassandra the last human. Rose talks to a repairing woman, who was very nice, but she probably gets killed by these strange metal things. I liked her, sorry I won't see her again: Rufello or something. The Doctor explains how the Tardis gets into people's brain changing something, thus giving her the ability to understand other species' languages. She insists on knowing about him, but he doesn't want to talk about it. It's a bit of a fight, he turns his back to her and they are silent for a few seconds then Rose says "as my mate says, don't argue with the designated driver" making him smile (I like this scene and that smile-smirk he does). She seems a bit down thinking of the end of the world and he puts something in her phone so she can call home :
" a little bit of jiggery-pokery" - "is that a technical term, jiggery-pokery?" - "yes, I came first in jiggery-pokery" :lol: and she calls her mum :-)
Those metal things deactivate the solar fields, and I was really sorry to see the tree lady die, she was very nice, beautiful and beautifully dressed, and a descendant of Earth's tropical forest too!!
She tries to help him, and also she says she knows who he is, and hells him "how sorry I am". So nice. She sacrifices herself to help the Timelord, he should have gone faster!! At the very last second he raises the shields again, saving all. We have a taste of DoctorWho's irony with the juke-box and Cassandra's idea of a traditional Earth ballad: "Toxic"-Britney Spears ....
The Doctor finds out that Cassandra is responsible for the whole mess. "What are you going to do, moisturize me?"- "with acid" :lol: She teleports away, but he reversed the teleport taking her back, and lets her crack. Rose told him to help her but he didn't. He gave the consciousness a chance, but Cassandra had killed people. The consciousness had killed too, yes, Wilson and Clive and who knows, maybe more, but let's say as it is, it's easier to forgive when it's someone you don't know, when you didn't actually witness it. Here, Rose was almost killed, and the Doctor saw the tree lady burst into fire and die.
The Doctor tells Rose of his planet, now dead "there was a war, and we lost". "I'm the last of the Time Lords" and "I've been traveling on my own 'cause there's no one else" - "There's me"=sweet Rose. It ends with him telling her that now she's seen how dangerous it is, does she want to go home? "I don't know"=very honest, sometimes you need to clear your head first, right? "I want chips" :-) lovely :-)
The credits say: Raffalo:Beccy Armory ; Cassandra: Zoe Wanamaker ;
3
The third episode (the unquiet dead) was the one with Dickens and the Gelth!! They go back to 1869 and she dresses up for the occasion, because apparently there's all sorts of dresses in the tardis wardrobe, and he looked at her already falling for her, you could already tell. This was written by Mark Gatiss.
An old dead woman in a funeral home kills a man and walks out. The owner says "the stiffs are getting lively again"... The doctor thinks they are in Naples, December 24, 1860.. but they're not. As she walked out and I saw the snow I thought it was wrong: it's actually 1869 and they are in Cardiff... the dead grandma has gone to listen to Dickens, and when the man and his servant take her body away Rose follows them so he abducts her. The Doctor follows with Dickens. They locked her inside a room with walking-dead grandma and grandson but the Doctor saves her. The servant Gwyneth or something (the actress who plays Gwen in Torchwood) has a special power, can sense the spirits and knows how the Doctor likes his tea (two sugars); there's a rift, a sort of weak point in time and space, and something is passing through. Gwyneth reads in Rose's mind about a different London and her dead father, but gets scared mentioning the BigBadWolf... and the Doctor uses her as a medium; she channels the spirits: they say they are the Gelth "we are so very few, the last of our kind, we face extinction" and say that the Time War destroyed their bodies and they're now asking for the dead bodies to live again "we're dying, help us". The Doctor thinks 'why not?' , nobody's using the dead bodies, and they could help them survive. Rose tries to talk to Gwyneth, she wants to help her but to Gwyneth it's more patronizing then helping. Rose says "you don't understand what's going on" and she says that it's "very clear inside your head that you think I'm stupid" and "things might be very different where you're from but here and now I know my own mind, and the angels need me". She wants to help them, and they beg to hurry up "pity the Gelth"... so she does it. There's a lot more than they thought, and the dead bodies in the funeral home are not enough, and they intend to kill the humans to take their bodies: they are not angels at all. The Doctor is angry because he tried to help, he pitied them, but now they are like "we don't want your pity, we want this world". Dickens runs away but once outside he understands that they need gas so he runs back inside. The Doctor apologizes to Rose because they're about to die. Dickens turns all the lights out and fills the place with gas so the Gelth are sucked out of the body into the gas. Dickens takes Rose out, Gwyneth says she can't send them back but she can hold them there while she blows up the place with matches. The Doctor is reluctant to let her do it, at first, but then he understands that she's already dead and goes out. When the place blows up, Rose looks at him in a you-let-her-die kind of look, but he explains that she closed the rift but was already dead. Rose says "she saved the world, a servant girl, and no one will ever know". They go away. Dickens asks him if his books will last :p and the Doctor says Yes! Forever! :)
Gwyneth: Eve Miles ; Dickens: Simon Callow
Episodes four and five are linked, same story, with a spaceship crashing in the Thames, with the Slitheen occupying Downing Street, and with the first introduction of Harriett Jones.
4
They are: 'aliens of London' : details: The Doctor takes Rose home, telling her it's only been twelve hours since she left so she goes back to her mother all happy, planning on telling her she spent the night at her friend's place, but there are fliers around with her face on it: she was actually gone twelve months, and as he sees them the Doctor runs to tell her "you've been gone a whole year, sorry" ...
A child writes BadWolf on the Tardis. I like Jackie and Rose, they're so real (so Jackie thinks she's 20 now :-p )
It's difficult to explain to Jackie where she's been and why she didn't call, twelve long months... of course Jackie is also mad at the Doctor: "what, you found her on the internet? did you go online and pretend you're a doctor?" - "I am a doctor" - "prove it, stitch this mate" and she slaps his face quite loudly :-p He says later to Rose: "900 years of time and space and I've never been slapped by someone's mother" so she learns his age and says "my mum was right, that is one hell of an age gap"... then Rose complains that she can't talk to anyone about all she has seen, saying she's the only one on Earth knowing all that exists out there (she's not, but she still doesn't know about the other companions) when a spaceship flies very low over London, crashing the Big Ben and ending in the river. It's obviously all over the news: "Big Ben destroyed as UFO crash land in central London". There are emergency meetings of course, the prime minister seems to have disappeared. Harriett Jones appears for the first time "but I did have an appointment at 3.15" - "yes, and then a spaceship crashed in the middle of London. Your schedule might have changed". I liked that man, it bothers me that I never manage to get his name :-/
Two men and a woman meet to talk about the emergency since the prime minister disappeared, and they laugh as soon as they are alone... Rose is worried the Doctor might disappear on her and to reassure her he gives her the key to the Tardis.
Harriett tries again to speak to them about her village hospital matter, and then she goes in when they don't see her, meaning to leave it in their suitcase, and she sees the emergency protocols..
The Doctor wanted to go and see the dead alien body: it's actually alive now, a pig running around on two legs until a soldier shoots him dead. The Doctor is angry: "what did you do that for? It was scared!". He says that that was an ordinary pig that someone changed, and then make it crash on purpose. After seeing the Doctor from his window, Mickie runs to Rose's home and sees her there! Nobody told him she was back! Poor Micky, they treated him very badly. He's upset, he couldn't tell them the truth about where she'd gone, and he was questioned five times by the police and strongly accused by Jackie, he'd been a murder-suspect for months.... When he tells Rose that the Doctor's gone, they go see and Jackie sees the Tardis reappearing: one look inside and she runs home and phones the emergency line; she speaks the words 'doctor' and 'blue box' and even 'tardis' and a red alert flashes on Downing Street computers. Rose asks Micky (the Doctor keeps calling him Ricky) if he's seeing anyone else, since she was away for so long, and he says "no, mainly because everyone thinks I murdered you" - "right". Again, poor Micky.
Harriett hides in the room and she sees when the new prime minister and the other two take off their disguise and kill the general.
Soldiers go to get the Doctor and Rose and they are escorted to Downing Street; he gets his own badge but she can't go in, and Harriett takes care of her. The Doctor realizes, maybe just a tiny bit late, that "it's not a diversion, it's a trap" because all the experts on aliens are reunited there; here are also the famous words "excuse me, do you mind not farting while I'm saving the world?" :-p
Harrett tells Rose everything and they find the corpse of the prime minister, and all of them see the alien taking off the human-disguise and show their real form "we are Slytheen".
All experts are killed through their badges. One alien unfortunately kills the guy I liked (sorry man, that happens often) and one alien is at Jackie's home about to kill her disguised as a policeman. The doctor is being electrocuted too, since he's also wearing his badge...
5
and 'world war three'.
Details: The Doctor rises, takes his ID card and stuck it to one of the aliens saying "deadly to humans maybe". All aliens start being electrocuted, so the Doctor runs, Harriet and Rose too, and Micky comes to save a shocked Jackie. The Doctor calls the soldiers but in the meantime the Slytheen had taken off the badge and disguised themselves again as humans, so the 'prime minister' can blame it all on the Doctor. The Slytheen find Rose and Harriet comes out of hiding yelling "Noooo take me first!" but then the Doctor comes in with a fire extinguisher... "who the hell are you?" - "Harriet Jones MP for Flydale North" - "nice to meet you" - "likewise" then later she asks "he's not human? but he's got a northern accent!" :lol: lots of planets have a north...
Slytheen is not their race, it's their family surname. The three of them are safe now in there, the cabinet room can be sealed with steel walls. The Slytheen reunite the family, there are at least six there, the 'policeman' is still out. The Doctor says he knows the name Harriet Jones, she studies the emergency protocols and Rose wonders if they have access to weapon codes because they could "launch a nuclear bomb at them" - "you're a very violent young woman" but they can't because the UN has the codes. The Doctor needs Micky's help, so they talk in speakerphone and Micky gains access to UNIT website with the passwords the Doctor gives him. Jackie asks him "is my daughter safe? Is she safe? Will she always be safe? Can you promise me that?" but the policeman shows up at Micky's door. The Doctor works out they are from Raxacoricofallapatorius but Micky's not impressed "yeah great we could write 'em a letter". The Doctor tells him to use vinegar so Jackie throws a lot at the alien and it explodes. The 'prime minister' announces that 'aliens' have killed all the experts, that they are dangerous and therefore 'we' as Earth should strike first, and he asks the UN to give him the codes. There's nothing up there to destroy, though, they'd use the weapons against other countries to start world war three, they want to sell the radioactive remains of Earth...
The Doctor gives them an ultimatum, to stop it or he'll stop them, and they laugh in his face. The Doctor always knew a way out but "I can't guarantee your daughter will be safe" - Jackie:"don't you dare!" - "if I don't dare everyone dies" and Rose:"do it" - "you don't even know what it is, you just let me?" - "yeah", and it's a beautiful scene; he explains that that's his life, making decisions that nobody else will, and he tells Rose "I could save the world but lose you" and they look intensely at each other until Harriet speaks "except it's not your decision Doctor, it's mine" because she's "the only elected representative in this room chosen by the people for the people and on behalf of the people I command you: do it" so he has Micky launch a common missile towards them, and Rose hides in a small cupboard with Harriet (it's not clear how they aimed the missile, there was already one pointed towards Downing Street? well, let's not complicate things...)
It hits destroying everything but the three of them come out safe, and the Doctor says he knew her name because Harriet will be the new prime minister "elected for three successive terms, the architect of Britain's golden age". Rose goes home to her mother, the Doctor goes to his Tardis. Jackie plans to cook shepherd's pie for him but when he phones Rose he's like "I've got better things to do" and gives her the choice: stay there for tea or go away with him, and she immediately packs a bag. Jackie begs her not to go but she goes anyway. Micky is surprised that the papers could write "alien hoax?" and the Doctor says "you're just not ready, you're happy to believe in something that's invisible but if it's staring you in the face: nope!" and "there's a scientific explanation for that, you're thick!" and Micky smiles "we're just idiots" - "well, not all of you". The Doctor gives him a virus to put online that will "destroy every mention of me" saying it's "because you're right, I'm dangerous and I don't want anybody following me" - "how can you say that and take her with you?" - "you could look after her, come with us" but Micky says that he can't, that life is too much for him, but "don't tell her I said that", so when Rose arrives and says "come with us" the Doctor refuses to have him on board, and declares "my decision is final" even after she remarked that he saved them :-)
Jackie keeps trying to keep her home but Rose tells her that it's also a time machine and she'll be back and only ten seconds will have passed (yeah right, remember the twelve hours that became twelve months?.....) so after the Tardis vanishes Jackie waits for ten seconds then sighs and goes home...
I liked the bits with the news reporters.
I liked the ending, and it was touching when Jackie waited the 10 seconds after watching the tarddis disappear.
6
Episode six is called Dalek and is great, (EDIT even if the first time I watched it, the sight of a Dalek said nothing to me because I had never seen one, this was a good introduction).
I like how Rose is all "I'm a traveller through space and time and I know how to handle aliens alone without the Doctor", so out of pity she touches it and she revives it...
Don't go around touching aliens, you silly girl!!! And this is the episode where she changes him, he was all anger, he was a warrior, but she changed him, made him put down his weapon, and I think this is very important.
Details: Some kind of signal has drawn the Tardis to 2012 Utah, 1 1/2 mile underground, Rose says she should be 26 - since she's 19 in 2005 - and they find a museum of alien stuff, exhibits. She says "if someone's collecting aliens that makes you exhibit A", smart girl she got it right.
They meet the richest man on Earth, who can replace US Presidents at will, a tech genius who owns the internet and is obviously arrogant and obnoxious and rather stupid, as you'd expect.
Rose of course doesn't like him "she's gonna smack you if you keep calling her 'she' ".
It's the "biggest museum of extraterrestrial artifacts" in the world, and he's the most powerful man on Earth, so he can do anything...
The man shows the Doctor his rarest specimen, his "pet" in "the cage". The Doctor is locked inside its room, and he wants to help the yet unknown alien, but then the lights are turned on and he's all "impossible!" when he sees who that is, and since at first he introduced himself, saying he could help, now the alien knows it and goes "Doctor? THE Doctor? Exterminate!" and he starts shouting "Let me out!" , he thinks he's gonna die but the Dalek doesn't work. He says "the entire Dalek race wiped out in one second" and "I watched it happen, I made it happen" - "you destroyed us" - "I had no choice" and then he adds that the Time Lords are gone too and they're both alone in the world... not the smartest move, all considering, so now he's kept prisoner too.
Rose didn't witness this, and when she sees the Dalek she feels pity because it's being tortured, and she touches it, giving it energy somehow, what with her being now a time traveller, so the Doctor says "release me if you want to live".
The Dalek kills his torturer, then he absorbs energy and informations, gets out and kills all the soldiers on its way. Rose thinks that stairs will stop it but "Elevate!" :-p
The Doctor really hates it and tells him to "rid the universe of your filth, why don't you just die!" - "you would make a good Dalek". They seal the bunker, hoping to block it down there, but she gets stuck too: "Rose, did you make it?" - "Sorry I was a bit slow" and she also says "it wasn't your fault, remember that, I wouldn't have missed it for the world".
The rich guy says he just wanted to touch the sky, but the Doctor replies that what he did was drag them down into the earth, label them, and he was "about as far from the stars as you can get".
Still, Rose is not killed by the Dalek because when she touched it she sort of contaminated it with her DNA. Rose also stops him from killing the rich guy; when the Doctor comes with a big alien weapon in his hands, he screams for her to get away because he clearly wants to shoot it. The Dalek came there with Rose, it opened its armor and wanted to feel the sunlight.The Doctor says "Rose did more than regenerate you, you absorbed her DNA" and it kills itself. Rose stopped the Doctor from killing it. The people on the base rebel against the rich guy and they'll now wipe his memory and leave it somewhere: 200 people are dead because of him, and he didn't care one bit. They're closing down the base, and Rose invites the cute British guy Adam to go with them.
7-The long game, shows that not everyone would be suited or accepted as a companion, when a guy joins them on a trip to the future but tries to take advantage of his position to make himself rich, to steal knowledge, and will be bluntly left alone with his regrets. It's the episode on Satellite 5.
Details: Rose plays expert to impress Adam, and when he faints the Doctor says "he's your boyfriend" - "not anymore"... They are on a space station in the year 200.000, I think, but it's not exactly how the Doctor described it, for a start there are on aliens around. The Doctor tells Adam to go explore after giving him some money, credits to spend, and he tells him that "time travel is live visiting Paris" meaning "eat the food, use the wrong verbs" and "kiss a complete stranger, or is that just me?" :lol: but I guess he simply wanted him out of the way, not really thrilled to have him on board. Rose goes with Adam so the Doctor is free to investigate. He stops two girls and asks them where he is: floor 139 of Satellite 5. "How could you get on board without knowing were you are?" - "look at me, I'm stupid" :lol: Then he uses his psychic paper to make it look like it's a test, because they'd do anything to get to floor 500, where "the walls are made of gold", Cathica says this as if it was reason enough while it actually means nothing and doesn't make sense, I mean, it's not like you can grab a wall and take it home or anything :-/. They broadcast news (the face of Boe is pregnant? really? how does that work?), there are 600 channels broadcasting everywhere...
Rose gives Adam her super-phone so he can call home but when an alarm goes off he puts the phone in his pocket instead of returning it. They see how Cathica works, connecting the computer to her forehead which opens up when she snaps her fingers so that her brain becomes the computer. When they are connected, the boss finds out that her friend Suki faked her information details and gives her a promotion to get her to floor 500.
Adam tells Rose that he'd like some time alone, so Rose gives him the Tardis key and goes with the Doctor. Cathica tells them they'll never see Suki again because £when you go to floor 500 you never come back". We see that up there everything is frozen and dark, and people are dead... The Editor knows she lied, and it's revealed that she's part of Freedom 15, an anarchist group, and she pulls a gun on him saying the facts are being manipulated, when she's confronted with the real boss there, a huge alien hanging on the ceiling; she tries to shoot it but it's killed like the others. The Doctor says that "humanity has been set back about 90 years" and Satellite 5 started broadcasting 91 years ago.. The Doctor and Rose go to floor 500 to investigate and see that Suki's dead, but since she's got a chip in her head like the others, those keep working.. The alien boss on the ceiling is in charge not only of Satellite 5 but of the human race, has been for almost a century, Editor Max tells us. They are chained. Cathica can't resist the curiosity and goes up too and the Editor doesn't notice because he's busy with them.
Adam goes looking for access to that technology. He records on his parents' answering machine about future technology and goes to floor 16 pretending to be a student from the Martian colony and has them install a chip in his head so he can have full access. He pays with the credits given to him by the Doctor, it turns out he has "unlimited credit"... he's not sure at first but then he does it, and by snapping his fingers his forehead opens up now. When he connects his brain to their computer, the Editor immediately learns everything Adam knows about the Doctor: the last of the Time Lords.. they see Adam on a screen and Cathica listens to how they're reading his mind; now they have access to the Tardis key too... Cathica also listens to how she was a slave and didn't even realize it. She connects to a computer after disengaging the safety protocols and she messes with the pipes and the controls heating up the rooms, so the alien suffers.. (it needs cold, so the heating was all directed to the other floors below and now she's reversing it). The station is in alarm, the alien is about to explode, Rose and the Doctor escape taking Cathica along. The Editor is held back by Suki :)
The Doctor is angry and he takes Adam home, deletes his messages - actually he destroys the answering machine. Adam will now have to stay quiet and unseen because nobody can find out about his head or they'll probably 'dissect him' :p "but I wanna come with you" - "I only take the best, I've got Rose" :-) Adam's mom comes home, happy to see him there; she says "time goes by like that" and snaps her fingers :lol:
Cathica=Christine Adams - Suki= Anna Maxwell-Martin - The Editor=Simon Pegg - Adam=Bruno Langley
8-Father's day is a great episode, when Rose wants to go back to the day her father died alone in the street, but she can't resist the impulse of saving him, creating a biiiiiig big problem that the doctor will have to sort out. It's very touching, and the doctor is great, I love him when he says to the couple that they are important, he believes that, he thinks everyone is important, I loved that, and was kind of sad that in the end they won't remember that because it's all been erased from their memories...
Details: Rose tells the Doctor about her father, born 15-9-1954 and died 7-9-1987, and about how he died when she was but a baby and what her mother had told her about him, and she asks him if they can go back so that she can see him alive: "your wish is my command, but be careful what you wish for". They go and they see their wedding (Peter Allan Tyler and Jacklyn Andrea Suzette Prentiss), when he couldn't remember all her names and she was like "Just carry on, that's good enough for me" with her eyes rolling. Then they go to see him die. They stand at the side of the road, holding hands, and she watches him die when a car hits him, and he tells her to go to him quickly, but she stormes off and cries and he follows her of course, and she says "he can't die on his own, can I try again?" and they go back, staying behind the wall watching themselves at the side of the road. The Doctor warns her to wait until 'they' go away, but she doesn't, she runs in front of her other self and saves her dad's life. The Doctor's upset, he stares at her and then says "when we met I said 'travel with me in space' you said no, then I said time-machine..." but she denies that it was all a big plan; he says "I did it again, I picked another stupid ape" (another? did he have stupid companions he didn't like in the past?) and "I should have known, it's not about showing you the universe, it never is, it's about the universe doing something for you" and "the whole world's different because he's alive" also telling her that if it could be done he would have gone back to save his people, then he asks for the key back and goes away. He tries to get in the Tardis but it's now a simple empty box.
Rose thought that her mom and dad had perfect happiness but she sees now that they always fight and are near divorcing. People are disappearing though, and when the Doctor comes running Rose smiles thinking that he couldn't go away without her, but he screams to get inside the church (they were all gathered for a marriage) and then flying monsters appear. He says "time has been damaged and they've come to sterilize the wound" staring at Rose. "Is this because... is this my fault?" but he doesn't answer, no need to. Of course it is.
Her father puts things together, the fact that he immediately trusted her, that she called him dad once, that the Doctor said a 'wound in time', and that she has his eyes and Jackie's attitude, and he understands that she's his Rose grown up and they hug. They talk, and she says nothing when he asks if he's gone grey in her time.
The bride asks the Doctor if he can save them, and she says "I know we're not important" and he goes "who said you're not important?" and "I've never had a life like that" talking about when they first met. It made them feel good.
The Doctor tells Rose that he has no plan, no idea, there's nothing he can do, humanity is being wiped out and "there used to be laws stopping this kind of things from happening, my people would have stopped this, but they're all gone, and now I'm going the same way" and "just tell me you're sorry" and they make peace. The Tardis key is still 'active' so he thinks there's hope to revive the Tardis and get out of there.
Pete asks Rose about the future, if he's still with Jackie, if Rose still lives with them, if he's a good dad... and she starts making up stuff about him reading her bedtime stories, never missing a night, taking them out every saturday, never letting them down... "someone I could really rely on"... he looks intensely at her and says "that's not me"... he doesn't fully realize why but he knows she's lying.
He already noticed the car in a loop, keeping coming around, and thought about it and said to the Doctor "It's my fault all of this is happening" and "I'm so useless I couldn't even die properly" and when he tries to explain who she is to Jackie, he gives Rose the baby but when she touches baby Rose damaging time even more the creatures get inside the church. The Doctor's caught too, dead, vanished, the Tardis key falling to the floor, and yes it's all her fault. Pete tells Rose that the Doctor really cared about her and didn't want her to go through it again, but he knew there was only one thing to do (wait, so to spare her a bit of pain he was prepared to allow humanity to be destroyed? What if Pete hadn't been smart enough? or decent enough?). Rose says "what are you talking about?" - "the car that should have killed me love" and he tells her that the Doctor knew and he knows it too, so he can be a dad now and do this for them. They hug and then he runs outside, running in front of that car and getting killed. The Doctor reappears, telling her "go to him, quick" and she holds his hand. None of them will remember those creatures or what happened, and only a bit of past has been changed. Jackie will tell little Rose about some stranger who kindly held his hand so he didn't die alone.
Pete=Shaun Dingwall
9-the empty child Details: The Tardis follows an object through space and time, some kind of universal red alert or something that of course ends up in London. Rose hears 'mummyy' and sees a child wearing a gas mask on a roof, so he goes to him. The Doctor goes asking around but it's wartime, so not the best time to go asking if something fell from the sky making a big boom.
When he sees that Rose's gone he picks up a cat and says "one day, just one day maybe, I'm gonna meet somebody who gets the whole don't-wander-off-thing", and then the Tardis telephone starts ringing. He's surprised: "how can you be ringing?" and a girl appears saying not to answer it, that it's not for him. The Doctor says that it's not even a real phone, it's not connected. When he answers he hears the same voice Rose heard saying "mummy? are you my mummy?". He follows the girl and sees that she steals food for homeless children, eating in houses left vacant during the raids, and the Doctor asks them "I wanna find a blonde in a union jack, I mean a specific one, I didn't just wake up this morning with a crave", but then that child in a mask comes knocking and Nancy closes all the doors. Doctor"it's never easy being the only child left out in the cold you know" - "I suppose you'd know?" - "I do actually, yes" and then she says "it's not exactly a child" and she says that he's 'empty' and he can make phones ring. Nancy and the children run away so when the Doctor opens the door there's nobody there. This whole thing started a month ago, when that thing fell from the sky, so she tells him that he needs to talk to the doctor first. In Albion hospital there's one doctor and hundreds of patients lying in bed with masks fused to the flesh. All patients are the same, with the same scar on the back of their right hand, like the empty child, like this doctor. Everyone who touched the first patient fell victim of the same plague, but they're not dead. Nancy's little brother Jamie was the first patient. In front of the Doctor's eyes, the doctor starts saying "mummy? are you my mummy?" and a masks appears on his face.
Rose is now hanging from a rope during a bomb attack, when she falls and she's saved with a light field, a tractor beam, by captain Jack Harkness. He tries to fool her with a psychic paper but she knows all about that trick already :) He has an invisible spaceship and he thinks now that she's a time-agent. They have champagne and dance in front of Big Ben's clock.. Rose and Jack go looking for the Doctor, and Jack calls him Mr Spock :p Rose:"what was I supposed to say? You don't have a name. Don't you ever get tired of Doctor? Doctor Who?" :lol: Jack says that he found that thing, it was empty, a space-ambulance, and he lured them there to try and sell it to them because he's a con-man. The Doctor says that human DNA is being rewritten.
The empty child locks Nancy in a room with him and at that moment all patients in the hospital stand up and move towards them...
10-the doctor dances The Doctor shouts "go to your room" and they all hear and they all go back, the patients returning to their beds, and the empty child walks out. The Doctor says "I'm really glad that worked, those would have been terrible last words" :lol:
so, Jack brought that piece of 'space junk' here so he could sell it? Planning to destroy it, blaming it on the bombs...
Jack has a sonic blaster, 51st century, and the Doctor says he's been to those factories once, basically he destroyed it and now there are banana factories instead "I like bananas, bananas are good".
Nancy's caught by the family but she knows some secrets so they let her go.
The Doctor senses something when neither Jack or Rose do, and he says "funny little human brains, how do you get around in those things?" - Rose:"when he's stressed he likes to insult species" :-p
Being sent to his room, the empty child came back to the hospital and now like him all the patients are after them. Jack asks about the Doctor's weapons and he's reluctant to say that he's only got a screwdriver... it was supposed to be a funny scene but I didn't find it funny, only a bit embarrassing and rather disrespectful, that screwdriver helped him a lot! All of a sudden Jack disappears and Rose says "why is it always the great looking ones who do that?" - Doctor"I'm making an effort not to be insulted" :lol: but Jack contacts them, he teleported to his ship and tries to help. He teleports them too when they were about to dance together...
Jack was a time agent, but they stole two years of his memories.
Nancy is locked with a contaminated soldier, and when he changes she sings to make him fall asleep until the Doctor frees her. When Jack touches the space-ambulance, all the empty people are drawn there. When Jack opened it he saw it empty but it wasn't, there were lots and lots of nanogenes ready to heal everything, and first thing they found was a dead child, Nancy's Jamie, wearing a gas mask and they revived him but they had no idea what humans look like still they followed their programming and kept doing it, kept 'healing' everybody making them all like the child.
Nancy is Jamie's mum, she kept it a secret because she was just a teenager when she had him, and now the Doctor encourages her to tell Jamie the truth. She tells him and she hugs him and the nanogenes surround them both, and the Doctor starts hoping: "come on, give me a day like this, give me this one": the nanogenes recognized "the superior information, the parent DNA" and instead of changing Nancy they changed Jamie back. The Doctor sends nanogenes to the other 'infected', saying "everybody lives Rose, just this once everybody lives". I liked that doctor a lot, and the scene when a woman went to him saying that her leg grew back "I had one leg" - "there is a war on, is it possible you miscounted?" :lol:
Jack took the bomb that was supposed to explode there away with his ship but now he can't move it, it'll explode in three minutes. When he asks "exactly, out of 100, how dead am I?", the computer says "termination of captain Jack Harkness in under two minutes, 100% probability". Jack was sentenced to death once, but instead he woke up in bed with two of his executioners... but of course now the Tardis appears to save him. It ends with the Doctor and Rose dancing. The 'I can dance' is my least favorite scene, rather incredibly since I love dancing :-/
These are two parts of the same story written by Steven Moffat. It's the story during the war, with the homeless children, and the one with the mask going around asking "are you my mummy?", and of course is also the episode that introduces Captain Jack Harkness, and we see right away he likes to flirt with anything that breaths, basically. It's funny to see the Doctor jealous of how Rose seems to see him as a sort of hero, and is also lovely to have her saying 'but Doctor Who?'.
The only thing I didn't like was that sort of dance, it seemed almost unnatural, I can't explain why it seemed to me out of place and character. I understand why he was happy, finally one episode where he gets to save them all! And in a Moffat episode too!! Maybe that's why he decided 'from now on I'll kill as many as I can'=to compensate!
11-boom town, is a strange one. It starts out so nicely, with the Doctor and Rose travelling back to Earth with Jack and meeting Micky, eating together and chatting, when they find that one of the Slitheen they thought were all dead is still alive and has a terrible plan in mind. The Doctor sort of arrests her and plans to bring her back to her home-planet, but has to deal with the fact that he would be bringing her to her death. There are long chats between them about this. It shows that the doctor's changed, now he's not so quick on killing the enemies, and this change will bring him to find a new solution to the problem, a merciful solution much more doctor-like. I liked this episode, it was slower than the others, more philosophical, but well done.
12-13 are Bad wolf and Parting of the ways. The last two episodes of this series. The three of them, being Jack part of the team now, travel to the future, to find it in trouble. Daleks are everywhere, lots and lots of them! The Doctor can't believe it, he thought they were extinct, but he can only go on fighting, even if it means he'll have to sacrifice himself to destroy them. They all fight together, Jack is apparently killed, and the Doctor knowing how it will end tricks Rose and sends her back home , but she won't accept it. Her mother understands why he did it and is grateful, but she's not going to leave the Doctor alone, she's not letting it go, and is so desperate to help him that Micky will help her open up the Tardis so she can look inside and absorb that energy that will allow her to go back to the future ( :-p)
It shows what good character is Micky, even if sometimes is annoying I never thought he was an idiot or a coward, he is good and brave. I remember at the start when he said he wasn't going with them because it was too much for him, and I thought that even if it could seem the coward thing to do it actually was a brave thing to say to the man that is stealing away the girl he still loves so much.
Anyway, Micky helps her, and she goes back to the Doctor and saves the day. I like her voice when she kills the daleks. It couldn't be helped that the doctor helped her, taking all the energy she had absorbed in him with a kiss, so she's saved. There was no other solution, otherwise later on we would have said, why don't you use the Tardis' energy??? Well, because it's not meant to be used like that, and it kills you. In this case, it killed the Doctor. I was sorry to see him go, even if I started watching it waiting for him to go, it was because I didn't know the character yet.
But then David Tennant appeared, so handsome, and then he smiled. And I even forgot who I was.
Ok, things are like this. I had never heard of Doctor Who at all until a few years ago, never heard of any of the actors that played it, had absolutely no idea of what it was. Then, one day, wandering on youtube, I saw an English show where the guest was David Tennant, and he was there for 5 minutes top, and he was saying he got the role as the new doctor, and in those five minutes he was so nice and adorable that I thought "I've no idea of what this doctor is, but if he's in it, I'll watch it sooner or later, when I can find it", so basically he's the reason why I started watching Doctor Who.
However, me being who I am, I didn't like the idea of watching a series from the second year, and I bought a box set with the first 4 series together, and started watching from the first.
And it blew my mind, the doctor IS fan-ta-stic ! And I think it tells much about the show-the actor-the character-the whole packet, that at the end of this series, when I knew that David was coming the next season, when it came the moment of his regeneration I still went 'what? no wait, I just met you!'. Of course, I was used to american series, when they do from 20 to 22 episodes a season, so when it ended at episode 13 it really was too early for me, it really felt like I had just started!
Cast:
Doctor: Christopher Eccleston
Rose: Billie Piper
Jackie Tyler: Camille Coduri
Micky Smith: Noel Clarke
1
- The first episode (Rose) was special for various reasons, for the way they introduced the Doctor, first showing his hand taking hers, then him saying 'run!', which is essentially the Doctor in a nutshell. Running, saving people, and taking people's hands quite easily, which is totally him, not just saving but also feeling close to people, caring.
I loved it. Sure the special effects might not be mind-blowing, but it's not important, the character is. The Doctor is funny, heroic, intense and light at the same time. I like Rose because she's like a normal girl, I mean, pretty but not a top model, she's not rich and she's not a fashion-victim, she's very much like a real person, if you know what I mean.
It goes like this:
Rose's day starts off at 7.30: wake up, kiss mom, take the bus and go to work, lunch break with boyfriend, back to work and...finally home? Not today, she has to stay back, and she's surrounded by moving dummies when 'someone' takes her hand, says 'run' and we meet the ninth doctor :-)
He tells her to go home 'I'm the doctor by the way. What's your name?'-'Rose'-'Nice to meet you Rose. Now run for your life' :lol: I already like this doctor character. Then the department store blows up and she runs away. Following the plastic track he shows up at her house. "You! Inside! Right now!" = yep, I like her too :-) He looks at himself in the mirror and says "it could have been worse... but look at the ears!" or something like that. Is this the first time he sees this incarnation? No time to find a mirror anywhere? Anyway. The plastic arm tries to kill them, then she runs after him wanting to understand what's going on. When he says he's "the Doctor" she replies "Doctor what?" :lol:
He tells her that he's just passing thru, a long way from home, and that they want to destroy humanity (simple as that), "do you believe me?" - "no" - "but you're still listening" :-) Yes, she is, without screaming or crying or whatever. Good. Thank you.
He tells her a bit of him, not much, then he tells her to forget him :-/ as if it was possible. She looks for information on him on the internet. She types 'doctor blue box' and the first site reads "doctor who?" :-) Micky drives her there on a yellow bug :-) (Micky's car?) and she meets Clive, and it was funny, I like how Clive and his wife talk. Well, she only says "she's a she??" but I like a lot how she says that. Clive shows her pictures with Nine's face in 1963, and with a family that cancelled their trip on the titanic and therefore survived, and again in the 19th century, and tells her stories about this mysterious man. Meanwhile Micky is outside being attacked by a plastic bin and replaced with a copy. He looks so plasticky now. At a diner he/it attacks the doctor, even after he tore its head off. I like that Rose immediately thinks of protecting the people inside and shouts for people to run away, get out. This is when she enters the tardis for the first time. They're running away and he simply enters there. It doesn't look very safe, a simple, little blue box, but once inside she's shocked. To see all that, to learn that the doctor is an alien... but it doesn't take her much to get real again and she thinks of Micky and cries believing that thing killed him. The doctor says he had not thought of that, which sounds a bit odd to me. Doesn't he care? How long has he been alone now?
He explains the plan, they run together holding hands :-) they reach this 'consciousness' and she runs to Micky who is still alive, and now the doctor says 'that was always a possibility' which makes me think that he always thought he was probably alive, and maybe what he didn't expect was the fact that Rose was thinking of Micky being dead while so many wonders were happening to her (plastic attacker, bigger-on-the-inside-box, doctor's an alien and all that).
The doctor tries to reason with this consciousness-blob, but it is not in a good mood and seems to be accusing the doctor of something. The doctor says "I was not attacking you, I'm here to help, I'm not your enemy. That's not true, I should know, I was there, I fought in the war, it wasn't my fault. I couldn't save your world, I couldn't save any of them" whatever all that means, at this point, right?
Then a signal goes out and all the dummies start moving and attacking people, and Clive gets killed. Sorry. Rose says "the end of the world" as if it was something strange, she'll get used to it. :-p
The Doctor is being held still by plastic things, and I like that Rose instead of panicking, looks around her, studying the situation, to see if there is something she can do. Micky is yelling for her to leave, that there's nothing she can do, but she goes sure she can, indeed. She helps the Doctor alright, and he takes them to safety in the Tardis. Once out, Micky is still in shock, while Rose calls her mom to see if she's ok. I liked this. The Doctor asks her to go with him, she says "I can't", he goes away but comes back "did I mention it also travels in time?" and she kisses Micky "thanks- for what? - exactly" :-) and then runs happily to the Tardis. I learn from the ending titles that those things are called Autons, they were probably present in some old episodes, but I had never heard of DW before this series, so I haven't seen any of them. Yet.
Can I say how much I liked the fact that Rose here was just a common girl with a common accent and common clothes on, and not some kind of top model who would have looked more alien than the Doctor? What I like about Rose is all here: her being normal, with curves and sweatpants on, her caring about people, her never panicking, her running happily, so young and fresh.
2
The second episode (the end of the world) was so-and-so, wasn't crazy about it and still am not, but I like the tree-lady, it makes me so sad when she dies. Funny thing is, this was the one time the Doctor didn't actually stop the end of the world, but had simply gone to watch it; he'll just have to stop a murderer.
It starts exactly where we left off. The Doctor asks Rose where she wants to go, she says "forward" and he takes her 5 billion years in the future, to the day the sun expands and the Earth dies, literally the end of the world.
Earth is empty now, of course, they are all gone. He shows his psychic paper as his invitation, then the trees come. I really like the trees. We also see the face of Boe for the first time, and Lady Cassandra the last human. Rose talks to a repairing woman, who was very nice, but she probably gets killed by these strange metal things. I liked her, sorry I won't see her again: Rufello or something. The Doctor explains how the Tardis gets into people's brain changing something, thus giving her the ability to understand other species' languages. She insists on knowing about him, but he doesn't want to talk about it. It's a bit of a fight, he turns his back to her and they are silent for a few seconds then Rose says "as my mate says, don't argue with the designated driver" making him smile (I like this scene and that smile-smirk he does). She seems a bit down thinking of the end of the world and he puts something in her phone so she can call home :
" a little bit of jiggery-pokery" - "is that a technical term, jiggery-pokery?" - "yes, I came first in jiggery-pokery" :lol: and she calls her mum :-)
Those metal things deactivate the solar fields, and I was really sorry to see the tree lady die, she was very nice, beautiful and beautifully dressed, and a descendant of Earth's tropical forest too!!
She tries to help him, and also she says she knows who he is, and hells him "how sorry I am". So nice. She sacrifices herself to help the Timelord, he should have gone faster!! At the very last second he raises the shields again, saving all. We have a taste of DoctorWho's irony with the juke-box and Cassandra's idea of a traditional Earth ballad: "Toxic"-Britney Spears ....
The Doctor finds out that Cassandra is responsible for the whole mess. "What are you going to do, moisturize me?"- "with acid" :lol: She teleports away, but he reversed the teleport taking her back, and lets her crack. Rose told him to help her but he didn't. He gave the consciousness a chance, but Cassandra had killed people. The consciousness had killed too, yes, Wilson and Clive and who knows, maybe more, but let's say as it is, it's easier to forgive when it's someone you don't know, when you didn't actually witness it. Here, Rose was almost killed, and the Doctor saw the tree lady burst into fire and die.
The Doctor tells Rose of his planet, now dead "there was a war, and we lost". "I'm the last of the Time Lords" and "I've been traveling on my own 'cause there's no one else" - "There's me"=sweet Rose. It ends with him telling her that now she's seen how dangerous it is, does she want to go home? "I don't know"=very honest, sometimes you need to clear your head first, right? "I want chips" :-) lovely :-)
The credits say: Raffalo:Beccy Armory ; Cassandra: Zoe Wanamaker ;
3
The third episode (the unquiet dead) was the one with Dickens and the Gelth!! They go back to 1869 and she dresses up for the occasion, because apparently there's all sorts of dresses in the tardis wardrobe, and he looked at her already falling for her, you could already tell. This was written by Mark Gatiss.
An old dead woman in a funeral home kills a man and walks out. The owner says "the stiffs are getting lively again"... The doctor thinks they are in Naples, December 24, 1860.. but they're not. As she walked out and I saw the snow I thought it was wrong: it's actually 1869 and they are in Cardiff... the dead grandma has gone to listen to Dickens, and when the man and his servant take her body away Rose follows them so he abducts her. The Doctor follows with Dickens. They locked her inside a room with walking-dead grandma and grandson but the Doctor saves her. The servant Gwyneth or something (the actress who plays Gwen in Torchwood) has a special power, can sense the spirits and knows how the Doctor likes his tea (two sugars); there's a rift, a sort of weak point in time and space, and something is passing through. Gwyneth reads in Rose's mind about a different London and her dead father, but gets scared mentioning the BigBadWolf... and the Doctor uses her as a medium; she channels the spirits: they say they are the Gelth "we are so very few, the last of our kind, we face extinction" and say that the Time War destroyed their bodies and they're now asking for the dead bodies to live again "we're dying, help us". The Doctor thinks 'why not?' , nobody's using the dead bodies, and they could help them survive. Rose tries to talk to Gwyneth, she wants to help her but to Gwyneth it's more patronizing then helping. Rose says "you don't understand what's going on" and she says that it's "very clear inside your head that you think I'm stupid" and "things might be very different where you're from but here and now I know my own mind, and the angels need me". She wants to help them, and they beg to hurry up "pity the Gelth"... so she does it. There's a lot more than they thought, and the dead bodies in the funeral home are not enough, and they intend to kill the humans to take their bodies: they are not angels at all. The Doctor is angry because he tried to help, he pitied them, but now they are like "we don't want your pity, we want this world". Dickens runs away but once outside he understands that they need gas so he runs back inside. The Doctor apologizes to Rose because they're about to die. Dickens turns all the lights out and fills the place with gas so the Gelth are sucked out of the body into the gas. Dickens takes Rose out, Gwyneth says she can't send them back but she can hold them there while she blows up the place with matches. The Doctor is reluctant to let her do it, at first, but then he understands that she's already dead and goes out. When the place blows up, Rose looks at him in a you-let-her-die kind of look, but he explains that she closed the rift but was already dead. Rose says "she saved the world, a servant girl, and no one will ever know". They go away. Dickens asks him if his books will last :p and the Doctor says Yes! Forever! :)
Gwyneth: Eve Miles ; Dickens: Simon Callow
Episodes four and five are linked, same story, with a spaceship crashing in the Thames, with the Slitheen occupying Downing Street, and with the first introduction of Harriett Jones.
4
They are: 'aliens of London' : details: The Doctor takes Rose home, telling her it's only been twelve hours since she left so she goes back to her mother all happy, planning on telling her she spent the night at her friend's place, but there are fliers around with her face on it: she was actually gone twelve months, and as he sees them the Doctor runs to tell her "you've been gone a whole year, sorry" ...
A child writes BadWolf on the Tardis. I like Jackie and Rose, they're so real (so Jackie thinks she's 20 now :-p )
It's difficult to explain to Jackie where she's been and why she didn't call, twelve long months... of course Jackie is also mad at the Doctor: "what, you found her on the internet? did you go online and pretend you're a doctor?" - "I am a doctor" - "prove it, stitch this mate" and she slaps his face quite loudly :-p He says later to Rose: "900 years of time and space and I've never been slapped by someone's mother" so she learns his age and says "my mum was right, that is one hell of an age gap"... then Rose complains that she can't talk to anyone about all she has seen, saying she's the only one on Earth knowing all that exists out there (she's not, but she still doesn't know about the other companions) when a spaceship flies very low over London, crashing the Big Ben and ending in the river. It's obviously all over the news: "Big Ben destroyed as UFO crash land in central London". There are emergency meetings of course, the prime minister seems to have disappeared. Harriett Jones appears for the first time "but I did have an appointment at 3.15" - "yes, and then a spaceship crashed in the middle of London. Your schedule might have changed". I liked that man, it bothers me that I never manage to get his name :-/
Two men and a woman meet to talk about the emergency since the prime minister disappeared, and they laugh as soon as they are alone... Rose is worried the Doctor might disappear on her and to reassure her he gives her the key to the Tardis.
Harriett tries again to speak to them about her village hospital matter, and then she goes in when they don't see her, meaning to leave it in their suitcase, and she sees the emergency protocols..
The Doctor wanted to go and see the dead alien body: it's actually alive now, a pig running around on two legs until a soldier shoots him dead. The Doctor is angry: "what did you do that for? It was scared!". He says that that was an ordinary pig that someone changed, and then make it crash on purpose. After seeing the Doctor from his window, Mickie runs to Rose's home and sees her there! Nobody told him she was back! Poor Micky, they treated him very badly. He's upset, he couldn't tell them the truth about where she'd gone, and he was questioned five times by the police and strongly accused by Jackie, he'd been a murder-suspect for months.... When he tells Rose that the Doctor's gone, they go see and Jackie sees the Tardis reappearing: one look inside and she runs home and phones the emergency line; she speaks the words 'doctor' and 'blue box' and even 'tardis' and a red alert flashes on Downing Street computers. Rose asks Micky (the Doctor keeps calling him Ricky) if he's seeing anyone else, since she was away for so long, and he says "no, mainly because everyone thinks I murdered you" - "right". Again, poor Micky.
Harriett hides in the room and she sees when the new prime minister and the other two take off their disguise and kill the general.
Soldiers go to get the Doctor and Rose and they are escorted to Downing Street; he gets his own badge but she can't go in, and Harriett takes care of her. The Doctor realizes, maybe just a tiny bit late, that "it's not a diversion, it's a trap" because all the experts on aliens are reunited there; here are also the famous words "excuse me, do you mind not farting while I'm saving the world?" :-p
Harrett tells Rose everything and they find the corpse of the prime minister, and all of them see the alien taking off the human-disguise and show their real form "we are Slytheen".
All experts are killed through their badges. One alien unfortunately kills the guy I liked (sorry man, that happens often) and one alien is at Jackie's home about to kill her disguised as a policeman. The doctor is being electrocuted too, since he's also wearing his badge...
5
and 'world war three'.
Details: The Doctor rises, takes his ID card and stuck it to one of the aliens saying "deadly to humans maybe". All aliens start being electrocuted, so the Doctor runs, Harriet and Rose too, and Micky comes to save a shocked Jackie. The Doctor calls the soldiers but in the meantime the Slytheen had taken off the badge and disguised themselves again as humans, so the 'prime minister' can blame it all on the Doctor. The Slytheen find Rose and Harriet comes out of hiding yelling "Noooo take me first!" but then the Doctor comes in with a fire extinguisher... "who the hell are you?" - "Harriet Jones MP for Flydale North" - "nice to meet you" - "likewise" then later she asks "he's not human? but he's got a northern accent!" :lol: lots of planets have a north...
Slytheen is not their race, it's their family surname. The three of them are safe now in there, the cabinet room can be sealed with steel walls. The Slytheen reunite the family, there are at least six there, the 'policeman' is still out. The Doctor says he knows the name Harriet Jones, she studies the emergency protocols and Rose wonders if they have access to weapon codes because they could "launch a nuclear bomb at them" - "you're a very violent young woman" but they can't because the UN has the codes. The Doctor needs Micky's help, so they talk in speakerphone and Micky gains access to UNIT website with the passwords the Doctor gives him. Jackie asks him "is my daughter safe? Is she safe? Will she always be safe? Can you promise me that?" but the policeman shows up at Micky's door. The Doctor works out they are from Raxacoricofallapatorius but Micky's not impressed "yeah great we could write 'em a letter". The Doctor tells him to use vinegar so Jackie throws a lot at the alien and it explodes. The 'prime minister' announces that 'aliens' have killed all the experts, that they are dangerous and therefore 'we' as Earth should strike first, and he asks the UN to give him the codes. There's nothing up there to destroy, though, they'd use the weapons against other countries to start world war three, they want to sell the radioactive remains of Earth...
The Doctor gives them an ultimatum, to stop it or he'll stop them, and they laugh in his face. The Doctor always knew a way out but "I can't guarantee your daughter will be safe" - Jackie:"don't you dare!" - "if I don't dare everyone dies" and Rose:"do it" - "you don't even know what it is, you just let me?" - "yeah", and it's a beautiful scene; he explains that that's his life, making decisions that nobody else will, and he tells Rose "I could save the world but lose you" and they look intensely at each other until Harriet speaks "except it's not your decision Doctor, it's mine" because she's "the only elected representative in this room chosen by the people for the people and on behalf of the people I command you: do it" so he has Micky launch a common missile towards them, and Rose hides in a small cupboard with Harriet (it's not clear how they aimed the missile, there was already one pointed towards Downing Street? well, let's not complicate things...)
It hits destroying everything but the three of them come out safe, and the Doctor says he knew her name because Harriet will be the new prime minister "elected for three successive terms, the architect of Britain's golden age". Rose goes home to her mother, the Doctor goes to his Tardis. Jackie plans to cook shepherd's pie for him but when he phones Rose he's like "I've got better things to do" and gives her the choice: stay there for tea or go away with him, and she immediately packs a bag. Jackie begs her not to go but she goes anyway. Micky is surprised that the papers could write "alien hoax?" and the Doctor says "you're just not ready, you're happy to believe in something that's invisible but if it's staring you in the face: nope!" and "there's a scientific explanation for that, you're thick!" and Micky smiles "we're just idiots" - "well, not all of you". The Doctor gives him a virus to put online that will "destroy every mention of me" saying it's "because you're right, I'm dangerous and I don't want anybody following me" - "how can you say that and take her with you?" - "you could look after her, come with us" but Micky says that he can't, that life is too much for him, but "don't tell her I said that", so when Rose arrives and says "come with us" the Doctor refuses to have him on board, and declares "my decision is final" even after she remarked that he saved them :-)
Jackie keeps trying to keep her home but Rose tells her that it's also a time machine and she'll be back and only ten seconds will have passed (yeah right, remember the twelve hours that became twelve months?.....) so after the Tardis vanishes Jackie waits for ten seconds then sighs and goes home...
I liked the bits with the news reporters.
I liked the ending, and it was touching when Jackie waited the 10 seconds after watching the tarddis disappear.
6
Episode six is called Dalek and is great, (EDIT even if the first time I watched it, the sight of a Dalek said nothing to me because I had never seen one, this was a good introduction).
I like how Rose is all "I'm a traveller through space and time and I know how to handle aliens alone without the Doctor", so out of pity she touches it and she revives it...
Don't go around touching aliens, you silly girl!!! And this is the episode where she changes him, he was all anger, he was a warrior, but she changed him, made him put down his weapon, and I think this is very important.
Details: Some kind of signal has drawn the Tardis to 2012 Utah, 1 1/2 mile underground, Rose says she should be 26 - since she's 19 in 2005 - and they find a museum of alien stuff, exhibits. She says "if someone's collecting aliens that makes you exhibit A", smart girl she got it right.
They meet the richest man on Earth, who can replace US Presidents at will, a tech genius who owns the internet and is obviously arrogant and obnoxious and rather stupid, as you'd expect.
Rose of course doesn't like him "she's gonna smack you if you keep calling her 'she' ".
It's the "biggest museum of extraterrestrial artifacts" in the world, and he's the most powerful man on Earth, so he can do anything...
The man shows the Doctor his rarest specimen, his "pet" in "the cage". The Doctor is locked inside its room, and he wants to help the yet unknown alien, but then the lights are turned on and he's all "impossible!" when he sees who that is, and since at first he introduced himself, saying he could help, now the alien knows it and goes "Doctor? THE Doctor? Exterminate!" and he starts shouting "Let me out!" , he thinks he's gonna die but the Dalek doesn't work. He says "the entire Dalek race wiped out in one second" and "I watched it happen, I made it happen" - "you destroyed us" - "I had no choice" and then he adds that the Time Lords are gone too and they're both alone in the world... not the smartest move, all considering, so now he's kept prisoner too.
Rose didn't witness this, and when she sees the Dalek she feels pity because it's being tortured, and she touches it, giving it energy somehow, what with her being now a time traveller, so the Doctor says "release me if you want to live".
The Dalek kills his torturer, then he absorbs energy and informations, gets out and kills all the soldiers on its way. Rose thinks that stairs will stop it but "Elevate!" :-p
The Doctor really hates it and tells him to "rid the universe of your filth, why don't you just die!" - "you would make a good Dalek". They seal the bunker, hoping to block it down there, but she gets stuck too: "Rose, did you make it?" - "Sorry I was a bit slow" and she also says "it wasn't your fault, remember that, I wouldn't have missed it for the world".
The rich guy says he just wanted to touch the sky, but the Doctor replies that what he did was drag them down into the earth, label them, and he was "about as far from the stars as you can get".
Still, Rose is not killed by the Dalek because when she touched it she sort of contaminated it with her DNA. Rose also stops him from killing the rich guy; when the Doctor comes with a big alien weapon in his hands, he screams for her to get away because he clearly wants to shoot it. The Dalek came there with Rose, it opened its armor and wanted to feel the sunlight.The Doctor says "Rose did more than regenerate you, you absorbed her DNA" and it kills itself. Rose stopped the Doctor from killing it. The people on the base rebel against the rich guy and they'll now wipe his memory and leave it somewhere: 200 people are dead because of him, and he didn't care one bit. They're closing down the base, and Rose invites the cute British guy Adam to go with them.
7-The long game, shows that not everyone would be suited or accepted as a companion, when a guy joins them on a trip to the future but tries to take advantage of his position to make himself rich, to steal knowledge, and will be bluntly left alone with his regrets. It's the episode on Satellite 5.
Details: Rose plays expert to impress Adam, and when he faints the Doctor says "he's your boyfriend" - "not anymore"... They are on a space station in the year 200.000, I think, but it's not exactly how the Doctor described it, for a start there are on aliens around. The Doctor tells Adam to go explore after giving him some money, credits to spend, and he tells him that "time travel is live visiting Paris" meaning "eat the food, use the wrong verbs" and "kiss a complete stranger, or is that just me?" :lol: but I guess he simply wanted him out of the way, not really thrilled to have him on board. Rose goes with Adam so the Doctor is free to investigate. He stops two girls and asks them where he is: floor 139 of Satellite 5. "How could you get on board without knowing were you are?" - "look at me, I'm stupid" :lol: Then he uses his psychic paper to make it look like it's a test, because they'd do anything to get to floor 500, where "the walls are made of gold", Cathica says this as if it was reason enough while it actually means nothing and doesn't make sense, I mean, it's not like you can grab a wall and take it home or anything :-/. They broadcast news (the face of Boe is pregnant? really? how does that work?), there are 600 channels broadcasting everywhere...
Rose gives Adam her super-phone so he can call home but when an alarm goes off he puts the phone in his pocket instead of returning it. They see how Cathica works, connecting the computer to her forehead which opens up when she snaps her fingers so that her brain becomes the computer. When they are connected, the boss finds out that her friend Suki faked her information details and gives her a promotion to get her to floor 500.
Adam tells Rose that he'd like some time alone, so Rose gives him the Tardis key and goes with the Doctor. Cathica tells them they'll never see Suki again because £when you go to floor 500 you never come back". We see that up there everything is frozen and dark, and people are dead... The Editor knows she lied, and it's revealed that she's part of Freedom 15, an anarchist group, and she pulls a gun on him saying the facts are being manipulated, when she's confronted with the real boss there, a huge alien hanging on the ceiling; she tries to shoot it but it's killed like the others. The Doctor says that "humanity has been set back about 90 years" and Satellite 5 started broadcasting 91 years ago.. The Doctor and Rose go to floor 500 to investigate and see that Suki's dead, but since she's got a chip in her head like the others, those keep working.. The alien boss on the ceiling is in charge not only of Satellite 5 but of the human race, has been for almost a century, Editor Max tells us. They are chained. Cathica can't resist the curiosity and goes up too and the Editor doesn't notice because he's busy with them.
Adam goes looking for access to that technology. He records on his parents' answering machine about future technology and goes to floor 16 pretending to be a student from the Martian colony and has them install a chip in his head so he can have full access. He pays with the credits given to him by the Doctor, it turns out he has "unlimited credit"... he's not sure at first but then he does it, and by snapping his fingers his forehead opens up now. When he connects his brain to their computer, the Editor immediately learns everything Adam knows about the Doctor: the last of the Time Lords.. they see Adam on a screen and Cathica listens to how they're reading his mind; now they have access to the Tardis key too... Cathica also listens to how she was a slave and didn't even realize it. She connects to a computer after disengaging the safety protocols and she messes with the pipes and the controls heating up the rooms, so the alien suffers.. (it needs cold, so the heating was all directed to the other floors below and now she's reversing it). The station is in alarm, the alien is about to explode, Rose and the Doctor escape taking Cathica along. The Editor is held back by Suki :)
The Doctor is angry and he takes Adam home, deletes his messages - actually he destroys the answering machine. Adam will now have to stay quiet and unseen because nobody can find out about his head or they'll probably 'dissect him' :p "but I wanna come with you" - "I only take the best, I've got Rose" :-) Adam's mom comes home, happy to see him there; she says "time goes by like that" and snaps her fingers :lol:
Cathica=Christine Adams - Suki= Anna Maxwell-Martin - The Editor=Simon Pegg - Adam=Bruno Langley
8-Father's day is a great episode, when Rose wants to go back to the day her father died alone in the street, but she can't resist the impulse of saving him, creating a biiiiiig big problem that the doctor will have to sort out. It's very touching, and the doctor is great, I love him when he says to the couple that they are important, he believes that, he thinks everyone is important, I loved that, and was kind of sad that in the end they won't remember that because it's all been erased from their memories...
Details: Rose tells the Doctor about her father, born 15-9-1954 and died 7-9-1987, and about how he died when she was but a baby and what her mother had told her about him, and she asks him if they can go back so that she can see him alive: "your wish is my command, but be careful what you wish for". They go and they see their wedding (Peter Allan Tyler and Jacklyn Andrea Suzette Prentiss), when he couldn't remember all her names and she was like "Just carry on, that's good enough for me" with her eyes rolling. Then they go to see him die. They stand at the side of the road, holding hands, and she watches him die when a car hits him, and he tells her to go to him quickly, but she stormes off and cries and he follows her of course, and she says "he can't die on his own, can I try again?" and they go back, staying behind the wall watching themselves at the side of the road. The Doctor warns her to wait until 'they' go away, but she doesn't, she runs in front of her other self and saves her dad's life. The Doctor's upset, he stares at her and then says "when we met I said 'travel with me in space' you said no, then I said time-machine..." but she denies that it was all a big plan; he says "I did it again, I picked another stupid ape" (another? did he have stupid companions he didn't like in the past?) and "I should have known, it's not about showing you the universe, it never is, it's about the universe doing something for you" and "the whole world's different because he's alive" also telling her that if it could be done he would have gone back to save his people, then he asks for the key back and goes away. He tries to get in the Tardis but it's now a simple empty box.
Rose thought that her mom and dad had perfect happiness but she sees now that they always fight and are near divorcing. People are disappearing though, and when the Doctor comes running Rose smiles thinking that he couldn't go away without her, but he screams to get inside the church (they were all gathered for a marriage) and then flying monsters appear. He says "time has been damaged and they've come to sterilize the wound" staring at Rose. "Is this because... is this my fault?" but he doesn't answer, no need to. Of course it is.
Her father puts things together, the fact that he immediately trusted her, that she called him dad once, that the Doctor said a 'wound in time', and that she has his eyes and Jackie's attitude, and he understands that she's his Rose grown up and they hug. They talk, and she says nothing when he asks if he's gone grey in her time.
The bride asks the Doctor if he can save them, and she says "I know we're not important" and he goes "who said you're not important?" and "I've never had a life like that" talking about when they first met. It made them feel good.
The Doctor tells Rose that he has no plan, no idea, there's nothing he can do, humanity is being wiped out and "there used to be laws stopping this kind of things from happening, my people would have stopped this, but they're all gone, and now I'm going the same way" and "just tell me you're sorry" and they make peace. The Tardis key is still 'active' so he thinks there's hope to revive the Tardis and get out of there.
Pete asks Rose about the future, if he's still with Jackie, if Rose still lives with them, if he's a good dad... and she starts making up stuff about him reading her bedtime stories, never missing a night, taking them out every saturday, never letting them down... "someone I could really rely on"... he looks intensely at her and says "that's not me"... he doesn't fully realize why but he knows she's lying.
He already noticed the car in a loop, keeping coming around, and thought about it and said to the Doctor "It's my fault all of this is happening" and "I'm so useless I couldn't even die properly" and when he tries to explain who she is to Jackie, he gives Rose the baby but when she touches baby Rose damaging time even more the creatures get inside the church. The Doctor's caught too, dead, vanished, the Tardis key falling to the floor, and yes it's all her fault. Pete tells Rose that the Doctor really cared about her and didn't want her to go through it again, but he knew there was only one thing to do (wait, so to spare her a bit of pain he was prepared to allow humanity to be destroyed? What if Pete hadn't been smart enough? or decent enough?). Rose says "what are you talking about?" - "the car that should have killed me love" and he tells her that the Doctor knew and he knows it too, so he can be a dad now and do this for them. They hug and then he runs outside, running in front of that car and getting killed. The Doctor reappears, telling her "go to him, quick" and she holds his hand. None of them will remember those creatures or what happened, and only a bit of past has been changed. Jackie will tell little Rose about some stranger who kindly held his hand so he didn't die alone.
Pete=Shaun Dingwall
9-the empty child Details: The Tardis follows an object through space and time, some kind of universal red alert or something that of course ends up in London. Rose hears 'mummyy' and sees a child wearing a gas mask on a roof, so he goes to him. The Doctor goes asking around but it's wartime, so not the best time to go asking if something fell from the sky making a big boom.
When he sees that Rose's gone he picks up a cat and says "one day, just one day maybe, I'm gonna meet somebody who gets the whole don't-wander-off-thing", and then the Tardis telephone starts ringing. He's surprised: "how can you be ringing?" and a girl appears saying not to answer it, that it's not for him. The Doctor says that it's not even a real phone, it's not connected. When he answers he hears the same voice Rose heard saying "mummy? are you my mummy?". He follows the girl and sees that she steals food for homeless children, eating in houses left vacant during the raids, and the Doctor asks them "I wanna find a blonde in a union jack, I mean a specific one, I didn't just wake up this morning with a crave", but then that child in a mask comes knocking and Nancy closes all the doors. Doctor"it's never easy being the only child left out in the cold you know" - "I suppose you'd know?" - "I do actually, yes" and then she says "it's not exactly a child" and she says that he's 'empty' and he can make phones ring. Nancy and the children run away so when the Doctor opens the door there's nobody there. This whole thing started a month ago, when that thing fell from the sky, so she tells him that he needs to talk to the doctor first. In Albion hospital there's one doctor and hundreds of patients lying in bed with masks fused to the flesh. All patients are the same, with the same scar on the back of their right hand, like the empty child, like this doctor. Everyone who touched the first patient fell victim of the same plague, but they're not dead. Nancy's little brother Jamie was the first patient. In front of the Doctor's eyes, the doctor starts saying "mummy? are you my mummy?" and a masks appears on his face.
Rose is now hanging from a rope during a bomb attack, when she falls and she's saved with a light field, a tractor beam, by captain Jack Harkness. He tries to fool her with a psychic paper but she knows all about that trick already :) He has an invisible spaceship and he thinks now that she's a time-agent. They have champagne and dance in front of Big Ben's clock.. Rose and Jack go looking for the Doctor, and Jack calls him Mr Spock :p Rose:"what was I supposed to say? You don't have a name. Don't you ever get tired of Doctor? Doctor Who?" :lol: Jack says that he found that thing, it was empty, a space-ambulance, and he lured them there to try and sell it to them because he's a con-man. The Doctor says that human DNA is being rewritten.
The empty child locks Nancy in a room with him and at that moment all patients in the hospital stand up and move towards them...
10-the doctor dances The Doctor shouts "go to your room" and they all hear and they all go back, the patients returning to their beds, and the empty child walks out. The Doctor says "I'm really glad that worked, those would have been terrible last words" :lol:
so, Jack brought that piece of 'space junk' here so he could sell it? Planning to destroy it, blaming it on the bombs...
Jack has a sonic blaster, 51st century, and the Doctor says he's been to those factories once, basically he destroyed it and now there are banana factories instead "I like bananas, bananas are good".
Nancy's caught by the family but she knows some secrets so they let her go.
The Doctor senses something when neither Jack or Rose do, and he says "funny little human brains, how do you get around in those things?" - Rose:"when he's stressed he likes to insult species" :-p
Being sent to his room, the empty child came back to the hospital and now like him all the patients are after them. Jack asks about the Doctor's weapons and he's reluctant to say that he's only got a screwdriver... it was supposed to be a funny scene but I didn't find it funny, only a bit embarrassing and rather disrespectful, that screwdriver helped him a lot! All of a sudden Jack disappears and Rose says "why is it always the great looking ones who do that?" - Doctor"I'm making an effort not to be insulted" :lol: but Jack contacts them, he teleported to his ship and tries to help. He teleports them too when they were about to dance together...
Jack was a time agent, but they stole two years of his memories.
Nancy is locked with a contaminated soldier, and when he changes she sings to make him fall asleep until the Doctor frees her. When Jack touches the space-ambulance, all the empty people are drawn there. When Jack opened it he saw it empty but it wasn't, there were lots and lots of nanogenes ready to heal everything, and first thing they found was a dead child, Nancy's Jamie, wearing a gas mask and they revived him but they had no idea what humans look like still they followed their programming and kept doing it, kept 'healing' everybody making them all like the child.
Nancy is Jamie's mum, she kept it a secret because she was just a teenager when she had him, and now the Doctor encourages her to tell Jamie the truth. She tells him and she hugs him and the nanogenes surround them both, and the Doctor starts hoping: "come on, give me a day like this, give me this one": the nanogenes recognized "the superior information, the parent DNA" and instead of changing Nancy they changed Jamie back. The Doctor sends nanogenes to the other 'infected', saying "everybody lives Rose, just this once everybody lives". I liked that doctor a lot, and the scene when a woman went to him saying that her leg grew back "I had one leg" - "there is a war on, is it possible you miscounted?" :lol:
Jack took the bomb that was supposed to explode there away with his ship but now he can't move it, it'll explode in three minutes. When he asks "exactly, out of 100, how dead am I?", the computer says "termination of captain Jack Harkness in under two minutes, 100% probability". Jack was sentenced to death once, but instead he woke up in bed with two of his executioners... but of course now the Tardis appears to save him. It ends with the Doctor and Rose dancing. The 'I can dance' is my least favorite scene, rather incredibly since I love dancing :-/
These are two parts of the same story written by Steven Moffat. It's the story during the war, with the homeless children, and the one with the mask going around asking "are you my mummy?", and of course is also the episode that introduces Captain Jack Harkness, and we see right away he likes to flirt with anything that breaths, basically. It's funny to see the Doctor jealous of how Rose seems to see him as a sort of hero, and is also lovely to have her saying 'but Doctor Who?'.
The only thing I didn't like was that sort of dance, it seemed almost unnatural, I can't explain why it seemed to me out of place and character. I understand why he was happy, finally one episode where he gets to save them all! And in a Moffat episode too!! Maybe that's why he decided 'from now on I'll kill as many as I can'=to compensate!
11-boom town, is a strange one. It starts out so nicely, with the Doctor and Rose travelling back to Earth with Jack and meeting Micky, eating together and chatting, when they find that one of the Slitheen they thought were all dead is still alive and has a terrible plan in mind. The Doctor sort of arrests her and plans to bring her back to her home-planet, but has to deal with the fact that he would be bringing her to her death. There are long chats between them about this. It shows that the doctor's changed, now he's not so quick on killing the enemies, and this change will bring him to find a new solution to the problem, a merciful solution much more doctor-like. I liked this episode, it was slower than the others, more philosophical, but well done.
12-13 are Bad wolf and Parting of the ways. The last two episodes of this series. The three of them, being Jack part of the team now, travel to the future, to find it in trouble. Daleks are everywhere, lots and lots of them! The Doctor can't believe it, he thought they were extinct, but he can only go on fighting, even if it means he'll have to sacrifice himself to destroy them. They all fight together, Jack is apparently killed, and the Doctor knowing how it will end tricks Rose and sends her back home , but she won't accept it. Her mother understands why he did it and is grateful, but she's not going to leave the Doctor alone, she's not letting it go, and is so desperate to help him that Micky will help her open up the Tardis so she can look inside and absorb that energy that will allow her to go back to the future ( :-p)
It shows what good character is Micky, even if sometimes is annoying I never thought he was an idiot or a coward, he is good and brave. I remember at the start when he said he wasn't going with them because it was too much for him, and I thought that even if it could seem the coward thing to do it actually was a brave thing to say to the man that is stealing away the girl he still loves so much.
Anyway, Micky helps her, and she goes back to the Doctor and saves the day. I like her voice when she kills the daleks. It couldn't be helped that the doctor helped her, taking all the energy she had absorbed in him with a kiss, so she's saved. There was no other solution, otherwise later on we would have said, why don't you use the Tardis' energy??? Well, because it's not meant to be used like that, and it kills you. In this case, it killed the Doctor. I was sorry to see him go, even if I started watching it waiting for him to go, it was because I didn't know the character yet.
But then David Tennant appeared, so handsome, and then he smiled. And I even forgot who I was.
Men in black 2 - nice, but the first was better
We meet again J, aka Will Smith, 5 years after we left him, 5 years after K left him, and now he's having problems with his new partners, and has gained himself the reputation of someone who would neuralyze everyone: "I'm very sorry, please don't neuralyze me!!".
To be honest, his actual partner Agent T aka Patrick Warburton, deserved it because he was a moron, and apparently the girl from the first movie wanted to go back to the morgue, but that's okay, I didn't like her very much. No, this movie is not as good as the first one, not at all. It's a big caos, it's noisy, and the baddy is Serleena (aka Lara Flynn Boyle), because the alien chose as a human camouflage a picture from a Victoria's secret campain... Come on, please, give me back the Edgar-suit!!! And if that wasn't enough, she goes around with a guy with a second head sticking out from the back! Apparently he's there to help her, but aside from the initial information, what help is he really during the whole film??? Maybe he was there as the funny 'sidekick', only he wasn't funny.
On the positive side we have Bruno the car, who actually does nothing but is so cute, if you like cats, and I do, and Frank the dog (well, more or less, I like dogs, he has a sweet funny face, but I so wished he would just shut up!)
Rosario Dawson is another good thing, she's pretty and good, really good choice. I could really understood J when he didn't neuralyze her, after she understood how lonely he must be ("I'll flash you another time" ... wait, what???), also she's so pretty that Frank gave the right description of her "She's not even my species and I'm attracted" . The most important thing though is that K comes back!! Tommy Lee Jones, yeah!!!
He's working as a postmaster, so comfortable because "just about everybody who works in a post office is an alien", his wife has left him because he couldn't adjust to a normal life even when he doesn't remember the other one he had.
Everyone at headquarters is thrilled to have him back, apparently he's "the most feared human in the universe", and for them he's like a legend, and this would of course be very well if it wasn't that he's been gone for 5 years, not 20!!! Is everybody new in the office???
Anyway, all he needs now is to be de-neuralyzed, and to put on "the last suit you'll ever wear... again"
Although it's not clear what J is talking about, when he goes on with old memories about the two of them together... they worked together for like two days or something!!
At the end ... SPOILERS if you care about that, you've been warned.
As I was saying, at the end we find out that he was in love with the alien Princess of Zarthan Lauranna, and that the Zarthans light everyone's looking for is Laura, her daughter =Rosario Dawson. Is she his daughter too?? It's not clear, he just says "you're as beautiful as your mother". It's nice to believe he's the father, because he's so sweet when he looks at her, so many people say it's implied, but not sure.
I think the answer to that question needs more data, like who was the light before she was born?? Was her mother the light?
Him being the father would mean that when Lauranna came here for protection she spent here some time, having all the time to tell the truth to K, and having the time to fall in love with each other. It would also mean that at that time Laura wasn't born, so the light was someone else, maybe Lauranna herself, so Lauranna stayed here enough time to fall in love, get pregnant, have her baby, and then unfortunately she was shot by Serleena but the light was already someone else and they had wisely hidden her somewhere. Then K erased his memories of her and that is why in the first movie he thought of his childhood girlfriend and not of her.
Yeah, it works. Awww K has a daughter...
In this movie there's a cameo of Peter Graves narrating the tv-version of the Lauranna story, and of Michael Jackson, who would very much like to be one of them, and if you look at the credits at the end it looks like he got his wish, because he's listed as "Agent M" . In the credits we also see Barry Sonnenfeld as the neuralyzed father, and we can hear Will Smith singing about the men in black saving the world in "Black suits comin' (nod ya head)"
To be honest, his actual partner Agent T aka Patrick Warburton, deserved it because he was a moron, and apparently the girl from the first movie wanted to go back to the morgue, but that's okay, I didn't like her very much. No, this movie is not as good as the first one, not at all. It's a big caos, it's noisy, and the baddy is Serleena (aka Lara Flynn Boyle), because the alien chose as a human camouflage a picture from a Victoria's secret campain... Come on, please, give me back the Edgar-suit!!! And if that wasn't enough, she goes around with a guy with a second head sticking out from the back! Apparently he's there to help her, but aside from the initial information, what help is he really during the whole film??? Maybe he was there as the funny 'sidekick', only he wasn't funny.
On the positive side we have Bruno the car, who actually does nothing but is so cute, if you like cats, and I do, and Frank the dog (well, more or less, I like dogs, he has a sweet funny face, but I so wished he would just shut up!)
Rosario Dawson is another good thing, she's pretty and good, really good choice. I could really understood J when he didn't neuralyze her, after she understood how lonely he must be ("I'll flash you another time" ... wait, what???), also she's so pretty that Frank gave the right description of her "She's not even my species and I'm attracted" . The most important thing though is that K comes back!! Tommy Lee Jones, yeah!!!
He's working as a postmaster, so comfortable because "just about everybody who works in a post office is an alien", his wife has left him because he couldn't adjust to a normal life even when he doesn't remember the other one he had.
Everyone at headquarters is thrilled to have him back, apparently he's "the most feared human in the universe", and for them he's like a legend, and this would of course be very well if it wasn't that he's been gone for 5 years, not 20!!! Is everybody new in the office???
Anyway, all he needs now is to be de-neuralyzed, and to put on "the last suit you'll ever wear... again"
Although it's not clear what J is talking about, when he goes on with old memories about the two of them together... they worked together for like two days or something!!
At the end ... SPOILERS if you care about that, you've been warned.
As I was saying, at the end we find out that he was in love with the alien Princess of Zarthan Lauranna, and that the Zarthans light everyone's looking for is Laura, her daughter =Rosario Dawson. Is she his daughter too?? It's not clear, he just says "you're as beautiful as your mother". It's nice to believe he's the father, because he's so sweet when he looks at her, so many people say it's implied, but not sure.
I think the answer to that question needs more data, like who was the light before she was born?? Was her mother the light?
Him being the father would mean that when Lauranna came here for protection she spent here some time, having all the time to tell the truth to K, and having the time to fall in love with each other. It would also mean that at that time Laura wasn't born, so the light was someone else, maybe Lauranna herself, so Lauranna stayed here enough time to fall in love, get pregnant, have her baby, and then unfortunately she was shot by Serleena but the light was already someone else and they had wisely hidden her somewhere. Then K erased his memories of her and that is why in the first movie he thought of his childhood girlfriend and not of her.
Yeah, it works. Awww K has a daughter...
In this movie there's a cameo of Peter Graves narrating the tv-version of the Lauranna story, and of Michael Jackson, who would very much like to be one of them, and if you look at the credits at the end it looks like he got his wish, because he's listed as "Agent M" . In the credits we also see Barry Sonnenfeld as the neuralyzed father, and we can hear Will Smith singing about the men in black saving the world in "Black suits comin' (nod ya head)"
Men in black - love it!
I still love it, so funny. It has a good start, with the dragonfly and the men in black coming to catch some alien.. and K is so nonchalant, you know, 'just another day at work' nothing more :-D He's adorable. Tommy Lee Jones of course :-) K's old partner makes it clear that he's tired of this job when he talks about stars being beautiful and about how they don't look at them anymore. K will then neuralyze him. Then we meet James, aka Will Smith, who will take his place. He had made himself noticed when he was in pursuit of a criminal (he's a cop) which turns out to be an alien scared to death of what's about to come "He's coming. He'll kill me" "you pissing everybody off today, huh?" :lol:
The bad guy comes from the sky and takes the identity of Vincent D'Onofrio's character, which is to say that there was this Edgar who was just an asshole like many on the planet, all of a sudden something falls out of the sky and he goes looking. He hears a voice ordering him to put down his rifle, and he says "you can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers" - "your proposal is acceptable" is the answer the alien gives him before killing him, probably eating him, and wearing his skin as camouflage, so now it goes around wearing an Edgar-suit :pmsl: I can't help it, every time I see Vincent D'Onofrio I always think Edgar-suit!!
Also, it's so funny when his wife asks what was it, and he says "Sugar" because he wants some, and she says "I've never seen sugar do that" :lol: It's also funny the first time K and James meet, and K asks him what did the alien say, and J says "yeah, he said the world was coming to an end!" - "Did he say when?" eheh K is so cool!! It was a really good scene when the spaceship with the bug at the end is falling towards them and they don't move, and it stops right in front of them.
Did you like the cat? Wasn't it beautiful??? Well, if you like cats, that is. I do.
Being an american film I guess they couldn't avoid jokes like "Elvis is not dead. He just went home" ...
:-D I love this film. I've seen it at least three times, but probably more, and it hasn't lost anything !
The bad guy comes from the sky and takes the identity of Vincent D'Onofrio's character, which is to say that there was this Edgar who was just an asshole like many on the planet, all of a sudden something falls out of the sky and he goes looking. He hears a voice ordering him to put down his rifle, and he says "you can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers" - "your proposal is acceptable" is the answer the alien gives him before killing him, probably eating him, and wearing his skin as camouflage, so now it goes around wearing an Edgar-suit :pmsl: I can't help it, every time I see Vincent D'Onofrio I always think Edgar-suit!!
Also, it's so funny when his wife asks what was it, and he says "Sugar" because he wants some, and she says "I've never seen sugar do that" :lol: It's also funny the first time K and James meet, and K asks him what did the alien say, and J says "yeah, he said the world was coming to an end!" - "Did he say when?" eheh K is so cool!! It was a really good scene when the spaceship with the bug at the end is falling towards them and they don't move, and it stops right in front of them.
Did you like the cat? Wasn't it beautiful??? Well, if you like cats, that is. I do.
Being an american film I guess they couldn't avoid jokes like "Elvis is not dead. He just went home" ...
:-D I love this film. I've seen it at least three times, but probably more, and it hasn't lost anything !
giovedì 21 agosto 2014
Red Riding Hood - 2011 version of the fairytale
A modern version of the fairytale, nothing more. Not exactly a children fairytale, maybe, since there are killings are torture, but not a horror version either.
There is a village that has been offering animals to a werewolf every full moon for years now, and everything seemed to be going well, until one morning Lucille is found dead, killed by the werewolf! Father August has the "brilliant idea" (bad, bad idea!) to call for Father Solomon, a real fanatic who uses the methods of an inquisitor. Lucille was Valerie's younger sister, and Valerie is our protagonist. She's never called Red Riding Hood in the movie, but all the other crucial points are there: she wears a nice red cloak, the granmother lives alone in the woods, and Valerie walks to her house with a basket in hand, although there isn't any food in there. In a dream there is also the famous scene of the big eyes/ears/teeth her granma has. But let's move on.
Valerie is in love with Peter, who to me seems the only one not to have a French name. Unfortunately her family promised her to Henry because he has a better position and therefore more money, and I sort of expected an older man, or an ugly man, or maybe just an evil one... instead we see a blonde, tall guy with gentle looks who apparently has always been madly in love with her, and I was like : that's better than Peter! Forget that cold fish of your boyfriend! But she doesn't.
Then Father Solomon arrives, the werevolves hunter, obsessed by them because apparently he married one, and had to kill her to protect his two daughters... yep, daughters. That surprised me a lot, but after all that's not Italy, and maybe they do things differently there.
Finally we see the wolf, when he comes to ruin the party: literally, they were having a big party because they thought they had already killed it, but he came to prove that they were wrong by killing a few people, but not Valerie! He stops in front of her, and while her friend only hears scaring noises, Valerie can clearly hear words, and the wolf wants her. I guess they wanted us to suspect the two boys, but I never believed that.
SPOILERS.
I had thought of the father and the grandmother as possible suspects, but I discarded the idea because I thought it didn't make sense. I mean, they were her family, she trusted them, it would have been easy for them to convince her to go away together without raising suspicions, and I still think this is the major problem with the film. At the end her father doesn't force her right away, he talks to her, but obviously she's already scared (or maybe disgusted..), knowing that he had killer her sister. Not to frightened to react, since she's the one that kills him, but still she's not going to think 'oh dear father, it was you?'...
That didn't make sense to me, it would have been more reasonable if he had talked to her in his human form, convincing her to go away with him, and only then try to explain the situation? The whole thing of his message, intercepted by Lucille and their meeting when he was a wolf was a mere excuse, a way for him to understand that she wasn't really his daughter because she wasn't able to understand him. Of course at that point only a stinky piece of shit like him would react killing her, as if all the years spent in the same house, calling her his daughter didn't mean a thing!
Anyway, as I was saying, it didn't really make sense.
Gary Oldman as Father Solomon was good as usual, but I really disliked the character, for what he was and what he did, torturing and killing innocent boys for what he thinks is the greater good... another stinky piece I'd say...
There is a village that has been offering animals to a werewolf every full moon for years now, and everything seemed to be going well, until one morning Lucille is found dead, killed by the werewolf! Father August has the "brilliant idea" (bad, bad idea!) to call for Father Solomon, a real fanatic who uses the methods of an inquisitor. Lucille was Valerie's younger sister, and Valerie is our protagonist. She's never called Red Riding Hood in the movie, but all the other crucial points are there: she wears a nice red cloak, the granmother lives alone in the woods, and Valerie walks to her house with a basket in hand, although there isn't any food in there. In a dream there is also the famous scene of the big eyes/ears/teeth her granma has. But let's move on.
Valerie is in love with Peter, who to me seems the only one not to have a French name. Unfortunately her family promised her to Henry because he has a better position and therefore more money, and I sort of expected an older man, or an ugly man, or maybe just an evil one... instead we see a blonde, tall guy with gentle looks who apparently has always been madly in love with her, and I was like : that's better than Peter! Forget that cold fish of your boyfriend! But she doesn't.
Then Father Solomon arrives, the werevolves hunter, obsessed by them because apparently he married one, and had to kill her to protect his two daughters... yep, daughters. That surprised me a lot, but after all that's not Italy, and maybe they do things differently there.
Finally we see the wolf, when he comes to ruin the party: literally, they were having a big party because they thought they had already killed it, but he came to prove that they were wrong by killing a few people, but not Valerie! He stops in front of her, and while her friend only hears scaring noises, Valerie can clearly hear words, and the wolf wants her. I guess they wanted us to suspect the two boys, but I never believed that.
SPOILERS.
I had thought of the father and the grandmother as possible suspects, but I discarded the idea because I thought it didn't make sense. I mean, they were her family, she trusted them, it would have been easy for them to convince her to go away together without raising suspicions, and I still think this is the major problem with the film. At the end her father doesn't force her right away, he talks to her, but obviously she's already scared (or maybe disgusted..), knowing that he had killer her sister. Not to frightened to react, since she's the one that kills him, but still she's not going to think 'oh dear father, it was you?'...
That didn't make sense to me, it would have been more reasonable if he had talked to her in his human form, convincing her to go away with him, and only then try to explain the situation? The whole thing of his message, intercepted by Lucille and their meeting when he was a wolf was a mere excuse, a way for him to understand that she wasn't really his daughter because she wasn't able to understand him. Of course at that point only a stinky piece of shit like him would react killing her, as if all the years spent in the same house, calling her his daughter didn't mean a thing!
Anyway, as I was saying, it didn't really make sense.
Gary Oldman as Father Solomon was good as usual, but I really disliked the character, for what he was and what he did, torturing and killing innocent boys for what he thinks is the greater good... another stinky piece I'd say...
Once upon a time season 1 - this was the best one
I really liked this first season of OUAT, I liked everything but was really gripped to the show only at the end of episode one, when we have a few seconds of Mr. Gold, when he hears Emma's name and suddenly remembers, and you can tell by his face, and most of all from the way he looks at Ruby before leaving, like he's really seeing her for the first time, like something's changed.
There are many reasons why I loved this series, and if you may have already guessed that one was Mr. Gold, alias Robert Carlyle, it's not the only one. I liked the fact as soon as you could link a Storybrook person to a fairy-tale character, you basically knew that character's soul, and it felt to me as if I was in the privileged position to know more about them than they did, and therefore able to think 'you are surprised you did that, but I'm not, because I know who you really are'.
I also loved how every story was loyal to the fairytales and yet somehow very different. Not a big surprise they made Red Riding Hood a werewolf, but a damn good episode. Not the only one, they made an episode for Jiminy Cricket, one for the Queen's mirror, one for the Queen's past, one for SnowWhite's hunter, one for Hansel & Gretel (I'm sorry we never heard from them again, there was no need to call back all the actors, but I think they could have mentioned how they were doing at least!), one for the Mad Hatter and many others.
Episode "skin deep" was wonderful, the Beauty&the beast fairytale has always been my favourite, and this episode was really beautiful, I loved every second of it. I must remember that when they are talking, Belle says "I've had a couple of months to look around", which does NOT mean she's been there for 2 months, like I thought at first, and this is important for future scenes. It probably needed some time before they were in enough good terms that she was allowed to do and go wherever she wanted to look around. Also, the way they talk to and look at each other in the curtains-scene, I mean she seems pretty enough comfortable, she asks him questions and replies back with no fear, and he doesn't get angry but is instead intrigued. This probably means that she's been there enough time that things have already changed between them. I must also say how thrilled I was the first time I saw this. Belle with her yellow dress, and her blue/white dress, her father saying "you can't go with this beast ", and the rose, and the chipped cup... I love it so much. It is kind of strange that I was all aww while she was cutting the rose and I knew that that rose had been Gaston,,,
Not sure about which world is Frankenstein's world, certainly not this one, and despite what he thinks about magic versus science, his world must know magic, since they can go back and forth from it.
There are many important characters, but of course the most important are Snow and her prince, the evil queen , Emma and their child Henry, and Mr. Gold.
The costumes are amazing, a big big part of the success, I should think, because every episode there is at least one costume that leaves you speechless. The Queen's outfits are all beautiful, but also Snow's coat when she's found by Red, Belle's yellow dress, and Cinderella's dress... so so many, they were incredibly beautiful.
All the actors are good for their role, I really like them. Jennifer Morrison as Emma is really good, from the first episode I liked her a lot, from the moment she blew the candle. Ginnifer Goodwin is a very good SnowWhite, Lana Parrilla as the evil queen is also perfect, beautiful and very good. Then there is Josh Dallas as Prince Charming, that apparently in real life married his Snow White, and now he and Ginnifer have a baby :-) Last is Robert Carlyle, simply amazing, I loved him more as Mr. Gold but also in Fairy Tale Land.
In desperate souls there is the story of how he became Rumplestinskin! Poor soul.
A very good season, I'm glad I bought it, because it's very good.
There are many reasons why I loved this series, and if you may have already guessed that one was Mr. Gold, alias Robert Carlyle, it's not the only one. I liked the fact as soon as you could link a Storybrook person to a fairy-tale character, you basically knew that character's soul, and it felt to me as if I was in the privileged position to know more about them than they did, and therefore able to think 'you are surprised you did that, but I'm not, because I know who you really are'.
I also loved how every story was loyal to the fairytales and yet somehow very different. Not a big surprise they made Red Riding Hood a werewolf, but a damn good episode. Not the only one, they made an episode for Jiminy Cricket, one for the Queen's mirror, one for the Queen's past, one for SnowWhite's hunter, one for Hansel & Gretel (I'm sorry we never heard from them again, there was no need to call back all the actors, but I think they could have mentioned how they were doing at least!), one for the Mad Hatter and many others.
Episode "skin deep" was wonderful, the Beauty&the beast fairytale has always been my favourite, and this episode was really beautiful, I loved every second of it. I must remember that when they are talking, Belle says "I've had a couple of months to look around", which does NOT mean she's been there for 2 months, like I thought at first, and this is important for future scenes. It probably needed some time before they were in enough good terms that she was allowed to do and go wherever she wanted to look around. Also, the way they talk to and look at each other in the curtains-scene, I mean she seems pretty enough comfortable, she asks him questions and replies back with no fear, and he doesn't get angry but is instead intrigued. This probably means that she's been there enough time that things have already changed between them. I must also say how thrilled I was the first time I saw this. Belle with her yellow dress, and her blue/white dress, her father saying "you can't go with this beast ", and the rose, and the chipped cup... I love it so much. It is kind of strange that I was all aww while she was cutting the rose and I knew that that rose had been Gaston,,,
Not sure about which world is Frankenstein's world, certainly not this one, and despite what he thinks about magic versus science, his world must know magic, since they can go back and forth from it.
There are many important characters, but of course the most important are Snow and her prince, the evil queen , Emma and their child Henry, and Mr. Gold.
The costumes are amazing, a big big part of the success, I should think, because every episode there is at least one costume that leaves you speechless. The Queen's outfits are all beautiful, but also Snow's coat when she's found by Red, Belle's yellow dress, and Cinderella's dress... so so many, they were incredibly beautiful.
All the actors are good for their role, I really like them. Jennifer Morrison as Emma is really good, from the first episode I liked her a lot, from the moment she blew the candle. Ginnifer Goodwin is a very good SnowWhite, Lana Parrilla as the evil queen is also perfect, beautiful and very good. Then there is Josh Dallas as Prince Charming, that apparently in real life married his Snow White, and now he and Ginnifer have a baby :-) Last is Robert Carlyle, simply amazing, I loved him more as Mr. Gold but also in Fairy Tale Land.
In desperate souls there is the story of how he became Rumplestinskin! Poor soul.
A very good season, I'm glad I bought it, because it's very good.
-Once upon a time 1x01 Pilot 3 May 2014
-Once upon a time 1x02 the thing you love most 3 May 2014Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
One of the best books ever, no doubt. I really love it, there's always something special about the way Agatha Christie writes, and this one if fantastic. Probably everyone knows the story, it's been many years and films have been made. Protagonist is my favourite character Hercule Poirot!! I'm always happy when he's in the story :-D
In this story we're told that he's just solved an important mistery that we'll never know about, but a series of circumstances make so that he's forced to leave immediately to return home and he finds a place on the Orient-Express, which strangely for the time of year was already full, but he found his friend Monsieur Bouc, the director of the company, willing to help him in any way, so Bouc finds a place for him! Fate, a passenger will later say! Yes, that word should make readers think! He finds himself in a compartment where there is a French conductor, a russian Princess, an italian man, four Americans : a woman, a private detective, the man-soon-to-be-killed and the male secretary of the victim; three English: the victim's valet, a colonel and a girl; a count and a countess from Hungary, a German maid and a swedish woman. It's full of people of different nationalities and different social positions, quite a peculiar situation.
As soon as Mr Ratchett is killed, and Poirot is called to investigate, he immediately finds evidence that this murder is connected to an old case, and realises that the dead man's name was a fake, and that he really was Cassetti, the evil man that years before kidnapped a little girl, Daisy Armstrong, and killed her, and the details of it, the fact that during all the time the family was in pain, and talking about ransom and all that, the girl had already been killed, not only outraged people everywhere, but destroyed more than one life. Daisy's parents died, and so did her nursemaid. Cassetti was caught but being very rich somehow was able to leave the country and change his name and disappear for a long time.
Critics of this books that I've heard say that it's impossible to arrive at the solution because we have no way of knowing all the details and all the people that were connected with the murder of the little girl. Well, that's true, but I don't agree that it's impossible to guess the solution, on the contrary, many things can point you to the solution. Not a detailed solution, of course, but a good solution nontheless.
SPOILERS just a warning, in case you haven't read it and don't want to know who did it... but really, is this possible? How? Never read the murder on the Orient-Express??? Come on!
Anyway.
It's impossible for us to guess who was the driver of the Armstrong family, who was the nurse or the governess... not so impossible at all to guess that all of them must have had a connection with the Armstrong case, or that the german maid was the cook (Poirot can spot a good cook anywhere, and lets us know), that colonel Arbuthnot was colonel Armstrong's friend. We are soon told, as Poirot goes on with his investigations, that Princess Dragomiroff was very fond of the family. Of course, it's not like you can spot the truth two pages after the murder occurs, you must have patience, and follow closely the investigations, and the depositions, and doing so (if you want) it is very much possible to guess enough of what's coming, because first thing first you learn that no one else but the people of the compartment could have done it, that the conductor was with some collegues, that the American secretary was with the English colonel, that the Italian man was with the English valet, and in the same way the alibi of all the other passengers are linked to one another, they are all the alibi of someone else... but someone must have done it, so if you want to stop and think, it's not impossible to ask yourself a little question. Since it appears that you can't pick a single person out of the crowd, and that at least two people were involved, because of the different injuries, and it is impossible to pick two people without suspecting of the others that are offering them an alibi, then what if they were all guilty? That's what Poirot must be thinking without telling us, because we see him starting to revealing connections to the Armstrong family. We hear of the love that Princess Dragomiroff had for them, and we heard her say "Fate" with that certain tone, at knowing that Poirot got on the train by luck. At that point, it didn't surprised me when other connections to the family were revealed, although the first time I read it I didn't know that you needed 12 people to make a jury, and had never thought of connecting the conductor to the case. It is very well possible, especially when it looks like the countess didn't have any part in it, because there is noone else, but I had not thought of connecting him too. I must admit, I could never do what Poirot does, stop and think for some minutes with his eyes closed, I simply go on reading, so of course I had not thought of many things, until Poirot revealed them, I'm talking about their true identities, but this book is special for his finale because not only reveals the truth, and takes your heart away with the words of little Daisy's grandmother, it was like I could see her and hear her, and my soul was in pain, and really sorry that Poirot had find out , but Poirot reveals two solutions, the truth and a better one that will not send to jail anyone of them.
I think it's fantastic, absolutely fantastic.
ITA assassinio sull'Orient-Express
In this story we're told that he's just solved an important mistery that we'll never know about, but a series of circumstances make so that he's forced to leave immediately to return home and he finds a place on the Orient-Express, which strangely for the time of year was already full, but he found his friend Monsieur Bouc, the director of the company, willing to help him in any way, so Bouc finds a place for him! Fate, a passenger will later say! Yes, that word should make readers think! He finds himself in a compartment where there is a French conductor, a russian Princess, an italian man, four Americans : a woman, a private detective, the man-soon-to-be-killed and the male secretary of the victim; three English: the victim's valet, a colonel and a girl; a count and a countess from Hungary, a German maid and a swedish woman. It's full of people of different nationalities and different social positions, quite a peculiar situation.
As soon as Mr Ratchett is killed, and Poirot is called to investigate, he immediately finds evidence that this murder is connected to an old case, and realises that the dead man's name was a fake, and that he really was Cassetti, the evil man that years before kidnapped a little girl, Daisy Armstrong, and killed her, and the details of it, the fact that during all the time the family was in pain, and talking about ransom and all that, the girl had already been killed, not only outraged people everywhere, but destroyed more than one life. Daisy's parents died, and so did her nursemaid. Cassetti was caught but being very rich somehow was able to leave the country and change his name and disappear for a long time.
Critics of this books that I've heard say that it's impossible to arrive at the solution because we have no way of knowing all the details and all the people that were connected with the murder of the little girl. Well, that's true, but I don't agree that it's impossible to guess the solution, on the contrary, many things can point you to the solution. Not a detailed solution, of course, but a good solution nontheless.
SPOILERS just a warning, in case you haven't read it and don't want to know who did it... but really, is this possible? How? Never read the murder on the Orient-Express??? Come on!
Anyway.
It's impossible for us to guess who was the driver of the Armstrong family, who was the nurse or the governess... not so impossible at all to guess that all of them must have had a connection with the Armstrong case, or that the german maid was the cook (Poirot can spot a good cook anywhere, and lets us know), that colonel Arbuthnot was colonel Armstrong's friend. We are soon told, as Poirot goes on with his investigations, that Princess Dragomiroff was very fond of the family. Of course, it's not like you can spot the truth two pages after the murder occurs, you must have patience, and follow closely the investigations, and the depositions, and doing so (if you want) it is very much possible to guess enough of what's coming, because first thing first you learn that no one else but the people of the compartment could have done it, that the conductor was with some collegues, that the American secretary was with the English colonel, that the Italian man was with the English valet, and in the same way the alibi of all the other passengers are linked to one another, they are all the alibi of someone else... but someone must have done it, so if you want to stop and think, it's not impossible to ask yourself a little question. Since it appears that you can't pick a single person out of the crowd, and that at least two people were involved, because of the different injuries, and it is impossible to pick two people without suspecting of the others that are offering them an alibi, then what if they were all guilty? That's what Poirot must be thinking without telling us, because we see him starting to revealing connections to the Armstrong family. We hear of the love that Princess Dragomiroff had for them, and we heard her say "Fate" with that certain tone, at knowing that Poirot got on the train by luck. At that point, it didn't surprised me when other connections to the family were revealed, although the first time I read it I didn't know that you needed 12 people to make a jury, and had never thought of connecting the conductor to the case. It is very well possible, especially when it looks like the countess didn't have any part in it, because there is noone else, but I had not thought of connecting him too. I must admit, I could never do what Poirot does, stop and think for some minutes with his eyes closed, I simply go on reading, so of course I had not thought of many things, until Poirot revealed them, I'm talking about their true identities, but this book is special for his finale because not only reveals the truth, and takes your heart away with the words of little Daisy's grandmother, it was like I could see her and hear her, and my soul was in pain, and really sorry that Poirot had find out , but Poirot reveals two solutions, the truth and a better one that will not send to jail anyone of them.
I think it's fantastic, absolutely fantastic.
ITA assassinio sull'Orient-Express
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