Sunday, June 16, 2013

Doctor Who: 1x04 "Aliens of London" & 1x05 "World War III"

[Note to Self: Have episodes in queue so when emergencies crop up the blog can still be updated.]

Welcome to the fourth episode review for Fandom Approved, Bechdel Tested.  I’ll be starting with a rewatch of Doctor Who.  In each review, there will be spoilers for the episode reviewed and all previous (obviously); any spoilers for future episodes will be highlight-to-read or under a “Read More” bar.

Come back at 3:30 today for the regularly scheduled episode review: “Dalek.”

DOCTOR WHO REWATCH: SERIES ONE, EPISODE FOUR: “THE ALIENS OF LONDON”

Doctor Who: 1x04: “The Aliens of London” Written by Russell T Davis

The Summary:
The Doctor once again gets it wrong when landing the TARDIS; instead of returning Rose to twelve hours after the events of the pilot, he returns her to twelve months after the events of the pilot.  Her mother, Jackie, has been obviously desperate in searching for her missing daughter.  Rose and the Doctor try to explain it off as “just traveling” and that Rose meant to call but forgot.  But then, an alien spaceship crashes through Big Ben and into the Thames!  While trying to escape dealing with the “domestics” between Rose, Jackie, and Mickey (who had been accused of murdering Rose), the Doctor figures out that the crash landing was faked, as was the “alien” thought to be the pilot.  Meanwhile, the Prime Minister (either a Tony Blair fill-in or Tony Blair himself) has gone missing, and some random people in the British government are put in charge.  Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North, continuously tries to get into see them but is put off.  She is the first to discover the acting Prime Minister and his lackeys are the real aliens.  When Jackie discovers that the Doctor is in fact an alien, she calls the police.  Instead of taking the Doctor into custody, the police escort the Doctor and Rose to Downing St to help decide the best actions for Great Britain to take.  The Doctor figures out that the people in charge are the real threat until it’s too late and everyone’s getting electrocuted while Rose and Harriet Jones are trapped in a room with another alien and Jackie is being attacked by yet another.  This episode has the third reference to Bad Wolf.

The Women:
Rose, Jackie, Harriet Jones, Margaret Blaine/Blon Fel Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen, Dr. Toshiko Sato    

The Conversations:
1. Rose and Jackie: Rose appears in her living room, thinking she’s been gone for only twelve hours, when for her mother, it’s been a whole year.  They reunite with tears on Jackie’s part and confusion on Rose’s.  The rating: 2

2. Rose and Jackie: After talking with the police, Jackie drags Rose into the kitchen and pleads with her to explain what happened.  The rating: 2

3. Harriet and Rose: Knowing that the acting Prime Minister is an alien and that the Doctor is an expert on aliens, Harriet offers to keep Rose company and asks her if the Doctor can help them.  The conversation is completely about the Doctor, the rating: 0

4. Harriet and Rose: Harriet brings Rose to the council chamber, where she explains what happened with the aliens.  The rating: 1

The Woman to Woman Quote of the Episode:
“Did you think about me at all?” – Jackie Tyler (to Rose Tyler)

I love the whole Jackie-Rose relationship and Jackie’s worry and love for Rose in these scenes are just heartbreaking.

The Tally:
Episode 1x03 Total: 5
Series 1 Total: 13
9th Doctor Total: 13
Rose as Companion Total: 13
Russell T Davis Era Total: 13

DOCTOR WHO REWATCH: SERIES ONE, EPISODE FIVE: “WORLD WAR III”

Doctor Who: 1x05: “World War III” Written by Russell T Davis

The Summary:
Picking up where “Aliens of London” left off, the Doctor is being electrocuted, Jackie is being attacked, and Rose and Harriet are being pursued by an unmasked alien.  The Doctor rips off the name tag that is electrocuting him and sticks it on one of the aliens, which magically electrocutes all the aliens at once, allowing Rose, Harriet, and Jackie to escape.  Jackie and Mickey hide from the aliens in Mickey’s flat while Rose, Harriet, and the Doctor lead two chases around Downing St which eventually collide and end with the three trapped, but safe, in the Prime Minister’s cabinet room.  Using a conference call with Jackie and Mickey, the Doctor manages to figure out the best way to defeat the aliens one-on-one: vinegar given that they’re prone to calcium decay.  Though that saves Jackie and Mickey, it can’t work on the large scale, so the Doctor must figure something else out.  He, Jackie, and eventually Harriet debate whether to launch a missile at Downing St to kill all the aliens (something that was actually Rose’s suggestion several minutes before).  Harriet Jones, being the only elected official in the conversation, takes responsibility and commands Mickey, who has hacked into the Royal Navy’s system, to launch a missile at them.  Rose gets the idea to ride out the blast by hiding in a cupboard, the walls of which are lined with three inches of steel.  They indeed manage to survive, and Harriet Jones immediately becomes a media darling, explaining everything that happened to the public.  At home, Jackie tries to make peace with the Doctor and Rose by cooking for them, but the Doctor gets Rose to run off with him before tea.  While Jackie begs Rose to stay, Mickey tells the Doctor that he’s too scared to go with them but doesn’t want Rose to know.  In the end, Rose and the Doctor disappear in the TARDIS, leaving Jackie and Mickey standing in the street.

The Women:
Rose, Jackie, Harriet Jones, Margaret Blaine/Blon Fel Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen

The Conversations:
1. Rose and Jackie: At the end of the crisis, Jackie decides she must accept the Doctor into her life if she wants to keep Rose around, so she plans with Rose to cook tea for them all.  The rating: 0

2. Rose and Jackie: Jackie begs Rose to stay with her, promising to make changes to make life better for them, but Rose explains that she is not leaving because of Jackie but because the universe is too beautiful to stay away from.  Though the Doctor is not actually discussed, he and Mickey are standing nearby and the conversation is obviously about the Doctor, the rating: 0.5

The Woman to Woman Quote of the Episode:
“I’ll get a proper job; I’ll work weekends; I’ll pass my tests, and if Jim comes around again, I’ll say ‘no’” – Jackie Tyler (to Rose Tyler)

“If you saw it out there, you’d never stay home.” – Rose Tyler (to Jackie Tyler)

Have I mentioned yet how much I adore the Jackie-Rose relationship?  Even though she understands she can’t keep Rose with her, she still desperately tries.  And Rose, instead of blowing her off, does her best to comfort and explain things to her.

The Tally:
Episode 1x05 Total: 0.5
Series 1 Total: 13.5
9th Doctor Total: 13.5
Rose as Companion Total: 13.5
Russell T Davis Era Total: 13.5

The Education of an Ignorant American:
So, this is my interpretation of Jackie Tyler, and I’m just wondering how correct it actually is.  Please let me know in the comments.

As I understand it, Jackie and Rose live on an “estate” which is similar to the American system of public/subsidized housing, or “the projects.”  Now, in American media, there are certain clichéd, offensive, and downright untrue ideas presented about the people who live in this type of housing.  Here are just a few… Idea one: people on welfare are lazy, unemployed-because-they-choose-to-be leeches.  Idea two:  poor, single mothers are sluts and terrible mothers.  Idea three: people are only in the situation they are in because they choose to be.

And at first, Jackie seems to be a big ball of these stereotypes, but as she’s developed further, she obviously subverts some of them, but others are preserved, mainly the amount of men she seems to be/have been involved with and her lack of employment.  And I don’t know exactly how I feel about all of these factors, but I do want to know, at least, how similar a British interpretation of her lifestyle is.

For Further Discussion:  Motherhood in Doctor Who
No Spoilers beyond these episodes


So how mothers and mother-daughter relationships are portrayed are one of my favorite things ever (as if you haven’t figured that out yet), so I’ll probably talk a lot about mothers while writing these reviews for Doctor Who.

Particularly in this episode, motherhood really seems to be linked to female authority.  Which is cool because yay moms but also problematic because oh hey women don’t have to treat you like they’re your mother to gain your respect.

So, Jackie obviously is a mother and acts very motherly in this episode in terms of how she demands respect and answers.  But her authority is mostly ignored by the people who really do owe her explanations – Rose and the Doctor.

Then, there’s Harriet, who kinda subverts and mocks the idea.  She acts somewhat motherly to Ganesh in order to get him to treat her sympathetically and let her speak to the acting Prime Minister.

The alien inside the Margaret Blaine body-suit also uses motherly language in a very creepy way when hunting Rose and Harriet, saying things like “come to me, let me kiss you better.”

And, of course, Rose treats her mother like a child when she wants to get her way and exert control over a situation.

I don’t have any particularly unified thoughts over what it all adds up to, but I thought I’d point out what I took from the episode on the subject and ask for your opinions.


So… comments?

4 comments:

  1. jackie is employed, she's a mobile hairdresser!

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  2. Thanks! I thought I remembered that being the case, but I couldn't remember if it was canon or fanon, and the featured quote led me to believe she absolutely was not employed.

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  3. So - I had a thought about this episode and representation, unrelated to the axes of representation covered by this blog. Nonetheless, I think it's useful to the conversation:

    The Slitheen's imposture as humans requiring them to pose as fat humans is an *intensely* uncomfortable thing. For one thing, they check off a lot of stereotypes; and more irritatingly, the scenes of the Slitheen rejoicing in being "naked" seem to be actively mocking fat-positive rhetoric in a manner I found very meanspirited.

    Where this intersects with the general conversation about representation, though - is that 100% of the fat people in this episode are Slitheen. There's no "spot the alien" game here. Fat = Slitheen = greedy/evil/disgusting alien. It draws a lot of attention to the general lack of anyone not-thin in the show that a body feature as common as fat can signify so strongly as "alien." I mean, if we had just one fat person in the entire two-parter who *wasn't* secretly a Slitheen...which I don't think we got, even among the extras.

    So, interesting study in the difference between "EVERY fat person is evil" vs. "some of the fat people are secretly evil."

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    1. Yes! That is an excellent point. Although I tend to applaud the varied representation in Davies' Doctor Who run, you're completely right that we really don't get to see good representation of people who don't meet specific standards of beauty - particularly when it comes to weight.

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