Human Nature

[dc]

Unexpectedly, one of the highlights of the weekend was Doctor Who. At last, eight episodes in, an episode that felt like Who, and which I was inclined to watch again. I was beginning to think the whole series would be a dud. Martha is still irritating and poorly characterised. When Matron said she thought she knew a lot more about concussion than Martha, I had to remind myself that Martha is supposed to be a medical student (not that a medical student would necessarily know a lot about concussion...). I repeat, never met a medical student remotely like Martha.

Mostly, though, this was good. Interesting continuity references (pictures of McGann, Hartnell, McCoy, Baker and Davison, I think, plus the slightly superfluous musical reference to “Remembrance of the Daleks”), with the namechecks of Sydney (Newman) and Verity (Lambert) as Mr. Smith’s parents. One or two slightly false touches: Matron talking about another war; that, surely, is an expression which would fit the period between the two World Wars, but not before the First. I would have thought it more accurate if she had talked about going to war.

Also, I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure machine guns (cutting-edge military technology) were not generally available for use by schoolboys. Would the disparity between well-armed troops and assegai-wielding tribesmen from the Dark Continent have really been so hard for the audience to grasp if they had been shooting rifles?

I am unsure about life in an English village, but is (was) it usual for them to have annual dances in November?

Still, a good one. I hope they do not blow it in part two.

Comments

[wibbble]

I found that the whole thing was let down by the parody-like acting of the guy playing the possessed schoolboy.

[tanngrisnir.livejournal.com]

It was a bit over the top, certainly, but it was nowhere near as bad as the laryngitic girl in “Fear Her” or a lot of the acting we have seen so far this series. A black mark, certainly, but still a pretty good episode, I thought.

[wibbble]

I don't know - it just particularly bothered me and stopped me from suspending disbelief, particularly in the scene in the woods.

[tanngrisnir.livejournal.com]

That was his worst scene by far, yes.

But, to be honest, I have given up hoping for an episode which allows complete suspension of disbelief.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

1913's close enough to the BoreWore (as the One True Histroy Book calls it), or the whole series of Imperial border skirmishes fought "with Maxim gun and Nordenfelt" that "another war" could have been merely something minor like the Ashanti expedition or another Afghan war: no-one really expected anything like the pan-European conflagration that we know now was just round the corner.

As for machine guns, yes - the then-OTC training included at least some machinegun practice. But it would probably have been on a termly "Field day" or at annual camp.

[tanngrisnir.livejournal.com]

Interesting; I can see something like that being used on certain occasions, it makes more sense than a machine gun being part of the school's equipment.

The frequency of relatively minor wars with the odd more major one was really what I was thinking of. At that time, it would be pretty much expected that there would be some sort of war somewhere, so a comment on the lines of if there is another war seems anachronistic. Obviously, no one expected the meat grinder which was the First World War, and certainly a civilian would not expect such a thing. It is not true, though, that no one expected a general European war. There had been incidents which might have provoked one, but Germany pulled back from pushing things to actual war, and the tension between those prepared to pledge military support to Belgium in the case of a German invasion and those who wanted no part of a European war was a major fault line in the Liberal government. War was in the air in those years. (It is interesting that in those days there was a school of thought that modern technology made war so costly for the combatants that it effectively made war war impossible between industrialised nations: correct premiss, faulty conclusion. This was not really a popular view in Germany, of course.)

I did think Matron's attitude (blaming the army for the loss of her husband) more than a bit clichéd; it would have been interesting if they had had her blame the enemy, or merely accepting it as something that happens to soldiers. (It is one of the clichés which really irritates me; the other is the one where the spouse of someone with a very demanding and important job cannot accept that their partner has to devote a lot of time to it.)