BlackJedi wrote:No, no, I thought it was a pretty good episode. Trigger was crap, yes, but the cyberblokes were excellent. Nice and heavy and stompy. Mickey was also good - the scene with his gran was very well done.
I forgot about the scene with his gran.
Actually, there was also the mild touch of "male bonding" with the Doctor at the start, where, for once, the Doctor actually bothered to talk to him.
That also worked in a subtle way because it got across "the Doctor and Mickey are slowly getting to know each other" thing but without doing it in any "sledgehammer to crack a nut" obvious way. No stupid spontaneous hug or forced "you know, I hated you but I think you're alright now, Doctor" dialogue appearing from nowhere.
You could see them "male bond" but only loosely and not completely, which is nice gradual realistic pacing if the intention is that, eventually, they get along well.
Yeah, that also fits in with this bizarre "duality" that was in the episode:
Mickey, as Mickey, doing the "male bonding" and meeting his gran and showing some indepenence that he walked off to do that in the first place - the whole Mickey sub-plot - was actually quite good.
Mickey, as Rickey, was fucking dreadfully bad.
Also, if analyse the "male bonding" while totally fucking ignoring Rose as a useless "spare part" while all the female characters were all turned into total bitches, yet Rose's Dad - shown to be a bit of dick previously (unintentionally and innocnently a bit of a dick but a bit of a dick nonetheless) - is now somehow a redeemed character...
...spotting a pattern yet?
As I say, this writer is betraying some serious kind of misogynistic / homoerotic psychological tendency here. Women are generally non-existent and when they aren't non-existent, they are total bitches. While, at the beginning, the Doctor and Mickey were "male bonding" in the style of Ancient Greece (well, it's what SJS said: "You can tell you're getting older, Doctor, your assistants are getting younger").
And, no, the episode isn't written by RTD but it would be a cruel libel to link his homosexuality to being a misogynist as, in fact, he seems very obviously to relate to being Rose more that he treats her with the supreme respect (almost idolising at times) that the other writers - especially this episode's writer - clearly don't wholly share. Sexuality is a more complex beast than the stereotypes give credit for and RTD's one of your "I wish I was a girl" kind of gay men, it seems.
I hesitate to even consider what's psychologically going on with this episode's writer, though, because I'm picking up what's almost aggressive woman-hating here. If it's not ignoring the woman totally, it's writing her wholly without any emotion or characterisation at all (but having no problem writing that in for all the male parts) and if the writer can't avoid the woman speaking, she opens her mouth to reveal she's a total bitch.
But there may be a clue elsewhere in the episode: Mickey's gran.
When Rose tells the Dcctor about Mickey's gran, she made a comment that I personally found pretty fucking weird: "She hits him". To which Rose - now characterised as an evil bitch by the misogynist writer - laughs her head off and the remark was made as if hitting someone was a sign of love.
And, sure enough, Mickey's gran hits him and nags him when we see her later.
Put the clues in order: Misogynist woman-hating throughout the script and then a bizarre comment - to which "evil Rose" laughs - thinking it's just fine and a sign of how much Mickey's gran loves Mickey because she slaps him all the time?
Wait a minute, let me get the Radio Times here. What else did this writer work on?
Yeah, there it is: "No Angels". Female nurses as horrible bitchy sluts only out for sex, trying to aggressively smash down the social stereotype of nurses - a feminine "mothering" role - being "angels".
What else? "Mile High". Again, smashing down the stereotype of the air stewardess - a feminine "mothering" role - as also being "no angels" because, behind the curtains and crammed into the plane toilet, the show exposes them as actually being borrible bitchy sluts only out for sex.
Oh dear.
"Houston, we have a problem".
Lie on the couch, Mr.McRae, and in the words of Sigmund Freud: "tell me about your mother".
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
