A Tale of Two Reactions

April 8, 2013

Review of The Rings of Akhaten
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

This one’s an odd one, and no doubt. The whole way through, I couldn’t decide if I thought it was wondrous or horrible. (Also – can I just tell you all how much the name of the place messes me up? I seriously keep thinking there should be an n after the initial A.)

I still can’t decide, and it looks like I’m not alone. There is no “fan consensus” about this episode, and I find that almost as weird as my own dual reactions. Complicating matters is the fact that I can’t pinpoint what I don’t like about it. All I can say is that somehow it rubs me the wrong way.

Let me begin, then, with a few niggling irritations. First, there’s the leaf. I like the story of “the most important leaf in human history” (though the Doctor’s being a bit stalker-y, which makes me vaguely uncomfortable); every happy couple should have some story about how they met that makes them smile years down the road. What bugs my detail-oriented self is that it’s not the same leaf we saw in the previous episode. I’m not sure what kind this one is – it looks a bit too broad to be an aspen, though that’s the closest I could come, with my limited knowledge of botany – but the one from The Bells of Saint John is most definitely a maple. This one’s supposed to be a maple, too, based on the tree from which it fell, but it’s not. And I’m completely unreasonably put off by it.

Then we get to the Doctor contemplating his latest puzzle: “She’s not possible!” Like last time, I’m getting a sense from this episode that I’ve seen it all before, and this is where that starts. The TARDIS’s information on Clara looks like the positive/negative pregnancy readings on Amy last season. And despite having charmingly put the Doctor off with a coy “next time I might say ‘yes,'” there Clara is on the stairs, drumming her fingers against 101 Places to See, another “girl who waited.”

Clara herself is causing me similar confusion; do I like her or not? I like Jenna-Louise Coleman’s portrayal of her, and parts of the character’s personality seem easily likable. Her natural, believable hesitation upon being asked the requisite question about where she wants to go – anywhere in time and space! – is endearing. When she’s thrown into an utterly alien setting for the first time, she’s curious and confident, if cautious. And she instinctually takes care of children who appear to need help (a holdover from her governess/nanny gig, or just innate?). There’s plenty to like. Yet somehow I don’t quite. Why is that? I still haven’t figured it out, unless it has to do with her status as the latest story arc.

Still the borrowing continues. We’ve got the bit about needing to help (crying) children, like in The Beast Below. We’ve got the “Old God” (which I took to be a star, though some thought planet; I don’t know what was meant, but I’m sticking with my initial read) that’s effectively Something Bad in a Living Star, like in 42. We’ve even got stuff from other franchises – e.g., the cantina from Star Wars and the rescue of the precious object from under a falling stone doorway from Temple of Doom. Even the climactic scene, with all the locals singing, reminded me of the Ood (or maybe just all the Whos in Whoville…..).

And, of course, there’s the crap astronomy. Perhaps most blatantly, at the very end when the Old God finally collapses, you’ve suddenly left all the people on your seven planets without a source of heat or light. Oopsies. Guess you didn’t save them after all. But that’s OK, because they can’t have been alive in the first place – because how was anyone breathing on “planets” so small they didn’t even have enough self-gravity to make themselves round, let alone hold onto an atmosphere? Or riding mopeds in space? I know, I know… “Never apply logic to Who.”

Time to take off my Grumpy Hat and switch it out for the Happy Hat. There were things I liked. Right off the bat, I loved that the Doctor finally mentioned someone from his more (in this case quite) distant past: his granddaughter, Susan. It seems appropriate in this anniversary year to start including a few more of these details that might be news to those who’ve only come to the show more recently. Clara was certainly taken off guard. (Though I have to admit, I was almost hoping for another Face of Evil-type plot once I heard the Old God was sometimes called Grandfather.)

I also liked that the TARDIS had a bit of a snit and wouldn’t let Clara in (after all, she doesn’t have a key). “I don’t think it likes me.” That could also explain why the TARDIS doesn’t seem to be translating all the alien languages for Clara. Is it a case of TARDIS knows best, perhaps? If Jack made the Doctor uncomfortable once he became “a fixed point,” maybe Clara is giving the TARDIS similar bad vibes. At any rate, I thought it was a nice touch to show the TARDIS sort of staring Clara down, thus making her more her own character, even in “box” form.

Another thing I liked is when they did get the astronomy right. The admittedly extremely simplified story that the Doctor told Merry was at least accurate, and it strikes me as absolutely in-character that he’d choose to end such a tale by talking of “ships and shoes and sealing wax and cabbages and kings.” Just like Clara’s parents’ leaf, everything had to be just right to make Merry Gejelh who she is. It’s beautiful, poignant, and absolutely true in real life as well as in the Doctor’s story.

And speaking of the Doctor’s Story, it comes to the fore at a climactic moment. There is no denying that Matt Smith can pull off a big, long speech with aplomb. It was a great rant about some of the horrible things he’s experienced in his long life (my favorite bit being the reference to Omega: “I walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a mad man!”). I don’t want to detract from that wonderful performance – or anyone’s enjoyment of it – but I just didn’t understand the point. Given the fact that when the crowd fed the Old God their precious items – and when Clara saved the day with her own precious item – these items disappeared completely, how could the Doctor have offered up his whole self, his entire life’s worth of memories, and come out the other side with anything at all? It simply didn’t make any sense.

The big up side to that whole denouement is that finally Clara got to have Her Moment. Last time, she was effectively robbed of proving her worth as a Companion because she only Saved the Day through use of her “mad computer skillz” – which weren’t even hers. Here, it really is something uniquely Clara’s that allows her to beat the Old God at his own game. Chalk one up for the new kid.

What sold me most to date on Clara, though, was that final scene.

“You remind me of someone.”
“Who?”
“Someone who died.”
“Well, whoever she was, I’m not her, OK? You want me to travel with you, that’s fine, but as me, not a bargain-basement stand-in for someone else. I’m not gonna compete with a ghost.”

That’s what we’ve been needing, to demonstrate a “strong female character” – someone who sets her own terms for this inherently lop-sided relationship. “You may have the power, with your space/time machine,” she effectively tells him, “but if you want me to agree to enter into that kind of friendship, you’d damn well better show me the respect I’m due.” (This, as far as I’m concerned, is the key exchange that was missing from the Doctor’s relationship with Martha; the Martha/Rose dynamic is what instantly sprang to mind during this scene.)

Add in the last little mystery of whether Clara has noticed something actually different (has the TARDIS put the Doctor where he “needs to be” again?), or is merely seeing her old home through new eyes, and the episode goes out on a relatively strong note. Yet after my two pre-review viewings, I’m still oddly unable to form a solid opinion. As fandom is split, so am I.

Let’s hope things come together soon.

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