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sir_guinglain May. 24th, 2011 03:50 am)
sir_guinglain May. 24th, 2011 03:50 am)This programme keeps me awake.
I suspect I'm thinking along the right lines regarding 'The Rebel Flesh' and 'The Almost People' which is to come. Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times has blogged that he had a theory about what was going on and had written a paragraph about it, only for the preview disc for 'The Almost People' to arrive, and he found that his predictions were correct. I don't know what those were, of course, but the trailers suggest further ambiguities surrounding who exactly is what, and the Doctor - but which one? - attacking Amy, whose storyline must take a vital turn next week. The recovery of the TARDIS perhaps has some significance too. Is the Doctor (accompanied by the original Rory?) already inside, waiting for events in the monastery to take their course? The design of the crucible in which the Flesh is kept has some echoes of the TARDIS interior, too, and this sort of detail is often deliberate.
I've missed a lot of the allusion through not being a great science fiction reader, but it appears that Matthew Graham might have done some sort of literary review before writing this story from the references to the work of others - David Brin, David Mitchell and John W. Campbell and of course Mary Shelley - which have been made in other reaction posts and reviews. Televisually, Matt Hills at Antenna has pointed out how Matthew Graham used the monastic setting to flag up his own authorial status - his production company is Monastic Productions - as well as importation of his signature devices such as TARDIS-as-pub. Given Ian Hepburn at Tachyon TV has argued that the structure of 'The Rebel Flesh' was that of two twenty-two minute episodes joined together - with the first cliffhanger coming as Cleaves-Ganger turns on the Doctor to reveal her unformed face - and Matthew Graham has in the past expressed his belief that Doctor Who is essentially a cliffhanger serial as he knew it growing up, the TARDIS-as-pub might also recall the obsession of the early 1980s that the console room should function as a discussion area or holding bay for characters like the vets' surgery at Darrowby in All Creatures Great and Small. Writing of Cleaves, her role as foreman makes her chief magician over the Flesh cauldron, so it's not surprising really that her forename is Miranda, though her Prospero is (so far) the machine itself, and there is no Ferdinando in sight, unless we read Cleaves herself as Prospero and Rory as Ferdinando to the newly assertive 'daughter' Jennifer. Still, one could contrive Shakespearean parallels all night.
I suspect I'm thinking along the right lines regarding 'The Rebel Flesh' and 'The Almost People' which is to come. Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times has blogged that he had a theory about what was going on and had written a paragraph about it, only for the preview disc for 'The Almost People' to arrive, and he found that his predictions were correct. I don't know what those were, of course, but the trailers suggest further ambiguities surrounding who exactly is what, and the Doctor - but which one? - attacking Amy, whose storyline must take a vital turn next week. The recovery of the TARDIS perhaps has some significance too. Is the Doctor (accompanied by the original Rory?) already inside, waiting for events in the monastery to take their course? The design of the crucible in which the Flesh is kept has some echoes of the TARDIS interior, too, and this sort of detail is often deliberate.
I've missed a lot of the allusion through not being a great science fiction reader, but it appears that Matthew Graham might have done some sort of literary review before writing this story from the references to the work of others - David Brin, David Mitchell and John W. Campbell and of course Mary Shelley - which have been made in other reaction posts and reviews. Televisually, Matt Hills at Antenna has pointed out how Matthew Graham used the monastic setting to flag up his own authorial status - his production company is Monastic Productions - as well as importation of his signature devices such as TARDIS-as-pub. Given Ian Hepburn at Tachyon TV has argued that the structure of 'The Rebel Flesh' was that of two twenty-two minute episodes joined together - with the first cliffhanger coming as Cleaves-Ganger turns on the Doctor to reveal her unformed face - and Matthew Graham has in the past expressed his belief that Doctor Who is essentially a cliffhanger serial as he knew it growing up, the TARDIS-as-pub might also recall the obsession of the early 1980s that the console room should function as a discussion area or holding bay for characters like the vets' surgery at Darrowby in All Creatures Great and Small. Writing of Cleaves, her role as foreman makes her chief magician over the Flesh cauldron, so it's not surprising really that her forename is Miranda, though her Prospero is (so far) the machine itself, and there is no Ferdinando in sight, unless we read Cleaves herself as Prospero and Rory as Ferdinando to the newly assertive 'daughter' Jennifer. Still, one could contrive Shakespearean parallels all night.
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