Doctor Who Rec List For Great Squee!

[promethia_tenk]

I've made no secret around these parts of the fact that "A Good Man Goes to War" has left me in a right funk. And I know I'm not the only one! If you're anything like me, though, perhaps you are tired of your funk. Maybe you would like to have your show back and to just be excited about it again. Remember how this felt?:

No, me either, really. But I want to. So I've made a big ol' rec list of Doctor Who stuff what has made me happy of late, and I share it with you now in the hopes that one or more of us may again be squeeful in advance of the rest of the season!



FANFICTION:

Night Terrors by Lyricwritesprose on Teaspoon (Rory + Eleven, 8500 words, PG) The Doctor helps Rory deal with recurring nightmares in an unusual manner. One of the best Eleven-era fics I've ever read, and no summary can do it justice. Perfect Rory p.o.v. Fantastic Eleven. Some fascinating scifi elements. And just generally beautiful and amazing and everything! Read it, ALL OF YOU. (Recced to me by ladymercury_10.)


Boxing Day by Lyricwritesprose on Teaspoon (Wilf + Eleven, 6800 words, PG) WILF and ELEVEN. I'll repeat: WILF and ELEVEN. I feel like that's all any reasonable person should need to rush off and go read this, but I'll reassure you that it's everything you'd want it to be and by the same author as 'Night Terrors' and very nearly as good. (Recced to me by elisi.)


The Hazards of Time Travel (and Flirting with Strangers) by cinderbella333 (Amy + River, 870 words, PG) In which Amy realizes she's been hitting on her own daughter. One of the best and most hilarious things to come out of the AGMGTW reveal, with perhaps a bit of subtle, meta-y consolation for anyone who suddenly discovered they'd accidentally written incest fic, oops. Even if the premise sounds awkward and awful to you, read it anyway. Trust me.


You're Just My Cup of Tea, Or: Domesticity is Setting In by dollsome (River/Eleven, 1000 words, PG) The Doctor, River, and teacups. Flirting ensues! Again, some more. UTTERLY DELIGHTFUL IN ALL WAYS. Someone once called me "the queen of Eleven/River banter," but I gleefully cede the title.


Untitled Doctor Who/Matilda crossover by seaweedie (Matilda + Eleven, 1000 words, G) Eleven meets Matilda Honey. Yes, Matilda. From the Roald Dahl book. If the very idea of this doesn't fill you with ecstatic glee, please don't tell me about it because I will have to stop knowing you. The only disappointment here is how short it is.


To Be Continued by honeynoir (River, 600 words, PG) I have a few personal crusades in Who fandom. One is to convince everyone that "The Beast Below" is an amazing episode. Another is to defend River's ending in the Library from all nay-sayers, which I shall do ALL THE MORE STRIDENTLY the louder and longer everybody complains about it. This is my favorite "River in the Library computer" fic: thoughtful and unsentimental about the limitations of being in a computer but not dismissive and really quite positive overall.



VISUAL STUFFS:

Kitty Who comics by tinysprout on Tumblr (owlsie) Little cartoons of the characters as cats. Too cute for anyone's good. Click the link for more.

The Ponds Disapprove of You by tardis-owl on Tumblr (owlsie again) Matching mother-daughter scorn! Click to embiggen:

Doctor Who icons by encorevous (link goes to tag) Can the world really support so much pretty?:
 

Gifs: Stewart and Colbert react to Doctor Who by di_br The fake news people express what we're all feeling:
 

VIDS:

Howl by such_heights and purplefringe (Amy, Rory, River) Be careful of the curse that falls on young lovers. Alright, I'm breaking my own rules a bit here. This isn't so much squeeful as cathartic. But catharsis is good too. A harsh look at the Pond family's relationship to the Doctor. It is, however, squeefully good.


Sandcastles in the Sand by winninghearts (Doctor/Rose) Wrong era of the show. Doesn't matter. If you like Doctor Who. If you like How I Met Your Mother (song by Robin Sparkles!). If you like Doctor/Rose. If you hate Doctor/Rose. If you love to hate Doctor/Rose. Watch this vid--it works for all.


Last Friday Night by aheartthen (Eleven, Amy, Rory, River) Team TARDIS + Katy Perry. Hijinks ensue. It's like Texts from the TARDIS in vid form.

Comments

[promethia_tenk]

*is confused* Oh! No, I didn't mean the one I recced you from the Teaspoon, I meant dollsome's one about River and the Doctor and the teacups. :P
Whoops! My mistake. Yes, sorry, so much love for the teacup story! *cuddles it*

Yes! That is an excellent hope, and I shall adopt it. :) If they do come back, I suspect they shall be all the more exciting for being held up against the dark beginning of the season.
Precisely! Plus, it took me a long while to realize that AGMGTW, while being very dark, was also very, very fairytale--it was a bit of an adjustment to get back into that mindset! So that does reassure me that Moff still remembers what kind of story he's telling, you know? And if we actually get a happy ending after everything we've gone through this season, it's gonna feel like every Christmas ever, all at once (please, Santa Moff!).

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool! What fairy tale elements did you see in AGMGTW? (That, incidentally, would probably make for an excellent meta if you have the time/interest required to write it up.) Were there fairy tale elements in the rest of the season, would you say?

Yes, it would be like a great big Christmas present! I'm just so afraid that something awful is going to happen and nobody will live happily ever after. It would be so much more awful than just having a sad ending, like so many companions get, because our expectations have already been set by last season's wonderfully, unreasonably happy ending.

[promethia_tenk]

Well, there was that very overt storytelling thread for one thing, that started with Amy telling Melody the story of her father, the Lone Centurion and then went on with many conflicting stories of the Doctor--we were quite forcibly reminded that these people are all fairytales, just as River said they are, even when they're real people too.

River's reveal at the end is classic fairytale, but done backwards. Usually the orphaned/fostered hero character does whatever heroic deeds and then is rewarded at the end with the reveal of their true (usually noble) parentage, but here we had a reveal to the *parents* of the fantastic identity of their lost child, at the *beginning* of the story, like a reassurance.

A stolen child--again classic fairytale (do any kids in fairytale have normal parents and childhoods?). Kovarian is a pretty archetypal evil stepmother/witch character. Little Melody's white bassinet thing even calls to mind Moses as a baby set adrift on the water . . . Moff brings back the nursery rhyme/poem voiceover like he used in "The Beast Below." And older River who shows up at the end is sort of playing fairy godmother again--appears magically at just the right moment to explain everything that happened, give advice and consolation and good news, etc . . .

Probably I am missing things, too, but you get the idea. I don't really think there were markedly fairytale-like elements earlier in the series, though. Well, in Neil Gaiman's episode, but that felt pretty stand-alone. In TIA/DotM where you'd expect to find them, though, the feel was so different, you know? There were all the things with the lost child, but the overall tone of those episodes was more sophisticated scifi, a bit X-Files, trippy psychological horror. There wasn't a lot to remind you that you were in a fairytale, which is why it came as a bit of a shock to the system, for me, for AGMGTW to happen, and it's all romantic fairytale logic where we'd been getting something a lot grittier and more realistic for most of the season, you know?

It would be so much more awful than just having a sad ending, like so many companions get, because our expectations have already been set by last season's wonderfully, unreasonably happy ending.
Ugh, this would be beyond horrible. I'm continually reminded with this show that if Moff wanted to *break* me, he could . . .

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's all very interesting! Thanks for explaining. I hadn't noticed most of those things, but now that you mention them, they do seem very fairy tale. :)

Yeah, it's been a bit weird bouncing back and forth from fairy tale logic to horror-inflected scifi and back again. I feel like some of the more absurd elements of Doctor Who have been back this season as well--the sort of campy things that were more common during the RTD-era (and probably before that, but I haven't watched much classic Who).

[promethia_tenk]

I feel like some of the more absurd elements of Doctor Who have been back this season as well--the sort of campy things that were more common during the RTD-era

Oh, that's interesting--can you give me an example?

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Um, well, the first thing that comes to mind is when River jumps off the building knowing the Doctor will catch her. It's a really cool set up, but then the payoff is a bit silly--the TARDIS parks sideways, she turns over into a diving position, and there is an audible splash. Compare to the "flying into the TARDIS" scene in The Time of Angels, which was also lighthearted, but not so goofy. I don't know...I mean, I did enjoy the campy, cheap SFX parts of DW, which I am given to understand are sort of its heritage, but after Moffat's much more polished episodes in S5, I kind of don't want to go back.