The Caretaker

[daibhidc]

It's been a busy week, but I've finally got round to writing this.

It was interesting. My sister, of course, hated it, because it was all about Almost Amy (as she calls her). I'm determinedly ambivalent about Clara, so I didn't mind it so much.

The obvious comparison is "The Lodger", except the gag this time is that the Twelfth Doctor can more-or-less function as part of human society if he can be bothered, but Clara is actually drawing more attention by assuming he wouldn't.

The Doctor's assumption that Clara's boyfriend is the professional Matt Smith lookalike is a cute bit ... or would be if it wasn't then continually lampshaded in dialogue, culminating in Danny actually using the phrase "he used to be Adrian".

The robot is clearly just there because there needs to be some kind of monster for the purposes of being a Doctor who story, so I won't spend too much time on it except to note that it's kind of neat it nonetheless gets at least the general shape of a backstory, rather than just being a Killer Robot that turned up from somewhere (cf. Raston Warrior Robot).

Coal Hill School is nicely realised. Courtney has the potential to be an interesting character or very annoying, depending on how they develop her. And the actual point of the story; Danny meeting the Doctor was good. I particularly liked Danny turning the Doctor's distaste of soldiers around and winding him up by calling him an officer.

So, on the whole, I liked it.

Comments

[rhiannon-s.livejournal.com]

The only bit I didn't like about it was Danny suddenly becoming a manga-esque martial artist with his stunning backflip. In a story that had an abundance of timey-wimey and sciencey-wiencey, that was where the elastic band which was suspending my of disbelief snapped. They don't teach that stuff in the British army (the Russian army, yes, but not the British one).

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Yeah, having him just jump the thing would have been -- well, maybe not plausible as such, but at least have looked plausible. Doing video game somersaults? Not so much.