Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 8 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Let Them Eat Awesome
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.19.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.I've got the most amazing idea for a science fiction story! There's this spaceship, right, but it's also a girl. What girl? Glad you asked! The most beautiful, brilliant, insightful, talented, fabulous, amazing girl in the entirety of history! Is she really? (Actually, kinda, in real life. Google her quotes, she's full boss.) So, like, the spaceship contains windows into moments of her life, and the whole thing is that she spends her life being menaced by these badass steampunk scary-as-hell clockwork courtiers who have -- on their programming alone -- been replacing parts of the spaceship with parts of people, to keep it working. So the ship not only represents her, but also the parts of her life through these doors and mirrors. That's like Iain M. Banks on Sorkin-quality crack! Sounds good...did you know that you're writing an episode of Doctor Who? Oh, no. The mere fact that you said that makes you Emotionally Retarded.... My bad. I'm not actually an Emotional Retard. Then sit still! Okay, but could you shoehorn in the Doctor and, like, Rose? They're kinda the point. I guess so.... You're not going to like the results, methinks. Well, the fans will go insane. Somehow I think that by kissing Tennant in everybody's imagination and fanfic, Rose managed to make love to Chris Eccleston in public. Who? Right. But that's...not the point? No, the point is this brilliant story that has nothing to do with the show. Okay, point taken, so how about we have Ten fall in love with Miss Perfection, because Good Old Mickey's on the TARDIS now, so it'll be like even. We could have it be a beautiful and sad parallel to the themes of the season, how all the shit SJ talked last week totally plays into Ten's worrisome attachment to Rose, and then his prophecy comes true, and the chick actually ends up aging and dying like a normal person, and the Doctor can, again, go fuck himself/cry eternally. He's really sexy in glasses or crying. Or at any state really. No see, because he's the same way: an eternal ship locked into a body that experiences pain, and beauty, and love. So that will make him and Mme. even more the same, and they'll have a crazy Vulcan mind-meld scene where she finally gives him the one thing he's always wanted: somebody who sees his whole heart, good and bad, and his entire history -- even the secrets and stuff that he can't tell Rose -- and accepts them, and that will make him understand that fleeting love is still love for all that. And Jacob can go crazy gay with the Tennyson quotes for the fiftieth year running. That'll be okay, right? Um, your awesome story is now nothing like what you were talking about before, but it's still great and I really like the Doctor angle, as weird/non-Who as it is. But it's so awesome and well-done and heartbreaking and all. Well, won't they be jealous of her? Or feel like she's fucking up the entire show and making it a total bummer? Won't they say mean words like "Mary Sue"? And then Jacob will have to be a dick to the people on the forums? No, no. I'm sure it'll be fucking fine. Rage on, crazy diamond! Still the best episode of either season, right? What could go wrong? Beyond the recaplet being sixteen miles longer than the episode? Shit, we broke Jacob. I think he just fell in love! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Jeanne-Antoinette. She was born in 1721, and married in 1741 to Charles-Guillaume Le Normant d'Etiolles. She bore him two children, neither of whom lived past ten. In February 1745, she caught the eye of King Louis XV at a masquerade ball. She was twenty-four years of age. By March, she and the King were close friends, and he moved her to Versailles, and bought her six more houses, including one called Pompadour. By July, she was made a Marquise and was legally separated from her husband; by September she was formally presented at court. She knew Voltaire and was well-read. She supported Diderot's Encyclopédie and the Enlightenment against the Church, and Choiseul, who shifted French foreign policy from Prussia to the Habsburgs, which ended up forcing the Seven Years' War, creating the Pacte de Famille, suppressing the Jesuits, and losing Canada. She was an amateur architect and a stylish designer. Her major shortcoming, in the public perception, was that she came from the bourgeoisie, and people got nasty as a result. She lived the kind of amazing life that you only hear about in stories that take place in Versailles.
And now, under a clear and starry sky, things are going wild in Versailles, but not the Sofia Coppola kind. It's a bunch of aristos from the eighteenth century running around in masks and screaming wildly. There's a tick-tock whirring sound and scary shadows all over; there's a smashed clock on the mantel. King Louis approaches his consort, Reinette, where she stands in a bedroom considering the fireplace very seriously, and complains of the creatures attacking, which he doesn't even think are human. "The clock is broken," she says simply. "He's coming." The King grabs her and tries to pull her away from the fireplace by the hand, but she won't be moved: "Listen to me. There is a man coming to Versailles. He has watched over me my whole life, and he will not desert me tonight." At Louis's insistence, Reinette admits that he is the only man -- save Louis -- she's ever loved: "No, don't look like that, there's no time. You have your duties. I am your mistress. Go to your queen." Reinette crouches and speaks directly into the flames: "Are you there? Can you hear me? I need you now, you promised. The clock on the mantel is broken. It is time. Doctor! Doctor!"
Thank goodness for Steven Moffat. We head back to the stars with the caption "3000 YEARS LATER," and inside a spaceship, the TARDIS appears. The Doctor emerges first, followed by Rose and Mickey; the latter is overjoyed to have gotten a spaceship on his first go. They look about, wondering why the ship's deserted, and the Doctor first assures them that there's no danger, and then wonders if there's danger, and then decides to scan for danger. Rose smirks behind his back as he taps into the system, and asks the date. He gets the lights on, and the roof opens up above them, revealing the stars outside: "Fifty-first century, Diagmar Cluster. You're a long way from home, Mickey! Two and a half galaxies!" Rose puts her hands on Mickey's shoulders as he stares out. The Doctor rummages through the bits and pieces of spaceship. "Mickey Smith, meet the universe," says Rose. "See anything you like?" Mickey's eyes are wide: "It's so realistic!" The Doctor drats about the repair work happening -- "had some cowboys in here!" -- and the three of them study a screen with the ship on it in diagram. "Now that's odd...all the warp engines are going full capacity!" says the Doctor. "There's enough power running through this ship to punch a hole in the universe, and we're not moving. So where's all that power going?" And, Rose wonders, where did the crew go? The Doctor confirms that there are no life readings on board, and Rose jokes that you don't just "nip out for a quick fag" in deep space, but the Doctor thinks she means it: "Nope, checked all the smoking pods." They smell a smell -- Mickey determines it as a Sunday roast, but Rose is more correct: "Yeah, someone's cooking." Several someones.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22Next