audio review: BFA 17: "Sword of Orion"

[x_losfic]

Sword of Orion

Sword of Orion's not bad, really, but no, not a whirlwind of joy either. Though most Cybermen stories bore me, so I was pleased that this one didn't. Possibly that's a result of their v. v. little screen-time in this.

Quick liked/disliked rundown before the major issues: I like the alien bazaar in the beginning, good sound editing. Extras all fine. Eight a bit of an ass for leaving Charley to deal with the bazaar!creepster alone. Who told the Sword of Orion team that that super Red-Dwarf sounding 'spaceship!!' music cue was a good idea? I like the Cybermat. The creepy claustrophobia angle kiiind of works, but could have been amped, esp. as Cyber-control and the background of conflict with human-appearing androids must add a new dimension of ‘is he or isn’t he’ paranoia.

Keep in mind as I explain why Charley is so inoffensive as to be deeply offensive (an attitude now culled from being halfway through Minuet in Hell) that I listened to Zagreus first. Would I have disliked her this much if I hadn’t been told that she’s special above and beyond other companions, that the Doctor loves her kind of in that way, and then seen no reason why he should? Maybe I’d only find her annoying. I mean, I think the River Song thing is a poor rip off of The Time Traveler’s Wife and vile independent of that, but if I'd been just told she was Some Extra, I probably would have paid enough attention to dislike her deeply. Both, for full disclosure, are at least partially annoying for fucking with my OTP.

I /hate/ Charlie's attitude towards the androids-- the immediate "oh, I accept their rights and prerogatives." She comes from a DEEPLY racist, tense period. Without a lot of character building to the effect that Charley has deeply felt personal convictions towards universal equality that are not only exemplary for her period but absolutely transcendent, I'm not going to believe that. She’s an otherwise pretty unquestioningly rah-rah denizen of the British Empire (as of last episode, with her Edwardian Adventuress schtick—and who refers to herself as ‘an Edwardian’ during that period, by the by?). Not a lot of evidenced angst about racial or sociopolitical issues, her prerogatives and place in the world. And this is an empire which doesn't really acknowledge all humans as endowed with equal status. Why should she immediately grasp the rights of non-human androids, and be willing to speak to that?

And wouldn’t it be more interesting if she didn’t? If the Doctor’s going to pick up companions from various periods, for veracity and interest they should reflect the prejudices and passions of their period. Wodehouse ‘black shorts’ jokes aside, 30’s Britain was flirting with fascism. It’s unlikely that a product of that climate isn’t going to be /at all/ affected by it.

She has nothing dynamic about her. She's ahistorical. I love the way that other than a few ‘thingys’ tossed in as an afterthought, nothing about the concept of time-space travel phases her: she’s down with 'androids', when the Czech neologism ‘robot’ has yet to probably enter her vocabulary, unless she’s hugely into period science fiction—and aside from a mention of Verne, no evidence of that. Charley’s bland in her perfection.

She has no growth to accomplish. Likewise, Charley seems to have no real age. I mean she’s 18? She has none of the natural issues of being young. Charley’s too chummy with Eight in Sword of Orion for having just met him--too 'he's always doing that' a la River Song. It’s unearned.

A symptom of the larger problem: Charley’s too Mary Sue!sassy. Banter-y without a real scene or character MO. And while it’s fun because Eight is fun, the banter’s like tasty icing on a really poorly made cake. I can't enjoy it because there’s no substance, it's just frosting. At first it's appealing, and then I bite down and eugh, Charley.

Deeva Jansen, who’s left shut-down from the cold to float around the void on the off-chance that someone will eventually salvage her, isn’t morally dead. Why doesn’t Eight search for her? Unless the explosion was of such force that Deeva might be anywhere in a huge radius, she’s near enough that they can troll around with the sensors on, pick her up, and drop her off back home. I have no idea what she might have done to deserve abandonment. In the end she deleted the information the Doctor asked her to and saved Charley: the Doctor owes her a ride. The fact that she’s just abandoned is rather cheap and inexplicable.

Deeva also parallels Rathbone or Lord Tamworth from Storm Warning in terms of a character who changed, or appeared to change, for the better with little motivation or foreshadowing, simply because the Doctor asked them to. Eight, like Nine, seems to be big on enabling other people to be heroic, but it keeps kind of backfiring on him. Rathbone backslides, Deeva gets killed. I’m wondering if there’s an emerging point about Eight and agency here, given that he’s fucked himself over by miscalculating and saving Charley initially.

In terms of effectiveness, rather a poor show for the Doctor. Bad a la Warriors of the Deep, in which everyone but the Doctor and his companions also dies. Did he and Charley’s presence have any real benefit? The end result—the ion storm, the disabled human ship, the refusal of Deeva’s proposition, the deaths of both crews–would have come along without the Doctor even showing up. There’s something immensely frustrating about a story in which the TARDIS crew’s role is just that of spectators. It logically must happen, but it’s not stage-worthy.

The emotional dynamics aren’t even changed by the Doctor and Charley’s presence to a sufficient degree so that I can say that they advance a more subtle plot. Deeva, the one character arguably changed by their intervention, still would have come to the same conclusions about the dangers of enlisting the Cybermen due to personal observation. She would still have made the offer of collaboration despite these qualms—she does even with the Doctor agitating against it. The fact that she chooses to enter a coma with the possibility of eventual rescue over dooming Charley to death in the Ion storm is the one real moment of dramatic interest, but we haven’t been given enough about Deeva to know that this is an act of overcoming some situationally-implied racist antipathy towards humans on her part, or that it’s much more than a logical exchange. ‘One saved life and the possibility of a second’ is greater than ‘one saved life.’

And then her possible selflessness is rewarded by Eight getting bored and wandering off instead of conducting a thorough search for her. So while it’s not a badly constructed episode, and was enjoyable to listen to, the whole underlying premise is rather a massive ‘er, what?’