Stuff I Watched: Who is a Machine?

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Doctor Who: BBC One\HD (Recorded 4th June, Watched 4th June)

I love Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who and this series has been great, so far, so the expectations were literally sky-high for the “mid-season finale” (if you can actually have such a thing).  Inevitably, it didn’t quite live up to those literal sky-high expectations, but it gave it a good go.  All the pre-title stuff with Rory the last centurion (not to be confused with Denver the Last Dinosaur) was great – despite them having Amy do the whole “sounds like she’s talking about The Doctor, but actually talking about Rory” thing again.

The episode was a rollicking ride, so to speak, despite a lack of any real plot and a few seeming inconsistencies.  The big reveal\cliffhanger was so well signposted – even before the “Melody Pond” revelation – that they only way it could have been shocking is if River wasn’t Amy and Rory’s sprog.   I didn’t quite understand where the Doctor raced off to, so at least that was intriguing.  Any lingering doubts about the episode soon evaporated when I saw that the series would recommence with “Let’s Kill Hitler”.  That’s how you tease an audience.

What was, perhaps, most striking moment of the episode was the blatant cunnilingus joke between the Lizard woman and her Victorian maid lesbian lover (yes, really).  Part of me is proud to live in a country where this could crop up in Saturday tea-time family entertainment.  The other part of me was horrified.

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grave: BBC 2 (R 6th June, W 6th June)

Adam Curtis’s spellbinding series drew to a close last night, with an exploration of…errr… I think it was something to do with humans being seen as machines juxtaposed against the horrors in Rwanda.  It was something like that.

My confusion is not purely down to the complex nature of the ideas presented.   I currently have the attention span of a teenager, primarily caused by my iPad addiction.  I watched the first half of this episode on the telly, but flicked over half way through to watch it on iPlayer on the aforementioned iPad.  As I tried to find where I was up to, I realised that I didn’t at all recognise the narration that happened just before the point I was up to.  I believed I had been paying relatively close attention, so I’m obviously not as good at multi-tasking as I thought.

The problems caused by my complete absorption in the electronic device seemed incredibly apt considering what I was (half-)watching.  Probably.  Like I said, it was pretty hard to understand.

Related articles

• Stuff I Watched: Expendable Machines (poursomegravyonme.co.uk)
• Stuff I Watched: Game of Bores (poursomegravyonme.co.uk)