Tuesday, October 15, 2013
The Girl in the Fireplace
I really enjoyed watching this episode. In case anyone hasn't watched it yet, the plot revolves around the Doctor materializing on a 51st century space craft with several "time windows" on board. Each window contains a different time frame of Madame de Pompadour's (aka Reinnette) life. Without revealing any details, it ends up being an emotional roller coaster for the Doctor, with Reinnette dying in the end. The episode closes with the ship drifting through space, and it is revealed that it's name is SS Madame de Pompadour. I know that everything we have discussed in class has been strictly science fiction, but did anyone feel like this could also be fantasy? Besides the obvious time travel elements and mechanical robots, it reminded me a lot of a fairytale-like love story, which might be the reason I connected with it. The fantasy aspect might have been more due to the ornate costumes and love aspect of it, but the whole "prince comes in and saves the day" also mirrored something very Disney-esque. Overall, I thought it was a really cool mixture of science fiction and fantasy and am interested to see what everyone else thought.
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I would actually agree with that assessment. The time travel isn't really explained in the way that Doctorow explains things in the Little Brother books, it's more simply accepted as possible (the way Apparition is treated in the Harry Potter series). I would think that it's entirely fair to categorize this more as fantasy than science-fiction.
ReplyDeleteI also agree, but I still saw it as more of a science fiction than fantasy episode. Perhaps it was just the fact that the enemy was a drone instead of someone really evil or the fact that they were on a ship 3000 years in the future, which does not seem too impossible.
ReplyDeleteI can see how fantasy aspects can be seen in the episode but I am still going to classify it as science fiction. The space travel and droids are examples of unexplained technology that reoccur throughout the plot. The time travel is actually kind of explained by the energy of the ship being converted into "time windows" instead of propelling the ship through space. However, the colonial French setting and monsters dressed up as Frenchmen do give off sort of a fantasy-like feel.
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