Thoughts on the Thirteenth Doctor

 Hmm - I had this post on deck and ready to go for the Sunday Who Review yesterday, but somehow, I wound up posting a movie review instead.  Getting ahead of myself?

After Twelve’s first season, I enjoyed writing a post on various similarities I saw between him and past Doctors.  It was interesting to think about, since Twelve was billed as such a departure for the show, especially in series 8.  Thirteen is in a similar boat, albeit for different reasons:  while Twelve’s more cantankerous tendencies are what made him stand out, Thirteen’s gender is her most noteworthy difference from the Doctors who came before her.  Despite some talk I’ve seen online about how Thirteen “doesn’t feel like the Doctor” or that the show “isn’t Doctor Who anymore,” I see plenty of parallels between her and the Doctors of past years.

As Thirteen starts coming into herself in “The Woman Who Fell to Earth,” the earliest impressions I got were strong Ten and Eleven vibes.  Even though both of them have some pretty stark differences from each other, there’s something about their humor that feels like a throughline shared with Thirteen.  That motor-mouth habit with a strong tendency to veer off into non-sequiturs.  Whenever Thirteen is going on about some ridiculous past experience she had or talking to herself at a mile a minute, that’s when those flashes of Ten and Eleven come through.

There’s also a gentleness to Thirteen that, by turns, reminds me of Five and Eight (this post features a lot of Doctor groupings that only sort-of go together – not altogether sure why.)  For me, these two, along now with Thirteen, are maybe the nicest Doctors overall, but again, that doesn’t always look the same way.  In fact, I always seem to forget how downright ornery Five can be at times until I rewatch his stories, but the general impression he often gives is of being pleasant but slightly unmemorable.  And that’s probably the most critical thing I can say about Thirteen’s characterization, that there are moments when she feels sort of blandly nice.  But most of the time, she feels more like Eight, warmly kind and filled with a joy you can’t help noticing, and I like that.

Circling back to Five and Eleven, and throwing in Two for good measure, I’m reminded of various Doctors who often have multiple companions that they regard more like odd little space families than anything else (well, in Amy and Rory’s case, that’s more literal!)  I don’t think Thirteen is quite there yet with Graham, Ryan, and Yaz, or at least the show needs to do a better job of demonstrating that, but it’s obvious that a family vibe is what it’s going for.  I’ve always liked depictions of TARDIS families, and I’d like to see the show continue to push that angle.

Thirteen is very science-minded in a hands-on way, which is reminiscent of Three but looks very different on her.  Whereas Three is most at home in a lab, Thirteen more often seems to prefer a workbench – she’s both techy and a tinkerer with a flair for engineering, which makes her come off less high-brow intellectual and more enthusiastic gearhead.  I love that she builds her own sonic screwdriver, and I just generally enjoy it whenever she sciences something together out of spare parts to save the day.

On the Basis of Sex (2018, PG-13)

*Disclaimer: Frickin’ Armie Hammer. I hate that the guy who played such a wonderful, feminist, non-toxic man backing up such a fierce woman turned out to be an alleged predator. It’s not fair to this movie that his creepiness polluted it.*

 

Since I don’t have a ton of nominated films I want to try and see before the Oscars, I’m going to try and catch some other well-received movies from this year that didn’t make the cut, to better inform my eventual Personal Nominations post.  This is one I saw before the nominations came out, but expect other non-nominated movie write-ups to get mixed in here as well.

This is another one like Bohemian Rhapsody or Mary Queen of Scots, where I can see why the reviews wound up more on the mixed side but I still like it quite a bit.  While, as an inspirational biopic, it can feel a little by-the-numbers sometimes, it’s ultimately a great story bolstered by some fine performances.

In 1957, Ruth Bader Ginsburg wasn’t a Supreme Court Justice.  Instead, she was one of nine women admitted to Harvard Law, a mere six years after women are first admitted to the prestigious institution.  The film follows the tremendous work she does balancing her education and her taxing home life, then jumps ahead to her first major case, taking on a sexually-discriminatory law in a federal appeals court.

I’ll get the complaints out of the way first so I can move onto other stuff.  My biggest issue with the movie is that, at times, it feels it’s checking boxes off a list of Ruth’s life events, at least for the two major periods that the film covers.  There are times when it seems to hop to plot points rather than flow into them, which can give it a choppy feel, as well as a sort of perfunctory air.  Also, from what I’ve read, the movie is mostly accurate save for some added dramatic tension in the climactic trial scene, and while there are plenty of films that play fast and loose with the facts, I don’t think this particular change was needed here.  As I was watching that scene, instead of being caught up in the story, I was thinking, “Is that really how it went down?”, a sign to me that the change was misguided instead of narratively beneficial.

All right, now that that’s out of the way!  There’s a lot that I love about this movie.  I really like that it resists the urge to mythologize such a well-respected figure as Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  In various ways, it highlights aspects of her fuller humanity.  It of course shows her righteous indignation at the towering amounts of sexism she encounters at virtually all times, which was to be expected, given how heavily the film deals with women’s oppression and the changing times.  But there are other ways as well.  Ruth isn’t the one to come up with every answer/solution on her own, but not in a way that diminishes her awesomeness – instead, she recognizes other people’s valuable input when she hears it and responds accordingly.  Also, there are plenty of little throwaway moments of her being a person instead of Future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  She plays charades with her husband and friends, she angrily kicks off her shoes after an aggravating party, and she jumps up and wraps her legs around her much-taller husband when they get intimate.  All these things add up to remind you that Ruth isn’t a mythic figure of feminism and justice that sprang fully formed from Zeus’s head; she’s a human, albeit one who’s done incredible things.

You probably don’t need me to tell you how inspirational it is to see Ruth being smart and tough in male-dominated circles, how much it hurts to see the moments when she feels worn down by the pervasive sexism she withstands, or how stirring it is to see her in the court room.  All this is totally awesome, and I’m 100% down for that.  What I’m also down for, though, is the portrayal of her husband Marty, a tax lawyer who’s a nigh-endlessly supportive husband and involved father.  Marty cooks for the family, is tender with the children, and champions Ruth without standing in front of her and being her male savior, and it’s just amazing.  He’s not perfect – he can be too placating at times, giving people the benefit of the doubt when Ruth sees they haven’t earned any leeway – but he’s a really beautiful portrait of non-toxic masculinity.  Again, I love Ruth and her story, but while I’ve seen some great films about incredible women from history, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen one in which a male character was so utterly behind her all the way.  It feels really radical to see Marty being so supportive, gentle, and emotionally open without the film casting any aspersions on his masculinity.

Strong cast all around.  Felicity Jones is great as Ruth – fierce and formidable, but also frustrated and uncertain at times – and Armie Hammer is terrifically warm as Marty.  The film also features Sam Waterston and Stephen Root as members of the old Harvard boys’ club, Justin Theroux as an ACLU lawyer and old friend of Ruth’s, and Kathy Bates as historic lawyer Dorothy Kenyon.

Warnings

Language, light sexual content, smoking/drinking, and strong thematic elements.