Buncha takes about Girl in the Fireplace (by someone that doesn't like it)

trying to give it as much grace as possible... there's some stuff to salvage, i think

visuals: again very beautiful episode aesthetically. even the spaceship sections which under rtd sometimes look a bit glip, with the right lighting in this ep, they rlly "pop" colonialism / hegemony: it's really uncomfortable but i don't know enough about reinette to go in depth with it. just gonna highlight the whole "this is the royal court and we're french" which is .... fittingly the point we're most asked to see reinette as a "Strong Female Character (tm)" / Girl Boss ... really sour. The Timeless Child Retroactive Continuity Bonus: the doctor's loneliness is made more poignant by being not "the last of their kind" but "the only one of their kind"

recurrent s2 themes: (this is what i was talking abt in theo ther post...) the clockwork fail because "it has not purpose now" perhaps this could be symbolism for monarchism in general, in face of a new, modern world? monarchies are well-oiled, intricate machines, socially speaking. they have rituals and customs and complex genealogies (hey, stowe armorial... amirite ladies... #crackin'heraldryhumor). but w/ the advancement of the productive forces, they "lost their purpose". the uk continues to have a monarchy to this day, but it is not longer the effective, purposeful machine it was was, rather it is an appendage or a relic of a more advanced system (bourgeois capitalism). one it has to cannibalize in parts to survive. also, the obvious visual of a highly-intricate "machine" that is made up of depreciated tech (clockwork). here's another: i saw an interesting meta that this ep could be read as a mirror of school reunion: in SR we see rose gripping w/ the reality of the doctor eventually outliving her, and here we see via reinette the doctor's pov of having to endure watching all their lovers "witter and die"except romana bc she just dumps him lol

i think this improves a bit on the seeming disjointedness of both eps and how disjointed it feels from the rest of s2.

relatedly, im also headcanon fix-ing it that this whole stint 10 pulls of "finding a mistress" (as it's very pointedly parallel'd in several scenes like him showing up late and "drunk" and rose being casted as the "nagging wife")(oooo resist negativity urges RESIST), is a direct example of him having a classic commitment-phobic panic, following SR.

there's an interesting theme/repeating motif in this ep (And later we see it repeated in moffat's seasons) about dreams and nightmares. (clockwork guys as reintte's+ the doctor as the clockwork's) idk how to tie it together as a Meaning or Theses yet but some interesting implications about it:

- the monsters we see in this ep are framed as nightmares (the doctor looks under the bed of kid!reinette to find the first clockwork robot)... what are nightmares? nightmares aren't real, but they also tell us something real about what we fear when awake. when these stories turn the imaginary into the real, there's a kind of symbolism in that "any fear we have can be faced and defeated" - kind of stealing this from another meta i read lol but: the monsters as fantasy vs grief as a reality, and the metatextual tension of having very real things like unavoidable death in a show with a "dashing, scifi hero that always defeats the scary monsters",,, - there's a negative asshole way to point out how similar reinette's "tragic ending" / arc is to a lot of... other storylines in moffat's who lol but i'm gonna try to spin it in the more positive, curious, "good faith" way: what is moffat trying to explore or say when he has characters always "missing" each other by the whims of time? sometimes by displacement, other time by "missing the timing" / "being too slow"? perhaps it is a call to be more prescient, and these are not just stories about tragedies... but cautionary tales about not taking actions / living life when one's called to live it (see river, amy, reinette, sally's friends,,,).

AND FINALLY, i had to really dig deep, but this is the one that salvages the episode i think, and why i wont *totally* discard it from my mental canon in the future: the traditional, surface interpretation of the ending is that it is "tragic" because ten doesn't go to reinette because she's dying/has died.... and once he has landed there, it is too late. the fireplace was tragically out of synch with his life....

however, let's push that further why doesn't he just go back a lil' earlier? why doesn't eleven just tell amy and rory to write a fake letter and put up a fake tombstone? the answer could be [bc time travel lore reasons!!].,,, BUT there's a potentially interesting and complex alternative reading: ten chose to not see reinette in her sickness. there was nothing impending him from seeing her again once he was back in the tardis. but much like with their companions that they can always locate if they wanted to, the doctor knows there's it's kind of pointless, kind of artificial, kind of cheating to manipulate time to get as much out of a human lifespan as possible. and it is a pointless act, because in the end he'll have to say goodbye anyway. and like he told sarah jane... "he just couldn't come back". so this this a self kindness he gives himself. to let reinette be just a fiery affair with a tragically beautiful woman he had "no control over" and could not comfort in her sickness/withering. perhaps unconsciously, this is a way he finds to not Deal with what the implications of this little "affair" means for his relationship w/ rose, and how he may have to make the same choice again in the future.