Day 819: The Woman Who Lived

If Deep Breath promised us that the Capaldi era would bring with it a renewed focus on longer conversations and letting the characters breathe, then The Woman Who Lived turns that promise up to 11 (or rather, 12). It's a fascinating story to consider because it only really has enough plot to sustain itself for around 20 minutes, and so the rest of the time is just spent sitting and talking with the characters, as we consider the ramifications of the previous episode for the woman currently known as Me.

So Me is the woman who used to call herself Ashildr, the girl who the Doctor made immortal in The Girl Who Died. And, as the Doctor hinted at in that story, it's not a decision that she's entirely happy with in the long term. You see, for all that we might see immortality as a blessing, you have to realise that there are so may downsides to it that you never consider beyond that beautiful upside that is 'not dying'. It's all about seeing everyone else die around you, and you can do nothing to stop them from dying, so you're forced to mourn their deaths and move on. And one of the interesting things about the character of Me is that she's effectively immunised herself to this notion of mourning and caring for other people's lives. There's plenty of moments in the episode where she's presented with the prospect of killing someone and you know that she's only not going to do it to ensure that the Doctor remains onside. It's this lack of care that inherently disgusts him, as seen in the Doctor's underplayed reaction to Me's outburst about being left in a leper colony - a colony that she herself set up because she used to have some care for other people.

And there's a lot more besides this to talk about, like the juxtaposition of the Doctor travelling in his effective immortality alongside Me's forced slow path approach, or the beautiful use of books as memories - a simple physical representation of Me's life and the way in which she approaches it. But those are for another time - I've got an assignment that I need to finish off and that must take precedence. Anyway, it's not as if we're not going to be seeing more of Me soon...