Looking at a quasi-companion today. The lethal Silurian head of the Paternoster gang, Vastra (along with Jenny and Strax) has never been a resident of the TARDIS, but she’s definitely a part of the Doctor’s life and has been known to accompany him through time and/or space when he needs someone with her skillset.
It’s true that Vastra falls onto the action-figure-ish side of the Steven Moffat Recurring Character line. She’s a brilliant detective (the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes if Dr. Simeon is to be believed) who caught Jack the Ripper. Her keen intellect is almost as sharp as her weapon of choice, a sword, she has a knack for the Big Damn Hero entrance, and she’s apparently eaten the odd murderer here and there (does that make her kind of like a Silurian cross between Dexter and Hannibal? She eats people, but only evil people.) All the while, she’s a member of an ancient, highly developed reptilian species who’s tooling around Victorian London with her maid/wife.
Sometimes all the flash works for me, sometimes it doesn’t. I tend to like Vastra best when we really see her as a product of her environment and/or her past. It’s neat, for example, when she shares knowledge based on her prehistoric experiences before her people went underground and into stasis, and I like it when she feels genuinely Victorian. I dunno; I just enjoy the idea that, no matter what her original story was, she’s now made a new life and home for herself in London and has become part of that society. So, I get a kick out of her doing stuff like calling newspaper ads a “distressing modern trend.” Granted, she’s time-traveled with the Doctor on at least one occasion, and her experience with people from other times/places – the Doctor, Amy and Rory, River, Clara – mean that she has knowledge of technology and other things from significantly further in the future, not to mention that the Silurians had advanced tech millions of years ago. In that sense, I get why she can function pretty interchangeably with someone like the Doctor or River in a crazy sci-fi scenario, and it’s not that I want Vastra to seem behind the times, but I like the little touches that remind us how she’s influenced by her environment.
I won’t go too much into her relationship with Jenny, since I’ve already talked about it. Suffice it to say, she can be an incredibly loving wife, but also a very dismissive, commanding one (it’s worth noting that most of the moments that have given me pause about their relationship have been based on things Vastra has said or done.) I always love her best when she’s tender with Jenny and treats her like an equal.
I really like the idea of Vastra as an accomplished detective, and we know Moffat knows his way around a deductive genius, but with this trait, it feels like we get a lot more “tell” than “show.” I mean, yes, we’re informed that Vastra is the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, and in the Paternoster episodes, there are references to different cases Vastra is working on – the most notable, I suppose, would be in “The Crimson Horror,” since her case there forms the basis for the adventure. However, we don’t see her do much in the way of actual deductive reasoning. With Vastra, we tend to get more generalized investigating, conjectures based on her knowledge of other worlds or times, and sexy Victorian reptile lady butt-kicking. I have yet to hear Vastra make a really gorgeous, stunning deduction like we’ve been known to get on Sherlock, and I’d like to.
No comments:
Post a Comment