I started watching Doctor Who recently. So far my family's seen the first season of the new series, and I am officially obsessed. But the entire season is way too big a topic for one post.

I've been trying to figure out why I found the Jack/Doctor kiss in Parting Of The Ways so touching, without a lot of success. I think part of it might be that when we first met Jack, he reminded me a little of Bosola from The Duchess of Malfi. (I saw the Actors' Shakespeare Project production this winter.) The line "I was conning you, that's what I am, I'm a con man" seems defensive, almost embarrassed, as though he doesn't really want to be one, but can't see any way out of it. Similarly, Bosola acknowledges that he is in the wrong, "A politician is the devil's quilted anvil" and "O, this base quality of intelligencer" where most villains would convince themselves they were right. He is angry at Ferdinand for asking him to spy, but he doesn't rebel until after the Duchess is dead. However, Jack is transformed just by meeting the Doctor, by his own account: "Wish I never met you, Doctor! I was much better off as a coward." Also, he's managed to express his feelings without breaking the Guy Code, which is always sweet.

Now I have a crazy impulse to make the entirety of Duchess of Malfi into a Doctor Who macro. I've got it half cast already. :( *fears for sanity*

As a side note, I think it's incredibly awesome that Duchess of Malfi has a shoutout to Richard III. (My drama club did Hamlet this spring, which also has a shoutout, to Julius Caesar, which I liked as well.) I love how Webster plays with the conventions, too, like pointing out his jumps over patches of time "I should dream / It were within this half hour" or the mistaken identity "Such a mistake as I have often seen / In a play." It was all I could to to keep from squeeing out loud in the theater when the Cardinal is plotting to kill Bosola, and we assume it's an aside, but then Bosola was behind the door and he heard it!