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tori_reviewsWhat If…1x04: What If Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands
Okay, that is easily the best episode of this show so far, so this ought to be a very different review than I’ve been doing. In fact, I kind of wish I’d taken notes instead of relying on my memory to bring up all the points I considered during this one.
When I say this is easily the best so far, I am still going to bring up things that don’t work especially if you think about them too hard. From the concept of the story, to the temporal philosophy, to theme, too the execution of the story; it’s still flawed, sometimes deeply, but it does have character and a decent story and it tells it pretty well.
As an odd starting point, I want it said that this is a further afield AU than it’s quite presenting itself as. I know this, because basically everything I ship in the MCU is characters that we meet who have a long established history, and that includes Strange and Christine. It’s a lesser ship of mine, but I did have a soft spot for it. And so I’m aware that something had to be different in their relationship before the accident so that they would be in that car together. Because a huge part of Strange’s character arc in his movie is to become someone a bit more capable of love, giving and receiving it. Which is why it’s a little hard for me to buy that this loss would have sent him down basically the same route as the MCU version. His mind and heart would have been in a different place when it came to learning magic and facing Dormomu, so I would think there would be more differences in those parts of the journey.
It's also weird to hinge this story on the Steven/Christine relationship when that hasn’t been shown on screen in several years now, and was in a very different place when it was. I might be drawn to them like catnip, but I think most people weren’t. So for me this is a cute enough what-if scenario, but the central point might not be everyone’s cup of tea.
Its temporal logic is a bit flawed in that same regards. We know that this is actually not a fixed point in time (I know they use a different word, I’m sticking with fixed point) as Strange could have gotten to basically the same point if he’d lost his hands instead of Christine. Which sort of begs the question if Strange could have saved her by going back further, making his past self say something stupid to push her away and taken the wound for himself while she survived but also kind of hates him (or at least isn’t as into him). But I don’t know whether to think this version of Strange is selfless enough to take all the pain on himself in a way that she would never know what he had done in order to save her.
The problem here is a little like last episode, it’s still not Christine’s story nor does she get to influence it at all. It basically makes her fridging into a fixed point in time and that’s…unfortunate. Especially when we know that it actually didn’t have to be.
I didn’t realize when I brought up karmic destiny last time that we would be getting something with such a similar premise to Madoka in the next episode. Now I kind of want to go watch Madoka again.
I’m a little all over the place with this review, as I want to go back to the relationship element. In that regard, this really shouldn’t have been Strange’s story. In most other ways, it would have to be, because he’s exactly the type to think he can and should do something like this, and possesses the kind of power where he could attempt it. And that thought lead me to realize that this is basically just WandaVision again. Telling it almost could be Wanda searching for justification for her actions, that it could have been worse. Or the writers trying to make her look less bad.
But this doesn’t let Wanda off the hook. It sort of me wonder if there’s a way we get a meetup between Wanda and this Strange somewhere out in the multi-verse and he could actually make her realize how awful she was (although I’m still not sure if the show knows how awful she was, and it’s unlikely to teach her a lesson if people don’t think she needs one).
But at the core, I believe that Wanda is…broken enough to do something stupid, but I don’t know that I believe it of Strange. At least not a Strange who made it through all his training and got through the Dormamu fight, who would still be irrational enough to do what we see here. Wanda is, by and large, untrained, and lacks a big level of discipline to where she could do something wild. But to think Strange would make this choice semi-rationally I have to believe he had a lot more wrapped up in Christine than we’ve ever seen be the truth. That or I put it down to watching her death so many more time drove him completely insane; but the show seemed to want him to seem semi-rational when he gives his big romantic comments about all he's doing is totally worth it.
The animation didn’t even bother me as much in this one, and I think part of that is how much this seems like a fairytale. When they use the amination to recreate things from the movies it still read kind of wrong, but when we’re in this Strange’s story, it kind of fits. Because this is something of a morality tale. And it does that fairly well. For all it’s built on somewhat shaky ground in terms of how believable this AU is, the story it tells is told in a way that works. And that’s better than we’ve been getting so far, so more of this.
(Yeah, I probably had more to say, but as is clear by the random way I approached this one, I didn’t exactly have a plan for what needed to be said.)
Okay, that is easily the best episode of this show so far, so this ought to be a very different review than I’ve been doing. In fact, I kind of wish I’d taken notes instead of relying on my memory to bring up all the points I considered during this one.
When I say this is easily the best so far, I am still going to bring up things that don’t work especially if you think about them too hard. From the concept of the story, to the temporal philosophy, to theme, too the execution of the story; it’s still flawed, sometimes deeply, but it does have character and a decent story and it tells it pretty well.
As an odd starting point, I want it said that this is a further afield AU than it’s quite presenting itself as. I know this, because basically everything I ship in the MCU is characters that we meet who have a long established history, and that includes Strange and Christine. It’s a lesser ship of mine, but I did have a soft spot for it. And so I’m aware that something had to be different in their relationship before the accident so that they would be in that car together. Because a huge part of Strange’s character arc in his movie is to become someone a bit more capable of love, giving and receiving it. Which is why it’s a little hard for me to buy that this loss would have sent him down basically the same route as the MCU version. His mind and heart would have been in a different place when it came to learning magic and facing Dormomu, so I would think there would be more differences in those parts of the journey.
It's also weird to hinge this story on the Steven/Christine relationship when that hasn’t been shown on screen in several years now, and was in a very different place when it was. I might be drawn to them like catnip, but I think most people weren’t. So for me this is a cute enough what-if scenario, but the central point might not be everyone’s cup of tea.
Its temporal logic is a bit flawed in that same regards. We know that this is actually not a fixed point in time (I know they use a different word, I’m sticking with fixed point) as Strange could have gotten to basically the same point if he’d lost his hands instead of Christine. Which sort of begs the question if Strange could have saved her by going back further, making his past self say something stupid to push her away and taken the wound for himself while she survived but also kind of hates him (or at least isn’t as into him). But I don’t know whether to think this version of Strange is selfless enough to take all the pain on himself in a way that she would never know what he had done in order to save her.
The problem here is a little like last episode, it’s still not Christine’s story nor does she get to influence it at all. It basically makes her fridging into a fixed point in time and that’s…unfortunate. Especially when we know that it actually didn’t have to be.
I didn’t realize when I brought up karmic destiny last time that we would be getting something with such a similar premise to Madoka in the next episode. Now I kind of want to go watch Madoka again.
I’m a little all over the place with this review, as I want to go back to the relationship element. In that regard, this really shouldn’t have been Strange’s story. In most other ways, it would have to be, because he’s exactly the type to think he can and should do something like this, and possesses the kind of power where he could attempt it. And that thought lead me to realize that this is basically just WandaVision again. Telling it almost could be Wanda searching for justification for her actions, that it could have been worse. Or the writers trying to make her look less bad.
But this doesn’t let Wanda off the hook. It sort of me wonder if there’s a way we get a meetup between Wanda and this Strange somewhere out in the multi-verse and he could actually make her realize how awful she was (although I’m still not sure if the show knows how awful she was, and it’s unlikely to teach her a lesson if people don’t think she needs one).
But at the core, I believe that Wanda is…broken enough to do something stupid, but I don’t know that I believe it of Strange. At least not a Strange who made it through all his training and got through the Dormamu fight, who would still be irrational enough to do what we see here. Wanda is, by and large, untrained, and lacks a big level of discipline to where she could do something wild. But to think Strange would make this choice semi-rationally I have to believe he had a lot more wrapped up in Christine than we’ve ever seen be the truth. That or I put it down to watching her death so many more time drove him completely insane; but the show seemed to want him to seem semi-rational when he gives his big romantic comments about all he's doing is totally worth it.
The animation didn’t even bother me as much in this one, and I think part of that is how much this seems like a fairytale. When they use the amination to recreate things from the movies it still read kind of wrong, but when we’re in this Strange’s story, it kind of fits. Because this is something of a morality tale. And it does that fairly well. For all it’s built on somewhat shaky ground in terms of how believable this AU is, the story it tells is told in a way that works. And that’s better than we’ve been getting so far, so more of this.
(Yeah, I probably had more to say, but as is clear by the random way I approached this one, I didn’t exactly have a plan for what needed to be said.)
