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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Doctor Who: Season 2 UK

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19:15 / 15.04.06

This was absolutely terrible. I went into this prepared for an extravaganza of an opening episode, but what we got was a wreck. It was all over the place and over-crammed with dodgy ideas.

Let's start with the story elements. This wasn't anything new, as suggested above, but more a throwback to tiresome old Doctor Who themes; running around corridoors from poorly designed monsters, barely sustaining its own internal logic. There was far too much crammed in here.
The Face of Boe sub-plot was simply added because the audience is expecting something like the Bad Wolf idea of last year. The cat-nurse plot was tiresome and typical RTD fare. He doesn't allow the story to resolve itself through its own momentum, instead looking to end it with a hokey emotional resolution; Yay..the people get to touch each other again..

I did like some things in the story however, the body-swapping was nice, and as is stated above, Tennant was at his best in the episode while portraying Cassandra. Some of the humour was good too, especially Cassandra attempting cockney.

Production wise, the episode was all over the place too. The Face of Boe model, CG element or whatever it was, was convincing, as were the cat prosthetics. The CG was desperately bad, see especially the scene where the cats fall down the lift shaft, or when one cat is infected with a huge amount of diseases (which, by the by, is another shitty idea that sounds like it was written by a five year old). The music, as bombastic and inappropriate as ever doesn't need to be commented on, as all people that enjoy the use of their ears can hear just how bad it is.

Just four more RTD episodes to endure this season.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:38 / 15.04.06

So, apart from that, how did you enjoy Dallas, Mrs Kennedy?

A fall of geckos

19:41 / 15.04.06

I found that exciting, fast and generally fun. Maybe not the most original episode. It could possibly have done with another 10 minutes or so, but I found it a promising start to the season. Tennent seemed to pick up the role and run with it, and I'm liking the less guilty Doctor.

Does anyone else think the hospital looks like the Burj Al Arab hotel from Dubai?

19:45 / 15.04.06

I think it was definitely just played as "funny line", and that in itself condones the word, and I don't like it.

One of the things I like about Rose though, is that her character has never really engaged with the "chav" stereotype, not even to counterpoint them. She's a person. They're irrelevant.

Llama, I do think you have some valid criticisms of Davies. He's a bit of an odd duck, and does seem to swing a bit between fantasticness and flimsyness. Most of the time I have issues with him, it's because he sets up what he's not quite able to deliver on. Mostly though, I think he makes up for his troughs with his peaks. When he's on form he's great, and does lovely little writing somersaults, especially with dialogue.

The man can write a zinger when he wants. And I love the understated recurring dialogue tics that he seems to like. Tonight's one about the hospital needing a shop as an example.

I think you're right with his resolutions. See the Rose/God part of The Parting of the Ways and that one set in Cardiff with the Slitheen. Two Deus Ex Machina that try for credibility by justifying each other, but don't work in my opinion.

However, I thought The End of the World was one of the best of last season. Different tone from any of the other episodes and it does what it tries for very well. For me, it sits happily next to "Empty child/Doctor Dances" because it's something seperate. Exploding the earth and then going back for chips was great.

WRT the music, the only time I found it too heavy-handed was in the very beginning, but I can't say I noticed during the rest.

19:46 / 15.04.06

I know that it's basically a show for the kids, but after the consistent excellence that we were greeted with for the majority of the last season, I just expected it to be better.

Much better.

I also think that people here are using their dislike of the use of "chav" as a nodal point for saying how poor the episode was without, y'know, actually admitting that the episode was bad.

Also, apologies for not getting your pop culture (of years gone by) reference about Dallas.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:50 / 15.04.06

If you're referring to my Dallas reference, it wasn't so much "pop culture" as "famous assassination".

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

19:52 / 15.04.06

I don't think the episode was bad, though.

Kiltartan Cross

19:57 / 15.04.06

chav

The TARDIS is presumably still translating everything into 21st Century naff English for Rose, and by extension us.

Normally I hate the word - not on grounds of it being doubleplusbadhatespeak, I just dislike it because it's popular (ha!) - but on this occasion I thought it was excusable.

ridiculous medical contradictions

The series remains as heavy on the fiction and light on the science as it ever was.

My main gripe with the episode was having to see more of Davies indulging himself to add camp to the script; yes, Russell, we know; you've made the point several times over; can we get back to the robots now, please?

...although Aidan Gillen would make a good Doctor! Anyway, all in all I found it an enjoyable episode, regardless of flaws, and the teaser for next week's episode looked good - that was a handsome werewolf there, or I'm no judge.

19:57 / 15.04.06

Yes, Stoatie, I was referring to your joke. Well there's just no way to get out of that without seeming like a buffoon, is there? I'll just happily gloss over my mis-reading of the joke and continue on.

Iamus:
I agree that when RTD is on form, he's on form. If I recall, I defended all three Slitheen episodes last year, so I know that RTD can pull off a good script. As much as I try to mull it over in my mind, and try to make it seem better, this episode just remains distinctly average, if not poor.

SPOILER

Is teaser discussion okay? The werewolf effect looks a little better than what we had this week. I hear that next week's episode will be the first to have a "May not be suitable for younger viewers" tag on it.

20:03 / 15.04.06

I thought "chav" was a pretty effective swipe at the sort of people who've been attacking Rose's "council estate clothes" and whatnot: here's which side you're on, and it ain't the good guys'...

20:15 / 15.04.06

Overall I liked it, but it had plenty of clumsy moments, and some quite glaringly awkward bits. Which to be fair I felt about the first season as well, though I’m aware of possibly having unreasonable expectations of what standards the show should be aiming for, and my willingness to extend concessions to its faults because it’s Who varies quite a bit depending on my mood, rather than being forced to recognise its independent brilliance – or whatever. Quite low-key as well, this episode, plus I wonder if it’s already trying to nostalgically capture what worked in the first season.

Iamus: Yeah, the “lonely god” was intriguing, and I’d like to see where it will go, but it did feel a bit obviously constructed to add another layer of mystery for invested Who fans to gush over. The more mythological aspects, and the Face of Boe / Cat Nurse / Doctor scene generally was probably my favourite drama bit. As said above: the “chav” thing was unfunny, the CG / infectious diseases, were a bit rubbish, as an idea and in their execution, and not really as well thought out as you might have hoped for. I felt that, again as above, that the vivisection scenes were shoe-horned in (and my initial thought was that they were going for quite a reductive stem-cell analogy, but I probably need to ponder that one a bit longer), and I don’t think Tennant handled the outrage as well as he does the smooth-talking charmer, and I think it’s going to be the continuity of character in his presentation of different sides of the Doctor that will be most interesting to watch develop. Not to be too definitive in these early days, but I think that the writers tried to give the New New Doctor the same moral range of outraged respect for life and uplifting “life will out” moments, but I think Eccleston handled it far more convincingly, and I did rather like the feel of his desperate last survivor of the Time War portrayal. I miss the old Doctor…

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

20:16 / 15.04.06

That's kind of what I was getting at with my "rich exploiters disregarding the worth of those they're exploting" thing. Which I also, as a viewer, tied in to the vivisection thing. Mind you, I have been listening to far too much Conflict recently, so I could well be reading in things that aren't there.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

20:17 / 15.04.06

(That was in reference to drink me's post).

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

20:19 / 15.04.06

I'm starting to think I was the only person who punched the air and went "fuck yeah!" for the anti-vivisection thing.

It's just me, isn't it?

paranoidwriter waves hello

20:58 / 15.04.06

No, Stoat, it's not just you. I thought the idea of having the cats grow human guinea pigs was a nice touch, although I also had similar thoughts as Blake Head about a possible stem-cell analogy. Either way, though it may not be original Sci-Fi, it was still nice to see on BBC1 at prime-time.

However, I did feel a little let down by the simplicity of how the Doctor cured them all so easily (i.e. "lets mix up all the 'cures' and get a super-cure!"), and the corniness how the infected humans could then cure each other by touching. I mean, I'm no expert in diseases, but what the f-?

That said, overall, I did enjoy the episode. It was fun.

21:06 / 15.04.06

drink me> That's a very charitable reading of a crass and poorly placed joke.

Blake Head's comments sum up my own feelings on this episode pretty well. I found it had the same whiffiness to it that hung around most of the last season's RTD-penned episodes. Some poor pacing - all the excitement, fun and tension dropped like a stone around the half an hour mark - some illogical plotting, some clumsiness in the mesage, some painful and strained attempts to go all mysitc on us wrt the Doctor's past and/or future (the end bit with the Face of Boe had all the subtlety of a kick in the cock).

Also agree with what you see as Tennant's weaknesses as an actor, Blake (or, at least, as an actor in this part/with this script). It's odd - if they could find a Tennant/Eccles hybrid and stick him in the role, he'd have all the bases covered. Eccles couldn't do funny or witty very well, but nailed the sadness, outrage and humanity. Tennant's like his evil twin - charming, sparkly and alive, but pretty rubbish at giving the impression that he's really got all that much invested in... well, anything that happened this episode, really. The bit where he hugged the one woman and made his little speech about the new human race was slightly squirm-worthy.

22:09 / 15.04.06

No, I think Stoats is on the right track in tying Cassandra's class-hatred to the dehumanisation of the disease victims: the latter are isolated and abused, and when they escape their brutal confines they're scabby and nasty and they make everything around them scabby and nasty too. It's why the ending, as paranoidwriter points out, is weak - the "mix-all-cures then spread that super-cure by touching" thing only works if you process it as a metaphor for compassion.

22:18 / 15.04.06

I didn't really buy the cure thing either.

It echoed the end of Doctor Dances a bit too much, and didn't have the excellent narrative grounding of that resolution.

miss wonderstarr

22:37 / 15.04.06

I watched this with two non-fans, after bigging it up and insisting we stop everything-else-Easter to concentrate on it, and I was pretty embarrassed. I don't know how it happened, but Piper's performance (as Rose, not Cassandra) often seemed awful, just gauche and kids' telly awkward, with lines clanging.

The CGI was inevitably going to be limited technically, but there seemed no creativity and invention in it. Fair enough if the BBC can't make a future-city look like Coruscant, but what's the point in pouring all your effects money into something that's just another Mega-City with flying cars, when it's never going to look half as good as science fiction from even a decade ago (Fifth Element for instance... even Blade Runner). Actually, Metropolis looked about as good as "New New York"... in 1927. The interiors were also distractingly cheesy and unconvincing.

Dramatic climax = zombies. Forgive me if I can't find fifty extras stumbling with their arms outstretched all that exciting anymore.

Having Cassandra inhabit you = acting posh and camp. I got no sense that this was the same person in the Doctor, Rose and Chip. It was just each actor's impression of an elitist society dame, rather than any attempt at a consistent channelling of Wanamaker's character.

Any air of sexual or romantic tension between Doctor and Rose was dissipated almost from the start, when it's made clear that they fancy each other and get giggly about their "first date".

I'm afraid this episode fell as flat, for me, as Cassandra's face.

00:51 / 16.04.06

Anyone else notice some of the redressed sets/locations from last reason?

Surprisingly, I wasn't nearly as disappointed as many people here seem to have been. Maybe my expectations weren't as impossibly high as some. Yeah, it wasn't perfect, neither was the Christmas Invasion, or a fair few episodes of the last season - and you know what? It was still great fun. I was a bit disappointed by the end of the world when I first saw it, but subsequently I have come to think of it as one of my favourite episodes.

But yeah... I think it is a bit odd that people appear to be castigating Dr Who for looking cheaper than a full feature film. You know what? It cost a fraction of a full-feature film and still looked pretty darn good. I guess it's a testament to how the new series has raised our expectations...

08:00 / 16.04.06

Anyone else notice some of the redressed sets/locations from last reason?

Such as the industrial staircase where the Doctor confronted the Nestene last year?

Also, Stoatie, your joke has just landed. It only took me 14 hours.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

08:22 / 16.04.06

I thought Billie was ace meself. I don't think RTD writes bad scripts per se, it's when he puts in stuff for the kids they seem clunky for older viewers (as far as I can tell, and admittedly I've not done exhaustive studies on this, is the farting aliens were loved by all the kids who watch the show), whereas other writers don't seem to have that problem. I think RTD is a bit too 'what shall I put in to this story to make kids like it?' while the other writers don't seem to worry.

miss wonderstarr

08:49 / 16.04.06

I think it is a bit odd that people appear to be castigating Dr Who for looking cheaper than a full feature film. You know what? It cost a fraction of a full-feature film and still looked pretty darn good.

My point is that if you have a fraction of that budget, then firstly don't try to compete on those terms (with big curvy silver cityscapes and flying cars) and secondly, why not show us something new and use the money inventively (ie. something other than big curvy silver cityscapes and flying cars... which we've seen done far better and which wouldn't be interesting anymore even if ILM had produced the sequence.)

09:21 / 16.04.06

The big curvy cityscape didn't look too bad at all, though. The flying cars were awful and completely out of place, the plague effect was pap (you always know you're about to get some rubbish CGI when an extra suddenly has to stand dead still) but, on the whole, the CGI stuff was on a par with that in the last series. Dr Who's always going to stretch its budget and its effects team's abilities too far. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can ignore it.

sleaze> I wouldn't say I was that disappointed. With the exception of Tennant's inability to give any emotional depth to the conclusion (and, to be fair, he didn't exactly have the greatest material to work with there) it was more or less what I'd expected. Fun on the whole, nothing brilliant, stumbled badly a few times.

09:24 / 16.04.06

Maybe it's not 'something new', but something different that I think Dr Who does with its curvy silver cityscapes is having its characters sitting back and lying on the grass and wondering aloud at the amazingness of it all. They always keep a distance from all the silver cityscape/flying cars stuff. Dr Who looks and marvels, and not in an ILM, look–at-how-fucking-complex-we-can-make-this-shot sense. And that 'sitting back and marvelling' thing is something I've never got from the Star Wars universe, where it seems that every such city has to be either zooomed around or blown up or else just slips by in the background while people are droning on about trade agreements. So while you’re bored by the very idea of a futuristic silvery megacity, I’d say this Dr Who makes such things interesting and alive again, in part because it *doesn’t* show us any details with super-expensive special effects.

But it's different strokes. Obviously I'm just easily pleased if I'm won over by a well-pitched sense of wonderment, but I'm still not sure what the comparison is worth. Dr Who is not Star Wars, is not trying to be Star Wars, and Star Wars fans - experts, even - aren’t impressed by the special effects in Dr Who. So what?

(But, really. Apple grass. In the year 5 billion. Does Star Wars have apple grass? I think not.)

09:27 / 16.04.06

In defence of the cityscapes and flying cars, it IS the first episode set on another world, so they presumably felt it was impotant to reinforce this isn't just Earth again.
Overall, I was initially very impressed, but on repeated viewing the small questions do irritate more and more: "plague carriers, last to go" just doesn't cut it as an answer to "why aren't they dead?"; why doesn't Cassandra jump again?; I'll accept any number of explanations of the use of chav, but it sounds clunky; and yeah, right, mixing all those drips will work.
Still, it's light years ahead of old *Who, and I'm happy with it.

09:28 / 16.04.06

Actually, having typed all that, I agree with ERandy that the plague effects were totally rubbish. No sense of wonderment or amazingness there.

Then again, that bit would probably have terrified me f I was 7. If the giant rat in Talons Of Weng-Chiang can give me nightmares, I’m willing to believe anything can be scary to a kid.

10:03 / 16.04.06

I tell you what was great, though, before all the whizzy flying cars and stuff: how the Mickey-Rose-Doctor thing seems to be now. She gives Mickey a Proper Snog, right? Before going off with the Doctor.

I mean, the Doctor and Rose are just sorta picking up where they left off at the end of The Christmas Invasion - the romantic 'Oh, I'd love you to come with me' bit in the snow, all sparkly-eyed and hand-holdy and oooh look at the stars and everything - which is the sort of thing I live for in my Who, basically. The monsters and stuff are great, but it's the oh-whoosh-me-away-in-your-tardis-you-lovely-man bits that I love the best. But even so, that bit in TCI still seemed a little conventional after Jack/Doctor/Rose. And I’d probably be happier if Jack was still on the scene instead of Mickey, because the relationship between those three was the best thing EVAH about season 1, but fuck. She has two boyfriends. An Earth boyfriend and a Tardis boyfriend, and proper boyfriends at that, snogging and all. And no tut-tutting or judgement or ‘you have to choose’ dilemmas so far. Go Rose! Don't ruin this, scriptwriters!

10:48 / 16.04.06

why doesn't Cassandra jump again?

They fumbled the whole Cassandra deal pretty badly all round. I think a hefty wedge of the blame has to go to the script again - in the Dr Who Confidential show they had on BBC Three afterwards, RTD said that when Cassandra was swapping bodies, it wasn't supposed to be as though it was the *same* Cassandra in each person. Instead, it was meant to be a mixture of Cassandra's personality traits with those of the original owner of the body she'd jumped into. Hence TennantCassandra acting so differently from PiperCassandra.

But without that being explicit in the script, it just came across as inconsistent and badly acted.

I suspect that the intention was to have Cassandra finally accept death once she'd taken on some aspects of Chip's personality - again, the script needed to make this clear, but didn't.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

11:33 / 16.04.06

Yeah, if those things had been made explicit in the episode proper I'd have a lot fewer complaints/niggles!

I did get what I expected from this episode, mind. I mean, I knew it was RTD, he was all excited about calling it a "comedy" episode. I could already sort of see where the flaws would probably lie.

There was enough to enjoy though! I feel like I'm not really making that apparent enough. But all the good things have been mentioned and expanded upon by others - the wonderment, different sense of futaaaar city etc. I feel all nitpicky and I don't like it. I feel like I could read this thread and go either way on how I feel about the episode, picking up on what differeng people have said.

But I can't not echo the "doctor dances" thing some others have mentioned. That is - without a doubt - my favourite episode of last season. And to have the resolution so clearly echo that - and taking jumps/cutting corners that aren't really deserved - to get out of a corner that's been written to, was a bit of a fudge. You can't just jump right to a point like that without doing the WORK that allows it to pay off. "The doctor dances" worked for that moment of pay off, and you could really feel that moment as a consequence of that. This - "Ace idea! Zombies!" "oooh, how'll I get them out of this?" "Ah, that'll do"

And, for a personal grievance. Come on, Face of Bo. That's not textbook enigmatic, that's annoying! You are one of those people who comes along and says "oooh, I know a secret" "what is it?" "Nah, can't tell you that". Aren't there rules about this sort of thing? You can't allude to secrets without telling them, it's just not polite!

Although I would find it amusing if the Face of Bo turned in to such a character, turning up every episode and just exasperating the Doctor.

"I know a secret."
"Gonna tell me yet?"
"....ummmmm..... no. Do you want to know it?"
"YES!"
"Bit eager, aren't you?"
"Oh for Gods -"
"Chill yr boots!"
"Just tell me?"
"Why do you want to know so badly?"
"Because you - and then - "
"Alright! Jesus. You need to relax, pal."

13:57 / 16.04.06

Watched it for a second time today, to see if it would grow on me. It's still bad, but I did find more things that I like. The Face of Boe's musical theme is quite nice. The performances of the Cat-Nurses were quite nice, too. What was even more jarring a second time was the Doctor's leap from calm to outrage (just after the reveal of the plague carriers). There didn't seem to be a natural progression and he certainly didn't take me with him; it was just.."oh, the Doctor's shouting, but I feel the same as when he was quipping ten minutes earlier."

Also jarring was Cassandra as Rose's wildly fluctuating accent. Argh! Annoying!

14:01 / 16.04.06

Well, the Face Of Bo is, like, a zillion years old, suedey! 13 episodes maybe doesn't seem so long for him.

drink me: I thought "chav" was a pretty effective swipe at the sort of people who've been attacking Rose's "council estate clothes" and whatnot: here's which side you're on, and it ain't the good guys'..

I agree with this, but I think my problem with the chav thing was that Cassandra got to say it twice without any reply from Rose. If it has to be used as the sort of snobby villian-y nastiness that Cassandra would come out with, then it's a shame that it then goes by unchallenged. 'Cos I was enjoying the way Rose and Cassandra were exchanging insults up until that point. She's struck dumb at just the wrong moment.

And yes, the 'Rose is a chav' thing has been hanging around for a while - I saw it used in newspapers to describe her during Season 1, I’m sure I've heard it used the same way on *Radio 4*, for heaven's sake - lot of people with varying milages for this word, all that. But, y'know, given that bits from Dr Who might find their way into the nation's playgrounds, it would certainly grate less to hear it if Rose was allowed a super-sharp comeback. Apart from everything else, I'm sure there’s lots of kids in lots of playgrounds who could find a use for a good line from Rose. Damn, think of the children, Russell! You were doing so well with the whole empowering thing.

Anyway, I dunno. I agree with the comments about saggy pacing and rotten plague effects and unconvincing ending but still loved it. The happy-making good bits (Billie, Davey, Billie and Davey as Cassandra, the APPLE GRASS) easily outweighed the bad bits.

And hey, I remember the first episode from series 1 being equally uneven, and then Eccles and everything else got much much much better over the course of the season. Room to improve, you say? - why, that's not so bad if you look at it right. Also, in season 1, they definitely seemed to have saved most of the effects budget for the later episodes. I wonder if they’re doing the same thing this time, eh?

Oh, and I just noticed this, from iamus:

I think it was that "the lonely God" line that piqued me. Sounded like a rich vein of Squeee just waiting to be mined

Oh, yes. I do hope so.

14:04 / 16.04.06

One other nice thing! I quite liked the line: "The Flesh is free!" Pity that it's followed shortly after with the pivotal moment of suckage when the cat-nurse is infected with every disease evar!11.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:15 / 16.04.06

They can't win, can they? Last season everyone moaned that they never went to any other planets; they finally do and get it in the neck for overstretching their budget.

14:23 / 16.04.06

I think certain elements of the alien planet set up were okay. I can't say enough good things about the cats and the sense of scale that they established was quite nice too. New New York did look impressively big, as did the hospital. The Duke of New York and the unusual petrification disease were alien concepts that I felt worked quite well. If they insist on an over-reliance on CG, then they should light it properly (once again, cat becoming plague carrier looked terrible)and show it for a brief amount of time..those plague effects lingered for far too long.

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