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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Doctor Who: Season 2 UK

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Kali, Queen of Kitteh

15:29 / 16.06.06

Sadly, my nose is made of foam rubber, so I guess I'm out.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

05:15 / 17.06.06

Um, if you've managed to avoid all the other newspapers spoilers you'll want to avoid the Guardian today...

07:53 / 17.06.06

Oh, crap, was just about to pop out for one. What page?

09:39 / 17.06.06

Oh, I see it. In the Guide. The photo is a bit out of order but the text isn't too horribly spoily.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

17:25 / 17.06.06

Ewwwww! Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew Ew! Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

Our Lady Has Left the Building

17:42 / 17.06.06

Aw, what a sweet little episode, even despite Peter Kay and a monster from someone on Blue Peter.

18:17 / 17.06.06

I agree with "Sweet" as an assessment.

Funnily enough, that's the episode of the second season of Dr Who that I think I've enjoyed the most. Not to say that previous episodes haven't been good or enjoyable - without reopening the girning/gurning/your face will stay that way if the wind changes debate - but Love and Monsters was just, in many ways, well made.

Granted, the pacing was a little bumpy in places. Peter Kay was distinctly odd. And, with mild spoilers, which I think are a given by now but, anyway, I really thought Girlfiend in a Paving Slab was, well, sweet, but some might say unnecessary. It was an example of the Dr Who truism of a slightly happy outcome following grief, because Elton ending up on his own after his friend's death might have been a little too sad.

I slightly concur with 'ew', but that was also part of the 'sweet'-ness.

Also... "Ex-zema"? Oh dear.

18:42 / 17.06.06

I thought it had the potential to be a fantastic episode and I'm sure it will become a fan favourite, but Peter Kay really drained all the life out of it for me. It's SO good until he turns up and then it fell apart. It's almost as if there are two episodes running in parallel - the fun well-written human story and a panto.
Still, they did have to shoehorn in a Blue Peter competition somewhere. I liked it, a lot. It even tempted me to invest in some ELO, but I think it could have been so much better with a better villain. Oh, and did anyone notice the nice touch with "Doctor What?" Think someone might be reading this thread?
Yes, and Ewwwwww. Indeed.

18:56 / 17.06.06

I think that's probably my favourite episode of the season after the Sarah Jane one. I like the whole theme about how ordinary people's happy little lives are totally destroyed when they come into the orbit of the Doctor. For a comedy episode starring Peter Kaye as a ludicrous monster invented by a 9 year old boy in a Blue Peter competition, I thought that was possibly the darkest, most chilling episode yet. "Sweet" was not my reponse to that. I found the idea of that poor guy being left with a paving stone girlfreind infinitely more chilling that last week's CGI Satan... Brrr...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

19:17 / 17.06.06

Feverfew, how can you not like Girlfriend is a Paving Slab? If the uppity parents didn't like Gay Captain Jack last year they're going to go mental at Doctor Who introducing the concept of Oral Sex to their vulnerable kids.

DWC was more missable than usual afterwards, but did reveal that the kid who designed the monster had failed to mention it was supposed to be as tall as a double decker bus so was a little disappointed to see it was Peter Kay sized.

I must admit my favourite bits were probably the beginning and end, when he wasn't around, but I didn't mind him that much, after all I've watched Delta and the Bannermen. But yet again it's nice to see the collatoral damage the Doctor makes as he steps through the world. And when Rose comforts Elton, another kid whose parent the Doctor couldn't save, (another mother if you want to treat Cyberman Jackie as Rose's mum) that was just a lump-in-the-throat moment.

19:38 / 17.06.06

Also... "Ex-zema"? Oh dear.

That was the joke. Alien. Doesn't know how to pronounce the word.

I didn't think Kay was too bad at all - certainly not "pantomime". Episode was okay. The "you've forgotten - your mum died" bit was a very silly piece of plotting that didn't even begin to scan with what had gone before, but at least the actors tried their best with it.

Keystone Cops chase made me laugh. Girlfriend is a Paving Slab is too disturbing for words if you dwell on it for anything longer than five seconds, so I'm not going to.

There have been far worse episodes this series.

20:20 / 17.06.06

Would it be too obvious to point out the similarities between this and "Storyteller" from season 7 of Buffy? Hand held, self filmed moments reminiscent of Andrew's hobby in the Buffy episode. It had lots of nice little cutaways like Storyteller does, but to the Autons, Sycorax and Slitheen instead of Faith killing a Vulcan, Andrew's belt scheme and the "we are as gods" stuff.

It even had a similar resolution with the Doctor (assuming Buffy's role in Storyteller) affecting disinterest in whether Elton/Andrew lives or dies. RTD often cites Joss Whedon as a huge influence on his work and with this episode, he has achieved his most Buffy like piece to date.

I enjoyed the episode a lot and wasn't as disappointed with Peter Kay as some people across the intarweb seem to be. Overlooking any niggles I might have with the episode (some poor CGI with the Absorbatrix, slightly iffy pacing around the middle) it gets a resolute thumbs up from me, if only for the excellent Jackie Tyler material and the Doctor's greatest line since the Christmas Invasion:

"Elton, fetch a spade!"

20:23 / 17.06.06

Having missed this week's DWC I'm hoping that RTD didn't make the comparison himself.

20:52 / 17.06.06

Three hours later and the whole "man left with paving slab girlfriend" thing is still really disturbing me. There's Sapphire and Steel levels of bleakness and wrongness about that concept.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

21:01 / 17.06.06

I wouldn't say it was just Buffy, I've lost count of the number of shows that have had an episode like this (see also: one event being recalled by various parties in slightly differing manners to piece together the jigsaw of what really happened.)

It just seems like a standard standalone episode device, really.

Which isn't to say I didn't like it, because I did! I thought some of it was framed a little oddly and some of the choices made with regard to viewpoint and presentation and the like were a little odd and clumsy, but it was pretty good.

Poke it with a stick

21:43 / 17.06.06

The only thing more odd than the referee in the Italy v. USA game was this episode.

I'm not sure I know what the hell I just watched; how it all managed to hang together whilst shifting from farce to tragedy to surrealist horror or if RTD and co. were saying something about Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps by putting that girl's face on Peter Kay's arse, but I do know I liked it.

I don't think I'll ever be able to look at a paving slab in the same way, mind.

21:52 / 17.06.06

The only thing more odd than the referee in the Italy v. USA game was this episode.

Did something odd happen about football tonight?

02:48 / 18.06.06

Well, that was just a lovely, depressing, uplifting, bizarre, and at times brilliant episode. Began to drag a bit when Kennedy first turned up, but the characters were just great. I'd love to see Elton again, even as a companion.

And yes, this episode was very Buffyriffic, reminding me of eps like The Zeppo and Storyteller.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:57 / 18.06.06

I've lost count of the number of shows that have had an episode like this

Reminded me of the Jose Chung episodes of The X-Files and Millennium, which I loved.

And I loved this too.

So that's alright then.

16:25 / 18.06.06

On the whole I haven't liked Tennant as the Doctor very much, and thought that Ecclestone was much better. Even the fake grin that Gypsy objects to upthread seemed to carry a menace from Ecclestone that seemed just right, where he was almost having to try too hard to convince others that their lives wouldn't be devastated by contact with him.

But this is the first episode of the second series that I've really enjoyed, and it managed to be both sweet, icky and sad all at the same time. I was really hoping our boy Elton would become a companion by the end, but I doubt that even the Russell Davies Doctor Who has space for a paving slab girlfriend.

Poke it with a stick

17:24 / 18.06.06

Cube - the ref was appallingly bad, and seemed determined to send off as many players as he possibly could.
Though, to be fair, he probably wasn't absorbing them in his room later...

18:57 / 18.06.06

The thing I don't get about the whole, "People's lives get wrecked when they hang around with the Doctor" thing is that this isn't the last series of the show, or a big concluding one - there's stuff that's going to have to go on afterwards. They can't KEEP harping on about the bad stuff that happens to people around the doctor for the next five series without its starting to look like he's actually bringing it down on them and that he should, you know, stop or something. It's really weird - they'd doing all this stuff with the character this series that seems like it's about really opening up and examining the dynamic of Doctor and Companion and the creepy stuff and the difficulties and the shitty bits, and ... well ... nonetheless the show must go on. How does it go on like this?!

This episode didn't really light me on fire, but certainly it was creepy and weird - several people died who I really liked and thought were decent and good and they didn't get much of a send-off, Peter Key was creepy as all hell because he looked stupid and trivial and yet killed lots of people in horrible ways, the guy who was the hero had had a terrible apocalyptically miserable life, Jackie was unhappy and alone and angry, the hero's left caring for a woman who is basically quadriplegic plus a bajillion bits and the Doctor seemed to think it was a cause for massive celebration that he'd saved her sentient face. The whole thing just seemed kind of desperate and horrible and almost slightly dismissive of the lives of real normal people. I don't know that I liked it at all.

Three episodes to go - Fear Her, Army of Ghosts and Doomsday - no idea what they're about at all although obviously rumours of return of Cybermen have bounded around for ages. They should make these into proper 22-24 episode runs, they really should. It's just not long enough as it is.

19:03 / 18.06.06

Is it just me that saw a horrible fate for Ursula if she and Elton ever split up? Who would pick up the pieces, so to speak? It isn't like she could really get out and meet new people...

19:04 / 18.06.06

Absolutely loved Jackie in this episode. Please keep her that well written.

19:05 / 18.06.06

Your wish is my command, Seth.

19:05 / 18.06.06

Wow, thanks!

... wait a minute. That was me posting again, wasn't it?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:18 / 18.06.06

This episode has confirmed my long-held belief that Jackie should become the Doctor's companion.

Regrettable Juvenilia

21:39 / 18.06.06

Loved the episode, but they are laying on the "somebody's going to die" stuff pretty heavily now... Is it really wrong of me to hope it is Rose, not Jackie?

Best joke (and I think it was a joke): "the Torchwood files on Rose Tyler have been corrupted by something called the Bad Wolf virus"...

22:46 / 18.06.06

I wondered what would happen to Ursula if stored face-down. And would Elton's "love life" consist of mounting the face?

Really really unpleasant.

23:07 / 18.06.06

Yes, yes, yes. We've processed that and the consensus is EWWWW!

I bet Jack Vettriano is gearing up for a version right now.

00:48 / 19.06.06

Tom: several people died who I really liked and thought were decent and good and they didn't get much of a send-off, Peter Kay was creepy as all hell because he looked stupid and trivial and yet killed lots of people in horrible ways, the guy who was the hero had had a terrible apocalyptically miserable life, Jackie was unhappy and alone and angry, the hero's left caring for a woman who is basically quadriplegic plus a bajillion bits and the Doctor seemed to think it was a cause for massive celebration that he'd saved her sentient face. The whole thing just seemed kind of desperate and horrible and almost slightly dismissive of the lives of real normal people.

Yes. And yet it ended amazingly uplifting and optimistically. I dunno, I guess it just depends on the person, but even after all the creepy horrible stuff that was going on, there was still a positive message to be found in the episode. "The world's a dreadful, scary place, but it's all worth it for all the right reasons."

I found this one to be funny and sad and heartwarming and just damn inspiring. It was a worthwhile experiment and I think I'll be going back to this one more than any other. It wasn't necessarily my favorite, or the best, but it's probably the most touching.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

05:55 / 19.06.06

It reminded me of the episode of Inspector Morse where Morse and his sidekick go to Australia to interview a supergrass who they sent there after he helped them bang up a big criminal family years ago. Shit happens, people die unnecessarily and then it turns out that Morse was so eager to get these guys locked up that the grass fed him a pack of lies which he believed.

I think Doctor Who is a rigorous enough program that the central tenets can be challenged without it falling down. It sucks if you were the guy who owned the Torchwood house in episode two, but on the other hand without the Doctor the British Empire would be taken over by a werewolf.

It's also interesting that Elton didn't blame the Doctor for his mother's death, he just wanted to know why...

Whisky Priestess

09:21 / 19.06.06

The mother's death thing was real overkill - too mawkish, out of left field and poorly explained. I mean, how would he not work out that she died, given that one day he had a mother and the next day he didn't? Completely unnecessary fact-hiding nonsense for very little emotional effect; if Agatha Christie pulled that sort of trick I'd hurl the book across the room.

I really liked the scenes with Jackie and Danny-out-of-Hustle, which were by far the best writing in the episode: other than that, I thought this was about as good as I would expect an episode written around a Blue Peter competition to design a monster to be, i.e. not very.

For a start Rose and the Doctor were hardly in it, which IMHO weakened it enormously - the programme's not called Girlfriend In a Paving Slab (although hopefully a new indie band soon will be) it's called Doctor Who - and unlike Buffy, whereby supporting-cast episodes usually centre around a character we already know-n-love (Giles, Tara, Dawn), this one threw a whole new person into the mix.

If Elton doesn't reappear at some point I will be quite annoyed, as otherwise it's a lot of screen-time for a one-off character and the episode as a stand-alone wasn't good enough to justify that.

09:28 / 19.06.06

Surprisingly though, no reference was made to the Doctor WHO? website that Micky took over. You'd have thought that LINDA would have found that on their investigations.

I did like how Rose had apparently wiped all information about herself from the Torchwood files whilst she was linked to the timestream. Subconcious defense mechanism or intentional?

The Absorbalith was pretty horrible, in a "hail to the new flesh" kind of way. Similar level of nastiness to it's Slitheen cousins. It looks comical, but actually turns out to be quite effective as a monster.

He was, of course, yet more evidence that lots of planets have a North.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:17 / 19.06.06

I mean, how would he not work out that she died, given that one day he had a mother and the next day he didn't?

Um, I don't think we were meant to think he'd forgotten that his mother had died when he was a child. He'd just forgotten a) that he found her body, and b) that it was the same night he saw the Doctor. From experience, I don't think people repressing the details of traumatic childhood experiences is unrealistic.

I got the best joke of the episode wrong ealier - the best joke was of course "Il Divo".

Next week: Nina Sosanya! Good old RTD sticking with his fave actors...

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