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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Doctor Who: Season 2 UK

  
  

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Whisky Priestess
10:27 / 19.06.06
Well, good. I got the impression that he had basically blanked his mum's existence - hence the 1970s home-movie "memories" at the end. I thought it was a touch far-fetched.

Il Divo singing "Unbreak my Heart" was mighty, on the other hand.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
11:33 / 19.06.06
Am I the only person who thought "Absorbathon" was the best name on offer?
 
 
Mourne Kransky
12:53 / 19.06.06
Wish the Abzorbaloff had absorbed Il F***ing Divo.

Great episode IMO, and particularly fine was its use of ELO. Marc Warren played genial, well-intentioned Elton well and I found it stimulating to be looking at the whole Doctor thang from the outside. I liked the pantomime feel. Too horrible for words without that gloss.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
13:06 / 19.06.06
I particularly like the stuff about how it's good for these little fan communities to move on and develop into proper social circles independent of their original catalyst: next time someone turns up on Barbelith asking why we don't talk about the Invisibles all the time any more, we'll know they're an evil soul-sucking monster who must be destroyed.
 
 
iamus
13:53 / 19.06.06
I kept waiting for them to start calling the Doctor "George", but no such luck.


As for Paving Slab Girlfriend..... well at least she's getting laid regularly.





Sorry.
 
 
Mister Six, whom all the girls
14:48 / 19.06.06
"Next week: Nina Sosanya! Good old RTD sticking with his fave actors..."

AND written by Matthew Graham of Life on Mars. Should be nice to have another new writer added to the mix, especially after this week's atrocity.

My big pet peave with TV programmes is when they mix comedy with drama. It can be done quite well (witness League of Gentlemen), but RTD just ain't up to it. When the episode made it clear that we were set for numerous shots of an actor in a static shot with sudden edits to him dancing to ELO throughout the 45 minutes of the show... I got worried. I have no problem with Dr who doing a 'Jose Chung'-like episode but... it has to be done right.

If you're going to send up your show, do so in new ways.

Don't have a Scooby-Doo run-a-round as a joke when you've already done it in for shock/horror in WW3. And why give us Elton's POV if the Doctor and Rose remain the same? It was a great idea to knit together the events of the past year and a half through the POV of Elton, but... why did it go nowhere? And why show us the events through his POV if they're exactly the same?

See, in the Jose Chung episodes we got to see the characters and situations we'd been watching all this time in a new light which showed them for being terribly absurd and silly. It's brilliant!

Just because RTD did not go this route is not the only problem. He doesn't have to follow someone else's formula to create a good ep of Dr Who. But then we get Victor Kennedy who is about as deadly and imposing as my Aunt. Why have a villain who should be charismatic yet terrifyingly powerful act like... a guest star? He's far too self aware and when he finally gets revealed to be a monster... not only is he having far too good of a time making the director laugh but... it's unclear as to why he did any of this.

He absorbed a group of people just to... draw the Doctor out and absorb him as well? Is that it? It could easily have been a case of the monster being stuck on Earth and concocting a plan to hijack the TARDIS... which also is very silly and apparently involves the monster standing in a garden doing nothing.

Were we supposed to be afraid? If so, this doesn't work because the Doctor doesn't really care about LINDA getting absorbed and certainly doesn't fear the monster either. The usual banter about silly planets and (please never mention them again) Slitheen. Laughing? Well... that doesn't work either because of the horror of the situation and the fact that for some weird reason the actors are playing the scene straight.

For me the only redeeming aspect of the episode was the Doctor's story about the living shadow that killed Elton's mother. WHY NOT TELL THAT STORY?? It's very strange and tragic but it's a great story.

Yet, as a reward we are treated to flashback film footage of Elton and his mom (in case we are brain dead and don't realize he just said his mom died). And creepily she looks like Jackie Tyler (well... dyed blonde anyhow). And the Doctor helping you out by giving you a paving stone for a girlfriend is the kind of help we don't need.--ecch.

Finally... a 45 minute show that uses roughly six montages, flashback scenes and numerous scenes of Elton dancing to ELO is worriesome. It's only 45 minutes, is that too much?

Still, I'm glad so many people liked it because it was terribly unique. It's the great thing about Dr Who. You get Nightmare of Eden and Seeds of Doom and Greatest Show in the Galaxy in the same show. There's nothing else like it.

I'm also glad that the show took a chance with such an 'off-beat' story, but... it failed for me on account of the lost opportunities.

Aside from the coda, which was excellent.
 
 
Billuccho!
15:23 / 19.06.06
My big pet peave with TV programmes is when they mix comedy with drama.

Really? Because that's my favorite thing about TV shows. It's why I love Buffy and MASH so much.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
15:53 / 19.06.06
It is of course, possible to take it too far, see the last two seasons of Buffy, and sometimes badly thought out comedy or drama in a script can tarnish the other.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
16:28 / 19.06.06
Whisky (and others): For a start Rose and the Doctor were hardly in it

It was a filler episode. I don't mean that in the sense that they couldn't be bothered writing a decent one and so shoved any old crap in instead - it actually *was* a filler episode, like filling an empty slot because they didn't have enough time in the shooting schedule to have Tennant and Piper appear in every installment of this series. Filmed concurrently with the Satan Pit two-parter by another crew.

It does make you wonder why they didn't have enough available shooting time, when Piper and Ecclestone managed to film all last series' eps. Clearly a 22/24 part series is out of the question. Not a bad thing, imo - do we really want them stretching this thing out with episodes of pure cack in order to make up the half-year's worth of shows, just like every ongoing US series ever?
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
16:55 / 19.06.06
I was waiting for that jibe. Finally, it came.
 
 
sleazenation
17:04 / 19.06.06
The reason this had to be the 'filler' episode (or the double banked episode, as i believe it is known in the trade) is that this time they had to do 14 episodes (a complete season plus a christmas special) in the same amount of time they had to do 13 episodes last year...
 
 
Spatula Clarke
17:16 / 19.06.06
Ah, I forgot about the Christmas special.

It's not so much a jibe, Kali, as... well, trufax. If you're trying to write, film and edit twenty-four episodes of an ongoing series every single year, something's going to give in terms of quality. Bar soaps (heh, "bar soaps") UK TV doesn't really do series of that length - doesn't create them, that is - and the few exceptions to that rule are noticable because of their shitness. Even the 24-eps-a-series US shows that I've loved have always stretched things to breaking point (possible exception: Sopranos).
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
17:39 / 19.06.06
Oh, I wasn't saying I disagree. You've got a point, but I was just waiting for someone to say that.

What's truly sad are the shows that are shit that keep getting renewed, where really good ones (i.e., Firefly, Deadwood) get shit-canned before they gain tread.

I mean, part of me does wish you guys would let the Doctor on for more than 13/14 episodes, but I also understand why you don't.
 
 
Ganesh
22:11 / 19.06.06
Oh, I wasn't saying I disagree. You've got a point, but I was just waiting for someone to say that.

Can I interest madam in a speciality rant thread?
 
 
some guy
23:37 / 19.06.06
For me the only redeeming aspect of the episode was the Doctor's story about the living shadow that killed Elton's mother. WHY NOT TELL THAT STORY?? It's very strange and tragic but it's a great story.

Have you considered the possibility that it never happened? That in fact nothing happened at all aside from the bits on the video camera? What if Elton is simply deranged and projecting this entire scenario to "explain" his mother's death and justify his obsession?

This would explain the Scooby Doo running, the silly design of the two monsters, the Doctor and Rose's behavior at the end; the "paving slab" setting on the sonic screwdriver; the nonsense plot and the stereotypes filling out LINDA. We might be seeing a subjective version of events (perhaps Bliss really did get married etcetera) but we might also be seeing a complete fabriation by a delusional guy who has somehow managed to rope Ursula into being his accomplice. (The big tell for me is that we don't see pavement Ursula on Elton's camera.)

Then again it might just be a load of old rubbish that shot for Darrin Morgan and failed miserably.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
06:25 / 20.06.06
The downside is that they'll need to do another of these 'Doctor and companion doesn't appear much next year'. You'd think that if they know they'll have to do one of these episodes then they'll get more filming time in the schedule.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
08:24 / 20.06.06
Given that Love & Monsters was comfortably one of the better episodes this season (probably only second to School Reunion), that would not be a downside.
 
 
Evil Scientist
09:05 / 20.06.06
It strikes me that Ursula, given her perky outlook on how she ends up, should have been recruited by someone to storm the Tomb of Rassilon years ago.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:43 / 20.06.06
Point.

I'm largely of the "if it makes you happy, go for it" school on the idea that this episode a series of fantasies spun by delusional!Elton, but I don't think it quite holds up - for example, how would he know about Rexicoricafallopatorius and the Slitheen? Also, although the paving-stone girlfriend is grisly and rather awful, I think it actually ties in with the development of the Tennant Doctor.

I think it's not unintentional that his catchphrase is becoming "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry". Whereas Nine ("Everything has its time and everything dies") was fixated on the death of his race and his own status as a mass murderer - all grief and rage, Ten seems to be past that, ad instead focusing on how he can't save everyone - Sooti and the Ood in the Satan Pit, Madame de Pompalumpsmylumpsmyladylittlebumps, the cyberbride, Elton's mother.

In that context, there's a sort of duality to the "rescue" of Flagstoning Myrtle - on the one hand, he's arrived too late to save her or any of the others, but he is having real problems accepting that. On the other hand, he has given Myrtle an apparently endless life as a paving slab (Myrtle = the face of Boe OMG!), and given Elton the role of carer for the rest of his life of somebody totally dependent on him. Broader questions here about when it is and isn't appropriate to revive/resuscitate/return from the dead, but is there a case to be made that that _was_ Ursula's time, in a purely personal rather than cosmic sense, and the Doctor's guilt at not being able to save her (and very tangentially being responsible for the deaths of LInDA) drove him on to do something actually pretty weird in order to make some amends?
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
10:57 / 20.06.06
I must say, I'm glad most people enjoyed it- I thought it was wicked but I thought I'd be in a minority.

My only real criticism is that the Scooby Doo scene shouldn't have been right at the beginning- that was the biggest laugh, and nothing else quite matched it. Although I guess it wouldn't have really matched the mood at the end...

And it was quite a brave move, really- even though the joy of Who is, for me anyway, the fact that content-wise you really never know what you're gonna get next- will it be action? Spooky? Funny? Some shite with a giant Bertie Bassett? You just don't know- they don't tend to fuck with the format much (other than the obvious change to one-off 45-minute episodes), and haven't in decades. It would be like having a musical episode of the Archers. I'm really glad it worked.
 
 
Mister Six, whom all the girls
11:40 / 20.06.06
See the Hartnell story The Gunfighters (1964)... er... don't actually.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
13:14 / 20.06.06
Urgh, pavingslabgirlfriend! Classic Whovian nastiness. I remember people getting turned into things all the time on Dr Who when I was a kid, or being shrunk to death by the Master, and once someone got eaten by a standing stone. Unless I dreamed that.
 
 
Mister Six, whom all the girls
13:25 / 20.06.06
But I don't recall anyone getting head from a sandstone... at least not on Dr Who.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:41 / 20.06.06
I think "getting eaten by a paving stone" might work better, but it's a fair point. after having been utterly delighted by the appearance of an uncomplicatedly bisexual and polyamorous character in what was meant to be a kid's TV show, this felt like somebody thinking they were doing the same thing and not realising that they weren't. Still, it was only one line.
 
 
Mister Six, whom all the girls
15:13 / 20.06.06
"getting eaten by a paving stone"

And a new curse is born.

I was so overjoyed by Captain Jack in season one... I hope I'm still overjoyed by him in Torchwood.

This season we get absorbed faces on buttocks and stone-faced BJs.

Still... Girl in the Fireplace was fab and Impossible Planet/Satan Pit was visually incredible.
 
 
penitentvandal
15:18 / 20.06.06
Have you considered the possibility that it never happened? That in fact nothing happened at all aside from the bits on the video camera? What if Elton is simply deranged and projecting this entire scenario to "explain" his mother's death and justify his obsession?

Well, the advantage of this is that you can really turn Elton into a severely fucked-up character with this kind of thing. Like, if this is all screen memories to cover up the death of his mother - what are those screen memories realy hiding? You can turn Elton into an impossibly deranged and actually frightening character with this, screen memories on top of screen memories until the ultimate revelation, that Elton is in fact The Master's programmed super-assassin, an assassin so secret that even he doesn't know who he is - or the terrible thing that he will one day do.

'Do I know you from somewhere?' Yes, because he keeps turning up. He's seen the doctor more than twice. They can just keep building on this with weird flashback episodes, Elton meeting different doctors, until a two-part season finale in which neither Elton nor the Doc are sure of what's real, what isn't, who they are, and whether or not they've been playing The Master's game the whole damn time...

They'll never do it, of course, but it would be cool.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
15:46 / 20.06.06
Haus: I think it's not unintentional that his catchphrase is becoming "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry".

Ten's said it a bit more, I think, but this was also something that Nine had a habit of doing when a one-off innocent died.
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
16:40 / 20.06.06
Yeah, Nine did say that a bit, didn't he? It's funny what you remember.
 
 
Mister Six, whom all the girls
17:56 / 20.06.06
But surely he never said it after ramming his magic wand in your soft parts and making your head explode.
 
 
Lama glama
18:05 / 20.06.06
The BBC Who site has been updated for Fear Her. Three or four children's drawings of the Doctor, Rose and the TARDIS appear one after the other, followed by a drawing by Chloe Webber that probably means that the girl needs some more attention at home and a voice that says: "I'm coming to hurt you."

I really want the monster in Fear Her to be an animated, hand drawn effect that interacts with real surroundings. Like Roger Rabbit, except less frightening.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
19:34 / 20.06.06
But surely he never said it after ramming his magic wand in your soft parts and making your head explode.

Was that supposed to sound as rude as it did? Or is it just me?
 
 
Kali, Queen of Kitteh
19:41 / 20.06.06
I thought it was a come-on, actually.

Drat the computer here at work and lack of proper audio. I can see the kids' drawings but not hear the voice...
 
 
■
20:07 / 20.06.06
Probably annoying bit warning, yet no real spoilers within.

Do you want to know what the worst five words in the world are right now?
I'll tell you: FINAL SCENE WITHHELD UNTIL TRANSMISSION.
Baaaaaaastaaaaaaaaards!
At least it means you can be sure all speculation about the last episode has to be hearsay and rumour. Believe nothing in the papers, folks, they surely know no more than you do: if they're cutting the end of ep 12, there will certainly be no previews for ep 13.
 
 
Mister Six, whom all the girls
20:14 / 20.06.06
"Was that supposed to sound as rude as it did? Or is it just me?"

Nope, it actually happened.

The Doctor rammed his sonic screwdriver into the Cyberman's fleshy chest in Age of Steel then caused all of their heads to explode after traumatizing them... my point is that this was a bit excessive and hardly excused by his half-hearted 'I'm so sorry' since it gets followed by lots of giggles on a ropeladder. Doctor #9 seemed full of sorrow and regret... and for good reason.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
20:24 / 20.06.06
lots of giggles on a ropeladder

That reminds me... what with having worked on the Saturday night, I watched Age Of Steel the next day, having downloaded it off someone who had clearly sat on their remote at some point. For about ten minutes towards the end, I had the voice-over for the blind, which really added something. I wasn't entirely sure whether even blind people needed to be constantly reminded that Rose has long blonde hair- "she begins to climb the rope ladder, her long blonde hair blowing in the wind". Didn't get any description of the Doctor. Strange, that.
 
  

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