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Well, that was... good and shit, IMO. Shit for the reasons already mentioned above (fat, poor, mixed race couple = MUST DIE!!!1!!), shit for the lazy death of Kylie (why even bother with all the Astrid = anagram of TARDIS hype if all she was is a one-shot character who dies in a vaguely Pullman-esque bittersweet way?), and shit for the villain being yet another rent-a-cripple Davros knock-off.
(Dammit, i was hoping for the D-Man right up until Kylie knocked him off the edge... OK, it was obvious Max whoever-it-was was going to be the bad guy, but the Max face could have been a mask...)
OK, i've always had very ambiguous feelings about the disabled characters (and actors) in Who. Davros had a kind of... grungy, schlocky, pseudo-epic kind of oldschoolhooror melodrama to him that made him transcend the bitter-crip-villain archetype a bit, and also i liked the fact that, unlike so many other disabled or disfigured characters in sci-fi, he wasn't rebuilt into something more physically powerful than he was before, a la Darth Vader, Robocop, etc, but remained disabled relative to normal humans and physically vulnerable, while still displaying the classic supervillain ability to survive near-certain death on multiple occasions - but the increasing numbers of knockoffs of him following the same lazy cliches, and with pettier and pettier motivations, just seems to suggest to me that it has become nothing more than a very dull, not to mention potentially offensive, stereotype (with its corresponding tragic-sacrificial-hero stereotype in little red alien guy doing his redemptive Vader thing).
Anyway, digression. I liked the blatant homage to both the second and third Alien films jammed into one scene. First obvious Alien(s) reference in Dr Who? I liked the vaguely Douglas Adams-ish feel of it (didn't Adams write or co-write some project that was loosely based on the "Titanic in space" idea?). I actually think Tennant Doctor might be better at comedy/parody Who than "serious" sci-fi Who. I actually liked Kylie's acting (she felt more like an old-school Who companion than like a Rose or Martha substitute). It would have been good for the Doctor to have had a not-from-present-day-Earth companion IMO. I liked the whole thing where they landed on Earth and it wasn't even certain what era it was (could have been taken over by the Daleks/Cybermen/Autons/whoever, or everyone killed in some mysterious space plague, or anything), and then the explicit referencing of previous episodes.
Still, i'm not sure whether or not for me the good stuff was overwhelmed by the ungood stuff. Meh. They could have at least trashed Buckingham Palace as they flew over it...
But, the trailers... Mummies? Vampires? Ood again? Someone trapping or controlling Ood? Could be interesting - wonder if there's going to be a link drawn between Pyramids of Mars and The Satan Pit? |
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