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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

DOCTOR WHO! SEASON...um.....thirtyone (No Spoilers)

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00:09 / 24.05.10

I tend to prefer them myself actually.

Incidentally, I read The Writer's Tale on the train back from Edingburgh. Fascinating read. Especially the Who/Star Trek cross-over that never was, and RTD being talked out of bringing the Daleks into The End of Time.

16:43 / 24.05.10

Sorry, I'd say something but I went and disqualified myself again. See you on Saturday night.

17:21 / 25.05.10

I tend to prefer them myself actually.

I like them too, but how many of those can you squeaze into a 13-episode per year show?

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:21 / 25.05.10

Six.

21:02 / 25.05.10

Excellent! I should have asked "how many should (...)"

16:40 / 26.05.10

The original series was always constructed around multi-parters. It was sometimes a bit mental - the seven-parters of the Pertwee era were entirely unnecessary, dragging out tales that already ran at a death-like pace - but, on the whole it added a lot to the show.

It's one of the things that I've felt the reboot wanted for, so I'm very happy to see an increased number of them this time around. They give a story time to breathe and explore concepts and characters, where, often, the standalone episodes have either felt rushed or, at the other extreme, virtually empty. Sometimes both at the same time, which is weird.

Having said that, what we've had up until now have effectively been thirteen-part stories, I suppose.

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:49 / 26.05.10

They're also cheaper, which is probably a blessing in these times of straitened BBC finances - barring the twinkly city shot, this is two episodes mainly shot in a Welsh village near the Cardiff studios and some corridors, which is probably something of a result.

Meera Syall would make a terrific companion, incidentally. And middle-aged romance! So nice to see for us older people.

17:59 / 29.05.10

So, yes, some nice moments, but just a bit too much Palestine allegory for an adult show. Which it's not, so that's OK, I'm all for that sort of thing, given that its original remit was about teaching history, it's just moved on to geopoltics with lizards. And on the subject of Silurians, it's nice to see we've been given yet another misnomer for the race (Eocenes was wrong, too), as I'm pretty sure "reptilia sapiens" would have been more accurate.
However, a big improvement on the first ep, until the Rory stuff, of course (we still don't care, sorry, mate), and the crack is still kind of cack.
I liked the Republic serial feel, and the fact that they still have those lovely rubbish blasters.

21:22 / 29.05.10

Not every story about two peoples at odds over territory is a Pallestine allegory, cube.

Or, is it???

07:53 / 30.05.10

Hah! Actually remembered my password for this place.

Well, erm..yes. New new Doctor Who. Have to say I'm not especially enjoying it. Moffat's scripts have all been fine and up to his usual standard (with the exception of The Beast Below which sort of just trailed off towards the end). Simon Nye's episode was a delight, and captured the new tone of the show perfectly: relatively sedate adventures through time and rural space. Hurray!

I'm already exhausted by the new aesthetic though. It's almost as tired as the suburban/council estate stuff of the RTD era. Other things I'm not enjoying...

Amy is woefully underwritten. Karen Gillan is a good actress, struggling with very little to do. The character walks through most scenes, with an air of disinterest. I know the awestruck, compassionate companion befriending everyone she meets had been done with RTD's main three, but this is an unappealing new approach. Her only character trait seems to be a more open sexuality than the previous, relatively platonic companions had. That's all fine and it's a new approach to the Doctor/Companion dynamic, I suppose, but when it's the only character trait, then it becomes dull. They haven't done anything with her abandonment issues (four psychiatrists, come on!), with the exception of a teeny bit in Flesh and Stone.

Now that Rory has been absorbed by the crack, she's just been reset to wisecracking, no character development, generic companion.

Can't say I'm enjoying the new colour palette on display either. Adam Smith's been the only truly interesting director. Whatever they're doing in the post production grading process, they need to stop. Hazy, muddy browns really aren't attractive.

On the plus side, Matt Smith is pretty much carrying the entire show at the moment, so kudos to him!

07:55 / 30.05.10

Also, Silurian episodes=shit.

Way to "remake" the original and remove every remotely appealing aspect. Also, Meera Syal was so bad, her delivery so off, that she made me want to punch myself in the face. Her performance was sub CBBC!

Poke it with a stick

08:23 / 30.05.10

Amy is woefully underwritten. Karen Gillan is a good actress, struggling with very little to do. The character walks through most scenes, with an air of disinterest.

From what they said during the Confidential for The Hungry Earth, there's a lot of character development being lost simply because of the 45 minute limit - they cut 15 minutes from that episode including about five minutes of dialogue between Amy and the Doctor discussing her and Rory.

Can't say I'm enjoying the new colour palette on display either.

Well, it is filmed in Wales. But, honestly - you thought last night's episode was muddy browns? Glowing orange and luminous greens? And the scene that was one of my stand-outs of this season - Amy's awe on entering the Tardis? That was brilliant - her face glowed, almost literally.

Now that Rory has been absorbed by the crack, she's just been reset to wisecracking, no character development, generic companion.

Isn't that what the crack does, though?

I thought this episode worked pretty well - Not having a clear memory of the Silurians and seeing what they used to look like I really, really don't hate the update - they look like creatures and not badly constructed Halloween costumes with torches in the forehead.

There were a couple of plot niggles - if the light from the crack touches you you cease to exist - yet the Doctor can happily reach in and grab debris?

The Silurian scientist guy is killed and no-one even thinks to look for him before gassing the place. Come on, the guy's been awake and researching for 300 years - you couldn't even give him that much consideration?

As Lama says, I thought Meera was the weak link - she was acting as if she was in a kid's show rather than just acting. And it would have been nice to see Rory go out in a manner slightly different to the one he did two weeks ago.

Overall, though - it felt like Who both old and new varieties: mixing the traditional tramping around in caves and Welsh valleys with the unfettered joy that having a little bit of cash, a visual effects department who can, you know, do stuff and some great actors can give you. It actually manages to feel grand whilst remaining intimate.

09:39 / 30.05.10

The Doctor putting his hand into the crack wasn't necessarily a problem for the internal logic - the glow around the edges of the crack doesn't have to be the light itself.

It's funny, seeing the comments above, because I've thought the post-production work on the look of the show this season has been head and shoulders above anything The Mill have managed on it before. Lighting and colours always looks tacky and overdone in the RTD seasons. Here, I'm barely aware of them (apart from in the particularly alien scenes), which is precisely how it should be.

I thought this was an okay coouple of episodes. Nothing astonishing, but watchable enough.

Rory's death was all sorts of odd, though. The acting, for one thing, was bizarre. A look of genuinely excruciating agony, followed by dialogue in which he looked like he was just having a chat while lying down, followed by his immediate death. "Fucking hell! He can act!" followed by "Oh, wait. No he can't".

And remarkably difficult to care, not just because the Amy/Rory relationship was never more than a faint pencil sketch, but also because I think it's kind of obvious that he's gooing to be brought back to life at the end of the season, when the Doctor reverses the work of the crack, or the crack does its 'reset to year zero' thing, or whatever. His death was dealt with in too offhand a manner for it to be permanent, and it'd make no sense in the context of the wider storyline if it stayed that way, given the emphasis previously put on the whole marriage thing.

13:06 / 30.05.10

The marriage thing could still be on. Now, instead of Rory, she's engaged to that other guy.

18:29 / 31.05.10

I told you guys there was a big bullseye painted on Rory's back. But, as pointed above, his death seems awfully reversible. Looking forward to see how they'll deal with "I had to get back home tomorrow for my wedding" thing they had going on.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

00:36 / 03.06.10

...but also because I think it's kind of obvious that he's gooing to be brought back to life at the end of the season, when the Doctor reverses the work of the crack, or the crack does its 'reset to year zero' thing, or whatever.

Or not. Y'know, whatever. I'm not sure why the writers expect us to care one way or the other. Actually, I think I'd rather him stay dead and have history re-written over him, with only the doctor remembering him.

22:57 / 05.06.10

I liked that a great deal more than I thought I would. Hearing who'd written it, I didn't hold out much hope for a decent episode, but it was very good indeed. Even if the whole 'can only see the alien in a mirror' thing made me think of Vampires in Venice. Albeit back-to-front.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

07:25 / 06.06.10

I enjoyed that quite a bit! Some bold music choices toward the end there, but I think it worked. That episode is pretty much what I love about Doctor Who, crazy alien man running around through time having adventures with historical figures and doing some nice things for them. Well done, sirs and madams.

07:50 / 06.06.10

That episode made me cringe.

This, children, is Vincent. Look, he's crying... and now he's happy again. This is because Vincent is BIPOLAR.

It can't be easy trying to tackle mental illness in a children's TV programme, but I would have preferred a little bit more subtlety.

Poke it with a stick

09:17 / 06.06.10

but I would have preferred a little bit more subtlety.

I dunno, making the monster of the week invisible and therefore something only Vincent could see, battle and ultimately defeat by himself added another layer onto that, I thought.

Literally the only bit I didn't like was the Athlete song blaring over the top towards the end.

Tony Curran was wonderful and Bill Nighy was, well, Bill Nighy.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

12:34 / 06.06.10

Comment from MattS: "I am getting sick of the music for this season."

I quite like this episode. It was fun, touching and just barely referenced what was going on with Amy previously. And it gives me the warm fuzzies knowing that I saw a lot of Van Gogh's work not too long ago.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

17:18 / 06.06.10

Yeah, my reaction to the opening 30 seconds was "it's a man painting a fucking picture, not single-handedly battling back the hordes of the Underdark."

The music has gone from being mildly overwrought to full-bore insane. It's like having subtitles you can't deactivate constantly saying things like ARRRRGH LOOK OUT HE HAS PAINTED ANOTHER CROW OH THE PORTENT across the bottom of the screen.

23:19 / 06.06.10

That was because the monster was moving though the field.

Again, I often wonder if I'm watching the same show as other people here.

This, children, is Vincent. Look, he's crying... and now he's happy again. This is because Vincent is BIPOLAR.

Yes! Except, no. Because that's not what happened, is it? We had one single violent mood swing moment in the episode and the explanation for it was largely in the showing and the characterisation, and the one bit of dialogue that did mention it was cut off halfway.

It's a fifty minute-long kids' sci-fi show about a time traveller encountering alien beings in historical and/or futuristic settings. If you came here looking for an in-depth analysis of *anything*, then you were misdirected. As it is, within its self-imposed limitations, its handling of the subject matter was entirely fit for purpose and about as effective as it could ever be within the format.

23:25 / 06.06.10

The ending, otoh, was kind of destroyed by the stupid musical decision and Bill Nighy's character all but tossing one off. it worked well enough on first viewing, but it's quite seriously over the top the second time of watching.

And I wish I'd not watched Confidential now, because all I can see in that last sequence is the silly 'rotating platform' camera shot during it.

ONLY NICE THINGS

01:47 / 07.06.10

I'm not ashamed to say that I shed a manly bro-tear.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

05:40 / 07.06.10

I wept actual men, with hair on places

I did find the ending touching, even if it was a bit much. I felt like the sort of thing I would do if I had a time machine and weren't such an asshole. The musical choice...I remember thinking "oh my" but I suppose it is to be expected. I mean, it was either that or another soft piano twinkling (possibly melancholy and/or bittersweet violin). They went the other direction, obviously.

08:16 / 07.06.10

I was underwhelmed, I must admit. I think my main problem was that as with Agatha Christie, it required you to buy into the notion that the guest character really is the "greatest x of all time". Call me a philistine but I don't, really.
That aside, it started well and I think the happy-sad-happy do-you-see Vincent was pretty well played, probably as well as could be done in the time allowed. The monster fight was an interesting twist, and a great way to freak out kids, I'm sure. And the notion that the good and bad things don't cancel each other out is a genuinely good thing to point out.
But that music. And Bill's speech. And the fact that the dedication on the vase was written IN ENGLISH. Meh. It's like someone slammed the oven door on a great Who souffle.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

10:49 / 07.06.10

Don't get me wrong, I really liked it and found it touching. But music of the last ten minutes was really really loud.

Poke it with a stick

13:09 / 07.06.10

...the fact that the dedication on the vase was written IN ENGLISH.

Well, cube, you could argue that the dedication was written in French but was translated for them by the TARDIS.

So let me get this straight:

the general consensus appears to be that - aside from the awful music - this was a pretty good episode that made many of us weep hot, salty, manly tears (Kali excepted) and our criticisms are, on the whole, fairly negligible? It's just that we seem to be getting to the stage where it's almost criticism for criticism's sake.

I'm not saying let's forgive the Beeb because it's not trying to be Stanislaw Lem - it's only escapism for kids after all - more that some of the nit-picking makes me feel like I'm on Gallifrey Base...

13:54 / 07.06.10

I want to nitpick, too!

They can't see the creature, fine. But they can't hear or feel it? The doctor can hear it "saying something", but he doesn't hear it roaring or stomping around? And he feels the impact of the tail, but when the feet stomp the ground, he doesn't feel the ground trembling?

And why not just squirt paint on it? You could have seen it then.

14:14 / 07.06.10

I was expecting a trip to a windmill to get some bags of flour, yes.

20:09 / 07.06.10

I have a feeling that this season will end in a big ol press of the reset button... so the dedication will go and so will rory's demise...

20:09 / 07.06.10

I have a feeling that this season will end in a big ol press of the reset button... so the dedication will go and so will rory's demise...

20:10 / 07.06.10

I'm just going to put this bit of news here for now.

As for Dr Who... I felt I could see what they were shooting for but couldn't work out whether they intentionally overshot Touching, Nicely Done Heartfelt Drama and bullseyed (shut up, it can be a verb) straight into Over-Loud Soundtracking, Slightly Mawkish, 'Alien of the week? No problem! Serious psychological issues? Um... ah..."

I agree with the issues raised above, but I also agree with the viewpoint that it's a fifty-minute appeal-to-all-ages-if-possible science fiction show, which gives a lot of slack...

... But you have to bear in mind that it's way, way better than Luther, so be happy with that, for now...

Poke it with a stick

10:17 / 08.06.10

Just because:

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