Archive for the Category "Doctor Who"
One of the cool things about the new series of Doctor Who is that it has had the folks at BBC Cult churning out some great new material.
In addition to the great Doctor Who site itself (which now has a news feed), there’s Who is Doctor Who?, Geocomtex, and now Bad Wolf.
You wait 16 years for a great episode of Doctor Who and then three come along at once.
From the wonderful resolution of the cliffhanger to the glorious denouement of the story, The Doctor Dances positively sparkles. The script is packed full of terrific ideas (“Squareness gun. Like it”), good jokes and lovely dialogue. The interplay between the Doctor, Rose and Jack is great fun (“Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks ‘This could be a little more sonic’?”) – the sort of scenes familiar to viewers of the writer’s award-winning previous work, from Press Gang to Coupling. Steven Moffat is the only writer on the series who’s been scripting TV for as long as Russell T. Davies and it shows.
My only niggle plotwise is that the nanogenes don’t seem to try to turn the Doctor human (given that his DNA is presumably quite different from human DNA) but I’m sure The Fans can come up with a reason. Quite frankly, when an episode is as good as this, who cares?
There are shocks and surprises throughout. Jamie appearing in his room; Mr Lloyd’s dalliance with the butcher; the possessed typewriter; and the answer to “Are you my mummy?” Murray Gold’s score is his best of the series so far: evocative, suspenseful and never intrusive.
All these elements build up to a thrilling, positive finale. The idea is terrific, that after such a dark story everyone not only survives but is physically better than before. (Which counterpoints one of the best “classic Who” stories, The Caves of Androzani, in which nearly everyone – including the Doctor – dies.) For the first time in a while, the Doctor explicitly saves the day. Jack gets to straddle a bomb, Dr Strangelove style (is that “Bad Wolf” in German on the side?) and everyone lives happily ever after.
In summary: this two-parter is possibly the best Doctor Who story ever made. As one friend texted me, “Steven Moffat's got the moves.” Could there be better news than that he’s writing for series two?
How great is this? Just when you thought New Who couldn’t get any better, we’re treated to another great episode. There’s no doubt at all that this really is Doctor Who – and it’s great.
The dramatic opening of The Empty Child quickly gives way to a build-up of spookiness. The ringing TARDIS phone is eerie as is the titular child. (Although when he called to the Doctor through the letter box, he could’ve been asking “OK. Is Dave there?”)
The sonic screwdriver now seems to be acting as a tricorder (which Russell Davies justifies in the Doctor Who Confidential following the story’s conclusion) and the Doctor’s “damp island” speech is touch on the Land of Hope and Glory side – although only a touch. Oh, and the Union flag on Rose’s t-shirt is wrong, but that may well be intentional and just makes it an authentic t-shirt…
For the first time this series, the episode feels perfectly structured: neither two fast or two slow at moments, but just right. The child actors are uniformly good and Richard Wilson proves that guest stars in Doctor Who can be excellent.
The dialogue is great throughout. The exchange between Rose and Jack about her “cellphone” is amusing and well-observed. The scene in the bar is a nice touch but there are moments of darkness, especially the suggestion that the evacuated children were victims of abuse.
An excellent cliffhanger leaves you wanting more and the second-half will determine whether the story as a whole is a great as the promise of The Empty Child.
It was my birthday on Friday so, with work closed on Monday and Tuesday, I spent a pleasant weekend with friends in London.
Friday
Before heading to London, I went out for a drink in Glasgow (for the first time). There was much discussion of Star Wars and Doctor Who, and while I was there the news came through the Billie Piper will not be in the whole second series. It will be very interesting to see how the production team deal with that: a Rose clone, or a completely different type of companion?
Saturday
Train Eavesdropping I
On the train down on Saturday morning, I overheard two Scottish pensioners who were reading a news story about the resignation of James Gray, briefly the Tories’ Shadow Scottish Secretary. Pointing out his Scottish roots, one of them said she knew his mother. They then commented, with a little disdain, that he was now based in Wiltshire.
Did the Indie‘s sudokus on the train, including the Super Sudoku which I’ve sense posted off.
Saturday evening consisted of watching a particularly fine episode of Doctor Who (review tomorrow, probably) and a trip to the pub. We didn’t stay in for Eurovision, although it occurs to me now that it’s probably for the best that we didn’t win as we’d surely end up with Patrick Kielty presenting it.
Which reminds me that we also caught some of the ITV2 coverage of Celebrity Sex Resort, which disappointing (and I’m not explaining why it was disappointing) wasn’t called Celebrity Love Island 2. I also found a small advert for the programme in my jacket pocket, which had sneaked in there when I was handed a small packet of Love Hearts by a young woman at London Bridge a couple of weeks ago. I hadn’t looked at it and thought they were just promoting the sweets…
The thinking behind Celebrity 18-30 Holiday is pretty obviously flawed. Their first mistake was the assumption that Big Brother‘s success derives from people hoping to see contestants “getting it on”. Following this up with the idea that anything with celebrities (or, in this case, with the word in the title even if there aren’t any actual celebrities, e.g. Celebrity Catfight
We also briefly considered whether Celebrity Wrestling would have been successful if it had better (B-list, say) contestants. Surely people would tune in in their millions for David Jason vs. Ross Kemp? Or Victoria Wood vs. Anna Friel?
Sunday
Bummed around London most of the day – completing the Observer crossword and then mistakenly throwing it away – before heading back to watch more TV.
Train Eavesdropping II
The train was full of Chelsea fans (they’d been visiting Chelsea, where they weren’t from, obviously). They were merry but good natured, but I was rather unimpressed when the man sitting in front of me started singing sweary football songs in front of his young son, and even more so when his son joined in. They had started on what seemed to be a rather anti-semitic song about Tottenham Hotspur when I, fortunately, had to get off the train.
Was introduced to an actor friend of friends who was a very nice bloke and has done some Doctor Who audio work, and watched Channel 4’s Dispatches programme about Labour’s election tactics. Some of these were pretty minor – anyone who believed that the people sitting behind Blair when he made speeches were “real people” is a bit naïve. Their tactics to stop journalists questioning senior MPs, though, seemed little more than paranoia. I spotted a university friend who now works for a Labour MP playing an “endorser” at two different poster launches.
Here ends Part I. In Part II: guns and The Sun.
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