Sunday 20 March 2011

Good Who - Exhibits A and B

Sorry for the break.... for those who want to know why I've been a bit tied up for the last few weeks I'll simply say "Ofsted" and leave it at that.  Anyway, I'm now back to having a life and can get blogging again.  What better way to start (especially as I've been accused of being negative in the past) than by putting together a few comments about some good Who stories.

The science in Doctor Who can, despite what some people think about me, be complete tosh and I can still enjoy the story. Step forward Exhibit A, "The Three Doctors".  It's a complete load of cobblers scientifically about anti-matter, black holes and faster than light travel.  The plot is a little weird, Omega draining the energy from our universe into his, first laws of time, multi-coloured Time Lords and Jo Grant's knickers but do you know what?  I LOVE watching it.  It rolls along at a cracking pace with only one obvious scene of padding (Tyler's corridor runaround) and the gell guards are so hysterically bad that my mind fills in a zillion and one reasons why they look so awful (involving Omega having been on his own so long he's forgotten what a practical animal looks like).  Omega rants like a loon but that's completely likely given how long he's been on his own.  The Brigadier (Nick Courtney always 100% brilliant) flips and turns into silly Brig BUT look at what he experiences in the story... multiple Doctors, the TARDIS interior, a monster made from a feather boa, naturally his mind's going to go a little loopy.  The relationship between Pertwee and Troughton is an absolute delight (Troughton playing the comic side of the 2nd Doctor rather than the serious side) and Jo blondes her way through the story with complete charm.  It's nonsense, it's loony and it's brilliant.

Exhibit B is "Kinda", freshly released on DVD.  There used to be an unwritten rule that no story could be perfect.  There always had to be at least one element that made fans curl up and die from embarrassment.  The rat in Talons, the fly in Green Death... the snake in Kinda.  However, thanks to a mix of CGI and serious talent from all those involved in it, Kinda doesn't have a giant plastic snake in it anymore but one that whizzes around the screen, twisting reality as it struggles to pass mirrors and looks damn fine.  Throw in pitch perfect performances from pretty much every member of the cast (yes, even Adric does reasonably well out of this one), a spine chilling set of cliffhangers (all three of them are utter corkers and episode three was one of only two times the show ever gave me nightmares) and high concept story telling.  I'm not a huge fan of the new CGI in old Doctor Who but in this release it's been done so superbly and keeping in the spirit of the story that it's the only time that I've even entertained the idea that it should have been the main version.

We'll pick up with Exhibits C onwards in future posts with some classics that I like and a few more surprising ones en route...

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