Dear Blog, it's been a while. Sorry! I was cheating on you with this thing called real life that I discovered. Don't worry, the affair is over now and I'm back in your virtual arms once more. However, it seems fitting that on my return you've served me up with Vincent and the Doctor, a story that I find deeply offensive so consider my punishment over, please? Oh bugger, you mean there's still The Big Bang to come???
Right, we'll start with one of the many elephants in the room about this one. I have deep issues with it. I hope you don't mind if I don't go into toooo much detail but through the course of my life I have been troubled with various things such as depression and self worth. Whereas a lot of people championned this story as being a wonderful depiction of mental issues, I found the Doctor's actions deeply upsetting and highly distasteful. Thankfully there are plenty of other things for me to comment on without troubling you with my history, but suffice it to say that if the Doctor told me that I wouldn't be appreciated until I was dead... well it wouldn't take months between me stepping out of the police box and ending it all. As soon as the TARDIS was gone, I would be too.
Anyway, on with the rest of the episode. It's going to be difficult to comment without harping back to the mental thing so this might end up as a rather shorter than normal review! Now, I'll freely admit that I knew very little about van Gogh before this episode. Thanks to QI (if you've never seen QI then you have REALLY missed out) I know that everyone pronounces van Gogh incorrectly (ah the wonders of the Internet. I am, of course, pronouncing it perfectly as I type) but I guess that's just the TARDIS translation unit stuck on "commoner". The one thing I did know though is that he only had one ear, thanks to a moment of depression, a prostitute and a knife. This episode is explicitly set in June 1890 which is a pity as the ear incident took place in December 1888. I'm guessing though, as they could barely afford CGI in this episode, they couldn't afford makeup to hide one ear. Something else also rather conveniently skipped over (given the love interest between Vincent and Amy) is the fact he was quite possibly riddled with STIs by 1890. Still, it's a family show so let's not bother with gory, sexual truths. Let's concern ourselves, instead, with the "plot" of the episode. Invisible monster goes on the rampage, Doctor acts goofy, Vincent saves the day, Doctor acts like a complete bastard.
Starting with the invisible monster. A chicken crossed with a horse that only Vincent can see. Now, I don't really remember any real explanation of why Vincent is the only person that can see it, why it shows up in mirrors, why no-one's seen it in a mirror before or what the hell was actually going on with the worst looking monster since the Myrka but combine all these things together and the alien aspect of this episode really irritates me. The implication is simply "Vincent is special so he can see it" but this really doesn't make any sense to my mind (perhaps I'm special in the other direction). Why does it show up in the mirror? It's another episode all about perception (the running theme of season five) but it's probably the worst one of the lot on that front. We just have to accept that (magically?) whichever of Vincent's suspected STIs or mental disorders is convenient enough that it allows him to see it.
Next on my list of notes is the fact that the Doctor has a Godmother. Don't know why but this really bothered me. It suggests that Gallifrey and/or the Time Lords had religion (something not indicated up to this point) and that there was a clear mother/father type role (so bye bye looms then). I suppose I should see this as a very minor point but, in an episode that's already spectacularly irritating me, it's one of those minor points that my brain blows out of all proportion. Unlike the Doctor's actions which I think my brain is justifiably irate at.
The Doctor, oh Lord of Time and complete smug git when it comes to saying what's fixed and what isn't (which my brain is mulling over as another set of ramblings), knows full well that Vincent will pull the trigger on the revolver. Yet he still seems to delight in giving Amy false hope that Vincent's trip to the future will somehow prevent this from happening. He takes Amy back and allows her to go to the exhibition again, knowing she's going to be more than just a bit unhappy at the lack of new Vincent paintings. I've already made it clear how I feel about Vincent's treatment but I think it's worth noting that the Doctor has no qualms about upsetting Amy in the slightest at the end of the episode.
Various other things irritate me about the episode, such as how light it appears inside the church at the end given how dark it is outside but the last thing I'm going to say about this abomination of an episode is that it's the 11th Doctor changing time without any hesitation whatsoever. I've not seen van Gogh's sunflowers in real life but it seems that the Doctor has no problems whatsoever in letting van Gogh changing the painting so it now has "For Amy" scrawled across it (in English???). Time has changed. The rules have changed. They haven't changed for the better. It's a paradox story (the Doctor goes to investigate an alien seen in a painting but his actions prevent the alien being painted so why did he go back in the first place?) which I detest and the actual plot of the episode is also seriously questionable.
A bloody awful episode that I've now watched twice and never ever want to see again.
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
Monday, 2 May 2011
Season 6 - The Impossible Astronaut/The Day of the Moon
Okay, so I haven't quite finished my season 5 re-watching but, as it happened, I don't think I've really forgotten much that was needed to "understand" the opening two parter. It might have helped if I'd forgotten basic physics and left my brain at home but sadly I didn't and whilst episode one really was pretty decent, episode two bombed rather spectacularly.
Okay, racing through episode one as I've not got so much to say about it... didn't like the opening silliness. I'm guessing it was there to demonstrate the passing of two hundred years of the Doctor's life but it went just that little bit too far for my liking. Plus whoever painted that portrait of Smith, they must have taken one hell of a bung to make his body look that good. My money was actually on River getting killed so the Doctor trying to regenerate was something of a surprise (though I'm sorry to say I think I cheered for the wrong reasons when it started). However, I guessed the "younger" Doctor turning up before he appeared on screen but, again, cheered when he got deservedly slapped.
Something to keep in mind is that, as we've seen it so far, River and the Doctor *aren't* meeting themselves in strict reversing order. The 1100 year old Doctor meets River before the 900 year old one does so things are a little mixed up at least from time to time.
Another important snippet from episode one is that putting the TARDIS in invisible mode is a huge drain on its resources. Just as well it only has to stay hidden for a few minutes eh?
The Silent in the loo knows all about Amy, so I'm guessing we can assume that telepathy goes along with their hide-and-seek skills and, whereas I think the mask on its face is superb, the hands look really dumb. I can't quite work out what it is, I think it's the fingers look too wobbly being so long, maybe if they'd had more support in them to make it look like they actually had bones in there... I'm not entirely sure what attacks Canton in the cellar either, the astronaut seems to be far too far away (though it also seems to have the ability to vanish into thin air at the start so we'll see what other powers it seems to have as we go through the season) and the Silents surely wouldn't have knocked him out? So if someone could tell me for sure what whacks him? So yes, a good episode one.
Then there's episode two.
I'm not entirely sure how Amy and Rory manage to stay on the run for three months. Sorry but they just don't seem the sort who'd have had all that much practise at it. River, yes... but Amy and Rory not a hope. But anyway, episode two opens three months later and the Doctor has a beard (and not in the Time Crash sense either!). Really don't know why this doesn't work for me, I'm guessing because it indicates that between adventures the Doctor is off shaving somewhere in the TARDIS. Yes, I know we know there was seemingly a shaving mirror back in the days of the secondary console room, yes I know he grew one when aged in The Leisure Hive and yes I know the Master had one on his face as well but the beard (apart from looking a little fake) just doesn't seem "right" for just three months' worth of imprisonment. What's worse is that the Doctor seems to think his prison is being built out of the densest material in the world. A material so dense that quite large blocks of it can be shifted around by two people with ease! And the blocks can seemingly be supported as a roof with no extra supports. Er, no! If this magic material is the densest thing in the world then two people shouldn't in any way, shape or form be able to move it like that and they certainly shouldn't have been able to build a box out of it (with a magic sliding door but that's just a minor niggle).
Once the prison is complete we find that the TARDIS is inside it in invisible mode which really does make you wonder how long it's been there given that episode one went out of its way to point out that invisibility mode was a huge drain on the power! The Doctor then takes the ship back in time to save River who's thrown herself out of a window. Ummmmm, so the Doctor will now quite happily nip back in time to save someone from certain death? Probably just as well he didn't know how to do this for Adric or Katarina or the classic series might have turned out very differently. This isn't just Moffat bashing by the way, ever since the Doctor nipped back into Martha's timeline in "Smith and Jones" to prove a point to her I've been growing very tired of the casual way the Doctor plays about with the time lines and the rescuing of River Song just happens to be the latest in a long line of sequences that really pissed me off. Just you wait till I review A Christmas Carol, I'll REALLY let rip on that one! So yes, the Doctor now sees nothing wrong with popping back a few days/weeks/months to save the falling River Song (who very fortunately guesses that the Doctor will drop her in the pool rather than onto, say, some mattresses). Oh, and with the new look console room with the police box doors, I'm not sure what must have happened to the Doctor, Amy, Rory and Canton when they flipped the TARDIS onto its side to get River through the doors.
When Mulder and Scu...sorry, Canton and Pond investigate the orphanage we get introduced to the creepy janitor (I get the feeling we might see him again at the end of the year) and we're told that too much exposure to the mind wipe from the Silents drives you round the bend. Now think back to how many markings Amy and co collected on their bodies whilst they were on the run and also think about how many times each random human probably (allegedly) sees a Silent. Why isn't the whole population completely bonkers by now? Still, the sequence with Amy in the locked room is a sign that Doctor Who can still do creepy when it wants to! And then we get the hatch in the door that disappears once Amy goes in the room and a mysterious woman's voice as she looks in. That'll definitely be picked up, could the room have been a TARDIS in disguise?
We eventually find out that the Silents have been manipulating us pretty much since the dawn of time and that then raises some more questions. Are we so dumb that we couldn't have evolved ourselves and secondly, why did it take the Silents thousands of years to get us to build a space suit? Is the story seriously trying to say that the Silents couldn't push us any faster? After all, the Doctor was terrified of Ace leaving her gheto blaster in the 60s in case it sped things up too much? I guess the Silents aren't as intelligent as they're trying to make out. I also wonder if they change their look depending on human fashion, or if they've always worn a suit and tie. Personally I can't wait to see one in a ruff....
Then we get to the big scene. The bloody awful scene that pretty much shatters my faith in Doctor Who. It's NOT the fact that the Doctor gets humanity to begin mass murdering the Silents (though it's pretty clear he didn't have any sort of backup plan and it looks like it was always going to be this or nothing), we've seen the Doctor desperate before (Vervoids, Warriors of the Deep, Genesis of the Daleks and so on). What I really, deeply and thoroughly object to is the fact that Matt Smith's "Doctor" looks as though he's actually enjoying what he's doing. He came across as completely lacking in remorse or any kind of guilt. He was smiling, he was bounching up and down at the thought. There was no sorrow, no "There should have been another way" moment, this was the Doctor ordering the deaths of thousands of living beings and not giving a damn about what he was doing. To me, thats not Doctor Who, that's not the Doctor, that's some character I'm not sure I want to follow. I certainly now no longer believe that whatever the Doctor does it's done with life as the most important thing.
Follow this up with something of a weird and major plot hole... the Doctor says that half a billion people will see the footage and will continue to see it for thousands of years but the other implication is that neither Amy nor Rory have ever seen it as they show no "pre-programmed" tendancy to kill Silents on sight. Right from the very start of episode one Amy should and Rory should have been desperate to kill the Silent that we saw in the sunlight but no, not a single twitch in the trigger finger is evident. Bit of a cock up there eh.
After the shoot out, River says something along the lines of "I hope my old man didn't see that". Now, given the Doctor was in the room with her, does this (thankfully) mean that River ISN'T the Doctor's wife and that she's married to someone else? I really hope so...
The Impossible Astronaut set things up superbly well. Then along comes The Day of the Moon and really seems to do nothing other that spectacularly mess things up in a desperate attempt to try and look mysterious and set things up for the rest of the year. I'm guessing that we'll be visiting the 60s again at some point and Amy will be responsible for the Silents being underground in their TARDIS-like room, I'm guessing the little girl that River thinks is human will turn out to be a human/TimeLord hybrid that the Silents have made with all their gadgetry and I'm guessing that it'll never be explained how humanity can go about massacring thousands of Silents and no one ever noticing what happens to the bodies. Do they just pile up and no one notices them? Do people trip over them constantly but not know why? It's a badly thought out, completely non-Doctor Who solution that didn't have any place in the episode.
Bring back the Fifth Doctor. He knew there should have been another way, this Eleventh one is just a git.
Okay, racing through episode one as I've not got so much to say about it... didn't like the opening silliness. I'm guessing it was there to demonstrate the passing of two hundred years of the Doctor's life but it went just that little bit too far for my liking. Plus whoever painted that portrait of Smith, they must have taken one hell of a bung to make his body look that good. My money was actually on River getting killed so the Doctor trying to regenerate was something of a surprise (though I'm sorry to say I think I cheered for the wrong reasons when it started). However, I guessed the "younger" Doctor turning up before he appeared on screen but, again, cheered when he got deservedly slapped.
Something to keep in mind is that, as we've seen it so far, River and the Doctor *aren't* meeting themselves in strict reversing order. The 1100 year old Doctor meets River before the 900 year old one does so things are a little mixed up at least from time to time.
Another important snippet from episode one is that putting the TARDIS in invisible mode is a huge drain on its resources. Just as well it only has to stay hidden for a few minutes eh?
The Silent in the loo knows all about Amy, so I'm guessing we can assume that telepathy goes along with their hide-and-seek skills and, whereas I think the mask on its face is superb, the hands look really dumb. I can't quite work out what it is, I think it's the fingers look too wobbly being so long, maybe if they'd had more support in them to make it look like they actually had bones in there... I'm not entirely sure what attacks Canton in the cellar either, the astronaut seems to be far too far away (though it also seems to have the ability to vanish into thin air at the start so we'll see what other powers it seems to have as we go through the season) and the Silents surely wouldn't have knocked him out? So if someone could tell me for sure what whacks him? So yes, a good episode one.
Then there's episode two.
I'm not entirely sure how Amy and Rory manage to stay on the run for three months. Sorry but they just don't seem the sort who'd have had all that much practise at it. River, yes... but Amy and Rory not a hope. But anyway, episode two opens three months later and the Doctor has a beard (and not in the Time Crash sense either!). Really don't know why this doesn't work for me, I'm guessing because it indicates that between adventures the Doctor is off shaving somewhere in the TARDIS. Yes, I know we know there was seemingly a shaving mirror back in the days of the secondary console room, yes I know he grew one when aged in The Leisure Hive and yes I know the Master had one on his face as well but the beard (apart from looking a little fake) just doesn't seem "right" for just three months' worth of imprisonment. What's worse is that the Doctor seems to think his prison is being built out of the densest material in the world. A material so dense that quite large blocks of it can be shifted around by two people with ease! And the blocks can seemingly be supported as a roof with no extra supports. Er, no! If this magic material is the densest thing in the world then two people shouldn't in any way, shape or form be able to move it like that and they certainly shouldn't have been able to build a box out of it (with a magic sliding door but that's just a minor niggle).
Once the prison is complete we find that the TARDIS is inside it in invisible mode which really does make you wonder how long it's been there given that episode one went out of its way to point out that invisibility mode was a huge drain on the power! The Doctor then takes the ship back in time to save River who's thrown herself out of a window. Ummmmm, so the Doctor will now quite happily nip back in time to save someone from certain death? Probably just as well he didn't know how to do this for Adric or Katarina or the classic series might have turned out very differently. This isn't just Moffat bashing by the way, ever since the Doctor nipped back into Martha's timeline in "Smith and Jones" to prove a point to her I've been growing very tired of the casual way the Doctor plays about with the time lines and the rescuing of River Song just happens to be the latest in a long line of sequences that really pissed me off. Just you wait till I review A Christmas Carol, I'll REALLY let rip on that one! So yes, the Doctor now sees nothing wrong with popping back a few days/weeks/months to save the falling River Song (who very fortunately guesses that the Doctor will drop her in the pool rather than onto, say, some mattresses). Oh, and with the new look console room with the police box doors, I'm not sure what must have happened to the Doctor, Amy, Rory and Canton when they flipped the TARDIS onto its side to get River through the doors.
When Mulder and Scu...sorry, Canton and Pond investigate the orphanage we get introduced to the creepy janitor (I get the feeling we might see him again at the end of the year) and we're told that too much exposure to the mind wipe from the Silents drives you round the bend. Now think back to how many markings Amy and co collected on their bodies whilst they were on the run and also think about how many times each random human probably (allegedly) sees a Silent. Why isn't the whole population completely bonkers by now? Still, the sequence with Amy in the locked room is a sign that Doctor Who can still do creepy when it wants to! And then we get the hatch in the door that disappears once Amy goes in the room and a mysterious woman's voice as she looks in. That'll definitely be picked up, could the room have been a TARDIS in disguise?
We eventually find out that the Silents have been manipulating us pretty much since the dawn of time and that then raises some more questions. Are we so dumb that we couldn't have evolved ourselves and secondly, why did it take the Silents thousands of years to get us to build a space suit? Is the story seriously trying to say that the Silents couldn't push us any faster? After all, the Doctor was terrified of Ace leaving her gheto blaster in the 60s in case it sped things up too much? I guess the Silents aren't as intelligent as they're trying to make out. I also wonder if they change their look depending on human fashion, or if they've always worn a suit and tie. Personally I can't wait to see one in a ruff....
Then we get to the big scene. The bloody awful scene that pretty much shatters my faith in Doctor Who. It's NOT the fact that the Doctor gets humanity to begin mass murdering the Silents (though it's pretty clear he didn't have any sort of backup plan and it looks like it was always going to be this or nothing), we've seen the Doctor desperate before (Vervoids, Warriors of the Deep, Genesis of the Daleks and so on). What I really, deeply and thoroughly object to is the fact that Matt Smith's "Doctor" looks as though he's actually enjoying what he's doing. He came across as completely lacking in remorse or any kind of guilt. He was smiling, he was bounching up and down at the thought. There was no sorrow, no "There should have been another way" moment, this was the Doctor ordering the deaths of thousands of living beings and not giving a damn about what he was doing. To me, thats not Doctor Who, that's not the Doctor, that's some character I'm not sure I want to follow. I certainly now no longer believe that whatever the Doctor does it's done with life as the most important thing.
Follow this up with something of a weird and major plot hole... the Doctor says that half a billion people will see the footage and will continue to see it for thousands of years but the other implication is that neither Amy nor Rory have ever seen it as they show no "pre-programmed" tendancy to kill Silents on sight. Right from the very start of episode one Amy should and Rory should have been desperate to kill the Silent that we saw in the sunlight but no, not a single twitch in the trigger finger is evident. Bit of a cock up there eh.
After the shoot out, River says something along the lines of "I hope my old man didn't see that". Now, given the Doctor was in the room with her, does this (thankfully) mean that River ISN'T the Doctor's wife and that she's married to someone else? I really hope so...
The Impossible Astronaut set things up superbly well. Then along comes The Day of the Moon and really seems to do nothing other that spectacularly mess things up in a desperate attempt to try and look mysterious and set things up for the rest of the year. I'm guessing that we'll be visiting the 60s again at some point and Amy will be responsible for the Silents being underground in their TARDIS-like room, I'm guessing the little girl that River thinks is human will turn out to be a human/TimeLord hybrid that the Silents have made with all their gadgetry and I'm guessing that it'll never be explained how humanity can go about massacring thousands of Silents and no one ever noticing what happens to the bodies. Do they just pile up and no one notices them? Do people trip over them constantly but not know why? It's a badly thought out, completely non-Doctor Who solution that didn't have any place in the episode.
Bring back the Fifth Doctor. He knew there should have been another way, this Eleventh one is just a git.
Wednesday, 27 April 2011
The Impossible Countdown - The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood
It's sad when a two part story can be summed up with the single word "yawn"
I'm not sure what it is that makes me so apathetic towards this story. It's not actually "bad" as such, I think it's more that it's a half-arsed effort on pretty much every possible level. The script, re-introducing the Silurians, is a rehash of... well... The Silurians (which is not good as it had already been rehashed as The Sea Devils) with a few bits of Inferno thrown in and a touch of The Daemons. The effects aren't the cheapest but the CGI explosion at the end looks rather lacklustre and whilst the large scale shots of the city try their best to look impressive, the running around the tunnels sections look as though the tunnels are made from polystyrene. The regulars aren't particularly sparkling, Smith's not quite at his flattest here but he's completely lacking eloquence and the scenes where he's supposedly being all authoritative leave me thinking "well, I wouldn't be doing what you asked me". Thankfully Amy's absent for a lot of the story leaving us left with a very underwhelming guest cast of two scientists, a kid and his tedious parents. And given that they're allegedly heading for Rio at the start of the story, Amy and Rory look very VERY overdressed.
The first part also presents us with yet another impossibly short time scale. They've got twelve minutes before the silurians arrive in the village and somehow, before the clock's even counted down to three minutes they've managed to wire up pretty much everywhere with cameras. Nope, sorry, don't buy that for a second. Nothing in that sequence feels remotely plausible and yet it could so easily have been more realistic (and weirdly probably even tenser) by making the time longer. Alas, they went with twelve minutes and the scene seems more a spoof of Mission Impossible style set pieces than anything Doctor Who related. And when the silurians/homo reptilia do turn up they're missing their third eye and in possession of a very long (and cheap looking) CGI tongue. They don't sound like silurians and yes, the Doctor "explains" this by saying they're a different branch of the family so to speak but, quite frankly, they completely bore me in a way that even the original seven parter would have been impressed by. They've got their magic "we can hack into anything" technology though which seems to be able to turn a computer monitor into a two way camera.
The main problem with the story is the whole ending where Rory dies or, more importantly, the crack and the comments made about time. The Doctor states that there are some points which are fixed and some points which are fluid. To me though, the presence of ANY fluid points completely eradicates the idea of a fixed point. How could you have, say, a fixed point in the year 2040 when here, in 2020, the Doctor's saying that the future can be completely re-written anyway? So problem number one is that we've got internally inconsistent statements about the nature of time. Problem number two concerns the fact that Amy forgets Rory. She's a time traveller, so in the angels story we were told this meant she would remember things that other people didn't. Yet here the Doctor says that as it's her own personal time that's being re-written she could forget? So let me get this right, she's capable of remembering being taken into the middle of a forest (and I would still love to know how she got there unaided if she couldn't open her eyes) and the soldiers who assisted her (but who were then swallowed by the crack) but she almost instantly forgets the person she's madly in love with? Which version of history does the Doctor remember? The version of this story with or without Rory? And with Rory gone, just how did the story actually unfold in the first place? Does this mean that Vampires of Venice never happened (in which case why aren't we over run by fish people) and how have the other adventures changed as surely, without Rory, even The Eleventh Hour would be totally different? And we've now got a combination crack, one which the Doctor can reach into and pull TARDIS fragments from and one which also swallows people up.
Finally, along with prisoner zero and River Song knowing the problems the Doctor will face, we've now even got the Silurians narrating it to us, just how does everyone in the universe except the Doctor know about all this???
So, in short (but not quite as short as a simple yawn), it's a cobbled together left over plot that smacks of lack of effort and starts to show just how badly thought out the crackpot crack plot is coming across. And I demand a third eye!
I'm not sure what it is that makes me so apathetic towards this story. It's not actually "bad" as such, I think it's more that it's a half-arsed effort on pretty much every possible level. The script, re-introducing the Silurians, is a rehash of... well... The Silurians (which is not good as it had already been rehashed as The Sea Devils) with a few bits of Inferno thrown in and a touch of The Daemons. The effects aren't the cheapest but the CGI explosion at the end looks rather lacklustre and whilst the large scale shots of the city try their best to look impressive, the running around the tunnels sections look as though the tunnels are made from polystyrene. The regulars aren't particularly sparkling, Smith's not quite at his flattest here but he's completely lacking eloquence and the scenes where he's supposedly being all authoritative leave me thinking "well, I wouldn't be doing what you asked me". Thankfully Amy's absent for a lot of the story leaving us left with a very underwhelming guest cast of two scientists, a kid and his tedious parents. And given that they're allegedly heading for Rio at the start of the story, Amy and Rory look very VERY overdressed.
The first part also presents us with yet another impossibly short time scale. They've got twelve minutes before the silurians arrive in the village and somehow, before the clock's even counted down to three minutes they've managed to wire up pretty much everywhere with cameras. Nope, sorry, don't buy that for a second. Nothing in that sequence feels remotely plausible and yet it could so easily have been more realistic (and weirdly probably even tenser) by making the time longer. Alas, they went with twelve minutes and the scene seems more a spoof of Mission Impossible style set pieces than anything Doctor Who related. And when the silurians/homo reptilia do turn up they're missing their third eye and in possession of a very long (and cheap looking) CGI tongue. They don't sound like silurians and yes, the Doctor "explains" this by saying they're a different branch of the family so to speak but, quite frankly, they completely bore me in a way that even the original seven parter would have been impressed by. They've got their magic "we can hack into anything" technology though which seems to be able to turn a computer monitor into a two way camera.
The main problem with the story is the whole ending where Rory dies or, more importantly, the crack and the comments made about time. The Doctor states that there are some points which are fixed and some points which are fluid. To me though, the presence of ANY fluid points completely eradicates the idea of a fixed point. How could you have, say, a fixed point in the year 2040 when here, in 2020, the Doctor's saying that the future can be completely re-written anyway? So problem number one is that we've got internally inconsistent statements about the nature of time. Problem number two concerns the fact that Amy forgets Rory. She's a time traveller, so in the angels story we were told this meant she would remember things that other people didn't. Yet here the Doctor says that as it's her own personal time that's being re-written she could forget? So let me get this right, she's capable of remembering being taken into the middle of a forest (and I would still love to know how she got there unaided if she couldn't open her eyes) and the soldiers who assisted her (but who were then swallowed by the crack) but she almost instantly forgets the person she's madly in love with? Which version of history does the Doctor remember? The version of this story with or without Rory? And with Rory gone, just how did the story actually unfold in the first place? Does this mean that Vampires of Venice never happened (in which case why aren't we over run by fish people) and how have the other adventures changed as surely, without Rory, even The Eleventh Hour would be totally different? And we've now got a combination crack, one which the Doctor can reach into and pull TARDIS fragments from and one which also swallows people up.
Finally, along with prisoner zero and River Song knowing the problems the Doctor will face, we've now even got the Silurians narrating it to us, just how does everyone in the universe except the Doctor know about all this???
So, in short (but not quite as short as a simple yawn), it's a cobbled together left over plot that smacks of lack of effort and starts to show just how badly thought out the crackpot crack plot is coming across. And I demand a third eye!
The Impossible Countdown - Amy's Choice
Okay, so I didn't quite make it through season 5 before The Impossible Astronaut hit our screens but last week wasn't a good week for Who fans and things distracted me. So only slightly later than planned... probably the best episode of the series.
Everything about this episode cries out "good old fashioned entertaining Who". There's a superb pre-credits teaser (yes, the Doctor's line into the theme is terribly cheesy and fourth wally but who cares, I love it) and I can't think we'd ever see the Doctor having to drop back in on a happily pregnant Amy with husband Rory after having dropped them back on earth.... I mean thank goodness it's all a dream :) We even get a "Space Museum" reference, how cool is that! Oh, okay, don't answer that one.
Just a shame that the superb cold opener is still followed by that theme music/title sequence.
Anyway, one of the greatest characters from season 5 (and, actually, quite a few of the recent seasons) is the Dream Lord. Twisted, bitchy and played to absolute perfection, the Dream Lord really was one of the highlights of the year's episodes. Part of me would like a re-match but I'm not sure how they'd go about doing it now that we know all about him. Well, I say "him", we know nothing really about the Doctor and this is one of the few times that any attempt to look inside the Doctor's mind has thrilled me but this story mostly hangs on us not knowing his true identity till the very end and now we know his way of working as well... oh well, as a one off he was great. Other things that are stunning about this episode include the ice covered console room (oh how I love the look of it, I wonder if when they do another console room we could have an ice themed one?), the CGI TARDIS freezing over and the fact the script doesn't feel like an old Tennant knock off, it actually starts to show the Smith Doctor as actually having his own traits. Completely inappropriate ones admittedly but the self harm line still raises a smile whenever I hear it (the town I live in isn't quite as dull as the dream scenario but oh boy does it come close). I love Rory's practical nature, I think the Doctor building a generator out of a whisk is inspired and death by dissolving into sand is also pretty grim.
As with pretty much everything in season 5 though, it's a story about perception and what's real/what's not. I am starting to get just a little tired of this and Amy is REALLY starting to irritate me now. When this was shown and Amy and Rory finally realised that they were made for each other I really and truly hoped that this would push Amy back to the background and let us concentrate more on the Doctor... we'll see how that panned out when I face the next two parter.
"Amy's Choice", absolutely superb. I know quite a few people didn't like it but this, to me, is how a Doctor Who love story should be done. Creepy, surreal and with possessed OAPs being hit with bits of wood. I just wish it could all have been like this.
Everything about this episode cries out "good old fashioned entertaining Who". There's a superb pre-credits teaser (yes, the Doctor's line into the theme is terribly cheesy and fourth wally but who cares, I love it) and I can't think we'd ever see the Doctor having to drop back in on a happily pregnant Amy with husband Rory after having dropped them back on earth.... I mean thank goodness it's all a dream :) We even get a "Space Museum" reference, how cool is that! Oh, okay, don't answer that one.
Just a shame that the superb cold opener is still followed by that theme music/title sequence.
Anyway, one of the greatest characters from season 5 (and, actually, quite a few of the recent seasons) is the Dream Lord. Twisted, bitchy and played to absolute perfection, the Dream Lord really was one of the highlights of the year's episodes. Part of me would like a re-match but I'm not sure how they'd go about doing it now that we know all about him. Well, I say "him", we know nothing really about the Doctor and this is one of the few times that any attempt to look inside the Doctor's mind has thrilled me but this story mostly hangs on us not knowing his true identity till the very end and now we know his way of working as well... oh well, as a one off he was great. Other things that are stunning about this episode include the ice covered console room (oh how I love the look of it, I wonder if when they do another console room we could have an ice themed one?), the CGI TARDIS freezing over and the fact the script doesn't feel like an old Tennant knock off, it actually starts to show the Smith Doctor as actually having his own traits. Completely inappropriate ones admittedly but the self harm line still raises a smile whenever I hear it (the town I live in isn't quite as dull as the dream scenario but oh boy does it come close). I love Rory's practical nature, I think the Doctor building a generator out of a whisk is inspired and death by dissolving into sand is also pretty grim.
As with pretty much everything in season 5 though, it's a story about perception and what's real/what's not. I am starting to get just a little tired of this and Amy is REALLY starting to irritate me now. When this was shown and Amy and Rory finally realised that they were made for each other I really and truly hoped that this would push Amy back to the background and let us concentrate more on the Doctor... we'll see how that panned out when I face the next two parter.
"Amy's Choice", absolutely superb. I know quite a few people didn't like it but this, to me, is how a Doctor Who love story should be done. Creepy, surreal and with possessed OAPs being hit with bits of wood. I just wish it could all have been like this.
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
The Impossible Countdown - The Vampires of Venice
And now for the return of Rory. I'm not normally a fan of cringe worthy humour but the bachelor party opening is great. Admittedly I thought that those sorts of events rarely took place the night before the actual wedding but I'm guessing as this is supposed to be small town community then they still do it the old fashioned way. Anyway, Rory's in the TARDIS and the Doctor promises a wedding present trip in the TARDIS (either that or tokens, nice line).
There are two stars of this episode and Rory is definitely one. He's grown up since the Prisoner Zero event and although it takes him a while he copes with TARDIS stuff much better than other people have in the past. Throughout the episode his dumbstruck charm really kept me amused (much needed as the plot's wafer thin) and it's possibly the only time I've ever found a "your mum" joke funny. Mind you, I probably found it funny because I found all the others rather dumb and the dumbness of the... okay, analysing the joke too much. Anyway, Rory's definitely the star character in this one. Amy's being bossy (which does nothing for me) and I'd have probably kicked her out of the TARDIS rather than become one of her "boys". The Doctor's also a bit too goofy in places in this one, the mirror scene in particular is probably supposed to be charming or something but I think Smith over plays it a lot and there's a surprising lack of venom in him given he thinks he's facing vampires, the ancient enemy of his people...
The other star of the show is the whole look of it, it looks fantastic. Often I've really wondered if it's actually been necessary to travel abroad to film things when really the story would have worked anywhere but this tale just looks sooooo brilliant and so sumptuous that you can't help but be impressed by the way it looks. A good thing really as the plot, as I mentioned, isn't up to much. Fish people lost their world, want ours. They make it rain, the Doctor stops the rain, fish people die (one dies at the hands of possibly the world's most powerful makeup mirror). Once more it's a perception story (how many now??) with the fish people wearing perception filters. However, it doesn't quite work consistently. Up until the end bits, whenever the perception filters have flickered off, the human form has been fully clothed but the fish version has been "naked". At the end though, queen fish ceremonially removes her garments before throwing herself in the canal which would suggest the clothes are real? If they are, how on earth do they contain the fish body?
The most important thing about this episode really is that it's setting up aspects of "The Silence" for season 6 (including the world falling silent at the end of the episode). It also deals with cracks so let's see what we're told.
The cracks were everywhere in the universe (so presumably not just where Amy and the Doctor have been recently).
You can travel through the cracks from one part of the universe to another
The cracks close up behind you once you've travelled through them (of their own accord?)
Through some of the cracks they could "see (the?) silence"
Now these, to me, seem to be very different cracks to the ones presented in the previous two parter which seemed to be ones that ate you out of existence if you even went close to them as opposed to ones you could travel through!
Oh and the fish people, like everyone else in the universe, seem to know about Gallifrey and its fate.
It's a weird story, light on plot and hammers home the crack bits rather heavily. It looks great (and I do love the clockwork bits at the end) but it's just not really got enough meat of its own to make it a good story. And one last thing... the Doctor makes it very clear at the end that time can't be changed. So just something of a major change in opinion since last week then. Ho hum.
There are two stars of this episode and Rory is definitely one. He's grown up since the Prisoner Zero event and although it takes him a while he copes with TARDIS stuff much better than other people have in the past. Throughout the episode his dumbstruck charm really kept me amused (much needed as the plot's wafer thin) and it's possibly the only time I've ever found a "your mum" joke funny. Mind you, I probably found it funny because I found all the others rather dumb and the dumbness of the... okay, analysing the joke too much. Anyway, Rory's definitely the star character in this one. Amy's being bossy (which does nothing for me) and I'd have probably kicked her out of the TARDIS rather than become one of her "boys". The Doctor's also a bit too goofy in places in this one, the mirror scene in particular is probably supposed to be charming or something but I think Smith over plays it a lot and there's a surprising lack of venom in him given he thinks he's facing vampires, the ancient enemy of his people...
The other star of the show is the whole look of it, it looks fantastic. Often I've really wondered if it's actually been necessary to travel abroad to film things when really the story would have worked anywhere but this tale just looks sooooo brilliant and so sumptuous that you can't help but be impressed by the way it looks. A good thing really as the plot, as I mentioned, isn't up to much. Fish people lost their world, want ours. They make it rain, the Doctor stops the rain, fish people die (one dies at the hands of possibly the world's most powerful makeup mirror). Once more it's a perception story (how many now??) with the fish people wearing perception filters. However, it doesn't quite work consistently. Up until the end bits, whenever the perception filters have flickered off, the human form has been fully clothed but the fish version has been "naked". At the end though, queen fish ceremonially removes her garments before throwing herself in the canal which would suggest the clothes are real? If they are, how on earth do they contain the fish body?
The most important thing about this episode really is that it's setting up aspects of "The Silence" for season 6 (including the world falling silent at the end of the episode). It also deals with cracks so let's see what we're told.
The cracks were everywhere in the universe (so presumably not just where Amy and the Doctor have been recently).
You can travel through the cracks from one part of the universe to another
The cracks close up behind you once you've travelled through them (of their own accord?)
Through some of the cracks they could "see (the?) silence"
Now these, to me, seem to be very different cracks to the ones presented in the previous two parter which seemed to be ones that ate you out of existence if you even went close to them as opposed to ones you could travel through!
Oh and the fish people, like everyone else in the universe, seem to know about Gallifrey and its fate.
It's a weird story, light on plot and hammers home the crack bits rather heavily. It looks great (and I do love the clockwork bits at the end) but it's just not really got enough meat of its own to make it a good story. And one last thing... the Doctor makes it very clear at the end that time can't be changed. So just something of a major change in opinion since last week then. Ho hum.
The Impossible Countdown - The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone
Right then, let's start with a massively positive opening to the comments... classiest cold opener ever. Seriously, in the whole of Who this two parter starts with possibly the best opening action of any story, ever. And I have to admit that it stays pretty good for most of the first episode and probably quite a bit of the second one as well. It also sets up a few "key statements" about the ongoing plot which will turn out to be very important over the next few episodes... which is where things then start to go a little wrong.
So anyway, after the superb cold opener (and after the less than superb titles which still leave me cold) we get a feisty TARDIS scene with the Doctor, River and Amy. First gripe about the episode, River suggests that the only reason the TARDIS makes the noise that it does is because the Doctor leaves the brakes on. Which would then suggest that EVERY OTHER TIME LORD DOES IT. Sorry, I know it's supposed to be a charming joke about River and the Doctor's abilities but it still really rubs me up the wrong way. On the beach we get a diary scene and when Octavian turns up we find out that River has secrets that the Doctor doesn't yet know about which aren't going to endear her to him. We then get the start of some major "changes" to the angels nature. Now, if you look one in the eye you become one (after a while). Does that mean that Sally Sparrow (from Blink) is slowly turning into an angel? A simple picture of an angel becomes an angel as well and we also find out that they also kill in nasty ways because they enjoy it. It's all wrapped up in some very well directed sequences though with Amy and the monitor screen so it just about moves you on before you have too much time to think about it. The trek through the statues is exceptionally well done with full use made of caves as location footage and it's another mention of perception filters which again means we've got a story about how things are perceived and seen and disguised. The cliffhanger is then... just a little strange. It's one of those ones where you know what's going to happen next but aren't quite sure how it will happen. Then it happens with a bit of technobabble and the story moves on.
So episode one was running through caves, episode two is running through corridors and running through woodland. It doesn't quite look as stylish as the first episode did as the corridors look, well I suppose they just look like rather standard corridors and the woodland bits have a weird look to them that I can't quite put my finger on. It's also a very crack heavy episode...
Things we learn:-
The cracks can be closed by throwing complicated space time events into them
The crack can move and looks as though it's following Amy around
The crack was caused by a very big bang and the Doctor can work out the date of the explosion
Fall into the crack/get too close to it and you're erased from time and everyone forgets about you. However the universe carries on exactly as it was which means that, as the Doctor puts it, "Time can be rewritten". Once the soldiers are in the crack presumably 99.9999% of the universe remembers some weird way that Amy managed to get into the middle of the woodland area on her own (that's got to be some majorly weird re-writing going on!).
If you're a time traveller then you don't forget the people who fell into the crack. And that's probably quite an important one as it might be cropping up again in a few episodes' time
Even though it looks like the crack is following Amy, the Doctor suggests that it might have been there when the cyber king stomped over London and rewrote that as well somehow.
It's quite neat the way the Doctor solves things in this one but there seem to be an awful lot of times in the second episode where it looks as though the angels are clearly looking at each other when they're moving (it's certainly the impression I got anyway). More mysteriousness on the beach (River remembers being there when the Pandorica opened) and then the final scene which is the start of the bullying Amy appearing. To be honest, I really wish it hadn't happened. From this point on Amy becomes very dominant in pretty much every episode and it feels once more as though it's a show about her rather than the Doctor.
Overall, episode one is much better than episode two, the angels are very different this time around and it does look pretty. It is also clearly setting up future episodes so...
Things we learn about River:-
She knows old high gallifreyan
She's travelled in time and views herself as a complicated space time event
She remembers the pandorica (even though the Doctor seems to now think it's just a fairy tale?)
She killed a good man.
It's ALMOST back to the levels of the Tennant years but it seems too ongoing plot fixated in the second part to really thrill me and the constant repetition of the "time can be rewritten" didn't half get on my nerves... Still, an improvement on Victory of the Daleks :) Mind you, pretty much anything would have been...
So anyway, after the superb cold opener (and after the less than superb titles which still leave me cold) we get a feisty TARDIS scene with the Doctor, River and Amy. First gripe about the episode, River suggests that the only reason the TARDIS makes the noise that it does is because the Doctor leaves the brakes on. Which would then suggest that EVERY OTHER TIME LORD DOES IT. Sorry, I know it's supposed to be a charming joke about River and the Doctor's abilities but it still really rubs me up the wrong way. On the beach we get a diary scene and when Octavian turns up we find out that River has secrets that the Doctor doesn't yet know about which aren't going to endear her to him. We then get the start of some major "changes" to the angels nature. Now, if you look one in the eye you become one (after a while). Does that mean that Sally Sparrow (from Blink) is slowly turning into an angel? A simple picture of an angel becomes an angel as well and we also find out that they also kill in nasty ways because they enjoy it. It's all wrapped up in some very well directed sequences though with Amy and the monitor screen so it just about moves you on before you have too much time to think about it. The trek through the statues is exceptionally well done with full use made of caves as location footage and it's another mention of perception filters which again means we've got a story about how things are perceived and seen and disguised. The cliffhanger is then... just a little strange. It's one of those ones where you know what's going to happen next but aren't quite sure how it will happen. Then it happens with a bit of technobabble and the story moves on.
So episode one was running through caves, episode two is running through corridors and running through woodland. It doesn't quite look as stylish as the first episode did as the corridors look, well I suppose they just look like rather standard corridors and the woodland bits have a weird look to them that I can't quite put my finger on. It's also a very crack heavy episode...
Things we learn:-
The cracks can be closed by throwing complicated space time events into them
The crack can move and looks as though it's following Amy around
The crack was caused by a very big bang and the Doctor can work out the date of the explosion
Fall into the crack/get too close to it and you're erased from time and everyone forgets about you. However the universe carries on exactly as it was which means that, as the Doctor puts it, "Time can be rewritten". Once the soldiers are in the crack presumably 99.9999% of the universe remembers some weird way that Amy managed to get into the middle of the woodland area on her own (that's got to be some majorly weird re-writing going on!).
If you're a time traveller then you don't forget the people who fell into the crack. And that's probably quite an important one as it might be cropping up again in a few episodes' time
Even though it looks like the crack is following Amy, the Doctor suggests that it might have been there when the cyber king stomped over London and rewrote that as well somehow.
It's quite neat the way the Doctor solves things in this one but there seem to be an awful lot of times in the second episode where it looks as though the angels are clearly looking at each other when they're moving (it's certainly the impression I got anyway). More mysteriousness on the beach (River remembers being there when the Pandorica opened) and then the final scene which is the start of the bullying Amy appearing. To be honest, I really wish it hadn't happened. From this point on Amy becomes very dominant in pretty much every episode and it feels once more as though it's a show about her rather than the Doctor.
Overall, episode one is much better than episode two, the angels are very different this time around and it does look pretty. It is also clearly setting up future episodes so...
Things we learn about River:-
She knows old high gallifreyan
She's travelled in time and views herself as a complicated space time event
She remembers the pandorica (even though the Doctor seems to now think it's just a fairy tale?)
She killed a good man.
It's ALMOST back to the levels of the Tennant years but it seems too ongoing plot fixated in the second part to really thrill me and the constant repetition of the "time can be rewritten" didn't half get on my nerves... Still, an improvement on Victory of the Daleks :) Mind you, pretty much anything would have been...
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Liz Sladen - A Tear for Sarah Jane
When I started this blog a few months ago it was with the aim of posting slightly caustic, hopefully informative and often silly posts about Doctor Who (plus science when my brain worked). I never thought I'd be writing a tribute to Elizabeth Sladen.
I missed Sarah Jane (first time around) by exactly one week. She left in Hand of Fear part 4, I was born the day of Deadly Assassin part one. Yet as I grew up and became a Who fan there was always talk of how wonderful a companion Sarah Jane had been. I can just about remember watching K9 and Company but I remember being more interested in K9 than any of the humans in the episode. It wasn't until the videos started to come out that I could really appreciate why everyone loved Sarah so. I enjoyed seeing her in The Five Doctors but Death to the Daleks was the first "true" Sarah story I saw. It might not be the best Doctor Who story ever but oh how I love it, mostly for Sarah Jane. I could genuinely believe in the character and had tremendous fun watching her struggle to come to terms with the world around her (I knew it was a relatively early story for her). The videos kept coming and it was one of the few simple "quality" rules about the story. If Sarah was in it then it was almost certainly going to be a fun story to watch. I'm amazingly keen on Invasion of the Dinosaurs (one of my many guilty pleasures) and it's another where it could pretty much only be a Sarah Jane story. Lots of other stories you could just about drop any companion in to and, with slight tweaking, it would still work. But this is a true Sarah story, it's her journalism talents that move things on and drive her to find the truth. No other companion could do what she did.
As every fan does, I reached a certain age and started going to events. Living where I did I had limited access at first but soon started going to events in London and I dread to think how many hours of my life I've spent waiting in line to get autographs. With very few exceptions, the lines for Liz Sladen were always the longest and often some of the slowest moving. She was always brilliant with the fans no matter what their age. Young children, grown up children.... all were treated with kindness and respect and were never hurried. She knew we were all fans, she knew we were there to see her and she didn't disappoint.
There's a reason that she got her own show (eventually). Doctor Who was back and was appealing to all the generations again and, yes, it was pretty obvious that any spin off shows would work. But only one companion from the whole run of Who could carry it off. Only one character actually had enough character to be the lead, only one character could so easily carry the multi-generation appeal over (sorry but as much as I like Louise Jameson or Katy Manning, I don't think the Jo Grant Adventures or the Leela Files would have in any way shape or form worked) and only one companion had the true long lasting appeal. After all, which other companion had already had a spin off TV drama, two sets of audio dramas and regular appearances in the books and comics?
Not a single person I was with this evening could believe the news. Twitter and Facebook have been flooded. And I'm sure that this is just one of thousands of similar pieces being written on blogs the world over by countless generations of fans because Sarah Jane was just "right". Elizabeth Sladen, you weren't just my Sarah Jane, you were our Sarah Jane. We will never forget.
I missed Sarah Jane (first time around) by exactly one week. She left in Hand of Fear part 4, I was born the day of Deadly Assassin part one. Yet as I grew up and became a Who fan there was always talk of how wonderful a companion Sarah Jane had been. I can just about remember watching K9 and Company but I remember being more interested in K9 than any of the humans in the episode. It wasn't until the videos started to come out that I could really appreciate why everyone loved Sarah so. I enjoyed seeing her in The Five Doctors but Death to the Daleks was the first "true" Sarah story I saw. It might not be the best Doctor Who story ever but oh how I love it, mostly for Sarah Jane. I could genuinely believe in the character and had tremendous fun watching her struggle to come to terms with the world around her (I knew it was a relatively early story for her). The videos kept coming and it was one of the few simple "quality" rules about the story. If Sarah was in it then it was almost certainly going to be a fun story to watch. I'm amazingly keen on Invasion of the Dinosaurs (one of my many guilty pleasures) and it's another where it could pretty much only be a Sarah Jane story. Lots of other stories you could just about drop any companion in to and, with slight tweaking, it would still work. But this is a true Sarah story, it's her journalism talents that move things on and drive her to find the truth. No other companion could do what she did.
As every fan does, I reached a certain age and started going to events. Living where I did I had limited access at first but soon started going to events in London and I dread to think how many hours of my life I've spent waiting in line to get autographs. With very few exceptions, the lines for Liz Sladen were always the longest and often some of the slowest moving. She was always brilliant with the fans no matter what their age. Young children, grown up children.... all were treated with kindness and respect and were never hurried. She knew we were all fans, she knew we were there to see her and she didn't disappoint.
There's a reason that she got her own show (eventually). Doctor Who was back and was appealing to all the generations again and, yes, it was pretty obvious that any spin off shows would work. But only one companion from the whole run of Who could carry it off. Only one character actually had enough character to be the lead, only one character could so easily carry the multi-generation appeal over (sorry but as much as I like Louise Jameson or Katy Manning, I don't think the Jo Grant Adventures or the Leela Files would have in any way shape or form worked) and only one companion had the true long lasting appeal. After all, which other companion had already had a spin off TV drama, two sets of audio dramas and regular appearances in the books and comics?
Not a single person I was with this evening could believe the news. Twitter and Facebook have been flooded. And I'm sure that this is just one of thousands of similar pieces being written on blogs the world over by countless generations of fans because Sarah Jane was just "right". Elizabeth Sladen, you weren't just my Sarah Jane, you were our Sarah Jane. We will never forget.
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