Monday, April 30, 2007
Doctor Who Series Three (I am in yr program SPOILIN' yr storiez)
No, but seriously, I know what you're thinking, namely "Loz, what do you think of this season of Doctor Who so far?" Well Gladys (did I ever tell you my pet name for you was Gladys? Well, consider yourself told G.), up to two Saturdays ago, it was positive. Smith and Jones did a good job of introducing Martha, I especially liked the fact that Martha was so quick to accept the aliens and all the weirdness precisely because of all the alien activity in Britain over the last few series, whereas in the Christmas Special they had to give a number of implausible reasons for how Donna missed them all. It's not a new idea, it was used in the strangely maligned Love and Monsters last year but it's a nice one, especially as in the Seventies people probably had to keep quiet or else get a visit from Sergeant Benton and Captain Yates. With all the rushing around the vampire wasn't really an impressive monster but I don't think she was expected to be. That the Doctor's plan to defeat her seemed to involve letting her kill him is certainly a new one, sure he probably would have regenerated had he actually died, but it was rather reckless. The Judoon were nice though, I'd certainly enjoy seeing them turn up every now and again, though why they felt the need to chase a vampire and not, say, the Slitheen from season one is one of those things we shouldn't consider too much.
The Shakespeare Code continued the fun. However, I'm getting a bit bored with all these 'last of their race' aliens turning up all the time, we had the Daleks, the Gelth, Satan, the Spider-thing from The Runaway Bride ... give me the good old days when Jon Pertwee just had to fight a Sontaran, from Sontaran, where there was an entire planet of Sontarans getting on with whatever Sontarans did. Martha's whole 'but what if I kill my grandfather' thing was amusing. I'm also wondering about the race issue. So far the humans and human-shaped creatures have been pretty colour-blind, Mickey's skin-colour was never a storyline and so far racism has been the domain of alien races and creatures like the Daleks. Now that we have Martha I'm in two minds about whether there is an issue here that needs to be addressed or not. Other than the threat of death the worst a companion of the Doctor's had to worry about up to now was being lightly patronised, I do wonder whether, if the makers are insisting on keeping the show more or less on Earth or recognisable equivalents whether there should be some situations they land in where Martha does stand out and is in danger just because of her skin colour. I'm not calling for Doctor Who and the Terror of the KKK but I'm wondering if ignoring the fact that Martha is different to almost all his other companions in one very visible way is actually a ham-fisted liberalism. Anyway, plenty of time for this to be addressed. The episode had any number of great lines, plus the rather unnecessary 'Doctor gives Shakespeare a number of quotes from his great plays' (a William Hartnell story had Queen Liz tell Shakepeare to write a particular play and Sir Francis Bacon give him the idea for Hamlet, rather suggesting that Shakespeare hasn't come up with that many of his own plays himself at all).
Gridlock gave me a brand new feeling, being glad to see the year five billion. New Earth had it's moments, but they didn't involve the hospital, the implausibility of the Cat Nuns cure or the Doctor's solution. But this was a nice character piece, with a great feeling of claustrophobia with everyone stuck in those little hover-cars they'd made their homes. The moment where everyone comes together to sing the hymn was either really sad or really uplifting depending on how you chose to read it, and Ardal O'Hanlan did an amazing job acting through the cat prosthetics. I must say though that I've never really cared for the Face of Boe as a character, so don't really care that he's shuffled off the coil, still, being five billion the Doctor could easily meet him in his own past. It's great that Martha isn't just a script with 'Rose' crossed out each time, and that the Doctor's relationship with her isn't at the same place as it was with Rose, though I'm not sure why Martha would be fancying the Doctor.
It had to go wrong eventually and it did so with the Daleks in Manhattan two-parter. Some of the problems were thankfully addressed in part two, the big one being the racial purity of Daleks. It was bad enough that the Emperor Dalek made his Daleks out of humans (though I suppose Davros was doing the same back in the Colin Baker days, and this was one of the big things in Remembrance of the Daleks) but all the stuff with the Cult of Skaro being there to 'think the unthinkable' was just daft, the equivelent of the Nazis saying "You know what, we could really do with some Jews to help us out round here". Then there's the Doctor suddenly way to eager to cuddle up to Dalek Sec, never mind that he's taken over an innocent human body, the Doctor doesn't seem to mind too much about all the humans the Daleks have captured to turn into human-Daleks. And the lightning streak allowing them to keep their independence? This was a mess of two episodes, with my largest cheer being when Solomon gives a cringingly awful speech that echoes that of the American President in Mars Attacks! just before he gets killed by the Daleks ("can't we all just get along?" "Exterminate!"). The first two series managed to credibly present the Daleks as a bigger physical threat and also, because of that whole Time War business, a bigger emotional threat for the Doctor to deal with, as they killed his people. This story diminished them, not least because of the three times in the second episode where the Daleks should have just shot the Doctor on the spot. At least the other stories managed to give fairly credible reasons why they didn't, mainly by use of things like forcefields and being in different places most of the time. In one of the last scenes the Doctor has a nice long talk with Dalek Khan, who decides to run away rather than shooting him. I know the Daleks are scared of the Doctor but really! I've heard a rumour that the BBC have a deal with the Terry Nation estate which means they must have a Dalek story each season or else they lose the rights to ever use them again. I hope this is incorrect as I really think the Daleks need to be left alone for a good long while as this story, reusing bits from The Parting of the Ways, Remembrance of the Daleks and The Evil of the Daleks as it does suggests they've seriously run out of ideas for now about interesting things to do with them.
So, that's where things are right now. Next week we're back with Martha's irritating family so I suggest we'll hear about the mysterious Mr Saxon again, the closest thing we have to this season's Bad Wolf/ Torchwood. I'm lukewarm about Martha's kin, not least because the Dad seems to be a stereotyped hapless male but, with only a few lines and hardly any screen time so far that may be a view that will be challenged. I wonder if his mid-life crisis girlfriend is around for the Doctor to see as some anti-Rose, again she's only had a few lines and little screen time but it was something I thought I saw straight away in the first episode. Ah well, only a few more episodes and then surely they'll be joining up with Captain Jack...
The Shakespeare Code continued the fun. However, I'm getting a bit bored with all these 'last of their race' aliens turning up all the time, we had the Daleks, the Gelth, Satan, the Spider-thing from The Runaway Bride ... give me the good old days when Jon Pertwee just had to fight a Sontaran, from Sontaran, where there was an entire planet of Sontarans getting on with whatever Sontarans did. Martha's whole 'but what if I kill my grandfather' thing was amusing. I'm also wondering about the race issue. So far the humans and human-shaped creatures have been pretty colour-blind, Mickey's skin-colour was never a storyline and so far racism has been the domain of alien races and creatures like the Daleks. Now that we have Martha I'm in two minds about whether there is an issue here that needs to be addressed or not. Other than the threat of death the worst a companion of the Doctor's had to worry about up to now was being lightly patronised, I do wonder whether, if the makers are insisting on keeping the show more or less on Earth or recognisable equivalents whether there should be some situations they land in where Martha does stand out and is in danger just because of her skin colour. I'm not calling for Doctor Who and the Terror of the KKK but I'm wondering if ignoring the fact that Martha is different to almost all his other companions in one very visible way is actually a ham-fisted liberalism. Anyway, plenty of time for this to be addressed. The episode had any number of great lines, plus the rather unnecessary 'Doctor gives Shakespeare a number of quotes from his great plays' (a William Hartnell story had Queen Liz tell Shakepeare to write a particular play and Sir Francis Bacon give him the idea for Hamlet, rather suggesting that Shakespeare hasn't come up with that many of his own plays himself at all).
Gridlock gave me a brand new feeling, being glad to see the year five billion. New Earth had it's moments, but they didn't involve the hospital, the implausibility of the Cat Nuns cure or the Doctor's solution. But this was a nice character piece, with a great feeling of claustrophobia with everyone stuck in those little hover-cars they'd made their homes. The moment where everyone comes together to sing the hymn was either really sad or really uplifting depending on how you chose to read it, and Ardal O'Hanlan did an amazing job acting through the cat prosthetics. I must say though that I've never really cared for the Face of Boe as a character, so don't really care that he's shuffled off the coil, still, being five billion the Doctor could easily meet him in his own past. It's great that Martha isn't just a script with 'Rose' crossed out each time, and that the Doctor's relationship with her isn't at the same place as it was with Rose, though I'm not sure why Martha would be fancying the Doctor.
It had to go wrong eventually and it did so with the Daleks in Manhattan two-parter. Some of the problems were thankfully addressed in part two, the big one being the racial purity of Daleks. It was bad enough that the Emperor Dalek made his Daleks out of humans (though I suppose Davros was doing the same back in the Colin Baker days, and this was one of the big things in Remembrance of the Daleks) but all the stuff with the Cult of Skaro being there to 'think the unthinkable' was just daft, the equivelent of the Nazis saying "You know what, we could really do with some Jews to help us out round here". Then there's the Doctor suddenly way to eager to cuddle up to Dalek Sec, never mind that he's taken over an innocent human body, the Doctor doesn't seem to mind too much about all the humans the Daleks have captured to turn into human-Daleks. And the lightning streak allowing them to keep their independence? This was a mess of two episodes, with my largest cheer being when Solomon gives a cringingly awful speech that echoes that of the American President in Mars Attacks! just before he gets killed by the Daleks ("can't we all just get along?" "Exterminate!"). The first two series managed to credibly present the Daleks as a bigger physical threat and also, because of that whole Time War business, a bigger emotional threat for the Doctor to deal with, as they killed his people. This story diminished them, not least because of the three times in the second episode where the Daleks should have just shot the Doctor on the spot. At least the other stories managed to give fairly credible reasons why they didn't, mainly by use of things like forcefields and being in different places most of the time. In one of the last scenes the Doctor has a nice long talk with Dalek Khan, who decides to run away rather than shooting him. I know the Daleks are scared of the Doctor but really! I've heard a rumour that the BBC have a deal with the Terry Nation estate which means they must have a Dalek story each season or else they lose the rights to ever use them again. I hope this is incorrect as I really think the Daleks need to be left alone for a good long while as this story, reusing bits from The Parting of the Ways, Remembrance of the Daleks and The Evil of the Daleks as it does suggests they've seriously run out of ideas for now about interesting things to do with them.
So, that's where things are right now. Next week we're back with Martha's irritating family so I suggest we'll hear about the mysterious Mr Saxon again, the closest thing we have to this season's Bad Wolf/ Torchwood. I'm lukewarm about Martha's kin, not least because the Dad seems to be a stereotyped hapless male but, with only a few lines and hardly any screen time so far that may be a view that will be challenged. I wonder if his mid-life crisis girlfriend is around for the Doctor to see as some anti-Rose, again she's only had a few lines and little screen time but it was something I thought I saw straight away in the first episode. Ah well, only a few more episodes and then surely they'll be joining up with Captain Jack...
Labels: BBC, Doctor Who, Television
