Metamatic Forums Socialising The Green Room Doctor Who?

Brief thoughts froom me until I formulate a better review...

Personally I really enjoyed it.

Matt Smith – going to be fantastic. He’s got charisma and an ‘alien-ness’ about him. Let’s not forget that the Doctor is always a tad crazy after regenerating. Interesting face. No Tennenty pretty boy. Quite Doctor-ish.

Karen Gillan as Amy – nice. Good character, different type of companion.

New TARDIS interior – rather “rubbish”, literally, since it’s just a pile of junk. They should have done something much more different.

Then again, the home-made time machine look matched the new Doctor’s twee, old professory type look.

New theme tune – glad they changed it, but not to this. It’s lost it’s identity.

New titles – boring, no invention. Missed opportunity.

The story itself – quite good, quite original. Not the best, but a damn sight better than most RTD stories.

Coming soon trailer – looks amazing.

VERY excited about this season - with the much-needed changes in place, this could be the best season since the show's return in 2005.

Just watched it myself.

Reminded me of a Tim Burton gothic fairytale.

I agree new Doctor has to find his feet.

Amy is very easy on the eye.

Spitfires in space,dunno about that.

Dalek in WW2 camoflauge - intruiging,a Mark Gatiss penned story so I've heard,wish I'd quizzed him last July about what was coming.

Enjoyed it ayway.Signs are very good for the rest of the season.

I think it's going to be a superb season. You can really tell that many changes in production have been made, and I think it's all the better for it.

Well yesterday's episode lived up to my expectations, if some of it was a little underplayed and rather a lot crammed in to 45 minutes.

But still, it felt fresh and original, and made a change from your typical villain or alien invasion type story.

The "Smilers" were pretty creepy and wonderfully realised; it's a shame they didn't do more with them.

Excuse the long post folks, I just got typing, and well, this came out…

Two episodes into the new series now and I’m almost 99% sure that Matt Smith will continue to be good as he continues on in the role. I like his 1950’s school teacher geeky look, (like he came out of Michael J Fox’s Back To The Future film), and I love the way that his face is both fascinatingly young and old all at once, but its still early days for me to say if he will ultimately become my favourite Doctor, if so, then I hope it happens unexpectedly in much the same way as it did with my past favourite actors in the role. In the first episode there were a few fleeting moments when he reminded me of Tennant, and in the second episode it was Troughton and Pertwee who came to mind. This could either be the intentional scripting in linking him to his previous portrayals, or of course just simply Matt Smith drawing on some of the fine acting standard that has gone before him, but either way its actually quite comforting, and strangely believable to see these echo’s of reincarnation manifest themselves within the body language of whoever new has taken up the role of the Doctor.


Normally I hate it when they tamper with the theme tune and graphics of the show, but I prefer this new slightly darker sound, and the ‘DW’ logo is way less fanciful than its so often been in the past, its just sleeker now. I love the steampunk look of the Tardis interior, finally going the full hog on the console and throwing in everything including the kitchen sink, its eccentric design of the controls is something that they just had to do, but apart from this aspect of the new redesign - I’m still struggling to clearly visualise just what the rest of the interior is all about! When watching episode two I noticed that the exterior of the Tardis was also giving off a striking impression, during a scene when the Doctor was standing next to the exterior doors the blue wood grain was quite lucidly visible, (well, it was on my TV).

Amy Pond, yes she’s nice to look at, but could she become annoying, well I expected Catherine Tate to be so, fortunately she was the opposite, and with previous companions - well sadly Martha Jones was nearly forgettable, and as for the big one, Rose, well somehow the show managed to eventually nullify her for me! There’s still never been anyone totally spectacular as an assistant in the new show (yes, I know there were plenty of stinkers in the old, old show, here’s some for easy debate, Adric, Peri, Melanie, to name a few).


There's some similarities working in from the past into the new, with the runaway bride theme, and a progressive mystery in the background which started with Bad Wolf throughout previous stories - and now we have the cracks in the fabric of existence appearing in this series - so why change something if it works, and I like the idea of these linking motifs.


The Eleventh Hour had some nice plot elements, the B-Movie setting in the ‘quiet’ English Village, the kind of place where there’s a small Parish, a village green, a tearoom, a red phone box (or did I imagine that one!) I know we’ve all seen it countless times before, but it remains as a classically pastoral Doctor Who environment for any scene of alien or supernatural invasion. If the Doc’ were American then he would no doubt materialise in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet small town on a bright and blue summers day, with its white picket fences and manicured lawns, just as Jeffreys Dad unexpectedly has a stroke whilst watering the grass, and the camera pans slowly down into the ground to reveal the dark bug infested horror that lurks beneath a once peaceful everyday setting.


The Doctor almost seemed to be turning into a superhero during his speech about defending the Earth, I expected him to don a cape and fly up into the sky, but the real horror in The Eleventh Hour was the fish fingers and custard eating scene. I don’t know why anyone would be scared of all the ‘Highly Digitised And Graphic Monster’ scenes, no, it’s abnormal food combinations that are the true evil of the universe.


The Beast Below, hmm, this was a slight step back from the opening episode for me, looked good with the smiling cyborg wooden-faced observers in the boxes, and they were a great surreal ‘army’ to rank alongside some of the best throughout the history of the show, but shame they were not really the biggest thing in the story. The BBC prop department had clearly come in useful for decking out the interior of Starship UK, but overall it all turned into a cheesy plot halfway through. The situation of the city on the back of a beast made me think of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld ‘planet’, and the mystery of its function was straight out of Star Trek NG’s pilot: Encounter At Farpoint, and how cheesy was that episode, but it lead on to several series and movies for that show, so, here’s to many more continuing seasons of new and improved Dr Who to come…

I agree.

But I am wondering how the Doctor and Amy (well, especially Amy) managed to wash and re-do the hair after bathing in whale sick...?

It was a blink-and-you-miss-it episode, so perhaps I did exactly that??

It’s the sort of sci-fantasy plot thingy that could drive you mad if you notice it, which I’m sure we all did, but try not to think about it.

Too late! I have. Just what was up with the scale of the human morsels in proportion to the size of the Ginourmous space whale/starship UK? its as unbelievable as the creaky old set-pieces in the ‘70’s TV show The Land Of The Giants. A mere human must be just like a speck of space dust on the space whales tongue, surely the beast required to filter us up like tens of thousands of plankton, then again, why would it need to eat us anyway. And then there’s the issue of the morals of a society where even a child getting a question wrong at school allowed for the excuse of being selected and digested and eaten alive. Surely this is a far bigger secret for people to elect to ‘forget’ about rather than the ‘torture’ of a near mythical creature that the majority of people will never truly contemplate the existence of. Unless of course the creature represents the body of the people, and its torture is symbolic of the repression of individual freedoms, or that sort of politi-mumbo thing.

Or is this just unnecessary over-analysing, when we should really just sit in front of the telly at tea-time and take heed of what Radiobeach says in an earlier post: ” Not that I give a monkeys for the psychology of what's essentially a kid show - it was all enjoyable and that's the point!

Yeah, it’s probably best just to tuck into our Saturday meal, sip a cup of tea, and imagine that the Doctors sonic screwdriver is also the galaxies smallest hairdryer complete with a microscopic personal grooming salon, and that a gun-totting, street-wise Queen Of England might one day become a reality...

Well, yesterday's episode thoroughly angered me. I'm as much of a fan of the Daleks as I am of the show, and that awful redesign got me hurling abuse at the telly no end.

For me the Mark Gatiss story Victory of the Daleks proved to be a huge disappointment.

Although Gatiss is a lifelong fan, with numerous writing connections to the show, for me, both stories of his, have been rather crap. Victory of the Daleks was perhaps THE most rushed and fast-paced story in the show's history - blink, and you missed it. This made it difficult to follow and it spent no time at all building up any kind of tension.

And not just that - the actual storyline was absolute rubbish too. The rehashed old tale of one race of Daleks beating another, all wrapped around a corny plot to get to the Doctor via implanting an android professor, claiming to have invented the Daleks, in Winston Churchill's war cabinet. I'm sorry, it just did not work. The Daleks deserve a genuinely original story - and not one that's necessarily earth-bound either. There are only so many ways you can re-tell The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and they've all been done twice over!

But it gets worse. According to Steven Moffat, as just about everything else in the series has change, why not change the Daleks too? Because there's no need, that's why! The change in the Doctor, the companion and the TARDIS is all normal with a new Doctor, season and production team, but a design as genuinely classic as the Dalek? Surely people want to see Daleks which look like Daleks, not an oversized, hunchback obese Dalek. Despite some nice colour schemes and some interesting details, such as the eye-stalks, the new fat Daleks looked utterly stupid, more resembling the various mis-shapen Dalek toys that came out in the 60s, barely resembling a Dalek.

This was one step too far in my book, which has undoubtedly raised my concerns for the rest of the series. I think at times the production team are so involved in the show, and wrapped up in their exclusive little Doctor Who bubble, that they easily lose focus and forget some of the most important things that just make the show work.

I'm giving it a bit longer to see where it's at...


The Beast Below. Since I saw this episode I’ve been reminded that it’s actually the intention of the new producer to bring a ‘Fairytale’ quality to the revamped style of the show, I forgot that when I watched it, so a giant creature carrying a city on its back was if a tad childlishly presented, certainly a step in that direction.


Victory Of The Daleks.

A concise little tale to say the least, that served to get the Daleks back in the door, but I think there were some elements in the story that should have run on into a second episode, and is it just me or do stories referencing The Blitz Spirit just seem so typical of the BBC, the Eastenders kind of Blitz of course, not those ‘80’s glow boys in lipstick and shadow.

Winston and the Doc’ as chums together in the bunker, and Daleks in army kit, well the camoed-up Daleks made for a nice surreal image, and Winston’s ”Keep Buggering On” was a line worthy of the cheeky script tweaker RT Davis himself, if he had actually invented it, Mark Gatiss’s story had some things going for it, but in truth I was a bit bored by the old Winston.


It’s still early days yet I think to tell just where Matt Smith’s evolving characterisation of the Doc’ is going to ultimately fix itself, some echoes of Troughton and Pertwee were coming through again, and I notice that he’s becoming quite a touchy feely person, resting his hands momentarily on people, did any other Doctor do much of that in the past? Mind you, he’s ruining the mystique of the Doc’ is our Matt Smith, speaking of being hands on, he’s been getting Paparazzied at the Coachella music festival, hand in hand with his Daisy, who the celeb’ mag’s like to tell us is - ‘an underwear model’


So, once again the Daleks were down to numbers of almost single figures, and once again they were resurrected, and yet again Amy Pond remarkably came up with a timely answer to a problem while all others were in a tizzy about finding a solution. At the end of the episode a likeable old Cyborg scientist with transplanted memories ran off to find his sweetheart, but before this he helped bring about a brief homage to Star Wars with some Spitfires in space. This nicely linked us back to George Lucas’s use of the WWII air fighter footage that he inserted into the production of his film, using it to fill in the gaps prior to the completion of the special effects.

Aboard a spaceship with a fittingly utilitarian metal room (and a curiously noticeably low ceiling), the Daleks were reborn adorned in the latest Star Trek movie styling after the Doc’ had rather stupidly called their bluff. The redesigned Daleks must have been gorging themselves on their power-hungry ambitions during the DNA reconstruction, as they now sport chunky midriffs. I’ve never been completely satisfied with the design of any of the Daleks since the show returned, though I did think that the all Black one was a good look, but I actually like the funky colours of this new team, they remind me of those dinky looking Swatch designed ‘smart’ cars, in lovely painted choices of Lemon, Lime, Raspberry, Tangerine, and NASA White.


It seems to have been a week of me hearing slogan’s with the word 'Britain' inserted somewhere, ‘ Victory For Britain’, ‘Broken Britain’, or, ‘Britain Is Great’, what, with the Doc’s Winston, Politicians on TV, and even Eddie Izzard popping up on a party political broadcast, everybody loves Britain, so why on earth do the Daleks keep coming back here using our little island as a springboard for world destruction, you’d think the grumpy little squids would just learn to be happy inside their armoured shells now that they’ve all got cheery colourful exteriors

I suspect Alex that the redesign of the Daleks is probably all about coffers into the Beebs funds, as you know sales from the merchandise of the show are huge, and the Daleks are most likely the Star Wars Toys cash cow equivalent, if you look at the many versions and scale sizes of Daleks that have already been produced over recent years, then issuing a new style as a toy or Model is going to hit the money mark straight away.


The Time Of Angels/ Flesh And Stone

So, what’s the deal with River Song? And what’s the exact nature of her ‘close relationship to the Doctor’, at first I thought she might be revealed now as his human mother, she’s very keen on keeping tabs on his actions. But then we get the info that she’s responsible for the death of ‘a very important man’, which is just too lazily obvious in its suggestion that she kill’s the Doc’, but if so then maybe its a plot device in the waiting for use when Matt Smith ultimately ends his role as the character? It’s got to be more than that surely, does she kill the Doc’s father, and more stories about the Doc’s origins are in waiting for us. It would have been imaginative though if they’d done more than just drop it into the script as something said by the characters, and made for a plot element you’d want to hang on for an answer to if we’d seen an ambiguous flashback or flash-forward of River Song’s actions.


The Time Of Angels had a great visual setting with its Maze of the Dead, and the plot really turned up the creepy Quatermass And The Pit factor in the scene’s of Amy trapped inside the dropship and her impending danger from the projection of an Angel, when capturing its image is revealed as being as deadly as its actual physical presence. I noticed that once again, as in every episode, Amy has a clarity of vision in these alien predicament’s that you wouldn’t quite expect from your average earth-bound person, and the Doc’ has also started to realise that there’s more to her than meets the eye. The 21 year old flame-haired Amy and her typically upfront behaviour finally brought her to attempt to seduce the old Doc’ in the second part of the story, and she was having none of his protestations about being 900 years old, it’s the sort of situation the old rascal Ronnie Wood would love to find himself in.


Flesh And Stone was the best episode of the season so far for me, certainly the most mysterious with its energy trees within the spaceship, what a surreal location, which I thought had quite a fairytale moment with Amy making her way without vision through a forest filled with the Angels, (made me think briefly of a scene from M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village - the forest setting and the blind girl who must make her way through the woods inhabited by ‘the creature’). The bright light from somewhere behind the trees that spelled the end of existence for anyone who approached made for a nice ominous moment as one by one the soldiers failed to return, and the story-line for both episodes firmly placed Amy right in the thick of the scarefest. Its these moments that from an adults point of view confound me, yes on the one hand Doctor Who is very much a family if not a children’s show that appeals to the child in us adults, but come on, how many kids watching are traumatised by watching statues that move when your back is turned, and have frightening shark-like teeth and claw hands when they are just about to get you!


I think Matt Smith is beginning to come through a lot more distinctively as his own portrayal of the Doc’, watching him I really felt that he’s had a hard act to follow after Tennant, and if it were not for that then I’d probably have been cheering for Matt a lot sooner. In the scenes where he was talking to ‘dead Bob’ and making a joking reference to comfy chairs and such other things he was fun to watch and I felt I was seeing new aspect’s of the Doc’.


The Weeping Angels are fantastic adversaries, so classically part of the Who world, you can just imagine Pertwee or Troughton having encountered them in the past.
There’s something about their physical nature and inevitable encounter with you that reminds me of a scary ‘70’s children’s TV show - Escape Into Night - which I saw back in the day, (also made into a weaker film in the late ‘80’s called Paperhouse with more fantasy and less horror). The original black and white TV version really creeped me out as a child, does anyone else remember those two kids being trapped in a house as living rocks appeared outside in the grounds and menaced them, slowly advancing on the house throughout the story...