Originally posted by Birdsong:
both me and my kids absolutely loved it!!
It was the only bit of TV we scheduled to watch, and it didn't disappoint on any level
Originally posted by Your Shadow:
I'm sorry I can't see the appeal of Doctor Who. I haven't watched it since the mid 80s. It's a kids' programmes isn't it?
I’m glad that you and the kids enjoyed it Martin, it was a genuine fantasy on the box, and it was also the only bit of TV that I bothered recording. I lent more weight in my original post to criticism of the Christmas Special rather than in enjoying the show for its sheer imagination and clever touches, so nitpicking aside, I can only admire Steven Moffat’s talent for spinning a good yarn, and with his artists mind he produces visual goodies that come straight from the heart of childhood fairytale.
Brian is correct in his post that the template of the show is being bent to say the least though, and it does feel that its at the scriptwriting whim of the Director, with the Doc’ more this time than ever before flaunting the rules that the drama long ago set itself up to follow, altering a characters past life so blatantly is a bit like throwing the guide book out of the Tardis tiny windows.
Andy, when you say in your post that ‘it’s a kids programme’, well if this was back in the days of an older Who series then I’d completely agree without hesitation. As someone who avidly watched the original show from primary school days onwards I remember getting to my late teens and not only losing interest and rejecting it, but feeling cheated by it – a bit like discovering that there’s no Santa Claus. This was when it still had Tom Baker clinging on, someone I’d loved at the start of my teens when he took over the role, but towards the end of his stay I knew full well that the show was locked into a hamster-wheel of infancy, your childhood imagination can often gloss over the lack of things, but when the veil is lifted, it was just, well, rubbish...
When Doctor Who was briefly resurrected in a 90’s one-off TV movie with Paul McGann it showed that it still had the potential to be of interest, but even then the only thing that had managed to mature about Doctor Who was its budget, the show still could not evolve. The Tardis Interior looked good, McGann looked great, and although it professed to be catering for the fans who had long since grown up, the bland plot and unsophisticated drama had escaped straight from the bargain basement of afternoon TV.
But Russell T Davis came along and did something that no-one expected, he found a mythical TV soap-land middle ground, and created a fun show that’s only requirement of the viewer was to be up for watching a very British fantasy tinged with nostalgia. Sometimes there’s been the odd head-shaking ‘what was he thinking’ moment amidst all the fanfare, but farting Slitheen and naff Adipose body-fat Aliens aside, its managed to maintain that great British BBC TV dream, a show that all the family can enjoy together - the young ones hid behind the sofa and willingly hypnotised into seeing ‘being geek’ as ‘being chic’, (it worked for Harry Potter), and the adults sat on the sofa indulging in a bit of shameless light entertainment. Its all the fault of Russ’, he changed a previously maligned slice of yesterday’s childhood and nurtured it into a kind of precocious teenage fantasy, ensnaring us middle-agers into reliving something innately buried within our child psyche and helplessly acknowledging that its miles better than it never was the first time around.
Popular culture is mostly childlike, and that’s how it should be. Take away all the wordy bits, the learned nuances of experience, or the obviously heavier or stereotyped ‘adult’ themes and reduce things down, they immediately take on a simplistic form, and in doing so you often get to a truer form of expression.
During the holidays recently I was visiting a relative, and over their shoulder I watched the last part of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial on TV, with the volume muted. I’m not a Speilberg fan, but I can’t deny the sheer genius of E.T.
As the film flashed through a series of images without any dialogue, the scenes that I somewhat questioned in my mind were all of the so-called logical ones that gave form to the drama, from the unlikely and stylistically filmed scene of space-suited scientists quietly, un-noticeably, and regimentally converging on the house, or the scientists trapped in an isolation tunnel getting dragged behind a fleeing ambulance in a dragged out comedy skit, or the teenagers jumping sand dunes at speed on their BMX bikes while the hidden E.T. is wrapped in a towel and sat upright in a basket on the front of one of those bikes and getting bumped around - why didn’t he fall out, and how could the cops in cars not just catch up with them? What I didn’t question though was any of the real fantasy going on – E.T coming alive again whilst seemingly dead in a freezer, or the bikes all flying through the air up into a golden sky and past a huge moon, and that magical moment at the end when E.T. touches the boy in farewell and reminds him that “he’ll be right here” – it’s pure magic, and its great to be moved emotionally as an adult by such childlike fantasy.
Now, my adult logic regarding Doctor Who’s indifference to the plight of all the other people frozen in caskets, and the time-twisting decision to instead cater for saving just the soul of the Scrooge character has all been put in shadow by the lasting impression of those vivid and enchanting images of the plot - the fish swimming around gaslamp’s in fog, and the Doc’ tumbling from out of the chimney, these are the things that stay with you…
:rolleyes: 
:p 
