Who?
Where to start?
'The Poison Sky was just New Who by numbers again. Lazy. No suprises, no drama, and only one unconvincing moment of suspense. And as we were told in both episodes, the Sontarans have only one weakness - the probic vent in their neck. Oh and their armour can't withstand bullets. Make that two weaknesses then.
That there have been worse episodes since the return, is more an indication of the series as a whole.
battylad wrote:
Am I the only one not bothered about Rose? Companions come and then they go, and we never hear from them again, unless it's an anniversary. All it means is that the end of the series needs us to have characters we care about for some reason, and this is the easy way out. So RTD's written it again.
And with Rose, we get her family, and if Martha's around we'll get her family. And Donna's too. Fan-fucking-tastic. The whole point of having the companions travel, is that they're getting away from everything. To see other times, other places, outer spaces (it's catching). The first time, with Rose it was fine, because as a one-off seeing how a companions family would react was different, it was interesting. Now it's all one half saying "there's only ever trouble when he's around, I wish you wouldn't go with him" and the other half saying "he's a good man, he'll look after you, go an enjoy yourself". It's dull, it's 2D, it's repetitive, and it adds the square root of fuck all.
King Mob wrote:
They always teleported in and out, so it didn't necessarily have to be in London. Hang on, silly me, what was I thinking?
Ginger Yellow wrote:
The problem with Story Arcs is that they have to be good. 'The Key To Time' worked because it was almost incidental - apart from 'The Ribos Operation' each of the stories would have worked just as well without the fact they were after a segment. 'Bad Wolf' worked because it was also incidental in the end, yet 'Torchwood' and 'Vote Saxon' were a lot more ham-fisted. Also, 'The Key To Time' doesn't have any episodes that clearly look like they've been shoe-horned in, to give the arc and the series finale more meaning. So far, we've had 'The Long Game', 'Tooth And Claw', 'Rise Of The Cybermen', 'The Lazarus Experiment', 'The End Of The World', 'New Earth' and 'Gridlock' that have all, on reflection, just looked like setups to the end of the series, with a story tacked on afterwards. Arguably 'The Unquiet Dead', 'Boom Town' and 'Tooth and Claw' are similar setups for Torchwood, and 'School Reunion' for the Sarah Jane Adventures.
And most of them were shit.
I'd argue there's no need for a story arc, or a series finale in Who. So what if most American-made Sci-Fi uses it? British Sci-Fi has always been so different as to be a different genre. American TV has always been built towards big finishes and climaxes, and telling their audiences they need a short term attention span and a long term memory. British TV has always been geared to entertain people in a different way. Who has always stood and fallen on it's writing, but Cornell and Moffatt apart, it hasn't been consistant, but as long as it gets AI figures over 80, then nothing will change.
The Lawrence Miles blog is great, with the obvious exception of his comments about Moffat. What is the deal there?
Lawrence Miles wrote:
The UNIT-era was probably my least favourite of the old series too. The variety this time is in the newsreader. Kirsty Wark this time. And you still think Dawkins is going to have anything but a cameo role this time?
Lawrence Miles wrote:
I rarely watch Confidential, but the clue I got was about a year later, when RTD said that he'd given Helen Raynor the brief of Daleks in Manhattan, and he figured it would be a great excuse for glamour and glitz, and that he was suprised and almost disappointed that she'd come back with a story set during the depression. As much as there are concerning similarities between RTD and JNT (most notably shoehorning famous names into the show, regarless of their ability to act, or even their suitability in the role), he would deliver the darker episodes.
I'm also concerned about next week's. 'The Doctor's Daughter'. That's fine, I can live with that. She looks a lot younger than Susan, but hopefully she's regenerated and a timelord, rather than something dull like a clone or crafted using a mixture of his DNA with someone elses. RTD has promised it will reveal something big about the Doctor's past. That's fine as long as it makes sense. He has, however says that it will piss off the fanboys. Which suggests that a) it won't make sense and b) that RTD has let the success go to his head, and is arrogant enough to set out to alienate the most hardcore of the fanbase. That sort of thing tends to be the undoing of people. Hopefully, he won't take the show with him.
Where to start?
'The Poison Sky was just New Who by numbers again. Lazy. No suprises, no drama, and only one unconvincing moment of suspense. And as we were told in both episodes, the Sontarans have only one weakness - the probic vent in their neck. Oh and their armour can't withstand bullets. Make that two weaknesses then.
That there have been worse episodes since the return, is more an indication of the series as a whole.
battylad wrote:
What's the back drop to Rose coming back - seen her twice now - I think. Next weeks looks like the big talking point, will be interested to hear how it all came about...
And with Rose, we get her family, and if Martha's around we'll get her family. And Donna's too. Fan-fucking-tastic. The whole point of having the companions travel, is that they're getting away from everything. To see other times, other places, outer spaces (it's catching). The first time, with Rose it was fine, because as a one-off seeing how a companions family would react was different, it was interesting. Now it's all one half saying "there's only ever trouble when he's around, I wish you wouldn't go with him" and the other half saying "he's a good man, he'll look after you, go an enjoy yourself". It's dull, it's 2D, it's repetitive, and it adds the square root of fuck all.
King Mob wrote:
"I know it's science fiction in an alternative universe, but where was the Rattigan Academy supposed to be, exactly? At the top of Primrose Hill?"
Ginger Yellow wrote:
Yeah, the surprises point is definitely valid, although I'd quibble with his "cult of the story arc" analysis. He seems to be arguing from an assumption that perfect sci-fi should be like the Simpsons, where each episode stands on its own and has little if any impact on the continuity of the series. Obviously this allows for more "surprises" than series driven by story arcs, but it's far from the only means.
And most of them were shit.
I'd argue there's no need for a story arc, or a series finale in Who. So what if most American-made Sci-Fi uses it? British Sci-Fi has always been so different as to be a different genre. American TV has always been built towards big finishes and climaxes, and telling their audiences they need a short term attention span and a long term memory. British TV has always been geared to entertain people in a different way. Who has always stood and fallen on it's writing, but Cornell and Moffatt apart, it hasn't been consistant, but as long as it gets AI figures over 80, then nothing will change.
The Lawrence Miles blog is great, with the obvious exception of his comments about Moffat. What is the deal there?
Lawrence Miles wrote:
It isn't just that the series is intent on flogging a formula we're already sick of, or that Doctor Who's capacity now appears to be more limited than at any point in its prior history, including the UNIT era. It isn't just the embarrassment factor of watching yet another TV newsreader announce the apocalypse while urgent-sounding music pumps away in the background, or the crushing banality of the "relationship" dialogue, or the way Helen Raynor keeps saying how nice it is that Doctor Who can combine "real world" with "alien" without noticing that the "real world" half of the programme is a spent force and that the "alien" half is rapidly becoming too routine to seem worthwhile.
Lawrence Miles wrote:
Looking back on it, the clue was there two whole years ago, in the Confidential that accompanied "The Girl in the Fireplace". You may recall an interview with Julie Gardner, in which she expressed her surprise that a script which begins with monsters on eighteenth-century Earth should then cut to a space-station in the fifty-first century, and said that this clearly wasn't business as usual. Now, this puzzled me at the time. Since Doctor Who is capable of going anywhere, anywhen and anyhow, and has the ability to change its methods with every episode, I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I consider a time-shift between the 1700s and the 5000s to be pretty much par for the course. At the very least, it's no big deal. Yet as far as the programme-makers are concerned, standard practice is to (A) find a historical setting or a modern-day "topical" issue, (B) attach a monster to it, and (C) arrange the set-pieces around the result. To me, a script that stretches our attention between Mme de Pompadour and clockwork droids in the far future is surprising, but it's only a background-radiation level of surprise. To a producer who doesn't even realise that surprise is a minimum expectation, on the other hand… yes, it must seem spectacular.
I'm also concerned about next week's. 'The Doctor's Daughter'. That's fine, I can live with that. She looks a lot younger than Susan, but hopefully she's regenerated and a timelord, rather than something dull like a clone or crafted using a mixture of his DNA with someone elses. RTD has promised it will reveal something big about the Doctor's past. That's fine as long as it makes sense. He has, however says that it will piss off the fanboys. Which suggests that a) it won't make sense and b) that RTD has let the success go to his head, and is arrogant enough to set out to alienate the most hardcore of the fanbase. That sort of thing tends to be the undoing of people. Hopefully, he won't take the show with him.
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