Who Review

[nameandnature]

No blog is complete without a posting on the season finale of Doctor Who. Here's mine. Contains spoilers.

I was, in the end, disappointed. It's clear that Russell T. Davies so wants the geeks to like him, what with all the references to pre-RTD Who and other SF stuff ("the project was our last, best hope", the funeral pyre, and so on). But what we got was a bit incoherent, long on emoting and short on plot. Geeks like plot, and, as Babylon 5 showed, we can put up with some terrible acting and special effects as long as we get it. RTD worked himself into a frenzy of flashes and bangs from which he had no way out other than using the TARDIS as a big reset switch yet again.

I liked the final scene between the Doctor and Martha because they involved the audience in a way most of what went before had not. RTD can do character interaction.

The best episodes of this series were those which combined this development of the characters with a plot which made consistent (and a little less frenetic) use of the SF elements (Human Nature and the Family of Blood) and one which took a single SF premise and worked through it well (Blink).

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

That there was going to be some sort of reset was fairly predictable, unfortunately; rather a shame given that they'd made so much of the non-reset alien presence in London. RTD thinks he's writing the next B5 but really he's doing Star Trek...

[lisekit.livejournal.com]

I give it the pink star for gayest Who ever. What with Captain Jack duffed up and in chains for much of the episode and the Doctor in a cage allowing the ballsy heroine to take centre stage (very Xena), John Sim's rather camp turn as glamrock-lving übervillain, and the Master dying in the Doctor's arms as the tearful Doctor begged him to regenerate and stay on as his pet....even by RTD standards it was notably homoerotic.

I really enjoyed the first RTD series. I thought it was fresh and original to bring so much humanity to the Doctor and his companion, and to have the key threats in the series targetting Earth. It was accessible and enjoyable. Now I think RTD should stop writing bleedin' Channel 5 soap operas and write some actual Sci-Fi instead.

[nameandnature]

I did think the fangirls (and fanboys) would be squeeing at Jack being chained up. Wasn't there the vague implication he'd been like that for a year, though? His arms would drop off.

Obey your master

[(Anonymous)]

I liked the first part of the three-parter, but afterwards it just got increasingly silly. And not good sci-fi silly, just chucking crazy plot twists in from every angle silly. And the Master character was really, really annoying. I don't think it's the actor's fault: there's only so much prancing a man can do before that gets inevitable.

mattghg