Monday, June 26, 2006

Dr Stu rambles on again...

Some more opinions of Season 2 Doctor Who. One controversial. One not so.

Love and Monsters: I really liked this episode despite it being not about the Doctor, but rather about some chap called Elton, purely for an excuse to show some footage of and make some gags about Sir Elton. Also RTD didn't want Elton to be a geek but he just came across as a well-dressed one.

The story basically was guy obsesses over Doctor, guy joins other obsessives, obsessives discover that there are better things in life than being a sci-fi Doctor Who fanatic and start a band, evil guy turns up and gets them all back to obsessing over the Doctor, guy relearns there is more to life and decides to grow up and date a girl, evil guy absorbs his fellow obsessives but they pull him to pieces, Doctor shows up to dispense wisdom and collect his paycheck and Rose actually shows compassion and empathy for a change.

It actually seemed to be a critique of the sci-fi fan, but this story did seem sufficiently tender in places that I enjoyed it, right up until the quite tasteless implication of a sex-life between Elton and the pavement slab girl. And they mentioned Slitheen. Because they're so great. For a family instead of a race they have been mentioned more than the Daleks and Cybermen.

I really expected to not like this episode and still think ultimately RTD cannot write science fiction, but when it comes to writing about relationships this is clearly his forte. He should write Coronation Street, not Doctor Who.

He was a man with a rudimentary pulley-system for reaching his boots. She was a pavement slab with a truly disgusting sex life. Together they fight crime.

Fear Her: Wow, talk about painting by numbers. This was a last minute addition to replace an excessively expensive script penned by that modern day Oscar Wilde wit Stephen Fry. It showed.

It was a solid story, if with the worst scribble monster ever and the bit with the Dad seemed a bit OTT. Worse yet the bit with the Doctor and the Olympic torch made me afraid I might contract diabetes from the sickly sweet television I was watching. In reality if the torch dropped there'd be a scrum of "concerned Lonodoners" trying to pick up the damn thing. Also did anyone try to check on the torch bearer?

As to next week, either the BBC aren't even trying to stop the spoilers about Rose dying, or this is some sort of clever misdirection to completely throw us off regarding how this season ends. Actually...

No comments: