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Doctor Who "Bad Wolf" Series 1, Episode 12 Ahahahaahahahahahahahahahahaha. Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I...I just...that was incredible. Incredibly dumb, but incredible all the same. I really have to say that was one of the more purely enjoyable hours of television I have seen in recent memory. There's not a whole lot of plot that actually happens in this episode, so I'll quickly run down the events: after our three mains return the Slitheen egg to her home planet, then get split up and transported onto three future game shows: The Doctor onto Big Brother, Rose onto The Weakest Link, and Jack onto some sort of fashion makeover program. The Doctor eventually learns that he's on a tv show that kills the losers, Running Man style, then breaks out with idiotic blonde housemate Lynda (Jo Joyner) in tow. Soon after, he realizes that he's, in fact, on Satellite Five, the same satellite from the events of "The Long Game", only now it's 100 years after the events of that episode and the satellite is now controlled by the Bad Wolf Corporation. To fill the news vacuum, the new owners have instituted deadly, compulsory reality tv shows. Anyways The Doctor and Lynda break out, meet up with Jack (who also breaks out of his own program), and confront the "Controller", a female human who as her name implies controls all the output of the satellite via being all Borg-bonded/enslaved to the machines running the network. It turns out that she had summoned him and his companions to this location and time to save her, because as it turns out her masters are, in fact, the DALEKS. Rose gets killed, but then unkilled as it's revealed that the lasers that shot her were in fact just transmatter rays and she's on the Daleks' home ship. As the episode closes out, we get the requisite cliffhanger ending as The Doctor vows to save Rose and destroy the Daleks. This episode is so amazingly, gloriously terrible that it loops back around to amazing. Most "so bad its good" televised stuff is made to be ironically bad, your sharknados and such. This though, this is sincerely bad television, and it's part of why it's so great. I honestly think Davies, when writing this episode seriously thought he was writing the next great social commentary piece, one that would really, totally cast into stark relief how terrible our reality tv culture is. Like, I'm pretty loving sure he seriously believed that his "jabs" (if you can even call them that) at the forced narratives and superficiality of Big Brother and the like was some great, inciting, deep stuff when in reality even as it aired it was super tired and cliched. Plus it makes the commentary accidentally ironic- it's fine to criticize reality tv for being lowest common denominator and idiotic garbage, but if you do so your scripted television has to be the opposite of that- intellectually interesting and thoughtful. Instead, "Bad Wolf" accidentally validates the medium it intends to mock by being so blatantly, obviously terrible. It's amazing how poorly thought out this episode is. This is why "so-bad-it's-good", and ironically watching, is still valid in this age of everyone on the loving earth pretending to be interested in things they hate. Most of these ironically bad works are done so knowingly, and because of it feel manufactured. In contrast, stuff like "Bad Wolf" underlines how awesome it is when you see truly terrible cinematic and televistic works, because of RTD's overwhelming sincerity and belief in his own genius is laid bare in every moment onscreen, and yet absolutely none of it works. The dialog could not be hammier and more scene-chewing if it had tried- there's three separate reveals (one for each of our three main characters' programs) that the ostensibly mild reality show has lethal consequences, and each time is just as terribly manufactured and accidentally hilarious. Like seriously, listening to Lynda (after Big Brother disintegrated the latest contestant) say, with full sincerity and dramatic weight, "She's been evicted...from LIFE." I...I just...AHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH! This poo poo is loving great! This is the version of RTD I like, when every stupid, insane thought in his dumb brain just flows into the script, with his complete and utter lack of either perspective or how the concept of "dramatic effect" works influencing every single line and scene. We get a shot of the host of The Weakest Link, except she's a robot (complete with fake bolted on hairpiece for no logical reason) say "YOU ARE THE WEAKEST LINK" before shooting losing contestants with her mouth laser. I can just see Davies in the writer's room going "Yeah, and then she SHOOTS HIM WITH THE MOUTH LASER! How cool is that poo poo?! Because...see..it's a commentary on the faux seriousness of the television program! God, I'm gonna get so many Emmys for this script, Davies you're a loving GENIUS!" At no point did he stop himself, at no point did he rein himself in, and it makes the entire episode into a beautiful disaster. In contrast to "Boom Town", this episode is so utterly refreshing because "Boom Town" was Davies lying to and disrespecting his audience. In "Bad Wolf", you see Davies sincerely try to address his own narrative and plot, but just failing in absolutely every respect. Like this is Davies going full-bore insane that he still negatively affects his script, but in a way that's still kind of hilarious. Because, outside of the hilarious terribleness, there's still out-and-out problems, like the introduction of Lynda. It seems RTD really wanted all of our main characters to be split up to have three separate, concurrent storylines, but this left The Doctor without someone to be a smug genius at, so he introduced yet another dumb blonde for him to save. It's just a really dumb, really annoying cycle of Davies introducing women who would be completely useless without The Doctor, and have no defining character traits or personality beyond "is obsessed with The Doctor/any man they meet". I'm also sure that as soon as Lynda and Rose meet up, if Lynda stays on as a permanent Companion we're gonna have a bunch of stupidass poo poo storylines about Lynda and Rose being catty bitches to each other, so fuckin'...hooray. Great. And yet the introduction of Lynda still kinda works as sort of a meta-commentary on how bad of a writer RTD is, where he literally cannot write a script with a strong, independent female character, and so desperately needs to have a woman put into her place by the intelligent man that he almost literally clones his main female character and ineptly grafts her onto The Doctor for the entire episode. This is what I mean by this episode being a beautiful disaster; RTD accidentally wrote an episode of television that completely and utterly mocks himself and how bad of a writer he is. Introducing the Daleks at the end, again, really does completely invalidate the narrative impact of "Dalek", but luckily avoids the pitfall that "Boom Town" had where the reveal of the Big Bad was at the end of the episode and not the beginning, so we already watched 35 minutes of terrible parody and horrible dialog and reveals and as a result the audience's expectations were already very low. Sure, it operates in a very similar narrative space that "Boom Town" does of Davies ignoring his own canon and narrative impact of his storytelling, but I'd argue that "Bad Wolf" doesn't build narratively to a single scene and feels less dishonest and more absolutely insane. To me, "Boom Town" felt like Davies disrespecting his audience to make his own lovely moral allegory; "Bad Wolf" feels like we're looking into Davies' insane, five-year-old mind, where of course the Daleks would come back half a million strong to destroy the Earth or whatever. The episode feels sincere and therefore endearingly stupid, and because of it doesn't come off as offensive. I mean...I kinda loved this episode. This is everything I always expected Doctor Who to be when starting this project, just utterly ludicrous and insane and constantly topping itself in idiocy. I can't, in good conscience, give this a high score- because everything about it is so loving bad, like in an objective sense -but I really did love this episode, because of how bad it is. And, I mean, it still even kinda landed- when The Doctor closes out the episode with this monologue pledging to take out the Daleks: The Doctor: "No! Cause this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna rescue her. I'm gonna save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet, and then I'm gonna save the Earth, and then, just to finish off, I'm gonna wipe every last STINKING Dalek out of the sky!" I mean...I pumped my fist too, because yeah, I want to see The Doctor succeed too. This is RTD accidentally making something kinda great instead of intentionally making something terrible. Grade: C Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Aug 17, 2014 |
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Aug 17, 2014 01:23
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See I dunno. The Davies stories are really eager to be ridiculously campy. I don't think it was meant as a pointed jab at reality TV or game shows or anything like that. He, more than Moffat, appreciates that Doctor Who is super kitschy and I think he's just more competent at creating that than most because he has special gay powers.
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Aug 17, 2014 01:36
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Not that I think you care but RTD collaborated with a journalist to write a lengthy book that covers nearly his entire time working on Doctor Who and the idea of writing big, fun, dumb, crowd pleasing episodes is definitely intentional. Sure, he wanted to put in some commentary on reality TV, but he knows it's big and dumb commentary designed to please every member of a family audience on some level. Even the emotional moments are deliberately written to be big and dumb in a very self aware way. I mean, were talking about the same writer who created Queer as Folk and The Second Coming. He can do serious and philosophical really well when it suits his audience. RTD knew exactly what he was doing during Doctor Who - crowd pleasing, and wether you like it or not is entirely up to you, but I for one love it. He understands that Doctor Who is silly, campy fun and is better at doing it than most. A lot of fans loving hated it because their show has to taken seriously and tonally the head writer didn't do that at all. Moffat unfortunately tries to balance this campiness with some of the most dour loving storylines ever, and the tonal class makes everything a loving mess. PriorMarcus fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Aug 17, 2014 |
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Aug 17, 2014 01:40
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Toxxupation posted:Doctor Who ONE OF US ONE OF US
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Aug 17, 2014 01:41
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Yeah, I think you're absorbing too much of the RTD hate - the reality TV thing in this episode was just meant to be fun and tongue in cheek, not some amazing commentary on whatever.
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Aug 17, 2014 01:45
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Disappointed that the Anne-droid pun wasn't mentioned. It was so brilliantly stupid. This was the first episode of Doctor Who I had ever watched. I was just flipping through the channels and landed on this; as an American I had no idea about what the show was, beyond hearing its name before. For some reason I still watch today.
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Aug 17, 2014 01:45
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Bad Wolf rules, it's so so dumb
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Aug 17, 2014 01:47
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I think it's interesting that Moffat creates Jack, and he's quite cool in Empty Child/Doctor Dances, but as soon as RTD gets his hands on him the character becomes a series of uncomfortable sex jokes. You see, he keeps a gun in his butt! Because he has sex with men! Right? I mean, RTD's gay himself, so it's hard to accuse him of prejudice, but it just feels way too broad for me.
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Aug 17, 2014 01:47
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Android Blues posted:I think it's interesting that Moffat creates Jack, and he's quite cool in Empty Child/Doctor Dances, but as soon as RTD gets his hands on him the character becomes a series of uncomfortable sex jokes. You see, he keeps a gun in his butt! Because he has sex with men! Right? RTD created Jack and assigned his introductory episode to Moffat.
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Aug 17, 2014 01:49
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MrAristocrates posted:Bad Wolf rules, it's so so dumb There really isn't anything more that needs to be said about that episode. It really is a camp classic. PriorMarcus posted:RTD knew exactly what he was doing during Doctor Who - crowd pleasing, and wether you like it or not is entirely up to you, but I for one love it. He understands that Doctor Who is silly, campy fun and is better at doing it than most. A lot of fans loving hated it because their show has to taken seriously and tonally the head writer didn't do that at all. This is generally true, but that doesn't mean he doesn't totally gently caress that up a lot of the time (Love and Monsters anyone?), nor does it explain his insane pet fondness for Rose.
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Aug 17, 2014 01:51
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DoctorWhat posted:RTD created Jack and assigned his introductory episode to Moffat. Oh, I never knew that!
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Aug 17, 2014 02:03
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mind the walrus posted:There really isn't anything more that needs to be said about that episode. It really is a camp classic. This is also generally true, but then on the flip side when he writes an episode that is deliberately the exact opposite (Midnight) he knocks it out of the park too. I think, over all, his successes out weigh his failures. The fondness for Rose is a bit confusing, but he does admit in the writers tale that the continued references to her as the show moves forward were a mistake.
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Aug 17, 2014 02:10
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Talking about Rose time and again was an understandable mistake when you realize that one of the reasons New Who was as popular as it was in the early days was all those kids and teenagers in the UK identifying with Rose a lot more than they did the Doctor or even Doctor Who as a British legacy show, since most of them weren't even alive the last time Doctor Who was something besides some old re-runs.
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Aug 17, 2014 02:36
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Doctor Who "Bad Wolf" Series 1, Episode 12 Really, I could just point to Occ's review of this episode, point to my review of the last episode, throw my hands in the air, walk away, and treat you all to the sound of a single gunshot. But, I guess I'm obligated to say something more substantial, so here goes. I called out Davies on being a great big Cockney-fetishizing man-child in my "Boom Town" writeup, but this was the episode I had in mind. So mammoth is its stupidity, its "camp" if you want to put it generously, that weaker men cannot gaze upon it without going mad. Beyond the ramshackle plotting and forgettable side characters, the central conceit is downright bewildering for Doctor Who - as Occ demonstrated, the greatest strength of "Bad Wolf" is how brazenly dumb it is. You're so agog just at the existence of its satire, let alone the ineptitude of it, that your higher brain functions shut down in self-defense. I wasn't so taken in by this one's gimmick, not the first time I saw it and not on subsequent views. First, I dislike TV, so TV about TV is a double-loser for me. Second, the subject material that "Bad Wolf" parodies is at this point incredibly dated (or at least two-thirds of it is, I don't believe anyone's driven a stake through Big Brother's heart yet). Do you know the last time I thought about The Weakest Link? I was twelve or thirteen, in a convenience store near my house - ratty place, kind of dim, narrow enough for only two people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder - and saw a comic about it when flipping through a nearby MAD Magazine. I have not considered The Weakest Link since I thought MAD Magazine was cool. And even beyond that gimmick, problems are everywhere. As per usual for a Davies episode, you have a ramshackle, directionless plot, no sense of pacing, and a cast of side characters who are, with very few exceptions, unmemorable corpses-to-be. There are a few decent moments, as is normally inevitable in 45 minutes of fast-paced quipping - I did like the future-gibberish questions in The Weakest Link sendup, and the game of hot potato Eccleston played with the terrified studio producer in Bad Wolf's broadcasting room, in which he essentially terrified a dude into pacifism. That scene, plus his threat to the Daleks, once again mean that Eccleston barely saves a Davies episode from falling down a deep, dark hole. Oh, right, Daleks. As someone spoiled shortly after my "Dalek" writeup (seriously, why does it seem to be exclusively the Moffat-bashers who just cannot stop spoiling poo poo? Are you all trying to give me a reason to dislike you beyond your poor taste and acrid, unwholesome body odor?), the Daleks make a comeback for the series finale, so remember all that stuff I wrote about the pathos-inducing end of one of the Doctor's long-time nemeses? Whoooops, all gone! The only good thing I can say about their re-emergence is that their presence around Satellite 5 suggests they were also pulling the strings behind the Editor and Max's shenanigans, but you do not get a mulligan for a stupid thing that makes another stupid thing slightly less stupid. The net value of stupidity has still gone up. I'm legitimately curious as to whether Davies was obligated to put Daleks in the finale, and whether or not he was aware that the show would be renewed at this point. Because if not, then that means the final two-parter of nu-Who, the last gasp of this old, venerable, if moderately retarded television series, would be a bunch of reality-TV gags that'd become dated before the kids who watched the first broadcast could legally drink. Man, no show that's run this long deserves an end that ignominious. But it was renewed, and this is just the first several steps of a long, long road. We have already conquered gaseous body-snatchers, fifth-rate Langoliers, dewy-eyed chavs, overweight surfing Welshwomen, and Mickey. What lies in wait for us two, hapless adventurers, we mountaineers of Mt. Who? Stay tuned.
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Aug 17, 2014 02:50
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Hold onto your butts, it's all downhill from here.
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Aug 17, 2014 02:58
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Aug 17, 2014 03:50
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Y'know sometimes I unironically wish we had a Doctor who straight-up wore a purple robe, had red eyes and a white beard, and did poo poo like glower at flaming skulls in space.
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Aug 17, 2014 03:53
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Pertwee had the whole inverness cape thing going on...
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Aug 17, 2014 03:54
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Hey, I'm not a Moffat basher and I stupidly spoiled poo poo in this thread! In fact, I really, really liked almost every episode of the last season except the last regular one and the christmas special.
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Aug 17, 2014 04:19
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I just saw an mls promotion for the earthquakes at Seattle game coming up and they had a shot of a fan holding up an exterminate sign with a full picture of a dalek on it Soccer remains the worst sport
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Aug 17, 2014 04:32
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Shout-out to ubiquitous British actor Paterson Joseph as 'Weakest Link rear end in a top hat' in this episode. I think the dude usually does good work with what he's given, and I remember hearing a rumour he was being considered as David Tennant's replacement back in the day. For all the stupidity in this episode, Eccleston's speech near the end always manages to get me hyped, so good on him I guess.
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Aug 17, 2014 06:40
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You guys are going to hate the next episode.
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Aug 17, 2014 07:22
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30.5 Days posted:Hold onto your butts, it's all downhill from here. Truth. Although, this is one thing I actually liked about the RTD era. The finales usually start off great and build up to a sense of epic craziness. And then, well I don't want to say anything more except. Bleh.
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Aug 17, 2014 07:27
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Roach Warehouse posted:Shout-out to ubiquitous British actor Paterson Joseph as 'Weakest Link rear end in a top hat' in this episode. I think the dude usually does good work with what he's given, and I remember hearing a rumour he was being considered as David Tennant's replacement back in the day. Joseph was near the top of the betting odds until the very end when Smith appeared out of nowhere. Moffat's since said that the role's been offered to a black actor who refused, and a lot of people reckon it was him and that's why he ranked so high.
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Aug 17, 2014 07:38
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Oxxidation posted:I'm legitimately curious as to whether Davies was obligated to put Daleks in the finale, and whether or not he was aware that the show would be renewed at this point. Because if not, then that means the final two-parter of nu-Who, the last gasp of this old, venerable, if moderately retarded television series, would be a bunch of reality-TV gags that'd become dated before the kids who watched the first broadcast could legally drink. Man, no show that's run this long deserves an end that ignominious. You know, I wonder if it had been cancelled, if they'd have had ending of the next episode a few seconds earlier, mid-glowsplosion. I mean, obviously at time of filming they knew they were being renewed, since they'd cast tennant, but if they'd known they weren't instead, if they'd have had a regeneration fadeout, or if they'd have had a much broader rewrite. 30.5 Days posted:Hold onto your butts, it's all downhill from here. Except for when it's not. Doctor Who: the weirdest quality rollercoaster ever.
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Aug 17, 2014 07:46
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One the most unfortunate parts of Doctor Who is how much potential it has to genuinely be a decent show. You have the ability to set episodes anywhere you could possibly want or imagine, you can replace lead actors whenever you need to without the audience questioning it and you've got a relatively rich established universe to play with. How can you take that and somehow gently caress it up? It's not as if it's a doomed concept to make the show a more challenging affair, considering there's real high points just about every season which do just that. Yet it's always one or two episodes that achieve this and the rest are absolute shite. Is it limited by the family show category, or is it just incompetence? I mean, there's some real horrible episodes coming up that you'll just think "How the gently caress do you even write this bullshit when you've got such potential to do just about anything else?".
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Aug 17, 2014 09:28
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Now imagine having to wait a week between episodes! You're trapped in having wasted a week of your life in anticipation for a new episode only to find it's crap. You can never get that time back, so now you have to squeeze what enjoyment you can out of the episode and tell yourself it really wasn't that bad, then prepare to sink another week in the hopes that THIS NEW EPISODE is the one that will reward your continued dedication to the show. At least that's what the main Doctor Who thread taught me.
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Aug 17, 2014 15:52
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ThePutty posted:One the most unfortunate parts of Doctor Who is how much potential it has to genuinely be a decent show. You have the ability to set episodes anywhere you could possibly want or imagine, you can replace lead actors whenever you need to without the audience questioning it and you've got a relatively rich established universe to play with. How can you take that and somehow gently caress it up? It's not as if it's a doomed concept to make the show a more challenging affair, considering there's real high points just about every season which do just that. Yet it's always one or two episodes that achieve this and the rest are absolute shite. Is it limited by the family show category, or is it just incompetence? A mix between incompetence and the fact that writing any kind of successful fiction is actually balls-to-the-wall difficult.
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Aug 17, 2014 15:53
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ThePutty posted:One the most unfortunate parts of Doctor Who is how much potential it has to genuinely be a decent show. You have the ability to set episodes anywhere you could possibly want or imagine, you can replace lead actors whenever you need to without the audience questioning it and you've got a relatively rich established universe to play with. How can you take that and somehow gently caress it up? It's not as if it's a doomed concept to make the show a more challenging affair, considering there's real high points just about every season which do just that. Yet it's always one or two episodes that achieve this and the rest are absolute shite. Is it limited by the family show category, or is it just incompetence? It's probably because there is 60 years of established history, tone, feel and tropes that you have to contend with when writing Who. You can't just make up any story on the spot, even though the fiction theoretically allows it. I personally feel this is the biggest issue with the show - in internet dicussions you often see people grunting about how "this writer really GETS The Doctor" or "this is how The Doctor SHOULD act", which I think is a bunch of horseshit. So you end up with showrunners and writers who are also hardcore fans and thus have their own very specific opinions about what role the show and characters should serve instead of concerning themselves with telling fundamentally good stories. Like, loving find an incredible actor/actress who's capable of carrying the show on their own and try an introspective solo series that doesn't shoehorn in a dumb companion because "that's the way it is" - how about that? Try shaking things up in this show that's supposed to have no rules. It seems to me that half the point of Doctor Who is that it has a built-in reset button, and the very best episodes are the ones where they throw all convention out the window and play around with creative use of narrative form and structure or just tell a traditional story in a very off-beat way. That's why I watch the show, because when it hits it's way more energetic and absurd and unpredictable than pretty much any other television drama. And that's why the last two series haven't done much for me, because while he has written some of my favourite episodes, Moffat has just been kind of spinning the wheel for a while, trying but failing to come up with interesting new mysteries and situations and instead just tries to force long form "epicness" down our throats. It's dull, and occasionally (only just) it makes me miss the insane days of RTD, because at least there was a huge amount of variety between episodes where you could go from the most somber, contemplative stuff to... you know, Bad Wolf. To me, Who is a really great conduit for extremely creative televised short stories, and though I don't mind the idea of a larger series-spanning arc, it runs the risk of taking away from that "bucket of water in the loving face" effect you get when a new episode arrives and you have no idea what it's going to be about or how things are going to be resolved. For better or worse, although a lot of the first series is dogshit looking back, reading some of these reviews there are definitely elements I miss in the newer series. Or maybe it's just Eccleston. Hakkesshu fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Aug 17, 2014 |
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Aug 17, 2014 15:57
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Hakkesshu posted:ike, loving find an incredible actor/actress who's capable of carrying the show on their own and try an introspective solo series that doesn't shoehorn in a dumb companion because "that's the way it is" - how about that? Try shaking things up in this show that's supposed to have no rules. To be fair, the new series has almost entirely been carried on the broken backs of its actors (mostly Eccleston, Tennant, and Smith).
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Aug 17, 2014 16:33
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Hakkesshu posted:To me, Who is a really great conduit for extremely creative televised short stories, and though I don't mind the idea of a larger series-spanning arc, it runs the risk of taking away from that "bucket of water in the loving face" effect you get when a new episode arrives and you have no idea what it's going to be about or how things are going to be resolved. For better or worse, although a lot of the first series is dogshit looking back, reading some of these reviews there are definitely elements I miss in the newer series. Or maybe it's just Eccleston. My main issue with Davies, as I've pointed out, isn't so much the zaniness of his scripts so much as his completely inept direction and execution - 9.98 times out of 10, the main has a weird idea and then does absolutely nothing with it beyond a whole lot of running from and shouting at the weird idea with a ridiculous deus ex machina at the end. Some of his dumber episodes sound frantic and fun when Occ is summarizing them, but he justifiably leaves out the several dozen close-ups of actors who aren't entirely certain what their motivation should be beyond "look somewhat concerned" or the long shots of the Doctor et al dashing down gray corridors or abandoned streets. Obviously it'd be spoilers to get into how Moffat contrasts him on that front, but he satisfied my narrative itch a hell of a lot more often than Davies did. And that's not even getting into the Rose thing, since I've gotten into it plenty already and will continue to get into it in the future.
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Aug 17, 2014 17:05
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You either get a decent idea executed abominably or a terrible hole-ridden idea executed generically but certainly not offensively and with much less overt stupidity (although it's been slowly getting there). You can't win either way, basically.
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Aug 17, 2014 17:26
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Hakkesshu posted:It's probably because there is 60 years of established history, tone, feel and tropes that you have to contend with when writing Who. You can't just make up any story on the spot, even though the fiction theoretically allows it. I personally feel this is the biggest issue with the show - in internet dicussions you often see people grunting about how "this writer really GETS The Doctor" or "this is how The Doctor SHOULD act", which I think is a bunch of horseshit. Hakkesshu posted:It seems to me that half the point of Doctor Who is that it has a built-in reset button Of all the old Doctors, Jon Pertwee is the one I consider the worst, because A) his stories tend to lean more toward action rather than science fiction and B) so much of his run was set on Earth in the present day. And NuWho seems to have taken that as its basic template and just magnified it and condensed it down into shorter, faster-paced stories.
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Aug 17, 2014 17:45
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Yeah, but y'know, budget and all that.
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Aug 17, 2014 17:47
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Tiggum posted:Of all the old Doctors, Jon Pertwee is the one I consider the worst, because A) his stories tend to lean more toward action rather than science fiction and B) so much of his run was set on Earth in the present day. Well, ACTUALLY, in Pyramids of Mars Sarah Jane says arrglebarrglmeninclatchaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggghhhhh 
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Aug 17, 2014 17:47
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WRT Aliens of London's first contact stuff not actually representing a change in society, Doctor Who as a programme has a long, long history of involving aliens in either current society or "near future" society in ways that would be be big news, talk of aliens, all the rest of it, going back to The Invasion in the late sixties which featured the iconic shots of the cybermen walking down the steps of St Paul's cathedral and stuff like a giant cybernetic Loch Ness monster rising out of the Thames in the seventies. The first series of Doctor Who is the one that RTD had been spending his entire life thinking about, and it shows - a large number of the episodes are a reaction to things that he thought were significant in Doctor Who but hadn't been directly addressed, viz the indefatigability of the human race in The End of the World, the fact that people would noticed aliens in The Aliens of London, the nature of the relationship between the Doctor and the daleks - as well as making a Big Campy Popular Programme. So when writing Aliens of London/WW3 Rusty was not, I think, particularly trying to establish a new paradigm of how humanity in the world of Doctor Who would appear in the future but writing an examination of how he thought that would be a direct and immediate in-universe consequence of aliens existing and being really obvious about it. With this context a lot of the stuff in Aliens of London - the Doctor just sitting and watching TV, the "first contact" just being a fake for two - works really well and that's a large part of the reason why I think it's a really really good story with the huge proviso that it has a downside you have to ignore that's as bad as anything that has ever been featured on television.
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Aug 17, 2014 21:33
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Doctor Who "The Parting of the Ways" Series 1, Episode 13 Well. That was..uh...Christ. Happy Series One of Doctor Who, I guess! I...I'm just kinda stunned. By the overwhelming badness, I mean. And I mean...it's all the worse because it starts so well. I kept on hearing rumbles from this thread, from Oxx, about the terribleness of this season finale. For the first half of "Parting of the Ways", I thought that Oxxidation was losing it- it was emotional, narratively satisfying storytelling, RTD operating on all cylinders. This was him getting out of his own way and using the narrative conceits of the episode to symbolize the Doctor's internal struggles in a way that was emotionally satisfying. Truly, I really was fully prepared to give this episode an A and not even feel bad, pointing to the amazing character work Eccleston did. Then the second half of the episode happened...and wiped all that goodwill out. Not just for the episode, or even the series, but any and all goodwill I had built up for the entire show as a whole. It was that incredibly, unbearably wretched. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The plot of this episode is rather light: the Daleks are about to invade Satellite Five, and Earth in general, as Rose is held hostage aboard the Dalek mothership. Luckily, The Doctor teleports in to the Dalek ship and saves her (projecting a protective force field over the TARDIS to prevent their killer lasers from landing). The episode truly does start off with a bang. The Doctor confronts the Daleks in their home ship, wondering how they are still around after the Time War, and meets the major antagonist of the episode: a Dalek that fell through a portal in space and has spent the intervening century slowly building up the Dalek fleet from the dregs of human society- criminals, murderers, the poor, and apparently reality tv show contestants. The Dalek Emperor (as it calls itself) has been harvesting their bodies and built new Daleks out of them. This is a fairly fascinating, and narratively satisfying, way to pay off the hanging question of "How are there so many Daleks?" while still dimensionalizing the Dalek race in interesting race- making them part human makes the Daleks, collectively, the biggest hypocrites of their own ideology, which The Doctor even points out via noting that they now hate themselves most of all- and a race that has nothing to really lose is the most dangerous race of all. It also means the Dalek ideology has to have been modified, and in my opinion the turn to religious zealotry makes perfect sense. How does a race that claims the pursuit of perfection justify the fact that their entire existence is owed to an inferior, hated species? By deifying their creator, of course, and having the Dalek Emperor boosted up as the "God of Daleks" is in my opinion a really fascinating turn for the Daleks as antagonists. Plus, it really does put into a finer point of how threatening the Dalek Emperor is as the main source of conflict- the Doctor and his buddies aren't just fighting a race of genocidal maniacs, they're fighting a god. Plus, it really helps dimensionalize The Doctor, and gives Eccleston ample time to emote and illustrate the pathos and rage his character is suffering. Plum lines like "My people were destroyed but they took the Daleks with them. I almost thought it was worth it...Now it turns out they died for nothing." land even harder given the narrative context the episode provides- plus, it creates an interesting dichotomy where The Doctor has to justify destroying his most hated enemies when in fact, they're the offspring of his most loved species- humans. It's a really fascinating juxtaposition that Eccleston is able to pull off adroitly. Continuing on, we finally have everyone- The Doctor, Jack, Rose, and Lynda- teamed up on Satellite Five, getting ready to fight off the Dalek invasion. It's initially considered a fool's errand until The Doctor comes up with the idea of creating a "Delta Wave"- essentially, a blast of energy that would fry the minds of any sentient being in its radius. Jack, Lynda, and a team of obvious redshirts all go down onto the lower floors to stall the Daleks long enough for The Doctor (and Rose) to reroute all the wiring to trigger the Delta Wave. In any case, The Doctor essentially tricks Rose into entering the TARDIS so he can send her home, realizing that everyone involved will, more than likely, die, and wants to keep his promise to Jackie to keep Rose safe. It's a genuinely emotional scene, as you realize that The Doctor is looking out for her best interests, with the capper from The Doctor of "Have a good life. Do that for me Rose. Have a fantastic life." Sure, Rose was and is a lovely, lovely character, but the moment still lands and shows The Doctor's innate desire for goodness in a way that feels real. Then...the second half of the episode happens. Unfortunately, I assumed that having Rose be sent back to her time period would essentially write her out of the story from then on, but this is not the loving case. We cut from sequences of The Doctor and co. desperately fighting for their lives to scenes of Rose whining to Mickey and just generally throwing temper tantrums in modern-day London, and it completely and utterly drags out the pacing of the episode, in addition of giving additional screentime to Jackie and especially Mickey, two atrociously terrible characters. It's all the worse when Mickey goes back to his simpering, puppy-dog obsession with pleasing Rose the minute she comes back, especially after the last episode had Mickey electing to not follow Rose any more, in his one and only minute of individuality in his entire miserable life. Unfortunately, the scenes aboard Satellite Five aren't any better. The Dalek Emperor works as a fantastic villain- his scenes antagonizing The Doctor as the Daleks slowly invade and wipe out anything in their path are a highlight, especially when the Emperor reveals that the Delta Wave will be indiscriminate- all of humanity will die, as well, not just the Daleks. Unfortunately, these scenes are interspersed with some truly, truly terrible action sequences. Like, even by Doctor Who's incredibly low standards, these are some utterly terrible action sequences, and if I didn't want to spend so much time on what's coming up I'd make more of a note of it; but, when your entire season has built to these scenes of humanity desperately but pointlessly fighting off the encroaching Dalek threat, it had better look suitably threatening over just outright embarrassingly cheap. But none of that really matters, quality-wise, because the meat of the episode is the Daleks arriving onto the top floor, having killed everyone in their way (including Lynda and Jack), ready to destroy The Doctor as he has finally hooked up the switch to trigger the Delta Wave. The Emperor confronts him, daring him to flip the switch, as The Doctor struggles with repeating his actions in the Time War, only with an entirely different species' survival at stake. Ultimately, he elects not to trigger the Delta Wave, to not be responsible for committing genocide yet again. The Daleks close in...as the TARDIS reappears. See, it turns out that the "Bad Wolf" words that appeared memetically in every episode this season, and was especially highlighted in the past two episodes, was...oh god I can barely write the words, they're so loving absurd...see, Rose gazes into the heart of the TARDIS this episode to travel back to The Doctor, but in so doing inherits the time powers and becomes a God, and then seeds her own past with the words "Bad Wolf" to create a closed time loop, so Rose notices it and gets the idea of looking into the heart of the TARDIS. Anyways so God Rose appears and then instantly kills all the Daleks and saves The Doctor, and just when the episode cannot get any more absolutely terrible, Rose goes unstable from all the power given to her so literally kisses The Doctor to transfer the power, which causes him to go unstable from all of that power but it's okay because he can regenerate, so he does so, introducing The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) to close out the episode. Doctor Who, everybody! The problem isn't that this episode ends with a deus ex machina. The problem isn't that it turns out the whole "Bad Wolf" thing was essentially a reveal of a closed time loop. In the abstract, these are actually really cool narrative ideas that take advantage of the genre Doctor Who is in- I actually like it when time-travel shows use self-causation as a narrative hook, as long as it's used sparingly. The whole problem- the entire, massive, ludicrous problem -with this reveal is that it centers on Rose. Rose is a bad character. She is an extraordinarily bad character. She is an atrociously bad character, and having her literally become a God to save everyone does not work on any level whatsoever. The only way that a deus ex machina reveal works is if it happens to a character that we can buy that reveal from, and Rose is the exact worst possible pick for a deus ex machina to happen. She's terrible, undefined, and irritating. She is poorly acted. Rose as a character has not endeared herself in really any way outside of some stuff involving her dad that ended as soon as it began, and on top of it is cancelled out by all the scenes of her being boy-crazy, incredibly petty, and most of all loving stupid. The fact that Russell T. Davies chooses her as the savior of the episode- literally, she revives Jack, completely destroys the entire Dalek fleet, and even gets her long-awaited-for kiss with The Doctor -is downright intolerable. RTD has not put any amount of effort, whatsoever, in even the bare minimum of dimensionalizing her, of making her not a sexist caricature of every single "woman in peril love interest" stereotype in existence, with virtually no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. Making her the ultimate hero is the most plainly obvious instance of authorial control, of rewarding a character in-universe that has done nothing to deserve these rewards since Ryan Murphy with Kurt in Glee. I...he made a stupid, lovesick, idiotic, constantly-in-danger, petty chav themost important being in the universe! Again, I'm not even mad. I just feel bad, because RTD set up such a good episode and then so completely, so utterly hosed up the landing that the crater can be seen from loving space. I guess he really does believe that Rose is super awesome or something, that he's really done right by that character which is all the more depressing because of how far afield of fuckin' reality he must be. This is just a joke. Doctor Who is just a fuckin' joke, guys. That the entire season has built up to a moment of the worst character, and I mean truly terrible character, as a loving God...I don't even want to make fun of this. This just makes me feel bad...How could you guys still be fans, after this? How could you look at this finale, see that this guy is the guy who'll be guiding you for the forseeable future, that Russell T. Davies thought this was at all an appropriate or earned ending and go "Yeah, I'll keep watching this"? I...I just. Man. Just...I came into this project wanting to mock Doctor Who fans, but "The Parting of the Ways" is so extraordinarily terrible, just so completely and utterly misses the mark that it feels downright cruel. Gaze on your show, ye Who-watchers, and despair. Grade: F Random Thoughts:
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Aug 18, 2014 02:05
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Good luck with the next episode. And season. I really think season two may be the worst of the revival.
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Aug 18, 2014 02:10
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Oh god, the Christmas special is gonna melt you. Almost as much as the second Christmas special. So gonna do the intermediary short episode next?
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Aug 18, 2014 02:21
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Toxxupation posted:How could you guys still be fans, after this? How could you look at this finale, see that this guy is the guy who'll be guiding you for the forseeable future, that Russell T. Davies thought this was at all an appropriate or earned ending and go "Yeah, I'll keep watching this"? When it was originally running, I actually stopped watching after... either this episode, or the first episode of Tennant's run. And then a friend asked me to record some episodes of the third series for her while she was on a trip, and I watched them, and they happened to be a few fantastic episodes (Human Nature/Family of Blood/Blink), so I ended up catching up on it again. I was definitely frustrated enough at the end of this season to stop watching it for 2 years, though.
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Aug 18, 2014 02:23
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