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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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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 10:35 |
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The idea that Eccleston is a better actor, but Tennant is a better Doctor is spot on in my opinion, even after having seen his whole run. His mannerisms often gets tiresome, but Tennant is a much better fit for the type of stories they did in those earlier series. He always brings a level of enthusiasm and hamminess with him that makes even the dumbest episodes watchable.
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Aug 19, 2014 09:29
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Are The Impossible Planet/Satan Pit the episodes where they used the goddamn door opening sound effect from DOOM? Because that alone makes them pretty alright.
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Sep 2, 2014 13:11
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Monagle posted:The main premise was pretty good and had some hosed up stuff going on. Miracle Day was about the same level as Children of Earth for me - really great build-up with crappy resolution. But then I actually didn't mind most of the first two series either; most of it is dumb like Doctor Who, just in different ways, and there are a couple of good ones in there. I really liked the one where Alliser Thorne played a cannibal.
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Sep 2, 2014 22:04
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My favourite part of this episode is that they just ran Bad Wolf through Google translate when they came up with Dårlig Ulv stranden. Dårlig is indeed a Scandinavian word for bad, but it's the derogatory kind, so in effect if you translated it back to English it'd come out closer to something like lovely Wolf.
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Sep 8, 2014 13:18
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Edit: Never mind
Hakkesshu fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 20:03
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Oh, sorry, I thought it was fair game to just post preliminary impressions of the next episodes as long as you don't talk about the actual content. I'll edit it out.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:11
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Reposting this 'cause I'm a dumb dumb These two episodes are probably my favourite ones in the whole revival. When I first started watching Who, I was liking it well enough, but it wasn't until Human Nature/Family of Blood that I really went holy loving poo poo Doctor Who and was on board forever. Just the combination of outlandish, abstract sci-fi concepts, extremely fun, hammy performances and genuine emotion with a story that just keeps topping itself with crazier and crazier poo poo, it's supremely entertaining. I've always had a soft spot for the exploration of these almost nostalgic ideas of what could have been if just the circumstances were different, and John Smith for me is the highlight of Tennant's run. The fawning Martha stuff would probably stand out more on a second viewing, because I don't remember it at all to be honest. Hakkesshu fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Sep 24, 2014 |
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Sep 24, 2014 14:24
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Pyradox posted:This review series is really selling me on Moffat all over again. He used to be my favourite writer by a mile before he took over the show and it's great to be able to remember how good his episodes were. It's also reminding me that Donna owned at all times, but I never forgot about that. Yeah, same. For me Silence/Forest is probably the peak of Doctor Who as a whole. They aren't my favourite episodes necessarily, but they are the ones that are most successful in terms of tone and encompassing the very best of the Doctor Who experience. I don't hate the later seasons, but I don't think it ever got as good as that again.
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Nov 4, 2014 13:26
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