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Doctor Who 2010: The new series

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number1fan
Member
#11 · Posted: 16 Apr 2010 06:36
Ranko:
It sounds very interesting. I may take a long lunch and check out a few of the second hand bookshops down Charing Cross road.

You do have some great finds in these bookshops.I often walk in to there on a lunch break.If im near to there.
Grey
Member
#12 · Posted: 16 Apr 2010 10:28
Is anybody else getting excited at the Daleks reappearing in the obviously named 'Victory of the Daleks'? Set in WW2 with Winston Churchill, this'll certainly be an interesting episode.
There are some new designs up of some of the Daleks that are going to appear in the episode, but I won't say how they look for spoilers sake.
number1fan
Member
#13 · Posted: 16 Apr 2010 21:47
I for one and not excited I miss the ridiculous monsters and cardboard sets of the Tom Baker years.Im not that old im only 21 I have seen the repeats of the old Doctor Who on UK Gold.I gave Doctor Who another go just didn't work for me I hope it does for others though :D
mct16
Member
#14 · Posted: 22 Apr 2010 02:29
I haven't been able to get into the recent series either. I can't say I particularly like the recent versions of the Doctor, who seem to rush around like over-excited schoolboys. I much prefer the more middle-aged versions like Pertwee.

As a result I tend to restrict myself to Dalek or Cybermen episodes. I hope Davros will soon be back. He's my favourite villain.
jock123
Moderator
#15 · Posted: 22 Apr 2010 09:28
mct16:
I can't say I particularly like I particularly like the recent versions of the Doctor, who seem to rush around like over-excited schoolboys.

I'd direct you if you haven't seen it, to what little is left of Patrick Troughton's tenure as the Doctor for what I see as the closest parallel to Matt Smith so far - and Troughton was the past-master of the manic rush! Sadly his masterpiece stories - Evil of the Daleks and especially Fury from the Deep are no longer with us, but he was an amazing Doctor in my childhood.

mct16:
As a result I tend to restrict myself to Dalek or Cybermen episodes.

That seems a shame, as the recent Cybermen stories have been fairly weak, and nowhere near as impressive as Blink and the sublime The Girl in the Fire-place.

Davros has been too much of a mixed bag over the years to be a truly great villain in my eyes - look at how often he has become a pawn in the Daleks' schemes, or their captive, rather than the other way about. His last appearance was good though: the high-quality prosthetics and a stunning turn from Julian Bleach managed to brush over the fact that he was - again - a prisoner of the Daleks. One also has to ask why, if he was capable of making a replacement for one of his arms, that he didn't think to make a second for the other side?

I'm also not sure if, given Saturday's events and the creation of a new Dalek race in their own time-stream, sans Davros, whether he will be back or not. Can't rule it out, but have to wonder if he has gone for a while.
mct16
Member
#16 · Posted: 22 Apr 2010 17:31
jock123:
Patrick Troughton's tenure as the Doctor for what I see as the closest parallel to Matt Smith so far

I have seen Troughton's Doctor. I watch a whole series of him, something involving him and his companions in a land that includes characters from fiction like Gulliver. He was alright, but like I say, I prefer my Doctors to be more mature in their general behaviour.

I do like Davros. He is crippled and ugly but a brilliant scientist and manipulator. I know that the Doctor has plenty of similar enemies but somehow Davros was always so much more sinister and twisted than most. The fact that his creations turn against him is one of those wonderful ironies: he designed them to conquer and be the supreme master race but his plan backfires (literally) and he has to try and get them back under his control.

I recall a scene in "Genesis of the Daleks" when Baker's Doctor tries to persuade Davros to call off their creation, comparing them to a deadly germ which could break out at any moment. This only seems to excite Davros all the more, at the thought of holding the whole of creation on the brink of destruction! I'm quite sure Terry Nation had Dr Strangelove in mind when he created him: two crippled Nazi scientists who get turned on by destruction as opposed to - pardon me - procreation!

And also the scene when Davison's Doctor almost goes to the point of killing Davros in cold blood. He must really fear him to go that far.
jock123
Moderator
#17 · Posted: 27 Apr 2010 08:26
Well, another week, another episode! I didn't think Saturday's re-visit by the Weeping Angels was as good as the original appearance in Blink, but it was still a good episode in its way. Creeping about in caves and catacombs, waiting for something to pounce is bound to ramp up the tension!
Amy's working out of how to counteract the image was good, and her problem arising from that also was both unusual and added to the creepiness; has she got over it, or will the trouble continue in episode two?
The biggest drawback for me: I do find River Song to be a very irritating character - I didn't care for the Library story that introduced her, and she isn't growing on me now.
Balthazar
Moderator
#18 · Posted: 27 Apr 2010 11:33
Firstly, SPOILER ALERT for non UK fans like Tintinrulz who haven't seen the new series yet (though I'm assuming you're simply avoiding reading this whole thread till you have).

jock123:
I didn't think Saturday's re-visit by the Weeping Angels was as good as the original appearance in Blink, but it was still a good episode in its way.

Yes, not as good as Blink, but then that's setting the bar pretty high. Not even the other Moffat-written episodes over the last few series — eg: that library two-parter — have been as good as his masterpiece Blink.

And I thought this latest episode was much, much better than the last two installments of this new series — the rather clunking political-allegory-on-a-space-station, and the rather trivializing use of the London Blitz last week. (I did like the kahki wartime Daleks in that episode, but my heart sank when they were replaced —permanently it seems — by those awful plasticky new Power Ranger Daleks!)

I must admit I was beginning to wonder if everyone's faith in Stephen Moffat to take the programme on to new heights as lead writer-producer was misplaced. But Saturday's episode felt like a real return to form and has restored my faith in him and the new series: a return to the sort of edgy creepiness, intelligence and subtlety that I was expecting from the new Moffat era, even though this episode wasn't actually written by him, of course.

Maybe, with all the responsibility of the job, it's actually now easier for him to make brilliant episodes when he's not having to write the script too. The same may have been true of his excellent predecessor, Russell T Davies, whose very best work was arguably in the episodes he commissioned, produced, co-devised and oversaw, rather than the ones he actually wrote.

Anyway, great stuff, especially that whole video scene with Amy. And the opening set up, with River Song's message to the Doctor, was great.

jock123:
has she got over it, or will the trouble continue in episode two?

Oh, I think it's safe to assume that Amy's problems with that are only just beginning!

jock123:
The biggest drawback for me: I do find River Song to be a very irritating character - I didn't care for the Library story that introduced her, and she isn't growing on me now.

I entirely agree, but to be fair to the writers/producers/actor, I'm assuming that's deliberate, rather than because Stephen Moffat thinks that sort of woman is charming! Let's hope so. If she really is going to be the Doctor's future wife then that would be way more terrifying than any alien monster he's ever encountered. There's a touch of the Peggy Alcazar about her, mixed with that stretched-flat parchment woman in recent series (called Cassandra, or something, I think).

I'm guessing there's something really odd and possibly sinister yet to be revealed about River Song. What was that secret conversation she had with the Bishop/soldier all about? And what was really in that green injection she gave Amy?
jock123
Moderator
#19 · Posted: 28 Apr 2010 10:39
Balthazar:
I thought this latest episode was much, much better than the last two installments of this new series — the rather clunking political-allegory-on-a-space-station, and the rather trivializing use of the London Blitz last week.

Ah, that's interesting, because while I agree with you to an extent about the Beast Below, I thought the use of the Blitz was handled well - far better than Moffat's earlier war-time set Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances.
I liked the idea of looking at the questions raised when good people keep bad company, if they think the end justifies the means; I thought that there was a deal of merit in that, and putting it in the recent past made the dilemma seem all the more real.
I also have less of a problem with wholly fictional, obviously false representations of the war, such as this and things like The Eagle Has Landed and Where Eagles Dare ("Broadsword calling Danny Boy!"), than I do with things like the truly awful Saving Private Ryan, which worryingly many people seem to think is an historic event, to the point where it was being recommended as suitable for viewing in school history lessons.
Its visceral opening battle scenes are admittedly shocking, and as far as can be told give at least a hint of the horror of the landings in Normandy, but then they are grafted to an awful, trite, badly executed story of great banality, which neither properly honours the soldiers from many nations who fought in France, nor the true story of The Fighting Sullivans (who were in the U.S. Navy, in the Pacific) which apparently inspired it.
Balthazar:
I did like the kahki wartime Daleks in that episode, but my heart sank when they were replaced —permanently it seems — by those awful plasticky new Power Ranger Daleks!

I loved them! They were straight out of the TV21/ Dalek Book/ Peter Cushing Movies pop-art, brightly coloured school of Daleks, like they should always have been! In my mind's eye the Daleks always were in colour, even when I was watching Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee in black and white, because that's how they were in the comics. Even the Beeb's own 10th Anniversary Special "Build Your Own Dalek" plans suggested multi-coloured liveries in red white and blue, and another in brown and orange (very Seventies, that last one).
Imagine my disappointment to discover that while the early TV Daleks were in fact dove grey and light blue, with the advent of colour recording they almost immediately went gun-metal grey and black!! The odd splash of colour crept in (a gold one here, a balck and gold one there), but what a missed opportunity!
Admittedly the Dalek Book - a sort of annual my cousins had - did tell us Earthlings that Daleks were incapable of identifying the colour red, a fact demonstrated in the book with an illustration of a Dalek unable to see a pillar-box. This must reduce the effectiveness of the new red Daleks somewhat ("I say - lads - I'm over here!" "Who said that?"), and obviously the Doctor could just adopt the Glasgow red police-box instead of the Metropolitan blue to make the TARDIS invisible, but otherwise I'm chuffed that they are getting a spruce up!
If you are worried by the change, it is always possible that the make-over is temporary, if the alteration to the time-stream which has erased Amy's knowledge of the Daleks is somehow going to be repaired; it might all just ping back to normal, with the old Dalek design restored...

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