Rewatching Doctor Who season two
Or: watching Doctor Who on the telly for the first time.
Rewatching Doctor Who season one
“The Christmas Invasion” has been cut to fit into a 45-minute slot. I’m not going to talk about how wrong is was, just point out something. Among the scenes that weren’t crucial to the episode and had to go, there was the scene when the Doctor chooses his brown suit and the coat. One of the most important scenes for that incarnation of the Doctor is cut because the episode makes sense without it. I had to go straight away and watch that missing scene, it felt so wrong.
Mum, I found a Time Lord. Can we keep him?
"New Earth" is brilliant. Every. Single. Time.
For the first time, I fully enjoyed “Tooth and Claw”. Despite loving the Doctor’s accent and what the queen said about him and Rose, I haven’t really thought the story was that great. The monks, the werewolf, the diamond, it all looked more like a set of elements thrown into one episode and glued with each other than like pieces of a precisely constructed plot. When I watched it on the telly, for some reason I didn’t mind. Maybe it’s David Tennant in HD. (Except it isn’t. But the screen is much bigger than my computer screen. I should see David on a screen in a cinema! So hoping that “Mad To Be Normal” gets some international screening…)
"Girl in the Fireplace". Just one more time. And one more. This is the last one, I promise...
Even “The Idiot Lantern” was better than I remembered, but that might be just because I don’t watch it very often. The scene with Detective Inspector Bishop is priceless. And, you know. The hair.
"Tell me everything you know"
Murray Gold’s piece “The Impossible Planet” is just wonderful. It’s a great two-parter, the Satan one, it gets better and better every time I watch it. Why hasn’t Matt Jones written more episodes for Doctor Who?
I always grin when the Doctor carries the olympic torch. Always.
I was actually, properly sad when I watched the trailer for 2x12 and the pre-intro sequence. I mean, I have Doomsday feelings when I watch the Doctor and Rose at the wall or when I just listen to the soundtrack, but the “This is the story of my death” line has always made me roll my eyes, because guess what, she’s not dead! I’d still watch the episode without those false, dramatic premises, thank you, Russell. But this time I felt really sad and I spent the entire episode thinking about Rose telling the story to… whom, actually? I don’t know but the Doctor’s request about not mentioning Jackie was ignored ;) Maybe I reacted differently because I saw my dad hearing Rose’s words and putting his head out of a newspaper, clearly interested in what’s in the telly instead. Or maybe I just realised it might has not been a literal death but what death is for all the living if not disappearing from the world? The only difference is that the Doctor knew she had an afterlife - or an alterlife. And, I just realised, he hasn’t just lost Rose on that day. He lost Mickey and Jackie, too, the closest what he had to a family.
Yup, I’m gradually developing more and more Doomsday feelings. In a few years, I’d cry just at the thought of it.
How to make a Whovian never use the zip
I only just realised (a rewatch full of discoveries!) that everyone was expecting the Cybermen to come back in the finale, as it followed the season one pattern - a well-known villain introduced in a mid-season episode to come back in the finale with an invasion. So I guess no one expected the Daleks popping up in the last seconds of “The Army of Ghosts”. There were times when Daleks were a surprise!
The season ended and then they didn’t air “The Runaway Bride”, just went straight to season 3. I guess nobody had guts to cut a single second of Donna.
Rewatching Doctor Who season one
“The Christmas Invasion” has been cut to fit into a 45-minute slot. I’m not going to talk about how wrong is was, just point out something. Among the scenes that weren’t crucial to the episode and had to go, there was the scene when the Doctor chooses his brown suit and the coat. One of the most important scenes for that incarnation of the Doctor is cut because the episode makes sense without it. I had to go straight away and watch that missing scene, it felt so wrong.
Mum, I found a Time Lord. Can we keep him?
"New Earth" is brilliant. Every. Single. Time.
For the first time, I fully enjoyed “Tooth and Claw”. Despite loving the Doctor’s accent and what the queen said about him and Rose, I haven’t really thought the story was that great. The monks, the werewolf, the diamond, it all looked more like a set of elements thrown into one episode and glued with each other than like pieces of a precisely constructed plot. When I watched it on the telly, for some reason I didn’t mind. Maybe it’s David Tennant in HD. (Except it isn’t. But the screen is much bigger than my computer screen. I should see David on a screen in a cinema! So hoping that “Mad To Be Normal” gets some international screening…)
"Girl in the Fireplace". Just one more time. And one more. This is the last one, I promise...
Even “The Idiot Lantern” was better than I remembered, but that might be just because I don’t watch it very often. The scene with Detective Inspector Bishop is priceless. And, you know. The hair.
"Tell me everything you know"
Murray Gold’s piece “The Impossible Planet” is just wonderful. It’s a great two-parter, the Satan one, it gets better and better every time I watch it. Why hasn’t Matt Jones written more episodes for Doctor Who?
I always grin when the Doctor carries the olympic torch. Always.
I was actually, properly sad when I watched the trailer for 2x12 and the pre-intro sequence. I mean, I have Doomsday feelings when I watch the Doctor and Rose at the wall or when I just listen to the soundtrack, but the “This is the story of my death” line has always made me roll my eyes, because guess what, she’s not dead! I’d still watch the episode without those false, dramatic premises, thank you, Russell. But this time I felt really sad and I spent the entire episode thinking about Rose telling the story to… whom, actually? I don’t know but the Doctor’s request about not mentioning Jackie was ignored ;) Maybe I reacted differently because I saw my dad hearing Rose’s words and putting his head out of a newspaper, clearly interested in what’s in the telly instead. Or maybe I just realised it might has not been a literal death but what death is for all the living if not disappearing from the world? The only difference is that the Doctor knew she had an afterlife - or an alterlife. And, I just realised, he hasn’t just lost Rose on that day. He lost Mickey and Jackie, too, the closest what he had to a family.
Yup, I’m gradually developing more and more Doomsday feelings. In a few years, I’d cry just at the thought of it.
How to make a Whovian never use the zip
I only just realised (a rewatch full of discoveries!) that everyone was expecting the Cybermen to come back in the finale, as it followed the season one pattern - a well-known villain introduced in a mid-season episode to come back in the finale with an invasion. So I guess no one expected the Daleks popping up in the last seconds of “The Army of Ghosts”. There were times when Daleks were a surprise!
The season ended and then they didn’t air “The Runaway Bride”, just went straight to season 3. I guess nobody had guts to cut a single second of Donna.