City of Death
Ah, I just popped in my NetFlixed DVD of Fourth Doctor era Doctor Who, "City of Death". I think I might buy it, now that I've had the chance of watching it. I will certainly miss this when I send it back.
First, Tom Baker is...well, Tom Baker. Lovely. Script by (though not properly credited to him in the episode credits) Douglas Adams, and therefore, absolutely brilliant. And the bad guy is played by...the same man who played General Veers in Empire Strikes Back. Took me FOREVER to place him, but a triumphant memory pull like that gives me a warm fuzzy, along with some feeling that perhaps parenthood hasn't scrambled my brain in the way I usually feel that it has.
Adams, rest his soul, was a magnificent writer. The sort of writer who makes me want to bow my head, back away from the keyboard, and never tap on it another word of my own imagination. He got the little stuff right...the one-liners, particularly. He knew how to set a mood; when you're tense, you get a joke, when you're confused, you get a fact to straighten it out. And the plots he concocted! So intricate. So ridiculously funny. Never with a dropped string. Always at the very edge of imaginative, veering nearly into insanity, they were so inventive.
It makes me want to cry that I'll never get to read or listen to another new bit of his writing, but finding this episode arc again, something I'm sure I haven't watched since I was seven and Doctor Who used to come on our local PBS station, has sated me, but just a bit.
If you haven't seen this arc and you are of the Doctor Who persuasion, I highly recommend it. It's Fourth Doctor with Romana on the side, with a very entertaining sidekick that they acquire during the events of the arc.
Now I'm un-pausing it and finishing the last episode of the arc. I'll be sorry to see it come to an end.
First, Tom Baker is...well, Tom Baker. Lovely. Script by (though not properly credited to him in the episode credits) Douglas Adams, and therefore, absolutely brilliant. And the bad guy is played by...the same man who played General Veers in Empire Strikes Back. Took me FOREVER to place him, but a triumphant memory pull like that gives me a warm fuzzy, along with some feeling that perhaps parenthood hasn't scrambled my brain in the way I usually feel that it has.
Adams, rest his soul, was a magnificent writer. The sort of writer who makes me want to bow my head, back away from the keyboard, and never tap on it another word of my own imagination. He got the little stuff right...the one-liners, particularly. He knew how to set a mood; when you're tense, you get a joke, when you're confused, you get a fact to straighten it out. And the plots he concocted! So intricate. So ridiculously funny. Never with a dropped string. Always at the very edge of imaginative, veering nearly into insanity, they were so inventive.
It makes me want to cry that I'll never get to read or listen to another new bit of his writing, but finding this episode arc again, something I'm sure I haven't watched since I was seven and Doctor Who used to come on our local PBS station, has sated me, but just a bit.
If you haven't seen this arc and you are of the Doctor Who persuasion, I highly recommend it. It's Fourth Doctor with Romana on the side, with a very entertaining sidekick that they acquire during the events of the arc.
Now I'm un-pausing it and finishing the last episode of the arc. I'll be sorry to see it come to an end.