Planet of the Dead
Being at the parents' home, with a real telly, really made me appreciate just how much the Beeb advertise this thing to death. Also RTD seems to have latched onto "romp" as The Word of the Day, and was repeating it, rolling his r's, as much as humanly possible in every interview. And it was hilarious, because it became the only word I heard.
Either the specials have got less good, or fandom and its anticipation has made me more demanding and therefore more disappointed...
It was okay. It wasn't brilliant - it was the sort of thing I'd expect maybe mid-series. It doesn't help that BBC3 then went and reshowed the start of series 2 last week, so I'm comparing this to School Reunion. I love School Reunion and Sarah Jane and K-9 and Mickey and.. and.. yeah.
Hands up who guessed which one would be psychic just by looking at the bus people?
I'm watching it now, and it does have great moments:
("That's handy; I'm a Lord"
"Lord of where?"
"Oh... it's quite a big estate")
*snerk*
Even if this is in the middle of Rusty's Straight Agenda. Really, really? Can he havea companion that he doesn't have a thing for. I appreciate that you're heading for a sort of classic they hate each other, they hate each other, oh WAIT thing with them, but did ya hae to? (I'm grumpy, I don't like my Doctor to be a romantic figure; it's partly why I loved Donna).
Which brings me to Christina. She's a good character. She's amoral, she's a rich, spoilt brat who thinks she can get away with anything. She's amusing in places and I completely failed to care about her.
("invested his fortune in the Icelandic banks" HA!)
She's deeply flawed, and there's no.. payback? karma? There are no consequences. Yes, she's very like the Doctor in her rebelliousness and her thievery, but she's a reflection of the worst parts of the Doctor/humanity and not the better parts like his other companions. Rose, Martha, Donna, Astrid; they were all at some point or other completely and utterly selfless (they had their faults as well, but they wouldn't have been half as interesting without them). Christina? Did it for the kicks. She sounds a bit like a spoilt brat at the end as well. And got away. (it's a kids programme. I want my good people to be rewarded, and my bad people to be punished. And it's horribly sad when the good people aren't rewarded - Donna - but it's brilliant when the bad people get away?)
Malcolm and Erisa? They're awesome. Malcolm is fake-ly Welsh (Welsh agenda!) and appears to have been written for Rob Brydon and then given to Lee Evans (hmmm... he did say on Jonathan Ross that he was cast fairly quickly). But he was good. Bernards... from Quatermass. Oh, dear. Actually, he was amazing. I'm not a Lee Evans fan, and he impressed me. Possibly the best character in the whole thing. (Malcolm as companion?)
("Tell me the bad news"
"Oh, you are clever... it IS bad news!")
And Erisa held a gun to Malcolm's head, and she wasn't punished. Because she was doing her job, and trying to protect the planet, and actually, three of those things did come through and she and her UNIT team had to go and deal with them. And she was competant, and collected, and calm, and did what she thought she had to, and she saluted the Doctor whether he liked it or not (I loved that; I loved her saluting and basically saying "you've got my respect and this is how I'm going to show it whether you like it or not". I want to see more of the Captain. And more of Malcolm.)
Fly people are also awesome, but underexplored. I wanted more fly people. (Why couldn't the fly people be the psychic ones? That would have worked well).
Hw much do I love the alien flying stingrays? They're not evil, they're not bad, they are just what they are, going on instinct. Like a plague of locusts, if locusts could form wormholes.
Daniel Kaluuya as Barclay. (It's POSH KENNETH! From Skins! And he's an awesome writer as well, and he's younger than me.) He was brilliant. ("It IS gold!"/ "Oh, they saw you coming")
And the warnings at the end?
"Your song is ending soon" - tell us something we DON'T know.
"He will knock four times" - at which point my mother said, "oh, the Master?"
Rewatch it just now, as I typed this up? There were lots of bits I liked. There were lots of bits that made me go "hee!". There were characters and scenes that I adored. There was the "ordinary things are worth more than anything" message that I lap up like a... thirsty kitten. There were bad guys that weren't really bad guys, but just acting on instinct, which I love. I love the complexity when it's not black and white. It's just, as a whole, it made me go "meh".
Either the specials have got less good, or fandom and its anticipation has made me more demanding and therefore more disappointed...
It was okay. It wasn't brilliant - it was the sort of thing I'd expect maybe mid-series. It doesn't help that BBC3 then went and reshowed the start of series 2 last week, so I'm comparing this to School Reunion. I love School Reunion and Sarah Jane and K-9 and Mickey and.. and.. yeah.
Hands up who guessed which one would be psychic just by looking at the bus people?
I'm watching it now, and it does have great moments:
("That's handy; I'm a Lord"
"Lord of where?"
"Oh... it's quite a big estate")
*snerk*
Even if this is in the middle of Rusty's Straight Agenda. Really, really? Can he havea companion that he doesn't have a thing for. I appreciate that you're heading for a sort of classic they hate each other, they hate each other, oh WAIT thing with them, but did ya hae to? (I'm grumpy, I don't like my Doctor to be a romantic figure; it's partly why I loved Donna).
Which brings me to Christina. She's a good character. She's amoral, she's a rich, spoilt brat who thinks she can get away with anything. She's amusing in places and I completely failed to care about her.
("invested his fortune in the Icelandic banks" HA!)
She's deeply flawed, and there's no.. payback? karma? There are no consequences. Yes, she's very like the Doctor in her rebelliousness and her thievery, but she's a reflection of the worst parts of the Doctor/humanity and not the better parts like his other companions. Rose, Martha, Donna, Astrid; they were all at some point or other completely and utterly selfless (they had their faults as well, but they wouldn't have been half as interesting without them). Christina? Did it for the kicks. She sounds a bit like a spoilt brat at the end as well. And got away. (it's a kids programme. I want my good people to be rewarded, and my bad people to be punished. And it's horribly sad when the good people aren't rewarded - Donna - but it's brilliant when the bad people get away?)
Malcolm and Erisa? They're awesome. Malcolm is fake-ly Welsh (Welsh agenda!) and appears to have been written for Rob Brydon and then given to Lee Evans (hmmm... he did say on Jonathan Ross that he was cast fairly quickly). But he was good. Bernards... from Quatermass. Oh, dear. Actually, he was amazing. I'm not a Lee Evans fan, and he impressed me. Possibly the best character in the whole thing. (Malcolm as companion?)
("Tell me the bad news"
"Oh, you are clever... it IS bad news!")
And Erisa held a gun to Malcolm's head, and she wasn't punished. Because she was doing her job, and trying to protect the planet, and actually, three of those things did come through and she and her UNIT team had to go and deal with them. And she was competant, and collected, and calm, and did what she thought she had to, and she saluted the Doctor whether he liked it or not (I loved that; I loved her saluting and basically saying "you've got my respect and this is how I'm going to show it whether you like it or not". I want to see more of the Captain. And more of Malcolm.)
Fly people are also awesome, but underexplored. I wanted more fly people. (Why couldn't the fly people be the psychic ones? That would have worked well).
Hw much do I love the alien flying stingrays? They're not evil, they're not bad, they are just what they are, going on instinct. Like a plague of locusts, if locusts could form wormholes.
Daniel Kaluuya as Barclay. (It's POSH KENNETH! From Skins! And he's an awesome writer as well, and he's younger than me.) He was brilliant. ("It IS gold!"/ "Oh, they saw you coming")
And the warnings at the end?
"Your song is ending soon" - tell us something we DON'T know.
"He will knock four times" - at which point my mother said, "oh, the Master?"
Rewatch it just now, as I typed this up? There were lots of bits I liked. There were lots of bits that made me go "hee!". There were characters and scenes that I adored. There was the "ordinary things are worth more than anything" message that I lap up like a... thirsty kitten. There were bad guys that weren't really bad guys, but just acting on instinct, which I love. I love the complexity when it's not black and white. It's just, as a whole, it made me go "meh".