Well, that was kind of a load of arse...
Is it just me or was that episode of Doctor Who sort of shit? And really obviously rewritten from a script for Ten and Donna. But badly. Oh, Gatiss, I like you in general, I like your enthusiasm. I loved many bits of The League of Gentlemen, the way you talk about things, and the one novel of yours that I've read. But please stop.
That script totally felt like it was written by someone who was trying to get a script past Russell T Davies without too many changes. It had all of the stuff that I don't like in Ten's reign -- unexplained leaps of plot, ridiculous bombast and human emotions winning the day in a way which defies any possible logical explanation -- without any of the earlier seasons' many virtues.
Three bits I liked:
(a) He held them off with a JAMMIE DODGER. That was perfect and fantastic.
(b) The Scottish agenda (but much of that is the pleasure of thinking about people getting cross about it)
(c) I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE DUCKS. Well, not them specifically but Amy is from some kind of different, possibly wrong timeline. The duckpond will be significant!
Things I thought I would like, but didn't:
(a) SPITFIRES IN SPAAAAACE. It sounds fantastic but it was stupid. So the mad scientist had already built not just one prototype gravity bubble thing but THREE of them? No.
(b) The Doctor angsting a bit. I thought I might welcome a bit more angst but strangely, I much prefer Smiff doing wistful melancholy.
(c) Amy. She was totally generic here, and Karen Gillan couldn't inject much life into that inert, plot-shovelling dialogue.
Things I hated. These are many.
(a) Those new daleks. Seriously, where were they from -- Planet bloody Ikea?
I realise it's nerdishness incarnate to say things like this, but there is absolutely no reason on God's clean, lovely Earth for them to be bright orange and yellow, on the grounds that it makes them sort of VISIBLE, which is the thing you do not want to be if you are a deadly war machine.
They are not sinister -- they are clunky and they look like someone made them out of bits you get in Kinder Eggs.
(b) Bill Paterson playing Pinocchio. "We can neutralise the blargityskwibble bomb if you can just think of the boner you got from Dorabella in 1927! You shall be a real boy!" The trouble is that I don't buy that Amy would naturally have come to the conclusion that that was how to get through to him (though maybe I'm being daft). However, Donna would have leapt there immediately. Both being ginger does not make them interchangeable.
Moreover, I can't believe they blew the casting of someone as wonderful as Bill Paterson on this.
It's like when they had Michael Brandon in Stolen Earth/Journey's End and then they gave him about ten lines and killed him off. WHY would you kill off someone who can actually do an American accent? Save him, for goodness sake, and spare us the ones who sound like New York is somewhere west of Dorking.
(c) The Doctor's actions made no sense. They particularly made no sense for Eleven. I could totally see Ten doing that. I liked the way Smith conveyed his fear and loathing, but I couldn't work out why he did half of what he did.
(d) The Doctor cosying up to Winston Churchill. I recognise that Churchill was a bit of a hero during the war, cometh the hour, cometh the man and all that, but he had some fairly repellent opinions and I don't trust the jingoistic revisionism that makes him a loveable uncle.
(e) Amy didn't get to do anything much -- save for twanging Mad Scientist's electronic heartstrings. Nor did she kick off when he left her in the middle of the London blitz, even though all she has known is how flaky he is about making it back on time. That seemed very uncharacteristic.
(f) Frigging London. Again.
Other places beside London and Coventry were bombed, you know. Also, I might be wrong, but wouldn't there be blackout curtains on almost all those windows in Whitehall -- because civil servants and so on were working all the hours because it was wartime -- so it wouldn't matter a tuppenny damn if someone switched all the bloody lights on.
(g) That stuff at the end, with "go on, you'll sneak away and we'll not notice". How cumbersomely done was that?
Still, next week looks grand. River Song FTW.
I wish I could vid. I've found the perfect song.
That script totally felt like it was written by someone who was trying to get a script past Russell T Davies without too many changes. It had all of the stuff that I don't like in Ten's reign -- unexplained leaps of plot, ridiculous bombast and human emotions winning the day in a way which defies any possible logical explanation -- without any of the earlier seasons' many virtues.
Three bits I liked:
(a) He held them off with a JAMMIE DODGER. That was perfect and fantastic.
(b) The Scottish agenda (but much of that is the pleasure of thinking about people getting cross about it)
(c) I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE DUCKS. Well, not them specifically but Amy is from some kind of different, possibly wrong timeline. The duckpond will be significant!
Things I thought I would like, but didn't:
(a) SPITFIRES IN SPAAAAACE. It sounds fantastic but it was stupid. So the mad scientist had already built not just one prototype gravity bubble thing but THREE of them? No.
(b) The Doctor angsting a bit. I thought I might welcome a bit more angst but strangely, I much prefer Smiff doing wistful melancholy.
(c) Amy. She was totally generic here, and Karen Gillan couldn't inject much life into that inert, plot-shovelling dialogue.
Things I hated. These are many.
(a) Those new daleks. Seriously, where were they from -- Planet bloody Ikea?
I realise it's nerdishness incarnate to say things like this, but there is absolutely no reason on God's clean, lovely Earth for them to be bright orange and yellow, on the grounds that it makes them sort of VISIBLE, which is the thing you do not want to be if you are a deadly war machine.
They are not sinister -- they are clunky and they look like someone made them out of bits you get in Kinder Eggs.
(b) Bill Paterson playing Pinocchio. "We can neutralise the blargityskwibble bomb if you can just think of the boner you got from Dorabella in 1927! You shall be a real boy!" The trouble is that I don't buy that Amy would naturally have come to the conclusion that that was how to get through to him (though maybe I'm being daft). However, Donna would have leapt there immediately. Both being ginger does not make them interchangeable.
Moreover, I can't believe they blew the casting of someone as wonderful as Bill Paterson on this.
It's like when they had Michael Brandon in Stolen Earth/Journey's End and then they gave him about ten lines and killed him off. WHY would you kill off someone who can actually do an American accent? Save him, for goodness sake, and spare us the ones who sound like New York is somewhere west of Dorking.
(c) The Doctor's actions made no sense. They particularly made no sense for Eleven. I could totally see Ten doing that. I liked the way Smith conveyed his fear and loathing, but I couldn't work out why he did half of what he did.
(d) The Doctor cosying up to Winston Churchill. I recognise that Churchill was a bit of a hero during the war, cometh the hour, cometh the man and all that, but he had some fairly repellent opinions and I don't trust the jingoistic revisionism that makes him a loveable uncle.
(e) Amy didn't get to do anything much -- save for twanging Mad Scientist's electronic heartstrings. Nor did she kick off when he left her in the middle of the London blitz, even though all she has known is how flaky he is about making it back on time. That seemed very uncharacteristic.
(f) Frigging London. Again.
Other places beside London and Coventry were bombed, you know. Also, I might be wrong, but wouldn't there be blackout curtains on almost all those windows in Whitehall -- because civil servants and so on were working all the hours because it was wartime -- so it wouldn't matter a tuppenny damn if someone switched all the bloody lights on.
(g) That stuff at the end, with "go on, you'll sneak away and we'll not notice". How cumbersomely done was that?
Still, next week looks grand. River Song FTW.
I wish I could vid. I've found the perfect song.