all Doctor, all the time
I've been watching some more Doctor Who - last night I was at axa's watching eps 6-10 of the new series (thank again, settiai!) and before that I had warmed up by watching the old eps roseveare sent me all that time ago. Well, most of them anyway - I'm still only halfway through the TV movie.
I'll start with the old eps for two reasons. The first is that I want to get it over with before I start on my unrestrained Steven Moffat crushing. The second is that then those who haven't yet watched all season 1 of the new series can avoid being spoiled... presuming such fans even exist. :-)
Re-watching the Peter Davison episodes, I found that I like him well enough - he's pleasant and has a sense of self-irony that appeals to me. In Kinda, I particularly adored this exchange (from memory):
"That's impossible! Any man who opens the box is driven out of his mind! Unless... Is he an idiot?"
"I don't know. Are you an idiot?"
"I suppose I must be. I've been called..."
"Be quiet, idiot!"
And also, of course, the line that made it into the crack_van overview: "An apple a day keeps the... never mind."
In Frontios, I giggled at how he talked about how the settlers were a small group of Earth people who had managed to escape from... "Well, I guess you have all that to look forward to." And when Tegan asked what they had escaped from: "All the civilizations have their ups and downs!"
So yeah, some great lines and a likeable personality, but still I can't help but feel that when you're used to Eccleston, Davison's a bit (dare I say it?) bland. A little too nice and normal.
Still, I think even that would have worked for me if he'd had some spicier sidekicks, but the Companions I saw were... well, maybe I saw too little of them. But they didn't seem to have much in the way of personality (except possibly Adric, and I didn't really care for his), and some of the acting was quite terrible. I kept thinking Tegan's accent was fake, and was surprised to find that it was actually real. And don't even get me started on Turlogh's breakdown in Frontios...
The poor acting and the cheap production values was why I after five minutes of Kinda went, "Oh, God, it's worse than I remembered!"
But the tape kept rolling, and I became interested... and more interested.
It was worse than I remembered, but it was also better than I remembered. The plotline was more than solid, so I could forget the silly-looking sets and just concentrate on the story (though the red teeth and the big snake were a bit much even then). In some respects, it was better than certain of the new episodes.
Castrovalva was much the same - not as funny, and with the plot sadly hinging a bit too much on the sidekicks, but still interesting. I really liked the thought of the city that folds in on itself, and the man who figures out that they're all fiction and "kills" himself to save the Doctor.
The biggest failing in that ep was that I rarely find cackling supervillains anything but a nuisance, and the Master was no exception. I liked him better when he was Jonathan Pryce and had golden boobies. (But then, that was Steven Moffat too... must wait with the Steven Moffat talk.) Okay, yeah, so Mara was a bit of a cackling supervillain too, but at least he had the excuse of being a nightmare.
Frontios I had completely forgotten that I even owned, and when I saw it, I realized why. It was boring. It was so boring I read the newspaper while I watched. And then the aliens appeared. All my Moffat loving aside, when your aliens look like Colin, Sophie and Laura did in Friends Like These, only with added bug-heads, you have a bit of a credibility problem.
And then there's the TV movie (which I haven't yet finished)... Oh dear. Lesson number one about cackling supervillains: they do not improve by having glowy green eyes and being played by Eric Roberts.
I liked the Asian kid, to the point where I started wondering if I had somehow subconsciously based Chen Li in the Birthdayverse off him even though I didn't remember that he existed at the time. Paul McGann was a bit too wet blanket-y for my liking (he reminded me in a rather unfortunate way of Gregory Peck in Spellbound) and Grace was... is there a way to say "too American" that doesn't make it sound like an insult?
Anyway. It looked better than the old Five episodes, but it was a whole lot worse. All in all, I wouldn't mind watching some more old Who, with Peter Davison or whoever, and I'm really, really grateful that this show was the one getting made and not the planned American one with Paul McGann, because brrrr!
And now for the new eps.
Giving people a chance to leave if they're American and don't want spoilers.
Before I let my fancrush roam free, some quick thoughts on the eps that weren't written by Moffat:
Dalek really went overboard with the melodrama, but I got misty-eyed anyway. Father's Day had me downright crying, though only a little (no Hole of the World or Brokeback Mountain bawling by eyes out, fortunately). The Long Game was so-so - I didn't like the monster - but Cathica was very pretty. I wish she could have come along. Adam was a twat; as boyfriends go, I prefer Mickey.
Whew! Time to indulge.
For some reason, The Empty Child didn't scare me, though it scared Padma. (Which made me gloat a bit, since she's so unaffected by the mushy emotional stuff that gets the better of me.) I suspect it might have been because I was so thoroughly spoiled: I knew there would be a happy ending, that Jamie wasn't really evil, and that all the gasmask-heads would get well again. Kind of takes the scariness away.
But it was still very interesting to see Moffat do horror scenes, since that's one genre I haven't seen him do before. Suspense, yes. Drama, yes. Strange, bordering-on-scifi-stuff, yes. Comedy, obviously. But not horror. He managed it very well, I think, and I suspect it's his gift for timing that helps, as well as building a scene so that you know what will happen, what has to happen (Jamie in "his room"), but it still doesn't take away the effect.
Jack's scene in the space ship as he thought he was dying gave me major flashbacks to The Last Word. Well, apart from the "See if I come here again" line, which obviously gave me flashbacks to Love and War instead. He and Spike aren't that similar (though close enough that the icon works *g* - and by the way it's not meant as an insult), but that humour/panic/resignation mix works really well for both of them.
I must say, though, I'd expected to like Jack slightly more after all that haussing you guys've been doing. He was a good character, I'm happy to see more of him, but I'm not in love with him like I am with Nine and to some extent Rose. Maybe it'll come in time, I don't know. He was a bit too pretty and smooth to really work for me. (And again with the risk of sounding anti-American, but wow I wasn't prepared for that accent. I mean, there's American, and then there's... really American.)
And I'm now sort of disappointed that he's going to be on Torchwood instead of more Doctor Who, since what I liked the most about him was his interactions with Rose and the Doctor... especially the Doctor. (If you guys have any fics, now would be a good time to tell me.) Adored the "who looks at a screwdriver..." line, and the banana switch was another very Moffat-y situation. I half waited for the Doctor's next line to be, "You think that's clever - check your underwear." :-)
Oh, and the unexpected phone of course... how much more Press Gang can you get? *grin*
There weren't quite so many specific things reminding me of Coupling - Jack has certain similarities with both Jane and Patrick, and there's the metaphorical sex talk, but I think that's about it.
I don't think I can detail every time I sort of half-smiled to myself and went, "that's so Moffaty." It kind of happened a lot. (Am re-reading the transcript now and going "yep, that's his sense of humour all right" at pretty much every joke.) I love the way he can balance the serious and the funny so that the jokes don't feel tacked on and the drama not schmaltzy.
One thing I really liked about this episode is that there were no villains - not counting the Germans, who never showed up in person. Jack made a mistake, Jamie was looking for his mummy, and the nanogenes weren't sentient. Ordinary human failings with enormous consequences. (Coming to think of it, that happened quite a bit on Press Gang too.) It was very sympathetic. The story was logical (for this kind of show), which means that the happy ending felt quite logical too.
To mention someone else who deserved kudos: Nancy was really loveable. It would have been nice to see more of her. And the kid actors were great too - Jamie, of course, but the others as well. You know how I feel about the general quality of kid actors. These were really natural, and I liked that.
All in all a fabulous double ep, and it's not all due to one man. ;-)
I'll start with the old eps for two reasons. The first is that I want to get it over with before I start on my unrestrained Steven Moffat crushing. The second is that then those who haven't yet watched all season 1 of the new series can avoid being spoiled... presuming such fans even exist. :-)
Re-watching the Peter Davison episodes, I found that I like him well enough - he's pleasant and has a sense of self-irony that appeals to me. In Kinda, I particularly adored this exchange (from memory):
"That's impossible! Any man who opens the box is driven out of his mind! Unless... Is he an idiot?"
"I don't know. Are you an idiot?"
"I suppose I must be. I've been called..."
"Be quiet, idiot!"
And also, of course, the line that made it into the crack_van overview: "An apple a day keeps the... never mind."
In Frontios, I giggled at how he talked about how the settlers were a small group of Earth people who had managed to escape from... "Well, I guess you have all that to look forward to." And when Tegan asked what they had escaped from: "All the civilizations have their ups and downs!"
So yeah, some great lines and a likeable personality, but still I can't help but feel that when you're used to Eccleston, Davison's a bit (dare I say it?) bland. A little too nice and normal.
Still, I think even that would have worked for me if he'd had some spicier sidekicks, but the Companions I saw were... well, maybe I saw too little of them. But they didn't seem to have much in the way of personality (except possibly Adric, and I didn't really care for his), and some of the acting was quite terrible. I kept thinking Tegan's accent was fake, and was surprised to find that it was actually real. And don't even get me started on Turlogh's breakdown in Frontios...
The poor acting and the cheap production values was why I after five minutes of Kinda went, "Oh, God, it's worse than I remembered!"
But the tape kept rolling, and I became interested... and more interested.
It was worse than I remembered, but it was also better than I remembered. The plotline was more than solid, so I could forget the silly-looking sets and just concentrate on the story (though the red teeth and the big snake were a bit much even then). In some respects, it was better than certain of the new episodes.
Castrovalva was much the same - not as funny, and with the plot sadly hinging a bit too much on the sidekicks, but still interesting. I really liked the thought of the city that folds in on itself, and the man who figures out that they're all fiction and "kills" himself to save the Doctor.
The biggest failing in that ep was that I rarely find cackling supervillains anything but a nuisance, and the Master was no exception. I liked him better when he was Jonathan Pryce and had golden boobies. (But then, that was Steven Moffat too... must wait with the Steven Moffat talk.) Okay, yeah, so Mara was a bit of a cackling supervillain too, but at least he had the excuse of being a nightmare.
Frontios I had completely forgotten that I even owned, and when I saw it, I realized why. It was boring. It was so boring I read the newspaper while I watched. And then the aliens appeared. All my Moffat loving aside, when your aliens look like Colin, Sophie and Laura did in Friends Like These, only with added bug-heads, you have a bit of a credibility problem.
And then there's the TV movie (which I haven't yet finished)... Oh dear. Lesson number one about cackling supervillains: they do not improve by having glowy green eyes and being played by Eric Roberts.
I liked the Asian kid, to the point where I started wondering if I had somehow subconsciously based Chen Li in the Birthdayverse off him even though I didn't remember that he existed at the time. Paul McGann was a bit too wet blanket-y for my liking (he reminded me in a rather unfortunate way of Gregory Peck in Spellbound) and Grace was... is there a way to say "too American" that doesn't make it sound like an insult?
Anyway. It looked better than the old Five episodes, but it was a whole lot worse. All in all, I wouldn't mind watching some more old Who, with Peter Davison or whoever, and I'm really, really grateful that this show was the one getting made and not the planned American one with Paul McGann, because brrrr!
And now for the new eps.
Giving people a chance to leave if they're American and don't want spoilers.
Before I let my fancrush roam free, some quick thoughts on the eps that weren't written by Moffat:
Dalek really went overboard with the melodrama, but I got misty-eyed anyway. Father's Day had me downright crying, though only a little (no Hole of the World or Brokeback Mountain bawling by eyes out, fortunately). The Long Game was so-so - I didn't like the monster - but Cathica was very pretty. I wish she could have come along. Adam was a twat; as boyfriends go, I prefer Mickey.
Whew! Time to indulge.
For some reason, The Empty Child didn't scare me, though it scared Padma. (Which made me gloat a bit, since she's so unaffected by the mushy emotional stuff that gets the better of me.) I suspect it might have been because I was so thoroughly spoiled: I knew there would be a happy ending, that Jamie wasn't really evil, and that all the gasmask-heads would get well again. Kind of takes the scariness away.
But it was still very interesting to see Moffat do horror scenes, since that's one genre I haven't seen him do before. Suspense, yes. Drama, yes. Strange, bordering-on-scifi-stuff, yes. Comedy, obviously. But not horror. He managed it very well, I think, and I suspect it's his gift for timing that helps, as well as building a scene so that you know what will happen, what has to happen (Jamie in "his room"), but it still doesn't take away the effect.
Jack's scene in the space ship as he thought he was dying gave me major flashbacks to The Last Word. Well, apart from the "See if I come here again" line, which obviously gave me flashbacks to Love and War instead. He and Spike aren't that similar (though close enough that the icon works *g* - and by the way it's not meant as an insult), but that humour/panic/resignation mix works really well for both of them.
I must say, though, I'd expected to like Jack slightly more after all that haussing you guys've been doing. He was a good character, I'm happy to see more of him, but I'm not in love with him like I am with Nine and to some extent Rose. Maybe it'll come in time, I don't know. He was a bit too pretty and smooth to really work for me. (And again with the risk of sounding anti-American, but wow I wasn't prepared for that accent. I mean, there's American, and then there's... really American.)
And I'm now sort of disappointed that he's going to be on Torchwood instead of more Doctor Who, since what I liked the most about him was his interactions with Rose and the Doctor... especially the Doctor. (If you guys have any fics, now would be a good time to tell me.) Adored the "who looks at a screwdriver..." line, and the banana switch was another very Moffat-y situation. I half waited for the Doctor's next line to be, "You think that's clever - check your underwear." :-)
Oh, and the unexpected phone of course... how much more Press Gang can you get? *grin*
There weren't quite so many specific things reminding me of Coupling - Jack has certain similarities with both Jane and Patrick, and there's the metaphorical sex talk, but I think that's about it.
I don't think I can detail every time I sort of half-smiled to myself and went, "that's so Moffaty." It kind of happened a lot. (Am re-reading the transcript now and going "yep, that's his sense of humour all right" at pretty much every joke.) I love the way he can balance the serious and the funny so that the jokes don't feel tacked on and the drama not schmaltzy.
One thing I really liked about this episode is that there were no villains - not counting the Germans, who never showed up in person. Jack made a mistake, Jamie was looking for his mummy, and the nanogenes weren't sentient. Ordinary human failings with enormous consequences. (Coming to think of it, that happened quite a bit on Press Gang too.) It was very sympathetic. The story was logical (for this kind of show), which means that the happy ending felt quite logical too.
To mention someone else who deserved kudos: Nancy was really loveable. It would have been nice to see more of her. And the kid actors were great too - Jamie, of course, but the others as well. You know how I feel about the general quality of kid actors. These were really natural, and I liked that.
All in all a fabulous double ep, and it's not all due to one man. ;-)