Doctor Who - The Impossible Astronaut
I have real life stuff to post about later, but right now I'm going to talk about Doctor Who.
I was at my parents' house over the weekend, which meant I had access to BBC America (I have no cable at all at my apartment). I downloaded anyway. I did watch the BBCA broadcast with my brother, but I was sort of ridiculously excited about the show coming back and didn't want to wait or put up with the commercials. From past experience I know the commercials tend to destroy the flow of the episode and I didn't want to be put off by that.
(the commercials were awful, by the way. How do commercials every five minutes constitute "limited commercial interruption?" Also, the episode was only about 43 minutes long, including the credits and next time trailer [based on the file I downloaded], which meant there really wasn't limited commercial interruption since the episode was about the same length as any regular US drama. Thus, no need to cut down on commercial time to fit it all in.)
Okay, the actual episode. I really loved it. I did feel a little bit bereft at the end, because I felt like I hadn't actually seen anything before the episode came to an end. But that's the thing about two-parters. The first part is generally set-up, with the payoff in the second part. So I'm not going to say much about this story until I've seen the whole thing.
But I loved the feel of the episode, the interaction and banter between the characters (so many great quotable lines), and the X-Files-y feel. I really like that DW tackled that particular "genre" and put its own DW spin on to it. Great stuff.
It definitely felt a little strange for an opening episode, which from what I've read was deliberate. I think I was a little put off at first that the Doctor was mostly sidelined in his own show, but again, that seems to be the point. The entire plot revolves around him so completely, but he (at least his present self) has to be kept mostly in the dark about it. It's a different perspective than what we usually get, and I always appreciate it when shows play around with their format.
I have questions and speculations, but I think I'm going to wait until the second part to see how this particular adventure wraps up. I'm sure there will still be lots of questions at the end of the second part, since there seems to be a lot of season-long arcs being set up here, but I'd rather at least see the second part of this story before I start dumping speculation all over the place.
Of course I did screencaps. Download them here.
I was at my parents' house over the weekend, which meant I had access to BBC America (I have no cable at all at my apartment). I downloaded anyway. I did watch the BBCA broadcast with my brother, but I was sort of ridiculously excited about the show coming back and didn't want to wait or put up with the commercials. From past experience I know the commercials tend to destroy the flow of the episode and I didn't want to be put off by that.
(the commercials were awful, by the way. How do commercials every five minutes constitute "limited commercial interruption?" Also, the episode was only about 43 minutes long, including the credits and next time trailer [based on the file I downloaded], which meant there really wasn't limited commercial interruption since the episode was about the same length as any regular US drama. Thus, no need to cut down on commercial time to fit it all in.)
Okay, the actual episode. I really loved it. I did feel a little bit bereft at the end, because I felt like I hadn't actually seen anything before the episode came to an end. But that's the thing about two-parters. The first part is generally set-up, with the payoff in the second part. So I'm not going to say much about this story until I've seen the whole thing.
But I loved the feel of the episode, the interaction and banter between the characters (so many great quotable lines), and the X-Files-y feel. I really like that DW tackled that particular "genre" and put its own DW spin on to it. Great stuff.
It definitely felt a little strange for an opening episode, which from what I've read was deliberate. I think I was a little put off at first that the Doctor was mostly sidelined in his own show, but again, that seems to be the point. The entire plot revolves around him so completely, but he (at least his present self) has to be kept mostly in the dark about it. It's a different perspective than what we usually get, and I always appreciate it when shows play around with their format.
I have questions and speculations, but I think I'm going to wait until the second part to see how this particular adventure wraps up. I'm sure there will still be lots of questions at the end of the second part, since there seems to be a lot of season-long arcs being set up here, but I'd rather at least see the second part of this story before I start dumping speculation all over the place.
Of course I did screencaps. Download them here.