(no subject)
The Waters of Mars was...surprisingly not bad. I'm not a Doctor Who fan for the most part, but I watch it as one of the few things that isn't Bargain Hunt or Holby City that the BBC is pouring money into. At least bad sci-fi is an improvement on no sci-fi. However, The Waters of Mars was intriguing, morally challenging (more so than Dr Who usually is, anyway) and set up an interesting dilemma for the Christmas special. The formula was same-old same-old 1) space station with a small number of engineers etc. to facilitate not hiring many extras and 2) zombies (OK, so you're right, Lizy). The 'water' theme was interesting but really incoherent at times. Yup, that's magic water that can break through steel in a matter of minutes. The 'difficult moral choice' TM was not exactly earth-shattering (though nicely executed by David Tennant) but I was interested to see if they'd carry it through. It's nice that for his final few episodes, the Doctor got to be heroic, but the consequences of his heroism were so much more interesting than the heroism itself. A much darker Doctor paving the way for a happier fluffier one in the next series, perhaps?
Better than Children of Earth imho, in that it had a generally more even level of interesting things happening, but the tension of that miniseries was all but absent. In Children of Earth, I was on tenterhooks waiting to see what would happen next. In Waters of Mars, they substituted any kind of explanation of events for a sort of muddled slightly Lovecraftian feel. Good, but not for the plotline.
Better than Children of Earth imho, in that it had a generally more even level of interesting things happening, but the tension of that miniseries was all but absent. In Children of Earth, I was on tenterhooks waiting to see what would happen next. In Waters of Mars, they substituted any kind of explanation of events for a sort of muddled slightly Lovecraftian feel. Good, but not for the plotline.