Christmas Doctor Who 2008 - "The Next Doctor"
Nice spectacle, shame about the rest, really.
Good things:
* GIANT CYBERMAN RISING OUT OF THE THAMES AND STOMPING OVER VICTORIAN LONDON! The best thing about the episode by some margin.
* In general, Victorian London yay. The BBC are past masters at this sort of thing, of course.
* The Next Doctor's sonic screwdriver is just a screwdriver! And the TARDIS is a balloon! Hahahaha
* David Morrisey did reasonably well. The plot point over the revelation of his true identity and his tragedy was nicely played.
* Dervla Kirwan played the rather generic villain role she was given well, elevating the rather uninspired writing with some good delivery. They seemed to be toying with some sort of feminist subtext here, but it never went anywhere... one gets the feeling, as often with Russell, that there was more to the character that didn't actually make it into the script.
Indifferent things:
* Velile Tshabalala wasn't really given a lot to do as "Rosita", was she? And her happy ending is that she gets to become a nursemaid?
Bad things:
* Hanging a lampshade on the fact that the history books don't record a giant robot destroying a good portion of the East End isn't the same as actually providing an explanation, Mr. Davies. I might have let this slide if you weren't always so sloppy about this sort of thing.
* They're abducting children in order to... run a power station? I'm sorry, what? Why were the children required when they have at least a dozen Cybermen hanging around twiddling their Cyberthumbs? Or did that plan fail to fulfill the necessary Galactic Evil Quota?
* It's all very neat to have the Doctor use the "TARDIS" hot air balloon for the final confrontation, but it does rather draw attention to the fact that the actual TARDIS a (generally) functional SPACESHIP perfectly capable of aerial flight was hanging around unused on some London street corner.
* Whatever happened to showing a modicum of mercy to the Cybermen, anyway, who lest we forget are meant to be perfectly innocent human beings from a parallel world? Here we were merrily having the non-Doctor and Rosita blow their heads up with laser beams. Kill or be killed, I suppose, but the general wavering throughout the series on precisely how much sympathy we're meant to have for the Cybermen bugs me.
Good things:
* GIANT CYBERMAN RISING OUT OF THE THAMES AND STOMPING OVER VICTORIAN LONDON! The best thing about the episode by some margin.
* In general, Victorian London yay. The BBC are past masters at this sort of thing, of course.
* The Next Doctor's sonic screwdriver is just a screwdriver! And the TARDIS is a balloon! Hahahaha
* David Morrisey did reasonably well. The plot point over the revelation of his true identity and his tragedy was nicely played.
* Dervla Kirwan played the rather generic villain role she was given well, elevating the rather uninspired writing with some good delivery. They seemed to be toying with some sort of feminist subtext here, but it never went anywhere... one gets the feeling, as often with Russell, that there was more to the character that didn't actually make it into the script.
Indifferent things:
* Velile Tshabalala wasn't really given a lot to do as "Rosita", was she? And her happy ending is that she gets to become a nursemaid?
Bad things:
* Hanging a lampshade on the fact that the history books don't record a giant robot destroying a good portion of the East End isn't the same as actually providing an explanation, Mr. Davies. I might have let this slide if you weren't always so sloppy about this sort of thing.
* They're abducting children in order to... run a power station? I'm sorry, what? Why were the children required when they have at least a dozen Cybermen hanging around twiddling their Cyberthumbs? Or did that plan fail to fulfill the necessary Galactic Evil Quota?
* It's all very neat to have the Doctor use the "TARDIS" hot air balloon for the final confrontation, but it does rather draw attention to the fact that the actual TARDIS a (generally) functional SPACESHIP perfectly capable of aerial flight was hanging around unused on some London street corner.
* Whatever happened to showing a modicum of mercy to the Cybermen, anyway, who lest we forget are meant to be perfectly innocent human beings from a parallel world? Here we were merrily having the non-Doctor and Rosita blow their heads up with laser beams. Kill or be killed, I suppose, but the general wavering throughout the series on precisely how much sympathy we're meant to have for the Cybermen bugs me.