Fear Factor 5!
"Bananas are good," says the Doctor, and gets a big laugh from Samuel. "He's right, you know, they are," says Adam, "they've got potassium." His mum looks at him proudly.
I love the 'Fear Factor' that BBC Cult have got going for each Doctor Who episode. They do non-spoilerific ones before the episodes air, then go back to fill them in with more detail afterwards. I think it's my favourite thing on the site at the minute.
Loved the last two-parter. Loved, loved, loved.
Before the show started, I was wary of giving Steven Moffat a two parter. He wrote The Curse of Fatal Death, a mini Comic Relief skit back in 1999. It was, obviously, a Doctor Who spoof, and it featured Rowan Atkinson as the Doctor, Julia Sawalha as a random companion, and Johnathon Pryce as the Master. The Doctor was also, incidentally, played by Richard E Grant, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent and Joanna Lumley.
And see, 'The Curse of Fatal Death' was a bit crap, really. It was alright, as Comic Relief skits go. But... it had farting gags. And it had an overly sincere speech from the Doctor and his Companion, as if Moffat was trying to write a manifesto for Why The Show Was Great. It was the kind of sincere that stopped just after it got your toes curling.
To put it bluntly, all the things I was afraid Moffat would do, are those things that Russell T Davies has ended up doing himself.
And yet 'The Empty Child' and 'The Doctor Dances' were perfect. Or near as dammit. I expected to hate Captain Jack, having been irritated irrationally by Barrowman's stint on 'Live and Kicking!' as a youngster.
But I didn't. I actually really liked him. I really liked the way he bickered with the Doctor; I liked it for the way it was written and I liked it for the way it was performed. I really, really liked it, and no matter how many times I say or write that, I will never quite get over how pleasantly surprised I am by it all.
I expected to sink into my chair with embarrassed horror as they shoved a bisexual character into the show. But I didn't. I really, really liked it. It was played pitch-perfect, and not once did it grate, seem inappropriate, seem overly gratuitous, or seem anything that could have been in any way irritating.
It was, in short, quite right.
And yet now we have three more RTD episodes to look forward to. And the RTD episodes to date are the ones that I've felt most 'meh' about. This time, he's doing the farting gags. He's writing the overly sincere speeches about how great the Doctor and Rose are; the speeches that come off as being just about on the wrong side of cringeworthy.
This is RTD, who wrote a Doctor Who novel featuring drug dealers, gay sex, stillborn psychic children, ancient Gallifreyan weapons bursting through dimensional cracks and out of peoples' heads...
And now he does the ones with the farting gags.
Funny old show.
I love the 'Fear Factor' that BBC Cult have got going for each Doctor Who episode. They do non-spoilerific ones before the episodes air, then go back to fill them in with more detail afterwards. I think it's my favourite thing on the site at the minute.
Loved the last two-parter. Loved, loved, loved.
Before the show started, I was wary of giving Steven Moffat a two parter. He wrote The Curse of Fatal Death, a mini Comic Relief skit back in 1999. It was, obviously, a Doctor Who spoof, and it featured Rowan Atkinson as the Doctor, Julia Sawalha as a random companion, and Johnathon Pryce as the Master. The Doctor was also, incidentally, played by Richard E Grant, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent and Joanna Lumley.
And see, 'The Curse of Fatal Death' was a bit crap, really. It was alright, as Comic Relief skits go. But... it had farting gags. And it had an overly sincere speech from the Doctor and his Companion, as if Moffat was trying to write a manifesto for Why The Show Was Great. It was the kind of sincere that stopped just after it got your toes curling.
To put it bluntly, all the things I was afraid Moffat would do, are those things that Russell T Davies has ended up doing himself.
And yet 'The Empty Child' and 'The Doctor Dances' were perfect. Or near as dammit. I expected to hate Captain Jack, having been irritated irrationally by Barrowman's stint on 'Live and Kicking!' as a youngster.
But I didn't. I actually really liked him. I really liked the way he bickered with the Doctor; I liked it for the way it was written and I liked it for the way it was performed. I really, really liked it, and no matter how many times I say or write that, I will never quite get over how pleasantly surprised I am by it all.
I expected to sink into my chair with embarrassed horror as they shoved a bisexual character into the show. But I didn't. I really, really liked it. It was played pitch-perfect, and not once did it grate, seem inappropriate, seem overly gratuitous, or seem anything that could have been in any way irritating.
It was, in short, quite right.
And yet now we have three more RTD episodes to look forward to. And the RTD episodes to date are the ones that I've felt most 'meh' about. This time, he's doing the farting gags. He's writing the overly sincere speeches about how great the Doctor and Rose are; the speeches that come off as being just about on the wrong side of cringeworthy.
This is RTD, who wrote a Doctor Who novel featuring drug dealers, gay sex, stillborn psychic children, ancient Gallifreyan weapons bursting through dimensional cracks and out of peoples' heads...
And now he does the ones with the farting gags.
Funny old show.