Doctor Who Prequel and Star Trek Trailer...
So the first little prequel to The Bells of St John is out and embedded right here!
Three things:
1. Cute, but predictable. I’m not sure whether this is meant to be a meeting of Significant Importance which contains Important Clues for the future storylines, or whether it’s just a one in ten million billion chance that the Doctor just happened to be sitting on that exact swing when Clara came to sit down beside him, but - hey, time will tell.
2. Kids don’t talk like that. They just don’t. I probably spend more time with kids than I do with adults (yikes, that’s a suddenly depressing thought) and I’ve come to realize that I very rarely see them accurately portrayed in television/films. They usually come in one of two flavours: the cute, precocious, wiser-than-their-years adorable troublemaker, or the snotty, obnoxious, don’t-need-your-help irritating troublemaker that the writer THINKS is cute, precocious and wiser-than-their years. At least this Clara falls into the first category, but honestly - the odds of any child asking a stranger: “are you lonely?” is up there with me finding the secret to nuclear fission.
3. So, this is now the fourth companion Moffat has written that the Doctor meets as a child. We’ve had Reinette and Amy who first met the Doctor as little girls (before becoming quasi-love interests for him as adults) and Melody whose timeline makes it impossible for me to unravel exactly when and where they first met, but was certainly brainwashed at a young age into becoming utterly obsessed with him. See #1 and cross your fingers that this prequel is in fact just a one in ten million billion chance that doesn’t involve any sort of precocious crush on Clara’s side.
Oh, and the episode trailer itself:
But I’m looking forward to this episode, for in a manner of speaking this will be my very first Doctor Who episode. That is, it’ll be the first one I’ve seen as it airs on television, having now got the rest of the series under by belt.
I didn’t start watching Doctor Who until years after the new series started, and by the time I finally caught up with the DVDs and the fandom, I had missed out on several years’ worth of hype, squee, meta, speculation and shipping wars (though I don’t mind having dodged that last one).
So now for the first time, I’m watching Doctor Who with the rest of the world. I’ve finally caught up, and since I’ve heard it said that “your” Doctor is the one that you watch first, it stands to reason that (if that’s true) then Matt Smith is “my” daughter and Clara Oswin “my” companion. It’s like the start of a brand new show!
***
And a new international trailer for Star Trek: Into Darkness is out, which you’ve probably already seen, but I’m putting it up for future reference. I was a bad daughter this year and never got around to getting my father a birthday present, so this comes at an opportune time - I can get dad tickets and tell him this is what I had planned all along.
Not the best trailer ever, as it's your fairly standard collection of portentous voice-overs, characters staring ominously off-camera and exploding/crashing/high-speed chase shots of the Enterprise, but I'm looking forward to this one. I think the first prequel caught everyone by surprise at just how much fun it was.
I have a friend who is a total Trekkie (or Trekker...?) and I’m pretty sure he has the entire original series on DVD, which I’ve been wanting to watch for ages now, just to see what it was all really like back then. I’m well aware of how iconic all these characters are, but I’ve never actually seen a proper episode (or movie) with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in the lead roles. Rather scandalous really,
Oh, and Benedict Cumberbatch is in this. Look, I have nothing against the guy, but I’m beginning to feel a little oversaturated by him. Which is odd, because I haven’t actually seen him in anything but Sherlock (and some random Miss Marple mystery) but the guy still somehow seems to be absolutely everywhere at the moment, complete with the usual fandom baggage. Calling it now, no matter how depraved this character’s crimes and personality ends up being, fandom will find a way to make him a poor misunderstood anti-hero in need of some tender loving care.
But hey, if he’s a bad guy here, maybe I’ll at least get to watch him die!
Click to viewThree things:
1. Cute, but predictable. I’m not sure whether this is meant to be a meeting of Significant Importance which contains Important Clues for the future storylines, or whether it’s just a one in ten million billion chance that the Doctor just happened to be sitting on that exact swing when Clara came to sit down beside him, but - hey, time will tell.
2. Kids don’t talk like that. They just don’t. I probably spend more time with kids than I do with adults (yikes, that’s a suddenly depressing thought) and I’ve come to realize that I very rarely see them accurately portrayed in television/films. They usually come in one of two flavours: the cute, precocious, wiser-than-their-years adorable troublemaker, or the snotty, obnoxious, don’t-need-your-help irritating troublemaker that the writer THINKS is cute, precocious and wiser-than-their years. At least this Clara falls into the first category, but honestly - the odds of any child asking a stranger: “are you lonely?” is up there with me finding the secret to nuclear fission.
3. So, this is now the fourth companion Moffat has written that the Doctor meets as a child. We’ve had Reinette and Amy who first met the Doctor as little girls (before becoming quasi-love interests for him as adults) and Melody whose timeline makes it impossible for me to unravel exactly when and where they first met, but was certainly brainwashed at a young age into becoming utterly obsessed with him. See #1 and cross your fingers that this prequel is in fact just a one in ten million billion chance that doesn’t involve any sort of precocious crush on Clara’s side.
Oh, and the episode trailer itself:
But I’m looking forward to this episode, for in a manner of speaking this will be my very first Doctor Who episode. That is, it’ll be the first one I’ve seen as it airs on television, having now got the rest of the series under by belt.
I didn’t start watching Doctor Who until years after the new series started, and by the time I finally caught up with the DVDs and the fandom, I had missed out on several years’ worth of hype, squee, meta, speculation and shipping wars (though I don’t mind having dodged that last one).
So now for the first time, I’m watching Doctor Who with the rest of the world. I’ve finally caught up, and since I’ve heard it said that “your” Doctor is the one that you watch first, it stands to reason that (if that’s true) then Matt Smith is “my” daughter and Clara Oswin “my” companion. It’s like the start of a brand new show!
***
And a new international trailer for Star Trek: Into Darkness is out, which you’ve probably already seen, but I’m putting it up for future reference. I was a bad daughter this year and never got around to getting my father a birthday present, so this comes at an opportune time - I can get dad tickets and tell him this is what I had planned all along.
Not the best trailer ever, as it's your fairly standard collection of portentous voice-overs, characters staring ominously off-camera and exploding/crashing/high-speed chase shots of the Enterprise, but I'm looking forward to this one. I think the first prequel caught everyone by surprise at just how much fun it was.
I have a friend who is a total Trekkie (or Trekker...?) and I’m pretty sure he has the entire original series on DVD, which I’ve been wanting to watch for ages now, just to see what it was all really like back then. I’m well aware of how iconic all these characters are, but I’ve never actually seen a proper episode (or movie) with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy in the lead roles. Rather scandalous really,
Oh, and Benedict Cumberbatch is in this. Look, I have nothing against the guy, but I’m beginning to feel a little oversaturated by him. Which is odd, because I haven’t actually seen him in anything but Sherlock (and some random Miss Marple mystery) but the guy still somehow seems to be absolutely everywhere at the moment, complete with the usual fandom baggage. Calling it now, no matter how depraved this character’s crimes and personality ends up being, fandom will find a way to make him a poor misunderstood anti-hero in need of some tender loving care.
But hey, if he’s a bad guy here, maybe I’ll at least get to watch him die!