Don't Drink the Water
Along with the rest of my American brethren who don't do the torrent thing, I got to see The Waters of Mars this past Friday night, on BBC America. I don't have much to say about it yet, really...like so many of Russell Davies' stories, there wasn't so much a plot as there was a series of things that happen, to hang the character development on. A pretty strong development, too, although the Doctor seemed to reverse himself pretty quickly. Might've been interesting to see him run several episodes with that attitude, but that's not to be. If I'd had to wait a month or more for the next episode, I'd've analyzed it more, but I don't have to! It's such a bizarre feeling, being caught up with U.K. transmission, and knowing I'm only going to be about 30 hours behind them on "The End of Time" as well. What with Christmas stuff going on, I can probably avoid spoilers for that long.
I gotta say, watching it on BBC America just feels right (watching it on BBC America in HD would be even better, but I can't have everything). I'm grateful to Sci-Fi for showing it the last few years, but BBC America is where the show belongs. Even though it had commercials added for the American market, I used the DVR, and was able to skip through them. But they really made the best of a bad situation with them...each commercial was proceeded by the "cliffhanger scream" sound effect from the original series, followed by a few seconds of theme music. The commercials even came at appropriately cliffhanger-y moments, which was a really nice touch. I've said before that growing up in the U.S., where the classic series episodes were edited together into movies, you never really felt a Doctor Who cliffhanger, or even noticed it, which must be pretty odd to contemplate, from a U.K. perspective. I enjoyed getting to experience that.
I gotta say, watching it on BBC America just feels right (watching it on BBC America in HD would be even better, but I can't have everything). I'm grateful to Sci-Fi for showing it the last few years, but BBC America is where the show belongs. Even though it had commercials added for the American market, I used the DVR, and was able to skip through them. But they really made the best of a bad situation with them...each commercial was proceeded by the "cliffhanger scream" sound effect from the original series, followed by a few seconds of theme music. The commercials even came at appropriately cliffhanger-y moments, which was a really nice touch. I've said before that growing up in the U.S., where the classic series episodes were edited together into movies, you never really felt a Doctor Who cliffhanger, or even noticed it, which must be pretty odd to contemplate, from a U.K. perspective. I enjoyed getting to experience that.