Reviews | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
List: |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Aside from the emotional finale in Doomsday, I don't remember the last Doctor Who episode that had me rewinding back to scenes multiple times and still experience the same thrill I got when I first watched them. Filters: Series 3/29 Tenth Doctor Television | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The serious amount of hype from the production team for this episode has ultimately served to be its undoing for me. No episode could have lived up to the 'scariest episode yet' tag and completely fulfilled the brief of being 'Doctor-Lite'. In the end it was a good episode, where expectations for it to perform were unfeasibly high, but I do think it suffered from the lack of the Doctor and Martha dynamic and relied on surrogate companions that you needed more time with to develop the necessary emotional connections. Filters: Series 3/29 Tenth Doctor Television | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Season 3 has been a bit of a let-down for me. Filters: Series 3/29 Tenth Doctor Television | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Blink is what is called by the production team as a "double banking" episode. These episodes have limited parts for the regular actors in order for the production team to crank out an extra story. One of these a year is now the norm for Doctor Who (and Torchwood it seems.) The tradition of stories told from a different perspective than the main characters is not new in science fiction television being employed by the X-Files (The Lone Gunmen, Michael McKeon's Area 51 episode) to Buffy The Vampire Slayer (Andrew's Vampyre movie...for the purposes of this review its science fiction) just to name two. The double banking procedure for the Doctor Who production now has turned the "outsider" episode in to a habit. Filters: Series 3/29 Tenth Doctor Television | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
We were promised a roller coaster ride for this season of Doctor Who and ten episodes into it, it truly has been a season of stark quality contrast rather than a string of wonderful memorable episodes that go beyond their pure entertainment value .At one end of the fence you have an episode such as DALEKS IN MANHATTAN/EVOLUTION OF THE DALEKS which you would have assumed would be one of the high points on the roller coaster and it turned out to be a poorly written, Frankenstein of poorly connected thoughts and ideas. BLINK on the other hand, this seasons applauded "Lite" Doctor Who episode had the undesirable feat of needing to rise above last years "LOVE AND MONSTERS", but like the 17 DVD's in Sally Sparrows collection, BLINK had one unique common link with two other modern DOCTOR WHO classics such as THE EMPTY CHILD and GIRL IN THE FIREPLACE that set it in the running break down barriers and experiment with new ideas. Of course the common thread between all these wonderfully written adventures is Steven Moffat who with BLINK cements himself into the DR WHO list of great scriptwriters. Filters: Series 3/29 Tenth Doctor Television | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I made no secret of it, I hated Love & Monsters. I don't use the word "hate" lightly, I genuinely hate the episode even twelve months on. Filters: Series 3/29 Tenth Doctor Television | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG BEST EPISODE OF THE SEASON HANDS DOWN. Filters: Series 3/29 Tenth Doctor Television | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I have strange conceptions of what Doctor Who should be. I believe it should be about the Doctor, his companions, his adventures. This is one of the problems I had when we started getting novels back in the mid-1990's in which the Doctor was tangential to the action: they ceased being about the Doctor, or his companions, or in fact anything to do with him, but seemed instead to be diversions into universes the writer wanted to piggyback onto the one we love. There's nothing wrong with that, per se, except I refer you to my original comment. Filters: Series 3/29 Tenth Doctor Television | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Or 'What I Did When I Ran Out of Original Ideas, by Steven Moffatt', as he recycles chunks of the plot from his short story 'What I Did On My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow' from the Doctor Who Annual 2006. Given that this comes straight after an adaptation of 'Human Nature', it does rather suggest that the writing team is scrabbling around for ideas. Filters: Series 3/29 Tenth Doctor Television | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Before pressing on with my thoughts on this week's offering, I'd like to just backtrack briefly to Family of Blood and, for those few out there who could really give a fig, slightly readjust my verdict: I think I was maybe a touch overly critical of said episode on the hindsight of a second viewing, but this was partly due to the almost overwhelming promise of Human Nature. That certainly was a very hard act to follow, and in many ways Family of Blood didn't do that badly - excepting my numerous criticisms of it last week, which I still stand by. I now think that on the strength of just one scene alone, the beautifully choreographed scenes of the scarecrows being mown down by lachrymose schoolboys (right up there, and even beyond, the opening scenes of Genesis of the Daleks for instance), which is also a kind of rejoinder to The Lazarus Experiment's allusions to Eliot's 'The Hollow Men' ('Not with a bang but a whimper - Eliot' - The Doctor; bear in mind also the poet's words: We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men/Leaning together/Headpiece filled with straw...'), I would upgrade my rather churlish rating of 6.8 to a far more deserving 8/10. Yes, quite a leap, but bearing in mind Family of Blood holds up well to a second viewing - in spite of a few little irritating/pretentious aspects - and also begs a third or fourth, along with Human Nature, means it is truly worthy of the better stories of the old cannon. It will be, I'm sure, the hit of this season critically, and of the entire new series so far. Filters: Series 3/29 Tenth Doctor Television | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast. Faster than you could believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink. Good luck!" Filters: Series 3/29 Tenth Doctor Television | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
It's really annoying. A few years ago I had a dream in which a time traveller from the future has a love affair with a young criminal, and repeatedly rescues her from arrest by using details of her exact whereabouts found in her diary he picked up years after the event at a jumble sale (seriously!). I always thought this would make a great short film, but never got around to writing it. Seems I never will now. Filters: Series 3/29 Tenth Doctor Television | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Blink marked the return of the popular Steven Moffat with his third script for Doctor Who, making him and Russell T Davies the only writers to have penned stories for all three series of 21st-century Doctor Who (and both will be back for Series 4). Filters: Series 3/29 Tenth Doctor Television |