The varous media parodies were limp, unimaginative stuff that would disgrace a particularly poor "Judge Dredd" strip, and had all of the humour of a truly duff Mad magazine script. Not to mention being the sort of smug, self-indulgent toss that you'd find in the worst of the Virgin New Adventures books. It was sub-panto crap that made stage play "The Ultimate Adventure" look good.
The Daleks. Oh how are the mighty fallen. The once-proud and ruthless conquerors and schemers, who planned to rip the cores out of planets and destroy Time itself, now plot to rule the Universe by...sponsoring naff game shows and reality TV. It's enough to make even strong men shiver. And as for sparing Rose's life to take her hostage - come off it. That's the sort of thing that a Cyberman would do. A Dalek is supposed to be so arrogant - "one Dalek can destroy all" - that it wouldn't NEED to take hostages. It would just merrily exterminate them all.
And Eccleston's big speech at the end had all of the fire and intensity of Walter the Softy. When any other Doctor - even McCoy - squared off to the Daleks, you could HEAR the fury and defiance in their voices, and they rang true. Eccleston merely came across as a posturing pub bully.
This sort of thing can work well as a 25-minute piss-take (and I'm sorry, calling it "camp" is not defence enough, it needs to be good AS WELL AS camp), with the right cast and writer. I believe it was called "The Ratings War", and starred Colin Baker as the Doctor and Toby Longworth as Beep the Meep, and was written by Steve Lyons. And was BRILLIANT.
This, on the other hand, was tawdry, smug, vapid TOSS. And "The Parting Of The Ways" is going to have to be truly brilliant to atone for it.
Posted elsewhere already, but here's my two penn'orth...
The varous media parodies were limp, unimaginative stuff that would disgrace a particularly poor "Judge Dredd" strip, and had all of the humour of a truly duff Mad magazine script. Not to mention being the sort of smug, self-indulgent toss that you'd find in the worst of the Virgin New Adventures books. It was sub-panto crap that made stage play "The Ultimate Adventure" look good.
The Daleks. Oh how are the mighty fallen. The once-proud and ruthless conquerors and schemers, who planned to rip the cores out of planets and destroy Time itself, now plot to rule the Universe by...sponsoring naff game shows and reality TV. It's enough to make even strong men shiver. And as for sparing Rose's life to take her hostage - come off it. That's the sort of thing that a Cyberman would do. A Dalek is supposed to be so arrogant - "one Dalek can destroy all" - that it wouldn't NEED to take hostages. It would just merrily exterminate them all.
And Eccleston's big speech at the end had all of the fire and intensity of Walter the Softy. When any other Doctor - even McCoy - squared off to the Daleks, you could HEAR the fury and defiance in their voices, and they rang true. Eccleston merely came across as a posturing pub bully.
This sort of thing can work well as a 25-minute piss-take (and I'm sorry, calling it "camp" is not defence enough, it needs to be good AS WELL AS camp), with the right cast and writer. I believe it was called "The Ratings War", and starred Colin Baker as the Doctor and Toby Longworth as Beep the Meep, and was written by Steve Lyons. And was BRILLIANT.
This, on the other hand, was tawdry, smug, vapid TOSS. And "The Parting Of The Ways" is going to have to be truly brilliant to atone for it.