avevale_intelligencer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2007-06-17 10:44 am
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2007-06-17 10:44 am
Doctor Who
I have indeed kept watching, and mostly I have refrained from spilling my niggles all over this journal (thank goodness--niggles are so hard to get out of the carpet, it's the little hooks on the ends). So I think I can get away with one post about the currently approaching series end.
It's rather a shame that all the Beeb's attempts to maintain some kind of secrecy about their series endings keep getting blasted out of the water. I hoped there might be some kind of misdirection going on, partly because the only possible "clue" I saw that pointed to Mister Saxon being the Master--the stupid anagram--doesn't work in character terms, indeed doesn't even work in actor terms after this episode, and the name would have been so much more appropriate for the Meddling Monk, another Time Lord who could have survived and an underused character who could have been developed in all sorts of interesting ways.
Ah well. They do what they do. And to all who are wondering how the Master got to regenerate again, I bet I know what the answer is. He's pinched one of the Doctor's. The Master is now the eleventh Doctor. Which means that whenever Tennant gets an offer that pays more, John Wotsisname can take over (lots of angsty drama for whomever is the companion that week). He's playing the Master exactly the way Tennant plays the Doctor anyway. It's not really typecasting, since as far as I can gather the other programme he was in was really just a hospital drama where they concentrated on the patient's hallucinations, and not sf at all.
There were good things. Jack works so much better as irritating sidekick than he does as boss of Torchwood, and Barrowman's energy can cover a multitude of sins. Sir Derek could be good in anything, and it would be nice to believe he was as keen to do the part as they made out in Confidential (but I remember similar quotes about Interim!Doc, so the salt truck has its own parking space round the back). Chantho was nicely imagined, and they used her well. The watch business would have been more effective in a different season from the one in which it was introduced--the longer you leave these things the more the shock when they come back--but the way they've chosen to do this show doesn't allow for any long-term planning like that, and they wrung as much drama out of it as they could with all the flashback flannel and hammering the point home in dialogue. As if we'd had time to forget.
So, not a total whinge. See, I'm trying to be good.
And the big surprise at the end of next episode is apparently the--[STIFLED SQUAWK]
It's rather a shame that all the Beeb's attempts to maintain some kind of secrecy about their series endings keep getting blasted out of the water. I hoped there might be some kind of misdirection going on, partly because the only possible "clue" I saw that pointed to Mister Saxon being the Master--the stupid anagram--doesn't work in character terms, indeed doesn't even work in actor terms after this episode, and the name would have been so much more appropriate for the Meddling Monk, another Time Lord who could have survived and an underused character who could have been developed in all sorts of interesting ways.
Ah well. They do what they do. And to all who are wondering how the Master got to regenerate again, I bet I know what the answer is. He's pinched one of the Doctor's. The Master is now the eleventh Doctor. Which means that whenever Tennant gets an offer that pays more, John Wotsisname can take over (lots of angsty drama for whomever is the companion that week). He's playing the Master exactly the way Tennant plays the Doctor anyway. It's not really typecasting, since as far as I can gather the other programme he was in was really just a hospital drama where they concentrated on the patient's hallucinations, and not sf at all.
There were good things. Jack works so much better as irritating sidekick than he does as boss of Torchwood, and Barrowman's energy can cover a multitude of sins. Sir Derek could be good in anything, and it would be nice to believe he was as keen to do the part as they made out in Confidential (but I remember similar quotes about Interim!Doc, so the salt truck has its own parking space round the back). Chantho was nicely imagined, and they used her well. The watch business would have been more effective in a different season from the one in which it was introduced--the longer you leave these things the more the shock when they come back--but the way they've chosen to do this show doesn't allow for any long-term planning like that, and they wrung as much drama out of it as they could with all the flashback flannel and hammering the point home in dialogue. As if we'd had time to forget.
So, not a total whinge. See, I'm trying to be good.
And the big surprise at the end of next episode is apparently the--[STIFLED SQUAWK]
no subject
I see you didn't watch life on mars, then.
no subject
Incidentally, Life on Mars is not made by the BBC (who therefore had to keep secrets about the same, as they did not own them), while Dr Who is.
no subject
But, having said all that, I'm sure it was very well done (or it wouldn't have been so successful) and I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Life on Mars
I have seen a fairly convincing argument that it made more sense if both the 70s and modern sections of it were being run as simulations on some future computer, and programming bugs were allowing leakage between the two because the same character was being used in both. Which is clearly SFnal, if not what the writers intended.
There will be a new series with a different time-shifted character.