nuWho begins

[avevale_intelligencer]

And it would take a lot more than that to dent my bonhomie. However, herewith the obligatory grump:

Point one: he is not Spencer Tracy, and she is not Katherine Hepburn. Just thought I ought to clear that up, since there seems to be some confusion. He could be Jim Dale and she could be Joan Sims playing it common. If we stretch a point.

Aaaaaawwww, cute little fubsy creatures to distract us from the Plot That Makes Absolutely No Sense. They'll be going straight to plush toy then. I suppose it beats the plushy ebola virus. I remember when a show not unlike this was not entirely written for the benefit of the merchandising department.

Kudos, I suppose if I must, to RTD for including characters of divergent body shape, and for restraint in not (a) making them the villains, or (b) killing more than one on-screen. That's a change. About bloody time, one might say. Any deaths that do occur are, of course, either the Doctor's or Donna's fault. Gods forbid we should have a hero.

And once again he have the TARDIS making like a helicopter and flying through the air. If they showed an RAF Sea King burrowing into the earth, or an ocean liner being towed down the high street by four horses, there might be questions asked.

Ah well. At least this addiction isn't killing me.

Comments

[inamac.livejournal.com]

Pretty much what I thought. Especially about the TARDIS in flight stuff. Not that I was paying much attention.

Lil came in towards the end, took one look at the adipose, and remarked "Oh, bald Tribbles!"

Clearly we are never going to get a serious SF series from the BBC ever again. *sob*

[pink-sweater-uk.livejournal.com]

In all fairness, of the two deaths that we get here, one is inadvertently Donna's fault, and the Doc tries all that he can to save Miss Foster.

However, everything else that you say is spot-on.

And that seemingly endless sequence of silent, overplayed (especially by Tate) gurning is one of the most cringeworthy scenes that nuWho has foisted on us yet. Right up there with, well, the Doc and Donna pootling along on Segways and laughing like idiots.

And - as I've said - apart from Bernard Cribbins, it was bloody awful. Ah well. At least Russ Boy is setting up his Big Plot early this year.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Having endangered her in the first place, along with all her victims. It's made pretty clear that, if not for his interference, the plan would have run smoothly and all that would have happened as far as Earth is concerned is that some people would have lost some weight. RTD likes to make the Doctor the bad guy.

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

I've decided - I think you ascribe too much thought to RTD. I don't think he purposefully made the Dr the bad guy - I just don't think he thought it through. In fact, I don't think he's thought much through since the beginning of NuWho. I'm convinced that the crapness occurs in much the same way as spelling errors in Jared's homework - he knows better, he can DO better, but at the end of the day, he doesn't care too much, would rather be watching Japanese anime and knows that at a pinch, it'll do as it is, even if the teacher gets a bit cross and gives him a C minus.

In other news, Jared was heard to utter the words, "Hurrah! William Hartnell!!!" upon turning over to BBC4, and stayed entranced until I sent him off to bed at 9.20pm! Boy's got taste :-)

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I don't know--you may be right, but it has seemed to me from the beginning that despite his much-publicised fanboy love of real Who, he really didn't like it all that much, and part of what we're seeing is the working out of a forty-year-old grudge. I think you're definitely right that he's a lazy writer as well, though. Being one myself, I know the signs.

Jared wins at Doctor Who appreciation. :)

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I think you're right. "Don't ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetance." I haven't seen his actual scripts, but assuming that they are similar to the end product most of the episodes seem to be like some of the less-good fan-fiction I've read, together with a bad case of "OMG I can actually meet celebrities and have them work for me!"

(I now have an image of RTD watching anime instead of doing his DW homework and getting told off by his teacher *g*.)

I was rather confused by the Hartnell series -- for some reason I remembered it as being in colour. Impossible, since not only was it made in B&W but we only had a B&W TV...

[armb.livejournal.com]

> all that would have happened ... some people would have lost some weight

Given that the scheme was illegal enough for both Nanny and the parents to be prepared to kill to cover it up, there could have been unexplained dangers to the host population.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

But (at the risk of overthinking something very slight) any reprisals to the host population by the authorities would have been out of the question for the same reason that the original crime was a crime. Remember the Judoon had to move Martha's hospital off Earth, at (probably) enormous expense, to get at one fugitive who was living there--and they were probably exceeding their authority at that. If the Adiposian (yuk) ship and the babies had been already back in space, and Nanny had been either with them or, more likely, killed anyway, I put it to you, members of the jury--ahem, sorry, got carried away a bit--it seems to me that the population of Earth would have been left alone. No harm, no foul, as far as humanity was concerned. If not for the Doctor.

And if you doubt that this repeated pattern is deliberate on RTD's part, look at Clive's speech in "Rose." That's how RTD sees the hero of his series.

[armb.livejournal.com]

I wasn't thinking of reprisals. I was thinking more of "actually some of the hosts will die of unmentioned side effects if the plan proceeds as planned, but it's only a few thousand, and they are only earthlings".
Otherwise why not try the "no harm no foul" argument on the Doctor and Donna, instead of trying to kill them?
Of course a better writer might have hinted at such dangers if they were supposed to exist. But a better writer might have more credible aliens than the Adiposans - after all, if they can convert other tissue, why not have them convert fat into something that could actually walk, rather than rejects from a lard advert?
(But if Nanny would have been killed anyway had the plan worked, that's only one death, due to Donna before she met up with the Doctor, unless you want to blame her investigation on meeting the Doctor earlier (which is valid, but getting tenuous).)

[aunty_marion]

Somewhat ... tripe-ish. Oh well. It's light entertainment for Saturday evenings, I suppose. Better than Coronation Street. (Marginally...)

However, I have taped the first three episodes of Dr. Who: The Daleks off BBC4. Ahhhhh... The tall blond Thals were just as handsome as I remembered. Much better.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the Countess wasn't keen, so I'll have to sneak the DVD in when she's otherwise occupied. :)

[patriciamc.livejournal.com]

Quick scan not really wanting to take in any details, we probably won't get this nuhu until, mmm, next year?

We've only just finished watching Life on Mars.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Sorry. That was why the cut-tag. I left out a lot of it, though, so hopefully you won't be too spoiled, and I shall bear in mind to keep it minimal from now on.

Oh, and there's a guy named Simon bar Jonas at the door wants a word about your icon... :)

[patriciamc.livejournal.com]

No, not at all spoilt for me, it's all good, I didn't look. Well, only a little and then I wiped my memory (who are you again? jes jokin). Appreciate the lj cut, and I knew the hazard of taking a peek when I did it. Putting the word 'spoilers' in the subject line works too.

Amazing what you learn on the web, Petros, the name given by Jesus to Simon bar Jonas or Shimon Bar-Yonas, aka Peter the Rock, and a fisher of men. He's at the door? Please tell him I gave at the office.

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

I gave up part way through. I'll try again next week and if that is as bad then this will join torchwood in the "could have been good but turned out to be crap file".

[placeofhonour.livejournal.com]

Good good, looks like me and His Grumpiness did the right thing by arranging to curl up on the sofa and watch someting completely different, then.

Nu-Who has just lost these two members of its audience...

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"I remember when a show not unlike this was not entirely written for the benefit of the merchandising department."

Except for the unfortunate business with the Quarks, of course. Oh, and before them, the Mechanoids. =:o}

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

To stray twice in the first ten years isn't too bad a record.

[pink-sweater-uk.livejournal.com]

The mighty Andrew Rilstone has an excellent, relevant, and very lengthy entry on his blog which is well worth a read:

http://www.andrewrilstone.blogspot.com/

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

He does indeed, and thank you for that link.

Took him a while to notice, mind. I came to several of the conclusions he reaches quite early on in season one of nuWho. To me the entire three years so far have been a spirited attempt to squander forty years of emotional capital, and the only reason it isn't all gone is that there was so very much of it.

I realised something today. It was one of them piffany things.

Classic Who = Round The Horne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_the_Horne).

nuWho = Stop Messing About (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Messing_About).

It works, I think. Our Doctor was Kenneth Horne, the central figure around whom everything happened, the raison d'etre of the show. He was never simply a straight man, but he had the gravitas to hold everything in balance. This one is Kenneth Williams, just another of the actors. He hasn't got the weight to sustain the central position, and since no-one has if he hasn't, there's nothing for events to revolve around. The only reason it keeps going at all is the sheer speed at which it runs; it doesn't dare stop, or it would fly apart completely.

So, going on relative running times and multiplying up, that would mean we might have as much as two more seasons of nuWho after the gap year. Personally, I doubt it'll last that long before flying to pieces, but you never know...