New Series of Doctor Who

[Crispin]

Bloody Good Episode. Naturally all the die-hard Doctor Who "fans" are complaining about the fart jokes in the episode, but it really was rather good. The Next Week at the end of the episode really has to go though if you're bloody screening a cliff-hanger episode. Yes, it's a given he'll survive, but still....

Nice to see they're exploring the consequences of companions travelling with the Doctor.
Seems as though I was wrong about the new series of Dr. Who not being in the same continuity of the previous series. Doesn't matter either way though.

[Kotatsu Neko]

I thought this week's was by far the worst so far. Stupid storyline and the effects... well they might have been trying to recreate that old 1980s BBC vibe, or they just had no money. Whatever it was they were absolutely shocking!

Much preferred last week's episode. Didn't like all the family nonsense too. There are plenty of shows that do all that stuff, it really wasn't needed here.

Watched the companion show on BBC3 as usual too. The guy who plays rose's B/F is just as vacant in real life as in the show! And I thought he was acting! I guess you really don't need to be articulate to be an actor then. Maybe he knows the producer or something....!

[MartyG]

The fart jokes were a bit much for sure. The odd one or two maybe, but a dozen or so? Too much, it just became Roy Chubby Brown.

The actual storyline on the otherhand I didn't think was too bad. The double bluff on the alien crash worked quite well.

I do have one pretty major beef though. Of course we know that The Doctor will get out of the tricky situation, but did they really need to spoiler the 2nd part at the end of the ep?

[Tig]

I thought it was pretty entertaining, what with Andrew Marr getting his ears in a flap about the spaceship knocking over Big Ben and all that. The pig in a suit had me laughing for quite a while.

Especially when the dude shot it dead Bang!

At any rate, it was better than the awful 'seance' episode. God that was cringeworthy. We want rubber aliens, not spiritual bollocks.

[Crispin]

There were too many fart jokes, and I didn't really understand why the Doctor said he wasn't going to mess around as it wasn't an invasion and then went and did, as well as abandoning Rose in some sense.

As for the "shocking" special effects, it's British produced sci-fi made by BBC Wales, the shocking special effects are rather welcome as well as being rather expected. It's not as if they can hire ILM to do the special effects, and even they can get it wrong, as witnessed in Star Wars Episode I & II. I think the rubber suits with a modern sprinkling of CGI effects are part of the charm.

I think the "family nonsense" is needed. It tries to take Dr. Who in new directions, as well as being quite funny and thought provoking. Otherwise it's just a case of having a different adventure every week, I always appreciate recurring themes in sci-fi, providing they don't get too heavily dependent on storyline (e.g. X-files, later series of Buffy)

[E. Randy Dupre]

That was pretty rubbish, all told. Last week's did such a fantastic job of showing just how the series should do planetary threats - make them small and personal, and you make them properly threatening. Make them big, loud and hugely populated and you turn them into Deadly Boring Sci Fi Action Movie X.

Fart jokes. Y'know, I understand what RTD is trying to do here, but he's ****ing it up badly. Instead of making the program childlike, he's just making it childish - he's trying so bloody hard to have it appeal to kids that he's just going to end up patronising them. Even a bad episode of My Parents are Aliens wouldn't talk down to its audience with constant fart jokes. If I were a kid, I'm pretty sure I'd think he was insulting my intelligence with that stuff, especially when he keeps on repeating it. The guy's desperate to stick stuff in it that young uns'll enjoy, but he doesn't really seem to have a huge grasp on what that actually is.

Gattis' episode totally hooked its audience, regardless of the spread of ages watching it. Given what we've seen so far, Davies doesn't seem to know how to do scary SF, he doesn't seem to know how to do tea-time funny, and he doesn't know how to do current-era, Earth-based SF without shoehorning some awkward political and/or moral point into it. His second episode was so much better than this, so much more subtle and touching and just so much more enjoyable, you'd think it was written by a different person.

The sooner they get away from having stories set in modern London, the better. Got to hope Gattis is given a greater share of the scripts next series.

[Spatial]

I'd agree that it's been one of the weakest episodes so far, given that it had a lot of potential.

I was really impressed by the spacecraft crashing, for some reason as it swooped over the block of flats it really reminded me of the opening of Half Life 2, so it scored bonus points for that.

It did go downhill from there mind - the farting bit in particular, and the pig in the spacesuit.

[bowser123]

I do have one pretty major beef though. Of course we know that The Doctor will get out of the tricky situation, but did they really need to spoiler the 2nd part at the end of the ep?

I said the exact same thing. We know Rose and the Doctor will be fine, but did they really need to show them free considering how the episode ended.

Personally really liked the episode.
The wholde double bluff of the aliens was worked well, and I liked the bit where the Doctor bamboozled the guy by telling him he didn't now his own name.

Not too sure about the continuity of the pig though. When he was pulled out of the water, and when on the mortary table, he looked much bigger than the size it really was.

Never mind, still enjoyed it.

[Kotatsu Neko]

As for the "shocking" special effects, it's British produced sci-fi made by BBC Wales, the shocking special effects are rather welcome as well as being rather expected.

Yes but the effects were generations ahead in the previous episodes. They were quite respectable, passable TV sci-fi stuff. This week's effects looked like something from 2 decades ago.

Maybe they did just run out of money, who knows.

Last week's episode was the best by far for me.

[SharkAttack]

I really enjoyed the episode. My only gripe, and one previously mentioned, was the spoilers for part 2! Morons!

The fart "jokes" weren't a problem to me as I didn't really take them as jokes but more building towards who was an alien and who wasn't.

[mid]

Yes, while the first couple were played as fart gags, the fact that they found them so funny acted as a good device for saying "this person's an alien" without having to whack you over the head with clumsy dialogue. When the policeman let one off, it was a quality "oh **** she's in trouble now" moment.

[FelixofMars]

Diabolical, not even flashy CG effects could save it for me, this is the second edisode I have watched, the pig did it for me, yes he was much smaller than what they pulled from the water, and also it was just well.. poor. I couldn't bring myself to watch anymore. The thing is I think they are trying to stay close too much to the cheesy special effects of the original, and also adding fart gags and the terrible grinning loon Doctor. I love how he was about to be shot (grinning loon mode), then they all turned around to help the woman and started taking orders from him.

[Kotatsu Neko]

Was thinking, is it worth buying any of the Dr.Who DVDs the BBC have released? They have a selection going right back into the distant past of Dr.Who, and lots from the Baker and Davidson eras especially.

Pure nostalgia trip or is any of it still good?

[anephric]

The Tom Baker stuff is excellent (my fave) and some of the BBC dvds have transfers that have been absolutely superbly restored, with excellent extras.

The Dalek episodes (Genesis of the Daleks etc) still have a decent sort of power and pathos to them: it helps that I have a mild Davros fetish (I fully plan to be him when I'm decrepit).

[E. Randy Dupre]

The thing is I think they are trying to stay close too much to the cheesy special effects of the original

They're really not. These are the best they could afford.

It kind of annoys me when people - not talking about you here, dude, just making an observation linked to what you said - say of the old series "Oh, I loved them - the wobbly effects werehilarious. I hope they keep it like that." It's rubbish - at the time those shows were being filmed, the special effects people did absolutely everything they could with the resources available to make things look decent.

I didn't mind the pig, to be honest. I mean, how could you not expect a pig in a spacesuit to look ridiculous? That, I think, was also part of the point of that whole bit - that when something happens to destroy part of a large city, there's a desire on the part of the media and those in charge of the country to attribute it to whatever they can think of first, regardless of how ridiculous that explanation may appear.

Kotatsu> If you're thinking about buying some of the old series, then do it. A huge amount of the Tom Baker era stuff holds up fantastically well today, simply because the part was so well defined and so appealing when he was playing it. The effects and a lot of the acting, sure, they often look a bit cack now, but there's an honesty about the shows that a lot of the later ones - those from the Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy years - lack. You can feel that everyone involved totally believed in what they were doing.

And they're a damn sight funnier than I remember them being. Properly funny, too, without having to go for the lowest common denominator that is the fart gag.