School and Doctor Who · 1:12am Jan 15th, 2013
It's time, once again, to resume borrowing ridiculous amounts of cash to pay for an education which will enable me to pay those ridiculous amounts of cash back. Ah, college.
Well, hopefully writing essays and driving an hour and a half every day will jog me into writing gear; most of Prince of Ponyville was written while I was taking summer classes, after all. So yay? I think. Eh.
Anyway, after plenty of urging from folks here and in real life, I finally sat down and finished watching David Tennant's run as the Tenth Doctor, and then continued on through Season Five of Doctor Who. And... guys, I'm really sorry to say this, but... it was kinda weak.
First off, let me say that I think Matt Smith is a perfectly acceptable Doctor. I don't find him grating or obnoxious, as some of my friends have claimed. And Amy and Rory are amazing, easily the best companions I've seen so far. I genuinely do love 'em both.
But, man, the writing really seems to have taken a hit. A big part of it is the personality of Eleven; as he himself points out, he tends to miss very obvious details staring him in the face. One of my favorite things about both Nine and Ten was their ability to surprise me with ideas that come out of left field but are totally logical. It drove home, again and again, how smart the Doctor is. But there were so many times in season five that I picked up on something before the cast did, and for the first time, it seemed like I was actually more on the ball than the Time Lord.
Take "The Time of Angels." The Doctor, Amy, River, and a few soldiers are wandering through an ancient catacomb filled with statues. As they walk, the Doctor repeatedly mentions how he'd been to this planet before, and really enjoyed the company of the two-headed race who lived there. The first time he said that, I didn't quite pick up on it. The second time he mentioned the two heads, I went, "uh, wait, all of those statues have one head." And no one pointed it out. It wasn't until it was blindingly obvious what was going on that River--not even the Doctor himself--pointed out what I'd been telling my screen for several minutes.
(Speaking of that two-part episode... maybe it's just me, but I was really disappointed. "Blink" was freaking creepy. One of the most effective horror film/episode/whatevers I've ever seen. But the weeping angels here just weren't nearly as scary. Don't get me wrong, the first scene with Amy trapped in a trailer with a video angel was terrifying, but for some reason, after that they stopped being spine-chilling and just became another weird alien race. Maybe it was because there were so many of them, maybe it was because the Doctor was actually there, or maybe it was because there were soldiers with guns and that automatically turns any intended horror flick into an action movie. [See: Alien vs. Predator.])
Plus, the whole "crack in the universe" thing wasn't exactly a thrilling seasonal arc. And really, how did it take the Doctor so long to pick up on the fact that the cracks were only appearing in places he was? They obviously had something to do with him, or Amy, or the TARDIS. And then there were the iDaleks. Look, I get it, the Daleks are decades old and look a bit silly to outsiders. And some of the changes they made to their design, I totally approve of. The new eyestalk thing? Totally on board. But why the shiny, solid color schemes? The Daleks clearly don't need them, they were able to organize entire armies without any means of visual differentiation. In fact, having Dalek leaders be easily identifiable by color makes it easy for the enemy to target them. Also, the Daleks only stole some DNA; where did the battlesuits come from? And if this lone scavenger ship had the resources to build five, new, more advanced suits, why didn't they upgrade themselves?
Finally, most glaringly, what happened to Season 4? Early on, the Doctor finds out that Amy doesn't know what a Dalek is, indicating that something erased the massive invasion and relocation of the Earth from history. So... what? Does that mean that everything that the Earth went through, all the repeated extraterrestrial contacts and near-disasters and hostile incursions just didn't happen? But that was one of my favorite things about the show! That the Earth was just beginning to accept that humanity wasn't alone, with all the conflict and baggage that meant.
Well, okay; that last one's hopefully going to be covered in the next season. Now that the cracks in reality are sealed, maybe folks will remember the Cybermen and the Daleks blowing eachother up in the middle of London. But as it stands right now, having only just finished season five, I'm honestly kinda whelmed.
Maybe the problem my friends have isn't that David Tennant's gone, but that Russel T. Davies is. I dunno. Onward to season six!
Here's your video, folks. By all means, feel free to tell me how wrong I am in the comments.
[youtube=8er83h9Bbn8]
hmm, now that you mention it...
man, I am way too easy to persuade, but still, I don't think that closing up the thing that was erasing things from having ever existed will stop- wait, Rory is like, not a robot now, right? ad the Doctor getting temporarily erased... hmm... maybe the stuff will have been re-retconned, and things will be back to having stuff not not having happened...
I'm sure there was a better way to say that....
so, in answer to your question... I dunno....
I'm still not sure if Rory's a robot or not.
I agree, the characters are good (go Rory!), the actors are good, but the stories themseves are a bit weak. At least the regular ones are. The one-offs from writers like Gaiman and such are excellent. However, there were many weak episodes in RTD's era as well.. Heck the original series was very hit and miss. Anything that covers that length of time is going to have weak points.
To me Jon Pertwee is my Doctor. All the others are replacements. :) When the new series started up, I was overjoyed with Eccleston's performance, because it reminded me of the relatively serious, sarcastic and anti-establishment Third Doctor.
I still love Matt Smith the most of all the doctors but I do agree, I was disappointed with the Weeping Angels episodes in his reign, well except for the most recent episode. I almost think that it would have been better not to have any episodes with them because none of them can compare to Blink, and they kind of desensitize the awesomeness of that episode.
712887>>713309
I'm pretty sure resetting the universe made Rory human again, and erased the whole "Last Centurion" thing from the memories of everyone except him, Amy, and the Doctor. Besides, I don't think a plastic robot could have impregnated his wife.
713341
I didn't realize Neil Gaiman had written "The Doctor's Wife" until this morning, and yeah, that episode was brilliant. I do hope we actually get to meet the Corsair at some point; he sounds like a cool dude.
Also, yeah, I really loved Eccleston. I wish he'd stuck around a bit longer. (Though I ended up enjoying Tennant at least as much.)
714315
Yeah, there's no way they could have captured lightning in a bottle again like they did with "Blink," but I think going from four angels to hundreds of angels in one go was escalating things a bit too quickly. An episode where there were, like, ten angels on a ship and the TARDIS wasn't working would have worked better (just off the top of my head).
Also, the whole "the image of an angel becomes an angel" thing kills a lot of the ominous dread the ending of "Blink" inspired, when it panned around showing all these statues and gargoyles and whatnot that might potentially be a dormant angel. If all it takes is a little time energy to reactivate them, then all the TARDIS has to do is materialize within a block of a vacationer's photo album and suddenly people are screwed. Plus, giving the angels a set form, rather than letting them take on the appearance of any statue they wanted, means that you no longer feel compelled to keep an eye on those lions outside the post office, y'know?
714536 right, yeah, Rory mentioned only sometimes remembering the whole centarion thing... Forgot about that
714536
You'd think so wouldn't you? But then again you could be mistaken...