Subscribe to RSS 2.0Doctor Who: Sat 22nd May
You know, I find of enjoyed last night's Who. It was a little humourless and there was nothing particularly clever about it, but still I found myself having fun. I've thought in the past that the writer, Chris Chibnall, should be under house-arrest for crimes against television. He was the show-runner for Torchwood and wrote a number of episodes for them. Really, that should result in an automatic five-year ban from media work. But his first Who episode, 42, was in the 'fairly good' category and that's probably where I'd put last night's effort, The Hungry Earth. I can't quite judge the pacing of last night's episode because I got a phone call in the middle of it. (Why would anyone call me at home at 18:45 on a Saturday? Unless they were my mother, I mean, and had a question about furniture.) But I'm hoping next week's ep can keep up the pace without doing anything too foolish. [Continue reading for one or two spoiler-laden irrelevancies]
Was interested to hear on Who Confidential that Chris Chibnall's original idea for the main monsters in The Deadly Earth was giant lizards that curl themselves into a wheel shape and roll after people in order to attack them. If they'd gone down that route, I wonder at what stage they'd have realised that CC almost certainly 'came up with' that idea through the clever trick of simply seeing it on another show and nicking it (or perhaps assuming it got into his brain via 'imagination' rather than the more pedestrian 'memory'). c.f. cluster lizards from weird, Euro-Sci-Fi show Lexx - which I think people only ever watched very late at night, so I can almost understand how someone might think they dreamed it.
Comments: 3
I liked parts of this episode, but didn't enjoy other parts. It had a great look, and really reminded me of classic Who in a good way.
But it was full of "people doing stupid things" to drive the plot - truly, if a steaming pit appeared in your floor, would your first action be to put your hand in it? Let alone the all-important headphones as a reason to go outside, and "We should dissect it" as a suggestion. [And why are there only three people manning that huge drilling outfit?]
The Silurians have always had fantastic potential. The true owners of Earth, after all, with the technology to enforce it. But the execution of this episode - fanatic, baiting Silurian v stupid reactionary humans, with saintlike pacifist Doctor determined to ensure peace rather than war - it's just not working for me. The scene where the Doctor gave the Mum a lecture of "no weapons" bothered me so much.
I'm also finding Amy-in-peril (and other people in peril) and the Doctor getting a lecture for it theme rather repetitive. Rescuing Amy seems to taking up a large amount of every episode. Contrasting it to, say, the Sontaren episode with Donna and I'm starting to feel the show has contracted Damsel in Distress syndrome.
I've been struggling to find a way to describe what's been wrong with these episodes for me and this one and the Vampires one particularly strike me as a "Patchwork Quilt plot". The scenes are in a logical order, they make an appropriate pattern, but it's like they're stitched together from wholly different coloured pieces of material, from larger stories, without proper build up and explanation.
Meh, maybe I've being over-critical because the Donna season was so tight and so well-done, but almost everything this season has felt...clumsy, crude and over-emphasised.
Posted by: Andrea K Host on May 23, 2010 02:36 PM
I have to agree with you Andrea, the last episode was poor. And yes, why did it seem plausible for three people to man a drilling outfit?! Silly.
My main problem with this season is the new Doctor. I'm finding it somewhat difficult to believe any of his emotions. It seemed to me that he was angry with Amy, not distraught that she was in life-threatening danger, when the ground was swallowing her.
Oh well, lets hope that maybe he'll get better?
Posted by: Verity Ann on May 24, 2010 09:02 PM
Watched this a week after the event and agree the full on 'peace in my time' stuff was over done. Also found lizard lady a bit too human (and Scottish?) But the dangers of drilling deep into the earth - shall we call that prophetic?
AliB
Posted by: AliB on May 31, 2010 10:30 AM