A Creeping Sense Of Unease

[poliphilo]

The Girl in the Fireplace is a near perfect thing-  a touching love story, with a sense of the cruelty of time, good jokes and some ingenious, scary monsters. Blink is wonderfully clever. The Doctor Dances makes me happy. All the stories Stephen Moffatt wrote for Who in the RTD era have a magic about them.

So far- with Moffat running the show- there have been flashes of that magic, but only flashes.  Last night's episode- The Beast Below- threw lots of cute ideas at the screen- too many for the time frame- and rushed its ending. Hit the right button and the problem is solved-  which is what happened- rather too often- under RTD. So, not so much timey-wimey as samey-wamey. And next week there will be daleks... 

Don't you think it's looking tired?

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I thought it was "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" - with manatees, and one of Moffat's trademark no-one-gets-killed endings. Oh, and a lot of self-cleaning sick, no trace of which remained by the Doctor and Amy's final clinch. Someone pointed out to me, too, that the 'choose to forget' button was a bit of a steal from The Matrix. I very much enjoyed the first one, though, and I'll hang fire on the Daleks - though I fear Sir Winston Churchill looks too much like my image of Sir Topham Hatt for comfort.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The actor who plays Sir Winston was last seen as a comedy vicar in Jonathan Creek.

I think Moffat has run through his stock of ideas- and is now running through them again. It happens to most writers sooner or later- even indisputably great ones. I'm also beginning to wonder (is this heresy?) whether Matt Smith isn't a bit lightweight.

I'll keep watching. I'm still hoping that sometime this season they'll air an episode that'll knock my socks off.

[redatt.livejournal.com]

They got cleaned up at Liz 10's

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Yes! Oh, I'm so glad that it wasn't just me (The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, that is).

Other than that, I was entirely entertained by it, right up to the sentimental ending. Kind? Since when has the Doctor been kind?

And I've been tired of daleks for several decades now, so I'm pretty much used to it...

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I think it's pretty obvious that describing the Doctor as kind is... dangerous, in that it allows you to deceive yourself about his nature.

But I think it's perfectly in keeping with Amy's character to believe that the Doctor is kind, and so that part of the episode made sense to me.

(Granted, I would have appreciated them not making the final comparison so... painfully... in-your-face. The single scene at the end with the Doctor and Amy, drawing the parallel, would have been fine. Making it three or four times in different words and with significant looks made me wonder if the writers would eventually erupt from the edges of the TV with placards.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love that image of the writers with their placards.

I'm hoping Amy is going to have experiences that will undermine her starry-eyed vision of the Doctor. If that happens it will be interesting. If it doesn't, then I don't think I like the way we're heading.

The Doctor has been many things in his many lives, but kind isn't one of them.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I'm a little tired of the smothered-romances that keep happening with all these young women turning the Doctor into their father figures. It was fine once or twice, but when it keeps happening.... ugh. I loved Donna for refusing to give in to that trope. I loved her "You're scary and obnoxious and you frustrate me, but you're interesting and you need a conscience" act. (So of course, they destroyed her character's involvement in the series, period.)

Now if they turn Amy into some kind of weird psychotic stalker-type, the way she seems to have started, that would certainly be fresh and different... but somehow I doubt they'll do that.

I'm at the point where I'm ready for the Doctor to have a male companion. Doctor Who as buddy-flick instead of almost-romance would be a nice change of pace.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

One Rose was enough. I liked Billie Piper and I liked that story arc- apart from its resolution which I thought was creepy- but I really don't want to be put through the wringer again.

Bernard Cribbens made a delightful male companion in the last two Tennant episodes. That pairing of an old man who is young at heart with an apparently young man who contains the wisdom of the ages was interesting- and I'd have been very happy to see more of it. What a pity Tennant and Cribbens couldn't have had a season together.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I would have loved a Cribbens-as-Companion season! But I suppose the directors think the eye candy is necessary.

[jenny_evergreen]

I, of course, am still waiting with bated breath for the new episodes, but I seriously doubt I will feel that it's tired. But I AM a pretty hard core Doctor fan who, frankly, doesn't mind the formula at all.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love Dr Who too. I've been following it since the very beginning. I know that it can be extraordinary- and I want it to be extraordinary all the time.

[redatt.livejournal.com]

I think it's looking rejuvenated, although I'm not sure I approve of yet more daleks . . .

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think the daleks should have been retired a long time ago.

[all-unnecessary.livejournal.com]

Agreed! It's surely some kind of marketing decision. How many times have they been eradicated now? At least once per season!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I suppose they're part of the brand.

I don't remember being scared by them when I was a kid- and I'm certainly not scared by them now.