"If you are an alien, how comes you sound like you're from the North?" "Lots of planets have a North!"
So, someone (a Canadian, from what I've heard) leaked the first of the new "Doctor Who" episodes onto the Internet. And, of course, I can't be expected to resist that sort of tempatation. I downloaded it and watched it.
My opinion: Pretty good, though not perfect. The 45-minute, stand-alone episode format really makes the story seem a lot shorter. Now, I'll be the first to admit that some of the old stories got dragged out much longer than they really warranted. But something just didn't feel right about this. Maybe it will get better.
Another thing I hope gets better: the humor. Some of the presumably comedic bits (the Doctor flailing around with an Auton arm choking him, Rose's boyfriend melodramatically cowering behind her when things get hairy, etc.) were really a bit too much. But they got it right a few times, too (e.g. the quote I used above).
Though it's hard to tell from just one episode, I do think Eccleston is going to make a pretty good Doctor. As for Rose: I don't see anything wrong with Billie Piper as an actress. I think it will depend upon how they write her. Again, it's just one episode, so she hasn't had a chance to do a lot that will show whether her character stands out or not.
Anyway, with just one or two things that I hope will be nothing more than first-episode kinks to work out, I'd say they're off to a promising start. Anyone else seen it and have thoughts?
(P.S.--I hope the final aired version will have the theme music different. They cut out the best bit.)
(P.P.S.--It's 3a.m., I have to get up in four hours, and I'm not feeling entirely well, so this "review" is brief and not very well composed. Oh well. I'm going to bed.)
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
How did it compare to the 'TV Movie' with Paul McGann?
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Well, I would rate the episode higher, but it probably depends upon your opinion of the movie. Personally, I thought many elements were a bit silly.
At least, when Rose asked the Doctor if he was an alien, he just said "yes". Nothing about being half-human.
Posted by Identity Crisis (Member # 67) on :
I've watched it twice now and I love it.
The plot is wafer thin and has several gaps in it but that's party on purpose. This story is told from Rose's point of view. The Doctor is some mad man who blunders into life and starts babbling about aliens and intelligent plastic and stuff. For most of the audience this will be the first time they've ever seen Doctor Who so having a real person react to the Doctor in a real way is a great introduction.
The madness that enters Rose's life plus the fact that they have to introduce the Doctor, the TARDIS, Rose, and some of the basic concepts of the series all in 44 minutes goes some way to explaining the very frantic pacing. You will be out of breath by the end.
With fewer introductions, and three two parters, the other twelve episodes should be a bit less packed. But this is Doctor Who for 2005 not 1975.
Ecclestone is brilliant. Manic, intense, flippant, goofy, angry - all in the space of a few minutes. He's a great acator and will be worth watching every week so long as he keeps on getting great lines. Loved his "I can feel it moving" speech.
Piper is fine. Nothing exceptional but nothing terrible about her performance (which is probably ideal - see above regarding Rose being a real person). Her Buffy moment at the climax is well handled as is her decision to run off with the Doctor at the end.
The humour is slightly hit and mass. The dialogue is brilliant, as one would expect from Russell T Davies, but things like the garbage bin burp are a bit too much. But the target audience is that fabled 9-90 family audience rather than either a traditional SciFi or post-Buffy audience so maybe the OTT gags are right for the younger viewers.
The new TARDIS interior is, um, different. Elements of the original, the Cushing film version and the McGann TVM version. I like it so far but I'm not sure it will work in the long term - it's fine here where it's used a getaway vehicle but presumably later on it will need to be used as a home base as well.
The scene with the Doctor and Rose's mother nicely puts to rest any idea that TVM style romance is on the cards. This Doctor understands human sexuality but isn't interested at all.
"That won't last. He's gay and she's an alien" - The Doctor flipping through celeb gossip magazine.
"I am talking!" - The Doctor drops all the flippancy and lets the aliens know who's in charge.
It's hard to judge the SFX. The autons are meant to look like plastic, so is it deliberate or poor CGI?
I'm glad the theme will be different in the final version. They used the Tom Baker theme on the leaked version and it doesn't synch with the visuals. The opening titles are average - just the TARDIS spinning through a vortex.
Roll on transmission.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
It's hard to judge the SFX. The autons are meant to look like plastic, so is it deliberate or poor CGI?"
I'm thinking the CGI might be a little on the cheap side. Mickey's fight with the trash can was pretty fake-looking. Not that it was bad, just that the trash can was of the very "obvious" type of CGI.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Apparently, someone at the CBC was passed a review copy. It was a matter of hours before someone passed it to a friend, who ripped it and put it online. He has sine been sacked, or is otherwise is a garbage bin of trouble, I understand.
Anyway, the BBC has since gone on record as saying that whatever's floating around the internet was an incomplete review copy. Title sequence, music mix, and SFX were all not the final versions we'll be seeing on the 26th in the UK (or April 5th here in Canada, and no confirmed date or network yet in the US). Furthermore, the screener is a poorly ripped version that is not indicative of the final product quality (so sayeth the beeb).
I've yet to see this unfinished work, but probably will. Why? Because of this!
After fifteen years' break, save for a half-decent TV movie, there's NO way that this show will please the hardcore fans who've glorified the old show far past how cheap and cheesy it was at times. Kinda like all the 30-somethings who deify G1 Transformers, or the original trilogy of Star Wars (less so with the latter).
I recently watched the Colin Baker entry "Revelation of the Daleks", and while that's hardly Doctor Who at its best, is indicative of the horrible pacing and dialogue the show accepted as its minimum standards. Doctor Who will never be that way again, nor will it live up to the expectations of the old fans who've been waiting so long. But as with so much television these days, it's not the fans that matter, and I'm sure that will garuntee the new Who a nice, long run.
Mark
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I keep expecting the Borg Queen to descend from the TARDIS's ceiling. They even included the hanging black hoses and breen glowy parts.
Someone should Photoshop Luke Skywalker floating in that tank at the console's center (does it still move up and down while making that grinding noise?).
Still, I look forward to seeing this new incarnation of Dr. Who.
Posted by Identity Crisis (Member # 67) on :
Yes it still moves up and down.
Not as obviously now, because the outer casing stretches from console to roof only the innards move move, but there's one close up in the first episode that shows it moving.
Posted by Identity Crisis (Member # 67) on :
"move move"? Guess who's been drinking?
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Both of you?
Mark
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Speaking of the TARDIS' new look, the interior and exterior of the doors are no longer in conflict with one another.
Observe. The doors are way over on the left. The thing above them is the interior of the "Police Public Call Box" sign complete with a sort of string of white Christmas lights like would probably illuminate the real thing. Also, even though it's hard to tell in this shot, that thing in the middle of the right-hand door is an old telephone of the sort I assume you would have found in an actual police box.
I'm glad they did this, because, dimensional transcendetalism aside, those doors always bugged me.
(P.S.--In the interests of full disclosure, I use "always" to refer to the year or so that it's been since I actually started watching "Doctor Who". But, I assure you, I was in fact bugged.)
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I always just assumed there was a coat-room between the outer and inner doors on the old TARDIS.
It was'nt that big a strain on my childhood's imagination.
...but I'm from Florida: the water here gives us strange strange dreams (mostly of dreaming gods and sunken cities, but I digress..). Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Well, it was on last night. Whole family wathced it - me, Kate, my parents and brother; even Lula sat on my lap and goggled at the screen before falling asleep. And we enjoyed it. The ratings aren't in yet (not that I've looked for them) so time will tell whether ver Doc has managed to defeat Ant & Dec (don't ask).
Thoughts. . . When the Doctor was pottering around Rose's mum's flat, doing the Heat magazine gag and so forth, I suddenly felt a real sense of familiarity. You know the Doctor loves Earth and Earthlings, and would even be au fait with the celebrity gossip culture! I haven't watched Who since sometime in the Colin Baker era (never liked him) so I wouldn't call myself a fan, but it felt like coming home.
Elsewhere, I loved the breast implants gag, but felt the London Eye routine was overdone - he looked over his shoulder about four times! One double-take would have done, maybe two, or even three - but four?!
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
I don't know why they claimed that the leaked copy of the episode didn't "show them at their best" or whatever it was. I didn't see any noticeable differences in the final version, except that it had the new theme song (which is still missing the best bit, dammit).
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Oh, and - "DW? - would it have killed you to put in one extra letter and just call it Who: "Rose"?
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
I see DW and think Darkwing Duck... Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
I missed the first 30 seconds and so didn't get the theme tune, but which is the best bit? There are three possible contenders:
1/ Bass bit by itself. Dum da-duh, dum-da-duh, dim-da-duh daaaaa (repeat) 2/ The actual tune itself. Woo-ooo-woooo. 3/ That bit where it suddenly goes all major key. Used for the first couple of Doctor's (I think). Not used at all for T Baker, came back in with Davison, and McCoy actually got it in the opening credits. Da...dun da daaa dududaaaa.
Anyway, let's nitpick! While in Rose's apartment the Doctor looks at a mirror of himself and comments that he doesn't look too bad, implying that he's only just regenerated and hasn't had a chance to look in a mirror. I know the Doctor is normally a bit off after regenerating, but he usually checks to see what he looks like straight away. I was going to comment that all the stuff NerdMan showed of the Doctor in the past shows that he changed a while ago, but I suppose he might not have gone back to watch Kennedy being shot yet (BTW, that was an appalling photoshop job there. Eccleston's face didn't fit in at all.)
And from a slightly gay point of view, if I'd gone from looking like Paul McGann to having Eccleston's face, I'd be fairly annoyed. But this man has been Colin Baker, so non-ginger and not-fat has to be an improvement.
With regards to the TARDIS doors, does it make sense that you can see the outside from the inside? Wouldn't that mean that part of the inside would change shape everytime the ship transformed? What about if you left your coat out there? Would it vanish, or simply adjust itself to the new surroundings?
I loved the use of the London Eye as the transmitter. It was an extension of what Pertwee once said...it's scarier to see the Yeti in the Underground than in Tibet. Likewise, using a famous landmark was so much better than just having it be a box in some building somewhere.
Nerd note: The Doctor said that TARDIS stands for Time & Relative Dimension in Space. While this was true for the very first episode, in all subsequent explainings it was Time & Relative Dimensions in Space. Which means that Eccleston either mispoke, or the writers were being so unbelievably nerdy that my head has just melted.
("Revelation of the Daleks" was a good story. Certainly one of Baker's best, and probably one of the top ten of the 80s. A DJ who plays to the dead, who's bodies are being used as raw materials to feed Daleks? Brilliant.)
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Regarding the theme tune: I was talking about the bit you've labelled "3".
As for his face, he did say "it could have been worse".
And the doors... Well, the ship doesn't transform anymore. Probably the Doctor just finally resigned himself to being chameleon-circuit-less, and decorated the insides of the doors to look like the outsides.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Encouraging.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
No, it's not. Not when you gotta register to read it.
But outpostgallifrey.net is reporting a peak viewership of 10.6 million, which is pretty impressive considering their main competition didn't see a significant dropoff. Time will tell if it's just the novelty (and one hell of a promo campaign), or genuine interest that will keep this new series alive...
Mark
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
I actually registered to read Media Guardian? well I never. . . But yeah, time will tell if it sustains the interest. I suspect in the long run people will prefer to watch the pair of gurning Geordie imbeciles.
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