posted
There has so far been Amazing Eps, Great Eps and Good Eps. There has very occasional been an Okay Ep.
But last nights Dr Who was a Utterly Shite Ep. Completely abysmal. The plot was pointless, and sadly highly unbeleiveable, perhaps worse still, utterly predictable. The characters were bland, and two dimensional. The plot had no relevance what so ever, except perhaps to metion Torchwood again (and again, and again, and again.... yes, we get the message, there is this new series coming called Torchwood).
In fact, there was two highlights in this show. 1/ The farcical "Scooby Doo" door chase thing at the very start. Okay, perhaps funnier in cartoons. 2/ Billie Pipers hair at the end, which really suited her.
That was it.
In fact the only reason I could see an episode like this actually making air was the fact that the bad guy in it played by supposid UK comedian, Peter Kay (never really been a fan of his as he is not particularly funny).
Personal recommendation to the Doctor.... Go back to the black hole from the last episode, and drop the video of this episode (and Peter Kay, and the rest of the casting of this eposide) in it. Nobody will miss them, and thankfully this horrible mistake in what has been a good second season may never be seen again.
posted
I was really liking the episode right up to the point that Olivia got eaten. Then the whole thing fell apart for me, from the motivation of the alien, to the sad fate of everyone that had been absorbed (it looks like the faces are slowly re-absorbed over time, which is even sadder), to the ultimate end of having one man whose whole life had been destroyed by the Doctor, losing his mom, losing a chance at a real relationship and ending up getting blowjobs from a talking piece of concrete. True, the whole point of the episode was to illustrate how the Doctor DOES this sort of thing by just being there, but I felt really let down after what was a nice story to that point.
I agree with the points made above about the Doctor having a disastrous effect upon people just by being around, and think this episode contributed quite effectively to the building theme this season that the Doctor and Rose are headed for a MAJOR fall at one point. After all, the Doctor's lifestyle has a price and it's usually paid by the innocent bystanders, but I don't think that's going to be the case for very much longer. I also agree that it was quite a sad turn for the story, but necessary: too many times the episode ends with the TARDIS vanishing, and it was nice to see the fallout, how people's lives went on after the Doctor turned up and left the scorched earth behind him.
As for the tone of the episode - sure, it was different, but different isn't a bad thing. It was, I think, an experiment. DW's version of TNG's "Lower Decks", a story told from the perspective of people on the outside looking in who don't have all the information, who aren't the best of the best and aren't on the inside track. Such a way of telling the story might not hit all the right notes for some people, but I think it says more good than bad about the new version of DW that the creative team behind it are willing to experiment with the formula of the show and try new things. I'm going to take a guess that a lot of the people on this forum are/were Trek fans: surely we've all learned the lesson by now of what happens when a show becomes reliant on a formula, then bound by it, then practically enslaved by it until it's just...dull! I'd rather see DW in the hands of a creative team that might risk the odd clanger if it means their quality is for the most part above average.
That said I did like the episode. Some of the comedy was a little stretched, but not far enough that it knocked me out of enjoying it. Can't believe that's most of the season past now!
-------------------- Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I loved this one. But I remember thinking while watching that this was going to polarise opinion like probably no other ep has to date. . .
Coincidentally, last week Without a Trace did an episode looking at a missing persons case from the perspective of the abductee's family. Well-acted, but all-in-all rather a bleak affair. Hardly surprising given the subject matter - but with "Love & Monsters" they set out to have fun, and fun it was.
Now, might as well admit it: I love ELO. I'm not averse to dancing around in a silly fashion to "Mr. Blue Sky" and I'm delighted that it's finally being embraced as one of the all-time great pop songs, hand in hand with a positive critical reappraisal of the band's work. So as soon as that sequence started I knew it was in for a good time.
It's not an exact survey by any means, but generally it seems to me that a lot of the L'n'M-haters don't like Peter Kay, and don't like Russell T. Davies' recent scripts either. Now, I sort-of see what they mean about the recent RTD efforts, but while I don't especially like Peter Kay I don't actively dislike him either.
In fact, for most people in this country Kay is known for three things: a series of commercials for John Smiths bitter (beer), a parody-video of "Is This The Waty To Amarillo?" that resuscitated Tony Christie's career, and a disastrous appearance at Live 8 where he tried to get the crowd to sing "Amarillo" TWICE, but then redeemed himself "And now, reunited on stage - THE SPICE GIRLS! . . . The Who?" I just love the idea that for just one second each of the Spices (but especially Victoria "Posh" Beckham, in the VIP audience) had a panicked feeling that all the others had secretly reunited without telling her.
But, as ever, I digress. Most people haven't seen Kay's "proper" work, since it's usually on Channel 4 which the Great Unwashed don't watch. So I didn't have a problem with him being cast, especially since the monster he played turned out to be a really rather useless alien. He's not the deepest actor ever but this role didn't demand it.
So, it was great fun, with some hilarious moments (the Scooby-Doo chase sequence!), good music, a good cast of familiar guest actors, very little 10Doctor and Rose (who're both annoying me at the moment - yet, bizarrely, on the other hand Camille Coduri wasn't annoying at all in this ep) and even ended well (or seemed about to) with that fade-to-white. But then it went all twisted again with the coda, taking it to a whole new level. Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Slab! And a joke about oral sex at 7:40pm on prime-time BBC1! As 9Doctor would say, "Fantastic!"
- Typically, I couldn't find the two best ones: Kay as a wedding party DJ inadvertently revealing that the Father of the Bride, er, isn't, by playing "Annie, I'm Not Your Daddy" ("I thought everybody knew!"), or the one where he rudely interrupts Engelbert Humperdinck by shouting out ". . . GO!" just before the end of "Please Release Me" ("What time's bingo on?")
posted
I can't believe I didn't comment on this episode sooner...
Yes, yes you all know what I'm going to say...
I loved this episode.
I really did. I liked it's departure from the norm, in seeing the effect the Doctor has on others, and what he leaves behind. Just everything about it was good - oh the alien wasn't that great - but I don't think it was really supposed to be.
Err - can someone point out the oral sex joke??
I don't know about anyone else but sometimes I just can't make out what they say in a sentence here and there. Same I found in the "The Idiot's Lantern" especially when the Doctor was up the tower - I couldn't fully make out what he said when he 'trapped' the alien - I eventually worked it out after rewinding the video file a few times. Maybe it was the capture??
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
No, it's because they're speaking with unintelligible-to-us-non-Brits accents. I have the same problem when listening to Quebec French on TV or the Radio - I learned French via France-Frenchies, and thus possess and best understand the Parisian accent.
quote:Err - can someone point out the oral sex joke??
Haha, Andy, you suck. But then again, so to would a cute girl's face stuck in a slab of concrete.
posted
Sorry I'm regurgitating this thread, but I felt I might as well do it instead of making a new one, so that newbies can read the previous posts.
Well, I finally saw this episode here in the States on Sci-Fi. I went into the ep knowing about all the negative impressions it left on many people here. So naturally I expected it to be as horrid as people were making it out to be.
Well...I liked it.
I realize that it was just a "filler" episode, which was why the Doctor & Rose were only in it at the beginning & end. But that said, I really liked the plot, I really cared about the characters, and I thought the things that were supposed to be funny, were.
About the only thing I didn't like (and this could just be something I might have missed) was the revelation about the main character's mother having been killed when he was a boy. It would have been nice to know this at the start of the ep before it was revealed at the end. And on that note: If he saw the Doctor in his house when he was a boy, standing right next to the dead body of his mom, why didn't he logically assume that the Doctor killed her? Of course, then his whole reasoning for wanting to find the Doctor again would have been different (and far darker, not what TPTB wanted for this humorous episode). But still, his motivation just didn't seem believable to me after the fact.
And, yes, I thought the whole "sexual realtionship with a girl's face stuck to concrete" was funny too, but maybe that's because I have a low threshold for sexual humor. However, quick point: When Ursula said that she won't age anymore, did anyone immediately think of the Face of Boe? Perhaps Ursula's a far-distant relative...
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
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WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
Member # 1425
posted
This episode kinda reminded me about the comment of Grima in LOTR about Gandalf "Stormcrow". "Trouble always at your heals" sorta thing. Like Gandalf, the Doctor usually leaves behind a wake of devastation of one type or another. But the CAUSE isn't the lead character, they are there to fight against what will cause the ruin and to minimalize it. But you can't fight a battle without casualties even if you do everything you can to limit collateral damage.
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: And now that we've essentially seen exactly the same episode on Torchwood, it makes it much more memorable.
Although, and quite strangely, the Torchwood remake was slightly less annoying. The simple reason being that no matter how bad it was, at least it was missing two awful elements...Peter Kay and Jacki's underwear!
Registered: Jul 2006
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