Who

[iainjclark]

Nice cinema trailer for new Doctor Who, Season 4 here. It still has Catherine Tate in it, sadly. There's only so long I can remain in denial about her. It also has some significant returning faces, and various nice shots of Rome, Ood and Sontarans. Oh, and Bernard Cribbins. Quite well done, all told.

We've been continuing to watch various old Doctor Who stories recently, with mixed success. I mentioned last time how much I enjoyed Tom Baker's debut story 'Robot'. Sadly 'Planet of Evil' from the following year is less impressive.¹ The setting is atmospheric, especially the weird alien jungle, but it just lacks the necessary character banter from the Doctor to lift the so-so plot. Likewise Pertwee's debut story 'Spearhead from Space' manages to be simultaneously snappily edited and draggingly slow, which is disappointing. Even the Autons can't really lift it from tedium.

We then progressed to the 'Beneath the Surface' box set. 'The Silurians', despite being very long, is consistently entertaining with good characterisation, decent location filming, Fulton Mackay, Geoffrey Palmer and a vague attempt at moral complexity. Okay the Silurians themselves look crap and the young, headstrong one has a hilarious voice but otherwise it works very well. The sequel tale 'The Sea Devils' is less good but still quite enjoyable. You can't go too far wrong with Roger Delgado and Sea Devils, and in true Pertwee fashion the story is stuffed to the gills (geddit?) with location filming and speedboat chases. The end of the -ahem- "trilogy", Davison's 'Warriors of the Deep' is both better and worse than I remembered. Better in that it was a tiny bit less polystyrene than I recalled, but worse in that the Silurian and Sea Devil dialogue is nothing but undiluted exposition and cliche of the worst kind, delivered at about four words per minute. "Soon.. we.. will.. have... our... revenge..." kind of stuff. (Also, why are the Silurians calling themselves Silurians when we know from 'The Sea Devils' that it was a misnomer? And why do they talk about "Our Sea Devil brothers"? Don't they have a name other than a pejorative nickname some sailors slapped on them in the 1970s?)

I'm enjoying old Who overall but it's a very hit and miss experience. My boss's 6 year old boy was apparently sat down in front of an old Tom Baker episode recently and immediately started complaining that the monster looked fake. Sign of the times.

--
¹ Although a few moments gave me powerful deja vu from watching the show in the 1970s, and from reading the novelisation -- it's surprising how often that happens. Those novelisations were a big part of my childhood.

Comments

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

I take it then that it is completely impossible for the Doctor/companion relationship not to have a strong romantic undertone? I'm more downcast about this than I am about Donna's return. In fact, I had hoped that the choice of her as the new companion would mean that the romantic subtext would be cut down to a minimum, or perhaps even (dare I hope) done away with entirely.

[fba.livejournal.com]

The main problems with 'Warriors of the Deep' are the Silurians/Sea Devils are reduced rather to monster-of-the-week - without the moral centre that made them interesting in 'The Cave Monsters' and that everything is so brightly lit. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in 'Warriors of the Deep' that chimed well with the early 80s - but things like the Myrca and the generally unatmospheric direction detract from the ideas in the script.

My boss's 6 year old boy was apparently sat down in front of an old Tom Baker episode recently and immediately started complaining that the monster looked fake.

Depends on the story really - some worked better than others - which still is the case today. Personally speaking I don't think the Slitheen, for example, are a particularly good prosthetic and in Aliens of London where it switches between prosthetic and CGI it looks especially naff. I reckon that a young fan of today would like most colour Dalek stories (though probably not Genesis or Ressurection - way too dark for a 6 year old) and wouldn't have a problem with the effects, I would say the problem with a lot of classic Who for a young viewer would be the pacing...