Okay, now that Battlestar Galactica is on break until next season, Sci-Fi is now airing the new series of Dr. Who on Fridays.
I caught the first two episodes of it last Friday, and so far I’m pleased.
The series seems to be a tad darker and more serious than the original series, which went off the air in the 1980s, but that’s because it’s being written more for adults than kids (now that the original Dr. Who fans have grown up).
It still has a lot of goofy fun in it, though.
I also like how the Doctor’s new assistant (Rose) is much more confrontational with him than many previous assistants have been, demanding to know things (like just who he is) and challenging him when he says things, bringing a more real-life perspective.
My favorite exchange was this:
ROSE (upon meeting a bunch of aliens socially for the first time): They’re so alien. . . . The aliens are . . . so alien. You look at ’em . . . and they’re alien.
THE DOCTOR: Good thing I didn’t take you to the Deep South!
ROSE: Where are you from?
THE DOCTOR: All over the place!
ROSE (still thinking about the aliens): They all speak English?
THE DOCTOR: No, you’re just hearing it. It’s a gift of the TARDIS. A telepathic field gets inside your brain–translates.
ROSE: It’s inside my brain?
THE DOCTOR: Well, in a good way.
ROSE: Your machine gets inside my head. It gets inside and it changes my mind and you didn’t even ask!
THE DOCTOR: I didn’t think about it like that.
ROSE (outraged): No! You were too busy thinking up cheap shots about the Deep South!
BA-BOOM!
As a native of the Deep South, I approve!
I gave ’em a couple of points for the first Deep South/alien joke, but the rejoinder scored ’em an extra TEN!
ROSE: Your machine gets inside my head. It gets inside and it changes my mind and you didn’t even ask!
THE DOCTOR: I didn’t think about it like that.
Touche’, Rose! A perfect critique of popular media!
And I think Deep South is code for “Christianity”!
I was also fairly pleased with the newest Dr. Who. Yeah it is a little darker, but it still has the right amount of camp.
I’ve had a soft spot for Eccleston ever since he played the Catholic Duke of Norfolk (over the top, but scripted that way) in Elizabeth R.
PVO
Apparantly Eccleston got a God complex in ‘The Second Coming’…I’ve not liked him since then ( We now have a new Dr. Who thankfully). However, Billy Piper as Rose, has been surprisingly entertaining.
After being Chris Evans’ ever drunken child bride, I doubted that she could rise to the occassion of memorising her lines, but I ws proven wrong.
Poor multi-millionaire Chris is alas, still pining for her (is there anything worse than unrequited love?)and recently made a bit of a fool of himself on the box, when interviewing his ex wife for his new chat show…Mr. Evans tried to show that he was over her, but it was cringeingly embarrassing because he all but broke down and cried when he began reminiscing about their life together.
Poor rich bloke.
I only liked it because I have been missing the Dr. for too long. Of course I had already seen some of this Dr. from a Candadian station I can pick up.
This Dr. is too dark. None of the other Doc’s have ever so casualy let another creature die.
Heck he could have killed the daleks all in one shot and didn’t.
I did like seeing a cross there when the world ended. 😉
I had just lent all of my Dr. Who tapes to a friend at work. All thirty years in one big box.
Man I should get those back and start watching them again. I really liked Dr.#3 and Dr.#1.
Ah the good old days.
Oh by the way you know they were talking about North and South England don’t ya Jimmy. 😉
This is fun 🙂
http://www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk/index1.shtml
To be fair, the only time we know of that the Doctor visited the American South was… Well, actually, he didn’t, now that I think of it. He visited a bunch of transplanted Civil War soldiers in “The War Planet”, and I don’t think that counts. I think the new show had him referenced as visiting Dallas, but again, not exactly representative.
What my son and I like most about the older Doctors (Baker and Pertwee) is that he is completly disarming. The episodes followed a MacGiever/KungFu/Equilizer sort of formula: show up at a suspicious moment in time, find out what everyone’s problem is and then fix the problem and leave. And if it is a Douglas Adams episode, the bad guys and good guys are not obvious until part 3. Is this the same for the new Doctor?
Also, for confrontational assistants, I thought Leela and Mary Jane were pretty confrontational.
Before I go, in the Invasion of Time, Leela and K-9 were left on Gallafrey at the end. I always thought a most interesting story could have developed in which Leela became a time lord and with k-9’s help crossed the doctors path. If anybody at the BBC is reading this, feel free to steel this idea.
Another question (we have no cable TV): is K-9 still a robot? I mean, if cylons don’t look like robots…
Gallifrey is no more. It seemed like it was worth it at the time.
The amazingly good episodes that take place during the blitz are -much- darker. Worth an award, too.
This season is -very- dark, you just don’t know it yet.
“Lots of planets have a north”
I think the difference between the episodes of the 9th (and in the UK we’ve already seen an episode of the 10th) Doctor and earlier incarnations is not so much an adult/juvenile distinction as much as it is written for an audience for whom science fiction has come of age.
I say this in part because my four-year-old and 22-month-old are totally mad about Doctor Who. My four-year-old won’t go anywhere without his sonic screwdriver (which he onomatopoetically calls his “dawizzer”) and daughter loves Daleks and dances to all Dr Who theme music. We had to go to the Dr Who exhibition in Cardiff twice in the same day because they couldn’t get enough of it.
I know I missed some of the last of the original Dr. series. ‘When’ did we find out Gallerfy(sp?) was done away with?
Was it just in the new series?