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Doctor Who – 42
Given that I have regarded Torchwood as desperately uneven, I had a nasty feeling that its head writer, Chris Chibnall, would provide us with a similarly lacklustre episode for Doctor Who last Saturday. Thankfully my fears turned out to be thoroughly unfounded as the real-time drama of 24 was brought to the series to excellent effect, with the Doc and Martha having 42 minutes to save the day.
But by golly it was red wasn’t it? I suppose unsurprisingly so given they were hurtling towards the sun, but my word I’ve never seen such a red episode of anything before. And frankly it was a bit daft of whoever designed the spaceship to put the backup escape capsule controls in a such an inacessible place. You’d almost think they’d done it for dramatic purposes.
So far the main repeated complaints I’ve heard are that the charring of the bodies on metal wasn’t accurate enough and that the supporting cast never got enough development or back-story for you to really care what happened to most of them.
In the case of the latter it’s a fair point. Only Riley really got much of a chance for you to sympathise and Michelle Collins’ captain only had a last minute “aw” moment, the others were just speaking extras, there to be bumped off within minutes (which they were). But, as ever, it’s a limitation of the format really. I could either get frustrated that it will ever be thus or just accept it and I think I’ll take the path of least resistance here.
As for the charring – yeah. But what did we honestly expect given the target audience and time of transmission? Again, given the high standard of the episode generally it seems churlish to get hung up on it really.
Otherwise I thought it was excellent. It was taut, scary, well-paced, playful and generally well-executed. Also the possession of the Doctor was one that genuinely surprised me – especially his admission of his own fear which I think will have surprised younger viewers who are probably now expecting him to be invulnerable. Frankly it did need to be re-asserted that he can actually suffer and actually die if he doesn’t get a chance to regenerate, so I was glad of that.
As far as I can see the generally high standard of this series is definitely continuing. Series two is beginning to look horribly limp by comparison.
And from the trailers tonight’s episode looks like it would seriously have to drop the ball not to deliver… it almost looks like it can’t not be bloody good.
Posted on May 26, 2007 | Filed Under Film, TV, Theatre
Comments
Response left by Emma on May 26th, 2007
The charring is simple to get right, it should look the same as a nuclear blast, and they should be well researched! And the red! Any ship supposed to be able to fly closely to a sun to fuel scoop it – would you paint the inside of a ship that was going to get hot red? Even if it’s not hot all the time a colour like that is a headache waiting to happen. Still enjoyed the flow and that’s what counts!
Law of Doctor Who #7 All emergency controls must be placed somewhere inconvenient. I.e. Other side of swinging fan blades, over chasms, in a radiation filled vacuum. If it was easy, it’d be shorter. Better idea – put it somewhere accessible and then make that inaccessible!
Response left by Pandemonia on June 1st, 2007
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Liked the ‘real time’ format, colour was rather red but effective nonetheless, similar distance problems with the re-magnitiser console for the escape module, not to sure about the whole ‘i’m scared’ bit (I know, I know…..but it’s the doctor!), was hoping Riley could be a companion for a bit (it happened in series 1)….would be nice to have another (cute) bloke around for a bit…..until Catain Jack shows up anyhoo.
In all a pretty good episode, but I still say it was very similar to Satan’s Pit.