Meanwhile, if you haven't seen them yet, here are the eleven incarnations of --- Doctor Hoo as seen by M Dyer on pu-sama's deviantART site...
Click to enlargeThanks to the good little bird who told me about them --- well, actually, more of a Good (Bird) Dog!
One of my friends on Twitter tweeted "Right, how the heck is Dr. Who going to get out of that????" So my friend Dewi is waiting with bated breath as well.
ReplyDeleteLove the WHO HOOs! (Although I've never watched Dr. Who -- am I allowed to say that around here? -- so I don't recognize a one of them!)
Hope the suspense doesn't prove too overwhelming! ;-)
Do I sense that you're more enamoured with tonight's episode than the last one you reviewed Brian? lol
ReplyDeleteI watched a little of it after a friend said the new Doctor is less "hammy" than David Tennant. I can't say I see where he's coming from!
These owls are so sweet!
ReplyDeleteYes, a highly complicated episode - let's hope that the denoumente (sorry if I've spelt that wrong) doesn't disappoint.
I like both of the most recent regenerations, Andy - ham and all.
Although I've enjoyed Matt Smith's Doctor, I get the feeling his ending is going to be disappointing. What was last night about? I hope they get their act together for next week...
ReplyDeleteindes: sticky endings
SCB - Dewi's question is a good one, unless.... But let's wait and see! :)
ReplyDeleteANDY - Yep, Saturday's episode was back on form (despite Vincent and Winston getting to make a comeback): exciting, complex, funny, scary and with a FANTASTIC cliff-hanger!
SHARON - I wonder if the Who Owls will start a trend of depicting the 11 Doctors as different animals? Wish I were a better artist...
SUZANNE - It was about... er... 50 minutes! Watch it again on BBC iPlayer: a lot of themes and threads are coming together. To address Sharon's fears, I hope the conclusion won't disappoint - unless, of course, they do a Lost or an Ashes to Ashes and we find that everyone4 is actually at Amy and Rory's funeral!
Unfortunately Moffat's endings often feel a bit of a letdown after a huge build-up, but nowhere near as disasterous as RTD's. I think we'll end up with a "good" episode next week rather than the one most are describing as "awesome" last night. You get the impression that Moffat at least works out the ending first and is consistent (where RTD seemed to write stuff just for a gimmick, not having a clue how to finish off what he'd set up). But Moffat does tend to climax far too early (His "Jekyll" mini-series was probably the worst example of this). So we were lucky last night with a great episode, some nice twists that didn't feel like cheats (they'd been well set up in previous episodes) and arguably the best cliff-hanger the series has ever had (or cliff-hangers - hard to see how he could have got more in). Not totally convinced that the directorial decision to do a "Lost" (slow motion, silent camerawork) at the end was the right one (far too obviously a "steal" from Lost) but fantastic that Moffat/the director managed to make cybermen genuinely scary again, where RTD had turned them into a joke, making wisecracks about designer costumes.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I am confident Moffat will deliver a finale that won't be such a huge let-down the way every single season finale from Davies did, but he's an intelligent writer and likes to make his audience think - not all fans of the show WANT to think and there were quite a few complaints that people couldn't follow what was happening (a second viewing is pretty much required if you didn't follow all the subtle clues, but it does show how consistent and well-thought out the plotting is).
What was hilarious watching the Twitter stream during and just after the broadcast was (a) the number of folks complaining vociferously they didn't know how they could wait 7 days which is of course what the original series managed to achieve (imagine if this were an American series - we'd have ended the whole season with last night's episode cliff-hangers and had to wait 9 months for a conclusion the writers hadn't thought of at the time the cliff-hanger aired) and (b) the small but very vocal minority of David Tennant female fans who are still complaining about how much better the series was with Tennant as the doctor. Doctor Who never used to be about "eye candy" and it's a shame that RTD had to turn it into an eye candy show to attract female viewers and boost the ratings which is now causing problems for Moffat.
Well, Ian, one week on, I have to say, I thought Moffat definitely delivered: full of complex, (sometimes sly) references across the season's episodes (and back to earlier seasons too), humour, sentiment and the promise of a trip to Egypt (ah, yes, River Song was posing as Cleopatra in last week's episode!) for the Christmas Special.
ReplyDeleteOur mutual friend, Sophie, says that if you drew a Time-(And-Relative-Dimensions-In-Space)-Line of the Doctor's tripping back and forth in the last 13 weeks, the dots wouldn't join up! I say they would but don't want to be so geeky as to try and prove it! :)
What do you think??