Doctor Who

[lostcarpark]

Ooh, I really liked this episode. I like this whole season, in fact, but this was one really good episode. I've been meaning to write about them all, but I've been too lazy.

So the Doctor arrives in New York. Well, actually London. Close enough. At least he's got his scooter.

This was another quite scary story. I know I've sometimes felt like my face was being sucked into the telly, and my brain dribling out my ear. Uncanny, that.

I could have a go at debunking the idea that a being could beam across space and arrive in our television signals, but the idea is too preposterous to warrant the effort. I mean it's theoretically possible, if you could first persuade someone to build a machine to receive the signal, decode it, store it and either reassemble it as a lifeform or give it a very powerful computer to exist in. I can't see any evidence that the TV man has either. And such a machine would probably have to include a receiver hundreds of miles across to have the bandwidth to receive a complete lifeform across intersetlar distances. But this is Doctor Who, and we don't worry about such trifling details. We're here to be scared.

David Tennant is such a great Doctor. Chris Eccleston was brilliant, but while he always wanted to do a good job, I think the Doctor Who universe was alien to him. David Tennant grew up with Doctor Who, and knows it inside out. I spot moments and think, "That's classic Tom Baker". He manages to pull influence from many of the previous doctors, but still make the role his own. I also noticed early on in the new series that his credit in the end titles had changed from "Doctor Who" to "The Doctor", which is what it had been in the old series. That was apparently at Tennent's insistence.

I still have a gripe that far too many episodes are set on Earth. Even if it's a new Earth a couple of galaxies away, or an alternative reality Earth, or a spaceship connected to 18th century France. I don't mind the majority of stories are Earth-based. I mean, a significant portion of the show is about the Doctor's unusual connection to an odd blue-green spec of dirt in an innocous corner of a fairly average glaaxy. But every so often, at least once or twice a season, they really ought to throw in a complete curve ball and have an episode with aboslutely nothing to do with Earth. No space station orbiting Earth, no space ship on a colision course with Earth, and no humans (apart from the Doctor's companions). It doesn't matter if the aliens look exactly like humans - that's normal enough in Doctor Who, and a heck of a lot better than funnny ears or noses, but just establish that we're on a complete alien world for once, and this episode has no Earth connection at all.

I rather liked the ending, though I don't know how the people got their faces back. If they had to be near a TV for the Wire to absorb them, surely they should have to be near one to get them back, and there didn't seem to be one in the lockup at all. But I know we don't watch Doctor Who for the science, do we?

I was a bit worried that the Doctor might pick up the kid as a new companion towards the end. I mean it wouldn't be the first time he'd picked up a boy who was gifted to electronics or maths or something. A bit dodgy that, really.

Next week looks interesting... minions of Cthulhu?

Comments

[davesangel.livejournal.com]

I loved this episode too. But I do agree that there have been too many set on earth - I'm looking forward to next week (a two-parter) not only because of what I've read about it, but because it will be interesting to at last see a story that's not set somewhere on earth.