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Wacky Reviews: Doctor Who

The Girl In The Fireplace - This is a good episode. It picks up the theme of the Doctor leaving people behind while he doesn't die, except this time it's shown in a clever science fiction way. Sophie Myles is a great guest star and I like Reinette quite a lot. The clockwork robots look really cool! There's a heart beating in a spaceship and I'm not sure if that makes sense but it's cool and freaky! Rose is a lot better here than the previous episode and actually has a good scene with Reinette rather than "you tryin' to steal MY MAN, luv!?" Mickey...well he's just kind of there for the most part but at least he has fun! Tennant is good in the scenes with Reinette. I do wonder why the Doctor doesn't Mind Meld more often and the rules of time travel are feelign rather fluid at this point, but whatever, the episode works.

MOFFAT THING: Reinette says "Doctor, Doctor who?" but it makes perfect sense in context (I'm not saying recurring Moffat things are a bad thing! YET.)

(Also the alien ship trying to repair itself and getting it wrong is a bit like the alien ship trying to repair people and getting things long in The Empty Child/The Doctor dances but it's done in such a different way that I don't think this is really worth noting but I already have okay.)

SCORE: 9/10
 
HOLY SHIT the Cybermen two parter was so fucking boring that I forgot to review it last night and I saw Thor today which was like not boring so I'd rather talk about that but I GUESS I can't let down the DOZENS of people reading this thread...

Rise Of The Cybermen - I don't think they did the Cybermen very well. Like as a NEW VIEWER who doesn't know anything about them (not really true but pretend I am) what makes them all that different from the Daleks? We already had dead humans being made into Daleks last season. This is more of the same only maybe the humans can kind of remember their own identities a bit but not really. There's a scene with humans being chopped up while "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" plays and it just feel completely flat to me. The Cybermen just weren't scary. Mickey/Ricky scenes were kind of amusing thanks to Noel Clarke, but the stuff with Mickey moaning "YOU NEVER LET ME DO ANYTHING DOCTOR" was really grating. I mean he'd only been a companion for two episodes at this point. Shouldn't he have just been grateful to the Doctor for letting him travel through time and space with him?

Everything about this was flat. It's an alternative reality but the only difference is there's loads of blimps oh and look there's Pete again because 'Father's Day' was a popular episode but it just feels like a cheap attemtp to provoke an emotional reaction here. The only "highlight" is Trigger from Only Fools And Horses doing some hilariously bad acting as Lumic.

SCORE: 5.5/10

The Age Of Steel - So last week's cliffhanger saw the Doctor running away from loads of people about to be murdered saying "WE CAN'T HELP THEM" then being captured himself. It's resolved with...him using some explodey thing to escape. Why didn't he do that to save the people last week? Ah, who cares.

Lumic is barely even Lumic now as he's turned into the Cyber-Controller and that ruins the hilariously bad acting. There's a scene with the Cyberman version of Jackie talking to Rose and Pete that's supposed to be sad but it's just silly? Maybe I have no feelings. Then there's the scene with the dying Cyberman WHO WAS A BRIDE THE DAY BEFORE HER WEDDING which is again just so fucking manipulative and not good. Then the Doctor's all "THE WORLD MUST REMEMBER MRS MOORE" but she didn't really do anything and he didn't care about the world remembering all the other people he let die in part one.

Mickey stays behind because of the quality of recent scripts.

SCORE: 5/10
 
The Idiot's Lantern - This is an episode that seems to have a good premise (evil televisions eating people during the coronation!) but turned out to be another tedious chore to get through, just as much as the previous two. Half the episode is spent on an angry man who shouts at and hits his family, but the actor is pretty bad and the writing is pretty poor so we're just watching a man shouting and that's no fun. His son finally says "you fought against fascism, but now YOU'RE A FASCIST!" while the Doctor just kind of stands there and it's so heavy-handed that I thought my hands would fall off. Then the wife kicks him out not for beating her and their son for years but because he "informed" on her mum by telling the police she'd had her face sucked off by an evil tv. When really if your mum DID have her face sucked off by and evil tv it seems like the sensible thing to do would be to tell the police. The villain could have been good if she'd said more than "FEED ME" and "AHAHAHAAHAHA". Rose gets her face sucked off halfway through which is kind of amusing at least. The climax is the Doctor running down a street then climbing up a transmitter while the music says "THIS IS REALLY EXCITING" but it totally isn't. One of the worst episodes so far.

4.5/10
 
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The Impossible Planet - This is better. I like the setting. The characters...aren't great. Some of the actors are better than others. But there's been much worse. The Ood have a cool design. The way they switch between harmless and POSSESSED BY EVIL works well. And the part where Toby is standing outside covered in alien writing with evil red eyes and kills poor nice hot Scooti is a good Doctor Who scene.

On the other hand, Billie Piper appears to have gone mad. She spends like half the episode laughing. The scene where she talks to the Doctor about how they'll never go home again because they've lost the TARDIS is good (though it really doesn't convince you that they genuinely believe they'll never go home again because come on, of course they'll find the TARDIS) but then she just goes back to acting like a total weirdo. I mean just compare it to how convincing she was back in 'The End Of The World' (which introduces the phone seen here, see I'm tying it together) and it's pretty sad. But anyway pretty good episode.

SCORE: 7.5/10

The Satan Pit - This is good too. I like the scene with Satan being a dick to everyone (Rose is going to DIE IN BATTLE, eh?) I like the guy making a log on everyone who dies. I like that the plot could be an episode of the original Star Trek.

It does drag a bit in the middle though with the generic "crawling through vents" scene complete with flahsing lights tracking system and a bad actor getting a long death scene. Also the stuff with the Doctor and Ida going down the pit lasts a bit too long. It's good once they start talking about belief but a bit repetitive? I do like the shot of the Doctor falling into the chasm though.

So Satan (OR AN ALIEN WHO WAS THE BASIS FOR SATAN) shows up and actually he looks pretty good! Even today I think it holds up quite well. A lot like a Balrog though. I have to wonder why the people who imprisoned him didn't just kill him all those years ago instead of a leaving a system that would let the Doctor kill him now? And why the TARDIS just happens to be sitting there right when the Doctor needs it. But WHATEVER it's a good episode.

SCORE: 7.5/10
 
It was only when I rewatched those episodes recently that I noticed just how actually crazy Rose is. She's on a base that will soon be overrun by murderous Ood, but she won't leave because "I HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE DOCTAH!!!!!!!" (who might as well be dead at this point). When they finally drag her off to a ship to save her life she then points a gun at the pilot and threatens to essentially kill them all unless she can go back and wait for him.

She's fucking nuts.
 
Love And Monsters - There was a point in this episode where I thought "this could have been something good, maybe." It's the part where LINDA start meeting and the it seems like the episode might be about lonely people finding friendship through the Doctor (as a thinly disguised metaphor for lonely Doctor Who fans finding friendship through the fandom.) The part where they're looking at old newsclippings of the Doctor and then start opening up and talking about their lives could have been good too. I say "could" because it's all over before it gets good and suddenly they're a band just as an excuse to play ELO songs again as the episode has a "if in doubt, play an ELO song!" policy. Then Peter Kay shows up and it turns into the worst thing ever.

I know the monster was designed by a child and it shows. I don't know why Peter Kay thought this was a script worth saying yes to (I'm not a fan of Peter Kay but he doesn't seem to appear in any old shit (except his own stand-up shows lol.)) His character it like the kind of monster that people who don't watch Doctor Who think Doctor Who monsters are like. Maybe that's the point? Or maybe it's just crap writing, who knows. He starts killing LINDA (including fucking Michael from Alan Partridge who doesn't even get to tell a story about throwing his monkey in the sea first) in a really obvious way but none of them figure it out because...Doctor Who fans are thick? What's the episode actually trying to say now? Even the lead guy from Hustle (but NOT The Real Hustle on BBC3) has to be told by Moaning Myrtle "he's going to kill you next because you've seen him! Run!" Because it somehow wasn't obvious to him.

There's also a bit with Jackie's really sad, pathetic attempts to seduce Hustle guy and I'm not sure why anyone would find this entertaining. Then in the end it turns into a "EVERYONE TOUCHED BY THE DOCTOR DIES OR HAS A MISERABLE LIFE" thing. Which I'm not really a fan of since being touched by the Doctor (not like that!) should be a lot of fun, really. Then we get a flashback revealing the guy's mother died (she was never mentioned in the episode until then) and ELO plays because it's not actually sad it's just really bad. Then it turns out the monster can be defeated by the people it's eaten pulling against it (strange that it evolved that self-defeating ability) and the Doctor brings Myrtle back to life as a paving slab for some reason and HOLY SHIT THIS IS TERRIBLE.

Then the guy does another boring speech about how it was ALL WORTH IT because at least he got to be happy for about five minutes. Never mind the three people who died horribly and the other who will live for eternity as a paving slab.

This is the first Doctor-light episode and I'm not looking forward to the next now!

SCORE: 2/10
 
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Yeah, Love & Monsters is "about" (as much as it's "about" anything) Russell T Davies' opinion on Doctor Who fandom in the 90's - a group of like-minded individuals who used their shared interested in The Doctor to come together and be friends, until Ian Levine waddled along and declared himself the uberfan and told everyone they must take it all very seriously because he saved The Daleks from being wiped don'cha know.

But then it just goes on to the depressing single life of Jackie Tyler and The Doctor confining people to an eternal hell.
 
I was wondering if Peter Kay was based on a real person...

Fear Her - So first of all I know this was a replacement for the scrapped Stephen Fry episode. But it's still shit. And really really cheap. Last week we had a Doctor Light episode, a few weeks before we had an episode set in a street, this week we have...an almost Doctor Light episode (he disappears for about ten minutes) set on a street and a bedroom. It's embarrassing.

A little girl's drawings coming to life isn't exactly an original idea but it could have been a decent story...except the only drawing that comes to life is a scribble. And the trapped children drawings don't move very often because I guess that would have cost money or something. Then the alien explains its backstory by drawing some things. It's really bad. And what's also really bad is the acting from the little girl and the old woman and ESPECIALLY Huw Edwards. Fucking Huw Edwards. Because you see this episode takes place during the Olympics opening ceremony 2012 (which looked a lot more impressive when I watched it on tv last year) so we get Huw Edwars as himself commentating on a terrible plot and saying things like "not you too, Bob!" and the whole bit about the torch being hope and courage and love and I can't be bothered looking the whole quote up because I want to go to bed but just trust me this episode has the Doctor picking up the Olympic torch (I guess the guy carrying it died or something but nobody seems to care) and it's terrible and oh there's a "there's a storm coming" ending which is the laziest writing imaginable and sorry about this review but really what does Fear Her deserve other than a terribly written review?

SCORE: 1.5/10
 
He was hired to write a script for season two, but after spending ages and ages writing it, he gave up and said he couldn't do it. Matthew Graham then had to come in at the extreme last minute and shit out Fear Her.

Matthew Graham then made up for Fear Her by writing The Almost People/The Rebel Flesh.
 
Army Of Ghosts - The episode starts with the idea that ghosts are visiting people all over Earth. The Doctor explains that they can't be ghosts and everyone just wants to believe in them. It's a decent idea but it's dealt with really quickly. And partly in a montage of ghosts showing up in tv shows. When they did the "clips from tv shows" thing for the first time back in Aliens Of London it worked really well. Perhaps it was because there was a more stuff going on (with everyone crowded around in Rose's flat) and we only saw each tv show briefly. Here we get a too long bit of Barbara Windsor telling Dirty Den's ghost to get out of her pub. This could have been funny (really!) if they'd just flicked by it in a couple of seconds, but showing the whole thing just makes it lame.

The episode picks up a bit inside Torchwood. We get Some Woman From Eastenders (the press always made a big deal whenever some woman from Eastenders showed up) as the head of Torchwood and really the actress is pretty decent and she wears a revealing outfit because it's Torchwood I guess! Then the mystery of what the ghosts are is stretched out for the rest of the episode...which doesn't make sense because we already see the Cybermen earlier hiding out in Torchwood. Plus when the Doctor is trying to make the image of a ghost more clear it's REALLY OBVIOUSLY a Cyberman but he doesn't notice.

One of the girls working for Torchwood is REALLY GOOD LOOKING and it's such a shame we won't see her again.

BUT WAIT it's not just Cybermen! The Daleks show up at the end and at least they weren't in the preview so it's a bit of a surprise (unless the fucking Radio Times spoiled it!) Having both and Cybermen and Daleks invade at the same time is certainly one way to up the danger.

I think this episode has aged kind of badly? There's the embarrassing "Ghostbusters" bit and the Doctor discovering he can say "alons-y!" Even though it's supposed to be a "big" epic set-up it doesn't really feel as epic as the previous season final. It's not bad though, at least stuff happens which is more than I can say for the previous two episodes. But it doesn't feel all the exciting, watching it now...

SCORE: 6/10

Doomsday - There's a narration with Rose saying "THIS IS THE DAY THAT I DIED" and "THE LAST STORY I'LL EVER TELL" and stuff. Spoiler: she doesn't die.

That scouse guy from the Cybermen episodes shows up and he's still terrible.

Pete and Jackie get a touching reuonion which thinks it's more touching than it actually is. Oh, and millions of people are dying all over the world.

So yeah, the Cybermen only have five million Cybermen but this is enough to have one in every home worldwide (and some standing around near the Taj Mahal for some reason) somehow. People fight back when the show up. The Doctor can see several fires from people being killed in the section of London he's looking at. So worldwide there must be a Hell of a lot more people fighting back and dying. And that's even before the Daleks show up and kill loads more people.

Yeah all through the episode there's a big build-up to what's in the...thing but it's just loads of Daleks. I liked that it was a prison that was bigger on the inside? But we've already seen loads of Daleks so it doesn't seem that exciting.

For an episode where millions of people must die it still doesn't feel all that epic. We don't really get a moment of the Doctor feeling bad for the millions dying either.

I DID LIKE the scene where the Daleks and Cybermen trashtalk each other. That was amusing. And the part where the Torchwood lady fights back as a Cyberwoman makes kind of sense since it was set up that Torchwood personnel have special psychic training.

The actual fighting between the Daleks and Cybermen is completely one-sided (the Daleks destroy them) which makes it a bit less fun maybe? It's just stuff that happens really. Needed more trashtalking and less Cybermen exploding. I realise that "who would win, the Daleks or the Cybermen!?" is probably a big thing to a lot of people and it is kind of enjoyable but it could have been so much better?

The Doctor does some thing that will suck everything with "void stuff" on it back into the void. It really doesn't seem like FIVE MILLION Cybermen are pulled in (and as they're all over the world wouldn't it take a long time?) but whatever. The TARDIS isn't sucked in despite the fact that it's travelled through the void. Rose and the Doctor's arms aren't torn off because...something.

I can't really be bothered going into the Doctor nearly telling Rose he loves her. It's too melodramatic and hokey to make me feel anything.

Hey it's Catherine Tate!

SCORE: 6.5/10

The Runaway Bride - Catherine Tate shouts a lot. In an annoying voice. I don't understand her appeal. There's really fucking annoying overbearing background music telling us "THIS IS FUNNY" or "THIS IS DRAMATIC" when it isn't. There's a part with the TARDIS chasing a car that could have been exciting in a better episode. Catherine Tate slaps the Doctor twice because women hitting men is funny. There's a really long, contrived explanation for why Donna is invovled in this. Lance turns out to be evil...and is actually kind of entertaining when he goes on his rant about how annoying Catherine Tate is. I hear you! There's a fucking spider women who is complete panto and not in a good, knowing way. Like the Doctor kills her with WATER AND FIRE and now we're supposed to take it seriously but we can't because it's so silly and shit. Oh and it turns out the spider lady just force feeds Lance the particle things so the six months he spent drugging Donna were pointless. Oh and those robot Santas from last year are back and working for the spider lady because...I don't know. And Torchwood built this secret lab thing and just left it empty? It snows at the end. Christmas. Donna doesn't want to be a companion. That's something at least!

Oh, another thing, all three of these episodes are set in present day London, just like many episodes previously. It's become obvious it's the default location for Doctor Who and it's really boring. Go somewhere else.

SCORE: 4/10
 
Yeah, that was one of the most annoying aspects of the RTD era. It seemed like every episode was set in London or Cardiff and they completely forgot about alien worlds or proper farflung time travel. I'm sure the budget came into that but if youre doing a show about exploring space and time you should really venture out of two of the country's modern day population centres. As a Londoner I was as bored as anyone with them deliberately shoving the London Eye into the back of shots and all that. I wanted escapism!

Thankfully Moffat's got the brains and the budget to venture elsewhere even if I don't always understand the plots.
 
They're only been in Cardiff twice so far, so that's something. And there's not as many gay references as I remember...
 
Smith And Jones - So finally series 2 is over and we have a fresh new companion. It is a relief to not have the Rose stuff clogging things up (of course she still gets mentioned a lot) but..it's not really a very good episode? I mean it's not bad. It's perfectly acceptable. Just lacking spark or any real cleverness.

It has to introduce the new companion and, while there's nothing really wrong with Martha's introduction, it doesn't make her seem all that exciting either. We get a look at her family life, which seems like a rehash of Rose's family life (and I don't remember anything about her relatives so I guess we don't see them very often after this), she's a trainee doctor which is nice, she shows the Doctor she's smart in a kind of "look, she's smart!" way, she likes being on the moon, the Doctor kisses her (urgh)...it's all okay (except the kiss, they should have steered clear of that after the Rose stuff) but not highly compelling.

The Judoon do look pretty good. I'm not sure why they had to bring the hospital to the moon instead of just putting a forcefield around it on Earth. The old woman villain isn't great and how is she actually drinking blood with that straw anyway? The bit with the Doctor travelling back and giving Martha his tie is nice. But that's about as good as the episode gets. Kind of nice. Put it this way, 'Rose' was the superior "introduce a new copanion" episode. It had a bit of energy.

SCORE: 6.5/10
 
The Shakespeare Code - This episode does a better job of making it look like they've actually travelled back in time than previous "early in the series time travel" episodes. Maybe they got a higher budget at this point or just made more of an effort, but it's appreciated. There's some nice shots of 1599 London. Martha is worried about being taken off as a slave when the Doctor says "nah, don't worry!" and two black women walk by so I guess that's settled (I know there wasn't slavery in London at this time anyway but you'd think she'd get more stares from people. Especially in those jeans! Yes it's my "Freema Agyeman is really hot" comment of the week!) Shakespeare shows up. He's okay? The actor isn't super great or anything. He has some amusing moments. Mostly he's really horny. There's witches. They're aliens really but they act exactly like witches. Like laughing, broomsticks, voodoo dolls (DNA REPLICATION MODULE.) It's really silly but the episode knows it's silly, at least.

The Doctor is still a bit of a dick to Martha, ignoring or dismissing her quite a few times. Then there's the "ROSE WOULD KNOW WHAT TO SAY" bit. I can understand the Doctor being insenstive becaues he's an alien or whatever, but they should have had a "actually Martha, you're good IN YOUR OWN WAY TOO" moment. But they didn't.

They also should have had Anne Hathaway guest starring as Anne Hathaway and showing up with a rolling pin when Shakespeare was trying to kiss Martha and she's like "you're in for it now!" But I liked the Elizabeth the First ending anyway. This episode isn't great but it's a lot more fun than The Unqueit Dead and Tooth And Claw.

SCORE: 7.5/10
 
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Gridlock - Another episode that makes it look like they're putting a bit more effort in than series 2. There's a quite well developed world here (for a 45 minute episode) and lots of special effects with the cars. Okay the effects have aged badly but the effort's there! It's a shame all of the cars the Doctor visits just contain humans (well, there's a white guy...and a red guy though. )The plot is pretty good too and the idea of thousands of people being trapped in a traffic jam for 24 years seems quite original (maybe it isn't I don't know.) The guest acting is strong too and Ardal O'Hanlon does a good job as the cat.

(It really is a pity about the "I'm just an old fashioned cat!" line. Like surely a cat married to a human in the year FIVE BILLION would accept two women being married? I don't get why RTD puts lines like that in as he seems to try to include gay characters to make them seem like everyone else, whcih is good, but then he's also saying "it's funny because they're gay!" and it seems self-defeating. Or maybe I'm analysing this one jokey line too much. Fuck.)

The moment where the trapped people see the sun again is nice. I'm not a big fan of The Face Of Bo's "LEGEND SAYS HE WILL SPEAK FOR FINAL WORDS" thing. He could have said four much more useful words. Or just said more stuff while he was still alive. It's just an attempt to recreate the Bad Wolf foreshadowing but it really doesn't work as well.

The episode also handles the Doctor/Martha stuff better than the previous one as he actually realises he's treated her badly and opens up to her about Galifrey (mirroring the scene with Rose at the end of 'The End Of The World'.)

A GOOD SOLID EPISODE.

(Why didn't the Face of Bo just open the roof years earlier?)

SCORE: 8/10
 
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Daleks In Manhattan - This episode is shit! Everything about it is wrong. There's no tension, no excitement, no humour, nothing interesting....there's pig men in the sewers. There's that. There's another "minion refuses to do something and threatens to blow the whistle and is introduced to the REAL BOSS and killed" scene (I make it the third so far.) There's Daleks. One thing I kind of liked maybe is that we see the Daleks early on, instead of keeping them a "surprise" for the cliffhanger. But then the episode stalls and drags things out to a cliffhanger anyway! The Doctor doesn't know about the Daleks so we have to watch him figure it out by examining a plastic brain. There's lots of really bad American accents from Captain Panaka, the showgirl, Spider-Man and Pig-Man. Martha doesn't do anything important and gets captured just because that's the kind of thing that happens when you're dragging an episode out. And the cliffhanger...after being used really well in the first series and "okay" in the second series (I mean thinking about it there was literally no story reason at all for the Daleks to even be in Army Of Ghosts/Doomsday but at least they weren't disgraced in any way) I'm now hoping we never see them again.

SCORE: 2.5/10

Evolution Of The Daleks - The second half is SLIGHTLY better because at least there's a few decent moments. There's the part where Captain Panaka makes a big speech appealing to the mercy of the daleks and they just kill him. There's the bit where the two Daleks are whispering about the Human Dalek and they look around to make sure no one's listening. And the scenes with the Doctor and the Human Dalek at least have kind of an interesting idea buried in there. I mean it's executed terribly but the idea of an enemy changing after becoming part human and the Doctor helping him is...decent. But everything else is shit. Martha has no role other than to whine about how the Doctor doesn't fancy her. That's all she does. There's a bit where she kills the pig men with lightning that strikes right as the door opens as well. That was shit. The Doctor's DNA is passed into the Human Daleks because he's struck by lighning(!)? That was shit. The Doctor saves the Pig Man's life somehow but can't turn him human again because they need a part with the Pig Man and Showgirl in love so Martha can have another "the Doctor doesn't fancy me!" line. All the Human Dalek Timelords and Pig Men conveniently die so that we don't have to deal with them. Why didn't I just skip to the next episode? BECAUSE I DESERVE PAIN.

SCORE: 3.5/10
 
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