oh well, episode one was good...

[perlmonger]

It was bereft of coherence, sense, style or any sort of respect for its viewers at all; I return reeling from Dr Who at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe on the TiVo.

I really don't know where to begin with this; there really were no saving graces at all, unless self-referential irony and anachronism raised to a core principle, leavened with pop "philosophy" and hackneyed plot devices were to save anything at all.

Part of the problem is the story-in-one-episode constraint which, of itself, makes any sort of structure to the series depend on the relationship between the Doctor and Rose, but even that can't excuse the layering of cliche upon cliche (running through spinning blades with seconds to spare, oh ghods, at least Galaxy Quest did that with wit...) and the golden age pulp sensibility of a contemporary - and, even within that, desperately narrow - slice of culture being treated as a universal five fucking million years in the future.

And he brought the Eval Beatch to Justice OMG!!! by reversing the polarity on the interositer with his bloody sonic screwdriver.

Chips indeed. Pah.

[Edit: Oh, and what was with the bloody bicycle pump? Eh? Answer me that?]

Comments

[pdcawley.livejournal.com]

I rather enjoyed it. A much lower tosh quotient than Quatermass over on BBC4. (Which underran by 20 minutes! I know that there's a tendency to go faster when it's for real but that was really going some.)

[syllopsium.livejournal.com]

I liked it. Yes, the spinning blades made me think of Galaxy Quest but other than that I thought it was rather good Who. It's set the stage nicely for future episodes (talk about huge canon altering bombshells!).