Welcome to the homepage for author and publisher David J Howe. I'm the author and co-author of numerous books about the TV Show "Doctor Who", as well as being a freelance writer and Editorial Director of Telos Publishing Ltd.
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Tuesday, June 26, 2007
The Time Factor
Profuse apologies for a lack of review for last week's Doctor Who episode ... basically the weekend was taken up with collecting son from Uni, and then tidying the house. Evenings this week are mental, and next weekend is also completely occupied with stuff.
So the chances are that The Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords won't be reviewed for a couple of weeks yet ...
Sorry about that but sometimes the real world intrudes ...
Nothing to do with the fact that it was dreadful then? ;-)
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, I was NOT impressed. Too many ideas, OTT 'acting' from John Simm (such a disappointment after Sir Derek), more CGI rubbish, a BIG scheme so far removed from the small scale stuff that Who does so well (Human Nature and Blink spring instantly to mind) that it was impossible to relate to any of it.
And who cares about Martha's family? Ironically, given that I felt Rose's family had too much prominence, Martha's have had so little and are such unsympathetic characters (stand up Martha's mum) that I felt no sympathy at all.
And what was all this "ageing the Doctor" nonsense? For a start, ageing him 100 years wouldn't produce the effect we saw. We know that Time Lord bodies don't age that badly.
Jack did nothing, I still love Martha and DT provided a great performance as usual. But the script was dreadful. The tension when Nicola McCauliffe's journalist was murdered was removed by the whole extended scream/open door gag. Pointless.
And then there was the use of that pop track. Grrr. What disturbs me most about that is that there is a line in that song: "so here it comes, the sound of drums" that is so specific that it causes the cynic in me to think that the whole drums mallarkey was thought up so RTD could crowbar that track into an episode!
Then the ending was another special effects 'spectacular'. Lucky Martha managed to find the only spot not destroyed by whatever these Toclafane things are.
The only two moments I truly enjoyed were the conversation between The Master and the Doctor over the phone, and our glimpse of Gallifrey. Very nice indeed.
There is nothing wrong with thinking big if you have the time and talent to pull it off properly. Unfortunately the season finale has SO much to cram into 45 minutes I feel we're going to be let down again. Who are the Toclafane? How do they know the Master? What is his plan? What the Hell are the drums about? How easily are they going to be stopped? Is Jack the Face of Boe? Has everyone forgotten that ALL this has to be resolved in 45 minutes so we can have another jolly romp Christmas special?
As normally follows with RTD 2-parters, I'm expecting more effect, blase explanations, lots of gunfights, explosions and some 'emotional content'. New Who by numbers.
I really hope I'm proved completely wrong - but after a string of good episodes, this was really disappointing.