Well, that was appalling. That’s far and away the worst episode of the revamped Doctor Who, and a good contender for the worst Doctor Who I’ve ever seen. Maybe I need to watch Timelash again.
The one thing I’ve said over and over again about Russell T. Davies’ Who is the comedy is far, far too broad. Which means that when they actually try and do a comedy episode, it rapidly degenerates into farce – and not in a good way, either.
The characters and acting were over-the-top comedic, with absolutely no realism (I practically laughed out loud when Doctor Who Confidential had one of the actors saying that Russell didn’t want geeky characters with silly voices – as that’s exactly what he got). Peter Kay is particularly bad.
Bah. Bah, I say!
Nope, you don’t need to watch Timelash again, it is that bad. No harm to them but this is what you get when you run a Blue Peter competition to make a Who villain and write a story around the result. That opening sequence in the facory, I’ve seen that gag done better in Scooby Doo and when did the Doctor stop trying to reason with the beasties? It’s rapidly becoming find it, kill it. That’s not Who at all…
I actually liked it, it was a good change of pace. It was poiniant, funny and the Abzorbalotz was pretty nasty.
Elton was an interesting character and the only mis-steps were the not-so-subtle intimation of having sex with a bodyless pavement slab, the bum girl and any, I mean any, mention of the Slitheen. That most of all was unnecessary.
Do kids like the Slitheen or something? Aren’t they supposed to be a family name anyroads, not a race name? Wasn’t that meant to be the whole “ooh cleverness” of the Slitheen?
Tonight (Dec. 8th) is when Sci-Fi Channel here in the states runs “Love & Monsters”. I’ve been warning people for MONTHS about how gloriously loathesome this fifty-megaton bomb of an episode really is (I’m one of those Who fans in America who’s been downloading from the ‘net after it first runs there, God bless ye good Brits!
For the past several weeks I’ve watched my friends be in awe at “The Girl in the Fireplace”, “The Age of Steel” and “The Impossible Planet”… now tonight I *really* get to watch them squirm in agony! Even by arguably more decadent American standards, this one is gonna be a stinker.