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Doctor Who - S3E8 - S3E13
Jul. 10th, 2007 11:58 amBeing fed up of going around like the Likely Lads for a month, with my metaphorical fingers in my metaphorical ears and trying desperately to avoid spoilers, I decided that we needed to watch Doctor Who last Sunday as we still had the last six episodes of the third series to watch and everyone in Britain knew what happened except us. I didn't expect to get through all of them in one sitting, but the episodes are definitely getting better and we could hardly stop once we'd started.
The "Human Nature/Family of Blood" storyline was an unusual start - it was only after watching it that I found that it was based on one of the old Doctor Who novels (his human form was from Aberdeen originally!). The almost fairytale-like ending had a strange air of sadness to it, and, just as "42" was the first genuinely frightening episode so far, this was definitely the most emotionally involving. They just used the tactic of piling it on thicker and thicker at the end until you eventually collapse under the colossal weight of it all at the war memorial scene. Incredible acting from David Tennant there, and very different from his normal character.
On to "Blink", which I had to get from TV Links because I'd forgotten to download it somehow. It seems like they're going for one side-story episode per series, and just like the last one, this was pure evil in a forty-five minute package. The storyline was actually very clever, making more use of the time travel aspect than normal and creating a Back to the Future-like loop that I'm still on the point of working out. But what everyone will remember from this episode are the weeping angels.
It was bad enough giving the huge buildup before you fully realized what was happening, and showing the screaming, twisted faces of the angels in the basement as they advanced in a demented stop-motion manner - but the main event came at the end, in that it's the only episode I've ever seen that actively tried to make you scared of something, rather than playing on a fear that someone might have anyway. I found statues to be a little unsettling anyway, but the scene at the end implying that any one of them could be alive and about to kill you actually made me shout at the television. Because as it happens, the building I work in is in a square surrounded by staring, empty-eyed bronze-faced statues that I now feel compelled to keep my eyes on every time I walk past. I'll get you, Steven Moffat. (I also found it hilarious that the Doctor Who site gives a special warning about this episode along with a "fear factor" of 5.5. On a scale of 5.)
After that, it was the final three-part storyline. Now, I did think that his episodes were incredibly clever at first, but it's rapidly emerging that Russell T Davies is far from the best writer of the team despite heading the idea of reviving the programme in the first place. The clever, menacing fear of the previous episode was replaced in the first part by somebody with wonky teeth walking around and going "grr" a bit, and a lot of the musical scenes in the storyline just seemed a bit embarrassing, even given the fact that the Master obviously wanted to turn himself into a trendy young Mac user sort of tyrant.
However, it almost made up for this weirdness in the sheer over-the-topness of the second half of the storyline - I can now see why my dad was so anxious to immediately download the third episode and watch it when he was here, because I don't think I would have coped with thinking about the situation the middle episode ended in for a week. Allowing a complete disaster to happen and going into that storyline for an on-screen year only to undo it later on was quite a major shock.
And thanks to all that, that night I had a nightmare involving Doctor Who fighting the Vortex Queen from Ecco the Dolphin. Thanks a lot. Unfortunately those are the last episodes that we'll comfortably be able to watch together because some idiot's brought Catherine Tate back for the fourth series, and that might be the most frightening bit of it all.
The "Human Nature/Family of Blood" storyline was an unusual start - it was only after watching it that I found that it was based on one of the old Doctor Who novels (his human form was from Aberdeen originally!). The almost fairytale-like ending had a strange air of sadness to it, and, just as "42" was the first genuinely frightening episode so far, this was definitely the most emotionally involving. They just used the tactic of piling it on thicker and thicker at the end until you eventually collapse under the colossal weight of it all at the war memorial scene. Incredible acting from David Tennant there, and very different from his normal character.
On to "Blink", which I had to get from TV Links because I'd forgotten to download it somehow. It seems like they're going for one side-story episode per series, and just like the last one, this was pure evil in a forty-five minute package. The storyline was actually very clever, making more use of the time travel aspect than normal and creating a Back to the Future-like loop that I'm still on the point of working out. But what everyone will remember from this episode are the weeping angels.
It was bad enough giving the huge buildup before you fully realized what was happening, and showing the screaming, twisted faces of the angels in the basement as they advanced in a demented stop-motion manner - but the main event came at the end, in that it's the only episode I've ever seen that actively tried to make you scared of something, rather than playing on a fear that someone might have anyway. I found statues to be a little unsettling anyway, but the scene at the end implying that any one of them could be alive and about to kill you actually made me shout at the television. Because as it happens, the building I work in is in a square surrounded by staring, empty-eyed bronze-faced statues that I now feel compelled to keep my eyes on every time I walk past. I'll get you, Steven Moffat. (I also found it hilarious that the Doctor Who site gives a special warning about this episode along with a "fear factor" of 5.5. On a scale of 5.)
After that, it was the final three-part storyline. Now, I did think that his episodes were incredibly clever at first, but it's rapidly emerging that Russell T Davies is far from the best writer of the team despite heading the idea of reviving the programme in the first place. The clever, menacing fear of the previous episode was replaced in the first part by somebody with wonky teeth walking around and going "grr" a bit, and a lot of the musical scenes in the storyline just seemed a bit embarrassing, even given the fact that the Master obviously wanted to turn himself into a trendy young Mac user sort of tyrant.
However, it almost made up for this weirdness in the sheer over-the-topness of the second half of the storyline - I can now see why my dad was so anxious to immediately download the third episode and watch it when he was here, because I don't think I would have coped with thinking about the situation the middle episode ended in for a week. Allowing a complete disaster to happen and going into that storyline for an on-screen year only to undo it later on was quite a major shock.
And thanks to all that, that night I had a nightmare involving Doctor Who fighting the Vortex Queen from Ecco the Dolphin. Thanks a lot. Unfortunately those are the last episodes that we'll comfortably be able to watch together because some idiot's brought Catherine Tate back for the fourth series, and that might be the most frightening bit of it all.
