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There's A NuWho Rising...
I notice my flist seem to have got bored of "Pond Life". It's not exactly the greatest thing Who has ever produced, I'll admit. Still, this might raise a sort of apathetic half-smile (and spot the perhaps-sorta oldschool Who in-joke):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm0dqb7rKpk
So, to recap yesterday's rambling narrative, I was just saying that, as many other fans have said, NuWho S6 wasn't really as good, overall, as the mostly-magnificent S5, although probably not for any of the reasons the would-be cognoscenti were pontificating over at the time. What it was not, however many fans may have said so, was terrible (in my opinion), yea even as terrible as S2, or even a game of two halves (as S3 and S4 arguably were, again in my opinion). It was, generally, a mixed bag, I think, but not to the extent that would turn me off the Eleven-Moffat project or anything (and let us be clear, here I am discussing Moffat's body of work in relation to NuWho, not whatever he might say or think or be like in real life or indeed his work on other projects). Anyway, and partially in response to a conversation that started on the previous post's comments, tomorrow I will wax lyrical about some of the stories I really liked in S6, but for now I will content myself with sharing with you...
The Hall of Shame (I liked the Gangers two-parter better than these):
3. Curse of the Black Spot. I don't even dislike Curse of the Black Spot that much, I just...I feel nothing about it. I am totally apathetic; watching it was like eating sugar-free candy-floss. I even had to look up the title because for me it has become "that boring pirate one with Lord Grantham in it". It wasn't bad, really, it wasn't good. It just was. And that, considering it was Eleven and Amy and Rory on an honest-to-gods pirate ship, on the high seas, with pirates and swordfighting and a ghosty mermaid thing, represents some astonishing level of achievement in some sense, I guess. So maybe I should admire it instead. Except that I won't. I will add, though, that the shocking plot twist was pretty much lifted wholesale from S1's The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (although a certain amount of plot-recycling is of course a time-honoured Who tradition - the Two era would have been half as long otherwise, saving the guys in the burnination department at the Beeb a lot of time and trouble, the swine). Oh, and Lily Cole (the siren) was in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, imho a much-underrated entry in the Terry Gilliam oeuvre, spiritual successor, perhaps, to the mighty Time Bandits. Talking about Terry Gilliam films is a much more worthwhile use of anybody's time than watching this story.
2. Night Terrors. Every time I put the boot into Mark Gatiss's writing for NuWho, I feel like I'm kicking a sweet innocent red-haired little puppy. He seems like a good egg, a sincere Who fan and also a fan of other things I can dig, like old British horror films (watch the documentary series he made about horror movies if you run across it - it's great) and duff war films ("this is Broadsword calling Danny Boy" - Google it), and I loved him and his co-conspirators in The League of Gentlemen. But...he hasn't really done a good script for NuWho yet, has he? Let's be brutally honest. Even The Unquiet Dead was mainly carried by the brilliance of Eccleston and Simon Callow, wasn't it? You know, I've seen worse Who stories than Night Terrors - some of them even had Peter Davison in - but that doesn't mean it was any good. It was set up as a creepy horror story along the lines of Blink, but it just didn't ever "click", as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not really sure what to make of the sort of oh-look-poor-people! approach to the block of flats and its residents, except to say I think - hope - it was well-meaning but misguided. Oh, the bloke out of Ashes to Ashes (and the late, sadly unlamented Outcasts) was good as the dad. Which is another thing about Mark Gatiss's Who stories; I would never presume to speculate out loud about anybody else's family relations, but...yeah...
There's a fic on the Teaspoon with the same title, by the way. It's much better.
1. A Good Man Goes to War. This may be a surprising choice for some of you - I don't know what the general reaction to this was, really - but I really took issue with it. And disliked it more on a second watch, which is unusual for me where NuWho is concerned (I normally like everything better on a rewatch), There's a quotation I'm not really remembering, something about sound and fury signifying nothing, and that pretty much summed up this story for me. The strange thing is, it had many features and scenes that I actually rather liked: Roman Rory threatening the Cyberfleet, for instance or instant-fanfic-heroines Madame Vastra and Jenny ("How did you find the Ripper?" "A bit stringy"). The whole, though, was definitely less than the sum of its parts, and what made it worse was the bombastic, overblown insistence that this was the highest the Doctor would ever rise...and the lowest he'd ever fall. Or whatever that bobbins poem was about. The Doctor's risen higher and on occasion fallen lower than that on...well, plenty of occasions, but never with the need for that sort of pompous build-up beforehand. I get that they were building him up so that the shocking twist ending would be all the more of a kick in the guts...except it was somewhat undermined by being exactly the same shocking twist ending that had been used to much greater effect in the previous story. The story felt like it was trying to be epic without really earning the right to call itself that (something that could be said, perhaps of the S6 story-arc in general).
I'm also not sure that the correct antidote to Ten!angst is to try to build up Eleven as some sort of grim'n'gritty 90s-throwback anti-hero (the boy Smith just doesn't have the elbows for it, for one thing). There were worrying whiffs of it in S5 (and disquieting signs in some of the trailers for S7), but this story was the clearest expression of the tendency in Moffat-Who so far. Seven never needed anybody else talking in hushed voices about what a universe-threatening bad-ass he was or good men not needing rules, etc. Just sayin'. ;)
Dishonourable mention goes to the Gangers two-parter, as subtly hinted at above. It wasn't actually that bad, but I don't know, something about Sarah Smart's frankly rubbish performance as the main antagonist really rubbed me up the wrong way. I'm sorry about singling out individual actors, but I really didn't like it. And I've seen her being good in other things she's been in, too. I may come back to this subject later.
Anyway, after all of that negativity...we'll have the Three Bestest tomorrow. I know you can't wait. ;D
Three days remaining! That is all!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm0dqb7rKpk
So, to recap yesterday's rambling narrative, I was just saying that, as many other fans have said, NuWho S6 wasn't really as good, overall, as the mostly-magnificent S5, although probably not for any of the reasons the would-be cognoscenti were pontificating over at the time. What it was not, however many fans may have said so, was terrible (in my opinion), yea even as terrible as S2, or even a game of two halves (as S3 and S4 arguably were, again in my opinion). It was, generally, a mixed bag, I think, but not to the extent that would turn me off the Eleven-Moffat project or anything (and let us be clear, here I am discussing Moffat's body of work in relation to NuWho, not whatever he might say or think or be like in real life or indeed his work on other projects). Anyway, and partially in response to a conversation that started on the previous post's comments, tomorrow I will wax lyrical about some of the stories I really liked in S6, but for now I will content myself with sharing with you...
The Hall of Shame (I liked the Gangers two-parter better than these):
3. Curse of the Black Spot. I don't even dislike Curse of the Black Spot that much, I just...I feel nothing about it. I am totally apathetic; watching it was like eating sugar-free candy-floss. I even had to look up the title because for me it has become "that boring pirate one with Lord Grantham in it". It wasn't bad, really, it wasn't good. It just was. And that, considering it was Eleven and Amy and Rory on an honest-to-gods pirate ship, on the high seas, with pirates and swordfighting and a ghosty mermaid thing, represents some astonishing level of achievement in some sense, I guess. So maybe I should admire it instead. Except that I won't. I will add, though, that the shocking plot twist was pretty much lifted wholesale from S1's The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (although a certain amount of plot-recycling is of course a time-honoured Who tradition - the Two era would have been half as long otherwise, saving the guys in the burnination department at the Beeb a lot of time and trouble, the swine). Oh, and Lily Cole (the siren) was in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, imho a much-underrated entry in the Terry Gilliam oeuvre, spiritual successor, perhaps, to the mighty Time Bandits. Talking about Terry Gilliam films is a much more worthwhile use of anybody's time than watching this story.
2. Night Terrors. Every time I put the boot into Mark Gatiss's writing for NuWho, I feel like I'm kicking a sweet innocent red-haired little puppy. He seems like a good egg, a sincere Who fan and also a fan of other things I can dig, like old British horror films (watch the documentary series he made about horror movies if you run across it - it's great) and duff war films ("this is Broadsword calling Danny Boy" - Google it), and I loved him and his co-conspirators in The League of Gentlemen. But...he hasn't really done a good script for NuWho yet, has he? Let's be brutally honest. Even The Unquiet Dead was mainly carried by the brilliance of Eccleston and Simon Callow, wasn't it? You know, I've seen worse Who stories than Night Terrors - some of them even had Peter Davison in - but that doesn't mean it was any good. It was set up as a creepy horror story along the lines of Blink, but it just didn't ever "click", as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not really sure what to make of the sort of oh-look-poor-people! approach to the block of flats and its residents, except to say I think - hope - it was well-meaning but misguided. Oh, the bloke out of Ashes to Ashes (and the late, sadly unlamented Outcasts) was good as the dad. Which is another thing about Mark Gatiss's Who stories; I would never presume to speculate out loud about anybody else's family relations, but...yeah...
There's a fic on the Teaspoon with the same title, by the way. It's much better.
1. A Good Man Goes to War. This may be a surprising choice for some of you - I don't know what the general reaction to this was, really - but I really took issue with it. And disliked it more on a second watch, which is unusual for me where NuWho is concerned (I normally like everything better on a rewatch), There's a quotation I'm not really remembering, something about sound and fury signifying nothing, and that pretty much summed up this story for me. The strange thing is, it had many features and scenes that I actually rather liked: Roman Rory threatening the Cyberfleet, for instance or instant-fanfic-heroines Madame Vastra and Jenny ("How did you find the Ripper?" "A bit stringy"). The whole, though, was definitely less than the sum of its parts, and what made it worse was the bombastic, overblown insistence that this was the highest the Doctor would ever rise...and the lowest he'd ever fall. Or whatever that bobbins poem was about. The Doctor's risen higher and on occasion fallen lower than that on...well, plenty of occasions, but never with the need for that sort of pompous build-up beforehand. I get that they were building him up so that the shocking twist ending would be all the more of a kick in the guts...except it was somewhat undermined by being exactly the same shocking twist ending that had been used to much greater effect in the previous story. The story felt like it was trying to be epic without really earning the right to call itself that (something that could be said, perhaps of the S6 story-arc in general).
I'm also not sure that the correct antidote to Ten!angst is to try to build up Eleven as some sort of grim'n'gritty 90s-throwback anti-hero (the boy Smith just doesn't have the elbows for it, for one thing). There were worrying whiffs of it in S5 (and disquieting signs in some of the trailers for S7), but this story was the clearest expression of the tendency in Moffat-Who so far. Seven never needed anybody else talking in hushed voices about what a universe-threatening bad-ass he was or good men not needing rules, etc. Just sayin'. ;)
Dishonourable mention goes to the Gangers two-parter, as subtly hinted at above. It wasn't actually that bad, but I don't know, something about Sarah Smart's frankly rubbish performance as the main antagonist really rubbed me up the wrong way. I'm sorry about singling out individual actors, but I really didn't like it. And I've seen her being good in other things she's been in, too. I may come back to this subject later.
Anyway, after all of that negativity...we'll have the Three Bestest tomorrow. I know you can't wait. ;D
Three days remaining! That is all!