Hello Everyone :-)
Last Saturday was the hotly anticipated (by hotly anticipated I mean in the world of nerd, not so much elsewhere) Neil Gaiman penned episode of ‘Doctor Who’ called ‘The Doctor’s Wife’.
The Doctor, Amy and Rory, answering a Timelord distress call, go to a scrap yard planet outside the Universe where the only inhabitants are Aunty, Uncle, Idris (Suranne Jones) and an omnipresent entity called House. On arrival Idris seems oddly familiar with the Doctor and when he tries to get to the bottom of the Timelord message thing take a turn for the worse and Amy and Rory’s lives hang in the balance.
I tried explaining the gravity of this whole episode to some friends when we were out on Saturday night, they didn’t really get it. For the uninitiated Gaiman is a fantasy writer. He’s penned ‘Coraline’, ‘Stardust’, ‘American Gods’ and wrote ‘Good Omens’ with the wonderful Terry Pratchett. Not just novels, he’s done children’s picture books, comics, teen fiction, screenplays, anything and everything. I like his work very much so this for me was a bit of a coming together of two of my favourite things hence the insanely hyped up state I was in on Saturday afternoon.
I worry when I get like this because although I’m a positive person, there’s always part of me that thinks ‘this cannot possibly be as good as I think it’s going to be’ and it hurts a bit when that’s the case. Some may argue that it didn’t, but for me, this episode met my insanely high expectations.
This episode was another standalone episode but I think it worked better than ‘The Curse of the Black Spot’. This might sound a bit hypocritical since I said the last episode fell down because it didn’t have enough to do with the current story arc, but bear with me. This episode doesn’t have a bearing on what’s going on in this series but it does have a bearing on the world of Doctor Who. I think long after we’ve tied up the loose ends of who River Song is, is Amy pregnant and who is ‘eye-patch lady’, we’ll be talking about ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ because of its impact on the show as a whole.
I won’t go into too much detail but there’s a lot of brooding Doctor in this episode. It treads where other episodes have been before, the Doctor muses the idea of forgiveness and redemption. I do enjoy it when they bring in the history of the Timelords because it’s something that’s taken for granted time and again. I’ll save the in depth character study (and my god what a study it would be… probably more like a novel) but as well as saving people and defeating the bad guys the Doctor is running away from his troubled past.
On that subject, Matt Smith has his finest moments in this. It’s a weird one because the Doctor finds himself with someone who knows him better than anyone and who points out his mistakes. It’s not often that the Doctor is on the back foot but for much of this episode he is. Smith grabs the emotional core of this episode and runs with it and throughout he is on top form. He tackles so much in from anger to regret, sadness and joy and the final farewell is so poignant and lovely and Matt Smith does it all without seeming false or overly quirky. All the haters that doubted his ability have well and truly been silenced.
Suranne Jones deserves a medal because she’s tackled something few actresses would try. I won’t give the game away but needless to say it’s all about Idris in this episode. This will sound mental if you’ve not see the episode but for those that have, she sounds exactly how I thought she might sound. The way she talks and more to the point the way she talks to the Doctor is exactly what I’d imagined (yes, in the past I have pondered what she might sound like…).
There was an interesting sub-plot thing going on with Amy and Rory being trapped in the Tardis and facing impending doom. The force keeping them locked in the Tardis seriously messes with their heads and there’s a sequence where Amy loses Rory in the corridors which is really quite shocking. The set annoyed me a bit though. Amy and Rory leave the control room and wander the hallways of the Tardis and it reminded me a bit of Scooby Do. You know when they’d walk down a corridor and the back ground would be ‘plant, water cooler, door’ repeated over and over and in this it was the same corridor repeated again and again. Granted, this added to the confusion of what was where and what’s real which was good but on the other hand I REALLY want to see the other parts of the Tardis. I want to see the Doctors bedroom!!!!
I absolutely loved its glorious nerdyness. Gaiman has crafted 45 minutes of Whovian bliss. The fair weather viewer won’t get it, but it’s full of details that crazy fans like me will love. Little things like why does the Doctor always push the Tardis door open when the sign on the front says pull? I love how the rooms work as well. There’s a bit when the Tardis is leaving the universe and the Doctor has to jettison some rooms to give them enough power to get out. I’d always thought of the Tardis as a physical space that gets destroyed and rebuilt but the way the Doctor deletes rooms makes it seem more like a computer. There’s also a moment where we find out that all the previous incarnations of the control room have been saved and filed away and I love that, like it’d never really gone, the Tardis remembers all.
I can’t tell you how much I loved this and it’s a hard one to blog about because it’s so easy to spoil plot points. I get that some on and off Who watchers will probably feel like it goes nowhere but for those that watch it regularly and have done since Ecclestone you will love it.
I think it’s about time for…
Reasons to be Cheerful
1. STEPHEN FRY HAS JOINED THE CAST OF THE HOBBIT! OMGOMGOMGOMG!!! Two of my absolute favourite things! Super Yay!!!! He’s going to play the Master of Laketown! But he could have played an Orc for all I care, he’s in it and when he first appears on screen I will squeal. Guaranteed.
2. Marshall Lancaster is making an appearance in this Saturday’s Doctor Who. For those that have not witnessed the majesty that is ‘Life on Mars’ or ‘Ashes to Ashes’Lancaster
3. The Friendly Fires album is AWESOME! It arrived on Tuesday and it’s brilliant. Very summery sounding and Ed’s vocals are really lovely. Not a totally new direction but new enough to keep me interested in them. Still a fan.
4. No more news from me but these posters are highly amusing.
Enough for today!
Goodbye till next time :-)
x x x x x x x x x x x
Last Saturday was the hotly anticipated (by hotly anticipated I mean in the world of nerd, not so much elsewhere) Neil Gaiman penned episode of ‘Doctor Who’ called ‘The Doctor’s Wife’.
The Doctor, Amy and Rory, answering a Timelord distress call, go to a scrap yard planet outside the Universe where the only inhabitants are Aunty, Uncle, Idris (Suranne Jones) and an omnipresent entity called House. On arrival Idris seems oddly familiar with the Doctor and when he tries to get to the bottom of the Timelord message thing take a turn for the worse and Amy and Rory’s lives hang in the balance.
I tried explaining the gravity of this whole episode to some friends when we were out on Saturday night, they didn’t really get it. For the uninitiated Gaiman is a fantasy writer. He’s penned ‘Coraline’, ‘Stardust’, ‘American Gods’ and wrote ‘Good Omens’ with the wonderful Terry Pratchett. Not just novels, he’s done children’s picture books, comics, teen fiction, screenplays, anything and everything. I like his work very much so this for me was a bit of a coming together of two of my favourite things hence the insanely hyped up state I was in on Saturday afternoon.
I worry when I get like this because although I’m a positive person, there’s always part of me that thinks ‘this cannot possibly be as good as I think it’s going to be’ and it hurts a bit when that’s the case. Some may argue that it didn’t, but for me, this episode met my insanely high expectations.
This episode was another standalone episode but I think it worked better than ‘The Curse of the Black Spot’. This might sound a bit hypocritical since I said the last episode fell down because it didn’t have enough to do with the current story arc, but bear with me. This episode doesn’t have a bearing on what’s going on in this series but it does have a bearing on the world of Doctor Who. I think long after we’ve tied up the loose ends of who River Song is, is Amy pregnant and who is ‘eye-patch lady’, we’ll be talking about ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ because of its impact on the show as a whole.
I won’t go into too much detail but there’s a lot of brooding Doctor in this episode. It treads where other episodes have been before, the Doctor muses the idea of forgiveness and redemption. I do enjoy it when they bring in the history of the Timelords because it’s something that’s taken for granted time and again. I’ll save the in depth character study (and my god what a study it would be… probably more like a novel) but as well as saving people and defeating the bad guys the Doctor is running away from his troubled past.
On that subject, Matt Smith has his finest moments in this. It’s a weird one because the Doctor finds himself with someone who knows him better than anyone and who points out his mistakes. It’s not often that the Doctor is on the back foot but for much of this episode he is. Smith grabs the emotional core of this episode and runs with it and throughout he is on top form. He tackles so much in from anger to regret, sadness and joy and the final farewell is so poignant and lovely and Matt Smith does it all without seeming false or overly quirky. All the haters that doubted his ability have well and truly been silenced.
Suranne Jones deserves a medal because she’s tackled something few actresses would try. I won’t give the game away but needless to say it’s all about Idris in this episode. This will sound mental if you’ve not see the episode but for those that have, she sounds exactly how I thought she might sound. The way she talks and more to the point the way she talks to the Doctor is exactly what I’d imagined (yes, in the past I have pondered what she might sound like…).
There was an interesting sub-plot thing going on with Amy and Rory being trapped in the Tardis and facing impending doom. The force keeping them locked in the Tardis seriously messes with their heads and there’s a sequence where Amy loses Rory in the corridors which is really quite shocking. The set annoyed me a bit though. Amy and Rory leave the control room and wander the hallways of the Tardis and it reminded me a bit of Scooby Do. You know when they’d walk down a corridor and the back ground would be ‘plant, water cooler, door’ repeated over and over and in this it was the same corridor repeated again and again. Granted, this added to the confusion of what was where and what’s real which was good but on the other hand I REALLY want to see the other parts of the Tardis. I want to see the Doctors bedroom!!!!
I absolutely loved its glorious nerdyness. Gaiman has crafted 45 minutes of Whovian bliss. The fair weather viewer won’t get it, but it’s full of details that crazy fans like me will love. Little things like why does the Doctor always push the Tardis door open when the sign on the front says pull? I love how the rooms work as well. There’s a bit when the Tardis is leaving the universe and the Doctor has to jettison some rooms to give them enough power to get out. I’d always thought of the Tardis as a physical space that gets destroyed and rebuilt but the way the Doctor deletes rooms makes it seem more like a computer. There’s also a moment where we find out that all the previous incarnations of the control room have been saved and filed away and I love that, like it’d never really gone, the Tardis remembers all.
I can’t tell you how much I loved this and it’s a hard one to blog about because it’s so easy to spoil plot points. I get that some on and off Who watchers will probably feel like it goes nowhere but for those that watch it regularly and have done since Ecclestone you will love it.
I think it’s about time for…
Reasons to be Cheerful
1. STEPHEN FRY HAS JOINED THE CAST OF THE HOBBIT! OMGOMGOMGOMG!!! Two of my absolute favourite things! Super Yay!!!! He’s going to play the Master of Laketown! But he could have played an Orc for all I care, he’s in it and when he first appears on screen I will squeal. Guaranteed.
2. Marshall Lancaster is making an appearance in this Saturday’s Doctor Who. For those that have not witnessed the majesty that is ‘Life on Mars’ or ‘Ashes to Ashes’
3. The Friendly Fires album is AWESOME! It arrived on Tuesday and it’s brilliant. Very summery sounding and Ed’s vocals are really lovely. Not a totally new direction but new enough to keep me interested in them. Still a fan.
4. No more news from me but these posters are highly amusing.
Enough for today!
Goodbye till next time :-)
x x x x x x x x x x x
No comments:
Post a Comment