Planet of the Dead
Apr. 12th, 2009 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snorkackcatcherSummary: Not bad, but not gripping either -- characterisation was mostly perfunctory, and there was a certain "seen this before" feel to it, in several cases because we had in fact seen this before.
OK, first the good -- it's a competent adventure with an interesting creature as the threat. It was good to see UNIT back again, even if the modern Redcap Stormtrooper version isn't as likeable as the Brig, Benton, & Co. The proportion of CoC was appropriate for London, and they all survived. The ... oh all right, you can tell I'm struggling, can't you? Probably unfairly, because it was OK ... but that's the point, I found it OK, but for me it just never seemed to get out of second gear.
A lot of the time, the Doctor seemed to be back in PITA mode here now he's on his own again (cf Midnight), although refusing to take Lady Christina because he can't bear to lose any more companions was interesting (even if it's probably not unlinked to the fact that we're in specials mode here and leaving a fairly clean slate for Steven Moffat to work with). Of course, since this is an Easter episode we had the Doctor's "what really happened ..." line (yeah, all right Rusty, whatevs).
The other characters didn't get the screentime to do much, except of course for Lady Christina -- who's a gift for the fanfic writer because she's such a familiar stereotype. (I expected to see fics already when I got back. I wasn't disappointed.) As a recurrent companion she'd have the chance to develop some depth, in a one-off (unless Michelle Ryan doesn't get to do any more Bionic Woman) she didn't really have any. (And was it just me, or is a flying bus rather too conspicuous to be a good getaway vehicle?) The token aliens basically seemed to be there to get killed off instead of the token human characters. The Lee Evans character was ... well, opinions may differ, but he annoyed the hell out of me. Another stereotype, this time the nerdy fanboy scientist. Not that that's inherently a problem, but here again it just felt flat to me.
Other seen-this-before-ness? No exact parallels, just things that felt familiar. The bus-lifted-to-another-world plot was a bit like Smith and Jones. UNIT on the other side of a barrier with a geeky type trying to help the Doctor get through it felt rather like The Daemons. And The Swarm rang a bell when I thought of Gareth Roberts as co-scriptwriter -- I imagine he might have been riffing off elements of his Four/Romana (well, they kiss. Once. At the end. What more do you want?) Whobook The Well-Mannered War (available via the BBC Doctor Who website) which features a different version of The Swarm. Which are, um, highly evolved flies. See what I mean? (If they're recycling the basic plot idea of that book for the specials, I'll be disappointed.)
Bits which were familiar because they were deliberate references -- a shoutout to the Giant Robot (presumably from Robot not The Next Doctor), the "finally -- bullets that work!" comment which was pure meta, and the repetition of the "your song is ending" from Planet of the Ood, together with more prophetic stuff: "knock four times on the ceiling if you want me" which will doubtless become clearer later (although if it goes the way I'd like (doubtful!) we could have four Doctors (possibly including Handy) there!
OK, first the good -- it's a competent adventure with an interesting creature as the threat. It was good to see UNIT back again, even if the modern Redcap Stormtrooper version isn't as likeable as the Brig, Benton, & Co. The proportion of CoC was appropriate for London, and they all survived. The ... oh all right, you can tell I'm struggling, can't you? Probably unfairly, because it was OK ... but that's the point, I found it OK, but for me it just never seemed to get out of second gear.
A lot of the time, the Doctor seemed to be back in PITA mode here now he's on his own again (cf Midnight), although refusing to take Lady Christina because he can't bear to lose any more companions was interesting (even if it's probably not unlinked to the fact that we're in specials mode here and leaving a fairly clean slate for Steven Moffat to work with). Of course, since this is an Easter episode we had the Doctor's "what really happened ..." line (yeah, all right Rusty, whatevs).
The other characters didn't get the screentime to do much, except of course for Lady Christina -- who's a gift for the fanfic writer because she's such a familiar stereotype. (I expected to see fics already when I got back. I wasn't disappointed.) As a recurrent companion she'd have the chance to develop some depth, in a one-off (unless Michelle Ryan doesn't get to do any more Bionic Woman) she didn't really have any. (And was it just me, or is a flying bus rather too conspicuous to be a good getaway vehicle?) The token aliens basically seemed to be there to get killed off instead of the token human characters. The Lee Evans character was ... well, opinions may differ, but he annoyed the hell out of me. Another stereotype, this time the nerdy fanboy scientist. Not that that's inherently a problem, but here again it just felt flat to me.
Other seen-this-before-ness? No exact parallels, just things that felt familiar. The bus-lifted-to-another-world plot was a bit like Smith and Jones. UNIT on the other side of a barrier with a geeky type trying to help the Doctor get through it felt rather like The Daemons. And The Swarm rang a bell when I thought of Gareth Roberts as co-scriptwriter -- I imagine he might have been riffing off elements of his Four/Romana (well, they kiss. Once. At the end. What more do you want?) Whobook The Well-Mannered War (available via the BBC Doctor Who website) which features a different version of The Swarm. Which are, um, highly evolved flies. See what I mean? (If they're recycling the basic plot idea of that book for the specials, I'll be disappointed.)
Bits which were familiar because they were deliberate references -- a shoutout to the Giant Robot (presumably from Robot not The Next Doctor), the "finally -- bullets that work!" comment which was pure meta, and the repetition of the "your song is ending" from Planet of the Ood, together with more prophetic stuff: "knock four times on the ceiling if you want me" which will doubtless become clearer later (although if it goes the way I'd like (doubtful!) we could have four Doctors (possibly including Handy) there!
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Dum-da-da-dum, dum-da-da-dum
Date: 2009-04-12 11:04 pm (UTC)I missed the "What really happened" line, having got confused about when the ep was going to start. Was RTD being unsubtly atheist again?
I wish he hadn't made the psychic the black woman, but I suppose even the Magical Negro stereotype is an advance on cannon fodder.
Re: Dum-da-da-dum, dum-da-da-dum
Date: 2009-04-12 11:34 pm (UTC)The Easter line was something like "And it's Easter? Of course, I was there for the first one. What really happened was ..." and then he's cut off by the bus going through the wormhole or something. Fairly standard RTD, really.
Re: Dum-da-da-dum, dum-da-da-dum
Date: 2009-04-12 11:42 pm (UTC)*sigh* Yep, par for the course.... Bit childish, really.
Oddly enough, I once heard someone's very convoluted theory on the science of the resurrection, the details of which involved a wormhole. (I have forgotten the rest, largely because I was too busy thinking that that sounded like a really bad DS9 crossover waiting to happen...)
no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 10:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-15 10:00 pm (UTC)