Remembrance Sunday

8 November 2015

It's Remembrance Sunday and I had an irresistible urge to re-watch The Family of Blood whilst doing the ironing.  It still holds up well, apart from the Doctor's punishment for the family, which I still think is unnecessary.  The final scenes always bring a tear to my eye.

Death in Heaven: Initial thoughts (spoilers)

So what did I do?  I turned off everything connected to the internet and sat down to enjoy Partners in Crime and Fires of Pompeii, of course, and to be honest, I enjoyed them both rather more than some of the more recent series.

When the husband finally reappeared, he announced that we would watch Death in Heaven  straight away. This may have affected my appreciation of it, as I was half asleep by then.  I'll need to watch again to confirm my impression of it.

First impressions though:

As with many season finales, there was too much going on. The action was rushed in places, whilst there were also pauses for emotional scenes that didn't always work, and the plot was somewhat hard to follow in places.

Positives:

• I like the Missy incarnation of the Master. She's totally bonkers, but also recognisably the same person as the John Simm version.

• Osgood was excellent, and her death was shocking, although it was clear that the writing was on the wall when the Doctor appeared to offer her a trip in the TARDIS. 

• The Cyber-Danny also worked well, and was a logical continuation from Doomsday where the converted Yvonne still performs her 'duty to Queen and Country.'

• The pre-credit wind-up with Clara pretending to be the Doctor (which carried over into the opening credits).  It was obviously done so that they could have a clip in the trailer of her saying that Clara Oswald never existed, so full marks for an excellent fan teaser.

Negatives:

•  Earth Force One and the Doctor-President. (I never cared much for the Valiant, either). The whole idea of a planet-wide response to anything is implausible, and UNIT really ought to know by now that the Doctor doesn't do positions of responsibility.

• I didn't really get the point of the cyber-pollen turning the dead into Cybermen.  The original point of Cybermen was that they had replaced parts of their bodies with cybernetics, so why would they need real skeletons, when they could easily use artificial ones? And why harvest human minds to populate the bodies, when they have to delete the emotions that make them human?

• The magic bracelet or whatever it was that allowed one person to 'cross back over' with a living body didn't make sense.  Yes, it worked as an emotional climax to the episode, but how was it possible, given that the bodies had been cyber-converted?

• The Cyber-Brig: I suppose it was a nice idea, but I find it somehow disrespectful.  And if any of UNIT had to survive, I would have preferred Osgood to the annoying Kate.

In retrospect, I suspect that the theme was designed to fit in with the broadcast on the weekend of Remembrance Day, but at the moment, I think Family of Blood addressed this far more effectively.

June 2007: losing the plot....

2 June 2007

The Family of Blood was potentially a great story, which was spoiled only by the unnecessary sequence of the Doctor punishing the family. It would have worked perfectly well either to have them die in the explosion of their ship or alternatively to live out their remaining existence as humans without access to their alien technology which was destroyed with their ship. However, the sequence of the children shooting the scarecrows, with the hymn playing in the background, was truly moving, as were the final scenes of Latimer and Hutchinson in the trenches, and then the old Latimer at the Cenotaph.

 9 June 2007

Blink had a lot to live up to, being written by Steven Moffat. As an exercise in writing an episode without much use of the lead actors, or CGI effects, it was exemplary, though it was disappointing that he failed to get in a line about bananas.  At times it seemed a bit like an episode of Coupling, but there is nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t stand out as the best of the season, as Moffat’s earlier episodes have done, but it is so much better than Love and Monsters.

16 June 2007

I found Utopia rather like old-fashioned Doctor Who (quarry, savages, well-meaning scientist etc.) but in a good way, and it was good to see Captain Jack again.

20 June 2007

To Leeds for business meetings. In the hotel bar afterwards, one of my colleagues started enthusing about Saturday’s episode and how good it was to see Captain Jack again, much to bemusement of the others, who started reminiscing about The Archers in revenge.

23 June 2007

The power-crazed loon in charge has now completely flipped. I don’t mean the Master, who was always thus, but Russell T Davies. Has he completely lost the plot? Any plot?