Dr Who New Season – first episode verdict

I do believe we’ve been here before…and from memory, I got my donkey playfully kicked for suggestng the new series (season 1 onwards) was dumbed down crap, and Piper was the best thing about it.

But maybe some people are just ahead of the times. 🙂 Or it could have been the editing and/or the show was never ‘smart’ to begin with :p

Ain’t seen the new ep. yet – but if the xmas ‘special’ with Tennant was any indication: effing awful its likely to be.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/columnists/story/0,,1753166,00.html

Charlie Brooker
Saturday April 15, 2006
The Guardian

Terrible thing, anticipation. For instance, if I locked you in a room
and calmly informed you through a hatch in the door that I planned to
return in an unspecified period of time and beat you insensible with a
car jack, chances are you wouldn’t enjoy the intervening hours very
much, even if I’d left you a couple of magazines and some battenberg
cake. The anticipation of what was to come would cast too much of a
pall. You wouldn’t even notice the lovely vase of daffodils I’d
thoughtfully placed on the table, would you? You self-obsessed bastard.

Of course, sometimes anticipation works in your favour the other way
round. When I was young, I remember being told that Morons From Outer
Space was the worst film ever made. When I subsequently went to see it
at the cinema, my expectations were so low, I practically tripped over
them on the way to my seat. By the time it had finished, I was
convinced it was a work of comic genius. I’d had my filter adjusted to
the point where I would’ve been impressed by anything other than a
blank screen and an atonal whistle.

All of which brings me to Doctor Who (Sat, 7.15pm, BBC1) –
specifically, to episode one of the new series. Now, I’ve been effusive
in my admiration of last year’s series – effusive to the point of
fellatio, you might say, if it were possible to fellate a television
programme, which it isn’t, not unless you take a printout of the
scripts, furl them into a tube and mimic a blowjob on them, although
the weirdness of your actions tends to overshadow your implied praise
when you do something like that. Anyway, my anticipation gland was
bursting as I settled down to watch the series opener – so you can
guess what’s coming next. It left me a bit … well, a bit down.

For starters, there’s a bit too much going on given the 45-minute
running time: the plot revolves around shadowy goings-on in an
intergalactic hospital, but there’s also a lot of messing about with
supporting characters who feel superfluous to the main storyline,
diffusing your attention. It also makes a few jarring tonal shifts –
leaping from high camp, to straight horror, to oleaginous
sentimentality without warning. And David Tennant, trying to keep up
with this, occasionally just ends up popping his eyes and shouting too
much.

What I’m saying is it’s a jumbled let-down. See what I’m doing here?
I’m lowering your expectations. Not because I’m trying to trick you,
but because I didn’t think it was very good. And I bloody love Doctor
Who. Sorry.

If I sound uncharacteristically mealy-mouthed in my criticism, it’s
because having a pop at Doctor Who actually pains me. In my head, it’s
come to represent everything that made Britain great – more so than,
say, the foundation of the National Health Service. Or Marmite. Or the
Sex Pistols. This means I’m mentally ill, obviously – but nonetheless,
its 21st century reinvention has been a joy to behold, so when it farts
out a bit of a dud, I’m not merely disappointed, I’m crushed – even
though, at its very very worst, it’s still 10,000 times better than 98%
of the rest of the joyless Formica drizzleplop you get on the box.

But hey. Carping over. Now for the good news. All of this – the rush of
anticipation, the slow guff of disappointment – all of this is all
entirely in keeping with last year’s premiere episode, which was also
an overexcited manic sprawl of a thing, but turned out to be merely the
slightly misfired opening salvo in a dazzlingly brilliant
fun-for-all-the-family romp. And if NEXT week’s episode is anything to
go by, this year’s going to be similar. Because next week’s episode
(also scripted by Russell T Davies) involves a much-publicised
encounter with a werewolf guaranteed to make easily-spooked kiddy
viewers crap their own spines through their bumholes. It’s flipping
great (as are Tennant and Piper).

In summary, then, your instructions are as follows: watch with a
forgiving eye, because the predictive chart I’m preparing indicates a
steep upturn in quality from hereon in. Hooray and phew for that.