jameslark.bsky.social
Composer, writer, teacher.
106 posts
138 followers
165 following
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You feel the formula flagging and sometimes failing under the weight of its own ambition, and by golly there are misfires - but I love that it is this ambitious and I love the feeling that the show is being pushed as far as it can go.
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After four years of faux-trendy metrosexuality, the Doctor at last dresses like the Doctor and behaves like an alien; we (eventually) get the best TARDIS interior of the 21st century; we get a 50th anniversary special to die for; and, so easily taken for granted, dialogue that really sparkles.
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Matt Smith is a force of nature in need of good direction - as a McCoy fan I’ve plenty of time for that - and (I can hear Joe screaming in disgust) I *really like* his dynamic with Gillan and Darvill.
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Series 5 was so refreshing when it arrived, Moffat’s complex, structured storytelling much more to my taste than the RTD heart-over-sense approach. Yes, he could have just told a straightforward decent story more often, but it was a thrilling ride at the time.
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An era I tend to remember for its considerable highs rather than its also-considerable lows.
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There was a bit of blurry video on Bach's twitter feed, but his account got suspended when Musk decided the cantata Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot was too woke.
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(I have seen him on stage a few times more recently and as it turns out kid crush is now also adult crush)
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Oh these were such wonderful recordings! Happy days.
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Then I bumped into Matthew Sweet, who had obviously heard about my upstart antics, and he was cooly polite about the whole thing which somehow made me feel even worse.
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I checked wikipedia for his birthplace and thought 'we'll start with that and the conversation will just flow from there, won't it?' though deep down I knew I ought to be suggesting that we got Matthew Sweet to do it. But I didn't because I wanted to interview Ian Marter myself.
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A £2,500 fine, though! For Coogan that must be like... I dunno... losing a button, or
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In hopeful anticipation that champion of the damned @felixfrazer.bsky.social will be on hand to argue that the Moonbase's Evans' decision to wear the Gravitron hat backwards is actually a brilliant fashion statement
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The Doctor's Daughter, a pilot for a spin-off nobody wanted seemingly based on a slight in-joke about the main guest star. Visually it's about on a par with the bits in More Than 30 Years In The TARDIS shot at Laser Quest, only less colourful. Dull to look at, dull to watch: the nadir of RTD1.
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All the more embarrassing that, once again, fare that feels and looks very much like it was made for kids tv, was being eclipsed in every way by the actual kids tv spin-off.
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One of the instant successes of NuWho was showing a general audience that Doctor Who is brilliant contemporary drama, not the cheap-looking and improbable set of stock caricatures and sci-fi cliches they thought it was.
The Sontaran story is an efficient attempt to reinstate those old assumptions.
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It looks beautiful. Which only serves to highlight failings in... er... all of the following episodes you're discussing.
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It might also have been sensible to involve the Doctor in the plot, rather than have him shrug off the ethical complexities, making it nice and easy for viewers to do the same before heading to Temu to look for tenth doctor cosplay suits and trainers.
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Planet of the Ood; or, has this Holocaust allusion really been earned?
I'm all for flagging up conditions in the clothing industry, but when covering such a serious topic it's best not to confuse your moral standpoint with scattershot imagery of factory farming, gas chambers and... er... sensorites
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The Fires of Pompeii is the best of this bunch, but something's wrong when this expensive trip to Rome proves far less impactful than Big Finish's take on Pompeii. And indeed when the story with the more subtly and elegantly acted Doctor is McCoy's.
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It just about gets away with it thanks to the chemistry of the leads, Catherine Tate in particular exhibiting a charisma I'm not convinced we saw in her first story. But even by the standards of the RTD patent 'lightweight opening episode' formula, this is weak stuff.