Doctor Who: Daleks in WWII
Apr. 18th, 2010 04:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackRandom thoughts:
1. I thought the premises were awesome, the idea of WWII Daleks was great, but the episode as a whole left me feeling a bit uninspired.
2. There seemed to be fewer of the really great moments I remember from one or two of the earlier episodes.
3. I still like Smith's Doctor and Amy, even though they had few moments to to shine. For instance, when Amy was questioning the Dalek against the doctor's orders, many companions would have made it seem like a purely petulant stupid thing to do, but Amy made it seem very reasonable, that despite the Doctor's correct fear of the Daleks, he ought to have been able to TELL her more clearly what he wanted, rather than just snapping orders.
4. Some things didn't make much sense, but the initial premises of the episode ("daleks in WWII", "churchill and doctor old friends") are a good example of how to deliver premises (whether they're self-consistent or consistent with prior canon of the series) VERY WELL: all brought out in the first few seconds and developed from there, so that we can relax into the story, rather than keeping wondering "is this a crisis, or is it all easily fixed by one of the random stupid premises they haven't introduced yet?"
5. I am excited to see how they handle River Song in the next episode, but am cautiously very optimistic, despite the significant risks to the characterisation of introducing an actual love interest for the doctor, I actually thought they handled River Song very very well when she appeared before, and am very interested to see another point in their relationship.
1. I thought the premises were awesome, the idea of WWII Daleks was great, but the episode as a whole left me feeling a bit uninspired.
2. There seemed to be fewer of the really great moments I remember from one or two of the earlier episodes.
3. I still like Smith's Doctor and Amy, even though they had few moments to to shine. For instance, when Amy was questioning the Dalek against the doctor's orders, many companions would have made it seem like a purely petulant stupid thing to do, but Amy made it seem very reasonable, that despite the Doctor's correct fear of the Daleks, he ought to have been able to TELL her more clearly what he wanted, rather than just snapping orders.
4. Some things didn't make much sense, but the initial premises of the episode ("daleks in WWII", "churchill and doctor old friends") are a good example of how to deliver premises (whether they're self-consistent or consistent with prior canon of the series) VERY WELL: all brought out in the first few seconds and developed from there, so that we can relax into the story, rather than keeping wondering "is this a crisis, or is it all easily fixed by one of the random stupid premises they haven't introduced yet?"
5. I am excited to see how they handle River Song in the next episode, but am cautiously very optimistic, despite the significant risks to the characterisation of introducing an actual love interest for the doctor, I actually thought they handled River Song very very well when she appeared before, and am very interested to see another point in their relationship.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-19 05:41 pm (UTC)This ep really disappointed me though. It's Doctor Who, so per episode I'm kind of prepared to give them one major suspension of disbelief, and one minor one ... and this just exceeded that on so many counts.
Things that bugged me included: no attempt being made to physically remove the lights (okay, there are aliens in space messing with the electricity, and we hope the super-boffins will save us, but in the meantime we have ten minutes and the population of London could unscrew an awful lot of lightbulbs in ten minutes); Amy saying 'But it'll take time for the Daleks to rebuild, won't it?' (ah, THEY have time travel too ...), building gravity-bubble-devices in approximately 2 minutes (there was no implication that he'd ever built them before, just that he'd drawn up plans), the android bomb not exploding because he started feeling mushy (hey, if I was creating an android who thought he was human and I had him wormhole-powered - therefore not very stable - I'd make him so that his emotion centres were completely detached from THE WORMHOLE).
... and LEAVING him as a WALKING WORMHOLE on EARTH. I think they really missed a trick with that one - he should've been taken on to the Tardis, and dropped off in the future somewhere or featured in the next couple of episodes. He looked kind of interesting, plus it would be nice to have the doctor with a non-girly companion as well as Amy.
Plus, clearly the first thing Churchill would've done after they left was to track the scientist dude down again, and work out how to exploit him / his ideas / his wormhole power. And, since his memories were stolen from someone, presumably he'll track this person and the girl-he-remembers down ... and then what? Go 'sorry, I'm the super-alien-android version of you'?
One or two of those things would've been okay ... but that was just too much.
Onto positive points ... I really liked:
WOULD YOU LIKE SOME TEAA???
-the Daleks getting one over on the doctor. It was about time.
-the idea that a boffin in WW2 invented the daleks, no wait, the daleks invented him. That was neat.
-the churchill-and-the-doctor-as-old-friends. And the fact that Churchill kept trying to nick the Tardis key. Sensible man.
-the line "well okay, it's a Jammy Dodger, but I was promised tea!" (although was not overly impressed by the whole Jammy Dodger thing)
I'm hoping the next episode will be significantly better. I seem to remember hearing somewhere that they didn't actually want to put Daleks in this season but the BBC insisted, so maybe that is a reason why this episode was particularly weak (although not an excuse).
--Carol
no subject
Date: 2010-04-19 06:17 pm (UTC)Yeah, I agree with basically all your criticisms. In honesty, I blocked out pretty much all the plot twists in the second part, and concentrated on the good and good-ish aspects...
I seem to remember hearing somewhere that they didn't actually want to put Daleks in this season but the BBC insisted,
That would make a lot of sense. They will in fact have to draw the Daleks out for as long as they make Doctor Who, because everyone expects at least SOME Daleks.
So I don't especially object to the idea that "crippled Dalek ship barely above WWII standard rejuvinates new scarier Daleks". I felt really sorry for the old Daleks :) Even though I thought the Dalek generator thing was a bit silly (and lots of the rest of the plot).
PS. What I forgot to ask about NZ's geographic and non-geographic MP system was if there was anything good/bad people typically said about it? :)