Doctor Who catchup

Was just catching up on some of the latest season of DOCTOR WHO.


Spoiler warning for those who plan to watch this stuff in the future (don't know when it'll broadcast in Canada, probably over the summer, and probably not in the US until next year).

The first episode of the season picks up where "The Christmas Invasion" left off, with the latest Doctor and Rose heading off for the future, where they encounter a few of the characters from the first season. It's a mediocre episode overall, but the new Doctor isn't bad. Really cornball resolution though.

The second episode is set in Victorian England, with Queen Victoria herself appearing, and with werewolves. There are like three facts in that description which convinced me not to watch it.



The third episode is the return of both Sarah Jane Smith and K-9, the robot dog, which probably makes it either the most anticipated or dreaded episode of the season, depending on how they do. The good news is that K-9 comes off pretty good (I never quite understood why Sarah had a K-9 unit, though). All downhill from there, unfortunately. Now, you have to realize that Sarah is the definitive Doctor Who companion to me, the one on the earliest episodes I saw and still my favourite. And the acress, Elisabeth Sladen, did a fine job with what she was given (and looks great). Unfortunately, the script was like the worst sort of fan fiction. Seriously, I can't believe just how awful the characterization in this episode was, especially the dialogue between Sarah and Rose. Couple of good moments between the Doctor and Sarah, but that comes down mostly to the fine work of the actors, not the script. Every little bit struck a note of just not getting it. And the actual sci-fi plot, aliens taking over the staff of a school for nefarious reasons, was generic to the point of insulting.

I pretty much give up on the series now, and just to put another nail in that coffin, looks like it's back to Victorian England or thereabouts next episode. No thanks.

Doctor Who - "The Christmas Invasion"

...or, for Canadians, "The Boxing Day Invasion". This slightly longer than usual episode (it ran in a 90-minute timeslot, with commercials, but didn't fill it) introduces the latest Doctor, who'll be headlining the next season in a few months. He and Rose return to modern day Earth, just in time for a massive alien invasion. We also get a hint of the new spin-off series TORCHWOOD.

I was pretty unimpressed with it, unfortunately. While there were a few clever bits, they were few and far between, and a lot of the stuff between them wasn't worth watching. Overall ranks close to the bottom of new series episodes.

The good news is that this doesn't mean much for the upcoming season, since the new Doctor spends most of this lying around doing nothing. The actor didn't seem to bad in the few bits he had, and maybe if they have him doing more it'll pick up some. The end of the episode had a few clips from the upcoming season, and while some of them don't seem too promising (as I've said before, I think DW should avoid Victorian England, so actually having Queen Victoria herself can't be good news), there are a few bits for the long time fan that I'm looking forward to, already leaked in rumours, but I won't mention them here.

I also just got the first tape of the original series from my library in a while, "Terror of the Zygons", from the Tom Baker years, with Sarah Jane Smith and Harry and the Brigadier, so that'll be a good way to get this latest thing out of my mind.

DOCTOR WHO spin-off

News comes that the BBC has ordered up a spin-off series for DOCTOR WHO to air next year, following the second season of the new series, called TORCHWOOD and featuring Captain Jack Harkness as part of a "crack team investigating alien activities and crime in modern-day Britain".

Might be interesting, though a bit too X-FILES sounding.

TORCHWOOD, as the article mentions, is an anagram for DOCTOR WHO. So I guess if it does well we can look forward to HOOT CROWD, DOW COHORT and HOTROD COW in years to come (at right, what you see if you google one of those phrases).

Doctor Who - The Dalek Invasion Of Earth

Got another old DOCTOR WHO tape from the library, "The Dalek Invasion Of Earth", a second season story with the original Doctor William Hartnell, plus the last with the full original supporting cast. Unfortunately I'd say I had a mixed reaction to this one at best. The Daleks were pretty good as always, but there wasn't nearly enough of them in this six-part story. Plus it's one of those where the main cast splits up for the bulk of the story, so there are three or four storylines to follow for most of the show, not all of them that engaging.

There were a lot of pretty good scenes mixed in that make it worth watching, including a rather odd chase scene in London which felt pretty different for the show, and the ending, where the Doctor's grand-daughter Susan is left behind on future Earth, is pretty good.

Doctor Who - "Sea Devils"

"Sea Devils", a Jon Pertwee episode with Jo Grant as the assistant, was unfortunately one of the weaker Pertwee episodes I've seen. A shame as it's the only one I have available from the library which features the original Master, who I remember always enjoying. He's mostly good in this one as well, but the overall story is a bit plodding, takes forever to get started and has a lot of dull bits between the few good scenes. I think part of the problem was that they had the co-operation of the British Navy in the making of this episode, which meant a lot of atypical for DW bits of location shots on the water and naval base, which didn't add much at all. This wasn't helped at all by the director doing a bunch of distracting visual tricks, quick cuts, sudden zooms and such, plus some weird sound effects.

A shame, as there is the hint of a good story in all of this, but it's not at all realized in the production.

Doctor Who - "The Five Doctors"

The latest WHO tape I got from the library is "The Five Doctors", a bit of a stunt production from the 20th anniversary of the show, gathering all five actors who played the lead character. Well, all except the first (who was dead and therefore replaced by a passable alternate actor) and the longest-lasting (who apparently just didn't want to participate and was represented by some unused footage and "caught in a temporal hoo-ha" mumbo-jumbo). Also a lot of the supporting characters and villains from through the years.

I have a bit of an odd history with this one as I'd never seen it before, but I did used to own the novelization, the only DW book I've ever owned (I did read a lot of other ones that my library had back then). It's the kind of story concept you really like when you're 13, I guess. I thought it was a pretty good read, although pretty slight, as all the DW books were.

It was interesting to finally see the second Doctor, who I liked quite a bit in here. I'll have to see if I can get a few of his episodes at a reasonable price since he's the one my library is otherwise lacking in.

Fun stuff, though pretty disjointed, as you'd expect given the production requirements of having to bend the story this way and that based on who was available. The overall story was serviceable, it did the job of getting everyone together, and there were a lot of cute character bits throughout. I thought it was a bit of a shame that there were only a few scenes with multiple Doctors on screen together, as their interactions were the most entertaining bits, but too much of that would have been overkill, so they were probably wise to keep it to a minimum. Well worth watching, and certainly more entertaining than anything I've seen from the original series from a few seasons before this up to the end.

Doctor Who new series thoughts

A few more thoughts on the full new season of DOCTOR WHO. Probable mild spoilers starting a few paragraphs in for those who haven't had a chance to see it. Overall I liked it, but a bit less so now that I've had a chance to watch or re-watch some of the originals. Almost everything in the new series was better than anything I've seen from the last decade of the original show, so that's something. I'm honestly amazed the original lasted as long as it did given the quality of those. Momentum is a wonderful thing, I suppose. At least so far this new one is getting better as it goes along. I'll definitely be around for the Christmas special later this year and new season sometime in 2006.

But it wasn't quite as good as most of what I saw from the earlier seasons. Some of that might be nostalgia, but even beyond that, I just think that despite the more limited budgets the early stuff had a sense of fun and was generally more cohesive than the new series.

As I've noted before, there seemed to be an odd internal struggle between completely getting what Doctor Who is about (and successfully translating that to modern terms) and completely missing the point. I don't know if this has something to do with different people working on the show, pressures to keep it "up-to-date" or what, but sometimes it really did feel like I was watching scenes from two different shows in the same hour.

I did like most of the characters, though. The new Doctor seemed a bit awkward at first, but I did like him a lot more as the series went on. Did a good job of being human but not quite. Rose was pretty decent as well, although she had more than a few moments of getting on my nerves. Captain Jack was pretty funny for the most part, a good foil for the other two, but sometimes a bit too precious. Rose's mom and Mickey are, well, they sure are there, all right.

Episode by episode:

Rose
The big re-introduction, mostly works on what's a tough amount of new stuff to get through in a one-hour show. The choice of villains, the Autons, still seems weak, and compared to the later stuff it doesn't work nearly as well, but it's solid.

The End of the World
The first trip through time, into the far future, I like this more now than I did originally, mostly because it sets up some later stuff well. It's good space opera, fast paced (maybe too fast, could have been a two-parter) and with some good character bits. On the other hand, points off for bad use of pop music.

The Unquiet Dead
The weakest episode, by a good stretch, goes back to Victorian England. Always a mistake. Not entertaining and not half as clever as it thinks it is.

Aliens of London
World War Three
Back in modern times with the first two-parter. A lot of good stuff in here, and I liked the way they integrated some modern special effects with the look of the original show. The cliffhanger was especially good. A bit of a weak ending in some ways, but overall solid.

Dalek
Really good, maybe the best of the year, but that just may be my unnatural (and illegal on some planets) love of the Daleks coming through. Still think it's a shame that they couldn't do this without advertising "Dalek" in the title and promos, as the first scene with the Dalek would have been much stronger with some element of surprise. Still, a good episode, looks really sharp, very dramatic and well-paced. Again, the ending was a touch weaker than it could have been, but not as bad as it could have been.

The Long Game
Back to the far future, a pretty average episode for the season. Nothing especially noteworthy, nothing really offensive.

Father's Day
Ah, time paradox. Means it didn't make a huge amount of sense, but it was something different, and did pretty well with the material. Also a focus on Rose in this episode, and she does a pretty good job.

The Empty Child
The Doctor Dances
A two-part story set in WWII. Started a bit weak, but recovered nicely, and the second part is the other contender for best episode. Introduces Captain Jack in this story, and he's a lot of fun, and the ending is really strong and funny in the best WHO tradition.

Boom Town
Back to modern times for the sequel to the "Aliens of London" story. I liked bits and pieces of it, but the whole thing didn't quite hang together for me. The second half was just trying to hard, a bit too earnest, and a lot of it just didn't seem to make sense.

Bad Wolf
The Parting of the Ways
The concluding two-parter. Starts off really bad with a parody of British reality TV and game shows. I'm sure that was cutting edge back in 1999. Got a lot better as the first part went on, and again the introduction of the Daleks was great (and again would have been stronger if they didn't feel the need to include it in the promos). Second part continues that momentum for a while, but gets a bit bogged down later, and then the ending is some sort of late-1970s Marvel comic cosmic-powers, glowing eyes thingee which was full of itself. A shame, as up to the last act it was shaping up to be the best of the season. Good stuff overall, though (I can't hate something with this many Daleks), and of course the ending leads to yet another Doctor starting later this year.

The Four (out of Five) Doctors

Latest batch of DOCTOR WHO tapes I got from the library did much to dispel the bad taste of the last batch, and cover four of the first five Doctors.

"The Crusade" and "The Space Museum" are on one tape, featuring the original Doctor William Hartnell. Unfortunately two of the chapters of "The Crusade" (chapters 2 and 4) are among the lost, but they cover for that in two ways, first by including the audio for them on a CD and second by getting the actor who played Ian Chesterton to reprise his role and describe the missing bits, plus an overall introduction. What remains is a very good adventure where the Doctor and company wind up back in the time of King Richard and get involved in his various entanglements amidst the Crusades. A lot of fun, and I'd love to see the missing bits.

"The Space Museum" takes a sharp turn to straight science fiction as our intrepid bunch wind up on a planet ruled by a warlike race who have built a museum, and thanks to odd time paradoxes know they'll wind up as exhibits if they don't change the future. A bit of an uneven serial, there were a lot of good bits but a few odd holes in the plot that were distracting. Still enjoyable, and a great surprise ending which makes me wish I had the following serial available.

"Planet of the Spiders" jumps forward a decade and is the final adventure of Jon Pertwee as the third Doctor. It was nice to see this as I actually saw most of it back when I was a kid, but never did see the final episode for some reason, just the following one with a new Doctor. The villains, crudely moving giant model spiders, are kind of lame, but there was a lot of interesting stuff as well, and it's always good to see Sarah Jane Smith and the full UNIT cast. The ending was pretty satisfying, there was a good enough reason for this to be a big enough threat to require regeneration at the end.

"The Face Of Evil" is a few more years down, with Tom Baker as the Doctor now, and the episode introducing Leela as his companion. They include a short interview that the actress, Louise Jameson, did for a British TV show at the time, discussing among other things the reaction to Leela's relative state of undress in her first few adventures. It was okay, about average for the Tom Baker stuff, showing off some of the quirky humour that I like in those, a bit over-acted in places.

Finally I had "Castrovalva", the first episode where Peter Davison takes over as the fifth Doctor. Weakest of these, but then when comparing it to some of the others I've seen recently it improves greatly. Still don't really like the companions he inherited from the Baker years here, and since this was one of those "unstable after regeneration" things he couldn't really define his own character much. I did like the Master in the first half of the serial, although for the big climax I thought he was played a lot more broadly "villainous" which didn't work (and yes, I know the character is meant to be played broadly, but there's a tipping point that was crossed there).

No more on the way in the near future, unfortunately. Based on the number of holds looks like I can expect "The Five Doctors" in about a month, "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" in early autumn and a few more late this year. Still mean to write some more about the current series (currently being re-run on Sunday nights in Canada for those who missed it) soon. Might also subscribe to BBC Kids channel which is showing it, but currently they're on late Tom Baker episodes which isn't worth it at all, especially if they continue on from there. I'll have to see if they ever go back to the older stuff. Unfortunately the only other show they have that's remotely interesting is BLACKADDER, which I've heard good things about but never watched.

Bad old WHO

Watched another pair of old DOCTOR WHO tapes from my library. Not too impressive, unfortunately.

"The Keeper of Traken" is from late in Tom Baker's run, and there might have been the essence of a good story in there, but it would be pretty hard to see under the awful acting. Add in a really annoying companion and future companion, and that's about it for this episode. Also kind of odd, I kept thinking one of the characters was the Master, when he wasn't, and then being doubly confused when the Master was revealed to be the main villain. Who then took over and transformed the first character. I suppose I must have seen an episode or some photos with the actor in Master guise from future episodes and recognized him from that.

"The Twin Dilemma" was the first story for the sixth doctor, Colin Baker, the first time I've ever seen his stint (leaving only Patrick Troughton among the original Doctors that I haven't seen. Unfortunately doesn't look like any of his run are among my library's holdings). Don't want to judge him too much since it was his first, and the storyline required him to be "unstable" as a result of the regeneration, but man was this some bad TV. Bad acting, bad writing, bad aliens. I think my least favourite serial yet. Attractive companion in Peri, but she was written pretty poorly as well.

Fortunately the remaining videos my library has are from the earlier Doctors (at least one from each except Troughton), so hopefully there won't be anything as bad as the later ones I've seen so far.

Doctor Who - "Day of the Daleks"

Latest video of the original DOCTOR WHO series that I've gotten from my library is "Day of the Daleks", a four part 1972 serial starring Jon Pertwee. Unfortunately, this is the first of the videos I've gotten where they edit out the opening title sequence to all but the first episode, which means they also dump the cliffhangers. One of the best bits of a good DOCTOR WHO serial is the cliffhanger (often poorly resolved in the next episode), where the heroes face death and the theme music wells up (that's one of the things the new series misses by doing so many single episode stories).

Still a very nice story, where the Doctor working with UNIT gets involved in assassins from the future who are trying to prevent years of war that left the human race open to easy conquest from the Daleks. A few times it felt like the Dalek stuff was an afterthought, that this could just as easily have been about any other conquerers, but there was some good stuff with the characters. I especially liked the Daleks recognizing the name of the Doctor, which has been echoed in the treatment of the Daleks in the new series.

Next pair I should be getting are "Keeper of Traken" and "The Twin Dilemma".

Doctor Who season wrap-up quick thoughts

Saw the finale of the first season of the new DOCTOR WHO series. No spoilers here since I'm mindful that some people will be watching it next week (and some won't get any of the episodes for a while), but I'll probably write up a more spoiler full overview of the whole season soon.

I did like the final two-parter quite a bit, though as has been typical there have been a few things that didn't feel right. In particular this time around were the parodies of some British game/reality shows, which weren't that funny. I was also kind of hoping for a more interesting reveal of the mysteries. The ending was kind of odd, made me wonder if the writer was a big fan of cosmic 1970s Marvel comics, all glowing eyes and cosmic powers like.

Anyway, it's good stuff overall, something I can recommend both to people who loved the original series and didn't equally, as it used many of the best parts and added enough modern sensibilities. It's a long wait for the next new one (a Christmas special followed by a new season I guess around the same time next year that this started). Fortunately it'll probably take around that long for the original series episodes I'm getting from the library to all get around to me ("Day of the Daleks" is listed as "In Transit" now. Pertwee and UNIT up against the Daleks? Dude!).

WHO Triple Play

Took out three more (sort of) DOCTOR WHO tapes from my library.

"The Androids of Tara" I mostly liked. It's a Tom Baker episode in the middle of the season where he and the original Romana (who I like better than the replacement Romana) were sent to find the pieces of the Key of Time, or some such. Kind of a goofy story that involves a medievel world which for some reason has some high tech like life-like androids, and a princess who is convieniently a dead-ringer for Romana. Some fun stuff. K-9 has a big role in this one, and I still haven't decided what I think of him. On one hand, funny sometimes, and played off Tom Baker well. On the other hand, a freaking robot dog?

"Mawdryn Undead", a Peter Davison episode, was a bit of wasted potential, with the return of the Brigadier, which should have led to a much more entertaining story, but didn't. Massively disjointed storyline, several scenes seemed missing, so I wonder if it was originally written for more than four episodes. And this episode featured the introduction of the one thing DOCTOR WHO needs less than a robot dog, a sullen teenage boy as a new companion, Turlough (one that the other companions didn't seem to care much about, as part of the disjointed nature of the story is that they're constantly forgetting Turlough was supposed to be around). And set up as a traitor by the horribly overacting Black Guardian as well. I didn't watch too much of the Davison DW originally, but I remember seeing the beginnings of a few when they were showing complete serials on weekend afternoons on the local PBS station and finding the companions kind of lame. I do think Davison seems good, but didn't have the material to work with.

The third one I got kind of confused me for a minute. It's called "The Curse of Fatal Death", which I almost didn't reserve because the title sounded so dumb. Then I picked it up and the cover lists Rowan Atkinson as the Doctor, and I wondered if I somehow missed that in my knowledge of DW chronology. Of course checking the back revealed that it was a parody special done for charity. Anyway, best thing I can say is that the money went to a good cause. There were a few amusing jokes, a lot more misses. The "making of" documentary was more entertaining, especially the fans who lent their expertise in making the TARDIS sets and the Daleks (which they'd made for a fan film project). Also on the tape are three parodies from various UK sketch comedy shows, none of which are brilliant but are generally better than "Fatal Death". Shorter, at least.

More WHO

Got caught up on the new DOCTOR WHO series with the last few episodes. Still nice, although a few things always feel off in every episode. Nothing I can quite put my finger on, but sometimes they seem to just be trying too hard to be cute or clever, and it really doesn't work (or sometimes does work, but not in the context of the series). Fortunately that's the minority of the time, and for the most part they deliver dopey sci-fi in the best DOCTOR WHO tradition.

Only watched one original series serial recently (got quite a few waiting for me to pick up from the library), and interestingly it had a lot of the same problems. It was "City of Death", a late Tom Baker era story I hadn't seen before. Overall I liked it a lot, and the parts of it that fit DOCTOR WHO fit beautifully. However, there were quite a few things that didn't, starting with the Paris setting. It would be fine if there weren't all these superfluous scenes of the characters running through Paris just to show that they were really there. It was also kind of odd seeing Douglas Adams credited with story editor, and realizing halfway through that he must have done a lot more than that, since a hugh part of the plot is identical to a Dirk Gently novel (a bit of web research shows that Adams did in fact co-write the episode under a fake name). Those parts were good, I'm a big fan of Adams, but they really didn't fit the series as well as they could have.

I have to say, I also really did not dig Romana as a companion much. I'm not sure why in the middle of the Baker years they started to move away from the companions being from contemporary Earth and had them from other worlds and times, but I'm pretty sure it was a mistake (and moreso making another Time-Lord a companion), and am glad they went back to the more traditional sort for the new show.

ElfQuest and Doctor Who

Still a bit pressed for time, a few quick comments.

Picked up ELFQUEST: THE SEARCHER AND THE SWORD from my local library. That's the original hardcover ElfQuest story that Wendy Pini did recently and published through DC. That was quite the disappointment, I'm sorry to say. I'm not a huge fan of ElfQuest, but I have read and mostly enjoyed the original stuff until they opened it up to other creators (and did like some of the stuff I read after that). This new thing just felt wrong on a lot of levels (did anyone really think, after reading the original, that what EQ really needed was a human point-of-view character?) and Pini turning to computer rendered lettering and colouring really didn't work for me.

It has got me kind of interested in going back and rereading the original stuff, though, so maybe more on that later.

Also get a bunch more DOCTOR WHO videos. Some more nice Hartnell stuff in "The Ark", and an okay Pertwee era one that I remembered in "The Curse of Peladon". On the other hand, my first taste of the McCoy 7th Doctor in two awful stories, "The Happiness Patrol" and "The Greatest Show In The Galaxy". I can see that the cancellation soon after those was wholly justified, and in fact overdue.

Various catching up

I'm back. Tired, but back. Major renovations around here, but one benefit is that for the first time in years I have ready access to just about every book, comic, recording and what-not that I own, instead of random stuff being buried in storage or unsorted boxes.

Among the things I dug up were Elliot S! Maggin's two Superman novels, LAST SON OF KRYPTON and MIRACLE MONDAY, which reminds me that I'm a few days late in wishing you all a good Miracle Monday.

In new stuff I picked up, the new JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR looks good, and I got MARVEL VISIONARIES: STEVE DITKO which should be a fun read that I'll write more about soon.

Latest previews of upcoming books should be up soon, but one I wanted to mention now is the next book from Jim Ottaviani's GT Labs, BONE SHARPS, COWBOYS AND THUNDER LIZARDS. At some point in the near future I want to do an overview of the previous GT Labs books.

Rest of this post is about DOCTOR WHO, just to warn you...

Still watching and mostly enjoying the new DOCTOR WHO. The most recent episode, "Father's Day", was interesting, as it was the first time I can remember seeing a WHO story really deal with a time paradox (except for the "Three Doctors" / "Five Doctors" stunt stories). It was interesting, didn't completely work, but good TV.

I've also been getting a lot of the original series videos from my library. They have about two dozen of them, most with a few holds already, so I reserved all of them and seem to be getting about one or two a week. Most interesting of those I've seen was "Daleks", the second storyline from the first season, and the first time I've seen the original Doctor. It was a lot of fun, a bit rough at times, but mostly fully realized. Most interesting of course was seeing the initial form of the Doctor's greatest foes. Very nice, and I can see why they caught on. I'm looking forward to seeing a few more of these early ones (including the second Dalek story).

I also saw "The Green Death", which was one I clearly remembered seeing from back when I first saw the series circa 1980, and I was surprised at how clearly I remembered some scenes. This is the kind of stuff that I first think of when I think DOCTOR WHO, with the really bad special effects but really imaginative stories. And of course Jon Pertwee is the best incarnation of the Doctor to me (although soon I'll be able to somewhat fairly judge the previous two).

"The Sontarian Experiment" and "Genesis of the Daleks" are together on one set, and another pair I remembered. And have the benefit of having Sarah Jane Smith, my favourite of the Who assistants. Good stuff, especially the Dalek story (which doesn't quite seem to jibe with the original Dalek episode, but whatever). Tom Baker was a lot of fun in the role, but sometimes didn't quite sell the more dramatic lines (like the long bit where he's questioning if he has a right to destroy the Daleks). And two stories in a row without even seeing the Tardis?

"The Talons of Weng-Chiang" is the last of the ones I've seen so far, and was new to me. It started off really awful, re-enforcing my belief that the series should never do stories set in the recent past, especially Victorian England. Fortunately the second half was much improved, so overall it was a passable episode. I will say that I never much cared for Leela as an assistant, partly because she replaced Sarah, and this didn't change my mind none.

Doctor Who - "Dalek"

Latest episode of the new WHO is the one I was waiting for, "Dalek". Great stuff, the new series is definitely getting better. It was a shame that it made obvious commercial sense to reveal the villain of the piece in the title and the preview, as the actual reveal in the episode was really well done and would have been stronger if you didn't know it was coming.

The handling of the Dalek was interesting. I've only seen a fraction of the original series episodes with the Daleks (although I just checked an my library has a bunch of them on video, so I went and reserved them and some other episodes), so I'm not sure how consistent it was, but it for the most part felt right (although a few parts of it felt too much like they were trying too hard to produce a definitive Dalek story).

More hints about the Time War, so I assume that'll end up being a major thing later.

Okay, back to weblog hibernation.

Doctor Who - "World War Three"

It was an interesting conclusion to the alien invasion storylilne. There was some really lame stuff, like about half the attempts at humour, especially those by the actors playing the disguised aliens, but there was some stuff that worked, and it was a very bold and outrageous plot with some nice pseudo-science.

The aliens were also kind of neat. A good updated version of what you'd expect from WHO, kind of goofy looking, but nicely designed. Kind of looked like what I would imagine an Alan Davis drawn WHO alien would be.

I also kind of like that they put up some real websites for the ones that are part of the plot.

http://www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk/
http://www.unit.org.uk/

(the UNIT press release on the file sharing virus is cute)

Next episode is a familiar "face", really good preview.

Doctor Who - "Aliens of London"

Now that's more like it. "Aliens of London" is the first part of a two-part story returning the Doctor and Rose to the present (or thereabouts) in time to witness a spaceship crashing into London. This is easily the best episode of the new DOCTOR WHO series, and I can't wait for the second part. I'm still not completely sold on the current Doctor, but he's at least adequete. And there was some stupid "humour" in this one that I could have done without and didn't belong in WHO as all. But overall I liked it.

Especially good was seeing UNIT used again. Don't suppose that the Brigadier will show up, I guess.

Doctor Who - "The Unquiet Dead"

Boy, there really should be a rule against DOCTOR WHO having episodes sent in the recent past of Earth, especially 19th century England. And having any real historical guest stars. The third episode of the new series was easily the weakest to date, with the Doctor and Rose getting involved in a ghost story / alien invasion story with Charles Dickens. Just boring, and I'm really not sure I like them seemingly adding a possible romance between the Doctor and Rose. And the more I see it the less I like the new interior of the TARDIS.

Next few episodes look better, with alien invasions in the modern day and Daleks after that, but I'm not sure I'll stick around.

Doctor Who - "The End of the World"

The second episode of the new DOCTOR WHO series was on last night. Still a mixed reaction, but I just checked an episode guide and saw that there are Daleks coming up so I'll probably stick around.

I have to say, something about having commercials in the middle of my DOCTOR WHO watching just feels wrong.

And tossing in pop music feels even more wrong. I didn't mind "Tainted Love", since it's not a bad song, but Britney Spears? I was really ready to give up on the show right there. They seem to fluctuate between showing that they really understand the premise of the show and just missing it completely.

On a better note, I did think that the effects were more even this time around. It still felt like classic WHO, but updated with better effects that can now be done cheaply, all better intergrated than in the first episode. There was some fun goofy stuff, and a surprisingly dense and well-structured plot for a one hour show.

I'm still not sold on this new Doctor, not at all. A few flashes of interesting behaviour, but maybe a bit too goofy. It'll also be interesting to see where they go with this "fate of the Time Lords" thing that they set up in this episode (I'm not sure if that refers to events from the decade of the show I skipped). That might make for an interesting storyline down the road, unless the intent was just to write the rest of the Time Lords out of the story.