Doctor Who nonsense. I'm a massive nerd.

So the 3rd episode of the new series was broadcast last night, to mixed reception. From the impressionistic examples I can find through my FB feed it seems this was less well taken than the first two episodes of the new series. To some extent, I agree that it wasn't great. I think this is mainly due to the fact it was a one-parter. We essentially got 4 big set piece scenes:

1. The Daleks being nefarious in WW2 London
2. The old Daleks being replaced with the power ranger Daleks
3. The Spitfires in space. Oh yes.
4. Them convincing ticking-time-bomb scientist to feel the power of LOVE.

If you take each of these sections on their own merits, they're all pretty enjoyable. Seeing the Daleks being scheme-y and nefarious in a very Power of the Daleks and Death to the Daleks fashion was a real treat, and as everyone else is saying, the "Would you like a cup of tea?" line was pretty inspired. Replacing the old with the new Daleks I think was also necessary, as was having them escape. Finally we can now have Dalek stories which don't involve A BILLION GAZILLION Daleks appearing out of nowhere only to be completely destroyed again, a la the RTD era. Killing off the old Daleks for the new seemed to be a pretty symbolic statement of intent.

As for the Spitfires in space? Very fun, little more to be said there. The 4th bit there I felt didn't work so well. It's not that I object to that in theory, but I think in practice something felt a bit off about that resolution for it to sit right in terms of how it was done. Still not put my finger on it.

So if I break it down like that, it would seem I really quite enjoyed the episode, but again something didn't sit right about it for me. I think really this needed to be a two parter, it felt very disjunctured and I think a bit more connecting fabric between these big plot points and set pieces would have fleshed out the story and changed it from simply Good, to Very Good or even Classic. Why couldn't we see more of the Daleks scheming? What was the Doctor's implied past relationship with Churchill like? How did they manage to make the Spitfires spaceworthy and manned with trained pilots in about 10 minutes? I think if the whole "testimony" bit happened as the cliffhanger of a first episode, giving us more time with the ambiguous Daleks, and then the 2nd episode focussed on the action and New Daleks, we would have had a much better story.

On the whole, I'll give this a 6.5/10.





I also just finished listening to all 4 episodes of 'Spare Parts'. Getting into the Doctor Who audioplays has been on my nerdery agenda for some time now, and besides catching the 8th Doctor Seasons they put out on BBC7 this is the first proper Classic Doctor story I've caught up on. And it's very good indeed. Peter Davison, the 5th Doctor, is absolutely my favourite for a start due to him being the first Doctor I ever encountered when I was younger, so I chose this as a starting point due to this predisposition... and I wasn't dissapointed at all.

I won't go into a bit-by-bit plot synopsis, it would be a waste of my time as there is a very good one here. Instead, I'll simply point out what I really enjoyed about it.

• It felt very Classic Series, from the use of the original theme music, the pacing, the style and the format of 4 25-minute episodes. It's definately aimed at that group of fans who miss the old style and it works very well in this regard.
• The Cybermen in it aren't just a bunch of stompy robots, ala their later appearances and the new series. This story really gets back to the core themes of their early stories regarding body modification, lobotomy and depersonalisation. There were bits of the story I won't spoil relating to this which were absolutely chilling.
• Generally good voice acting and scene setting. Obviously in an audioplay its much harder to convey setting than on telly just for format reasons, but it was just subtle enough here that the background sound effects didn't become too obnoxious or intrusive whilst still managing that.
  
• Generally good selection of voice actors. Again, with the lack of the visual aspect, for an audioplay to be effective you need to select distinctive voice actors and in general they managed this.
  

A definate 5/5 for me. There was very little I disliked about this story.

I'll probably post some thoughts on the telly Doctor Who and another Audioplay next week if I have the time. Because I'm a massive nerd. and I might just do a general life post later on as well.

New Blog.

I've decided to make a new blog here. I've noticed more and more people I know slowly switching over to blogspot over time, so it makes sense from that perspective. Livejournal seems to be a bit of a sinking ship these days, most of the posts I see are from communities and very few of my friends really seem to use it at all now.

I'm also hoping switching around to a new site will give me some impetus to blog more often. I'd like to ideally blog both about life stuff and random archaeological/nonsense ramblings. I think it's good to have an outlet for stuff which is a bit more longwinded than a FB status, and isn't another essay. Just doing academic writing for the last year or so is slowly driving me around the bend. I'd definately like to branch out in the sort of things I write about, as my old blog did just turn into a place for me to moan. This will hopefully contain moaning *and* other stuff. It's a winning combo.

More posts to follow shortly.