Tooth and Claw

[coalescent]

• Far from great, but at least the pacing and plotting were basically competent, unlike last week.


• Thumbs up for Pauline Collins.


• Thumbs up for (what I'm assuming is deliberate) characterisation of the Doctor and Rose as getting complacent. The way this Doctor is fascinated with the strange and incredible, to the point of very nearly being oblivious that he's staring at a werewolf which will kill dozens of people if not stopped, was nicely handled.


• In fact, it's particularly good because the Doctor is our avatar. RTD's much-vaunted gift for dialogue was a bit absent (the 'not amused' gag was deeply tedious), but he was still good at the sensawunda stuff--Queen Victoria's monologue about the need for consolation, the initial scene with the 'telescope'--and then started to subvert it.


• On a purely propaganda level, I can't object too strongly to an episode which argues that books are the best weapons.


• RTD really wants to do a full-on steampunk episode, doesn't he?

Comments

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

RTD really wants to do a full-on steampunk episode, doesn't he?

Precisely what I said to PK last night.

It was a very annoying episode in so many ways. RTD cannot pace an episode to save his life, throws away so much good stuff so casually (it's wanton the way he discards things other people could make episodes out of; such profligacy is not clever, it smacks of ... oh, a kind of complacency of its own, I think, a 'don't worry, another great idea will be along in a minute' attitude).

However, I agree that he is good at the sensawunda ... if he could only apply some discipline to what he does with it. And I liked the books line too, but then, you knew I would. However ...

[wychwood]

RTD really wants to do a full-on steampunk episode, doesn't he?

Yeah, I thought exactly that :)

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

I *hated* the 'we are not amused' bit - I know I have to accept a certain amount of jokes aimed at the 8 year olds but that was just irritating. I did like Rose trying to do a Scottish accent, though.

[andrewducker]

Agreed. Better than last week, but still not great.

Twas nice to see Rab from The Book Group doing something else.

I want to know why on earth Scottish monks were doing martial arts and flying through the air...

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

I know I have to accept a certain amount of jokes aimed at the 8 year olds

Further proof that I am eight.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

RTD really wants to do a full-on steampunk episode, doesn't he?

Yes.

Although the more I think of it, this was the closest to a Buffy episode the show has yet done. I mean: werewolf, martial arts, irreverant pop-cultureness, and everyone holing up in the library doing emergency research. Plus the resolution was a semi-mystical bit of technology. What more do you need?

I agree about the Doctor being our avatar (where arguably Rose was the audience's avatar in Season 1), but I'm still unconvinced that our heroes are being set up for a fall. I suspect that they are simply Being Themselves - which includes - quite intentionally on the part of the writer - being smug space tourists. They're presented as flawed individuals who are in it for the adventure, but have a strong sense of morality. The Steed and Mrs Peel of the space-time continuum.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

I want to know why on earth Scottish monks were doing martial arts and flying through the air...

Because it's cool, I suspect.

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

I thought it was pretty good. For once a Dr Who epsiode that looked as good as it thought it did. And next week doesn't half look like a slight re-use of some Dark Season style material.

Oh, and referencing the BBC ident with the kung fu people up in a glen in Scotland was a stroke of actual genius.

Dr Who always a lot better when set in the past, at least for RTD - he just doesn't really do the future properly.

[andrewducker]

Aaah, the perennial excuse for everything.

I once spent a full two hours trying to explain to someone the difference between in-world explanations and out-world explanations, and why "It's cool" was a perfectly good out-world explanation, but you really needed an in-world one too...

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

I think the heading for a fall thing is pretty much official - quotes from RTD to that effect are all over the fora, along, obviously, with a lot of speculation about how it will manifest itself.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Oh, and referencing the BBC ident with the kung fu people up in a glen in Scotland was a stroke of actual genius.

Ah, it was a reference. I wasn't sure whether I'd actually seen an ident like that or not.

My download missed out about the last thirty seconds plus credits, so I have no idea what's coming next week. I'm guessing it's a contemporary episode, though, since it would never do to stay away from now for too long ...

[grahamsleight.livejournal.com]

My guess, based on no evidence, is that this episode really has set off a Bad Alternate Timeline; and that some of the implications of that will play out over the rest of the season. Otherwise, why talk in so much detail this week about what the alternate timeline would look like?

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

It is indeed a contemporary episode; it is also one which has just about everyone who watched Who in the mid-Seventies bouncing up and down with anticipation...

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

It's actually Tai Chi (http://www.five-winds.co.uk/news/bbcident.html) in the ident rather than kung fu.

But are we going to find out in future why and where a bunch of Scottish monks learn martial arts anyway?

Also, was the monstery supposed to have been there unchanged since whatever medieval year the shooting star came down? Because there have been one or two religious wars in the UK since then. And the penal laws.

[pikelet.livejournal.com]

The meta websites they've set up are also talking a lot about Queen Victoria - making it likely, IMHO, that she'll be making a reappearance in some form or other later in the season.

[palatinate.livejournal.com]

The RT last week included summarises of all the episodes in the series. There's three two-parters this year, two of which feature the Cybermen. Just as last year with the Daleks, it looks like the Cybermen have a setup mid-season and then a wham-bam return at the end of the run.

The first Cyberman two-parter is set on an alternate current Earth; I wouldn't be surprised if that traces back to this divergence.

There's an interesting discussion of the monks, etc on autopope's LJ.

[ajr.livejournal.com]

It is? I just found it embarrassing. Especially with the 'trendy' directing they used for those bits. *cringes*

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Was it a deliberate reference though? Seems like a weird thing to do.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

But the buffy fan-children should be reasonably happy too.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Ah! Hadn't realised that. I'm not staying spoiler free (I'm watching the "Next week" promos, for example) but neither am I going out of my way to find out what's coming.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Promising. :-)

My wife has just commented on how cool it would be to do a story in one alternate universe, and then as a separate episode do the same story but with events running differently. And it would.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Possibly. Of course, the talk of a detailed alternate timeline could be just for the whizz-bang steampunkyness of it all. But it wouldn't be that dissimilar in concept to the future-Earth divergent history we saw in S1, so I could definitely see them going down that route.

[snowking.livejournal.com]

GIANT STEAM-POWERED ROBOT QUEEN VICTORIA!

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, how I've missed you, Mr H.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Oh and yay! Cybermen!

(Although how cheesy is this Cyberman pose?)