Saturday, May 31, 2008

New Who Clues (pt 7)

No clues that I could see this week, but it was a cracking episode nonetheless, with some spooky bits, lots of funny bits, more hints at the mythology (last time it was about the Doctor's name, this time it's a wife?) and some great ideas (the library has "saved" all the people as books, I reckon, because the air piranha things won't eat books). Doctor Who is definitely in safe hands with Steven Moffatt.

In other "news", I've got a new "Green Day" (ugh) column up here, this time concerning Spider-Man's sometime love interest, the Black Cat, and Marvel's rather dubious treatment of the character of late.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

New Who Clues (pt 6)

No clues that I could spot this week, apart from a brief mention of the missing bees thread (and I'm really intrigued by that one; where are they going with that?). The recurring joke about the Doctor and Donna being a couple cropped up again, but I'm not sure that's going to be significant.

I was really looking forward to the Agatha Christie episode, as her mysterious disappearance seemed like good fodder for a Who story, and chucking the Doctor into a murder mystery seemed like it might be fun too, if a little obvious. For some reason, however, it just didn't come off; the mystery was choppy and convoluted in the worst way, with the clues available to the viewer not adding up to the eventual answer. I don't know, but if you're going to present a story as a Christie-style mystery, surely it should work like one, rather than just pay lip service to the genre? They also seriously squandered the author's disappearance, relegating it to an offscreen bit of plot mechanics at the end, when it should have been the core of the story.

I did, despite myself, quite like the nod to Cluedo early on, but they spoiled even that by explaining the joke almost immediately. Bah.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

New Who Clues (pt 5)

I didn't spot any of the potential ongoing threads in tonight's Who. There was a vague suggestion towards the end of that "Doctor as hero/god/mythic figure" thing we've seen a couple of times this series, but it wasn't overt and was probably just me reading too much into things. There was lots of stuff about the Time Lords and the Time War, but that's been a theme since the show came back.

It was a cracking episode though. The underground city looked much better than a bunch of corridors with some junk strewn about had any right to, and the fish-men were really well done. The story was quite similar to last year's Gridlock, with an initially clichéd setting giving way to something considerably more interesting by the end of the episode. There wasn't much to Jenny (the titular Doctor's Daughter), but Georgia Moffett did well with what she had, and brought the character to life; I sense a spin-off, but I hope she'll be back in the main series to, if only to give the Doctor something to smile about.

It's the Agatha Christie episode next week, which is the one I've been most looking forward to for some reason.

Saturday, May 03, 2008

New Who Clues (pt 4)

Well, I missed the first five minutes of this episode, so I don't know how Bernard Cribbins got out of the car, but the rest of the episode was quite tense and would have worked quite nicely as a series finale, so I hope they can top it with the real finale.

Which will probably be Daleks. Again.

Fascinating final scene too, with a TARDIS which doesn't seem to want Martha to leave, and the Doctor's Severed Hand (the ship is huge, so why is he keeping it in the console room?) going mental, which usually only happens when there's a Time Lord around. Hmmm...

I didn't pick up any of the "code words" this time, although there were echoes of the first episode of the series as the Sontarans too wanted to turn Earth into a nursery planet. We also briefly saw Rose on the TARDIS monitors, but that's not exactly a clue, since it's quite obvious that she will play a large role in the series' over-arching story.

There was also a nice nod to the Gas Mask Zombies in the episode, and a confirmation that the Brigadier was still knocking about (in Peru, apparently). Neither are probably clues, but they were welcome bits of fan service nonetheless.