Better

New Earth turned out better than I'd hoped.

In the words of Simon Cowell, "I was entertained." But also in the words of Simon Cowell, "It was a bit karaoke". In fact, it was very karaoke indeed. RTD's writing and plotting left far too many holes and badly used characters: the Catsisters failed to motivate their cause, the science was dreadful, the whole Face of Bo thing should have been chopped by a competent editor. But in the end, it wasn't about characters and plot.

It was about dialog. Sparkling dialog with just the right amount of Sharon Osborning of Cassandra last night (with Louis Walsh as her vat-grown companion) and Doctor/Rose interaction.

Which begs the question. Is Dr Who just about having a good time with witty dialog? Isn't there supposed to be something deeper to the stories? A moral heft?  The New Earth morality tale rang false to me without the story to back it up.

Comments

[Sean]

Lovely to have you back on board, E. It really has been too long.

'New Earth' really was something of a guilty pleasure - lots of sparkling dialogue, great chemistry between Tennant and Piper and superb prosphetics on the cat nuns.

But, as so often in RTD scripts, there was so little to hang it all together. I honestly believe we'd be better off if he just storylined and left the actual meat 'n' gravy writing to the likes of Cornell, Shearman, Moffat et al. In Russell's case I think his enjoyment of writing for the show spills over into poorly edited scripts, unfocussed narratives and far too much juvenile humour.

Still, if this is as bad as Season 2 gets then we should still be in for some seriously good 'Who' this year