Okay, first of all - I kinda enjoyed 'Fear Her'. To a point. More on that later.
Secondly, I got into an interesting conversation with someone from the Outpost Gallifrey forums, and I'd like to type up some of my posts here, if you'll endulge me. Feel free to skip to the end of this post if you're not interested in my views on the new series, or my look at 'Fear Her'.
Ahem.
People these days need a bit more then just a monster. A show needs more
depth then that, and having the human element can give it a new
edge, one which the mainstream public can identify with. RTD himself
has said 'If there's planet X with monster Y, then I'm not interested.
But put a human colony on planet X, and suddenly I'm interested', or
something similar. He has a point. In a similar style most, if not all, programmes these days have story arcs. It keeps
people interested and in a way it rewards them for watching by having a
blazing conclusion. Doctor Who had an arc in the first series which
paid off in 'The Parting of the Ways' (well I thought it did), and it
has another one this series which will pay off in 'Doomsday'. And while
I agree that at times that arc (occasionally) seems crowbared into the
episodes, it doesn't make the rest of the story any less great. If you
look at them as individual stories, they do stand up well. The writers
aren't writing themselves into a corner, because there is no corner to
write themselves into. That's the beauty of Doctor Who - you can do
almost anything.
Sadly, some of the science (there's a scientific explanation behind all magic!
) from the first series has been lost in this second one. It's hard to
say why exactly, but I personally think it has something to do with the
main characters. Eccleston had a hard shell, if that makes sense. He
was a lot tougher, more of a loner. And Billie, essentially, drew him
out of that shell, almost made him into the father she'd lost. There
was good chemistry with that relationship, and I enjoyed the series a
lot because of it.
We don't have that chemistry with Tennant. He's not a loner, he has no
shell, he's just a happy-go-lucky guy with few cares in the world who's
out for a laugh. That doesn't make him bad, but it does make him a mate
to Rose rather than a fatherly subsitute. And when you have two friends
who think they're invincible, they can get very, very irritating. I
didn't notice it at first, but as the series went on, their smugness
became more and more apparent.
The first time I really noticed it was in 'Rise of the Cybermen', when
the Doctor & Rose got into the Tyler house working in the kitchen.
Rose says some very bitchy things ("or maybe she's just a little bit
thick") and that's really when it first hit me. I started noticing it a
lot more when I rewatched the episodes after that, but since that point
in RotC, it hit me that the two were really starting to irritate me.
They ticked me off during 'Tooth & Claw' ("Where the hell have you
been?" is NOT what I would yell at that point), during 'The Idiot's
Lantern', at the beginning of 'The Impossible Planet' (not so much
during the rest of the story, which I think is the strongest of the
series), whenever we saw them in 'Love & Monsters' and throughout
'Fear Her', which is my biggest flaw with the episode. Truth be told,
the episodes that work best are when the two are split up - 'The Girl
in the Fireplace' and 'The Satan Pit', but they also have another
reason for being great.
I'm going to pick on 'Love & Monsters' for a moment, if you don't
mind, because I enjoyed that episode. For the first 32 minutes. Watch
it again (if you can) and you'll see where it all falls apart, but for
that first half-hour, things are good. Why? Because the story is
focused on a person who isn't having a laugh. Elton is a real person,
who has real feelings. He shares them with us, whether it be by telling
us or through the quality of the actor's perfomance.
Hard as it may be, I can't really think of many times we get that with
the Doctor or Rose this series. We got a couple with the Doctor while
he's in the caves, and later climbing down the pit, during 'The Satan
Pit' (as I call the 2-parter), and they were great. We also had a few
in 'Girl in the Fireplace' (it's a really touching moment when he reads
that letter), but sadly that's about it. And we had them all the time
in the first series. That, I guess, was the magic of the first series
that simply isn't there in the second. We've lost the emotional
connection with the characters.
I mostly enjoyed 'Fear Her', although I will admit it wasn't perfect.
You only need to read the other reviews her to see what
other people thought of it. Hopefully that ridiculous air of smugness that's been surrounding the lead characters this series be addressed in the final episodes, but
still... Anyway. Yes, 'Fear Her' - not perfect. But FAR from pathetic.
There was no real monster, which was the whole point of the episode. It
was all about one lost soul finding another, which is what the Doctor and Rose were when they first met, in a way. Eccleston was somewhat lost, and Rose was... well, stuggling to find a meaning to it all. Then they found each other, and all was right. Until he turned into Tennant, and that connection was lost.
Here's hoping they can get something like that connection back in the third series.
Okay, and finally: I was doing an audio version of The Clockwise Man, remember? Well, I had to put that on hold when I got a job (yay!), and when I cam back I found all my enthusiasm for the projecty had been drained (boo!), simply because I really didn't want to be sitting in front of my PC reading out and entire book. Boring in the extreme.
But (!) yesterday I was skimming through the book again when I had a realisation. Maybe... maybe I could turn it into a Big Finish style audio instead? So I went back to the beginning and went through it again, seeing if I could mentally adapt certain bits to suit the BF style. And I think it's a very real possibility.
Which is where you come in. I'd need people to provide voices! I can do a couple, as well as the Doctor (since I've been told I do a pretty nice Eccleston), but really I'd need a couple of other people to join in - most importantly someone who could do a decent Rose impression. So if you're interested, let me know!
Okay, that's it. You may return to your episode bashing now.