a little retro Who
Nov. 9th, 2011 12:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jencatSeeing as how the season 6 boxset won't be arriving for another couple weeks, and Sky now have season 1 on the Anytime menu, I had a yen to rewatch the first couple of eps for once...
I probably wasn't concentrating so much when I watched Rose the other day, but it was still as cute and quirky as I remembered from way back when (ended up watching it in a hostel in Norfolk at Easter the first time around, on a very fuzzy tv, and it was such a nice surprise at how awesome it was.)
Tonight was The End of the World (and, let's be honest, new Who destroys the world at least once a series as a rule.. they eventually had to upgrade to destroying the universe a couple of times now, just to up the ante a bit, let's face it). And I'd forgotten quite how impressive it was, especially considering how early on it is, with hardly any of the later canon established. There are some lovely one-liners, Zoe Wanamaker shamelessly stealing the show as the voice of a CGI strip of skin - and bizarrely, Tainted Love and Britney's Toxic making an appearance on a jukebox (hey, Toxic as a soundtrack improves almost anything, it's true..). Also the trees!
Amusingly Rose spends the ep being overwhelmed by the fact she's just scarpered with the weird bloke in the blue box, then being freaked out by all the aliens, then storming off, getting knocked out and spending the entire rest of the ep locked in a room while the Doctor ran around with a fabulously dressed and flirtatious tree saving the day. Ahem. It was fun, and a little melancholy - the tree sacrifices herself, becoming the first in a long line of pretty, chippy girls that end up dying in the reboot so the Doctor can save the day/save himself.
So: I'd been on a major Eleven obsession of late (which is why I still haven't posted the very very long reaction thing I wrote after The Wedding of River Song... It all started looking a little different after I'd been reading around it for a while) and therefore a Moffatt-era - so I'd kinda forgotten how much fun RTD used to be. His last eps, after all, were not exactly majorly classic Who (multiple John Simms... argggggghhhh!). But it used to make me cry quite frequently - something Moffatt doesn't necessarily do anymore, because he loves implementing his happy endings quite so much. RTD used to love milking the tragedy wholesale (please don't get me started on Rose leaving, either bloody time, or Donna...!!)
So I'll carry on with the re-watch - although there's several eps I'm not a huge fan of in the first series. Having said that, I can say the same about the fifth series as well though. And I HATE the third with a passion (except for the obvious Blink and Family of Blood).. the second and the fourth were very strong... and the sixth might be my favourite of all of them. Mostly because we got five whole River episodes and some actual answers, yay!
And.. now I have much-sought-after tickets for the Sherlock preview next month, which started off as a whole 'will Moffatt show up?!' (we only got Mark Gatiss at Big Screen, after all) and then descended into a OMG THE BFI ARE EVIL from lots of other people who didn't get tickets after the date was changed by the BBC. I can totally see how you could miss out on the tickets, after all that - they took the online booking offline just as it was about to open, the phone lines immediately got blocked with frantic phone calls (I know, as I was hitting redial constantly for 35 minutes and couldn't even get through to the queue), and in the end I decided it was quiet at work and I was 2 tube stops away from the box office so trotted off down there. Looks like I made the reservation list just in time, 35 mins after it theoretically opened - and I got through to the phone queue just as I walked into the box office, lol!
I probably wasn't concentrating so much when I watched Rose the other day, but it was still as cute and quirky as I remembered from way back when (ended up watching it in a hostel in Norfolk at Easter the first time around, on a very fuzzy tv, and it was such a nice surprise at how awesome it was.)
Tonight was The End of the World (and, let's be honest, new Who destroys the world at least once a series as a rule.. they eventually had to upgrade to destroying the universe a couple of times now, just to up the ante a bit, let's face it). And I'd forgotten quite how impressive it was, especially considering how early on it is, with hardly any of the later canon established. There are some lovely one-liners, Zoe Wanamaker shamelessly stealing the show as the voice of a CGI strip of skin - and bizarrely, Tainted Love and Britney's Toxic making an appearance on a jukebox (hey, Toxic as a soundtrack improves almost anything, it's true..). Also the trees!
Amusingly Rose spends the ep being overwhelmed by the fact she's just scarpered with the weird bloke in the blue box, then being freaked out by all the aliens, then storming off, getting knocked out and spending the entire rest of the ep locked in a room while the Doctor ran around with a fabulously dressed and flirtatious tree saving the day. Ahem. It was fun, and a little melancholy - the tree sacrifices herself, becoming the first in a long line of pretty, chippy girls that end up dying in the reboot so the Doctor can save the day/save himself.
So: I'd been on a major Eleven obsession of late (which is why I still haven't posted the very very long reaction thing I wrote after The Wedding of River Song... It all started looking a little different after I'd been reading around it for a while) and therefore a Moffatt-era - so I'd kinda forgotten how much fun RTD used to be. His last eps, after all, were not exactly majorly classic Who (multiple John Simms... argggggghhhh!). But it used to make me cry quite frequently - something Moffatt doesn't necessarily do anymore, because he loves implementing his happy endings quite so much. RTD used to love milking the tragedy wholesale (please don't get me started on Rose leaving, either bloody time, or Donna...!!)
So I'll carry on with the re-watch - although there's several eps I'm not a huge fan of in the first series. Having said that, I can say the same about the fifth series as well though. And I HATE the third with a passion (except for the obvious Blink and Family of Blood).. the second and the fourth were very strong... and the sixth might be my favourite of all of them. Mostly because we got five whole River episodes and some actual answers, yay!
And.. now I have much-sought-after tickets for the Sherlock preview next month, which started off as a whole 'will Moffatt show up?!' (we only got Mark Gatiss at Big Screen, after all) and then descended into a OMG THE BFI ARE EVIL from lots of other people who didn't get tickets after the date was changed by the BBC. I can totally see how you could miss out on the tickets, after all that - they took the online booking offline just as it was about to open, the phone lines immediately got blocked with frantic phone calls (I know, as I was hitting redial constantly for 35 minutes and couldn't even get through to the queue), and in the end I decided it was quiet at work and I was 2 tube stops away from the box office so trotted off down there. Looks like I made the reservation list just in time, 35 mins after it theoretically opened - and I got through to the phone queue just as I walked into the box office, lol!
