Halfway out of the dark
Dec. 25th, 2010 07:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexsarllThe Doctor Who Christmas special became a tradition out of nowhere. But more than that, the Doctor Who Christmas special starring David Tennant and written by Russell T Davies became a tradition. All five of them, same team. Charitably, two and a half of them were good. One was the worst Doctor Who story ever. Could Moffat and Matt Smith follow that and do it better?
Of course they bloody could. Best Christmas Who ever. It helped that when it wasn't ripping off Moffat's own first professional Who, 'Continuity Errors', it was reworking Paul Cornell's 'The Hopes and Fears of All the Years. But with the exception of that slightly vexing swerve at the end, it was otherwise a thing of utter beauty, unashamedly soppy but never schmaltzy, smart without confusing the casual viewers. In other words: utterly, near-perfectly Doctor Who.
Merry Christmas.
Of course they bloody could. Best Christmas Who ever. It helped that when it wasn't ripping off Moffat's own first professional Who, 'Continuity Errors', it was reworking Paul Cornell's 'The Hopes and Fears of All the Years. But with the exception of that slightly vexing swerve at the end, it was otherwise a thing of utter beauty, unashamedly soppy but never schmaltzy, smart without confusing the casual viewers. In other words: utterly, near-perfectly Doctor Who.
Merry Christmas.
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Date: 2010-12-25 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-25 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-12-25 08:16 pm (UTC)I like it when they remember that it's a time travel show, but for the looping, self-referential stuff to work, there needs to be some kind of story beyond a series of contrived character beats. I kept waiting for the real threat to be introduced.
Why doesn't the super-genius, super-observant Doctor work out what the countdown timer is about? And what the hell kind of illness leaves you looking that good when you are one day away from dying?
Bah, humbug.
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Date: 2010-12-25 10:44 pm (UTC)And we've established that this Doctor in particular does miss things sometimes. He has to or he'd just be infuriating. The illness? Well, it's common enough on screen and I prefer it to tiresomely worthy method buboes.
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Date: 2010-12-25 11:06 pm (UTC)The relative smallness of scale worked very well I thought.
Poor old Blinovitch.
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Date: 2010-12-25 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-26 09:29 am (UTC)Also, his objection to letting the cruise ship land seemed to be to do with surplus population, but presumably the people on board were holidaymakers and not refugees.
They could at least have put in a closing shot showing the Welsh bint's head exploding in a massive, festive aneurysm shaped like a sprig of holly.
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Date: 2010-12-26 11:00 am (UTC)And it's the old Stalin tragedy/statistic line - especially when the individual reminds you of (or indeed, is) your younger self, that's going to get through layers of emotional defences which 4,003 unseen holidaymakers can't.
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Date: 2010-12-26 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-12-30 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-25 11:21 pm (UTC)WHY HAS NO ONE MENTIONED THIS YET? WHYYYYYYY?
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Date: 2010-12-25 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-26 10:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-26 11:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-01 01:20 pm (UTC)