Category: Featured

In-brief:

Something to chew on… but not as much as it wants.

In-depth:

This is the first episode of series 4 I’ve had some serious doubts about. After last week’s cliffhanger of sorts, I felt sure that this week would prove to be a real fantastic romp of an episode.

But it’s hampered by an extremely slow start, an initially confusing design for an alien creature and the very title of the episode itself, is never really encapsulated upon to my tastes.

In nuWho, the Doctor is a solitary figure. He’s absolutely alone in the sense that he knows that he is the Last of his kind. So whenever he gets a whisper of possibility that their might be others’ of his species’ still kicking about, he gets very, very scared. And very protective.

But we’ve seen this before in the Master. Despite everything the Master did in the last three episodes of Series 3, the Doctor still found it within himself to grieve, to suffer, to cry, at his eventual death.

Or ‘death’. But that’s another story. On another forum.

Review. So if you’re going to tap into that idea of the Doctor not really being alone, you’d best do something damn different with it.

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In-brief:

Wow.

(Very) In-depth:

I’m a little bit shocked actually. I just sat down and watched the second of a two-part episode of Doctor Who, and not only did it manage to build upon the first episode, with no stone left not fully unturned, it did so in a way that was, quite simply, brilliant.

Plot; Martha has been cloned, the Sontarans are flooding the world with somekind of poisonous gas, Donna’s granddad is being poisoned to death by said gas and the Doctor, and UNIT, stand helpless…

…but not for long.

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In brief: Solid storytelling.

In-depth: Okay. Now this is a curious little Doctor Who tale.

I simply can’t fault how beautiful this episode looked; the CGI effects of the snow covered planet, the interior and exterior designs of the Oodsphere complex… it was an alien planet that looked and felt like an alien planet! The design team here did some fantastic work.

Back to the story though, as it transpires, the Ood were a docile race that humans found and decided to take of; to educate as one character within the episode calls it. We know something has gone wrong though from the opening scene where one of the humans running the Ood servants company is murdered by the Ood who serves him. One who has a familiar looking red colour to his eye… The Doctor and Donna arrive and quickly the Doctor determines that the Ood are somehow being controlled by an outside force again – it simply isn’t in their nature to kill.

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In brief:

Fun with good gut kick.

In-depth:

Russell T. Davies. I think what this man has done to Doctor Who, is absolutely nothing short of fantastic. He brought back to life a series which had been thought gone, and has helped to turn it into the powerhouse it is today with a strong guiding hand.

For that I am extremely thankful because it’s brought an element of fun to Saturday nights in front of the tv that hasn’t been there for a good while. All that said, I will freely admit I’m not entirely sure he’s the best person to write episodes of Doctor Who. I think, although he has brilliant ideas and themes, the execution gets a little bit mixed up sometimes.

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