OFF: Doctor Who, how was it?

[Jon Jarrett]

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005, Mike Montfort wrote:

> I didn't like Eccleston very much in the first couple of episodes,
> either, but I have to admit he really grew on me a lot and I'll miss him
> not being there for the next series.

        They put a lot of work into character development scriptwise for
the Doctor, and Eccleston's big schoolboy persona was making a lot more
sense as a defensive way to hide from moral reality by the end. What
little I've seen of Tennant leads me to suspect that baffled earnest
gaucheness is more his strong suit, which for character continuity will
suck, so I hope he has other strings to his bow.

> However the best Dr Who episodes this year were the two parter The Empty
> Child and The Doctor Dances... Now that was amazing writing.

        They were great. I particularly admired the way the horrific
visual image they created (scriptwriter exorcising a gasmasked-people
nightmare there do we think perhaps?) was actually dismantled as part of
the denouement. The girl who played the young mother had some acting in
her too. But some genuinely scary stuff in there, a very effective variant
of mindless horror and a great deal of buckled swash and backchat to
meet it, too.

        I think after the threat had been successfully diffused, the thing
about that doublet that may remain with me longest is one of the credits,
the kid who got the job of being "Voice of the Empty Child". That phrase
is going to stay with me a long long time. Yours,
                                                  Jon

ObCD: Spiral Realms - _A Trip to G9_
--
    Jonathan Jarrett    "There is scarce any tradition or popular error
    Birkbeck College     but stands also delivered by some good author."
        London         (Sir Thomas Browne, "Pseudodoxia Epidemica", 1646)