Okay, I didn’t see a thread on this, so I’ll start an ‘official Stateside’ thread on it. Anyway, wow! Cool! I loved it. If the concluding episode is as good as the first, it’ll rank up there IMO as one of the best Who stories ever. I suppose the fact that I was absolutely unspoiled for it - didn’t see any previews & had no prior knowledge to what would occur - certainly helped.
The FX were decent. The story was intriguing and suspenseful. The Ood were great-looking creatures. I loved that the stories was a throwback to the very period of the show when I first discovered & fell in love with it: when the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Sarah-Jane found themselves smack dab in an “H.P. Lovecraft” story week after week, and menaced by truly otherworldly monstrosities. Even the five minute “character exposition” moment in which Rose teases the Doctor about having to get a mortgage for the home he’ll have to live in (as he is stranded w/o his ship) was entertaining.
Even the incidental music (my major gripe about this new series) was tolerable and worked with the story.
I’m curious to see what the ‘Satan’ figure emerging from the pit will be. Even if the brief glimpse we got of him last time he appeared to be much like the awful “Beast” from Angel s.4.
As a nitpick, that was a bunch of nonsense about how impossible it was for them to be orbiting around a black hole. There’s nothing to stop you from orbiting around a black hole, outside the event horizon, unless you’re close enough to be dragged in by falling gasses or other things. It’s just a matter of how fast you have to orbit.
I saw it in the UK - and the next episode too. Excellent story line and well produced and directed for a budget that, in American terms, can be counted in pennies. The next episode is very spooky indeed.
It’s just that I don’t like the new doctor. He’s a ratface.
Tom Baker was, of course, the best but the one before him, John Pertwee, who was a doctor in a frilly shirt with a velvet smoking jacket who could do kung fu was amazingly camply good too. The most frightening of all the doctors was the second. I just about remember him. patrick Troughton. He looked like an intelligent Shemp from The Three Stooges - ie. like manic child molester. I remember, aged about five, seeing one episode where the dcotor and his youthful ward were in a mine. The walls began shaking. Clods began falling to the ground. Suddenly a swarm of daleks smashed through and surrounded the pair, screaming ‘Exterminate!’ . AND THE DOCTOR QUITE DISTINCTLY PUSHED HIS CHILD COMPANION BETWEEN HIMSELF AND DANGER. You couldn’t show that now. Not that there aren’t plenty of kids these days who deserve tio be thrown to the Daleks.
Well I wouldn’t go as far as to say he’s a ‘ratface’, I do kind of like him in a way. It’s just that…well, he’s just not eccentric enough to be the Doctor. It’s the same gripe I had with Peter Davison (who took over the role from Baker). He just seems to normal, whereas the Doctor of all people, no matter how he’s played, ought to be an oddball who sticks out.
‘Ratface’, I said, and ‘Ratface’ I maintain. I can do no other.
If its eccentricity you want, you might prefer the doctor when he was played by Sylvester McCoy. McCoy is a comedian and writer who, in real life, has a rep as a fabled eccentric. The episodes in which he appeared are apparently warmly loved by the generation of children who watched them (for them, he is ‘their’ doctor). I never saw any of those later series so I cannot say for sure.
After what he did to Willy Wonka (turning him into an albino version of Michael jackson… no, wait). I am not surprised. I very much enjoyed Depp’s performance in Sleep Hollow and I rememebr that move. I thought then - as I think now - that either the director or Depp himself had seen Troughton as the doctor many years ago. Or perhaps it was an inspired improvisation, darkly humorous.
You are correct of course. I just chalked it up that the particular orbit they were in was unstable at their particular distance and velocity and should be deteriorating. Obviously Rose isn’t an astrophysicist so it really doesn’t matter what she says on the subject.
Anyhow, I’m pretty sure I’d have no interest in the show if the Doctor was some old dude traveling around with a bunch of little kids instead of cross between a London hipster and Willie Wanka traveling with a busty blond quasi-love interest.
A possibility is that the planet was orbiting within the range where the tidal forces from the black hole should have ripped it to pieces, but that’s a complete fan wank explanation. The line bothered me too.
I didn’t know this was a two-parter. About three-quarters of the way through, I realized that I was going to be plenty pissed if they fixed everything by the end of the episode, because they had done such a great job setting the stage that it deserved to play out longer.
