What a fun episode! But, dammit, my TiVo disconnected in the last few minutes.
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:: trying to hide spoilers from mouse-over ::
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I last saw Elton, talking to the recorder, with Ursula being taken for granite, and the comment about how they sort of have a love life and Ursula says, “Let’s not talk about it.” And the rest is lost to me. Probably just a minute or two, but I’d love to know how it wound up.
I apologize if there’s another thread on this, I tried to search but searching on “who” doesnt’ work.
Here’s the last bit, as I recall it. I’m a trifle vague on the sequence–the whole thing was a bit disjointed, because of the format–but hopefully it will cover what you missed.
[spoiler]
Elton was talking about remembering his mother’s death, and the night he first saw the Doctor. Then he moved on to LINDA, and how they were drawn together by their interest in the Doctor, but had great times that had nothing to do with him…and then, in the end, it was their interest in him that led to disaster. He acknowledged that it wasn’t the Doctor’s fault, but still…there’s death around him.
Rough paraphrase: Touch him, even a little, and you die.
Elton wonders how long it will be before Jackie and Rose pay the price.
He concludes with a little philosophical observation, about how he was brought up to have a “normal” life–get a job, get married, have kids, and so forth–but there’s more to the world than that. How the world is darker, and madder, and better than we realize.[/spoiler]
Hope that helps.
I wasn’t too sure about the episode until the end. It had plenty of funny moments, and a couple of poignant ones, but the clip-show air bothered me a bit. Elton’s last little talk pulled it together nicely, though.
There was a competition to “design a Doctor Who Monster” on a UK children’s show Blue Peter. The main monster in this episode was the winning entry. The episode was written to accommodate a kid’s idea of a good Doctor Who monster. That mioght explain the flaws in the episode.
This episode was filmed without the availability of David Tennant and Billie Piper, because they were too busy on other episodes. This one had to be shoehorned in, and low budget, contractually, hence the unusual absence of the leads for the most part.
It reminded me of one of the really terrible episodes of X-Files, with the Lone Gunmen and a lot of hokey jokiness. At least they aren’t all so stinky, I might never watch this series.
The biggest kick I get out of watching the new Doctor Who is watching it with my kids. My son was agitated by the lack of the Doctor & Rose and when I jokingly said “Worst Episode Evah”, by daughter quickly agreed.
They really disliked the whole thing and the logic of the episode was weak enough for my daughter (she is only 9) to tear it apart.
I understand this episode was a filler as the prior two-episode arc required extra filming time. That one was great and my kids and I loved it.
One of the best episodes of new Who. It works if you consider Elton as a somewhat unreliable narrator. Great performances from Marc Warren and Camille Coduri - the seduction scene was hilariously well done.
I actually liked this one quite a bit. It’s good to have a change of pace every now and then. The one thing that kept taking me out of the episode was thinking, “That’s Private Blithe from Band of Brothers!” I had no idea he was English.
Wow, not understanding the hate for this episode. Not the best episode ever but it was far from the worst. I enjoyed Elton because I’d seen the actor in a TV movie a while back playing a completely different type and the contrast was fun to watch. They’ve touched on the theme of regular people traking the Doctor before (that’s how Rose got hooked up with him IIRC) and LINDA was a nice expansion on that idea.
A bit of an anvil with the whole “touch him and you die” and “those of us left behind suffer” business but this was the first time in a long time when I didn’t find Jackie just profoundly irritating.
A four minute clip of the upcoming Christmas Special is available on Youtube . The quality isn’t great because it was filmed off a large screen at a Children in Need Dr Who party, but it’s very promising and includes a great scene
of the Tardis in a car chase along a busy motorway
Very good episode. It played to the strengths of the new version: how the Doctor affects, on a human level, the people around him. The chasing after monsters grew old years ago, but the show tended to avoid human relationships, other than just touching on the Doctor’s platonic friendships with his companions from time to time.
The “Let’s not talk about it” line was also something of a departure.
Over the years Who fandom has thrown up more than a few “superfans” who consider that their view on the whole thing is the only correct one. This has lead to such things as hate campaigns against series producers and writers in the past, in addition to schisms and hostility between various factions. I guess this is inevitable in a show with such a long and rich history. The dynamic between Victor Kennedy and LINDA IMO is clearly meant to parallel the relationship between the superfan and the ordinary Joe who just likes Dr Who.
Some have conjectured that the character of Victor is based directly on one such superfan, Ian Levine, who has contributed great things (such as helping to recover lost episodes), but has otherwise been a very divisive figure in Who-fandom, and is an implacable enemy of Russell Davies (who himself is a total Who-nerd) vision for the new show.
Anyway, have a look at the OG forums if you haven’t before, and check out the levels of bile that can be generated. I hasten to add that a large majority of the OG posters are not like this!
