DOCTOR WHO: THE REAL
SEASON FNARG TRAILER
SEASON FNARG TRAILER
I see the pictures, I hear the stories now
All the good times in the days of old
You look around you, you see the legacies
Of the empires that just went wrong
So take your time and open your eyes
You know you might just get a few surprises
All the cheap and nasty sympathizers
Fall in love like it's out of style!
Are these the golden years?
Until I saw this trailer, I was, all in all, looking forward to the new season of Doctor Who. Certainly more than I was than the 2008 season which has since become one of my favorites. My (ultimately entirely inaccurate) critique on the previous season trailer was entirely that, critiquing the trailer rather than the episodes it was advertising. The first trailer hinted at a lazy, direct manner to get people interested. This trailer, quite frankly, put me off watching the show altogether!
And the worst thing is, I ain't alone in this...
"Each time I see this trailer, I find myself utterly disappointed in the new direction of Doctor Who."
"Bit naff."
"Hm...mixed emotions, liked the start and end, not so much the middle. He really is aiming squarely for the 8-year-olds isnt he, ol' Moff?"
"I look at this Dr and see 'David Cameron in space'. I hope to be proved incorrect."
"The music inside the vortex was... incredibly wrong. I can't quite place it. The show is supposed to be about adventure, mystery, and danger... yet that whole sequence had a 'young adult romance' vibe... ugh. I've been optimistic so far, but this doesn't bode well..."
"This specially made teaser in itself was a bit duff."
"Fie! Fie on this. Is that the right use of the word? I don't like it. Don't like his look--the voice is good though and the attitude seems right. But the look--Sylvester McCoy all over again!"
Are just some of the comments already out on the bloggosphere.
Me: That trailer was awful!
CJ Mason: Ah...
Me: In what ways was it good?!
CJ Mason: It was short.
Me: ...this is true.
Now, I'm not an anti-Moffat-bashing type person. I was his staunchest of supporters pre-2005. But then The Empty Child managed to be an illogical, uninteresting, non-frightening piece of badly-characterized trash which bored me rigid. And then there was The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink which I really rather liked, which restored much of my faith in the man, before it was all systematically annihilated by Silence in the Library, leaving me with the impression that Moff the Genius is lobotomized every time he tries to write for Doctor Who.
I dread to think what Mad Larry the Pirate King has made of this new trailer, because it doesn't do anything but support his "quality Doctor Who is now doomed" apocalyptic prophecies. And Mad Larry being proved right is, I think I've made it clear, second-only to Sparacus being proved right as Most Depressing Outcome Ever. Actually what has he said?
Wait... Stargate gets Robert Carlysle and we get that?
...which is quite a fair analysis.
OK, for a start, this does reveal that the new regime have retained RTD's desire for trailers to consist of new, memorable material designed to keep the leading characters in the mind's eye of the public and they've clearly splashed out a decent amount of cash on it. Indeed, it makes previous efforts look cheap (the 2007 effort after all just had the Doctor and Martha standing outside the TARDIS - wow, epic).
It doesn't mean this new one is any good.
I've had to watch it a couple of times now, since it evoked that Doctor Who Annual ability to make me doubt the workings of my own brain. That and the new anti-depression medication I'm taking made me wonder if I wasn't quite awake, because this thing is trippy and no mistake.
OK. This very... filmic, professional-looking bit of work begins with the Doctor and Amy lying on a grassy hill late at night, looking up at the stars. Far be it from me to seem ageist, but I do get reminded of a couple of high school students passing the time on a weeknight in between shagging alfresco-style.
Hey, it's that 70s show they insist on making in the 21st Century..."How bout that one?" asks Amy, pointing up at the stars.
"Bit green up close," the Doctor muses.
"You got any more weed, Amy?"Amy, troubled, notes a particularly bright star. "That one's flickering," she whispers.
"Yeah," the Doctor frowns, "sorry. I thought I'd fixed that."
Amy turns to look at the Doctor. "Who are you?" she asks.
The Doctor turns to look at her. "I'm the Doctor," he says carefully.
"So... you still got that stars-and-stripes bikini from The Kevin Bishop Show? Cause, seriously, you looked freaking amazing in that. Especially with the shotgun...""Doctor who?" asks Amy casually.
Just then there is this hideous squeaking cracking noise and the ground beneath them shakes. The Doctor sits up as bright beams of light start to break through the ground in a rough ring around him and Amy.
And this is why, when you see a sign saying "KEEP OFF THE GRASS" you damn well do what it says, OK?!Suddenly the hill explodes, flinging the pair in slow-motion towards us as a rather lame and camp musical track begins - imagine Clocks by Coldplay fused with tubular bells to sound vaguely Doctor Whoish. It suits the following events like a laughter track in Earthshock.
Yes! The long-awaited Doctor Who/Double the Fist Crossover is finally here!!! Yet another one of my ideas is ripped off by the official series! THIS MAKES ME SICK! GAAAAH!The explosion behind the Doctor and Amy clears to show a kind of liquid blue vortex, into which they are promptly sucked backwards and forced to shout over the music.
The Eleventh Doctor and Amy guest-star in the sex education film "Where Babies Come From: The Fallopian Tubes of DEATH!!!"In freefall, the Doctor grabs Amy and shouts, "Hold on tight!" before everything goes slow-mo again and he and Amy turn to look across the vortex at a floating Dalek interrogating a floating blue bubble (kind of like the one the TARDIS is in in the Seventh Doctor opening credits) containing a severed mannequin head.
"STATE YOUR IDENTITY!" demands the Dalek and the head goes from "casual" to "evil thing" which I screen-capped from the last trailer.
"SORRY-PAL. THOUGHT-THAT-YOU-WERE-ACTUALLY-DAVROS-FOR-A-SECOND-THERE. DON'T-MIND-ME."Slow-mo ends and the Doctor whirls to see some Weeping Angels floating/falling behind them, and turns to shout at Amy: "Trust me!"
Okay, now it's just starting to look stupid, isn't it?"What?!" asks Amy, understandably lost. "WHY?!"
A Weeping Angel (now in fang/claw mode) floats down towards them and so the Doctor shoves hard on Amy's boobs with enough force to send her tumbling end over end...
Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventure Of Copping A Feel
Doctor Who Discovers... UpskirtingMeanwhile the Doctor... um... wrestles... with the Weeping Angel.
This is as embarrassing as it sounds.
"Get your damn paws off me, you damn dirty lonely assassin!"As Amy shouts for the Doctor, the vortex explodes or something and turns the Weeping Angel to crumbs of rock and, in slow-mo, the Doctor and Amy drift together.
...and this is your production team on drugs. Any questions?And high-five.
"Yeah, totally! We're, like, there, dude! Gimme some skin!""All of time and space," a distorted Doctor narrates as the duo grab each other once more, "everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was..."
[Dawn French] OH JUST KISS YOU MORONS! [/Dawn French]There's a white flash and the Doctor and Amy are back on the hillside like nothing happened, and the last 30 seconds were a drug induced CGI nightmare. "Where do you want to start?" the Doctor drawls with a disturbingly lusty expression.
The new Doctor's gimmick is him getting completely stoned at least once an adventure.The Doctor turns to look at Amy again and then the hill explodes, flinging them in opposite directions to show a Silurian head emerging from the vortex as the cliffhanger music starts, and then we cut to the "OW" logo.
Um... I think they could have got a better photo of Matt for the opening title sequence. Does he wink and smile at least?There's not really much left to say. Matt Smith isn't particularly good in this trailer, but I still have some faint hope as a) he's not actually got much to work with and b) lying on your back on an uneven surface can affect your breathing and thus diction, so he sounds lot more breathless and nasal than he does usually.
Um... Karen Gillan's very pretty.
I'm trying to be positive, God knows I am, but... come on! This is the most retarded ad I've ever seen! It's like Moff wandered into work one day and said, "I took some bad Es last night, wrote down what happened, no make it the season trailer ye sassenach bastards ye!"
I dread to "analyze" what the trailer (or "trailer") means. The fact that some rather lame characterization (the Doctor is a rubbish god-like being who is personally responsible for replacing stars in the night sky while Amy just looks at him adoringly and feeds him straight lines) turns to a non-sensical CGI fest of monsters and action scenes (the Doctor fighting an immobile statue is only slightly less pathetic that when the statue explodes for no apparent reason, making you wonder why it was a threat in the first place) and the presence of the Dalek seems there either to keep Nick Briggs/the Nation Estate happy or to convince viewers this has something to do with the David Tennant series we all liked. And then it turns out to be a dream. Or does it? The end. That's ignoring the less-than-impressive run-of-the-mill "the universe is a big place" speech that never actually leaves a Welsh hillside - all the interesting stuff is below the ground, not above the sky.
I wanted to love this, but now I'm tempted to wait until the ABC screens the eps - if they're of this poor quality, maybe I won't even watch them. This is bad, people. This trailer is without doubt the first real evidence that the Moffat era could actually turn out to be shit. And I say that as a TV viewer, not a Who fan. As a Who fan, I doubled my medication to block out the pain.
No man dare say that RTD wasn't better at pre-publicity and we should all cling to the hopes that this "running most successful British TV show" PR stuff is simply not what Moff's good at (Jekyll, Press Gang and Coupling never needed trailers, did they?) and the stuff in the actual episodes THEMSELVES is what will be a real success. Cause... otherwise... this is the end, my beautiful friends.
0/5
Also, methinks Moff has been reading a bit of Trenchcoat lately. Compare and contrast...
32 comments:
Really, Ewen? I rather liked Silence in the Library, but you know the old saying about opinions being like arseholes...
Well, Silence is without doubt the least popular of Moffat's stories, and my reasons for disliking it are here.
I concede I was completely wrong assuming we'd never see River Song again, but she didn't turn up in 2009, did she?
Granted, I watched it paired up with Forest of the Dead as part of a nigh-three-day-marathon shown on BBC America before The End of Time, Part Two, so that may have affected my opinion of it a bit...
Also, the main disappointment I had with the trailer was that it was the same Murray Gold arrangment we've had for the past six years. For Gad's sake, could we at least get something moody, like Dominic Glynn's theme for Trial of a Time Lord?
The only "mood" we were allowed was that emo-romance twaddle in the blue vortex.
I've heard that might actually be the new time-vortex design for Series 5; what sayeth you?
It's possible. It could just be the title sequence. Surely it'd be cheaper to use the cgi vortex they already have?
Well, I thought Moffat didn't want the vortex to be in the titles, anymore; just Matt Smith's head...
Where did he say that?
Somewhere; thought it would be in more of the old "howlaround" style...
Also, I think this would irk you; it's a bunch of scans of Doctor Who Magazine, where the new production team talks glowingly about their work:
;-)
http://s775.photobucket.com/albums/yy36/wirebutterfly/dwm418/
http://community.livejournal.com/doctoreleven/108456.html?style=mine
Yes, I've got that issue.
But they were hardly likely to bemoan what they were doing as complete crap, were they?
It's not like Eric Saward is involved, is it?
It's not like Eric Saward is involved, is it?
True, true... but that doesn't mean that you have to bemoan it as complete crap before seeing a single episode, does it?
Oi! Where exactly have I done that then, EXACTLY?
Do I not say "the stuff in the actual episodes THEMSELVES is what will be a real success"?
Stop putting words in my blog.
I wanted to love this, but now I'm tempted to wait until the ABC screens the eps - if they're of this poor quality, maybe I won't even watch them. This is bad, people. This trailer is without doubt the first real evidence that the Moffat era could actually turn out to be shit. And I say that as a TV viewer, not a Who fan. As a Who fan, I doubled my medication to block out the pain.
No man dare say that RTD wasn't better at pre-publicity and we should all cling to the hopes that this "running most successful British TV show" PR stuff is simply not what Moff's good at (Jekyll, Press Gang and Coupling never needed trailers, did they?) and the stuff in the actual episodes THEMSELVES is what will be a real success. Cause... otherwise... this is the end, my beautiful friends.
Your words; not mine. ;-)
For that part with the statue wrestling, just do what I do Ewen.
Replace the doctor with Steve Foxx.
Appart from that, I remain optimistic that the actual final result won't look as naff a this trailer.
Your words; not mine. ;-)
Words you clearly have failed to understand. I shall now translate since no one seems capable of reading them properly.
1) This trailer is awful
2) The trailer is made by the same people who made the episode
3) IF the episodes are made to the same standard as the trailer, they will also be awful
4) I hope that 3) does not occur.
@ Chris
Replace the doctor with Steve Foxx.
Dude, I can see that the 'wrestling a statue' scene DOES have a bit of potential for comedy if nothing else. But none of that was used here. Indeed, the Doctor might as well be dancing with it.
OMG. Doctor Dancing Moffat Innuendo Shagging Statue... GAH!
Appart from that, I remain optimistic that the actual final result won't look as naff a this trailer.
As do I.
But if it DOES end up this naff, we are all completely screwed.
Well, one always hopes...
...then, again, why be so gloomy, in the first place? There's no chance of it being as bad a first episode as, say, The Twin Dilemma, now, is there?
...then, again, why be so gloomy, in the first place?
Oh, I dunno, off the top of my head, maybe because I'M CLINICALLY DEPRESSED, perhaps!?
There's no chance of it being as bad a first episode as, say, The Twin Dilemma, now, is there?
Why not? The Twin Dilemma was made by the people who had just made The Caves of Androzani.
The new series is being made by the people who have last made Silence in the Library.
The Twin Dilemma was made by the people who had just made The Caves of Androzani.
Granted, but they had a different writer for Twin Dilemma, did they not? It's obvious he was no Robert Holmes...
The new series is being made by the people who have last made Silence in the Library.
Technically speaking, the last thing they made was the final scene of The End of Time, and that was a nice minute or so of television, so, really, what is there to worry about? :-)
Granted, but they had a different writer for Twin Dilemma, did they not? It's obvious he was no Robert Holmes...
You want to be pedantic, then the last scene of Androzani was written by Eric Saward. Who also wrote The Twin Dilemma. And was very much trying to be Holmes' protege.
So, really, what is there to worry about? :-)
The fact they also made this awful trailer.
You want to be pedantic, then the last scene of Androzani was written by Eric Saward. Who also wrote The Twin Dilemma. And was very much trying to be Holmes' protege.
I thought Anthony Steven wrote The Twin Dilemma? I know Saward was the script editor, but I figured he would've at least given Holmes a shot at bringing in the new Doctor, wouldn't he have?
No, because union rules meant that only one story per writer per year - apart from which, Holmes only did Androzani because there was no continuity elements involved and he had free reign. He wouldn't have accepted writing the Sixth Doctor's first story even if he'd been offered it.
Have some Doug Bayne animation to take your mind off it all!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyhzXBo1N98&feature=player_embedded
Holmes only did Androzani because there was no continuity elements involved and he had free reign.
There was Peri; how could you not attempt to make the companion's character consistent without working in knowledge of Planet of Fire? Eric Saward couldn't have had that much work to do on the teleplay...
There was Peri; how could you not attempt to make the companion's character consistent without working in knowledge of Planet of Fire?
Remind me, bar possibly "makes a change from lava", where is there ANY dialogue or events that would require Holmes to have seen that episode.
Eric Saward couldn't have had that much work to do on the teleplay...
Couldn't he? Do some research, friend, and be amazed - there are whole sequences axed at the last second, from the opening TARDIS scene to killing the Magma Beast with a tank of oxygen...
there are whole sequences axed at the last second, from the opening TARDIS scene to killing the Magma Beast with a tank of oxygen...
I knew about that; it's on Wikipedia... and I am not a pain. ;-)
By the way, just a random thought: I liked the fluttering eyelids during some of the regenerations, most notably on the regeneration from Hartnell to Troughton and from Baker to Davison.
Dunno why, but it seemed sort of a final moment for Hartnell, almost him going, "Ben? Polly? I must LIVE for them...!", whereas with Davison, it's as though the Watcher is reinvigorating his Doctor, and he's going, "Mmmmmm, yes! Waking up, now..."
Only just saw this - because you didn't change the title I assumed it was the review for the old trailer. Haven't seen this one but your description is hilarious. And it also sounds terrible.
Mad Larry seems to have had legitimate fears about Moff's mythical view of the Doctor. Which is surprising because, if anything, he seems more fallible in his non-Library based stories than those others were writing.
As you point out, Silence in the Library sucks. But then we already knew that.
Mad Larry seems to have had legitimate fears about Moff's mythical view of the Doctor.
Yeah, shoulda seen it coming in Moffat's first DW work, Continuity Errors, where it turns out the Doctor is simply a renegade-Time-Lord-shaped reality-shagging monster who is actually pure evil but tricks everyone into thinking he's a nice hero...
No response to my comment, then?
I actually had another thing on my mind: If you apply the revived series mindset on regeneration to the closing episode of The War Games, it seems the Second Doctor is suffering a fate worse than death, because another man, seemingly with no appearance personally approved by the Doctor, will go into exile on Earth, and, thus, be the Doctor that so many remember, rather than him.
Combine that with the fact that Two and Three bickered incessantly the two times they met, and I think the Doctor would've preferred dying to regenerating; don't you think?
No response to my comment, then?
...what did you want me to say? "Nonsense, Hartnell is just suffering REM"?
Personally, one should remember that in many respects the Third Doctor is an abberation. He wasn't 'born' naturally, and his mind was altered by the Time Lords, making him a bitter, arrogant, holier-than-thou fop with a temper and no small bit of hypocricy. He is the one the Time Lords use for their missions, what with them being barely able to keep the Second Doctor IN ONE ROOM when he doesn't want to be, and compare his attitude in The Mutants or Frontier in Space compared with the Fourth Doctor.
Is it not significant when the Third Doctor dies, he is regenerated by the person who knows his 'true' self best?
Seriously though, email me with such random thoughts. These blog post comments are harder than they look to reply to.
Seriously though, email me with such random thoughts. These blog post comments are harder than they look to reply to.
Well, in the words of Ten, "I'm sorry; I'm so sorry."
You've got your e-mail address on the blog page, right?
No idea.
ewen32@iprimus.com.au
Thank you; I'll be sure to remember that. ;-)
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