Saturday, December 28, 2013

Still can't be arsed to do a review. Does anyone care?





Mark Goacher's reasoned and impartial reviews:

2/10. Utter garbled drivel. The plot was ridiculous, the production values childish and the only good thing about it was Matt Smith's portrayal of an 'old' 11th Doctor. Silly rubbish for vacuous lumpen drones.

Mr V.L. Drone: Spara , there's a time and a place to discuss Ben Chatham. This isn't it...
Cheap dig. My point is that 'Time of the Doctor' was completely ridiculous. The Christmas elements were bunged in for no apparent reason other than to keep the lumpen happy, the acting was, as usual, childish shouty comedy and the whole thing was a letdown after the comparatively good 'Day of the Doctor'. 

I did not intend to insult anyone, I thought I'd used rather moderate language however apologies if I seemed a tad strong. My point is that there was little in that episode that seemed fresh or challenging. I felt a strong sense of 'seen it all before', including the regeneration dialogue.

My take on how the 11th Doctor should depart the series would have captured his eccentricity via lots of toilet humor while at the same time conveying a sense of dread. It would have been set in Colchester Castle (Clara wouldn't be interested in super cool Norman castles, while the Doctor would want to go to a Soho club as he fancied "a bit of this") and had the Silence chasing them into a McDonalds', only for all the chavs to turn into Zygons so the Doctor can aside to camera "Moffat must be running out of ideas!" and there's canned audience laughter at the in-joke.
And so the Doctor and Clara run into the next shop which is Ann Summers (because all slinky underwear shops are right next to fast food joints) and Clara repeatedly kicks the Doctor in the shin for drooling and leering over her. And because his shin is sore, he trips into the road and is run over by an Essex Man in a white van. And before a startled Colchester public he regenerates into........ Peter Capaldi with the immortal final words, "Ahhhh..... its over. Brought to an end by Essex Man in a white van. Ho hum. Such are the tragedies of life!"
...
Hello?

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Jingle Blogs...

Lo my poignant friends, Christmas is rapidly approaching and with it the end of the Eleventh Doctor. Well, the Twelfth Doctor. Well, the Thirteenth Doctor. Well... look, Matt Smith's finale is shown next Thursday and I feel like I should be doing some kind of honorable blog thing, especially given the reams and reams of bandwidth I filled up around the last changeover. Alas, I am so damn tired. Not in a "sick to death of everything" way, but a "good god, I could sleep for another two eternities I am so weary". There just doesn't seem to be enough time to blog like crazy, especially as no one else seems to be up for it.

Anyway, posted below is another music video - are you sick of those? do you even watch them? I honestly don't know - to cover An Adventure In Space And Time. Now, having been unwillingly privy to some of Monsieur Gaytiss's early ideas, I can at least confirm that this minidoco could have been much, much, much worse than it was. Unspeakably awful and uncomprehendingly bizarre, as bad if not worse than his Dr Who Night skits which - atrocious insults aside - are utterly meaningless and unfunny.

True, huge liberties were taken with the history of the show to make its labyrinthine history even halfway palatable and yes, maybe the characterization of the figures portrayed were a bit family friendly (Mad Larry Miles went off one that Sydney Newman should have been a nigh-mute visionary being all imaginative and innovative while Verity Lambert should have been a chainsmoking Spartha Jones - though why anyone would want to watch two such unpleasant and undramatic characters beggars belief, which is probably why he ended the year with his "I AM THE ONE TRUE DOCTOR WHO FAN AND THE REST OF YOU HEATHANS CAN GO SUCK A HAMSTER!!").

So yeah. Could've been worse. Definitely could've been better and I think the biggest mistake was emphasizing how utterly miserable Hartnell was at leaving when we only got vague exposition of why he wanted the job in the first place. Certainly he was shown to be a patronized, disrespected workaholic who apparently had no real friends, crippling anxiety issues and... actually, I'll stop there because it sounds more and more like I might be describing myself.

Mind you, odd that the Doctor Who Annual (with Zarbi and Menoptera on the cover) came out two years before they wrote The Web Planet. Odd.

Anyway, below is another perspective on AAISAT with musical accompanyment by Mark-Callahan-formally-of-Gangajang-but-now-performing-as-"Cal" (which was how James Valentine insisted on referring to him every single time when he was performing on The Afternoon Show before Delta and the Bannermen).

Oh, Happy December and all that bollocks.