Quote: sootyj @ May 15 2011, 6:17 PM BST
As opposed to the bountiful treasure trove of scifi ideas in old Who?
All scifi plays in the same limited dressing up box.
That this episode uses so many ideas with such verve is why again New Who proves it's a tragedy Old Who wasn't entirely wiped and replaced by Bill and Ben.
I guess you're on drugs. There aren't actually any ideas here at all unless you think Harry Potter is full of ideas. The Tardis communicates telepathically with Rory? The Doctor builds a stripped-down Tardis console to go after the real Tardis - not bad - then can't make it work until the Idris Tardis licks her finger and squirts an energy beam into it? Then Deus Ex machina-like she re-inserts herself ectoplasmically back into the actual Tardis and expels 'House' just when he's decided to kill everyone after talking about it a lot.
These magical/fantasy elements degrade the show to a huge degree. They make anything possible, robbing the programme of tension and making the viewer completely passive. It's as if the butler did it at the end of an Agatha Christie mystery when there wasn't even a butler in the story.
You often dig away at old Who - a lot of it is bollocks for sure, but it's also 40 years old. It had plenty of verve at the time.
Quote: Badge @ May 15 2011, 9:01 PM BST
Balls to the lot of you. This was lame-o average New Who. I guess people like it more because it's a name writer. It was flawed but okay. Godot won't like it of course but he doesn't like New Who anyway. I do. Under Moff the sad story is it has deteriorated. Notwithstanding the potential of great episodes to come, but even if that happens there is a lousy mid season break to kill any momentum.
I do like new Who - seriously I wouldn't watch it if I didn't like it. I think Blink was excellent - and Midnight - and I was one of the first to praise the casting of Matt Smith when we actually saw him do his thing.
Badge is right though, that he hasn't delivered as show controller. We can all deny it if we want, but all he's done is write the season as if it was one big episode, which is introducing viewer fatigue and alienating the casual viewer. You lot don't care about the non-fans who watch, but they are crucial to the show's success.
The mid-season break is more worrying - as is the preponderance of two-parters - and starting the series with a two parter (an obvious indicator of a weak line-up). It suggests that Moffat has a very elaborate denouement planned that he is going to eke out with arse-numbing portentousness over the remainder of the year. The other possibility is that he couldn't get the scripts together in time - equally disquieting.
