Sunday, May 04, 2008

Indifference Engine

Well, I said I'd post my thoughts on the Doctor Who Sontaran two-parter once both parts were in, but now that we come to it, I find motivation fading fast. But I'm persuaded I'll have forgotten much of the thing by tomorrow, so I'd best pass some sort of comment now.
It wasn't bad, it wasn't terrible. It was better than Helen Raynor's previous old monster two-part extravaganza. But that, of course, is about as faint as praise gets before it turns altogether invisible and, with the exception of a few select moments, it left me much like a parked car, in neutral.
So, I guess I'll just wrap this up with a quick game of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly:
Good: Mike from The Young Ones as a potato-head, some nice emotional stuff between Donna and Grandpa Cribbins, UNIT making good by end of business and kicking Sontaran butt, the investigative journalist at the beginning who reminded me of Sarah Jane Smith because she was an investigative journalist.
Bad: the Sontaran second-in-command who decided not to act at all and stick with his standard toff persona, the useless but ultimately self-sacrificing prat from the League Of Less Than Extraordinary Geeks, baked-potato aliens in a half-baked plot.
Ugly: the Sontaran chant, the Doctor being such a prick in the first episode and continuing to be a bit of one in the second.
In the end though the copper was more excited than I was.

2 comments:

Stuart Douglas said...

Hard to argue with much of that Simon (though I quite liked the Sontaran chant) and neutral is an improvement over so many episodes of New Who :)

I've kind of half convinced myself that there are layers to the script that make it more interesting than it first appears, but it's entirely possible that I'm kidding myself and - going by Rusty's previous failure to follow through - I'm againing it al and the season will end with a big free-for-all, as expected.

Stuart Douglas said...

Ahem - for againing please read 'imagining' :-)