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Doctor Who: Podshock - Episode 45
Authored by: TiggsPanther on Tuesday, July 04 2006 @ 06:44 AM EDT
It's funny. Some rate it really low, some rate it really high, yet I find myself somewhere in between. Although I do find myself in agreement with the gist of Ken's review. In that it could do better, but it wasn't a completely bad episode. My view: I can see why people wouldn't like it, but I have to admit I enjoyed it. That's all, really. I didn't think it was great, it was a heck of a comedown (although, as was pointed out, maybe well-needed) from the previous episodes and the ending (the "charcoal briquette") didn't really work for me. But I kind rather enjoy the episode. Although it did take me a while to get past the "Where are the Doctor and Rose" feeling. OK, realising they were double-backing (after the fact) made it more palateable. And it was a brave attempt at something different. But after the credits is when I always expect the TARDIS and/or crew to show up, so did find myself waiting for it to arrive. That's not to say I didn't find flaws with it. And I have to say I prefered Peter Kay as Kennedy rather than the Absorbaloff - the latter, although cool, seemed him more playing to type. Even with the same basic premise, the episode could have been a lot better. But I didn't find it as bad as some did. Although I'll probably find it more enjoyable when I have the boxset, as it will follow right on from one and lead into another. No feeling of a one-week letdown. I also found that, between the silliness, there were some brief moments of gold that did shine through. The serious look at both those left behind and those who briefly encountered the Doctor. And to see that the Doctor has left clues behind in his wake over the years, and that not all people are too unobservant to notice. A couple of the nitpicks from the podcast were ones I agreed with, although the first was rather unavoidable. Ursula's glasses: New character as episode focus: All in all I think it was a brave experiment. I'm still not totally sure it succeeded, but sometimes you don't know whether something works until it's actually been tried. ---
Doctor Who: Podshock - Episode 45
Authored by: teshia on Tuesday, July 04 2006 @ 11:33 AM EDT
While driving to work this morning, I had to hold myself back from throwing my Nano out of the car window. Louis' comments offended me so very deeply that I'm really starting to wonder if this is a podcast I want to continue downloading. I certainly don't listen to it to hear people tear my favorite show apart.
I realise everybody is entitled to opinion but there's no need to make the rest of us that like Love and Monsters feel like we're buffoons. Certainly when Louis calls the episode a "cartoon" (which it isn't, by definition - perhaps he means "slapstick farce"?) he insinuates that those of us that like it are childish simpletons. When he edits in sounds from Scooby-Doo throughout the episode, it sets a tone suggesting his opinion, but not necessarily that of the other hosts. To compare Love and Monsters to The Candyman is absurd. They're two completely different kinds of camp. The reason why McCoy camp is bad and Love and Monsters is good is that Love and Monsters make a decision about what it is - comedy. McCoy's era can't make up its mind whether it's camp or not. They take a camp character like The Candyman and try to make him scarry, which goes against the whole point of camp. Love and Monsters doesn't do that - it's comedy straight down the line. I think it's also ironic that Louis doesn't appreciate the girlfriend as a concrete slab, yet loves Hitchhikers Guide. Considering there's a good dose of Hitchhiker injected into the show during the Adams script editing era, I think they're quite connected. This is certainly not the first time anything like this has ever happened in the show. Some of the other hosts didn't like the show either, but they had their say and were done with it. In Louis' case, I felt like he was suggesting the rest of us are complete idiots and that anybody that liked an episode like this was a moron. I've been watching this show since '76 when it first came to my area (Ontario) and I lived through the great drought of the 90s. I seeded those polls, I sent those letters, and I kept my part up to get this show back on the air. To see another fan tearing this show and its fans apart just fills me with dread. It's like accepting a gift from somebody, only to return the favor by kicking them in the pants. As for the main character, I thought he was well played, well written, and great fun. I'm shocked to see how much Louis didn't like him, as he's a tribute to all of us "geeks" that were ever members of a club for geeks, fans, etc. If anything, the character is a triumph for us. Plus, his girlfriend was wicked hot. :) --- chown -R me ./inferno && cat season3 | grep gunfighters > /dev/null
Doctor Who: Podshock - Episode 45
Authored by: joereform on Wednesday, July 05 2006 @ 08:24 PM EDT
I already ranted in the forums about the episode. I just wanted to comment
on one very appropriate word that Louis employed in his critique: "embarassed." This would be the last episode that I would want to use to introduce someone to 21st-century Who, an episode I would hate to defend watching to my dear wife were she to walk in on me (especially after the jesting I do about some of her selections). Embarassing. Isn't it great that the hosts can have such strongly held, opposing views and still remain civil (and even FRIENDS) despite it? A great model to follow, especially since we are talking about a television show and not foreign policy... Doctor Who: Podshock - Episode 45
Authored by: tarashnat on Thursday, July 06 2006 @ 01:59 PM EDT
Nicholas Courtney played Bret Vyon in The Dalek's Master Plan during the Hartnell era. The Invasion is the first story to feature U.N.I.T. in which Nicholas Courtney reprises his role of Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart from The Web of Fear. --- |
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But man-o-man, now I'm reminded of that farcical excuse for an episode, “Hate and Clowns.”
I mean come on now, let’s get real, why is Louis the only sane voice on this ridiculous excursion? Yes, yes, yes, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I am not trying to change anyone’s opinion, I’m just trying to understand.
The Rating System
Ok, 5 Tardis groans is 5 Tardis groans is 5 Tardis groans. This is the way I have always looked at it: (I got this adopted this from Rolling Stone Magazine years ago) On a 5 star scale 1= Poor, 2= Fair, 3= Good, 4= Excellent, 5= Classic.
I’ve said this before, elsewhere, but I like to consider myself a Doctor Who realist and I consider myself one of very few while among other Whovians. And don’t get me wrong, I sooooo love Doctor Who in its entirety, but I would say that I would rate most Doctor Who episodes in general as a 2 or 3 while other Whovians I see on forums etc. seem to rate almost everything as a 4 or 5. Ok, so be it. But this episode a 5! A 5! How could you rate this episode as a classic, but almost in the same sentence say it was really good, as something to do every once in a while, but not every week. If you really believe it’s a classic, why wouldn’t you want some like that every week. All episodes I consider classics, my god, give me more, more, more of that any day.
Ken and His Sci-fi Rant
Louis brought up a great point to Ken. Going back to Ken’s huge rant(s) concerning the Sci-Fi channel and us as sci-fi fans refusing to stand for crap like Stargate. Ken kinda just let Lou’s point slide by, but seriously I really think for Ken to ignore the hypocrisy here really reduces the credibility of his previous rants. I so loathe Stargate on television myself, but I’ll take an episode of Stargate over this farce any day. Even if we call this episode a 2 or 3, why stand for that. Why shouldn’t we demand more? Just b/c it’s Who it gets a pass for being so-so? Maybe if D.Who was more like traditional American shows and had at least 22+ episodes a year I would be more likely to excuse it, but especially, especially with D.Who only having 13 episodes, and 6 of those, almost half being joined as 2 parters, for me it’s simply excusable to waste an entire episode on such crap. I feel so cheated now on my series 2 or 28, whatever it is.
And man, to give it an equal rating as “Dalek!” I think I must be in an alternate universe now.
Doctor who not sci-fi?
If D.Who isn’t science-fiction, I don’t know what is. Episodes like “The Celestial Toymaker” and “The Mind Robbers” could only exist in the genre of sci-fi. To say that D.Who is comedy & horror and everything, well sci-fi is all these things as well. Trek, Twilight Zone, Star Wars, etc. always had these elements. I’m sorry, I’m just not understanding this at all.
Innovative?
Innovative? Does every Who fan only seem to watch D.Who and nothing else. Hello, newsflash, tons and tons of new shows post yr 2000 have done tons to innovate. Buffy, Lost, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Trek, Smallville, Alias, all of these shows thoroughly pushed the boundaries of conventional small-screen storytelling. And so we have D.Who trying to stay in and fresh in the new millennium, but stumbling miserably. And no they are not trialblazers. Louis already made a great point mentioning the STNG episode “Data’s Day” not to mention “Below Decks.” Those breaking of the mold Trek episodes were some of the best. I think this episode had some interesting concepts on paper, but in execution botched it all up.
Love and Monsters for the Kids?
Also I heard it mentioned that 1,000s or millions of kids of today will be inspired by this episode etc. On the recent episode of Podcast Who that addressed this episode, one of the guest hosts made the point his children were watching Love & Monsters with him while it aired and he said they were just sitting there trying to figure out what it was all about. It wasn’t like what they had come to expect from previous episodes that they really had enjoyed. Oh, go figure, kids really can be quite smart. I mean come on, many of us were already inspired by D.Who as youths, me included, and conventional Who episodes were just fine for me.
If I was the kid who designed the Absorbalof, I would have felt so gipped by RTD
The "B"
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Esco aka "The Bachelor"