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tarashnat
Registered: 08/17/05
Posts: 3062
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 Saturday, June 24 2006 @ 08:38 PM EDT |
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Another bottle episode. Not as controversial as its predecessor, but geared more for the kids. Plays on many of their basic fears... |
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Daleks don't accept apologies! YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!
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BadWolf
Registered: 03/25/06
Posts: 316
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| Saturday, June 24 2006 @ 10:47 PM EDT |
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Yeah but not as bad as we thought it might be  |
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Forget the shooty dog thing!
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shoggoth
Registered: 05/31/06
Posts: 115
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| Sunday, June 25 2006 @ 12:08 AM EDT |
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I have to say that I was happily surprised by this episode. It won't be one of those episodes that I watch over and over, but it was clever enough to keep my interest.
The previews for next week look amazing! I can't wait. |
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"Elemental, my dear Benton."
The Doctor to Sgt. Benton (The Daemons)
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seanhuxter
Registered: 08/27/05
Posts: 825
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| Sunday, June 25 2006 @ 12:14 AM EDT |
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Yeah, this one did appear to suit kids better, and that's not bad... we can't have all episodes geared towards the adult audience - it will begin to lose an important viewership - the kids.
Doctor Who has always been about the kids.
Still... this one was more like "Idiot's Lantern" to me than "Love & Monsters"... It was to me this season's "Boomtown".
Sean.
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One solid hope is worth a cartload of uncertainties.
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DarthSkeptical
Registered: 03/11/06
Posts: 1129
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| Sunday, June 25 2006 @ 02:37 AM EDT |
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[Quote by: seanhuxter] Yeah, this one did appear to suit kids better, and that's not bad... we can't have all episodes geared towards the adult audience - it will begin to lose an important viewership - the kids.
Doctor Who has always been about the kids.
Still... this one was more like "Idiot's Lantern" to me than "Love & Monsters"... It was to me this season's "Boomtown".
Sean.
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| I grow weary of the phrase "this season's Boom Town" as a kind of vaguely negative euphemism.
In the first place, "Boom Town" is not universally thought of as a "resting" or "breather" episode lodged between two "better" stories. Some of us see it as the glue that holds the entirety of Series 1 together. Seriously, try taking that piece of the puzzle out of the mix and the series as a whole falls flat.
In the second, it's just not an apt comparison. "Fear Her" is a standalone episode, except for two or three lines; it's not particularly vital to the integrity of the season. Without having seen the last two episodes, it seems safe to assume that it can be removed from this series without greatly affecting the series-long story lines (though it does have some nice echoes of the "lonely wanderer" theme). It's not about a villain. To the extent that it's a morality tale, it's about the power of love, not about the ethics of the death penalty.
In sum, it's just a good, solid, self-contained episode involving a hitherto-unknown alien species with some nice moments thrown in to connect it with some of the broader points of the Doctor Who mythos [See, Susan was his granddaughter after all, Mr. Platt. Or Miranda was his daughter. Hmmmmm.]. |
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"I think of myself as ambitious in casting terms, and I know that Bonnie [Langford] has the potential to make the part totally unirritating . . ." — JNT, 1986
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DarthSkeptical
Registered: 03/11/06
Posts: 1129
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| Sunday, June 25 2006 @ 03:29 AM EDT |
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[Quote by: Louis]
For the second time in a row, the upcoming attractions for next week's Doctor Who (the trailer at the end of the current episode) features an Apple Macintosh 17" PowerBook G4. It's probably the same one seen in Love & Monsters... |
| I'm more impressed that they got TV to display in widescreen, activated by hotkeys, on a G4. Much as I love and use Macs, certainly the G4s like this never did a truly great job of displaying TV signals smoothly. And the widescreen's just a total cheat, isn't it? Or does the BBC actually offer a widescreen signal for its routine news broadcasts?
Wonder why the show has been happy to include Macs, but not too keen on showing them being used realistically? Do they really think their graphic inserts are an improvement on the elegance of Mac apps? |
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"I think of myself as ambitious in casting terms, and I know that Bonnie [Langford] has the potential to make the part totally unirritating . . ." — JNT, 1986
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Satai Styx
Registered: 09/12/05
Posts: 178
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| Sunday, June 25 2006 @ 09:12 AM EDT |
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| [Quote by: Linquel] Really? It seems like I'm always seeing Apple laptops with their big Apple logos on TV and in the movies. In Buffy they never covered up the logo. As soon as I see a Mac laptop with the big Apple logo (conveniently oriented so it's right-side-up for everyone else when the laptop is open) I immediately think "product placement". |
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I don't think BBC has a sponsorship deal with Apple, but with Microsoft. It's common practice to subsitute a blank bottle/can/lable when a scene calls for a product to be seen, unless there is a sponsorship deal. The places where you see Macs in movies and on TV (or Sony Viaos, or Coca-Cola, etc.) there is a sponsorship deal in place - the product company has agreed to give over money for production of the movie/series in order for the use of thier product on screen.
That is the most likely explanation for the G4's Apple logo being "covered over." |
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Ciotka Judi,
The Polish Blonde
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seanhuxter
Registered: 08/27/05
Posts: 825
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| Sunday, June 25 2006 @ 09:47 AM EDT |
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| [Quote by: DarthSkeptical]I grow weary of the phrase "this season's Boom Town" as a kind of vaguely negative euphemism. |
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It is. Boomtown was a huge disappointment to me. It was a huge dip in the momentum of the series. It was just silly... and uninteresting.
Riding a wave of momentum, it was like the surf stopped, and we were left with a lull, which thankfully picked up again when the wind got going again.
Likewise, "The Idiot's Lantern" and "Fear Her" were similar dips on the momentum that series 2 had going.
So when I say "this season's Boomtown" I do mean it as a negative.
Sean.
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One solid hope is worth a cartload of uncertainties.
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cfarrell
Registered: 12/30/05
Posts: 11
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| Sunday, June 25 2006 @ 10:37 AM EDT |
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| I thought "Boomtown" was great fun and sort-of redeemed the wasted oppurtunity of "Aliens of London/World War 3". |
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Satai Styx
Registered: 09/12/05
Posts: 178
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| Sunday, June 25 2006 @ 11:01 AM EDT |
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***Spoiler Alert***
The thing I found very interesting in this episode is that it was Rose who did nost of the investigation and solved the conumdrum. Much that I am very sick of Rose, it was a great episode showing that the companion can do so much more that just ask, "What's wrong? or "What's that?" and scream when the monster/alien/bad guy comes near.
The one thing that bounced me out of the believeability of the ep was right at the end, with the Doctor picking up the torch and lighting the Olympic Beacon. Can anyone really believe that security would just let anyone run in and pick up the torch? Then run into the Olympic Stadium to light the Beacon???? |
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Ciotka Judi,
The Polish Blonde
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Louis
Registered: 01/01/04
Posts: 3075
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| Sunday, June 25 2006 @ 01:06 PM EDT |
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[Quote by: Satai Styx] ...
The one thing that bounced me out of the believeability of the ep was right at the end, with the Doctor picking up the torch and lighting the Olympic Beacon. Can anyone really believe that security would just let anyone run in and pick up the torch? Then run into the Olympic Stadium to light the Beacon???? |
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Well, as evident in the last two episodes... if you want believability, you have to look elsewhere I am sorry to say. Doctor Who has lost much if it after what we saw last week and to good extent, this week's story as well.
Security at the Olympics is the least of it. He was turned into a cartoon both literally and figuratively!
Cheers,
Louis |
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☛ Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LouisTrapani ♥ ♥
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joereform
Registered: 06/11/06
Posts: 52
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| Sunday, June 25 2006 @ 01:59 PM EDT |
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| [Quote by: Satai Styx]The one thing that bounced me out of the believeability of the ep was right at the end, with the Doctor picking up the torch and lighting the Olympic Beacon. Can anyone really believe that security would just let anyone run in and pick up the torch? Then run into the Olympic Stadium to light the Beacon???? |
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Simple. His telepathic paper said, "Torch Bearer Understudy." 
--Joe! |
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Facebook me! http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=583224917
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joereform
Registered: 06/11/06
Posts: 52
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| Sunday, June 25 2006 @ 02:03 PM EDT |
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[Quote by: Satai Styx]I don't think BBC has a sponsorship deal with Apple, but with Microsoft. It's common practice to subsitute a blank bottle/can/lable when a scene calls for a product to be seen, unless there is a sponsorship deal. The places where you see Macs in movies and on TV (or Sony Viaos, or Coca-Cola, etc.) there is a sponsorship deal in place - the product company has agreed to give over money for production of the movie/series in order for the use of thier product on screen.
That is the most likely explanation for the G4's Apple logo being "covered over." |
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Yeah, Apple refuses to pay for product placement. The choice to use Macs is usually left to set designers, many of whom are wise enough to use a Mac.
--Joe! |
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Facebook me! http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=583224917
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Abersoch
Registered: 11/27/05
Posts: 395
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| Sunday, June 25 2006 @ 02:52 PM EDT |
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The use of the Olympics in this episode seemed rather extraneous to the plot too - apart from allowing the schmalzy bit with the Doctor running up with the torch, which was another self-indulgent moment.
The Olympics don't represent love and so all that waffle from Huw Edwards (the news announcer) sounded really forced. Now if he'd said harmony or unity I could have understood it and it would also have fitted in with the nature of a creature that comes from a family of 4 billion.
And what happened to the poor torch bearer anyway? There was conjecture of him having been "struck by lightning". Wouldn't the Olympics medics have changed runners? Do they not care enough or was he just so unimportant to the plot that they thought "Nahh! Let him die by the roadside."
And if they were going to be really corny with the ending, you would have thought they could have had the runner collapsing into the Doctor's arms and saying "I can't carry this TORCH, WOULD you carry it for me." - MASSIVE missed opportunity there.... 
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DarthSkeptical
Registered: 03/11/06
Posts: 1129
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| Sunday, June 25 2006 @ 04:51 PM EDT |
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This speculation about the believability of a stranger being allowed to carry the torch is just that: speculation. I'm not sure we've ever seen what would happen if, in the middle of a live broadcast, the runner collapsed. Does the Olympic committee actually have standby runners lining the route? Somehow I doubt it. They have no expectation that their final runner, who has pretty much always been among the host country's most decorated athletes, would suddenly collapse in the middle of a short jog. I think that the committee's organizing committee, already having had a bit of a heart attack with their star athlete collapsing, would hold their breaths and hope it all turned out alright, rather than risk having the image of a man being wrestled to the ground and the torch physically removed from his possession beamed into every home in the world. It's the biggest live TV, event in the world not something you can, ahem, doctor in post.
I think, too, it may be partially inspired by true Olympic stories in Athens and Atlanta where security was proven to be quite lax, or have we already forgotten the marathon in Marathon?
What took me out of it, if anything, was that the Doctor was able to go all the way up to the main torch and actually light it. Where's the cool lighting effect? If that's all London has planned for us in terms of a torch-lighting ceremony, I'm quite underwhelmed. I want my Barcelona paralympic archer back!
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"I think of myself as ambitious in casting terms, and I know that Bonnie [Langford] has the potential to make the part totally unirritating . . ." — JNT, 1986
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