Currently viewing the tag: "Throwback"
So this is Christmas, or it will be in a couple of weeks, and while we have visions of killer Snowmen dancing in our heads for this year's Christmas special, why don't we look back on modern Doctor Who's first? Yep, it's time to resume our "Throwback" reviews with "The Christmas Invasion."
Does Doctor Who suffer when it taps into trends, rather than trying to remain timeless? Exhibit A is "Bad Wolf," wherein reality TV takes a beating. Does it hold up? And how about that epic reveal which wasn't?
Well, they can't all be winners. They certainly can't all be huge and epic, either, but "Boom Town" particularly suffers by being bracketed by Steven Moffat's debut and the first in a long line of budget-busting series finales. This cheap-feeling episode has a couple of things to recommend it, however, and it's actually better in [...]
Let's just quickly zip past the fact that "The Doctor Dances" is one of the most excellent episodes ever, and talk about its REAL name and its true subversive impact on Doctor Who from 2005 on.
Warning: While there isn't any actual "bad language" in this episode, there's a fair bit of bleeping which itself [...]
Wow, it's been a long time since I've done a Throwback Review. Let's remedy that with the debut of one Steven Moffat in an episode that evokes classic Who, the tropes of vintage 2005 RTD-era, and hints of the future Moffat era.
(OK, this runs five minutes. But, in my defense, there's audio clips and [...]
Resuming our Throwback Reviews, we go back to the eighth episode of the 2005 revival of Doctor Who, "Father's Day" by Paul Cornell. (It's an interesting time to watch one of Christopher Eccleston's stories, after his recent remarks about his time on the show were repeated by Martyn from the Bad Wilf podcast.)
Think of "The Long Game" as the mirror-universe version of "Torchwood: Children of Earth." Many of the same attitudes and philosophies Russell T. Davies portrayed in that later, much better work are present in "The Long Game." But in a cheap-sets far-future playground, it's much harder to muster finesse…
Shannon Patrick Sullivan's excellent A Brief [...]
The return of the Daleks. At the hands of Rob Shearman.
Yes, it's just as good as you remember.
Yes, "World War Three" is better than "Aliens of London." Which is somewhat like saying a stab wound is better than amputation. All the same, there's some important and valuable stuff in RTD's otherwise least-successful Doctor Who story.
PLUS an announcement: there's a trivia throwdown coming at Gallifrey One between The Doctor Who Podcast [...]
Michael of the excellent Tin Dog Podcast frequently observes, when he reviews an old and not-much-missed story, that "it's actually not that bad!" Would that I could say the same of an episode that brought to 2005 some of the stereotypical criticisms leveled at the classic series: bad effects, bad monsters and bad pacing.
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