Return of the Autons
Mar. 27th, 2005 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hazelkThe morning after Doctor Who review.
K, my other half, is of the opinion that it’s a mistake to re-visit TV programmes from your formative years because they were basically all crap. I’m not quite that cynical. OK Thunderbirds is definitely not of the good but the Oliver Postgate oeuvre stands up pretty well.
Anyway topic: last night’s Dr Who pilot. Well it shows promise I think. Billy Piper was brilliant. Christopher Eccleston seemed dreadfully mannered at first, bit of Tom Baker here, bit of Peter Davidson there, but it all gelled by the end. I really felt the loneliness of the character and the chemistry with Piper was great.
(Ecclestone hails from the same part of Salford as K, which makes him almost like family. Hi Chris!)
Some good funny “Lot’s of planets have a North” and some groaningly predictable – the burping bin. My big problem was with the MOTW storyline. K says the plastic people were based on the Autons, which even a bunch of 13 year old boys found completely risible back in the day. It could have worked as nostalgia if the Doctor and Rose had been less well done, I think. Some of the sequences were scary, a lot of the walking down dark passages and the attack of the mad paddle hands. But the bad stage-school robotic dancing; very old-school Who but they should have had them gliding like the gentlemen in Hush.
MOTW come and go though, I’ll keep watching. And the young text messengers to Radio 5 seem to have been 90% in favour so perhaps there’s hope for more to come.
K, my other half, is of the opinion that it’s a mistake to re-visit TV programmes from your formative years because they were basically all crap. I’m not quite that cynical. OK Thunderbirds is definitely not of the good but the Oliver Postgate oeuvre stands up pretty well.
Anyway topic: last night’s Dr Who pilot. Well it shows promise I think. Billy Piper was brilliant. Christopher Eccleston seemed dreadfully mannered at first, bit of Tom Baker here, bit of Peter Davidson there, but it all gelled by the end. I really felt the loneliness of the character and the chemistry with Piper was great.
(Ecclestone hails from the same part of Salford as K, which makes him almost like family. Hi Chris!)
Some good funny “Lot’s of planets have a North” and some groaningly predictable – the burping bin. My big problem was with the MOTW storyline. K says the plastic people were based on the Autons, which even a bunch of 13 year old boys found completely risible back in the day. It could have worked as nostalgia if the Doctor and Rose had been less well done, I think. Some of the sequences were scary, a lot of the walking down dark passages and the attack of the mad paddle hands. But the bad stage-school robotic dancing; very old-school Who but they should have had them gliding like the gentlemen in Hush.
MOTW come and go though, I’ll keep watching. And the young text messengers to Radio 5 seem to have been 90% in favour so perhaps there’s hope for more to come.