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Review: Doctor Who S3.5
Andrew Mickel
If last week's episode thrived on fanwankery, this week it ran on all-out moronic pomposity
It could just be the second worst episode of Doctor Who ever! Beaten, surely, only by that crappy Peter Kay one?
Published on May 2, 2007
One of the selling points of Doctor Who is that it confronts big philosophical questions that leave you rubbing your chin like a face pervert. From the rules of war to the responsibilities of an all-powerful being, the series often couches old debates in new and accessible ways.
But all that falls apart when you throw in a colossal dose of idiocy with which to misuse and abuse those ideas. If last week’s episode thrived on fanwankery, this week it ran on all-out moronic pomposity.
The crux of the problem lay with the insistence that the worthy human/Dalek hybrid and indignant human non-minions were all free because they had ‘good’ species DNA.
What the heck kind of lesson is that to put in one of the most influential TV shows for children?
Freedom isn’t predicated on our genes, but on individuals making their own personal decisions to choose it and/or fight for it. But hey, kids, you can defer to your oppressive government and carry on playing Knifey Knifey Time – everything you do is good, and free, which are apparently the same thing! It’s in your genetic make-up!
At best, the writer is downright stupid – Helen Raynor, so you know to avoid her like the plague – abusing ideas to an extent that would put the Wachowski Brothers to shame.
At worst it is intellectually irresponsible, and flies in the face of previous episodes. She must have some revealing photos of the T Davies to have been allowed a double episode.
Philosophy undergrad whining aside, there were plenty of other problems. The humour vacuum meant that several pigs were fried and another pig had heart problems, and still no-one made a joke. The abysmal writing saw the Daleks repeatedly get the Doctor in their sights and then, for increasingly stupid reasons, not killing him – even when he’s screaming at them to do it.
Plus why was he volunteering himself – mankind’s only hope – for Deathsville just because a man he knew for all of eight minutes had carked it? Where’s the Doctor’s funtime rationality gone? In its place he’s now using lightning to transmit alien DNA through a building to fully-developed people. Come on Who, Lost makes more sense than this.
Elsewhere, everyone continued to get a bit moist whenever anyone mentioned New York, particularly in Talullah’s glassy-eyed salute to the city. What she and the others failed to notice was that some other alien crack team has apparently wiped out all citizens already, seeing as this was the most deserted the city has ever looked on screen. Either that, or a few too many had been enjoying Knifey Knifey Time in the late 1920s.
Still, the transatlantic mess is now behind us. The Daleks escaped in unimaginative fashion. We have an iffy storyline in the offing with Martha’s crush. Chicken Boy is becoming more of a bellowing, hectoring cultural imperialist by the week. But at least Helen Raynor can now be put back in the cupboard. Airholes are optional.
Users Comments
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Blimey. The human-Dalek hybrid looks really scary
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