Series 4 Reviews - continued

'The Doctor's Daughter'

I'd braced myself going into this story for a couple of reasons: the title, and my friends had reacted rather positively to it. Hype makes me nervous.

I've explained that before, haven't I? How I tend to lower my expectations for things I'm looking forward to in an effort to better enjoy the thing when it arrives? I'll go to the point of bad talking things in public in an effort to keep that expectation low.

It's hard to go into an adaptation of something you enjoy, or an experimental episode of a TV show you like, or an issue of a comic that doesn't seem to do much but is setting something else up. Sometimes you can expect too much or not be in a receptive mood for the variation or whatever. What people often tend to forget is that a review of something, even if it's as part of a casual conversation over lunch, is just an opinion. There are ways to discuss the construction of a work, to determine mathematically that its made well or made poorly, but, really, who reviews things like that? Of what value is it? A poorly constructed film can still be more entertaining than one that is technically well assembled. A review is how one person reacted to a work, generally in that one moment. Music reviews can be done from multiple plays of the songs involved, but often a movie or TV review is done from one viewing of the work in question. What kind of mood did the reviewer have going in? Do they generally like the type of work in question? What distracted him/her while watching the work? In the average review, none of that is discussed, just a 'it was awesome!' or 'it was awful'.

The Internet often does not help as it is considered 'criticism' to hate what is liked and like what is hated. It's 'cool' to be contrary for the sake of it. To be fair, I've lived that life too, but it soon gets very boring.

Now, in all fairness, everyone has their own limits as to what they'll accept. It annoyed a lot of people that Spider-Man had organic web-shooters in the movies instead of the mechanical ones. It's really not much of a plot point but, from a purist point of view, it was wrong and tainted the film for them. Fair enough to them but in the overall scheme of things, I didn't think it was a big deal. I had some issues with the ending to Series 3 of Doctor Who, with the world thinking about the Doctor enough to 'fix' him, but it was a moment and I moved on.

Where was I going with all this? Oh, right, 'The Doctor's Daughter'. Returning to the task at hand.

I enjoyed it. Some of the new 45 minute episodes feel truncated in their stories and this was one of them. While watching it, I enjoyed it, but I could also feel the 'missing' parts if this had been a old-style 4 part story. There were characters and set-up that was bypassed that felt like it was there. It was weird in that regard.

The title had concerned me as I was afraid of some weird set of circumstances that would generate the title character. It actually is dealt with straight away in the story so that we can focus on the consequences.

This is where the episode shined for me. There was a lot of other things to enjoy: the mystery, the fish-like aliens, the gritty look of everything but the Doctor's reactions and reasons for such made this all click. For viewers of the new series, some of what he explains might be news, but for me, this was just going back to the old days. It was almost like a sequel of Troughton's conversation with Victoria in 'Tomb of the Cybermen'.

The fact that the Doctor's Daughter, Jenny (Genny?), was played by the Doctor's Daughter (Peter Davison's daughter) amused me. I will also admit the fact that she's very pretty indeed helped my attention as well. Wow. Such a smile!

'The Unicorn and the Wasp'

Murder mystery with Agatha Christie writted by Gareth Roberts. You had me at hello.

The only rough spot in this story, indeed in the season in general so far, has been some of the CGI effects. Some of them are getting more noticable. I'm not sure if I'm getting more picky about it or if CGI is being used more or what exactly it is. It's not been a big problem so far but it's just something that I've noticed more.

Oh, and yesterday I also watched:

'An Unearthly Child'

Still one of the most exciting half-hours of television, 45 years later, and nothing really happens. When Ian sums up the series to come as 'A Police Box, standing in a junkyard, it can go anywhere in Time and Space', I have to wipe a tear from my eye.

It's just so... right. You can go anywhere from there.

And they did.