149 - Paradise Towers

8/12/09

What a mess this is! I am not liking the direction this season is going in at all. Well, we start off with the Doctor and Mel materializing the TARDIS at a place called Paradise Towers, apparently for a good swim in their awesome pool. Well, Paradise Towers is a huge building that is run down and dilapidated, and I guess the inhabitants are trapped inside it. There's two rival gangs called the Kangs (rhymes with gangs, clever), and some dude called Zex who pops up every now and then and tries to be a hero. You know what, I can't even struggle to capitulate the plot of this. It was dreadful, and I want my time back. The production was even worse than the last one, and the story took such incredibly painful lapses in logic and asks the viewer to shut their brain off to the extent that the story is totally mush. I really, really didn't care for this one. It set out to tell a story that promoted unity and examined the state of society in 1987, during the height of 80s excess and decadence, but I think it pretty largely failed, due to incompetent storytelling and very childish devices. If you want to be a children's show that doesn't challenge, do that. If you want to be a cutting edge socially aware drama, do that. But the two can't really mix and please both audiences.

2/10

148 - Time And the Rani

8/9/09

If you are paying attention to the dates, you will see that it has been almost a year since I last posted on this blog. I didn't intend for it to take so long, but when I last tried to watch the first Sylvester McCoy story, it was so terrible that it put me off for a very long time.

Seriously, this is a very bad story. I mean, it's cool that we get to see the Rani again, and I like Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, but this is not Doctor Who! This is some sort of base, cheap children's entertainment, not my beloved Doctor. You can tell money is not what it was from the very beginning, even though there is a cool new computer animated opening sequence. Colin Baker, wisely, refused to film a regeneration scene, and so they did a crap job of putting a blond wig on McCoy and filming him quickly and shakily, and from there, it's all downhill. The plot is thin and corny. The Rani is trying to use the minds of some of the universe's most powerful thinkers to create a time device (I think) and a bunch of locals on this planet get caught up in it. But honestly, I thought the whole thing was tedious, hard to follow, and laughably juvenile, something that Doctor Who never was. There is a difference between family friendly and childish, and what we have here just seems childish.

*shudder*

Well, my hopes are not high. This is not a good way to start a season, but we'll see if it gets any better. My rating is...

3/10