The New Doctor Who
By stephanie - Sunday, April 16th, 2006
It’s been a long, long while since I’ve watched classic Doctor Who, but I was a fan of Tom Baker and his famous scarf.
After a long hiatus, they released all new episodes of Doctor Who in 2005, with Christopher Eccleston as the ninth doctor. (The SciFi Channel is currently showing the 2005 episodes.) This year brings us yet another regenerated Doctor, played by David Tennant.
I was fortunate enough to catch the first episode for 2006, “New Earth,” which aired April 15. As my first new Doctor Who episode in years, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
In “New Earth,” we are taken billions of years into the future to the city of New New York on a planet that has replaced earth (destroyed when the sun went supernova). There, our heroes have a run-in with a woman who consists of a brain in a jar and a face made of stretched skin (or “trampoline” as she wryly described herself), and a bunch of zombie-like clones locked up in cages Matrix-style for medical research.
The plot, in and of itself, might be completely ridiculous, except the delivery and execution was simply delightful. The new Doctor Who is just fun. Smart writing and that lovely dry British humor made this episode highly entertaining and funny. (”It’s like living inside a bouncy castle!” exclaims the bad gal as she takes over the young Rose’s body.)
The pacing was terrific – there was hardly a dull moment – and the special effects weren’t that bad, though still filled with the trademark cheesy images you might expect to see in Doctor Who.
Unlike many American science fiction shows, Doctor Who does not strive to be realistic or serious. It is this terrific mix of the absurd and the fantastic that makes the new Doctor Who a welcome relief from the darker science fiction coming out of American studios.
David Tennant is the perfect Doctor, dapper, smart, and slightly wacky. He’s got a great sense of comic timing and he’s also kinda cute to boot. (”I’ve still got it,” he says, after the possessed Rose kisses him.)
As mentioned earlier, the Sci Fi Channel is still a year behind on the new Doctor Who series, but I’m sure we’ll be seeing David Tennant in the states soon enough. Meanwhile, I am looking forward to more of the new Doctor Who, and plan on dusting off some of the old classic series as well.
September 29th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
[...] Doctor Who season two is premiering in the states tonight on the SciFi Channel; in case you missed it, I had already reviewed the episode back in April. (I don’t live in the U.K., but I have my ways of getting my grubby little hands on things…) [...]