Fat's Entertainmenrt

[gervase_fen]

Things I liked: Catherine Tate, especially her scenes with Bernard Cribbins, her authority when going undercover at Adipose, her fan-nish, if not fangirl-esque, preparedness for a trip in the TARDIS. David Tennant playing 'wistful and reflective'.

Things I didn't like : the sense that RTD has been to the well too many times now. Things like... A climax featuring a Big spaceship from above, (cue awed reaction shots from extras). Donna's Mum... being Rose's Mum with less subtlety in the writing or the performance.

At one point I wondered if the journalist character was being introduced as a possible alternate companion for this story - she's intrepid, she looks a bit like Martha, she does the research, she confronts evil.* (Confirmed perhaps given that her name, Penny, is the name of the 'generic' companion RTD devised whilst the contract for Catherine Tate was in negotiation.)

So, suppose she was in one draft; but being left tied to a chair from the midpoint of the story on - and leaving her tied up almost to the final scene! - just undercuts all the points in her favour for a feeble comedy resolve. Unless that was the point all along. The Doctor's dig about "making it all up" shows that he's read Nick Davies' "Flat Earth News", which, as it happens, I'm reading at the moment - but as noted, Penny did her research, challenged the PR pablum, and was brave enough to confront Miss Foster.

And the comedy - I'm sorry, but the silent window stuff seemed to take forever, the "You're not mating with me sunshine" line was desperate, and - well, it just felt a bit nasty looking for laughs from fat, jolly chavs exploding into stress-relieving mannequins. I detest this sort of stuff in Hollywood comedies, and was depressed to see it in "Doctor Who".

And wasn't Murray Gold off-form tonight?

Comments

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed it, as I'll explain later (need a Rowan Atkinson ninth Doctor icon) - I thought that Russell was acknowledging some of his critics at least at various points, and I liked the silent window stuff.

But I was reminded that I had said that RTD does have a problem with fat people, and it's still there... and we are brought again to Susie Liggat's own statement of the fundamental problem with Love and Monsters, which took about fifteen minutes in my view to overcome (essence of Liggat's observation) the failure of television people to understand people who aren't television people.

[gervase-fen.livejournal.com]

How was the viewing party?

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Smaller than for an end of season, termtime one, but enthusiastic - two stayed until the end of the Verity Lambert tribute.