Doctor Who - The Girl in the Fireplace

[mrph]

That was odd. I liked it, I think - pretty costumes, clockwork, an interesting story structure. And some character moments. Not quite so fond of the final twist, but there you go...

Be warned:Comments on this post may contain spoilers

Comments

[livingarmchair.livejournal.com]

I liked it. So much superior to the this happens. That happens. This happens stuff we've had so far.

Final twist was either brilliant or corny as hell. I think it worked very well...

[mrph.livejournal.com]

The 'slices of a life' structure worked very well for me - as did the Doctor's final visit, just a little too late.

Final twist was definitely fact corny as hell. So the answer was behind the TARDIS all along...? :)

But yes, much better than the previous stuff in many ways. As I've said before, RTD shouldn't be allowed to write plot. He's good with dialogue and characterisation - as long as he skips the inappropriate cultural baggage (and did they really slip a 'Camilla' in this week?!)- but he can't write otherworldly settings, he misjudges the humour and his pacing is hit and miss. Great as a guiding hand and possibly as a script editor - not nearly so impressive as a writer.

[Rant over :) ]

[livingarmchair.livejournal.com]

"Great as a guiding hand and possibly as a script editor - not nearly so impressive as a writer."

I think he'd be terrible as a script editor - I think he needs a script editor looking at his stuff and telling him his plots are crap and rejigging them.

For some reason, I was reminded of that farcical story with the Mona Lisas!

[mrph.livejournal.com]

City of Death? I liked that one - Douglas Adams doing a last-minute rewrite on a poor plot and turning into something where the dialogue sparkled...

Plus Tom Baker and Julian Glover trading barbed lines, which was always fun. But yes, it was farcical - RTD could learn a lot about humour from it, as it was head and shoulders above his fart jokes, bodyswapping villains and 'Chav' comments...

[livingarmchair.livejournal.com]

"City of Death? I liked that one - Douglas Adams doing a last-minute rewrite on a poor plot and turning into something where the dialogue sparkled..."

Yes, I remember watching it when I was a kid... Afterwards went out on the street to play with my friends, and we were all doing impressions of "Scaroth, last of the jagaroth" and laughing about the "spaghetti faced monster". Didn't have a clue what it was about when I was 7...

Must rewatch it.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I was kind of bored, to be honest, and Sophia Myles sounded an awful lot like Natalie Portman at her most stilted in the Star Wars films. Also, that was a bloody terrible job of ageing-up the actor playing Louis XV at the end. He looked like he'd been trying to do whiteface by just wearing green concealer and no powder, which as most babygoths work out, does not work.

[livingarmchair.livejournal.com]

The dialogue was pretty awful.

[aoakley.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a real return to form for the second series. Tooth and Claw was good because it was Victorian horror, School Reunion was good because of the cameos, but the Christmas Special and New Earth were frankly mundane. Whereas Girl In The Fireplace was a solid bit of sci-fi in it's own right.

I particularly liked the way they actually used the consequences of time travel as the basis for the plot. I felt for the first time since McGann that we were actually seeing some science fiction, ie. fiction based on the repercussions of scientific advances. It really drummed home one of the main messages that the show is concentrating on this season; that the Doctor, as an ageless Timelord, not only sees his best friends grow old and die, but that by combining his agelessness with time travel, these awfully stressful personal events can happen in the space of a weekend.

The lass who played Mme Pompadour was a bit wooden, which came as somewhat as a surprise to me, as A. according to the normally reliable SFX, she was apparently the only good thing in Thunderbirds The Movie (this may speak volumes for the awfulness of Thunderbirds The Movie, mind) and B. she's apparently Tennant's new IRL girlfriend and I'd have thought he'd have better taste. To be honest she struck me as "We can't afford Kate Winslet, so who's posh, cheap and fills a corset?". They could and should have picked someone better.

The ending was excellent. The Doctor didn't know everything; he couldn't answer the question as to "why Mme Pompadour?" but there was an answer. All too often, the revived series has taken the First Doctor's (Hartnell's) annoying habit of speaking the plot to speed things along, fill vaccuous backstory or overcome lack of budget. The Doctor doesn't know everything and we should see more of these little conundrums and less of the huge leaps of logic that we've seen in the last two series. Tom Baker, Davidson and McCoy's Doctors were particularly good at asking questions to point the audience in the right direction (Troughton too, from the little remains that I've seen), whereas Colin Baker, Hartnell, Pertwee and Eccleston were guilty of blurting out all kinds of key plot points which really should have been left to the audience to figure out for themselves.

[mrbear.livejournal.com]

As I understand it the young lady playing Mme Pompadour is David Tennant's girlfriend.

[graylion.livejournal.com]

I liked it. lots. including the tragic end.

[scy11a.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the whole romance subplot was just so not Dr. Who.

[henry_the_cow]

I'm catching up, so this comment is very belated.

I'm a bit surprised at the feeling here. The new series of Dr. Who have been surprisingly entertaining, at least. Given that there is little sci-fi on TV I like (three that come to mind are Babylon 5, Farscape, and Red Dwarf), this is quite a compliment. I have no time for old Dr. Who episodes - they entertained me as a child but if you look at them now, well, they're rubbish.

This particular episode was more that entertainment, it was good SF. I thought it was among the best SF I've ever seen on TV. Obviously with DW there is always the question of why he can't just use the Tardis to pop back and change the plot and that question was especially apposite on this occasion, but that's just one of the rules of entry.

I didn't anticipate the final twist and I don't see why it's corny - I've read a lot of SF and I don't recall coming across this before. The doctor arriving too late for his beloved could be corny but I thought they did that very well.

[mrph.livejournal.com]

I think my problem has been that the first season had some gems - looking back, I tend to forget that many of them weren't at the start of the series. But there was an expectation that season 2 would build on this, whereas it actually seemed to be finding its feet all over again. Understandable for Tennant, less understandable for the writers and directors. It feels as if RTD still isn't quite sure which bits worked and which didn't, so he's repeating mistakes.

Having said all that, Tooth and Claw was good, as was Girl in the Fireplace - and Idiot's Lantern had some lovely moments. On the other hand, New Earth was only passable and School Reunion was a bundle of Good Stuff wrapped around a very weak plot.

The thing that really seems to have upset people is the way that the Cybermen were handled, though. They made very sure that they got the Daleks right when they revived them - after all, why use old villains again unless they serve a purpose and there are good things to be done with them? Whereas the Cybermen seemed monosyllabic and not terribly bright, with a creator who was a villain-by-numbers copying too many details from one of the really memorable bad guys (Davros).

I suspect I'd be a lot happier with it if RTD didn't have such a stranglehold over the writing. As a guiding force, he seems to be a very good thing - but as a writer, he consistently delivers some of the weaker episodes (they do always have some great moments, but rarely hold together well...). And as head writer he gets the first and last episodes of each season, too...