I'd agree about the updated effects on the dvds.It's nice comparing them to the old ones and they aren't in your face and screaming to be noticed....unlike a certain Mr Lucas and his abominations. :D

I'm actually really looking forward to the new series after that clip on Jonathan Ross. Those vampire women sort of reminded me of some of the vampires you see in Jean Rollin's films, with those over-sized fangs.

I've just been watching "The Time Monster" from the Pertwee years for a review I'm writing. Not a critically highly regarded story but I thought it was thoroughly entertaining: great interaction between Pertwee and Delgado, plus Ingrid Pitt and a teenage Susan Penhaligon turn up in Atlantis!

Plus an unrecognizable David Prowse as a load of bull. :laugh:

The new TARDIS interior is awesome. Far superior to the old one, it now actually looks like the TARDIS rather than the crappy underwater coral, dark and dingy thing they used to have.

Yeah, I don't know what they were thinking, with that coral design. Trying too hard to be radical I suppose. The new interior looks much better.

Just saw the new Doctor Who episode and thought it was excellent. Wasn't too sure about the new Doc at first (christmas) but he did a cracking job in this episode!

Anybody else manage to see it?

I'm going to reserve judgement until I see a few more episodes.All I'll say is it wasn't the disaster I thought (or hoped) it would be.

And Karen Gillan is pretty tasty. :tongue1:

Want impressed but give it time

yeh, i saw it too it was fun, already prefer the new doctor to david tennent. and i quite like the new companion :D, but i'll watch a few more episodes to have a proper opinion.
wasnt to keen on the new theme though

Personally I thought it was absolutely abysmal. Basically CBBC stuff.

I didn't watch it, but caught the ending and I think I love Karen Gillan.

I've said that many a time.I can see it being broadcast on CBBC along with The Sarah Jane Adventures.

I was prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt but even I didn't expect such amateurish rubbish. Very sad indeed.

The endlessly legged (and hopelessly wooden) Karen Gillan is obviously going to provide Smith with love interest, which we need like a hole in the head. The latter Tennant episodes bore little resemblance to Dr Who itself, and I guess things are going to get even worse now.

hope she doesnt turn into a love interest, that would be annoying,
yeh i think it is a little too cbbc, but compared to a lot of junk programs these days its not too bad but its never gonna be as great as the older ones.

The love element is a certainty by the looks of things. :ohwell:

I enjoyed it and I thought Matt Smith was very good indeed.

This opener was never going to be a classic, but it was enjoyable and it certainly did have a different feel to it than RTD's era ( thank god ).

I've read the synopsis for the first five stories and they look very promising. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

One of the weakest stories in "New Who" history but I liked Matt Smith and Amy Pond and the interplay between them, and many of the clips from upcoming episodes looked fantastic. Also Mike Gatiss is writing for the series again, so it's bound to have something good about it!

I watched it, overall I thought it was ok. As usual, much the same as the RTD stuff so my opinion hasn't really changed.

Doctor Who is never going to be (proper) Doctor Who again.

The character of the Doctor doesn't have anything in common with any Doctor from 1963-1989. Now, he could just be some random presenter of CBBC. The classic series Doctors all had their own 'agenda' and sense of mystery about them and you never knew what they were upto. They all had unique personalities and their own eccentricities. The classic show was based on a good story, script, writing, acting and plot development and developing the lore of each serial/story. Now it just seems to be a vehicle for overacting and melodramatics with crap CGI/special effects. It's essentially Hollyoaks with added Sci-Fi.

The new console looks far too chaotic to me...And what was that empty glass bottle going up and down?
Looked more like a mad inventor version of the console...Perhaps Cushing's Doctor had a hand in designing it!

As for the new story....

I wish they'd shove the choirs up their arse!! Overblown pretension! Even shoved them on the credit music now.

Smith is still damn weird looking, but I like his performance and I think the old head on young shoulders thing will work well here.
And at least he does not shout and make stupid noises as much as Tennant (or have that shouty pseudo-Cockney shtick).

But (yet again) everything is made very hard to follow (must be half impossible for little kids) thanks to having to SHOUT THE ENTIRE ****ING PLOT AND EXPLANATIONS WHILE RUNNING because you have only one episode to actually tell a complex story.

Worse when the story also has to introduce a new Doctor...Hell the old series could take a total of a whole episode's running time spread throughout the 4 part story just to introduce a new Doctor.

Flawed to buggery by the stupid time restrictions, saddled with pompous choral noise and far too SHOUTY...but it could herald something less tiresome and more watchable than most of the Tennant era.

In fact this whole AGGHHHHHHGGHHHHAGHH attitude of the new re-boot was summed up at Tennant's end by the stupid as hell idea to turn a simple regeneration into a ****ing nuclear explosion that almost destroyed the Tardis (WHY?!) and nearly killed this new Doctor before he even started.

Hold on now! Lets not tar it with the dreaded Hollyoaks brush, it wasn't THAT bad. Infact I quite enjoyed it. As being a fan of Tennant I was expecting to be saying , Its just not the same without him, but at no point did I find myself doing that. The one thing that I did find slightly repeatative was the veiled warning of impending doom that is to come. It reminded me of the story in which dalek Khan was predicting the future. On the plus side though, how could you not love the dalek at the end in british army green going through the trenches. Class!

The thing i find with dr who nowadays is it promises so much yet delivers nothing.....when tonight episode started i thought it wasnt going to be good. i thought the smilers in the boxs where pretty good like the idea, but the whole concept mounted to and deliverd nothing,, and become dull and boring. i also thik that sometimes u cant cram a decent story line in 40 min r so... be good if they built 1 over a period of 3 4 episodes

The old classic stories often ran for at least 4 or more episodes. Troughton's The War Games ran to 10 and Hartnell's (mostly missing) The Daleks Masterplan ran to a walloping 12 episodes.

I'd like to see them try a new story over 4 parts,just to see how it goes down with the new viewers.I know old school Who fans would be open to it.If it works,great,if it doesn't then at least they've tried.

Yeah the classic series cliff hangers were superb. They actually had you shouting 'OMGWTF?! :eek:, how is the Doctor and/or companion going to survive that' and made you want to find out. Then usually it was something cheesey but who cares, it was still awesome and highly entertaining. I think these days, there is far too much music played over scenes, I think they use music in abundance on TV these days to hide poor acting and rubbish writing. Go back to classic Who, not one use of bloody stupid music over a scene, yeah, the acting was quite bad a lot of the time but the writing made up for that the majority of the time.

I just can't take to new Doctor Who at all to be honest, and I doubt I ever will. I have recently gone back and watched the full Eccleston series, and I actually found it to be very watchable and enjoyable but it will never be a patch on any of the classic series.

Just watched Episode 1 and thought the story sucked but Matt shows promise as the Doctor. Hoping this will pick up in next few episodes. Looking forward to follow up story to Blink!

Some of my favourite Who stories are the six or seven part Jon Pertwee tales. I don't feel they're 'padded' at all - just gripping from start to finish.

Saturday night's story tried to cram a bit too much into one 45 minute tale, which is a pity. I also thought the Smilers were underused.

I can't ever see the Beeb doing four parters again, but maybe a series of two parters spread across two nights ( to placate the crap attention span of today's viewers ) might be an idea?

I thought the smilers where a gr8 creature at the opening scenes then just went down hill.. i realy dont think u can a decent story line in just 45 min the prob is there eg 13 12 episodes where they come up with 12 13 dif creatures etc, even if they do use old creature like the daleks all the time that the actual story plot etc is left behind because there sometimes trying to much to come up with new ideas that sometimes fail miserable... dont get me wrong the odd episode is good i like the staue angels in blink they where excellent, i do think they do come up with some realy good creatures even if they dont do much with them... i thought the oods where good creature def dif

Just watched the new "Dr Who" Dalek story;

Smith is doing okay.
Not sure about the day-glo colour, plastic looking, 'Renault Megane'-style fat ass Daleks though!
Sort of cool, sort of silly.

And yet again, what would have made a first class 4 part (or even 6 part given the possible epic scope of this story that could have included so much interesting stuff) is stupidly rushed and crammed into one, roughly 2 part running time, episode that barely has any time left to even do anything with the new Daleks, wastes a great Spitfire vs flying saucer idea by having it last about 3 minutes, and barely scrapes the idea of the Daleks being around during WW2.

No cliffhangers, no plot development, rushed new ideas, rushed new Daleks even.
Shame.
So ****ing stupid, given how popular this re-boot now is (so there basically is no big risk) to not to try out a 4 part tale with a story full of this many plot ideas and possibilities....let alone new damn Daleks.

Hey ho.

Re: The Doctor Who Thread
 

I don't mind the self contained episodes with nods to the arc that builds to the end of the series - it worked with Buffy and Angel. I think times have changed and the way TV has changed means the beeb could only make a twelve episodes of a show like this per year, so to have it taken up by a couple of self contained stories isn't really appealing to me.

Saying that though, I think the Dalek story last night was the first true dud of this year's series. It harkened back to a criticism that a lot of people had for the RTD era, painting themselves into a corner then pulling the solution out of their arse. I thought Matt Smith had very much found his Doctor persona in the last ep, but was a bit blank this time round. Possibly because Gatis wrote this pre casting? Who knows, but I thought it was a step backwards.

The new Daleks are pathetic imo,I'm sure kids will love them but I DONT! Steven Moffat needs a good slap!

Now I am a big Doctor Who fan since I discovered it on one of these new cable TV stations we got where I could watch stuff in the original language and they had a constant fix of Tom Baker episodes - so I think I got a pretty good view of the series and can also relate to some of its silliness - where I also put the shopping-car-coloured new Daleks. I my self found this to be a nother top episode with the new Doctor, being a great David Tennant fan, I am really happy that Matt Smith is a good follow-up to him! He did good things in episode 1 and he was very strong here in episode 3.

I disagree on the episode being too short, ok, it was a lil tight, but there is big potential and the promise that this was not the last of the new Daleks, so that 2-part episode might still be in store, maybe as season's end? We have to wait and see...

And I am also excited about the episode-spanning thing with the cracks in the universe, this is good stuff and will surely develop into something big. I think Moffat does a nice job here and I am excited about each new episode!

I like the new dr who think hes fitting in good, he plays it well, quite witty and sharp, but sadly the only downfall is i havent actualy enjoyed a episode yet think they been realy poor r just plain rubbish, the daleks wtf as the old saying goes if it aint broke y fix it, they was god dam awful, was dissapointed with the statue episode, the creatures in the 2nd episode looked promising then hughly let down become dull boring and sort of went nowhere with that episode

Hmmmh... I think the opposite, ok, I can see the frustration in some with the Daleks, I may be off in liking that episode, but I really liked most of the episodes so far (my weakest episode was the second, as I was never a big fan of these future episodes - although there was good stuff in it like the UK spaceship, I still found it a bit dull...). The double episodes were both excellent, the return of the Weeping Angels was very welcome and spooky, same goes for the lizzards under the surface (me and names... ;)), but the ending

I am absolutely thrilled by the spanning story line with the crack in time! For me it ranks on the same level as the previous 4 seasons since the return...

Not really liking this season at all. After a pretty good 1st episode, it's mostly been down hill since. The episode "Vincent and the Doctor" was though a major step up, so perhaps the final episodes will see the series go out on a high.

Totally agree with others view on the 'new' Daleks. They are just horrible. The 2005 redesign was more than adequate. A simple repaint of that model would have been sufficient.

Poor Rory came back only to be an Auton...

new guy weighing in here with this.

i've got to admit i'm enjoying this series of doctor who as it's a departure from those of RTD. while Moffet has kept the 'structure' of the series with the companion lite episodes, the 2 parters and the key words scattered throughout he's done a good job at keeping it fresh. granted i wonder how many times the dalek's can loophole their way out of extinction but i guess seen as they're a staple of the doctor who name then they will never really go.

all in all it's keeping my guessing as i watch it and making my grin a little bit. plus matt smith and karen gillam work well together on screen.

I'm not homophobic but I hated the way in which RTD waved the pink flag for same sex relationships in both Doctor Who and Torchwood. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with gay characters, but RTD really underlined his social viewpoints to the point where they distracted from the storyline.

Anyway, I've found this season of Who t obe the weakest. What RTD did very well was what I'll call the "Whedon Effect" considering that he openly admits to borrowing Joss Whedon's style. He managed to creat very real emotions in his scripts from the interplay between characters or at least encourage it from the pool of writers. He teased very well, too, in making you believe that something was going to happen and invariably it didn't.

An example; Leading the public to believe that Tennant had regenerated when in fact he managed to create a "twin".

There has always been something wrong with the assistant;
Rose - not convincing for me
Martha - too bland and Freema is a crap actress (sorry to her fans)
Donna - the best of a bad bunch. Sometimes I thought I was watching a Catherine Tate sketch.

Amy Pond is irritating. She has no charm and just come across as a snidey know it all.

The last couple of episodes have been top drawer, though.