Doctor Who Series 1

[rm]

To more fully grok the world of Torchwood, I am now watching Dcotor Who.

Thoughts so far:

Episode 1: Evil manequins? You started the series with evil manequins?
Episode 2: Some really elegant, nicely performed dialogue.
Episode 3: We meet the Cardiff Rift. I wonder why Eve Myles plays two presumeably unrelated characters in the DW/TW universe named Gwen/Guin. Also wonder why wardrobe department couldn't decide on what year it was.

In general:
Could watch Eccleston read the phone book.
Am not an old Doctor Who fan and therefore must ask whether the Doctor has always been so self-absorbed. He's sort of an ass.

Comments

[fleur.livejournal.com]

I don't remember her being on Dr Who .. I need to go back and re-watch.

I was heartbroken when Eccleston left as I was slightly in love with him, but as soon as I watched one episode of Tennant I forgot that other guy even existed.

[rm.livejournal.com]

She's the maid in the funeral home who opens and closes the Rift.

I fell for Eccleston when he was Norfolk in Elizabeth.

[fleur.livejournal.com]

She is?! Definitely need to re-watch. I wonder if that's going to re-surface in Torchwood?

[fleur.livejournal.com]

OH and also, I can't wait for you to get to the 2nd season when Torchwood is created ...

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

3. Wales is not really that big, there are fewer actors than you might expect...

But then again, Martha, assistant number 2 (of the new era), had already appeared in Doctor Who, and she is not Welsh so suggests the team don't care very much about this. Also, the BBC runs on nepotism.

The Doctor is allowed to change personality with every actor who plays him. Consistency is to Dr. Who as [fill in witty simile of your choice here].

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

Depends on who's playing him. The Doctor has always had that streak that allows him to meddle in the affairs of other planets. But I think the first sort of asshole doctor was the sixth.

[elionwyr.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he's usually a self-absorbed ass. Some (say, #6) more than others (#5)...I think #9 and #10 do a better job than others of actually noticing and reacting to the chaos they seem to inspire.

And the Companion's job has traditionally been to (a) scream and (b) ask, "What's THAT, Doctor?" I think they've broken from that format pretty well.

I do not think that starting off with the Autons was the best decision ever; IMO they were only ever nominally interesting 'villians' in the old series.

I personally love the issues addressed in Episode 4; I think you're going to love Eccleston's performance in Episode 6.

[nyghtowl.livejournal.com]

I loved the idea of starting the series with the admittedly cheesy return of the Autons and the Nestene consciousness. Guess it's just the geek in me. Wait'll you see "Dalek"

P

[elionwyr.livejournal.com]

Did you see they're bringing back the Sontarans?

[tommx.livejournal.com]

#6 wasn't a self absorbed ass, he was a self absorbed asshole. Never liked Colin Baker even a little bit.

My favorite doctor of the classic series was #4 followed closely by his predecessor.

[crystalsage.livejournal.com]

Just a note from the IMDB trivia page on Eve Myles:

"In 2005 she appeared as a maidservant who died to save the world in an episode of "Doctor Who" (2005) and so impressed the writer Russell T. Davies that he cast her as the female lead in the spin-off series "Torchwood" (2006)."

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

The Doctor's self-absorption and egotism is nothing short of legendary, it sort of defines him.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

He's sort of an ass.

He's just too busy saving the universe to bother with human social niceties. ;)

[tommx.livejournal.com]

The evil mannequins were a nod to the old series. They were villains in two stories back then.

Yes, the Doctor has always been fairly self absorbed and sort of an ass, but he also loves human beings. Eccleston was the perfect choice to bring back the series as he was able to balance the sort of "older man" vibe with the vitality the role demands.

As for Eve Myles playing two different roles, I suspect it has more to do with RTD liking her as an actress and wanting to use her again. Naoko Mori is also in the first Dr. Who series playing the same character, but they sort of retconned the character in the second series of Torchwood to explain the apparent breakdown in continuity.

One of my favorites of the early episodes was The End of the World.

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

The evil mannequins are a nod to an old-school story, from the early 1970s. "Terror of the Autons" I think it was, and if you thought the new-Who story was a bit on the cheezy side... *eyeroll*

re: eps 3, it was RTD pulling the old-school-BBC producer routine. The rule used to be that if an actor arrived on time, sober and remembered their lines, there were pretty much set for life with the Beeb (which is why you keep seeing the same faces in older BBC productions - they were reliable, the Old Boys running the production teams knew who they were, so why not keeping hiring them). Apparently RTD really loved Eve Myles in "The Restless Dead" and as the premise for "Torchwood" started to bubble up in his brain...

But, oh yeah, don't me *started* on the costuming in TRD. The story was... okay, I thought, but the production values were all over the bloody place. It was a rather slap-dash episode, I thought.

Is the Doctor an ass? Depends who you ask. As there have been so many others playing the character, when a person looks at new-Who and says "Has he done that before" cases can be made both for and against.

The general thinking seems to be that the Ninth Doctor is newly regenerated, relatively soon after the Time War (er, I shan't go into too much detail, I don't know how you feel about spoilers) and is thus carrying a load of survivor's guilt and, yeah, is a bit me-me-me at the moment, as he's the only Time Lord left.

But keep watching. I think your opinion might improve over the course of that season... :)

[denn566.livejournal.com]

Im curious about something. I noticed in your profile one of your interests (actually 2 of your interestes) are off broadway and off off broadway. i was just wondering if you saw the plae Rent and if you did what did you think of it?>
It's one of my favorite movies.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I've not seen the show, but do like some of the tunes. Alas, I find much of Rent to be objectionable from its uninteresting rip-off of La Boheme to the idea that love can conquer death for straight people but not gay people.

The show gives people the idea that being poor is a clever thing to do, as opposed to a big fucking pain in one's ass.

[ali-highland.livejournal.com]

Dr who is always the smartest guy in the room, in fact usually the smartest guy on whatever planet he is on, so a certain level of arrogance goes along with that.

Testing actors out on a single episode seems to be a trait of RTD.

[rm.livejournal.com]

The use of the actor twice doesn't perturb me, but why does the character essentially have the same name?

[nobodyreally.livejournal.com]

...and when you answer that, explain why more and more actors are showing up as characters named *their real first name* - WTF?

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think because we have more and more writers involved with the casting process and writer/directors who meet someone in the casting process and instantly feel them click with the world they are building and then can't stand to change their names.

[nobodyreally.livejournal.com]

While I understand that, I'd have to call bullshit on the laziness of writers who can't name their own damned characters. It blows the whole 'suspension of disbelief' if everyone is named the same as in real life. urgh!

on a side topic of writers and such, are you getting any of the fallout from JKR's anti-fan-books thing?

[nobodyreally.livejournal.com]

part 2: forget i asked...

[ali-highland.livejournal.com]

Gwen is a stereotypical Welsh name, like Angus for a Scot or Pierre for a Frenchman.

[gement.livejournal.com]

I presumed the second Gwen was a descendent or someone otherwise close on the family tree (great-great-great-grandniece?), a deliberate echo a la Swiftly Tilting Planet. NewDW does a lot of little structural correspondences.

I also hadn't seen Torchwood yet when I watched NewDW Season 1.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Could watch Eccleston read the phone book.

Gods yes, I enjoy Doctor Who, but (from my PoV at least) he's by far the best Doctor they've ever had. I didn't much like episodes 4 & 5 much, but episode 6 was utterly amazing.

Am not an old Doctor Who fan and therefore must ask whether the Doctor has always been so self-absorbed. He's sort of an ass.

I think this is largely due to the Doctor's grief at the destruction of his homeworld. Others have been fairly self-absorbed, but not as much.

As a sidenote, the evil mannequins are a reference to the first series with the 3rd doctor (the marvelous Jon Pertwee, from who I acquired my fashion sense) who also dealt with evil mannequins.

[dskasak.livejournal.com]

Episode 6, which has already been mentioned here as "Dalek," is one of my favorite ones from Eccleston's too-short role. The two-parter with "The Empty Child" is pleasantly creepy (and where the crossover begins in earnest), while "Father's Day" pisses me off to no end, and I'd rather not spoil it now. David Tennant had, IMO, a great Season 2 and not-so-great Season 3 due to the "Lonely God" story arc attached to him.

As for being an ass, you can go all the way back to Jon Pertwee in the early 1970s to see the Doctor's arrogance when dealing with humans. The character's love of humanity vacillates with each Doctor, with some incarnations showing an abundance of love (Peter Davison, the one-shot Paul McCann), and some who can barely tolerate humans (Colin Baker, whom I actually liked because he was an abrasive ass; too bad most of his scripts were horrid). Eccleston carried a weary weight to the role, which Tennant seemed to fill in Season 2, but not Season 3. He's very close to Peter Davison's chumminess with humans, with a bit of "I'm-so-much-smarter-than-you" that Tom Baker and Colin Baker held in abundance.

This thread reminds me that I need to download the new episodes...

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

I thought Eccleston was incredible as the Doctor.

I don't think the Doctor is an ass. He certainly has his issues, yes, but I don't think he's an ass. Though he's not exactly polite either. As others have mentioned, he has a lot of survivor's guilt and issues about the Time War, plus a fair amount of arrogance, but on the other hand, he genuninely has something to be arrogant about (imho).

But then, I'm a big fan of the Doctor, and if I saw the TARDIS, would be throwing myself at it the first chance I got.