Doctor Who: The Long Game
May. 8th, 2005 11:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenayI'm still loving my shiny new show :-) This episode wasn't quite as good as Dalek, but that still made it a rather fine episode.
First thought: on the one hand, Adam is a selfish little genius with a worrying lack of ethics and understanding of time paradoxes. On the other hand, Turlough could also be described along those lines so that doesn't automatically make him a bad companion. But it appears that the Doctor has learnt his lesson about taking in self-centered strays who will probably stab him in the back if they think it might get them something. And I don't think that Adam would have had Turlough's style or interest value if he'd stayed.
Some more important thoughts:
The idea of controlling an empire through the news they receive has been done before, but it still worked.
The creature who's name I can't remember any better than Simon Pegg could was really quite gross.
Simon Pegg plays evil accountant/banker very well. I was particularly amused by his resignation when he realised how badly things were going. Rats on a sinking ship...
He's your boyfriend!
Not any more.
The Doctor and Rose cracked me up :-) And it seems that even Adam noticed the sparks there. Their relationship is an example of why UST works best when you can actually see a connection and a spark - writers from numerous other shows would be advised to take note. It only works well if there's some chemistry there. You can't force it. You can't write it and try to pursuade everyone that it works if there's nothing there for the actors to work with. UST either happens and the writers are best advised to work with it or it doesn't and the writers should just leave it be.
< /rant >
There were a lot of things to enjoy here - the humour (yes, I did have to laugh out loud at a few lines), the commentary on news gathering, Simon Pegg, the ideas.
It's a shame that, after an episode like Dalek, this episode didn't work quite as well. The ideas about news and news bias were interesting, but didn't have the "they got away with this?" feel of Aliens in London/World War Three. I would have liked to know how the alien got into a position where it could control the Earth Empire, although from comments in Confidential I suspect that this might be something we come back to in a later episode. The subplot around Adam could have been pulled out over a couple more episodes, although I suspect that this point is just my usual wish for long-term story-arcs rather than a valid point - drawing out Adam's subplot might have detracted from the more important subplots around the Doctor and the Time Wars. I'm also not a huge fan of Tamsin Greig, but that's a personal preference rather than an episode comment :-)
Overall, the episode was good and I enjoyed it, but it didn't really have the impact of Dalek. I've probably come to expect a lot - certainly I've come to expect better story-telling and characterisation than we had in many classic adventures - and that's why this episode didn't work as well as it could have. I went into new Doctor Who feeling hopeful that it would be good, but not really expecting it. What I've got is a show where the average episodes are better than many other shows' best episodes and it then pulls out all the stops for big episodes, like Dalek and The Unquiet Dead. Any episode following up Dalek would be struggling, so maybe it's not a surprise that I keep comparing The Long Game and finding it not quite up to standard.
The trailer for next week's episode, though, looks...do I really have to wait six days?
In non-spoilery things, I saw Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on Friday. I enjoy it, laughed out loud at many points, but unfortunately they showed the trailer for Star Wars III before it and now I really want to see that movie. Damn them for making me excited about a movie that I didn't really care about two weeks ago :-( And damn them for bringing it out the day before I fly to Canada so that I'll have to track down a cinema as soon as I get there to see it. Huh.
First thought: on the one hand, Adam is a selfish little genius with a worrying lack of ethics and understanding of time paradoxes. On the other hand, Turlough could also be described along those lines so that doesn't automatically make him a bad companion. But it appears that the Doctor has learnt his lesson about taking in self-centered strays who will probably stab him in the back if they think it might get them something. And I don't think that Adam would have had Turlough's style or interest value if he'd stayed.
Some more important thoughts:
The idea of controlling an empire through the news they receive has been done before, but it still worked.
The creature who's name I can't remember any better than Simon Pegg could was really quite gross.
Simon Pegg plays evil accountant/banker very well. I was particularly amused by his resignation when he realised how badly things were going. Rats on a sinking ship...
He's your boyfriend!
Not any more.
The Doctor and Rose cracked me up :-) And it seems that even Adam noticed the sparks there. Their relationship is an example of why UST works best when you can actually see a connection and a spark - writers from numerous other shows would be advised to take note. It only works well if there's some chemistry there. You can't force it. You can't write it and try to pursuade everyone that it works if there's nothing there for the actors to work with. UST either happens and the writers are best advised to work with it or it doesn't and the writers should just leave it be.
< /rant >
There were a lot of things to enjoy here - the humour (yes, I did have to laugh out loud at a few lines), the commentary on news gathering, Simon Pegg, the ideas.
It's a shame that, after an episode like Dalek, this episode didn't work quite as well. The ideas about news and news bias were interesting, but didn't have the "they got away with this?" feel of Aliens in London/World War Three. I would have liked to know how the alien got into a position where it could control the Earth Empire, although from comments in Confidential I suspect that this might be something we come back to in a later episode. The subplot around Adam could have been pulled out over a couple more episodes, although I suspect that this point is just my usual wish for long-term story-arcs rather than a valid point - drawing out Adam's subplot might have detracted from the more important subplots around the Doctor and the Time Wars. I'm also not a huge fan of Tamsin Greig, but that's a personal preference rather than an episode comment :-)
Overall, the episode was good and I enjoyed it, but it didn't really have the impact of Dalek. I've probably come to expect a lot - certainly I've come to expect better story-telling and characterisation than we had in many classic adventures - and that's why this episode didn't work as well as it could have. I went into new Doctor Who feeling hopeful that it would be good, but not really expecting it. What I've got is a show where the average episodes are better than many other shows' best episodes and it then pulls out all the stops for big episodes, like Dalek and The Unquiet Dead. Any episode following up Dalek would be struggling, so maybe it's not a surprise that I keep comparing The Long Game and finding it not quite up to standard.
The trailer for next week's episode, though, looks...do I really have to wait six days?
In non-spoilery things, I saw Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on Friday. I enjoy it, laughed out loud at many points, but unfortunately they showed the trailer for Star Wars III before it and now I really want to see that movie. Damn them for making me excited about a movie that I didn't really care about two weeks ago :-( And damn them for bringing it out the day before I fly to Canada so that I'll have to track down a cinema as soon as I get there to see it. Huh.