In many ways this is a throw back to season one . A story set on a space station because the budget doesn't stretch to creating a convincing planet with alien skies and alien soil and alien flora . Or indeed alien aliens . It helps with the production costs if you just film a DOCTOR WHO story in a studio with actors dressed as recognisable humans . It seems a great pity that a show with so much imagination in its premise has the Tardis traveling somewhere that looks suspiciously like a BBC studio . Not only that we see the episode that's written in the Steven Moffat style . The story revolves around children , everyone lives / no one dies not even the monster which isn't really an archetypal monster at all . Add to this some satire involving a regal Queen , a government and what have you got ? A recycled plot where the best part of the episode involves the setting up for next weeks adventure
Matt Smith is good as The Doctor . He's not as intense as Eccleston but is far less irritating than Tennant . He plays the role in a rather Troughtonesque manner and I can picture him growing in the public affection . The unfortunate thing though is that he shows that the rest of the cast aren't up to much . Terence Hardiman is best known for his eponymous role as THE DEMON HEADMASTER which he effectively reprises here . Sophie Okonedo received an Oscar nom for HOTEL RWANDA but gives the impression she's just appearing in a kids show while Karen Gillan is dreadful as Amy though I'm not sure if it's entirely down to the actress . Perhaps more to the script ?
Actually this is a serious problem Eccleston and Piper could carry a bad script , of which there were a few in season one . Smith too gives the impression that he can carry the show when there's a duff screenplay Gillan just comes across as one of those generic , irritating bimbos that populated the show after Ian and Barbara left in the mid 1960s . I hope it's just a one off bad performance but whilst you could believe Rose , Martha and Donna existed in the real world I can't help thinking that Amy - the way she's written and the way she played - is merely a character from a television show
Here's hoping next weeks episode is an improvement which involves Spitfires in space in a plot recycled from the 1966 story Power Of The Daleks . One can only think Moffat is wasted as a television scriptwriter and he should be employed as an environmental scientist . All this recycling would be put to good use and we'd have a world where there's no deforestation or green house gases
Matt Smith is good as The Doctor . He's not as intense as Eccleston but is far less irritating than Tennant . He plays the role in a rather Troughtonesque manner and I can picture him growing in the public affection . The unfortunate thing though is that he shows that the rest of the cast aren't up to much . Terence Hardiman is best known for his eponymous role as THE DEMON HEADMASTER which he effectively reprises here . Sophie Okonedo received an Oscar nom for HOTEL RWANDA but gives the impression she's just appearing in a kids show while Karen Gillan is dreadful as Amy though I'm not sure if it's entirely down to the actress . Perhaps more to the script ?
Actually this is a serious problem Eccleston and Piper could carry a bad script , of which there were a few in season one . Smith too gives the impression that he can carry the show when there's a duff screenplay Gillan just comes across as one of those generic , irritating bimbos that populated the show after Ian and Barbara left in the mid 1960s . I hope it's just a one off bad performance but whilst you could believe Rose , Martha and Donna existed in the real world I can't help thinking that Amy - the way she's written and the way she played - is merely a character from a television show
Here's hoping next weeks episode is an improvement which involves Spitfires in space in a plot recycled from the 1966 story Power Of The Daleks . One can only think Moffat is wasted as a television scriptwriter and he should be employed as an environmental scientist . All this recycling would be put to good use and we'd have a world where there's no deforestation or green house gases