review
Doctor Who - Let's Kill Hitler
Like the seemingly inevitable annual threat of a new pandemic, Doctor Who is back on TV again.
As usual, it was hyped as the only thing worth watching between the Royal nuptials and the 2012 Olympics. And like those two events, it promised lots of sentiment and drama. Like that wedding, it was all empty spectacle, and like the Olympics, we're all supposed to cheer and stare, agog, at its brilliance.
Oh, how I despise this modern incarnation of Doctor Who. To label it as smug, overwrought, incestuous fan wank would be too kind. Saying it has no balls is understating the case - this sci-fi soap by focus group wouldn't make a 6-year-old flinch. It's such a nauesating, self-referential shambles that no normal person could follow the green-screen trail of vomit that masquerades as plot. (Plot? Ha! Whatever happened to that?)
Some people will like it - the sort of people who foam at the mouth over the mystery of who Amy Pond's baby is (who cares?), and dress up as their favourite character at conventions. Good luck to them - this dog's dinner has enough regurgitated entrails to keep them hunched over internet fan forums until the crack of doom (Amy Pond's crack of doom, if head "writer" Moffat has anything to do with it).
They'll vibrate with joy at this sick slurry of garbled explanations and neverending merry-go-round of BIG! SECRETS!, fronted by a gormless public school boy who gabbles out Moffat's crap dialogue like an inbred Tory version of one of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony (remember them?), some broad who used to be a model and has the acting ability of one, and all overseen by Steven "My-One-Trick-Is-The-Bloke-Falls-For-The-Dominant-Woman" Moffat.
I'm off to watch Celebrity Big Brother - it makes more sense, has better characters, and is certainly better written. And it doesn't have Matt Smith in.
Yet.
*Cathode Ray Tube have a detailed review of the episode.
"Don't get it right, just get it written."
Quotation; James Thurber, American writer, 1894-1961.
2 comments:
I must say I agree: garbled & tiring & emotionally-incoherent. Really one would think you can't just put a bullet through the Doctor's head: instead in the Moffat 'vision' you kidnap his assistant's daughter, programme her to kill him, send her back in time (&/or forwards). It's like the old Scooby-Doo: 'I'll build a robot alien & fake flying saucer to scare off kids while I dig tin from this old mine...' It's all just so bombastic & histrionic with no-one being very likeable. Trying to shoe-horn the teenage 'Mels' into Rory & Amy's life was woeful & her blurting, 'Let's Kill Hitler' facetious & then lamely (not) resolved. And what's this about the Silence? I thought they were those aliens in the first episode. Oh, who cares!
While I've not yet reached my limit of endurance with the Moffat scripts I'm getting there!
I thought 'Let's Kill Hitler' was very average. Having dared to stick my neck out this weekend and actually suggest that 'it wasn't very good' I've spent the weekend defending my views against rabid Moffat worshippers. Knee-jerk reactions from fans who simply won't put up with any criticism of their God.
Personally, I think the rest of the series actually looks like it might be worth watching. There are some intriguing scripts from Mark Gatiss, Toby Whithouse and Tom MacRae to look forward to. Alas, Moffat returns for the finale which will no doubt be more of the same self-indulgence. Mind you, even RTD was guilty of that. However, he was at least less insufferable that the rather smug sod in charge at the moment.
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