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Jun. 19th, 2006 03:44 pmOkay, I'm writing this brief review of Saturday's Doctor Who episode, Love and Monsters, because there's something that needs exorcising from within me.
I'm upset.
I'm greatly upset that this episode was spent showcasing a Blue Peter story, a monster designed by a child, and - damn it - Peter Key playing the monster, first like some camp theatrical impresario and, later, some obligatory scaredy green slimy boogedy-boo with fat deformed fingers and a perpetual leer.
Talk about phoning in your lines.
Damn, Marc Warren's performance in that episode was wasted. Absolutely wasted. The man's a young acting genius, and it was a worthy role spoiled by all the "this-is-a-kids'-show" bullshit.
The two bits in that whole effort that stand out are:-
1) The Doctor explaining why he was there, in Elton's house, that night when the little boy was four, and had been woken up by the sound of the TARDIS.
I was actually upset by the revelation, as Elton's memory came back to him, that the Doctor had not been able to save Elton's Mum, and the whole scene where the mother walks away into the light and leaves her boy in the foreground waving bye bye to the strains of the closing bars of ELO's "Mister Blue Sky" still brings tears to my eyes.
2) Elton's closing line of the episode.
This line, which begins "You know, when you're a kid ..." is just stunning. I've been telling people more or less these words for years. To hear them from someone else, it felt like someone had stolen my shoes, was walking about in them in front of me without knowing whose shoes they were.
In the end, I wanted to know more, so much more, about the "Shadow living in the darkness; an elemental shade escaped from the Howling Halls," and a lot less of the fat green boogedy - boo monsters.
It's like writing a comedy, and throwing in the cheap jokes because "it's supposed to be funny, right? So we've got to make with the hyuk-hyuks, right?" Comedy's not about the gags (the truth is, comedy's really the controlled torment of the show's protagonists through the exploitation of their weaknesses for entertainment); and if you want to use monsters in any medium, any medium, they've got to be a lot more scary than putting a fat Northern comedian into a green rubber suit and telling him to roll his tongue all over his chops like a leering perv hovering about the entrance to a school. Green slime and rubber suite ARE NOT SCARY; they're effing pitiful.
I think Russell T. should've been within his rights to tell the Blue Peter crowd to go f*ck themselves and their stupid competition, to go to hell and rot there.
If I were adapting one of my stories for TV, and some nonce came up with a stupid, hare-brained scheme like that for one of my episodes, I'd put battery acid in the bastard's tea.
I'm upset.
I'm greatly upset that this episode was spent showcasing a Blue Peter story, a monster designed by a child, and - damn it - Peter Key playing the monster, first like some camp theatrical impresario and, later, some obligatory scaredy green slimy boogedy-boo with fat deformed fingers and a perpetual leer.
Talk about phoning in your lines.
Damn, Marc Warren's performance in that episode was wasted. Absolutely wasted. The man's a young acting genius, and it was a worthy role spoiled by all the "this-is-a-kids'-show" bullshit.
The two bits in that whole effort that stand out are:-
1) The Doctor explaining why he was there, in Elton's house, that night when the little boy was four, and had been woken up by the sound of the TARDIS.
I was actually upset by the revelation, as Elton's memory came back to him, that the Doctor had not been able to save Elton's Mum, and the whole scene where the mother walks away into the light and leaves her boy in the foreground waving bye bye to the strains of the closing bars of ELO's "Mister Blue Sky" still brings tears to my eyes.
2) Elton's closing line of the episode.
This line, which begins "You know, when you're a kid ..." is just stunning. I've been telling people more or less these words for years. To hear them from someone else, it felt like someone had stolen my shoes, was walking about in them in front of me without knowing whose shoes they were.
In the end, I wanted to know more, so much more, about the "Shadow living in the darkness; an elemental shade escaped from the Howling Halls," and a lot less of the fat green boogedy - boo monsters.
It's like writing a comedy, and throwing in the cheap jokes because "it's supposed to be funny, right? So we've got to make with the hyuk-hyuks, right?" Comedy's not about the gags (the truth is, comedy's really the controlled torment of the show's protagonists through the exploitation of their weaknesses for entertainment); and if you want to use monsters in any medium, any medium, they've got to be a lot more scary than putting a fat Northern comedian into a green rubber suit and telling him to roll his tongue all over his chops like a leering perv hovering about the entrance to a school. Green slime and rubber suite ARE NOT SCARY; they're effing pitiful.
I think Russell T. should've been within his rights to tell the Blue Peter crowd to go f*ck themselves and their stupid competition, to go to hell and rot there.
If I were adapting one of my stories for TV, and some nonce came up with a stupid, hare-brained scheme like that for one of my episodes, I'd put battery acid in the bastard's tea.
