Testing mini-posts with this story from the Guardian Newsblog.
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Archive for 2005
The great teaser, with the Doctor’s bemused words to camera, leads into the first half of the two-part Doctor who series finale.
Spoofing Big Brother (and Weakest Link for that matter) are a little passé even when it involves contestants dying (The Year of the Sex Olympics
The What Not To Wear sequence goes on just that little bit too long after the revelation that the robots are equipped with some nasty machinery but it, too, is a touch of dark comedy before we reach the Game Station.
Once out of the game, the Doctor seems to know without being told that it’s exactly a hundred years since his first visit. How does he know? Does his sonic screwdriver – a all-powerful Swiss Army knife now – tell him? Lynda seems to know her way around the station which is also a bit odd. But the revelation that the current state of humanity is a result of the Doctor’s acts in The Long Game is great. It is almost redundant to say that Eccleston’s Doctor has real emotion throughout.
Back in Weakest Link and Rodrick appears to give “Hazel Dean” as an answer… When Rose loses (and here the line from the trailer – “Rose, you leave this life with nothing” – is omitted) and is disintegrated, it’s shocking and moving. Suddenly you’re not sure if she really is coming back or if this is one of the terrible, unexpected twists and Lynda is the new companion.
The Doctor, Lynda and Jack are threatened with the lunar penal colony (see Frontier in Space with its similar ending) before they reach floor 500. At which point for the second week running the TARDIS provides a leap in the plot, sapping a little of the drama. Hopefully the final episode will reveal just why the Daleks are teleporting game losers. That evicted Big Brother contestants don’t actually die takes the edge off the satire a little.
The Controller (see Day of the Daleks) looks terrific and when she arrives on the Dalek ship you see horrible holes in her flesh where she was connected to the Game Station systems. The revelation of the Dalek fleet and the incidentally music with it is very effective, as is the brief shot of a sucker approaching Rose (see The Daleks).
One of Russell Davies’s best episodes, the cliffhanger is great. Who is the Bad Wolf? How did the Daleks survive? Will the Doctor win? And the Doctor’s final line is straight out of Big Brother: “I’m coming to get you!”
Boom Town, the eleventh episode of Doctor Who, was a late addition, apparently: an empty slot allowing it to be influenced by the previous episodes. We’re therefore rewarded with the return of one of the weaker villains of the series. I’m going to be nit-picky. Sorry.
If we take the episode at face value, it has been six months since World War Three. In that time Margaret Slitheen has become Lord Mayor of Cardiff, commissioned a nuclear power station and achieved the necessary go-aheads to build it. Given that the original Margaret Blaine was from MI5, she won’t have been involved in politics before her previous appearance. Are we to assume half the politicians in Cardiff have been bumped off? And a Lord Mayor doesn’t run the council, they chair council meetings and cut ribbons. If Margaret is a directly-elected mayor, her achievement is all the greater. Especially as she seems to have help on despite knocking down in her car one of the people involved in the nuclear project. Credit to Annette Badland, though: she’s much better than in her previous appearance with some notable moments, although stilly hammy at times. She also gets some good scenes: the line about London not caring about Wales and her various attempts to kill the Doctor in the restaurant (plus the mention of venom grubs) are highlights.
Jack is pretty redundant in the episode which is unfortunate as he’s only just been introduced. Meanwhile, characters make great leaps: the Doctor knows immediately that the power station is flawed; Margaret suddenly has great insight into the Doctor’s personality. The brief realisation about Bad Wolf is handled well: spooky and then funny. There are fewer special effects in this episode but the cracks forming in the ground around the TARDIS are great.
Russell T. Davies shows his strengths with his dialogue and the scenes between Rose and Mickey are perfectly pitched. It’s a shame, though, that we never got to see Rose’s first visit to an alien planet. Davies’s characters are let down a little by his plots. In this case the deus ex machina ending, to which he confesses in Doctor Who Confidential, is a disappointment.
But Boom Town casts itself as a morality tale and here it doesn’t succeed. It poses interesting questions about the Doctor’s willingness to kill – although he didn’t seemed bothered about finishing off the last of the human race a few weeks ago – but the opening rift and the Slitheen’s return to traditional monster mode let him off any decision. When Margaret asks the TARDIS crew and Mickey to look her in the eye, no-one dissents so there’s no drama between them.
Some good lines but it feels like filler before the finale.
Despite rumours to the contrary,
We are allowing the sale of tickets because we believe that people can make up their own minds about what they buy and sell. The reselling of charity concert tickets is not illegal under English law and eBay believes it is a fundamental right for someone to be able to sell something that is theirs whether they paid for it or won it in a competition.
Update
Under pressure from their customers and “Sir” Bob Geldof, eBay have u-turned. Here’s their new statement:
Today you have made it very clear to us that our previous decision to allow the sale of LIVE 8 tickets on eBay.co.uk was not one that the vast majority of you agreed with. As a result of this clear signal from the Community we have decided to prohibit the resale of LIVE 8 tickets on the site.
Although the resale of tickets is not illegal, we think that this is absolutely the right thing to do. We have listened to the views you expressed on the discussion boards and in the many emails you have sent to us. We shall be working over the next few hours to remove all LIVE 8 ticket listings from the site.
According to the Guardian:
Geldof, Midge Ure and Harvey Goldsmith yesterday called for a worldwide boycott of the internet auction site and consulted lawyers over possible high court action to ban ticket sales on the web. Trading standards officials also warned that some tickets could be fakes.
Update the second
See Chris Applegate and Mathaba (sorry, there are popups).
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