"Who am I then, nothing? I am just a story?" — John Smith (aka the Doctor)Once upon a time, there was a man named John Smith. He had an ordinary job, did ordinary things; he lived an ordinary life. But his dreams were anything but ordinary as he dreamt of the fantastic and wondrous — of people, places and things not familiar and yet ever so. So his life continued like this for many years and he was content. Being ordinary meant he would be taken aback when things would intrude upon his path, as was the case when he fell in love with the school matron, Joan. Of course, being an ordinary person who never experienced love, he tried his best to deal with the situation the best way he knew how: He took his sweet time acting on his feelings. Although this was something new to him, it seemed that this feeling of love would eventually fit in nicely with the life he had made for himself. Alas, his ordinary life was thrown askew for a second time when one day his favorite servant, M...
read more
"I sometimes think how magical life would be if stories like this were true." — John Smith (aka the Doctor)The show’s creators have come up with an ingenious storyline for this episode (setting up the events for Part 2 next week): The Doctor and Martha are pursued by dangerous aliens who can follow them anywhere through time and space. The Doctor comes up with a plan to change himself into a human (via a very painful process) and hide his Timelord essence in a device camouflaged into looking like a pocket watch. They travel to Earth in the year 1913 to hide and await the deaths of the short-lived aliens. The Doctor’s memory is erased in the process (also stored in the watch device) and he assumes the identity of a schoolteacher of the time period, with Martha being a servant of his. As things would turn out, the Doctor was not able to think of all the various contingencies that would arise as a result of this and Martha has the challenge of trying to suss it all out.O...
read more
"The following takes place between the year 2007 and five billion and twenty-four."The first thing I thought before the opening credits was: “Yay! Finally! An episode that isn’t set on Earth… again.” Of course the majority of the characters in the episode are human (not counting the Doctor or the living star organism), so I’m not sure if this counts as a non-Earth-based episode. Whatever the case may be, the episode has a very similar feel to the Doctor Who two-parter, “The Impossible Planet” and “The Satin Pit,” except it’s filled with the frenetic energy of the TV show 24, which the episode pays homage to (considering that for the most part, the show happens in "real time" and that 42 reversed is 24).I fully expected the Doctor to do some incredible and death-defying feats in order to save the day, and I wasn’t disappointed. Off the top of my head the Doctor is able to come up with a plan to save the ship’s engines; he di...
read more
"I'm old enough to know that a longer life isn't always a better one. In the end, you just get tired. Tired of the struggle. Tired of losing everyone that matters to you. Tired of watching everything turn to dust. If you live long enough... the only certainty left is that you'll end up alone." — The DoctorSo we have yet another episode set on present-day Earth and, sadly, also one of my least favorite episodes this season (which means I have little to say about it). I'm not saying that it's completely worthless. To the contrary, there are many things to like about it. It's just that I don't believe they gel together to produce an episode on the high standards that we have been used to in the past three seasons of this revival.To briefly sum up the story: The Doctor returns Martha to present-day Earth to a few hours after she first left with him. Just as he is about to leave her there, he hears a report on the news about some experiment and he decides to investigate. As it turns...
read more
"I know that one man can change the course of history. Right idea at the right time is all it takes. I've got to believe it's possible." — The DoctorIn the conclusion of the two-part Dalek arc, the Doctor and associates are presented with the birth of the first Dalek-human hybrid, and I must say that new voice was way more annoying to me than his original, human voice. I cringed almost every time he spoke in the first half of the episode. By the end of the episode and after his sacrifice, I had become used to it and was a little sad (or guilty) that I disliked it. Damn emotions!Poor, poor Solomon... Can someone tell me why no one ever listens to the Doctor at the start? Weird, flying-metal-container space alien with a bunch of pig slaves appears and the only one with any knowledge of them tells you that they can’t be reasoned with and yet he still tries. Loved his speech (except for the not-American-sounding "this is my township" line) but just knew that he was a goner. Yo...
read more
"Know this, Time Lord: You are not alone." —The Face of BoeAfter the teaser, this episode picked up immediately after the events from the last episode, "The Shakespeare Code." The Doctor has taken Martha to the past and now wants to show her a different planet in the future — the distant future. The Doctor blows off Martha's suggestion that they should head to the Doctor's home planet and instead sets course for the year 5,000,053 and the planet New Earth (which he had taken Rose to visit previously), and the city New New York (although, as the Doctor points out, technically its the 15th incarnation of the city, so its: New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York). The TARDIS ended up landing in the slums of "one of the most dazzling cities ever built."As it turns out, New New York and its citizens aren't that much different from the world that we know today, and not all of that is good. Martha was kidnapped by carjackers and taken to the "Motorway." T...
read more
"I promised you one trip and one trip only. Outside this door: brave new world." — The DoctorHello all! I will be taking over the official Doctor Who blog from the esteemed Angel Cohen and I hope all of you will go easy on me during this transition (I may tend to ramble).Some background: I've been a Doctor Who fan on and off since I was a child and our local PBS affiliate aired the show (loved those pledge drives). Although I've seen many episodes of the Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker and Peter Davison series (and also the Fox TV movie when it was originally broadcast), sadly, I do not recall much about the episodes. In fact, I had forgotten about the series for all these years until I heard about the new BBC product a few years ago. When they first aired on the Sci Fi Channel, I was able to watch the first three episodes of the Christopher Eccleston series and thought they were just OK. Basically, nothing I should be going out of my way to view, and so I stopped watching.How wrong I w...
read more
“Everything has meaning. There are no accidents.” — Susan ChambleeUp to the halfway point of the episode, I was originally going to complain that the episode wasn’t living up to the standards of the previous ones. Boy, was I wrong. The first half was exposition that set up major events to come in this and future episodes. Where to begin? How about the Jump Start? I couldn’t understand why everyone had no idea where they were going based on the clues considering that the location was shown on the map in the film. Of course, rewatching that scene revealed something that I missed the first time — rather than representing their actual location (considering they were in Georgia and the map was of Colorado), it was just an example of how the Jump Start works. My concern here is that if it confused me (because I wasn’t paying attention), what about how it would affect the casual viewer who tunes in? Then again, I’m not the brightest bulb in the box, ...
read more
“Truth is death…. You got to lie like your life depends on it.” — Violent Trimble to her fatherAlex Tully: “Who are you?”Officer Poole Impersonator: “No, that’s not the question. The question is, ‘Who are you?’”After last night’s episode I seriously need to rethink what is going on in The Race and how the participants were selected. It appears that almost everyone in the episode is hiding some sort of secret, which only adds to my confusion….Winston Salazar claims he was innocent of the crime he was put away for. Obviously he is going to say that to his brother with whom he is trying to bond, but is he serious? Even as the bounty hunter was driving away he was encouraging his brother to get to the next leg of The Race. He seemed pretty resigned to the fact that he was being taken away. I’m not quite sure what to make of him at this time, except to say that he likes women who drive fast cars and is easily tricked b...
read more
"For as long as there have been cars, there has been 'The Race.'" — Mr. BrightDrive is the latest project from Tim Minear. Who exactly is Tim Minear? He was a coproducer and writer for Angel and Firefly. He also was the creative force behind the series Wonderfalls and The Inside. With the exception of Angel, all have aired on the Fox network and all were cancelled before their time. Cancelled? Sadly, yes. Yet, even though they were only broadcast for a short period of time, fan communities for his shows developed, later to be heartbroken over their cancellation.So here we have Tim creating yet another show for the network that likes to cancel his series. Is Tim a glutton for punishment? Is this show even worth your time? How will it appeal to the fans of his other series? At first I thought the concept behind Drive wouldn’t, well, drive — take The Gumball Rally and The Amazing Race, sprinkle some Deathrace 2000 and Season 7 into the mix and voila!Huh?This was the same...
read more