Difference between revisions of "Doctor When"
From The Doctor Who Cuttings Archive
Jump to navigationJump to searchJohn Lavalie (talk | contribs) (Created page with "{{article | publication = New Statesman | file = http://cuttingsarchive.org/images/2/22/1968-03-22_New_Statesman.pdf | px = | height = | width = | date = 1968-03-22 | autho...") |
John Lavalie (talk | contribs) |
||
| Line 28: | Line 28: | ||
To become truly modish, a cult on the scale of The Avengers — a possibly undesirable consummation — Dr Who would have to sharpen its visual style. The opening titles were picked out years ago by [[the Times Literary Supplement]] in a special number devoted to the avant-garde, and Ron Grainger's backing is as weirdly memorable as anything since Journey into Space. But once in the main body of the story, the camerawork dwindles: [[broadwcast:The Web of Fear|the Underground]], even the deserted Underground, is a familiar property, and last Sunday's episode included some ludicrous larking about on a beach which was the soggiest possible echo of the obligatory seaside scene in the working-class melodramas of the Fifties. | To become truly modish, a cult on the scale of The Avengers — a possibly undesirable consummation — Dr Who would have to sharpen its visual style. The opening titles were picked out years ago by [[the Times Literary Supplement]] in a special number devoted to the avant-garde, and Ron Grainger's backing is as weirdly memorable as anything since Journey into Space. But once in the main body of the story, the camerawork dwindles: [[broadwcast:The Web of Fear|the Underground]], even the deserted Underground, is a familiar property, and last Sunday's episode included some ludicrous larking about on a beach which was the soggiest possible echo of the obligatory seaside scene in the working-class melodramas of the Fifties. | ||
| − | That seaweed troubles me, just as it troubles the crew pumping Eurogas out of the North Sea in the year c.2000; we have already seen some angry clashes of masterful executives which are straight out of [[ | + | That seaweed troubles me, just as it troubles the crew pumping Eurogas out of the North Sea in the year c.2000; we have already seen some angry clashes of masterful executives which are straight out of [[wikipedia:The Troubleshooters (1959 TV series)|The Troubleshooters]]. It is one thing to avoid ludicrous monsters, and another to fall into the old television idiom of romanticized documentary. As Jamie remarked (in so many words), the Tardis has a statistically improbable tendency to fetch up on earth. Was this a hint from one script-writer to another? One of the things we might learn elsewhere is what set the Doctor on his Flying-Dutchman travels in space and time in the first place. Like Captain Nemo, he is sometimes a little ostentatiously secretive about his central mystery. Children are not much concerned with such things, and apparently swallowed the change from one actor to another without much difficulty, but adult palates are choosier. |
Not too choosy, however: Dr Who is obviously one of the BBC's great box-office successes, and no amount of peripheral niggling will alter the fact. It owes little of this to its timing: if anything, 5.25 on a Saturday afternoon is an inconvenient slot for adults. It is an inconvenience that some of them have learned to live with. By comparison with much of the literary science-fiction available, Dr Who is crude indeed, but a new medium doth make children of us all. Dr Who in colour will be able to get away with anything — for a while. | Not too choosy, however: Dr Who is obviously one of the BBC's great box-office successes, and no amount of peripheral niggling will alter the fact. It owes little of this to its timing: if anything, 5.25 on a Saturday afternoon is an inconvenient slot for adults. It is an inconvenience that some of them have learned to live with. By comparison with much of the literary science-fiction available, Dr Who is crude indeed, but a new medium doth make children of us all. Dr Who in colour will be able to get away with anything — for a while. | ||
}} | }} | ||
