Dr Who-cares sparks into life with cliff-hanging classic
- Publication: Belfast Telegraph
- Date: 2008-06-07
- Author: Shane Donaghey
- Page: 25
- Language: English
It's become an article of faith that the reinvention of Dr Who (BBC1, Sat, 7pm) has been a stunning success. "The BBC at its best!" they harrumph on Points of View. "They have reinvented television that the whole family can watch," murmur sociologists mystifyingly. "It's so-so and not a patch on the time that Tom Baker tackled the mud men freaks of the planet Gaseous Exchange in the Beta quadrant (Star Trek having taken over the Alpha Quadrant)," whinge the nerds on the geeksphere.
Truth to tell, the quality has gone up and down faster than Gordon Brown's approval ratings, and, to be frank, it was only goodwill that got it through series two (David Tennant's first) at Donaghey Towers after Christopher Eccleston relaunched the old Saturday evening warhorse in spectacular style.
Russell T Davies, the current show runner, has been treated as some sort of TV god for the reinvention, which to be fair, must look brilliant to anyone who is a stranger to the Buffyverse created by Joss Whedon for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel-goodlooking people with a ready line in wit and horror.
Yes, everyone's had a good time with the return of the Daleks, but if you've seen a million-odd daleks escape from another dimension, then you probably have seen them all. Time to retire the anti-social old pepperpots.
In fact, the stand-out episodes in the first three series hadn't a dalek or a cyberman in sight: instead, the big bads have been a gas mask, clockwork, statues (statues!). Last week it was shadows.
The connection? One Mr Stephen Moffat, the gifted writer of Coupling, Jekyll and the truly magnificent cult series Press Gang.
The Empty Child had a four-year-old in a gas mask walking around asking "Are you my mummy?"; Madame de Pompadour had clockwork psychos in pre-revolutionary France, the brilliant Blink had statues that turfed people back into the early years of the 20th century seemingly for a laugh and part one last week had billions of microscopic 'air piranhas' reducing people in spacesuits to skeletons in three seconds.
What Moffat has remembered, and which, in these days of 'gore porn' where everyone gets horribly mangled in increasing detail often is forgotten, is the terror to be found in the everyday psychotic clockwork men in prerevolutionary France perhaps excepted.
The doctor and Donna landed on a huge planet of books, mysteriously abandoned 100 years ago.
When a space expedition led by Alex Kingston and the bloke who played Tubbs in The League of Gentlemen turn up, anyone in the shadows gets eaten. Quickly.
This, hopefully has included Donna Noble (Catherine Tate), Who's most annoying assistant since the talking dog - and no, I don't mean Bonnie Langford.
When last seen, Donna had been turned into a plastic robot, which the doctor was oddly annoyed about. There's also a brilliant subplot where the doctor meets an assistant from the future. Part two is tonight.
The good news is that the fantastic Mr Moffat is taking over as show runner; so long as his own work's quality doesn't suffer, then it's a genius move to get the best writer on British TV to take over.
Caption: Not really bovvered Donna Noble and the Doctor
Disclaimer: These citations are created on-the-fly using primitive parsing techniques. You should double-check all citations. Send feedback to whovian@cuttingsarchive.org
- APA 6th ed.: Donaghey, Shane (2008-06-07). Dr Who-cares sparks into life with cliff-hanging classic. Belfast Telegraph p. 25.
- MLA 7th ed.: Donaghey, Shane. "Dr Who-cares sparks into life with cliff-hanging classic." Belfast Telegraph [add city] 2008-06-07, 25. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: Donaghey, Shane. "Dr Who-cares sparks into life with cliff-hanging classic." Belfast Telegraph, edition, sec., 2008-06-07
- Turabian: Donaghey, Shane. "Dr Who-cares sparks into life with cliff-hanging classic." Belfast Telegraph, 2008-06-07, section, 25 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=Dr Who-cares sparks into life with cliff-hanging classic | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Dr_Who-cares_sparks_into_life_with_cliff-hanging_classic | work=Belfast Telegraph | pages=25 | date=2008-06-07 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=5 December 2025 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=Dr Who-cares sparks into life with cliff-hanging classic | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Dr_Who-cares_sparks_into_life_with_cliff-hanging_classic | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=5 December 2025}}</ref>
