Doctor Redux

The highest praise I can give a TV show is to recommend it to my Lovely Bride. And when she got home from Tai Chi last night, I said "You really should watch this".

I was pretty darned impressed with the new Doctor Who (see previous entry). Yes, it has been updated in its sensibilities (cell phones, the Internet, conspiracy theory) and has more of a quick-cut, MTV pacing. And the four-or-six-episode story has been shrunk down to a single hour show. But it works.

Christopher Eccleston makes a good Doctor, evoking Tom Baker's good-natured 4th Doctor more than any of the others. And Billie Piper is the latest companion, Rose Tyler, an action-girl hottie. In fact, the whole first episode is about her move from normal life to companion-ness. The big bads are the Autons, animated plastic creations of the Nestene Consciousness. They were kinda goofy when they appeared before in the series in the sixties (big plastic-headed dummies), and have a bit of that silliness still (mannikins wearing wedding dresses running amok, a carnivorous recycling bucket). The special effects are nice, but not state-of-the-art. Yet it pulls together nicely and gives the series a great start.

One small gripe - the more modern approach to directing results in us losing some dialogue. Part of this is the script (several cases of cross-talk, made more difficult for us North Americans by British accents), and part having characters talk over explosions. But I guess that' a good enough reason for taping.

And yeah, with it available to Yanks only near the northern border, there will be tapes floating around, if not pirate downloads. If you get chance, and you're a fan of the old shows, you really should watch this.

More later,