Monday, December 27, 2010

Doctor Who Special and Series 6 Trailer


The Doctor Who Special that aired on Christmas Day. It was loosely based on Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol with the Doctor trying to rehabilitate a Scrooge character named Kazran during the "Crystal Feast"- that planet's version of the Christmas holiday. Overall, it wasn't bad. There were excellent performances by Michael Gambon and singer Katherine Jenkins. It starts with Amy and Rory on their honeymoon... dressed as a kiss-o-gram and a roman soldier... ahem.

For once the Doctor wasn't trying to vanquish some monster force, he was trying to prevent a man from becoming a monster. Interesting.

Some very humorous timey-wimey things occur. The Doctor might have married Marilyn Monroe, he and a young Kazran also get to wear some fezzes and some rainbow striped scarves. Though all this was amusing, they did play a little fast and loose with the established rules of time travel, such as crossing personal time lines.

Moffat also gave the Doctor a total Sherlock Holmes deduction moment- he notices a painting of Kazran's father and deduces the state of their relationship by its placement in the room in relation to the furniture, etc. For a moment I thought he must have accidentally forgotten he was writing Who and started working on the next season of Sherlock.

Still, overall it was enjoyable and a bit sad.

The series 6 trailer has me so excited! It seems to be very America centric (which as they have been filming in the US makes sense) with some great Western landscapes and a new hat for the Doctor, this time a Stetson- though River doesn't seem to like it much. She seems like she'll be heavily involved in next season... and possibly naked. Yeah. Anyway, some key quotations from the trailer seem to be the Doctor saying "Amy Pond, my life in your hands," and "...monsters are real." Some creepy doll creatures are on the menu (as if dolls aren't creepy enough).

There appears to be: 17th century characters, Nazis, the TARDIS from "The Lodger," the Doctor chained up and bearded, Utah, the Ood, mysterious markings on Amy and River. Neil Gaiman is said to have written an episode this season, so that should be interesting.

7 comments:

  1. I can't wait to watch the Christmas Special! I'm in South NJ visiting family till Thursday and my internet is less than stable, so I can't watch it down here. Do you know when Season 6 begins?

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  2. They say "Spring"- it's very vague, but supposedly it will be airing in the US the same day as in Britain this year, no 2 week gap.

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  3. I watch it all online, so I watch it as soon as it's out in England either way, have to pay extra for BBC America by me. You might be interested in this article http://io9.com/5718601/shot+by+shot-analysis-of-the-new-doctor-who-trailer/gallery/?skyline=true&s=i that breaks down the trailer and speculates on what's going to happen in the new season.

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  4. Yes, I don't actually get BBCA where I live now either.
    Interesting speculations, I'm definitely on board with the Area-51 thing (though 10 already went there in a DW cartoon called "Dreamland").
    Have you seen the unaired pilot of Sherlock? Because I can't get it out of my head that bearded Anderson looks alot like bearded 11. I may have to do a photo comparison post tomorrow.

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  5. Totally agree, I'm still trying to get my head around them messing with Karzan's personal timline. Still though, I mostly enjoyed it...and it was much better than the 'Voyage of the Damned' Christmas special!

    p.s. Great blog.

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  6. Thanks!
    Yeah, Voyage wasn't that great- I really liked 10's first special "The Christmas Invasion" personally, especially because his severed hand shows up again later.

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  7. Really enjoyed the Xmas special. Saw it yesterday. :) Happy belated Xmas and hope you have a fantastic new year! Good luck with your writing! :)

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