Kopic's Doctor Who & Torchwood News |
| Posted: 15 Jun 2008 02:46 PM CDT John Barrowman is in Canada this summer to serve as a judge on the Canadian version of the hit BBC series How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?. The series is being broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and premieres today Sunday June 15th at 8:00pm across the country and at 8:30pm in Newfoundland. Shows in front of a live studio audience will begin in Toronto on Sunday June 22nd. Tickets to be in the live audience are available from...  | ||
| Posted: 15 Jun 2008 10:36 AM CDT 2-Entertain, the company which produces the classic DVD's, has confirmed there is an authoring error with the latest release, The Invisible Enemy, out this week as part of the K9-Tales disc set. The error is towards the end of Episode Three and causes the disc to skip part of the episode. 2-Entertain will replace all faulty discs and have set up a helpline which will be active from Monday. Customers with faulty discs are advised to either email dvdsupport@bbc.co.uk...  | ||
| Another Doctor Who Guest added to JumpCon Posted: 15 Jun 2008 10:08 AM CDT Colin Spaull will be jumping to JumpCon on several dates. Colin has appeared in Doctor Who as Lilt in Revelation of the Daleks (Parts 1 & 2), but you may remember him more readily from his recent work as Mr. Crane which introduced us to the alternate-universe Cybermen in Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel in the 2006 series. | ||
| Stanbrough heating up along with the weather - Brazil Times Posted: 15 Jun 2008 06:44 AM CDT
 | ||
| The weekend's TV - guardian.co.uk Posted: 15 Jun 2008 06:43 AM CDT
 | ||
| Posted: 15 Jun 2008 05:50 AM CDT  Each series of Doctor Who has included an episode which seems designed to split the viewers. We had 'Boom Town', 'Love & Monsters', 'Gridlock' and now 'Midnight'. It's really excellent that the show can include this sort of more experimental drama in the mix, as it all helps to show that Doctor Who can be inventive and unexpected as well as presenting the usual same old same old battles with Daleks and Cybermen.My feelings about 'Midnight' are a little mixed. As usual I've watched it twice so far, once on transmission and then again to take notes for this review, and I'm really not sure what to make of it. On the surface it's a standard mid-season money saver. Limited CGI effects, no prosthetics, no monster, limited cast, and only a couple of sets (the area where Donna was, where the Doctor phoned from, and the shuttle). Many series do an episode like this at some point in their run to save a little cash, and Doctor Who, to its credit, has never gone down the route of doing the 'flashback episode' with the bulk of the content being scenes from earlier shows. If this is the case, then all kudos to Russell T Davies for taking what could be a limitation and turning it into something more experimental. The drama is all about the interrelationships with people, how they react when put under pressure in an enclosed space. It's informed by shows like Big Brother of course where normally rational people behave totally irrationally, and where tempers get frayed very quickly. We open with the Doctor and Donna enjoying a holiday on the planet Midnight. The Doctor wants to dash off and enjoy a four hour excursion to see a sapphire waterfall, but Donna just wants to sunbathe. So the Doctor heads off alone. On the shuttle we meet Professor Winfold Hobbes (expert on the planet), Dee Dee Blasco (one of his students), the Cane family: mother Val is an opinionated loudmouth, father Biff is somewhat put upon, and son Jethro is your usual rebelling teenager. Then there's Sky Sylvestri, another singleton. There's also a Hostess, the Driver and an Engineer (who might as well have been wearing Star Trek red shirts!). Off this happy party goes, following a new route to the waterfall. The Doctor disables all the annoyingly blaring entertainment in a nice touch, but who would put them all on together anyway! This bit just didn't ring true, and the Hostess also seemed a little wooden and stiff. A shame as all the other performances were very good indeed. All is going well until the shuttle breaks down and stops, apparently for no reason. The driver calls for help, and the Doctor determines that there is nothing apparently wrong. He calms the other passengers down, but then knocking is heard coming from all around the shuttle. Sky goes off her rocker and screams that it's coming for her in the least effective moment of the show. The shuttle shakes, sparks fly, and the door is dented by something from outside ... It transpires that the control cabin has been ripped off and Driver and Engineer are missing presumed dead (as the planet is believed uninabitable due to Xtronic sunlight). It also seems that Sky has been possessed as she repeats everything that everyone says. This is a lovely conceit, and certainly in the Confidential episode, Russell T Davies and Phil Collinson hit the nail on the head when they commented that this is a very annoying thing to do. It was handled well, and Lesley Sharp made a good job of appearing snake-like and alien in her movements during the sequence. The basic concept here is well thought through. First the alien possesses one of the humans, starts to repeat everything it hears (learning or absorbing as the Doctor postulates). Then it speaks at the identical time as the others, before homing in on the Doctor as the cleverest there, and then speaking before he does, placing him in a paralysed stasis as the creature continues to drain him. While all this is going on, the other passengers squabble and shout and try and work out what to do, initially agreeing between themselves to throw Sky from the shuttle despite the Doctor's protestations, and then to do the same to the Doctor when it appears that the alien 'infection' has passed to him. I liked the Doctor trying to outsmart the possessed Sky with companion names and TARDIS, and his 'Shamble bobble dimble dooble' also made me smile. How long before the t-shirts and badges with that written on start to appear? It's only the entity now pretending to be Sky using words previously used by the Doctor that alerts the Hostess and Dee Dee to the fact that this is not, in fact, Sky at all, and the Hostess takes matters into her own hands and pulls Sky to a door, opening it, and being ejected out onto the planet surface with her. The Doctor returns to normal, and the rescue shuttle arrives to take them back to base. I wondered why the earlier captions refered to 'kliks' as some unit of time (or maybe distance) when everyone talked about 'hours', and the final caption referenced 'minutes'. This sort of thing just annoys me anyway ... I think a 'klik' was a unit of distance in the Virgin New Adventures novels ... I really have no idea why writers like to invent and use new measures like this. I think on balance that the story worked. I'm a little worried at not showing the monster at any point (or even naming it - what plastic action figures might appear from this episode are very much in doubt), and also what younger viewers might have made of it all. However my young nephew was today slyly repeating everything everyone else said ... so maybe there is an inherent humour here which can get lost in too much pontificating and analysis. Just as Steven Moffat likes to try and tap into primal fears, so Russell T Davies has his finger on what kids can do to annoy everyone around them. The episode reminded me a little of older science fiction fare like episodes of Out of the Unknown (I'm sure there is one there where a small group become trapped in a space shuttle or something), or even The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone. Sometimes we need the simplicity I feel to make us appreciate the more complex adventures, and so something a little different and left field from time to time is no bad thing. Next week: Rose is back, the Doctor's dead, the stars are going out, and everyone's going to die. Cheerful.  | ||
| Posted: 15 Jun 2008 02:26 AM CDT Today's new york times has a profile of Russell T Davies.  | ||
| Posted: 14 Jun 2008 10:20 PM CDT Unofficial figures show that episode ten of Series Four, Midnight, was watched by 7.3 million viewers, giving it a 37.8% share of the total television audience. The programme was once more the most watched of Saturday, beating the second placed Casualty by 1.5 million viewers. ITV1's highest rated programme of the day was Euro 2008 with 3.8 million. In a week when ratings were down across the board, Doctor Who actually increased its audience over...  | ||
| I'm having a BLAST in EastEnders - Sunday People Posted: 14 Jun 2008 09:53 PM CDT
 | ||
| Posted: 14 Jun 2008 09:11 PM CDT According to the latest issue of Torchwood Magazine, Executive Producer Julie Gardner has confirmed rumours that the show will move to BBC1 with a much shorter run. The magazine reports that the third series will consist of five episodes forming one continuous story with at least one penned by Russell T. Davies. "It's the longest and most ambitious story we have ever made, so be prepared for some shocks and surprises!" Gardner told the magazine....  | ||
| TOP TRUMPS: DOCTOR WHO - DS-x2 Posted: 14 Jun 2008 03:46 PM CDT
 | ||
| From Torchwood to Hollywood - ic Wales Posted: 14 Jun 2008 12:21 PM CDT
 | ||
| Billie Piper's 'Secret' is out - Los Angeles Times Posted: 14 Jun 2008 07:51 AM CDT
 | ||
| Russell T Davies, OBE - Firefox News Posted: 13 Jun 2008 09:57 PM CDT
 | ||
| Funnygirl gets a gong - Manchester Online Posted: 13 Jun 2008 07:36 PM CDT
 | ||
| Queer as Folk creator receives an OBE - PinkNews.co.uk Posted: 13 Jun 2008 06:37 PM CDT
 | ||
| Calzaghe ko’d by CBE - ic Wales Posted: 13 Jun 2008 05:21 PM CDT
 | ||
| Joe Calzaghe gets CBE in Birthday Honours - Daily Post Posted: 13 Jun 2008 02:34 PM CDT
 | ||
| Joe’s finally knocked out... by his CBE honour - Daily Post Posted: 13 Jun 2008 02:12 PM CDT
 | ||
| O'Connor and Wood head honours list - Yeovil Express Posted: 13 Jun 2008 11:50 AM CDT
 | ||
| O'Connor and Wood head honours list - Yorkshire Evening Post Posted: 13 Jun 2008 11:47 AM CDT
 | ||
| O'Connor and Wood head honours list - Winsford Guardian Posted: 13 Jun 2008 11:45 AM CDT
 | ||
| O'Connor and Wood head honours list - Preston Citizen Posted: 13 Jun 2008 11:43 AM CDT
 | ||
| O'Connor and Wood head honours list - Mid Devon Star Posted: 13 Jun 2008 11:41 AM CDT
 | ||
| O'Connor and Wood head honours list - Chorley Citizen Posted: 13 Jun 2008 11:40 AM CDT
 |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Kopic's Doctor Who and Torchwood News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email Delivery powered by FeedBurner |
Inbox too full?  Subscribe to the feed version of Kopic's Doctor Who and Torchwood News in a feed reader. | |
| If you prefer to unsubscribe via postal mail, write to: Kopic's Doctor Who and Torchwood News, c/o FeedBurner, 20 W Kinzie, 9th Floor, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment