I became a regular Who viewer only recently, with Matt Smith's Doctor. I had seen some of the earlier nuWho episodes before (never any of the original Who), but never gotten into it. However, a couple of years ago I tuned into the Series 5 premiere and have been watching ever since. Now I've been going back and watching nuWho from the pilot episode on Netflix. Just finished the first series (and started the second) and here are some thoughts. If you lot aren't sick of discussing these old episodes by now, I'd appreciate your input. Please no spoilers for series 2-4.
-First and foremost, in the end I must say I liked the first series overall and grew to accept Eccleston as the Doctor. As I said, I had only seen a handful of the Eccleston and Tennant episodes before, so for me Smith was the Doctor. However, somewhere during Series 1 Eccleston became his own Doctor. Good!
-Even though I liked the series as a whole, a lot of the episodes were so-so at best. Some of them were just too cheesy and full of plot holes. The Slitheen double parter comes to mind. Made no sense to me whatsoever and just seemed to be an excuse to have people unzip their heads over and over and over (and over) again.
-Father's Day and The Empty Child were two of the episodes I had seen back when they originally aired (the others I remember seeing being The Christmas Invasion, Planet of the Dead, parts of Boom Town and The Next Doctor, and perhaps one or two Tennant episodes I don't know the name of), and I wasn't very impressed with them then. Certainly not enough to keep watching the show. This time around I think they were two of the best episodes of the first series. Perhaps the rest of the series was just so bad that these stood out, perhaps my tastes and/or expectations changed over the last 6 years, or perhaps it's easier to appreciate these stories if you're already familiar with the characters. Whatever may be the case, there were some good episodes in series one, amongst all the cheese.
-Speaking of cheese: life or death versions of Big Brother and The Weakest Link? Really...? If this was some ham fisted message of how reality tv and cheap game shows are ruining tv, then I sympathize with the message, but I don't think badly written scripted shows do much to alleviate the pain.
-The ending of the season was a bit disappointing. I had heard friends of mine, who had been watching the show all these years, talking about how well executed the arcs on the show were. They must have been talking about the Tennant years (no spoilers please!), because the Bad Wolf 'arc' (if you can even call it that) was highly disappointing. What exactly was the purpose of all this? So deus ex machina super-Rose scattered these words throughout space and time for what reason exactly? When she was back on earth with the non-functioning Tardis, how did seeing these words help her? What, she couldn't have figured out that the Tardis, the only thing she knew of capable of time travel, would be her only hope to return to the future to help the Doctor, without seeing "Bad Wolf" graffiti? Made no sense whatsoever to me. Unless this story isn't over and we'll see more Bad Wolf in future (i.e. series 2-4, no spoilers please!) episodes, this doesn't rank very high with me on the scale of well executed arcs.
-Edit: A bit more moaning about the big finale. Why did they spoil the fact that the Daleks were the big enemy in the next-time-on segment at the end of Boom Town? And then continued to pretend that it was supposed to be mystery for the first half or so of Bad Wolf? Bad communication between marketing and production, I suppose. Also, it was a bit cheap and easy to have the Daleks escape their apparent genocide at the hands of the Time Lords in the Time War so easily ("O yes, I escaped. Yes, even though you were so certain that no Dalek escaped, I did. That's it. Nothing to see now. Move along, move along. And worship me.")
-I like how they're setting up Torchwood. I've watched series 3 and 4 and scattered episodes of series 1 and 2 of that show, and it is nice to see all the elements being introduced here. The introduction of Jack in The Empty Child, the Cardiff rift in Boom Town (although, if I understood correctly, this is something from an earlier original Who episode?), the Torchwood institute in The Christmas Invasion. I like how all the pieces are presented slowly and naturally, instead of being all packed into one look-here-is-an-obvious-pilot-episode-for-another-show episode as these things usually go. I don't know if it was planned this way from the start, but with hindsight, I like it. Looking forward to see where this is going.
-All in all I'm liking the show. I think it's been improving hugely over the first series and I can only hope it'll get even better from here on. Just watched the first episodes of the second series (The Christmas Invasion and New Earth) and although they weren't earth-shattering, they were quite well done for what they were supposed to be. They also seem to be setting the stage for bigger things to come. I'm looking forward to watching the next three series. (Again, can't stress this enough, please no spoilers.)
-First and foremost, in the end I must say I liked the first series overall and grew to accept Eccleston as the Doctor. As I said, I had only seen a handful of the Eccleston and Tennant episodes before, so for me Smith was the Doctor. However, somewhere during Series 1 Eccleston became his own Doctor. Good!
-Even though I liked the series as a whole, a lot of the episodes were so-so at best. Some of them were just too cheesy and full of plot holes. The Slitheen double parter comes to mind. Made no sense to me whatsoever and just seemed to be an excuse to have people unzip their heads over and over and over (and over) again.
-Father's Day and The Empty Child were two of the episodes I had seen back when they originally aired (the others I remember seeing being The Christmas Invasion, Planet of the Dead, parts of Boom Town and The Next Doctor, and perhaps one or two Tennant episodes I don't know the name of), and I wasn't very impressed with them then. Certainly not enough to keep watching the show. This time around I think they were two of the best episodes of the first series. Perhaps the rest of the series was just so bad that these stood out, perhaps my tastes and/or expectations changed over the last 6 years, or perhaps it's easier to appreciate these stories if you're already familiar with the characters. Whatever may be the case, there were some good episodes in series one, amongst all the cheese.
-Speaking of cheese: life or death versions of Big Brother and The Weakest Link? Really...? If this was some ham fisted message of how reality tv and cheap game shows are ruining tv, then I sympathize with the message, but I don't think badly written scripted shows do much to alleviate the pain.
-The ending of the season was a bit disappointing. I had heard friends of mine, who had been watching the show all these years, talking about how well executed the arcs on the show were. They must have been talking about the Tennant years (no spoilers please!), because the Bad Wolf 'arc' (if you can even call it that) was highly disappointing. What exactly was the purpose of all this? So deus ex machina super-Rose scattered these words throughout space and time for what reason exactly? When she was back on earth with the non-functioning Tardis, how did seeing these words help her? What, she couldn't have figured out that the Tardis, the only thing she knew of capable of time travel, would be her only hope to return to the future to help the Doctor, without seeing "Bad Wolf" graffiti? Made no sense whatsoever to me. Unless this story isn't over and we'll see more Bad Wolf in future (i.e. series 2-4, no spoilers please!) episodes, this doesn't rank very high with me on the scale of well executed arcs.
-Edit: A bit more moaning about the big finale. Why did they spoil the fact that the Daleks were the big enemy in the next-time-on segment at the end of Boom Town? And then continued to pretend that it was supposed to be mystery for the first half or so of Bad Wolf? Bad communication between marketing and production, I suppose. Also, it was a bit cheap and easy to have the Daleks escape their apparent genocide at the hands of the Time Lords in the Time War so easily ("O yes, I escaped. Yes, even though you were so certain that no Dalek escaped, I did. That's it. Nothing to see now. Move along, move along. And worship me.")
-I like how they're setting up Torchwood. I've watched series 3 and 4 and scattered episodes of series 1 and 2 of that show, and it is nice to see all the elements being introduced here. The introduction of Jack in The Empty Child, the Cardiff rift in Boom Town (although, if I understood correctly, this is something from an earlier original Who episode?), the Torchwood institute in The Christmas Invasion. I like how all the pieces are presented slowly and naturally, instead of being all packed into one look-here-is-an-obvious-pilot-episode-for-another-show episode as these things usually go. I don't know if it was planned this way from the start, but with hindsight, I like it. Looking forward to see where this is going.
-All in all I'm liking the show. I think it's been improving hugely over the first series and I can only hope it'll get even better from here on. Just watched the first episodes of the second series (The Christmas Invasion and New Earth) and although they weren't earth-shattering, they were quite well done for what they were supposed to be. They also seem to be setting the stage for bigger things to come. I'm looking forward to watching the next three series. (Again, can't stress this enough, please no spoilers.)
