Dr. Who new series 1 (Eccleston)

[nacho]

So...season one (or "Season 27" for the purists) hit to rave reviews, and season two was purchased within a few episodes.  That starts next spring.  As the Dr. Who machine grew, they went ahead and bought a third season.  Seems like a wild move to me.

Now, as second season episodes begin filming, we get this news:

Torchwood Spins Off Who

The BBC announced that it has commissioned a spinoff series of its hit revival of Doctor Who for its BBC Three network. The new series, from the new Who's creator Russell T. Davies, will be called Torchwood—an anagram of "Doctor Who"—and will feature the character of Captain Jack (John Barrowman), a swashbuckling spacefarer who was introduced in Who last season. The network has ordered 13 episodes.

"Torchwood is a British sci-fi paranoid thriller, a cop show with a sense of humor," Davies said in a statement. "It's dark, wild and sexy. It's The X-Files meets This Life. It's a stand-alone series for adult audiences, which will have its own unique identity. I have just begun working on the scripts with a team of writers and cannot wait to see the results."

Set in modern-day Cardiff, Torchwood will get its launch in the Christmas special and second season of Doctor Who and will center on Torchwood, a renegade group of investigators. No stories will cross over between Torchwood and Doctor Who, the BBC said.

A spinoff after only one season.  Now that's called a comeback.  The first season of the remake already outstripped the ratings of the old show.  Sci-fi begin again.

[monkey!]

The remake stank of shit.

It was a watered-down, poorly conceived children's programme; just another Telly Tubbies.

[Tyson]

So.... What's Dr. Who about, anyways?

[monkey!]

So.... What's Dr. Who about, anyways?

It's all about a lovely man called Tom Baker.

[nacho]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_who

[monkey!]

Wikipedia is a tool of The Devil.

[RottingCorpse]

I simply didn't know where else to put this:

I think it's a safe assumption that guys who write internet articles about film are geeks. Even beyond the actual articles we put up, it's pretty obvious that we all have deep, dark secrets relating to hidden geekiness. For instance, when I was in high school, I edited ten bi-monthly editions of a fanzine called "Eternity" that was devoted to "Doctor Who" and other televisual science fiction and fantasy. My friends and I were fifteen, and whilst it was fairly amateurish (particularly in the beginning), we were pretty well received. In fact, I've recently had my "Doctor Who" obsession re-ignited, first by the ABC then by the new Russel T Davies series. Yes, I am a big fan. And "The Christmas Invasion" (the first proper episode with David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor) is probably the finest episode of "Who" ever produced.

So you know where I'm coming from when I tell you that a few months ago, I did the geekiest thing I've ever done in my life.

A friend had sent me a link to a trailer. It was, he told me, a trailer for a porn film, but one I absolutely had to watch. Now, I'm not a huge fan of porn. I don't have anything against it, I just find it really boring and curiously un-sexy. I'm in that small percentile of guys who don't own porn of any kind, and while I wonder if sometimes it makes me look like a bit of a prude, I don't spend that much time thinking about it. So I click on this link and a video starts up. It's four blondes in a car speaking really bad lines in really bad English. For some reason their car breaks down and they have to walk through the forest in skimpy outfits.

So, just as I'm beginning to wonder why I've been direct to the link, one of the girls disappears. She reappears, naked, on a ship, and just as we hear "Extermine! Exterminate!", we pull back to reveal Daleks advancing on her. Then the title: ABDUCTED BY THE DALEKS!

It was Hungarian Lesbian Dalek Porn, and I had to own it.

Immediately, my housemate and I jumped on the net and begun searching for copies. The BBC had jumped all over this, forbidding sites to sell copies. The makers had vainly changed the title to ABDUCTED BY THE DALOIDS, but even this wasn't good enough. The BBC was forbidding anyone from selling any copies, regardless of what the title was.

A lot of searching led us to a site selling the DALOIDS version. While it was essentially the same movie, we both agreed that the whole point of tracking it down was to get *Dalek* porn. I eventually gave up, but the next day he came across a copy of the original DALEK version. Only a thousand ever made. After a brief debate over which one of us wanted it more, we decided to get two copies. This was too great a talking point, too irrestible a collector's item to not shell out the AUS$45 required. Each.

Why is this the geekiest thing I've ever done? Because it's the first porn I've ever bought, and I didn't get it for the girls; I got it for the Daleks.

We finally watched the film the other night, once we'd gathered a small portion of the hundreds of people who'd told us they'd wanted to watch it. The film itself was unsurprisingly awful, but it's the sort of thing you can really get a kick out of if you're watching with a group of beer-fuelled friends. If you do manage to track it down, make sure you're getting it for the Daleks: there's no actual sex anywhere in the film.

Can you compete with this? Is this so pathetically ungeeky that you can top it with six geekier things you did before breakfast? Tell us below!

[nacho]

Yes, I can compete with it, as the article asks.  I downloaded Abducted by the Daleks as soon as it was released, including a special features disc. 

And it's not "porn."  It's naked women.  They don't even do anything.  It's 60's nudie flick stuff.  Except with Daleks!!

[nacho]

So, despite Monkey's vehemence for everything that happened after Tom Baker, Doctor Who hits Sci-Fi on the 17th of March. 

Season 27 -- It's a season of faults and fumbles, thrown into a ratings frenzy by the strong fanbase that has always been underestimated by the traditionally blind BBC.  It's everything you would expect from a show that's filling the shoes of a low-budget wonder that lasted from 1963 to 1989 and never, really, defined itself or its genre.  Bringing Doctor Who to life is like taking over Colonel Kurtz's army after he died.  Even the worst episodes and worst Doctors have been cast in a glittering, priceless, alien metal. 

And, yet, it was a success.  Despite those faults and fumbles, the roll-eye moments and deep sighs, the pulled punches and strange sorta story-arc, the show did something that its predecessor was famous for:  It was kinda catchy.  As the season progressed, the stupid elements morphed into that half-laugh, that proto-MST3K internal voice that made you go, ah, Doctor Who. 

It's a daring thing, really. This ain't no Battlestar Galactica.  Battlestar Galactica was a cool show that disgraced itself from out of the gate, had the mystical ability to wipe the last season from the records, and then stewed for a generation.  Doctor Who was alive and vibrant, even in the end, and it spanned generations.  It's etched everywhere in our pop culture, whether you know it or not.  Eccleston's Ninth Doctor serves the purpose of setting the stage, of pulling the show, screaming, into the 21st Century.  Season 27 is really about the upcoming Season 28.  Tenant's Tenth Doctor now has a pleasant task -- to simply continue the momentum of the Doctor Who universe.  The show has been accepted and welcomed.

So -- on the 17th, the US audience is introduced to a sort of self-conscious revisit to a show that's impossible to mimic, and nearly impossible to continue.  The granddaddy of sci-fi television, a weird and vital vein that runs through the genre and has, despite cancellation in 89, never really given up influencing the writing and approach of most every sci-fi show out there.  Star Trek's the mother who sat at home, nourished us (and, when we left for college, became some sort of sick whore and died of AIDS).  Doctor Who's the father down at the factory.  The bread on the table. 

The Wikipedia article linked above is good for a crash course.  Ultimately, the great thing about the show is that you can jump right in.  Over 700 episodes precede the premiere on the 17th.  But, you don't really need them.  Dr. Who is the last, great episodic sci-fi.

[nacho]

And...an episode guide.  I'm not sure what Sci-Fi will do to fuck it up, but here's how season 27 originally aired:


Rose  (present day)

We leap right in as if the show's been on the air all along.  Eccleston is, obviously, newly regenerated, but no details are given on what happened to Paul McGann.  We open up with an old, though somewhat obscure enemy:  The Autons.  The Third Doctor defeated them twice, foiling the plans of the never-seen Nestene Consciousness.  The Autons are nice and retro, but the Nestene has been upgraded for the new show.

Nacho's Gin Rating:  3 of 4.  The comeback.  It's like a fan-made episode and it's cool to finally meet the Nestene after 35 years.  And the Auton's are suitably violent.

The End of the World  (the year five billion)

And...a fumble.  This suffers more from the first episode blues than Rose does.  The Doc and Rose go to the end of time to view the destruction of Earth, but odd things are afoot... A gratuitous show-off-the-monster episode, as well as getting Rose's feet wet as the new companion.  They're trying to cushion a little bit of a revision to the overall storyline, which is an attempt to deepen the Doctor's character and save themselves the trouble of dealing with the plotline morass of Gallifrey and the Timelords. Technically, there was no "bible" for Doctor Who, nor was there a running story arc.  The Timelords showed up at the end of the Second Doctor's time as a clumsy little plot point which destroyed the Doctor's mystique and, as we went on, they became more and more involved in the Doctor's life. By the sixth Doc, it was just ridiculous.

But -- they're gone.  Unfortunately, the mystique remains a little tarnished.  We get great detail on how the Doctor fought with them in a great final war and survived by chance.  So his presence, despite the extermination of his people, isn't all that surprising.

Nacho's Gin Rating:  One of four  Okay, yes, we get it.  Doctor Who's back.

The Unquiet Dead  (1869)

As an homage to the first decade of the series, we enjoy a quaint attempt at a historical adventure.  1869.  But the true Doctor Who historical adventure just can't be done anymore without making us drink lots of bourbon and start pretending we're Tom Servo, so there's plenty of sci-fi.  Overall, enjoyable and fun.  The show begins to hit a stride.

Nacho's Gin Rating:  3 of 4.  Dickens, ghosts, zombies, a pinch of kitschy comedy.

The Aliens of London (present day)

Back to the modern day, we finally get a sci-fi show that has some sort of insane supernatural event go on and…everybody sees it.  And remembers it in later episodes.  UNIT returns -- the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, a secret military organization that was founded during the Second Doctor's term and fought side by side with the Third Doctor.  They're a strong fixture in the franchise.  And they're no longer working with teletype machines out of a warehouse.  They have a War Room!

This is a two-parter that would have been top quality if it wasn't for the gassy Slitheen aliens.  The gag is geared towards the kids, while the episode is geared towards the geeks.  A weird combination.  But UNIT, political apocalypse, and the everybody-sees-it fact above saves it.

First of two parts.

NGR: 3 of 4.

World War Three  (present day)

In the conclusion, we get more UNIT, more gassy aliens.  The hope of a stronger UNIT presence in the future is not only hinted at, but a sure thing…we're looking at the beginnings of the Torchwood spin-off show here.  Torchwood is a planetary defense system that spawns out of this alien invasion.  It has nothing to do with this episode, except for the fact that the alien invasion has changed Earth forever…

What quickly becomes tedious throughout the series is the Mickey and Rose dynamic.  Companions were usually ripped out of their lives and there were no returns to family or loved ones.  With the new show, we spend most of our time in Rose's time period…and in her neighborhood.  Her mom and ex-boyfriend are, pretty much, unofficial companions.  This is something I hope they change.

NGR: 2 of 4. 


Dalek (near future)

The big episode for the comeback.  The Daleks first showed up in 1963 and, quickly, became a Dr. Who icon.  They've given every Doctor trouble, but were destroyed in the Timelord war.  But…were they destroyed?  What is that thing in the shadows?  What is the big surprise reveal of this episode?  I have no idea…I look to the episode title for a clue, but it doesn't fucking -- OH!  Dalek!  Right.

The title ruins the whole intro before the reveal because, hey, we know.  And it's a shame, because it's a great reveal.  Even despite the fact that we know, the Doctor's intense shock and panic is wonderful.  It's a freakout scene, followed by a bitchin'  new-show Dalek that just fucks up everything.  Until…a punch is pulled.

I'm torn on this episode.  It's sort of the lynchpin of the comeback season.  It's important… But it also forgets the usual reaction to the Daleks -- and their outcome.  There's an odd mix of the Second Doctor's pity for the monsters he faces and the remorseless destruction that most of the other Doctor's put into motion when dealing with the Daleks.  But the dynamic isn't within the Doctor, it's between the Doctor and Rose…it just doesn't work.

NGR:  3 of 4.  Death, destruction, a rogue Dalek.  But not four of four because we're not on this boat to feel good.  You can't market Dr. Who as a children's show when 100% of your fanbase is 20-plus.

The Long Game  (the year 200,000)

Simon Pegg in the house!  His mere presence ups the episode.  We're at one star now.

We're also in the future, on a space station, and crazy shit is happening.  More death, more destruction, horrific zombies, laugh out loud Pegg moments.  Finally, the show goes traditional.  This episode could be dropped into the lap of any Doctor and it would fit.

NGR: 4 of 4.  One for Pegg, three for -- Tradition!

Father's Day (present day)

Yawn -- Rose and her dead dad and the timeline gets fucked up.

NGR:  2 of 4.  It gets that rating because, when the Timeline is fucked up, it's really fun.  But, up until then, it's gin time!

The Empty Child (1941)

A wildly creepy episode set during the Blitz.  Loads of fun.  Good horror elements here.

NGR: 4 of 4.

Another two parter.

The Doctor Dances  (1941)

Conclusion.  We don't falter from The Empty Child.

NGR: 4 of 4

Boom Town (present day)

Ah, okay.  The farting alien shtick is back.  This time, though, it's not as kid-friendly.  So we'll give it:

NGR: 2 of 4

Bad Wolf (100 years after The Long Game)

An episode with insane robots, game shows where you die horrifically and, finally, a really good reveal.  Though, knowing Sci-Fi, the commercials and previews will destroy that reveal.  So, after Boom Town, go on a preview-blackout.  If preserved, Bad Wolf is a great episode.  And Eccleston really seems comfortable with the Doctor here.

NGR: 4 of 4.

Another two parter.

The Parting of the Ways (100 years after The Long Game/Present Day)

And…there we go.  The end of season 27, and of the Ninth Doctor.  Continuing from Bad Wolf, post-super-reveal, it stands out as a victorious finale:  Proof that the Doctor has returned to television, and has survived that return.  For the people getting into the series for the first time -- consider this the introduction. 

NGR: 4 of 4.

[nacho]

Well, Sci-Fi is up to "Father's Day," showing on the 28th.  Sadly, Dr. Who has been a bust in the US.  The ratings for the episodes so far have been hopelessly low... Which proves Sci-Fi's initial reaction to the show in 2005:  Not fit for the US audience.

Then again, Sci-Fi loves to fulfill prophecies.  They aren't pushing or caring about the show. 

US audiences are coming off of a renewed era of powerful sci-fi.  The childish energy of the Russel Davies interpretation of Doctor Who is going to have a hard time flying... But I expected a little more support.  Though, as the show has evolved, the flaws of the first season of the new series are very clear and very clumsy.

July sees the box set for the Eccleston season...so let's see what DVD sales say.  So far, the original series region one sales have been very strong.

[nacho]

The poor performance on the Sci-Fi channel should be noted by Davies, who continues to kidify the show:

Ratings for the seventh episode of the first season of the new series, The Long Game, on US television on the Sci Fi Channel, are in. The numbers were slightly up from the previous week, averaging a 1.20 household rating with an average viewing audience of 1.4 million viewers, up one-tenth of a million from the previous week's low for "Dalek". Season-to-date, Sci Fi reports that Doctor Who is currently averaging a 1.35 household rating and an average audience of 1.6 million viewers for the season (noting also that the audience, according to their current mid-season demographics, is 64% male/36% female, with a median age of 47 years.)

Doctor Who's fanbase is no longer teenaged.  The old fans are floating this puppy.  Though, in the US, those 47 year old men are all creepy, I promise you.  I go through great pains to avoid other Doctor Who fans because they're all 300 pounds, wearing sweatsuits, and sitting in the middle of a pile of Dr. Who memorabilia.  Or they're crazed dwarfs with crooked canes who can quote and act out every episode of the series.