Category: Directed by Graeme Harper
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Journey’s End opens with one of the series’s biggest cliffhanger cop-outs–and “Who” is all about the cliffhanger cop-out, so it’s actually a surprise. If the opening titles hadn’t already given it away, I guess. This episode reveals the villains’ master plan and features them seemingly defeating Doctor David Tennant at every turn. If writer Russell…
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I started The Stolen Earth with some reservations thanks to the previous episode—a de facto prologue—which managed to both waste and diss Catherine Tate simultaneously, but the first scene won me over a bit. It’s an exterior street scene with Tate and David Tennant and it’s actually shot well. There’s no telling how much better…
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Welp, figured out what Catherine Tate was doing while last episode filmed and David Tennant was on his own… she was filming this episode, with Tennant now the Superman III Margot Kidder. Tate goes to a fortune teller (Chipo Chung, in a particularly inglorious return to the show after she was a major supporting character…
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Again, not going to look into it, but I’ll bet there’s some kind of story with the Susie Liggat-produced episodes. She does like three a season, then nothing until the next season. And they sometimes more involve women, sometimes not. This one seemingly more involves women because the done-in-one companion is Agatha Christie, played by…
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“Doctor Who” is sometimes a tad British. So when we find out this episode David Tennant didn’t realize the Ood were a slave race the last time he encountered them (season two) even though Billie Piper had a whole subplot about it… and saying they’re just too British assuming positive intent. There’s the much darker…
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So, when I started watching “Doctor Who,” I didn’t have any idea the title is a joke. Or can be a joke. Even though I’ve known about the show most of my life… didn’t realize it. Now, is the “Time Lord” thing… is the “Lord” part really important? I don’t think I’ve ever seen heavy…
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So I very awkwardly noticed the female producer who did a couple episodes of “Who” is gone, with Phil Collinson back. It was an awkward notice because she was actually gone last episode. She just did the two-parter with the pre-WWI love story. This episode is Russell T. Davies writing and it’s the start of…
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There have to be TV shows where they unintentionally duplicate episodes. Soap operas, whatever. The same plot must get repeated. Unintentionally. Because it very obviously happens intentionally, such as with 42, which is a riff on a great two-parter from last season, only without anything similarly great. Like, if you’re going to remake something… don’t…
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The BBC does market research, don’t they? I’d love to see what their “Doctor Who” market research says as far as target audience. For instance, this episode—the momentous, earth-shattering (literally?) season finale, which will change the Doctor (David Tennant) forever–has the many experienced heroes, including ostensible eccentric space and time genius Tennant, completely flummoxed over…
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One Earth episode without Camille Coduri was clearly too much so she doesn’t just appear in this one, she also pretends to be daughter Rose (Billie Piper) and play companion to David Tennant. Coduri and Tennant don’t grate as sharply as one might’ve feared (hard to imagine her and Christopher Eccleston stuck together so much…
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I had low expectations for this episode, given the first installment was so unimpressed; writer Tom MacRae and director Graeme Harper do not improve at all this episode. The perfunctory cliffhanger resolution does nothing to ratchet up any enthusiasm. The stakes are simple—the Cybermen are taking over this alternate universe and Billie Piper won’t let…
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The cold open of this episode looks pretty bad and the direction on the actors is terrible so I was just waiting to see it was Keith Boak. Then the opening titles rolled and I got a little hopeful upon seeing the writing credit—Tom MacRae, new guy (all the “Who” writers are guys so far),…
The Stop Button 