Archive for August 2011
Psycho Killer, Qu'est-ce que c'est?
Well, I definitely didn’t see that coming.
I was worried about Let’s Kill Hitler. After I got over the initial thrill of seeing that title card for the first time, I began to have second thoughts about the Doctor appearing in a story with the world’s most notorious war criminal. DWM’s latest cover is a bit disturbing when you stop to think about it. Whatever next? Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with Pol Pot? In fact, I had hoped that the title wasn’t literal at all, and in a way I was right: the real war criminal in this episode is River Song (or, from her brainwashed point of view, the Doctor) and I was very happy to see Adolf locked away in a cupboard very early on, never to be seen again. Read more
Turn In, Toon On, Drop Out
Today the Space Time Visualiser takes us back to a time when Tony Robinson had very nice hair.
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Some People Like to Enjoy it Inwardly
Last year the BFI screened a recently rediscovered episode of Frankie Howerd’s 1960s BBC sitcom. Two small moments in particular made the cinema audience laugh. Howerd is spending a night alone in his flat, and looks at his hangdog, careworn, reflection in the mirror: “Owh Gawd! Where is the golden god of yesterday?”, he asks himself. Later on, he leaps into bed and tells the camera “There’ll be one poor woman sleeping on her own tonight!”
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A Kind of Ending
Steven Moffat has a habit, which I rather like, of taking the some of the background noise about Doctor Who and dramatising it within the programme itself. Moffat’s well-publicised dislike of internet spoilers became a long-running part of the River Song timey-wimey storyline, and equally the various debates within fandom about the Doctor’s sexuality (or lack of it) became the central theme of both The Doctor Dances and The Girl in the Fireplace.
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