Posts Tagged ‘bbc’

Tonight’s Doctor Who, Let’s Kill Hitler, was a cracking fun episode from the start. Now I’ve been known to complain about certain issues with illogicality and this episode certainly started with plenty – writing Doctor in a corn field, introducing Amy’s best friend who’s never been so much as mentioned before with a montage and crashing the TADIS into Hitler’s office.

BUT (and it’s a big But so big I’m going to start a sentence with it, write it in capitals and underlined bold for good measure) anyone who thinks a Doctor Who episode with the title Let’s Kill Hitler is going to be another Blink their head examining. It’s going to be pulp silliness and its going to try and give Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds a run for its money on a BBC TV episode budget.

Introducing Mel and getting the episode title into the pre title sequence was nicely done. The montage has its moments. Young Rory moments are humorous. Most especially there is the scene that shows Amy and Rory get together with Amy having thought Rory was gay. It’s all topped off with a lovely 2001 reference to get us into the action in the visual of Mel throwing model TARDIS cutting to TARDIS flying erratically.

The killer robot piloted by miniaturised crew silly idea and could have been such a bad Terminator 2 rip off except completely saved by the Tessellating exterior effect. Its slightly incompetent crew and killer robots added to the episodes pulp feel and humour. There was something of Men in Black about the whole set up.

It’s nice to see Rory’s transformation into action hero continuing. He gets stuff to do and good lines: Knocking out Hitler, a German soldier, riding a motorbike with a hint of The Great Escape and driving a mini through a cornfield. The contrast of post plastic Roman with early Rory as seen in the montage is telling of his character’s development. Amy gets her moments too.

That Amy’s childhood best friend turns out to be Melody Pond and her regeneration is triggered by being shot by Hitler. She gets one of the best pre regeneration lines ever in “shut up Dad I’m focusing on a dress size” and lovely post regeneration fun. Yet this is River as we’ve never seen her before. This River reminds me of Angelica in The Stainless Steel Rat books. Like Angelica we see the character transform from psychopath to the River we’ve previously seen.

Which brings me to her attempts to kill the Doctor. Their little duel of intelligence with Melody trying to kill him with knives and guns. Yet she succeeds by poisoning him with a kiss – the one strategy he wouldn’t be expecting – with the poison of the Judas tree. I wonder if the two religious references were slipped into the section on regeneration deliberately or accidentally.

It all gets wrapped up with the Doctor’s death plenty of sillyness which fits this episode perfectly. The temporally convoluted story of the Doctor, Rory, Amy and River takes more steps forward. I was going to call it a soap opera but it’s something older than that.

The set dressing, costumes and period detail throughout was deserve a mention. Going to the trouble of making Hitler’s office based on photographs of the actual office just to smash it up was a good idea. Dressing the Doctor in top hat and tails was a nice touch.

I was worried about Richard Curtis writing a Doctor Who for two reasons – first that it could be too Richard Curtis; second that it could be Richard Curtis free. I’m glad to say that Vincent and the Doctor was Doctor Who and it was a Richard Curtis Doctor Who.

First let’s get some of the small stuff out of the way.  There were nice jokes about the sunflowers and only using the screwdriver to screw in screws.  I’m not sure if The Doctor actually talked too much in this episode or if that was just the impression I was left with from reading Curtis’ interview on the BBC.  There were times I felt a slightly quieter Doctor might have had a bit more impact.  Music can be a powerful tool for stirring emotions but it is a dangerous tool that can distract from the impact of a scene too.  I’m also not sure if the music was needed over the scene in the gallery at the end or it real bravery would have been to let the emotion of the scene play by itself.

This year’s Bad Wolf, The Glowing Crack, didn’t appear but Amy’s relationship with Van Gogh kept the Crack’s implication centre stage. The early joke of the children in the gallery with the Portrait of Dr. Gachet reminded us of the mystery of why no-one remembers the Daleks, Cybermen or other events.

Tony Curran is one of those actors who I look forward to seeing.  He turns up in so many interesting roles.  The camera angles, costumes and Curran’s passing likeness for Van Gogh’s self portraits help sell his performance.  Why is it that the Scottish accent can pass for other accents?  There was a time only Connery could pull that off but it appears Curran can now carry it off too. The Scottish Van Gogh only pulled me out of the story once.

Bill Nighy’s cameo at the start and the end was wonderful.  His inclusion is an obvious tie to Curtis’ previous work.  He had a difficult job to do – he had to pull off not one but two info dumps.  The first had to set up Van Gogh for anyone unfamiliar with the artist.  It was always going to be a bit awkward like any info dump.  The second was essential to completing the emotional journey of the story.  He nailed the moment at the end with just a move of the head when he’s not sure if he’s just met the real Van Gogh.  Nailing that moment and the moments before it nailed the story.

It took the darkness that can be found in Doctor Who in a new and powerful direction.  Amy’s Choice reflected on the darkness inside The Doctor by externalising it and personifying it as the Dream Lord. Vincent and the Doctor tackled complex and difficult questions of depression, creativity and suicide in a way that felt both sympathetic and honest.  It’s easy to remember Curtis for his RomComs but Blackadder Goes Forth deals with one of the most difficult settings a SitCom has ever tackled and in its final scene conveyed a powerful truth about the futility of war.  Tonight he managed that again.

The easy end would have been for history to change.  For the slaying of the external monster invisible to all but Van Gogh to be the slaying of mental illness.  I’m glad Doctor Who is still a drama capable of avoiding the easy path.  The result is Vincent and the Doctor, one of the best Doctor Who episodes since the relaunch.

I’ve been lazy and didn’t do a post for last week’s Doctor Who, Flesh and Stone.  So this week I’m doing a read one (post) get two Doctor Who reviews.  I’ll come to The Vampires of Venice soon but first Flesh and Stone and then at the end the Crack and River Song.

Second parts haven’t been the new Who’s strongest stories.   Fortunately Flesh and Stone worked from start to finish.  The escape by jumping onto the crashed space ships gravity.  Having the Doctor use a gun as a tool to engineer the escape was a nice touch.

Amy’s spooky countdown was a nice play on the old countdown timer gimmick.  The solution to the Angel inside her was clever and created another problem.  That in turn set up the problem of her escaping from the angels and the crack with her eyes closed and walking like she can see.

The end of the episode caused complaints but nowhere near the same scale as the last episode.  Interesting that the it’s a kids show and must be pure and nice with nothing adult mob didn’t even come close to the you spoilt our episode mob for numbers of complaints.

The Doctor had some nice snappy dialogue.  He also got some nice monologues.  Really liked the lines about the plan not being ready because he’d not finished talking yet and about having to trust him because he doesn’t always tell the truth.  Personally I’d have left the nanight off his climatic comment about them having forgotten the gravity of the situation.

The Vampires of Venice:  This week we got fishy, venetian vampires.  I was hoping for the return of the haemovores from the Curse of Fenrick but it wasn’t to be.  Lots of fun plenty of running around, an explosion, a sword fight and action but also a good building tension through the story.

The location worked wonderfully.  The set dressing was beautiful and costumes.  And there were the vampire girls.  They made up for the lack of haemovores.  Will the buxom, vampire girls get complaints to the BBC?

Overall, although I enjoyed it, I’d say The Vampires of Venice frothy a bit light.

Both episodes gave us more about the cracks.  Flesh and Stone revealed the danger of the cracks as they destroy people so they never existed.  Is the crack following Amy?  The crack unwrites time.  The crack can be fed to slow it down.  The Vampires of Venice was more of a teaser than a revelation with the bits about silence.

Who is River Song?  Who did she kill?  I’m not convinced by the idea that she’s the Masters wife or that she killed the Doctor.  The hints have been too broad and too obvious.  If either of those were true I doubt Moffat would have given such big clues away already.  Unless its more complicated and there is another layer to unpeeled below the hint.  A twist or two yet to be revealed.  Will she be back this season or are all the hints setting up for the long term?