Friday, March 9, 2012

From BEYOND THE GRAVE (ii)

Yes, Gabriel Chase has updated A WHOPPING TWO SENTENCES to his "ever-evolving" website - that's roughly a word a month since he last changed anything.

Let's look at it now...

With new Executive Producer Steven Moffatt casting the virtually unknown Matt Smith as his lead (looking like a cross between Edward Scissorhands, Marilyn Manson and a young Peter Davison),
This is of course, a massive insult to Matt Smith there. We know how much GC despises Davo, but his opinions on Johnny Depp and electropop goths are less certain. And, since Matt Smith is now UNIVERSALLY KNOWN as Doctor Who - much like Tom Baker before him - isn't this rather superfluous.

and equally unknown Karen Gillan
Oh, bollocks! Everyone knew her as the redhead in the bikini from The Kevin Bishop Show. Or the soothsayer from Fires of Pompeii. She was practically a household name in England, while of course Matt Smith was "that bloke from Party Animals later on tonight on your ABC" as the press dubbed him.

as his mini-skirted sidekick Amy, a new direction for the show was inevitable,
I would have thought Moffat being in charge was more important than the cast. Was a new direction of the show inevitable when Freema "SHE'S ONLY HALF-BLACK!!!" Agyeman was cast? If it's so inevitable it happens on a regular basis, why even comment on it in the first place?

and Moffatt immediately introduced the kind of convoluted inter-episode cross-linking that had been such a trademark of his Coupling sitcom.
Yeah, cause it's not like the good old days when that daft bint Verity Lambert had every single episode of a 52-week season cliffhanger into each other.

...

Hang on.

Moffatt, however, maintained many elements of the Davies era, in particular the rather annoying habit modern TV writers have of involving members of regular characters' families, which had threatened the credibility of several other long-running TV drama serials in the previous ten years or so.
...OK, I want names, mofo. Seriously. I am really curious to know what long-running dramas over the last decade lost their credibility because character's relatives showed up. Is he talking about Spooks? Or... um... Robin Hood? I'm actually struggling to think of long-running dramas at the moment, and I end up with a pile of soaps. And soaps tend to need families in them, for some reason...

This had already resulted in regular appearances for Rose's mother and boyfriend during the first two series, Martha's family in Series 3, and Donna's mother and grandfather (played by former movie companion and ex-Womble voice Bernard Cribbens) in Series 4.
Cribbens? Never heard of him. He must be good friends with Jack Barrowman.

With Gillan's Amy came boyfriend (and subsequent husband) Rory, played by Arthur Darvill, who became a regular companion towards the end of Smith and Gillan's first series.
That doesn't really count, though, does it? I mean, "we get the companion and her family" is different to "we get two companions who are married". There is, methinks, a significant difference, especially as Amy's parents only existed for one episode and haven't been seen or heard from since.

Moffatt also broke new ground with the depiction of Amy as an expectant mother,
Yes, did you know, women didn't have babies until 2011? It was all done by the stork!

and the subsequent revelation that the recurring character of Professor River Song (introduced in Davies' final series by Moffatt) was actually Amy and Rory's daughter.
I'd say that was spoilers, but I must have missed River Song appearing in The Next Doctor, Planet of the Dead, Waters of Mars or The End of Time...

It seems as though the new show has gone about as far from the original as it can get.
Yes. I mean, the original had two human lovers, an alien wonderkid and a mysterious old man in a time machine disguised as a police box wandering around through time and space, fighting Daleks now and again. And it was black and white. And shorter.

Completely different in every respect! You wouldn't find such crazy shit as an android companion, 45 minute episodes, the Doctor flirting with women or story arcs in the classic series. Especially in the bits JNT wasn't in charge of...

How much further it can go is surely up to the so-far enthralled TV critics and the BBC's higher echelons.
This is, of course, a huge backdown from GC there. He's gone from decrying the show as the mindless proof of a godless universe to saying that... get this... the show is popular, ergo it keeps getting made.

I KNOW! It's such a revolutionary idea it needed stating in such a snyde manner!

Oh, GC. Why don't you just kill yourself?

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