Sunday, September 23, 2012

Diary of a Doctor Who newbie



So there’s this show called Doctor Who.  It’s made in Britain, and has timey-wimey stuff, I’ve heard.  There have been so many people in my inner circles, and in the periphery of my life that have told me I need to watch this show, I thought I’d start, if only to be able to hold on to my geek card.

I don’t really know a whole lot about this show, beyond the odd spoilers that I read almost purely on accident, so most of this is going to be completely new to me.  From what I understand, this show has a major mythology behind it, so I am fully expecting to be lost and confused for decent chunk, but we’ll see. 

This is going to be a recurring series, but not one on any specific schedule, as I’ll watch the episodes as I can fit them into the five million other things I am attempting to juggle all at the same time.  But anyway, let’s get this party started with the meeting of the newest team.

Revival Series 1, Episode 1-Rose

The very first thing on this show is meeting Rose.  She seems like a typical young adult, working, hanging out with friends, nearly getting killed by plastic come to life.   You know, the normal stuff.  She is saved from the incredibly creepy mannequins come to life by a mysterious stranger who calls himself The Doctor, and this turns out to be the titular Doctor Who. 

He tells her to run while he blows up something on the roof of the department store she works in…unfortunately for Rose, he manages to blow up the whole building, and not just the thing on the roof, so Rose is out of a job. 

The next morning, her mother tries to convince her to go for compensation, which I’m assuming is kind of like suing?  Not 100% on that, but the context seems to confirm.  Rose is hesitant, but the Doctor Who shows up at her cat door, and Rose lets him in.  He is looking for the arm that Rose took the night before, and with good reason: The arm straight up attacks both Rose and The Doctor before he puts it down with a blue light-tipped thing-a-ma-jobby.  In later scenes, he calls it the sonic screwdriver, so I’m just going to go with that from now on.

The Doctor and Rose take a walk and discuss what all just went down, and the fact that there is living plastic around, and how he needs to destroy the consciousness, before The Doctor takes off mysteriously.  Rose does an internet search, and finds a guy who has been studying the various appearances of The Doctor, and has found him as far back as the late 1800’s.  Rose is convinced he’s a nutter, but as she’s talking to him, her boyfriend, who came along for protection, is eaten by a garbage can.   He is replaced by a plastic replicant, but Rose doesn’t seem to notice.

They head to a restaurant, where Rose’s boyfriend acts obviously strange some more, and doesn’t even look like himself.  Honestly, I’m not sure how Rose missed that, but whatever.  The Doctor comes to rescue her again, and they figure out where the living plastic’s consciousness is hidden:  underneath the London Eye. 

It was actually pretty funny how dense The Doctor was for this last third, it was almost completely Rose who did and solved everything, which was pretty cool, actually.  Sci-fi is not really the genre you expect to subvert gender roles, and be so blasé about it.

Anyway, Rose figures out the transmitter is the London Eye, she finds the place where the consciousness is hanging out, and, after The Doctor gets captured trying to reason with it, saves him and destroys the plastic.
Then, we see the group, Rose, her (real) boyfriend, and The Doctor, chatting about what to do next.  The Doctor gives Rose a choice:  stay, and live your life like you expected, or come with him for a life of dangerousness and excitement at every turn.  She turns him down, she has to take care of the lump known as her boyfriend, and her mother.  The Doctor takes off, but reappears moments later, telling her they go through time as well.  Apparently, that was all she needed to hear, and Rose officially joins The Doctor.

So, a very solid first outing, if I do say so myself.  The villain of the week was very creepy.  The mannequins, with their non-eye stare were very menacing, but not too scary to turn off first time viewers such as myself.
Rose seems like a strong, capable woman, and will make a good companion, if the writers don’t ruin her character later on down the road. 

The Doctor was very mysterious, and I rather enjoyed his no-nonsense answers to any question that was thrown his way. 

I gotta say, I think this may be the start of a beautiful TV watching experience!

Feel free to comment below, but avoid spoilers, please!  

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