Dr Who and The Lake House

[green_amber]

Before I fly off to Cambridge for 4 days..



.. having seen it a bit later than most people, and catching up on comments, rather surprised the overall response seemed to be between "awful" and "meh".

I think we're all having a bit of an NME-style backlash period on Dr Who. Yes, maybe nothing this season's been as good as The Empty Child and Dalek, but they were DAMN GOOD. If we compared to all of season 1 - I think we would be more pleased at this season overall. This week's episode was both good solid old fashioned Dr Who (for everyone who complained that last week's Wasn't Who)and modern, confident fast paced, well acted, well written, genre TV (for everyone else). Looking at it with my screenwriting hat on, I've been noticing just how "dense" the text has been lately without the pacing seeming over full or rushed as it did in a couple of eps at the start of the season - in this ep, in the first minute or so before the credits we establish every necessary plot element with very little obvious fuss : it's London in Olympiad year, this used to be a pleasant safe street, now children are vanishing, and there is a scent of evil that is beyond normal crime; and the Olympic torch is passing through this street; and the girl upstairs is Strange and draws people in moving drawings who scream, and impliedly, vanish. That's pretty good for a minute of exposition.. I am impressed with how the dialogue goes on being bouncy and the tone changing while basic plot is expounded. This is good stuff of the post Whedon, post Alias generation.

And actually, yeh, I did like the iconic moment of the Doctor picking up the Olympic torch, and, myself, thought it veered towards charming, uplifting and pleasantly time-binding (how cool to have an Olympics episode on right now instead of the more obvious future-World-Cup one! though I suppose that might not have sold as well to the Yanks..) rather than camp and schmaltzy - but I accept that's a personal call. Again, the BBC commentary was done very well both in terms of veracity of tone and telling-us-lots-of-plot-quickly.

My only grumble is that the whole thing is slightly stolen from the extremely scarey Paperhouse - which oddly no one seems to have referenced. EDIT: frandowdsofa did , I hear.

And wow , next week's trailer looks EXTREMELY fun. Torchwood finally! Cybermen come back! the End of Rose! I genuinely want to see how they've set it up - it looks more Season 4 of Buffy than UNIT right now..

As for Rose dying, as most seem to think - I hope not. I'd rather have (EDIT :) palatinate's idea of her being reunited with Mickey on the other side of the dimensional rift. We do seem to have a had a few eps of softening up Rose on the idea that the Doctor isn't her special person, and he won't always be there for her, to make this more palatable to the viewers (and hopefully to allow for later guest slots). Jackie dying though, I can well see, as there wouldn't be much point in using her once Rose isn't The Companion. (And we've just had an ep - Love and Monsters - tailored to make Jackie's death more poignant too.)



And finally, The Lake House is much better than (most of) its reviews too. It's kind of a filmed romcom version of The Time Travellers Wife, only without the dodgy pedophile overtones of that novel. The alleged romantic chemistry between Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves which got the film made (remember them smooching in Speed? well, I only remember The Bus) is non-existent again (actually, both seem keener on the dog) but it honestly doesn't matter very much; this is a genuinely intelligent, European style (well, adapted from a Korean movie by a Spanish director) movie, which takes a rather different look at time travel paradoxes than most movies which invoke the trope - here the key issue is not whether the past can be changed, but how much, how, and, especially, when. My own rather elitist feeling is that the reviewers who said the plot is full of holes, just weren't genre savvy enough to understand it - there *are* holes, but one is minor (the book business) and one is major, but kind of playing an allowable joker card (is the time gap between the parties always exactly two years?). I liked it, a lot, and vaguely expect it, if geeks can get over the few uber-schmaltz moments (the dog playing chess - ick!)to become a minor sleeper genre cult film.

Comments

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

> rather than camp and schmaltzy

I thought the torch sequence was a bit over that side, especially the awful commentary by Huw Edwards. All it needed was the music from Chariots of Fire and Tennant in shorts to turn it into complete parody. ;)

Then again, I don't really really "do" sentimentality.

Someone somewhere in the foafisphere (I'm trademarking that word) said that the Doctor should've just sidled off and had a cup of tea when his piece was done -- that's always been my attitude to leadership; they emerge from obscurity, do their job quietly, and bugger off once the immediate problem is cleared up.

[trav28.livejournal.com]

I thought there were some real standout "Sapphire and Steel" moments too. And the scene where Ten scoops up the marmalade with his fingers and eats it was *priceless*

Great stuff - leaves me eagerly awaiting next week's ep.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

> It's kind of a film romcom version of The Time Travellers Wife

You're not selling it to me ;P

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I thionk you'd probably leave before the credits :-)

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

You wouldn't even get me within 200 yards of the cinema if it was a romcom ;P

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

I thought the lack of journalists on a street where 3 kids went missing in a week was very unrealistic. Will the 'think of the kiddies' hysteria will have disappeared in 6 years? I doubt it.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

An end to sensationalist tabloid journalism? That would be something to look forward to.

[nwhyte]

Not guilty of the Rose/Mickey suggestion, but agreed on everything else - except the Olympic torch!

[percyprune.livejournal.com]

Paperhouse was inferior to the Anglia TV adaptation of the original novel, Marianne Dreams. I remember watching that around 1968-69 and it shared the living shit out of me.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I think it must have been nearer 1973, but yes, me too. It must have been one of the very best children's TV series of all time. I wonder why no DVD?

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Hmm. And apparently it was called 'Escape into Night'. I could have sworn it was called Marianne Dreams. 1972. So I would have been seven. No wonder I was petrified.

[percyprune.livejournal.com]

1972? I thought it was 1968 because I have some memory of being five at the time. Instead I find I was nine.

It really was quite terrifying. Particularly the standing stones with eyes.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think that must be why I was so originally acared at the idea of drawings coming to life.. I must actually read Marianne Dreams sometime.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I liked it too, and I think that the first series was full of episodes that felt badly paced, whereas this series is settling into the 45 minute format much better. I did think the picking up the torch thing was a bit stupid, but I didn't mind much. And Dr Who has always had corny bits in it; I think people who don't like them are trying to make the series something it isn't.

On Paperhouse, it's based on Catherine Storr's unbelievably scary book Marianne Dreams -- the book my daughter is named after. And frandowdsofa did indeed peg the reference yesterday.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Yes I do remember it's what Marianne is named after! My sister loved it too.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

(is the time gap between the parties always exactly two years?)

I haven't seen the movie but I have seen the trailers. I don't see how the plot works unless one of them dies at the end because otherwise, they'd both be alive in 2007 and could meet.

The plot seems very similar to a guilty-pleasure schmaltzy favorite of mine on the Hallmark Channel, The Love Letter, based on a short story by Jack Finney about a guy in modern times who communicates with a woman from the Civil War era by means of a trick rolltop desk and a very old post office.

[palatinate.livejournal.com]

As per my own post, I definitely agree with your view that we're in the backlash period now. Personally I do still prefer season 1 to season 2, but I certainly don't have the issues with season 2 that many people seem to have. And we need to remember that after such a long time off the air (and with so little decent TV SF) we have a lot of writers here who are still refining their approach. And except for RTD, noone has written more than 3 eps over the 2 series - and most people only 1 or 2 - so we're mostly seeing the writers' first crack at the problem.

Looking again at the episode list I find not only that there's nothing I really disliked but that a number of the episodes have grown on me since I saw them. And certain moments in episodes too: several of the Sarah Jane moments; the steampunk werewolf-killing telescope; riding through the mirror ...