Lying on the ground of Hampstead Heath, staring at the stars, in complete defiance of the traditional act of dogging normally found the Heath, the Doctor and, new non-Rose companion, Amy Pond choose their next adventure… It’s a simple start to an advert that wears its budget on its sleeve. Lots of swirly colours, floating Daleks and grinning creatures ensure that those in the audience wearing 3D glasses are in for an awe inspiring 40 seconds. Okay, so showing a 3D advert on the BBC to advertise the new series of its flagship show on a medium often associated with being quite flat did give the whole proceedings an air of watching Jaws 3D when the shark explodes, but it was still an opportunity to see more of Matt Smith as the new Doctor.
But what do the fans think? Well, not a lot really. There are already cries of it not fitting into Doctor Who continuity. A 45 year old poster has spoken on behalf of the 8-15 year old target audience decrying the trailer as nothing but tosh. So angry was he, that he had no time for spelling or grammar.
And thank God he did speak out against this 40 second piece of propaganda. It’s been widely known amongst the fan community that since its reboot, Doctor Who has been purposely morphed from its traditional adult themes of time travel and robot dogs, to something resembling a family show aimed squarely at everyone outside of the continuity picking bracket. As a Doctor Who fan myself, I find it tough to swallow the BBC’s incessant need to distance itself from thought provoking drama and pour money into a show that may as well be called Queer As Folk series 3. The special effects are shoddy, the acting appalling and, in some cases, it all comes across a little too cheesy and childish. The following is just a number of instances where in the last five years, Russell T Davies has pissed on the corpse of William Hartnell. I only present them here so Steven Moffett can learn from them and quickly amend any problems before the new series in March.
1) The 2009 episode ‘Robot’ found the Doctor and his companion Sarah Jane (God when will we see the last of her!), taking on the might of a giant robot. The worse part about this whole episode are the special effects. How are we supposed to realistically accept that Sarah Jane has been kidnapped by a Robot when she’s clearly CGI. If I wanted to cry at a bunch of 1s and 0s, I’d watch fucking Avatar.
2) Russell ran a competition on Blue Peter for one lucky winner to design a bad guy for Doctor Who. The winning result was this:
Eventually played by Alan Carr, this episode served to show that Russell had completely lost the plot.
3) With a new doctor came a new outfit and it wasn’t long before the fans were in a fevered rage only reserved for Gary Glitter and war. The image below shows how RTD’s gay agenda was in full effect. In a style that was later dubbed ‘geek chic’, the Doctor looked every inch the kind of person who appreciates the work of Van Gogh… If you catch my meaning.
- Ooh, hello Mary!
4) Russell was well known for trying to be overtly politically correct and this was never more obvious than in this clip taken from 2005’s Talons of Weng Chiang.
Fuck off Russell, you Guardian reading ponce!
5) David Tennant’s portrayal of the Doctor took a battering over the last few years and quite rightly so. As we see in this trailer for 2007’s The Time Meddler, David chooses to portray the Doctor as a crotchety old man who fumbles his lines! A long way away from the train punching Doctor we hardcore fans have come to love. Where’s the moodiness? Where’s the darkness? We expected more! Heck, we deserved more.
6) Another example of Russell’s need to inject his lifestyle into the show can be seen in the opening sequence. Look hard enough and you’ll see the Doctor wink. Wink, for Christ’s sake. We all know the kind of people who like to wink. The same kind of people who like to read the Daily Mail in the dark… If you catch my meaning.
7) Finally, just when we thought it safe, RTD gave us the 10th Doctor’s final episode. And what a mess it was. The entire thing was set on Earth, John Simm returned as the Master for what could quite possibly be the campest portrayal of the criminal genius and to add insult to injury, how did the doctor die? Not in the hail of bullets we would have all liked that’s for sure. Instead, RTD’s constant hints of ‘The Doctor falls off a satellite’ turned out to be nothing more engrossing than the Doctor falling off a satellite.
Steve, if you have any ounce of dignity, you’ll listen to the fans, take note of the points above and give us a Doctor we want. One that justifies why we argue with 16 year old kids on forums whilst our wives file for divorce.
So, it’s official. The fifth series of New Who has begun filming, but ask some fans and everything is not as it seems. All day yesterday, exclusive photos bounced around the internet and speculation ran rife. One of the main rumours doing the rounds is that Matt Smith isn’t the 11th Doctor. No, no, he’s the 1st Doctor at an earlier stage in his life. Most of the evidence seems to centre around the fact that no one can accept that the Doctor would dress the way Matt Smith is now doing. ‘He’s clearly the first doctor,’ one forum member of Digital Spy cried, ‘He’s wearing a bowtie. The 10th Doctor would never wear that!’. Of course, now it all makes sense. Personally, I like the costume. It fits in with the contradiction that runs through Doctor Who. In the same way, the 1st Doctor’s crotchety manner made way for the 2nd’s buffoonery, the 10th’s mockney geek chic is, at first sight, making way for a very unhip dress sense.
