The Anorak Zone Forums

[Anorak]

I'd say not, but bottom five, definitely.

[Anorak]

I've just added a couple of new ones... if this doesn't become Waz's favourite thread then I don't know what will.

[ajd]

It's down to the fact that the Doctor - a time traveller - is so stupid he doesn't realise going back through the fireplace will cause him to come and find Madame De Pompadour significantly older.

That bugged you? It's hardly as if the time that passed between the windows was uniform...they jumped days, months, years, hours, even minutes. Now, maybe the Doctor should have known it could have been one of those long jumps, but he could have miscalculated since the fireplace was no longer hooked up to the ship. Even given that, it all happens in a rush, and the Doctor has after all just discovered he's not going to be trapped on Earth for the rest of his life...I could see it as an understandable oversight given the circumstances. And the Doctor suffers no little pain for his mistake. I like this kind of stuff. A Doctor who makes errors is infinitely more interesting to me than one that never sets a foot wrong.

[Anorak]

I ought to add some pro ones here to balance it out, but I'll have them all up soon enough.

Anyway, I do like the Doctor being fallable, but I felt the writer's hand way too heavily in that one.

[Lance]

The other major issue with the episode is that the Doctor falls in love with a woman just minutes after he's got to know her as a young girl. Come on, even Woody Allen waited a few years before making his move.

In the same way that Robert Holmes finally found a conduit in his script for The Two Doctors to push his long held belief that the first and second Doctors had really been working for the Time Lords all along (even though on-screen evidence from their own eras says otherwise), Steven Moffat's script for GITFP was his chance to push his long held belief that the Doctor was a kiddie-fiddling nonce all along.

[Tone]

Such a feat is in direct contrast to the fact that it's the most charmless and inane New Who story yet

Does this mean that VOTD is the Anorak's official Worst New Series Episode Ever?

VOTD and L&M are pretty much neck and neck for that honor IMO! With Daleks in Man/Evolution breathing down their necks for second place...

Reading these reviews, I think they're amazingly accurate and very sharply written! I especially liked the posts where it just says "Season 3" and leaves it blank! Sums up my feelings perfectly!

[Lance]

The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky
Silly, ridiculous nonsense that sees the Sontarans come to Earth to sing a chorus of We Will Rock You while the ever-pointless Murray Gold channels the theme to Rawhide. Meanwhile, Martha is cloned into a wooden, statically-speaking version of herself. Nobody notices. Speaking of which, the Equity Police make a mass raid on the ranks of UNIT extras, a UNIT that is governed by one of the Double Take Brothers from Harry Enfield. Tennant comes off auto pilot for the first time in the season, though is frequently unintelligible, while the mawdlyn sob-in of New Who has now reached such epidemic proportions that even Bernard Cribbins has to reach for the crying towel. Despite the relentless vapidity of the entire concept, the whole sorry enterprise somehow manages to emerge as tremendous fun on its own terms.

***

Fair summing up.

It's definitely a "switch your brain off at the door and you'll enjoy it" kind of story ain't it? Mind you, a lot of the new series episodes are.

[Waz]

The other major issue with the episode is that the Doctor falls in love with a woman just minutes after he's got to know her as a young girl. Come on, even Woody Allen waited a few years before making his move.

In the same way that Robert Holmes finally found a conduit in his script for The Two Doctors to push his long held belief that the first and second Doctors had really been working for the Time Lords all along (even though on-screen evidence from their own eras says otherwise), Steven Moffat's script for GITFP was his chance to push his long held belief that the Doctor was a kiddie-fiddling nonce all along.

Jaysus lads. It's all about persepective. A Time Lord wouldn't care about meeting someone a few minutes later and they've all grown up. He'd see them as just being born/dead/teenager/old woman/middle-aged frump/twenty year old raver on the town all at the same time. His relationship with time is different, it's not going to freak him out. Christ, it's not like he made a move on the kid...


W.

[Anorak]

But you do have to understand, Jayzus, that the Gospel is there as a conduit to one liners?

[Waz]

But you do have to understand, Jayzus, that the Gospel is there as a conduit to one liners?

I've had your mum and I want my tenner back.

W.