Non spoiler thoughts on both:
Doctor Who: Watched the second part of the two-parter. It didn’t get any better. The first true dud of the season. There wasn’t enough plot to merit a two-part story, and almost no utilization of the setting, apart from the Empire State Building as a plot device. Predictable story at every step of the way, and, as I said before, they’re overusing the Daleks.
Heroes: Last night’s episode was their homage to the classic X-Men “Days of Future Past” storyline, giving us a view of the dystopian future, which nicely serves to give personal stakes for failing to save the world. Brilliant acting from pretty much everybody, too — I had managed to suss out the big reveal simply because of the strength of Adrian Pasdar’s performance. I’m impressed as hell with this show….so much so that my Bittorrent-junkie self will actually be buying the first season DVD set when it comes out.
(Keeping non-spoilery)
“Evolution of the Daleks” was indeed constructed of low-grade suck.
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Agreed. (and agreed on your deleted spoilery comment as well — although I have faith in Russell Davies. I don’t think he’d do that.)
Haven’t seen Heroes yet–we were out last night–but yeah, we knew it was “Days of Future Past.” I”m looking forward to it.
I agree about Dr. Who. Those were the weakest eps this season, easily, and probably the weakest Tennant eps yet. Which is a shame, but it’s hard to be brilliant all the time. And I notice that these are the first Dr. Who eps Helen Raynor has written–and before this she’s only done one Torchwood ep and one ep for a show called Brief Encounters. She’s primarily a script editor–they clearly gave her a chance to show what she could do here, and she flubbed it.
I agree that it could have been a single episode and probably been better for it (the entire subplot with the showgirl could have been cut, for example). However, for some reason it didn’t seem that bad to me — I recall second season episodes that seemed far worse to me at the time. Perhaps it’s because the previous few episodes of season three have been consistently (and for me, surprisingly) strong, and I ended up forgiving Manhattan/Evolution more than I normally would.
But yes, I’m getting damned sick of the Daleks too.
the dvd of heroes is going to be so much worth it…
for the commentary track alone!
now if they can get alex ross to do the menu screens.
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Her TW episode was pretty Meh as well, but that didn’t stick out so badly in TW.
“Daleks in Manhattan! Brilliant! Marvellous! Fantastic!” – RTD, DW confidential
“Errr… not in and of themselves, no.” – everyone else
A two-parter consisting of “HEY WOW!” reveals that didn’t actually provoke anything but an “….and?”
Another one to put on my script writing / editing course “Take this script and make it WORK!”
I did like one, and only one, bit of it a lot. When a dalek “looks over his shoulder” before speaking. Genuine LOL.
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Agreed. I generally thought TW Season 1 was decent but not outstanding. And that episode wasn’t one of their better ones, though it wasn’t awful either.