Television Review: Doctor Who

Greetings angry fans, it is I, The BOFH of Anger Central better known as The Angry Systems Administrator.

Although it may seem that I spend all my days in a dark server room, struggling to keep Anger Central up and running, I actually do like to do things that have nothing to do with computers.

In this case, I’m going to talk about the BBC’s television show, Doctor Who. For those of you who don’t know, Doctor Who is one of the longest running, (albeit not continuously) TV shows on the air. Basically it’s the story of a human looking alien known as The Doctor who travels through space and time in his ship called the TARDIS. For reasons you can research yourselves, the TARDIS looks like an old British Police Box.

I’m not going to go through all the permutations of nearly 40 years of  The Doctor. You can do that research. However, I’m not above stealing from that well known and highly accurate source of information on the Internet, Wikipedia.

Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The programme depicts the adventures of a mysterious and eccentric humanoid alien known as the Doctor who travels through time and space in his spacecraft, the TARDIS (an acronym for Time And Relative Dimension In Space), which normally appears from the exterior to be a blue 1950s British police box. With his companions, he explores time and space, faces a variety of foes and rights wrongs.

Obviously, you can’t have one actor playing thew same part for 50 years, especially with a break of 20 years in the middle. The writers got around this by having The Doctor regenerate. When he does this he basically becomes a new man.

The previous Doctor, played by David Tennent, was also a bit slow to get started, but he grew into the roll and made it his own. His final scene when he regenerated was powerful and sad reflecting his real world feelings on leaving the roll.

Which leads me to the current incarnation of the good Doctor. He’s being played by Matt Smith. I’m not really thrilled with him. Now I’ll grant you he’s new to the roll and needs to develop his style with the writers, but at the moment, he just doesn’t quite have it. Part of the problem is that I’ve been watching the series since Tom Baker was The Doctor and saw several episodes with Jon Pertwee. Still, I think he’s eventually grow into the roll with the help of some good writers.

Which brings me to another problem. The writing this season hasn’t been very good, either for Matt Smith or his latest companion Amy Pond played by Karen Gillan. Ms. Gillan is a good actress. I can see the talent there. The problem is the way the roll is being written for her.

Her character, Amy Pond, gives type A personalities a bad name. I think the writers have noticed the problem and are working to correct it. in the later episodes, they show Amy as being engaged to the forgettable  Rory Williams played by Arthur Darvill. In the episode just televised in the United States, Rory is heroically killed saving the Doctor.

Amy Pond is completely devastated by what has happened, and then a crack in the universe appears causing Rory to have never existed. Amy then promptly forgets him. I understand they will be bringing Rory back in the final episodes for this season. Hopefully the writers will get their thumbs out and do some good writing.

Now, lest you think I’m going to dump the series and stop watching it, think again. Even though I’ve been unhappy with the way the show has been proceeding this year, all of this can be laid at the doorstep of a new production crew.

In the past, when a Doctor left the series, the writers and producers were there to maintain continuity. When writers left, the Doctors were there to help keep them in line and protect the character. This year, they just about replaced the entire team and it shows.

Now that the season is coming to a close, the writers are starting to hit their stride. Amy Pond still needs a lot of work, and Karen Gillen needs to work with them to develop her character. Matt Smith is also slowly starting to fit into the roll, but I suspect it will take almost another season for him and the writers to fully gel and make him one of the memorable doctors.

So, how do I rate the new doctor? I’ll give him 3 out of 5 stars. The potential is there, but it needs to be refined, polished and possible smacked over the head with a 2×4. 😉

Doctor Who is available on BBC America. I do recommend you watch it.

~The Angry Systems Administrator~

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