Planet of the Dead

This be a nerdy post... Ye have been warned...

Over the past week or so, I've started and abandoned three separate blog posts on Real Issues (such as this ridiculous video full of lies). But for whatever reason, I'm having trouble striking the right tone.

So, instead, here's another post about Doctor Who.

I posted on Doctor Who once before, and it was only recently surpassed by this post about why same sex marriage should be legal as my most popular post of all time.

So, I just watched "Planet of the Dead," David Tennant's antepenultimate episode as the Doc before passing the torch to Matt Smith, the new Doctor. Due to the power of the internet, I was able to check it out just hours after it aired in the UK. Yay! So, what did I think?

Well: Meh...

Some of the imagery was kind of cool, such as a bashed-up double-decker bus sitting in the middle of the desert (most of the ep was actually filmed in the desert of UAE), and... well, that it really. Pretty much everything else ranged from "sigh" to "ugh." (My use of words like that are why I'm not a professional TV reviewer.)

I have to say, as much as I appreciate his reinvigoration of the show I adored as a kid, I'm glad to Russell T. Davies' go at the end of this year and leave the show in the hands of Stephen Moffatt, who has written most of the best episodes of the new series.

Things I won't miss about Davies tenure:
(at least, I hope they're gone.)

Aliens that are just humans with the heads of earth animals stuck on them. Planet of the Dead featured a new one, the fly-headed dudes:

This is in addition to the rhino people, pig people, cat people, and probably many others I don't recall:

Seriously. Knock that off. It's beyond lame, and I feel a little ashamed to like the show every time one of these stupid creatures comes on screen. Maybe I'm spoiled by BSG complete lack of aliens of any kind.

Rose Tyler. Enough with the Rose Tyler already. And furthermore, enough with revisiting the old companions time and time again in general... except for Martha Jones. More Martha Jones is always welcome.

The Final and Complete Destruction of the Daleks for All Eternity I Mean it for Real This Time happening every three weeks. Yeah, I know the Daleks have been the Doc's most notorious villain since their debut in 1963, but they lose a little potency when you see them all the freaking time. Same, to a lesser extent for the Cybermen.

This plotline: There's a massive alien invasion of London that threatens the entire world. The Doctor stumbles upon their plan too late and the entire city and/or world falls to the invasion. The Doctor and friends are taken captive, but eventually gain the upper hand. The Doc kindly offers the evil aliens a choice: leave now or die. They choose die. The next day, everyone goes about their business as usual as if they hadn't just been slaves of an alien race less than 24 hours ago.

Seriously, you could just plug in some alien-sounding names in there and top off some guys in jumpsuits with, oh, let's say shark heads, and you're ready to start filming!

The Sonic Screwdriver. This should just be called "the magic wand" instead, because it can do pretty much everything. This was a problem on the original series too, to the point where John Nathan Turner (the producer for most of the 1980s) had it killed off because the writers relied on it too much instead of, you know, having the Doctor be creative. Time to do it again. Ditto for the once-clever-now-tired psychic paper.
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Okay, enough of the geeking out for now. I now return you to your regularly scheduled long spate of silence broken by the occassional long-winded rant.