TV Review: Doctor Who: Time-Flight

It is often said that the road less traveled in any journey might be the hardest, the most diverse and at times perhaps a bit more fun as well.

 Sometimes this can prove to be true in our entertainment choices as too, as a band in the music biz who take a risk on a new musical direction may be loved or hated for such a choice or an actor might be a hit in a drama after years of doing comedy.

It is a fact then of sorts that the art of  daring to be different makes an impact, be it positive or negative...

Doctor Who is no stranger to the road less traveled, at it's very core the concept of the Tardis and the nature of the Doctor's biological attributes sets it apart from most other shows in the genre of science fiction.

TV Review: Sarah Jane Adventures- Sky

The start of any new series of a television program you enjoy is usually a joyous occasion, but in the case of the fifth series of The Sarah Jane Adventures it is mixed feelings that accompany the return of the series as the star of Sarah Jane and former Doctor Who actress Elisabeth Sladen passed away in April of 2011.

This of course stopped production of the fifth series of the popular CBBC show and only six episodes consisting of three completed stories would ever be broadcast.

TV Review: Sarah Jane Adventures- The Curse of Clyde Langer

Friendship has been an important factor in the Sarah Jane Adventures since it hit our screens in 2007 and while most of the focus has been on the happier side of things when it comes to friends, The Curse of Clyde Langer dips into what it would be like if all of your most trusted friends, even your own family, suddenly hated you and were forced by choice out of your daily life.

TV Reviews: Doctor Who- Turn Left

Day to day we are faced with choices that might affect our near and in some cases distant future.

Whether we talk to that member of the opposite sex we have seen a few times on the commute to work or if we take the risk to send out that book proposal we have had stashed deep in the desk drawer, the littlest decisions affect us in ways untold, to do or not to do, turn right or turn left...

TV Review: Doctor Who- Silence in the Library

I have always been quite partial to library's, having grown up right across the road from one for most of my youth and having always thought of them as warm friendly places full of knowledge and loved browsing the long aisles of books for a hidden treasure to take home with me. But after this week's episode of Doctor Who, I may find the library's a little more dark and sinister than before.

TV Review: Doctor Who- The Doctor's Daughter (S4E6)

Conflicts are very much a part of our daily lives and also can come from a variety of sources, from a full scale war to the more private and at times more devastating turmoil that can exist inside a person.

It is both coming to terms with and fighting these moments that who we are as people are laid out before us as we live every day, with the internal skirmishes shaping who we will become and allowing us at times to leave who we were before in the past, for better or for worse.

TV Review: Doctor Who- The Doctor's Wife

I feel so justified.

Sometimes I talk to my electronics, an eccentric little quirk I picked up from some television show or another, forget which one, and I am always getting eye rolls from my fiance, as it is not normal behavior apparently. Yet although we have the same model smartphone mine always seems to work better, something I attribute to the affection I give my machinery.

This of course is all ridiculous in the extreme, machinery does not talk back and does not perform better based upon the fact of it's user and that user's encouragement...or does it?

Neil Gaiman would like us to think about such possibilities as we step into the fourth episode of this series, The Doctor's Wife and it has to be one of the better episodes so far this year If not of the whole of the new era of Doctor Who.

It was indeed a fan boy's dream wrapped in a simple yet deep plot, one that saw many moments of joy, sadness and fear, and a very special old friend that we have known since the series began. This one goes all the way back to the very beginning and gives more insight into the mystery of the Doctor's origins.

TV Review: The Science of Doctor Who

Doctor Who's most unique qualities come from the shows initial groundbreaking concepts.

A spacecraft that is bigger inside then out, moves in such a manner that allows it to travel to almost any location in space and time. Much like Star Trek three years after Doctor Who's debut in 1963, early Doctor Who inspired a whole generation of geeks and science nerds.

However in terms of tone and characterization, Doctor Who more closely resembled the ideals, morals and true motivations of a scientific mind. Where Star Trek did champion concepts such as racial diversity it was still slightly tied into an overall military concept.

TV Review: Doctor Who- Waters of Mars

Sometime in 2008, it was decided that Doctor Who would take a small “rest” the following year for a couple of reasons. Not only would it give the audience a little time away from the show to appreciate it a little better, but it also gave star David Tennant time to work on other projects besides Doctor Who.

However, there would still be Who on television over the next year. It would consist of five specials, to begin with, the now annual Doctor Who Christmas episode on Christmas Day in 2008. Each special would feature a one-off companion and would climax with the end of Tennant's reign as the Doctor as well as final episode made under Russel T. Davies watch as executive producer.

TV Review: Sense8 "A Christmas Special"

Of all the series out there, Sense8 was probably the last I would have expected to have had a Christmas special. In fact, SF and Fantasy, in general, do not tend to go much for this sort of thing, probably thanks in part at least to the flashbacks all Star Wars fans get to the infamous 'Holiday Special'*.

Christmas specials are the preserve of quirky BBC comedies like Only Fools and Horses or The Vicar of Dibley, not a slick, hip, high concept SF series. For those that are not aware, Sense8 is the result of a collaboration between the Wachowskis (of Matrix and Jupiter Ascending fame) and ‎J. Michael Straczynski (of Babylon 5 fame).

Produced by Netflix, it follows the stories of 8 people across the world who become psychically linked as they try to discover why this has happened and what it means. The range of characters is broad - a Chicago cop, an Icelandic DJ, an Indian Pharmacologist, a German gangster, the daughter of a Korean corporate magnate, a San Francisco hacker, a Mexican film star and an African bus driver. In addition to the range of professions and ethnicities presented, we also have diversity in sexuality with one character being homosexual and another transgender.

TV Review: Doctor Who- Love & Monsters (S02E10)

One of my favorite films of all time has to be Interview With a Vampire, based on the novel of the same name by Anne Rice. Like most things that become our personal favorites there are some scenes and certain dialogue which will always stick out in our minds and this film has one that has relevance when we are preparing to discuss one of the most controversial and dividing episodes of Doctor Who since it returned to television in 2005:

“Vampires pretending to be Human pretending to be vampires...how avant garde.”

It always seemed to me the line could be paraphrased to describe the episode Love & Monsters from Doctor Who's second series: “A fan writing for fans about actors pretending to be fans.”

When Doctor Who entered its second series in 2006, the glow of seeing it back on television had started to wane slightly, and that of course meant the ugliness that is a bitter and unsatisfied section of fans began to loudly protest some of the elements of the programme that they disagreed with.

TV Review: Doctor Who-Robots of Death (Se14St05)

Doctor Who has always been able to pull off homages to all kinds of storytelling genres by virtue of the show's immensely flexible format. It allowed for both subtle and dramatic twists on established storytelling methods over the last fifty years of the series existence in various forms of media.
Robots of Death is no exception, with the action playing out in such a manner that it might have been created by a futuristic Agatha Christie.

Written by Chris Boucher, the author that had also penned the previous adventure The Face of Evil, it was indeed conceived with the 1939 Christie novel Ten Little Indians in mind.

The traditional trappings are all there, from the rogue's gallery of potential murder suspects and the mounting body count as the mystery progresses to the shocking reveal of the true villain at the end.
The murder-mystery angle is well performed by both cast and crew all the way around, with the suspense and mystery maintained through the first three episodes quite nicely.

It also evokes feelings more firmly rooted in traditional science fiction, such as the Human reaction to robots as part of their daily lives. This aspect of Robots of Death echoes some as Asminov's greatest works on the subject of robotics, such as I Robot, with the three classes of robots in the serial having rules about interacting with the Human Miners.

TV Review: Doctor Who- 5oth Anniversary Blue Peter Episode (2013)

Blue Peter and Doctor Who are intertwined throughout the latter programs fifty-year history. Since the time the first Doctor, William Hartnell was the Tardis console, Doctor Who themed segments and competitions have been featured on Blue Peter on a regular basis.

As Doctor Who turned fifty, Blue Peter, not only dedicated the show closest to the November 23rd anniversary to the Time Lord but also had an early morning party for viewers on the Saturday of the anniversary itself.

The main link between the regular Blue Peter broadcast and the party was a design a monster with a  twist as many fans got to be a 'part', with storyboard artist Shawn Williams sketching monster designs from Blue Peter viewers suggestions on the various physical aspects of the creature. The design would be sketched out during the regular Blue peter and would be 'brought to life' on the Doctor Who Party on Saturday morning.

TV Review: Doctor Who- Terror of the Zygons (Se13St01)

More than thirty years ago I was lucky enough to have the remaining (at the time) episodes of the Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee and Tom Baker years of Doctor Who broadcast every week in order on Saturday or Sunday nights.

While others may have had only the Target novelization to help them imagine the first appearance of the Daleks or the Master, I was lucky enough to see them on the small screen at least once (mainly if I could not beg my parents for a VHS tape to record the ones I was missing on).

Through this I learned an appreciation for the past Doctors the way many fans in the eighties could not, but although I would constantly read about how scary the Daleks or Ice Warriors were in their heyday in Doctor Who Magazine or books like A Celebration, I thought they looked rather tame, although I loved them all.

TV Review: Doctor Who- The Reign of Terror (Se03St05)

Throughout this journey through the first season of Doctor Who we have been treated to the brilliance of the show and it's initial concepts.

We marveled at the rise of the Daleks, have been brought to some of the most awe inspiring locations in Human history and survived the perils of totally alien environments.

However a journey is judged just as much by its ending point as it's start, so The Reign of Terror is of no less importance to the legacy left behind by the first season then such classics as Marco Polo or The Daleks.

TV Review: Doctor Who- The Space Museum (Se02St06)

Doctor Who has always been known for it's ability to change from adventure to adventure in terms of tone and subject matter. Being able to do a western one moment and a space opera the next is surely one of the reasons we are now counting down to the programme's 50th anniversary.

The Space Museum is a good example of the shows ability to adapt. The episode plays out like a good Twilight Zone installment, bending reality in such a way that we are forced to look at the universe askew for awhile.

Oddly enough, this story was supposed to be more of a comedy then it turned out to be in the end, due to incoming script editor Dennis Spooner heavily rewriting Glyn Jones scripts and removing most of the more comedic content.

TV Review: Sarah Jane Adventures- Warriors of Kudlak (S01E03)

The Sarah Jane Adventures have so far had some nice moments, even if they seemed brief and fleeting, and Warriors of Kudlak continues that trend for me.

Its only big failing (remembering it’s a 21st century children’s show) is that it sort of makes the main character, Sarah Jane Smith, into someone that seems a little at-odds from the companion we once knew. It is sadly, a product of its own idea.

The Sarah Jane Adventures were borne of the Doctor Who episode School Reunion, the idea being to make Sarah Jane into the sort of adventurer/detective that might investigate suspicious schools or kidnapping video games of laser tag.

TV Review: Doctor Who- Vampires of Venice (S05E06)

Monsters and Doctor Who are inseparable.

They rely on each other for existence both in the real life of the television series, where the monsters are certainly one of the reasons viewers tune in every week, and in the fiction itself, where a Doctor who did not meet and battle monsters would hardly seem like the Doctor at all.

Traditional rules for Doctor Who have monsters that are great and wonderful but somewhat see through and a bit repetitive.

They all want to take over the earth, they all want ultimate power and they all want more then they rightly deserve, and only the Doctor can stop them.

TV Review: Doctor Who-Age Of Steel (S02E06)

Throughout the years Doctor Who has had the distinction of bringing us on a wide verity of adventures. We’ve seen comedy, even slapstick humor, and even various send ups of the show itself.

This week we were exposed to the show bringing out an old and familiar psychological terror that lies somewhere in us all.

TV Review: Doctor Who- The Girl in the Fireplace (S02E04)

This week’s episode was a mixed bag, with a few genuine scares (I actually jumped as the Doctor found the Clockwork Robot under Madame Pompadour’s bed) and more of the same nitpicking that has made my series two viewing experience a bit less enjoyable.

I had expected more from Steven Moffat, writer of last years The Empty Child, and although you could see the great original ideas in the script itself – such as the human parts in the spaceship, the menacing Clockwork Robots, the great parting shot showing the ship being named “SSS de Madame Pompadour” – I still felt that the script, like most of series two so far was put at a breakneck pace and speed that makes me wonder if the cat nurses from New Earth took over the production offices of Doctor Who during the filming of that episode.