Hi I'm Sparkymarky from a small village in Norfolk who loves reading,playing ps2 games and cooking.I...
Hi I'm Sparkymarky from a small village in Norfolk who loves reading,playing ps2 games and cooking.I'm 32,married and work as a chef and love writing reviews so others can enjoy what I enjoy-sharing the pleasure around.....
Member since:23.08.2006
Reviews:47
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This is the penultimate collection of episodes from the first re-imagined season of the all new, all singing and dancing Doctor Who and is probably the best of the collections so far in terms of episode content. Picking up where we left off with Adam Mitchell now invited onboard The Tardis, (they picked him up from Van Statten's doomed museum of space oddities-remember?) Rose and The Doctor travel far forward in the future in THE LONG GAME, easily the weakest episode on the disc, and arrive on Sattelite 5 where the media is all-consuming quite literally and where the heating is strangely excessive. Having a mixed set of companions has often proved tricky for The Doctor back in the past and now is no exception as Adam feels slightly jealous of Rose's affections for The Doctor and almost left out of the little in-jokes that they share between them. He also suffers from culture-shock from being flung into a strange situation and it is good to see an episode where it is made abundantly clear that travelling through time and space really isn't to everyone's tastes!!
Adam goes off on his own and inadvertantly gets himself into trouble; meanwhile The Doctor attempts to understand why everything on the Sattelite seems 90 years out of date according to his knowledge of
earth's history. Needless to say Rose's quip that perhaps The Doctors history is wrong does not go down too well....
This is a totally average episode with more all-star cameos from Tamsin Greig and Simon Pegg and the all-too-conventional rather routine bog standard "scary" monster. There are no real big revelations and thank god the season moves swiftly onto what is probably the most poignant and moving episode of the season in FATHER'S DAY.
Rose and The Doctor travel back to the day her father died when he was killed in a hit and run and died alone on the street. All Rose wants to do is hold the father she never knew so that he doesn't die alone but, as always things don't exactly go to plan. Her first attempt to go to him is thwarted when she freezes to the spot. A reluctant Doctor allows her a second go-round but this time Rose prevents her dad from ever being hit by the car that was supposed to take his life. This weakens the space-time continuim and opens the door for a pack of rather nasty looking aliens to break through into our world. This is one of the angriest times we have ever seen The Doctor, as he is all too aware of what the repercussions may be. Although he would like nothing more than to go back and save his own planet from destruction in The Timewar, as he tries to explain to Rose certain events are set in stone and shouldn't be tampered with. This is a more human side to Rose than we have seen in any other episode outside of her debut and is quite a sad story to watch, filmed as it is around Rose's mum telling a young Rose all about her father and the way he died. And in fact it is a story we can all relate to because who hasn't wanted to go back at one stage and change just one thing.....
The last two episodes on the disc, THE EMPYT CHILD and THE DOCTOR DANCES, feature the debut writing of Stephen Moffat who is set to take over from Russell.T.Davies when he and his writing partners jump ship at the end of the current season 4. To be honest, a little bit of wee came out when I heard this news as Mofffat's stories for Doctor Who have always been some of the scariest and the best that the show has to offer. This can be seen from this two-parter set during the second world war that introduces us also to Captain Jack Harkness of Torchwood fame who later goes on to become...well that would be telling....
A piece of space junk has landed in war-time London but is not as empty as it appears to be. The Doctor pursues it through time and arrives about a month after it has landed by which time an epidemic has began to spread. Gas Masks begin appearing on peoples faces, fused to their skin, and they are compelled to walk the streets asking "Are you my mummy?"
Okay, okay it doesn't sound scary I'll grant you but the actual effect, much like some of the early SAPPHIRE AND STEEL shows from the late '70's, is eerily disturbing. Moffatt has this knack of tying in to our subconcious fears and making the smallest things seem very very frightening and manages to hark the show back to it's earliest incarnations when many of us used to watch from behind the sofa. This is Doctor Who as it deserves to and should be- dark, mysterious and at times the stuff of nightmares and if this is the sort of thing we can come to expect from season 5 in 2010 (the show will only appear as a series of specials next year) then I for one can hardly wait!! Moffat shows that you don't need masses of CGI, you don't need big, scary monsters that in fact just one child and a spooky voice are more than enough to send shivers and chills racing down your spine.
These last two episodes rank as two of my personal favourite from this season and along with FATHER'S DAY make this disc a must-have in any Whovian's collection!!! If you only buy one disc from the first season then this is the one you should buy without a shadow of a doubt. Not only do you get four episodes instead of the usual three but also you get three of the best episodes from any of the seasons so far!!!
This is why Doctor Who needed a break and hiatus from our screns for so very, very long. So it could come back bigger, bolder and better than anything that had preceeded it.....
Now there is just one disc and three more episodes to go....bring on the BAD WOLF!!!! also on dooyoo
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Production Year: 2007 - Science Fiction - Director: Francis Lawrence - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Dash Mihok, Will Smith, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith
Production Year: 2004 - Science Fiction - Director: Alex Proyas - Original Language: English - Classification: 12 years and over - Starring: Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, Bruce Greenwood, James Cromwell, Chi McBride, Alan Tudyk
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