![]() So nothing much happens, with no particular urgency. Despite Murray Gold’s best efforts with the whoa-scary-crisis music and Graeme Harper’s snappy direction, there’s actually no ticking clock here at all. Kind of makes it hard to care about any of it, doesn’t it? Graeme Harper does his usual great job here, but it can’t disguise the fact that despite all the running around and urgency, none of it matters a pixel.Īnd about that running around and urgency: what’s it for? Why, after years of waiting, is it vital the humans board the rocket this very instant? Why does the Doctor rush the others through the corridors to get the liftoff cranked up? No reason whatsoever. Is it important that they get the rocket to take off? Not in the least. How about whether or not they get in and chomp the others? Nuh-uh. Does it matter whether the futuristic humans manage to catch that guy running desperately across the landscape? Nope. It’s about Sir Derek discovering his inner Masterliness, and that’s all: everything else is just filler. No, seriously, they’re having a laugh.Īnd they might as well, because there is virtually no point to any of this story. The pointy-toothed Mad Max refugees bawling “Hew-mahn!” The giant rocket, the tousle-haired cherub, the countdowns and corridor-running. The blue alien with the speech pattern that even the other characters say is annoying. So bad is it, in fact, that we strongly suspect it’s a giant pisstake. What else? Martha, obviously, not that she has a lot to do except look sulky about Rose for the trillionth time. The scenes between Jack and the Doctor through the door of the radiation room are terrific: it’s a complex relationship, with a lot that’s unsaid, and these scenes get that over superbly. It’s not strictly Doctorly, particularly the bit where the Doctor admits that he ran away from Jack, which is a desperately unDoctorly utterance, but still, it makes for an interesting dynamic. Jack’s not particularly impressed by the Doctor leaving him behind, and the Doctor, for his part, views Jack as he would a large, furry spider emerging from a plughole. (Hanging around with Owen would also do it.) (Being the best thing in the otherwise appalling Torchwood in the meantime probably didn’t hurt, either.) There’s nothing like a bit of iron in the soul to make a character more interesting, and a hundred years of kicking around on Earth with one ear always cocked for a wheezing groan would make anybody bitter. ![]() So what else is good? Surprisingly, Jack, whose character has fortunately developed a bit more heft from the smugarama he was afflicted with the last time he was in the TARDIS. ![]() Can you imagine what an amazing Doctor he would have made? But in our brave new world it’s totally verboten, we hear, to cast as the Doctor someone over 45. The depths, the nuances, the effortless and, more importantly, unhilarious menace… please, Dad, can’t we keep him?īut we can’t. Just as fantastic as the Master, and considering how unthrilled we usually are by the Master, that’s saying a hell of a lot. We instantly sussed that he was some sort of Time Lord, but it didn’t matter. ![]() So, good bits first, then? And the truly awesome, magnificent, toweringly superb bit is, of course, Derek Jacobi. It’s also less depressing, as unlike the others it does have some redeeming features. If we thought all future Doctor Who episodes would be like this, these would be the last we’d ever see.Īlthough Utopia, The Sound Of Drums and Last Of The Time Lords are a continuing stoooory, Utopia’s a more discrete entity than the other two, so let’s start there. When we say this story is bad, we don’t mean bad as in boring, bad as in illogical, or bad as in just plain stupid, although it’s all of those. UTOPIA/THE SOUND OF DRUMS/LAST OF THE TIME LORDS ![]()
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