Season Five: Bored Now

[jmatonak]

I'm really not digging the new season thus far, and I can't put my finger on exactly why.



Each episode has watchable bits, and Karen Gillan has extremely pretty hair. But, for the most part, the season has been a big snore.

Is it too much of a kids' show? Well, the rainbow of Daleks was pretty annoying, although to be honest the physical redesign bothered me more than the recolor- that weird blocky thing the zap gun and the plunger come out of? Was that always there? (And, since the Dalek casing is a machine, why did they need genetic... never mind. That Progenitor thing is a jerk, I guess.)

Is it that the Doctor is full of himself? Yeah, kind of. That trap speech in episode 4 was a groaner. But all the Doctors are like that, even my beloved Ninth. (I almost typed "Nine." Heh.)

I don't understand it. The Empty Child was awesome. Blink was a lot of fun. What, if anything, changed? Is it just me? (Probably.)

(crossposted)

Comments

[jmatonak.livejournal.com]

I utterly, utterly loathe 'River Song', whose name I have to put in inverted commas because it looks so ridiculous otherwise. Ditto Reinette. I couldn't watch 'Eleventh Hour' with Amy and Rory without being reminded irrepressibly of Sally Sparrow and whatever-his-name-was. He's so bad at it that he totally screws over existing characters - including the Doctor. How does he even manage it?

Moffat's writing is a puzzler. I would have said boy-meets-girl stuff was in his toolbox, based on Coupling. I am easily distracted by pretty, so I liked Reinette (as a character) and Sally Sparrow. But the relationship in Girl in the Fireplace just seemed dumb... and then there's River. Oy.

I can appreciate the idea of River- somebody whose special knowledge is as annoying to the Doctor as the Doctor's is to the companions- but actual River? A little goes a long way. The name "River Song" was a good try, but it's still grating. It missed in exactly the wrong way.

Sort of like a blocky plasticine model. Ugh.

The S1-S4 Daleks looked to me like they were made out of metal. These new ones look like scaled up injection-molded toys. I keep expecting to see raised plastic seams on them from where the pieces were glued together.