I keep giving Doctor Who a chance, I really do, but it must be me because I just don’t understand a word of the story lines.
Peter Capaldi as the Doctor is excellent. He’s still developing the role and moulding it the way he wants, but he has a much darker side than the recent younger models. But it’s the stories I don’t get.
This is nothing new for me. As soon as Christopher Ecclestone became the man in the Tardis, I liked him but I had no idea what was going on. Tennant was even better, one of the great Doctors, but what on earth was that about, I said during each episode? Same with Matt Smith. The writers and Doctors changed but my understanding never improved.
I was watching Doctor Who when most of you weren’t even born, I suspect, and I am sure I grasped what was going on far better when Jon Pertwee was whizzing around in an elderly car, accompanied by Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, when he was based on earth in real time because the BBC didn’t have enough cash to send him round the Universe. (I think the reason the BBC gave was something to do with his fellow time lords but I knew different!)
Pertwee’s Doctor would do simple things, like battle against giant green maggots in coal mines, and even my simpleton brain could keep up with that. And the stories were over a number of weeks, so there was time to spread out the story, maybe even drag it out, so that I could follow it.
Tonight, the Doctor, his assistant and sundry minor characters were shrunk in order to enter a Dalek’s innards, rather like Raquel Welch in the Fantastic Journey, and to do something I didn’t really understand. Then it all went tits up and a firefight ensued. All was saved at the end when the Daleks started blowing each other up – I think – and that was it. There must have been more to it than that but I can’t say I knew what it was.
Everyone else in our house knew exactly what was going on, or at least pretended to in order to make me look even more stupid, which made things far worse, and by the end I was replaying Liverpool’s goals against Tottenham Hotspur from earlier today in my head (we were watching on delay, by the way).
Capaldi is going to be an all time great Doctor, of that I have no doubt.
Whether I shall ever be able to fathom out what he and the cast are talking about is another matter entirely, but I’ll watch anyway.
1 comment
That was one of the more straightforward episodes, certainly compared to many of the Tennant/Smith ones.
Many of the confusing aspects of the last few years, though, have only been confusing within the context of each episode and the answer, or explanation, has come later.
Same thing with this season with the woman welcoming someone to heaven at the end of each of the two episodes so far.
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