h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

At the end of the showing of 'Doctor Who and the Daleks' this afternoon, they showed a couple of seconds of the new Who. It went something like this:

The Doctor opens a door and leans into a room, saying "I'm the Doctor by the way. What's your name?"

Petulant-looking girl sitting on a box in the room says "Rose"

Doctor: "Nice to meet you Rose." The doctor starts shaking a strange looking box, while smiling and staring madly (in something akin to Tom Baker-ish way) and saying "Run for your life!"

And that's the clip. Not much, but there you go.


Geggs

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Having seen a couple of clips in the BBC2 Dr Who 'couple-if-hours' special Chris Ecclestone sent shivers up my spine AND made me laugh. The 'run for your life' line is pure Dr Who. The clip of him 'feeling' the Earth travelling through space had the intensity of his portrayal in 'The Second Coming' where he was Jesus re-incarnated and a stunning drama written by Russell T Davies who is writing Dr Who as well. OK, Dr Who and Jesus no comparison but the humour and the seriousness in the two clips feels so good.

Sci-fi has grown up over the past few years and hopefully tis will follow in the tradition. Grown up sci-fi? Babylon 5, Dark Skies and numerous others that were cancelled during their first season - so they must have been good - from what I have heard Battlestar Galactica kicks ass.

Let's hope Micheal Grade hasno influence over canning the show again. He has said he doesn;t mind it beign on as long as he doesn't have to watch it. I feel the same way about all of the cr*p he commissioned on channel 4.

I don't know what Michael Grade means by that . Mind you at the time it was scraped it had become a a bit of a parody of itself.

From what I've seen so far this new series looks like it could be the best yet.

also
Some one was telling me that down one of the roads between Borough market and union street in southwark . I cant remember the name of the street.but I think its the one just befor Redcross way

There is one of the original Daliks in a window.

I keep on meaning to look but I always forget when ever Im in the vicinity.

They just showed a clip on Parkinson.

Basically the doctor tells Rose that unlike everyone else, he can feel the Earth rotating. During this speech he holds her hand. I wasn't sure of the significance of this.

Jules

Drat, Alfster has already described that bit. Sorry

I'm sorry, but I think this is going to suffer from Red Dwarf Syndrome. Take a long holiday and massively increase the production budget, and the writing, direction and acting takes a blow.

B

Unfortunately, it's not a particularly satisfying experience with a 56k connection. (BitTorrent that is.)

"Have have seen one teaser trailer of the show: the one with the Dr running down the tunnel with the fire ball behind him and walking with a swagger into the Tardis. It all seemed very serious. Ecclestone has basically said he thought the way the others dressed was quirky hence his t-shirt and leather jacket."

Each new actor basically stamps their own interpretation on what is, at the end of the day, the same character. From what I've seen, Eccleston's character is more 'serious' than some of the previous incarnations (such as Tom Bakers' and Sylvester McCoys') but at the same time rather more odd and eccentric and possibly quite detached.

"Or can we be sad an theorise that as the Dr is regenerated into a new character then this regeneration just happens to be more serious than the other ones."

That's pretty much the case. As I've said, if you look at the series as a whole the incarnations are the same character with a different appearance and personality. Hartnell was grumpy, Troughton was an eccentric hobo, Pertwee was a serious, dandyish action-man, Tom Baker was extremely eccentric and odd, Davidson was nervous and slightly wimpy, Colin Baker was cold and hard-headed, McCoy was eccentric and moralistic, McGann didn't really get a chance to create his own identity and as for Eccleston - well, we'll see.

"The good thing is that Steve Moffat and Russel T Davies write very good character based drama/comedy so should I be worried at all."

I shouldn't be worried. Davis and the show's other writers are genuine Who fans who know the series and yet have the good sense to make it appeal to a new audience (as an example of this, the first episode has a subtle reference to the Doctor's regeneration rather than changing the main character after 20 minutes and confusing newcomers as the 1996 movie seemed to try to do).

"'m sorry, but I think this is going to suffer from Red Dwarf Syndrome. Take a long holiday and massively increase the production budget, and the writing, direction and acting takes a blow."

I shouldn't think so. Dwarf suffered from losing one of it's writers which affected the quality of the scripts drastically. Who is written by people such as Russell T Davis, responsible for 'Queer as folk' and 'The Second Coming' and also Mark Gatis of 'The League of Gentlemen' fame. Neither's track-record suggests anything but great scripting and the fact that they are who-fans means they will put a great deal of effort into making it work.

As for acting talent - Christopher Eccleston. Need I say any more?

"The good thing is that Steve Moffat and Russel T Davies write very good character based drama/comedy so should I be worried at all."

I won't deny this. But Doctor Who is emphatically NOT 'a character based drama/comedy.'

B

"But Doctor Who is emphatically NOT 'a character based drama/comedy.'"

Neither was 'The Second Coming', a Russell T Davis penned drama that was shown on ITV1 a couple of years ago. And it was still pretty good (certainly better than most of the crap that passes for ITV's output these days).

"I have heard of vcrs, but to be honest haven't had one since we moved. And no one seems interested in selling us one because 'there's no demand' so they've stopped stocking them. "

You can get DVD writers but I expect they're quite pricey. I think the Beeb's one mistake with this new series has been it's scheduling. A large lump of it's target audience will most likely either be going out or be ready to go out at 7pm on a Saturday evening. It would have been sensible to schedule a repeat of the previous Saturday's episode quite late on Friday evening in order to 'catch' this portion of the audience returning from the pub or staying in.

Cost of a standalone DVD recorder: approx £100 for a bottom of the range model. The decent ones are at least double that.

Alternatively, you can use any old PC with a TV (analogue or digital) TV tuner card, a DVD burner, and some freely available encoder/decoder software and you've got yourself a PC based Personal Video Recorder solution for approximately the same amount and with more flexibility.

"Basically the doctor tells Rose that unlike everyone else, he can feel the Earth rotating. During this speech he holds her hand. I wasn't sure of the significance of this."

Eccleston has claimed that the new Doctor is fascinated by these sorts of small details and insights. Pertwee's incarnation, for example, would probably have shrugged them off, Eccleston's incarnation feels the need to tell people about them.

Jim said yesterday, that he hopes the new series doesn't try to be too like the old ones - and it sounds like it is avoiding that trap. We went to the BBC Dr Who site and had a look at the teaser trailers. (Jim was watching Ghostlight on DVD with the commentary. Brilliant!)

Woohoo! It's definitely offically offical now!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/listings/index.shtml?service_id=4223&day=saturday

B, I don't think RD and Doctor Who can be compared in this way. Surely RD's problems were down to breaking up the writing team, whereas Doctor Who has had been different writers over the years- it doesn't rely on an established 'team' in the way that Dwarf did.

I'm so excited .

Are Daleks Hover crafts

I hope they clear up the issue of how they get up and down stairs.and cross ruff terrain.

Then again there are some things we probably don't need to know.

"Are Daleks Hover crafts

I hope they clear up the issue of how they get up and down stairs.and cross ruff terrain."

One of the laziest pieces of observational 'wit' about Doctor Who is that 'Daleks can't climb stairs'. Daleks can climb stairs due to having something not unlike a hover thing at their base. If anyone wants to see it in action, find a DVD or video of 'Remembrance of the Daleks' where a Dalek uses it to pursue Sylvester McCoy up some stairs.

Incidentally, there was a very funny Lee & Herring sketch where they made fun of dumbo celebs on talking-head shows. One such talking head recycled the 'Daleks and stairs' observation only for Stewart Lee to tut and reel off why he was wrong. They also discussed whether Mike Gatting had ever actually encountered Daleks after noting the haunted look he had about him as he gave his own opinions. I can't remember what the show was called, annoyingly.