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

Bearing in mind that everybody with any taste whatsoever loves the new series, are there any things that have jumped out at you and tweaked your 'Oh dear, that's a bit poo' sensor?

For me there's:

Antiplastic - surely they could have called it something a little less 1970s sci-fi.

The girl in 'Fear Her' - sorry, but child actors whispering loudly aren't scary: they're just child actors whispering loudly. Actually, maybe they are quite scary...

Nanogenes - I know the chap on 'Confidential' seemed quite proud that he hadn't done any research; I think it would have been better if he had and at least joined the sci-fi fray and called 'em nanites.

There are more but those'll be doing for now.

Love and Monsters - That's not just bad Doctor Who, it's just plain bad television.

Christopher Eccleston - Yeah he did a good job but he wasn't a fan of the original and wasn't committed to being The Doctor, and just did a season. If it was RTD's plan to just have a Doctor for one season to introduce the concept of regeneration he should have got Paul McGann in for one season instead of wasting an additional regeneration!

45 Minute/1 Part Storys - It mat just be me, but the short episodes with cliffhangers was one of the things that was great about the original series, and maybe it's just the TV format of today but i much preferred the stories spread out with chance to grow then rushed in to one episode.

Hit and Miss - A number of the episodes have been very hit and miss and i think maybe they are experimenting but they should take more time to keep the quality high and not let some of these things past the writers room (like Love & Monsters).

Rose - I got so sick of Rose being a jealous girl or being the hero of the story, the focus should be the Doctor, not the assistant.

Season 1 ending - Season 1 had this great Bad Wolf arc (which incidentally should not have tried to be replicated in season 2) but it then had the worst resolution in history, and what an easy why to wipe out all the Daleks, it was so unimaginative. Also, why the Daleks were smart enough to keep themselves alive but the Timelords weren't is a big negative to the Timelords.


I enjoy the new series, but i do think it has a lot of flaws.

The commentator in Fear Her. Not that the performance was bad, you understand, but the dialogue he was given wasn't as good as it could have been.

The delivery of "Who you gonna call?" in Army of Ghosts. Just didn't work for me.

And then there's the one biggie - the Fans.

OMFG the fans. Not the folks on this thread, who have expressed dislikes and such in a reasonable manner, but that loud minority who seem to only be able to say things like "Russell Davis is debasing the memory of Doctor Who and MUST GO NOW!!!oneone" or "David Tennant couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. The fish people in The Underwater Terror" are much better than him!!!"

These people don't exist in real life, you understand. They only exist on the Intarwebs. Site after site with the same awful opinions belched out about every single episode. What are they? Masochists? Are there really people who, given the opportunity to watch a show that they don't like, will sit and watch it just so they can be unpleasant about it later? These folks need help and they have been, without a doubt, the absolute worst thing about the new series.

I really like Doctor Who but I spotted some pretty serious plot holes in the last episosde [Doomsday]. I'll only say if you want me too though...

A whole lot of stuff:

I think first of all that this show desperately needs to try and punch above its intellectual weight a bit more. Its a shame that, having cast-off the albatros of what made the old series so often reviled (bad sets and SFX) its neglected what made the old series so respected - intelligent plotting and good dialogue. The new series has shamelessy reverted to poor exposition and cliche a lot of the time.

As for episodes I felt needed to do better:

Series One

"The Long Game" - probably closest to the old series in "feel", this is a good example of a story that didn't fit into 42 minutes. It feels rushed and ill-explained.

"Boom Town" - the restaurant face-off was excellent, but the rest of the episode was plotless nonsense.

"Bad Wolf" - an odd one for me. Right up until the "shock" moment about half an hour in this is arguably the worst Doctor Who story ever. Then it turns on a sixpence and becomes one of the best (rewatching it again recently, I recalled how shocked I still felt when the Doctor is having his mugshots taken and how suddenly stark the atmosphere becomes).

Series Two

"New Earth" - the "best" example of a potentially great story ruined by a 42 minute runtime. The end in particular is very poor.

"Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel" - cliche after cliche after cliche. This was a potentially-interesting opportunity to create something challenging and interesting for Saturday evening viewing, instead it was a bunch of hackneyed alternate-Earth ideas stitched together and never fully explained beyond the thinking that Zeppelins and a "British republic" tell viewers that its an alternative timeline. The cybermen were good but that's about it.

"Fear Her" - a brilliant idea largely ruined by a shoddy attempt to link it to the 2012 Olympic Games. This should have been set in the 1940s or 1950s on a remote Scottish island. That would have made the small commuity/childhood abuse storyline work much, much better.

Welcome back, Spook!

"why the Daleks were smart enough to keep themselves alive but the Timelords weren't is a big negative to the Timelords."

I'm only speculating, but I think the question you might want to ask is why the Daleks weren't smart enough to stay hidden even longer. I don't believe for a second that the Time Lords have gone. They've just got a better hidey-hole than the Daleks.

There are two things I've disliked:

The press now spoiling the surprises so far ahead (such as the enemies in the final two episodes this year, blurted out by a tabloid eight months earlier)

As has already been mentioned, the collective amnesia of the fans. I'm certain a lot of fans haven't even seen every surviving episode; they've certainly not watched them all recently. I defy anyone with a fully-functioning central nervous system and critical faculties to watch Underworld, The Mutants, the first two episodes of the Sensorites, Four to Doomsday or Time Flight and genuinely rate them above any episode from the new series. Attack of the Cybermen beggars belief too - it's so poorly structured and badly scripted that it's no wonder viewers were deserting the show in their millions.

The main problem is that a lot of fans are lazy. The ones who complained about Ghost Light being too confusing seem to be stuck in the same rut. I'm not sure there's even a single 'plot hole' so far that isn't either explained at some point or explainable with a bit of imagination.

I've been a continuity cop* for about 20 years now, and I've honestly found it much easier to solve plot-holes in this series than in the past. RTD even makes it easy for us - Christmas Invasion explaining plotholes from Destiny of the Daleks, Doomsday explaining the recurring Cyberleader in Five Doctors.

* Trying to find solutions to continuity rather than getting upset when it doesn't work.

"I've been a continuity cop* for about 20 years now, and I've honestly found it much easier to solve plot-holes in this series than in the past. RTD even makes it easy for us - Christmas Invasion explaining plotholes from Destiny of the Daleks, Doomsday explaining the recurring Cyberleader in Five Doctors."

How does that work out, then?

Thanks Jims, i'm sticking my head in now and again now a bit more often. I disagree that the Timelords are hiding though, I'm of the opinion they majoritively died along with Gallifrey, but that some Timelords have survived. Of these I'd say The Master & The Rani could both be ressurected as having survived as villains, and also Romana as an allie.

As for your points, I agree fans forget the poor quality of some previous Doctor Who, some was quite bad, but personally i can still enjoy some of the bad episodes, which is kind of how i look at some of the new series, and an episode like Love & Monsters i just couldn't njoy full stop, while an episode like The Long Game, while full of flaws and is pretty poor, i can still enjoy the ride.

As for being a continuity cop, i also enjoy explaining continuity, like explaining the reason the Time Lords sent the Doctor to kill the Daleks in Genesis, at the time just an easy method to set up the story, but now you look back and realise the Time Lords could see the coming Time War. Also for the new series, I look at any contradictions of events from the original series down to the Time Lords & Daleks being destroyed in the Time War, which has caused changes in the Timeline.

I'd enjoy if with David Tennant or the next incarnation they returned to a Doctor more like the 7th and reintroduced mystery and a sinister side to the character, as that's what made him such a compelling Doctor to me, and looking back i really thing the last season of the original series was such a strong one that Doctor Who actually went out on a high.

Well, in the Five Doctors, you see the Cyberleader getting trounced by the Raston Robot, only for him to pop up again for the second masacre on the big chessboard. In Doomsday, Russell put in a scene to show a standard cyberman being upgraded to Cyberleader after the first cyberleader had been destroyed. It's a tiny point, but it means that they can use the cyberleader costume in crowd scenes without it being a continuity problem - which also fixes a similar scene in Earthshock where two colums of Cybermen are seen marching, with two cyberleaders.

And of course, the Doctor regenerating his hand in Christmas Invasion is a convenient explanation for how Romana could change her whole body five times in Destiny of the Daleks on a whim...

interesting you mentioned those two, as i recently read them both on wikipedia!

anyway, i guess the cyberleader bit is interesting but they are different cybermen with different weaknesses (gold) so it can't be assumed the same format of leadership works for both.

as for the regeneration thing, i think it has some major flaws!!!

Civvens, I forgot there are serious Whovians here. Silly me!

I've mentioned this classic episode before: The Deadly Assassin.

I know why that sort of episode isn't cropping up (yet?) but am also glad that, despite nods in its direction, we've had nothing as bad as Silver Nemesis yet.

i watched Silver Nemesis recently, and it wasn't too bad, but it had the problem of just being a rehash of Rememberance of the Daleks only not as good. Doctor Who has done much worse, and despite the poor plot i always finnd Sylvester McCoy can make a bad episode watchable due to his presence onscreen as the dark, mysterious Doctor, something the recent incarnations have not been able to do.

'Dark and mysterious'? In Silver Nemesis? Ahh, no.

In some stories, yes, but not Silver Nemesis.

he was quite mysterious, not revealing much about what he knows about the nemesis, the fact he set an alarm for this moment and he himself sent such a dangerous object out in to space, and was possibly involved in it being on earth in the first place. very mysterious.

I'll tell you what's really dissapointing - the Doctor hasn't once mentioned Jelly Babies or even "reversed the polarity of the neutron flow" yet!

Well, in his defence, he only said "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" once in the Pertwee era anyway (though he said many variations of the phrase during that time).

Although (as evidenced on DW Confidential) he did say 'Reverse the Polarity [of something]' quite a lot.

you know i'm surprised The Doctor didn't reverse the polarity of the neutron flow in 'Rise of the Cybermen', cause that would have probably solved the energy problem.

Yeah probably...