TV Gold

I thought a lot about this over the weekend about how we (TV Gold) should view Doctor Who. For UK members the series has now ended (18th June 2005) so we can now talk about 'the Eccleston era' as classic TV.

So here to get the ball rolling...........

Now that the dust has settled and the Ninth Doctor Christopher Eccleston has passed on the keys of the TARDIS to his successor it?s a good time to look back over the past thirteen weeks and talk about the highs and lows, memorable events, cast performances and all things concerned with the impressive re-launch of the series.

I?ll start the ball rolling by listing in order the episodes in my personal preference starting with best (Gold, Sliver and Bronze) right down to the ?Wooden Spoon? for what I feel was the most disappointing. It?s been a difficult task with the quality overall being so uniformly high but week by week I?ve mulled over the relative strengths and weaknesses of what I?ve watched and this (going by my initial ?gut reaction? is what I personally have decided.

1 Boom Town (episode eleven)
2 The Empty Child (episode nine)
3 The Parting of the Ways (episode thirteen)
4 World War Three (episode five)
5 Dalek (episode six)
6 Rose (episode one)
7 The Doctor Dances (episode ten)
8 End of the World (episode two)
9 Bad Wolf (episode twelve)
10 Aliens of London (episode four)
11 The Unquiet Dead (episode three)
12 The Long Game (episode seven)
13 Father?s Day (episode eight)

Probably you won?t agree with my choices and have your own ?best and worst? list, however here?s a few words to explain why I?ve placed episodes where they are. I?ve chosen ?Boom Town? as the best primarily due to character interaction (Rose and Mickey/the Doctor and Margaret) and, not expecting much from it, it genuinely moved and surprised me. ?The Empty Child? for obvious reasons as a truly scary forty-five minutes of mysteries, horror and cool graphics over the skies of the London Blitz. Add into that the surprise arrival of Captain Jack and Richard Wilson?s chilling performance and surprise shocking transformation. A dramatic ending which was both enjoyable, tense and exciting, it was only to be expected that ?The Parting of the Ways? would feature highly on my list. I?m sure there are many people who didn?t care for the Slitheen?s first appearance however I felt that ?World War Three? was the better part of the two episode story and it?s major strength was Penelope Wilton?s performance as ?Harriet Jones MP?. ?Dalek? for obvious visual and drama reasons rates highly for me but some people may be puzzled to see ?Rose? right below it. I know that this was a rather too fast paced story for some people however I felt it was absolutely perfect in setting up the style and tone of the new series to a modern audience. You?ve got humour, drama, character interaction and the return of a favourite alien foe in the timeless ?Autons?

I?m fairly lukewarm towards episodes ten, two, twelve, four and three feeling that they were adequate in what they were setting out to do, nothing more. I failed to get overly excited about ?The Long Game? and I personally felt that the soap element prevalent in ?Father?s Day? rather swamped the science fiction portion of the story. Seeing that I absolutely loathe, detest and despise all soap operas with a passion this was never really going to grab my interest as others in the run have done.

Anyway, over to you guys........... <!--emo&:huh:-->[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/huh.gif[/img]<!--endemo--> <!--emo&:blink:-->[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif[/img]<!--endemo-->