Most Doctor Who stories can be divided into one of two categories: ones where The Doctor is basically forced to confront an old adversary and ones where he chooses to confront or investigate something unknown out of curiosity. “Under The Lake” is a fine example of the latter category and one of the better installments thereof in some time in terms of quality.
Let’s start out by acknowledging that good child actors are hard to find and good performances from children are hard to get. This is not as an excuse for anyone but simply an acknowledgement that for every Haley Joel Osment or Maisie Williams there’s a thousand of everybody else. Having said this, I don’t think the problems with this episode really had anything to do with child acting, nor do I think this episode had any really massive problems anyway. I just think there were a lot of little problems that all added up to an unspectacular episode. Continue reading
I have a theory: let’s say that The Doctor undergoes a bit of a midlife crisis circa 2006, materializing in the regeneration into David Tennant and Matt Smith, his two youngest bodies at a ripe old age that he’s maybe starting to feel a little bit. He learns some lessons, experiences some things, reconciles aspects of his old, warmongering nature in the form of John Hurt’s “War Doctor,” and finally takes the form of a more “age appropriate,” older gentleman in the person of Peter Capaldi. This season, the midlife crisis is over and The Doctor is coming to terms with himself and his age and is now engaging in some old man stuff like watching his daughter figure grow up and replace him with a new male figure. Continue reading
I’m sure I’m not the only one who already feels like Peter Capaldi has already been the Doctor for a long time now. By the end of “Deep Breath” his performance felt both familiar and fresh at the same time. I’m not sure what more one could ask for from a transition than that very feeling I just described. I can’t go so far as to say that the transition has been seamless; to do so would be ignoring how dissatisfied I was with “The Time of the Doctor,” but I will say that on this back-end of the change, on the transition from one Doctor I liked immensely to one I was giddily excited for did not disappoint. Continue reading
Mixed American Film Buff 