Shakespeare? In love.
Well, that was pretty much exactly how Doctor Who should be.
By turns, funny, clever, full of good ideas and well-written, the Shakespeare Code was up there with the likes of School Reunion and the Empty Doctor/Doctor Dances double bill at the very peak of the New Who tree.
It wasn't perfect or anything and I've seen perfectly legitimate complaints that attempts to show 'proper' Elizabethan England were cursory at best (there were distinct shade of Blackadder in the Gardiloo scene for instance) and that Shakespeare was more of a cartoon than Messrs Russell and Barnes Totally Doctor Who disaster. But I don't care asbout that kind of minor niggle since, away from Rusty Davies' utter fascination with shagging, The Shakespeare Code was genuine family entertainment, with jokes and references to Old Who and the Doctor being clever and heroic and everything.
Plus we saw exactly how any Doctor/Companion romance should be shown in Who - i.e. nothing happened, what with the Doctor being 900 or so and having seen the entire Universe and his companion being 20 or so and having seen Bermondsey. There's a word for people who have it off with other people 880 years younger than them , although not a common word, for obvious reasons.
The ending could have been better - having set up the idea of a science based on words, I was hoping for something of the depth of Phil Pascoe's '...ish' but instead we got a reference to the woefully over-rated JK Rowling and her crappy wizard. Even here though the CGI aliens looked good (as did the Elizabethan backgrounds in general) and the coda with Queen Elizabeth I just capped things off.
Fantastic.
By turns, funny, clever, full of good ideas and well-written, the Shakespeare Code was up there with the likes of School Reunion and the Empty Doctor/Doctor Dances double bill at the very peak of the New Who tree.
It wasn't perfect or anything and I've seen perfectly legitimate complaints that attempts to show 'proper' Elizabethan England were cursory at best (there were distinct shade of Blackadder in the Gardiloo scene for instance) and that Shakespeare was more of a cartoon than Messrs Russell and Barnes Totally Doctor Who disaster. But I don't care asbout that kind of minor niggle since, away from Rusty Davies' utter fascination with shagging, The Shakespeare Code was genuine family entertainment, with jokes and references to Old Who and the Doctor being clever and heroic and everything.
Plus we saw exactly how any Doctor/Companion romance should be shown in Who - i.e. nothing happened, what with the Doctor being 900 or so and having seen the entire Universe and his companion being 20 or so and having seen Bermondsey. There's a word for people who have it off with other people 880 years younger than them , although not a common word, for obvious reasons.
The ending could have been better - having set up the idea of a science based on words, I was hoping for something of the depth of Phil Pascoe's '...ish' but instead we got a reference to the woefully over-rated JK Rowling and her crappy wizard. Even here though the CGI aliens looked good (as did the Elizabethan backgrounds in general) and the coda with Queen Elizabeth I just capped things off.
Fantastic.
Labels: doctor who
7 Comments:
I think you enjoyed it more than I did! "The Empty Doctor" is only too apt for the present era!!
I did wonder if maybe it was just a sign of desperation, clinging at whatever straws New Who throws out and really, really wanting to like it.
But I watched it again, and it's still fabulous - easier to see the flaws, granted, but also eaiser to catch bits I'd missed last time round.
I'm a little concerned that he Doctor seems to think getting himself killed is the answer to every problem, but it's about time soemone made the obvious use of his twin hearts :)
Stuart can now see the Doctor's New Clothes :)
SAF: "Stuart can now see the Doctor's New Clothes "
lol - yes, but it's worth noting that those clothes (again) have been tailored by someone other than ol' Rusty :)
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But how bad was that nonsense with the cats in a traffic jam?
(Scott does Dr. Who comments, whatever next...)
Scott: "that nonsense with the cats in a traffic jam?"
Much as Friends episodes went by titles along the lines of "The One With...", I think DW episodes should all follow this pattern: "That nonsense with..."
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