Well, after a seven month wait that seemed longer than the nine years between the TVM and 'Rose', we have the most ambitious and expensive looking DW episode ever. And was it an improvement on Planet Of The Dead, the last special? Well, yes, because...almost anything would have been better than Planet Of The Dead. But let's get down to specifics. What we have here is a solid, exciting, genuinely disturbing first half hour of classic Dr Who that shares with the instant-classic episode "Blink" a monster that would actually scare young children. To date, Russell Davies' creatures have usually been more laughable than frightening, and it is as of he's trying to make up for lost opportunities and mistakes like the Slitheen. I say 'first half hour' because things go a bit pear-shaped in the second half. The tension and claustrophobia of the story gets largely thrown out in favour of 'cosmic angst', lengthy flashbacks, and incredibly clumsy foreshadowing. Yes, we all know that there is one thing Russell D can't manage, and that is subtlety. The story's sets are phenomenal, as are the simple but effective CG-treated Mars surface shots. I do wonder about the scale and the engineering wisdom of the base in the CG shots, however - the dialogue states that the designers scrimped on every kilo, yet decided to make pointlessly long and ludicrously huge dome connector tunnels made of very heavy steel that don't seem to serve any function other than being long metal box-tubes. But that's nitpicking. As for the plot, it's not exactly original. John Carpenter's late 80s horror movie Prince Of Darkness is, in effect, stolen wholesale here, and the director's later film Ghosts Of Mars is also mined. Throw in obvious pinches from 28 Days/Weeks Later, and you don't have a great deal of new stuff here. It's only when the Infected plot basically slams to a halt and we get the 15 minutes of angsting that we see any new material. And what new material! We have a galaxy-weary Doctor more or less becoming the Master here, with his self-imposed rules about not messing with 'fixed' Time being thrown out. Davies and Ford do not give Tennant enough of a chance to do more than yell a lot in this, so the chilling implications of a rogue Doctor are undermined somewhat. But the writing for those scenes is very good, and Tennant himself is never anything less than superb. The acting in general in 'Waters' is good, with "that guy from Neighbours" (as I think we all greeted him when he appeared) being the obvious standout for me.
Amazing sets and CG, a threat that's actually scary, a handful of the most poignant scenes in the show (the German crew-woman playing the video of her daughter and sobbing as she awaits her doom is, hands down, the best acted and shot scene in the entirety of DW)...there's a lot to like here. Some to not like, though - Murray Gold's music is typically overblown, intrusive and mixed FAR too loud on the soundtrack - but that's quibbling. A good special, all in all. Gripping telly!
OBVIOUS CONTINUITY ERROR The first humans on Mars? Er, sorry, that honour would go to the crews of Mars Probes 6 and 7 eighty years before Bowie Base even existed, as seen in Season 7 of the old show. :)
Amazing sets and CG, a threat that's actually scary, a handful of the most poignant scenes in the show (the German crew-woman playing the video of her daughter and sobbing as she awaits her doom is, hands down, the best acted and shot scene in the entirety of DW)...there's a lot to like here. Some to not like, though - Murray Gold's music is typically overblown, intrusive and mixed FAR too loud on the soundtrack - but that's quibbling. A good special, all in all. Gripping telly!
OBVIOUS CONTINUITY ERROR The first humans on Mars? Er, sorry, that honour would go to the crews of Mars Probes 6 and 7 eighty years before Bowie Base even existed, as seen in Season 7 of the old show. :)