Doctor Who - Tooth and Claw

[raven]

This review is going to be a little confused - okay, a lot confused - because I watched it squished with about twenty other people and their toffee popcorn into a very small room lavishly decorated with withiel's blood. I guess that's what happens when you leave home.

This one was immeasurably better than last week's. There were things to like about New Earth, and I discussed them at length, but overall it was mixed. This one was better, but I do think we need to move off RTD's episodes before we get one with any sort of coherent plot. Actually, I'd quite like to watch this one again and pay more attention to it - squished into a room with twenty people is the not the best place for in-depth analysis - and in the meantime I may have missed the fine details. Anyway, things of note:

-the beginning was deliciously crack-addled. The slow-mo monks were, um, bizarre. Someone - lots of people - expressed a desire to hear someone say "This is BBC One!" They were exactly like the people on the BBC announcing screens, or whatever is the technical term for them. Possibly the same people. Also, how do you advertise for actors to fill roles that involve having a natural resemblance to a cadaver?

-David Tennant is still beauty incarnate. Him in the TARDIS shrieking about Ian Drury was so camp and so attractive. And when he steps out and he's Scottish - I love him. I really do. Sigh.

-the Doctor introduces himself as "Doctor McCrimmon." EEEEEE. He also says he studied under "Doctor Bell" - would that be the Bell Sherlock Holmes was based on, I wonder?

-The cracks about Rose's "nakedness" amused me greatly. I think last season, they would have written Rose getting offended; she seems to find this sort of thing amusing, now.

-Actually, Rose and the Doctor now have a relationship that doesn't bug me in the way that Rose and Nine bugged me. There's something cleaner, sweeter, less fundamentally creepy about it. I loved him checking with her, "Am I being rude again?" So sweet.

-the ghost story, or the werewolf story, rather. That's a good ghost story - one child in a generation gets taken as a new host. Eee, creepy.

-the werewolf. The werewolf was perfect. If it hadn't been for the PoA werewolf I wouldn't have appreciated it as much, but while it did have something of the Mexican hairless quality about it, it had a furry muzzle and big pointed ears and a proper howling-at-the-moon stance. But I found it scary when it was human. (Or alien, of course.) Its black eyes were a very simple effect, but against the white, in the dimness, they were creepy. And the low, soft, Scottish voice was all the more creepy for how normal it was, ostensibly.

-the Doctor, as chains_of_irony said, is a pervy werewolf fancier. He is. He is! His first response to the werewolf is how beautiful it is. I now desperately want Doctor/Remus slash. I also would love a decent icon of the shot of the door with the Doctor on one side and the wolf on the other.

-the mistletoe. Is that part of the werewolf mythos, or did they make it up? I'm suspecting the latter, as I'm sure there would be mistletoe fic about Remus otherwise. Anyway, I liked it as a detail, especially with it worked into the doors, but I think the bits with the maids and the mistletoe soup were mostly padding. I may be wrong.

-the Doctor licked the wall. LOVE.

-the sweet, sweet relationship between the couple - Robert? (I didn't have my subtitles on, woe is me) and Isobel. There were bets being laid as to which one would die and when. Awww.

-the trap was cleverly executed. I like how it all came together, for a given value of together, and I was impressed that they didn't just blow the werewolf out of existence. It says (I think): "Make it brighter", sadly, and still with a Scottish accent, and there's an example of a really clever, subtle special effect when the shape of the wolf becomes the shape of an alien in the light. Also, was it just me, or was there a curious religious undertone to that? The position of the wolf, and alien, is of someone being crucified in a burst of light. It may be just me.

-I am a little disturbed by the way Queen Victoria deals with the Doctor and Rose. How much of her little speech is from their naturally more liberal, carefree outlook, and how much from the Doctor's hubris? We shall see. If this season is going the way I think it's going, the Doctor is due a significant fall from grace.

-Queen Victoria was a werewolf. Dear me, that explains a lot. And I'm guessing they removed the Kohinoor from the big prism thing so they could return it to the government of India the thieving bastards. Ahem. Perhaps a rant for another time.

But there were some iffy bits. It never seems to quite cohere in certain places - for example, why does the Doctor suddenly panic about Rose at the end of the werewolf story when he wasn't bothered before? - and the Torchwood reference seems utterly, utterly gratuitious. It would have been much more effective to give us a quick glimpse of the name-plate and leave it at that. But I think subtlety is possibly RTD's big problem.

But the preview for next week is very, very nice. There were vociferous yells of glee at Anthony Head and more at Sarah Jane. I can't wait, myself.

If anyone who knows is reading - where and how are the DocSoc? I haven't heard a word from them all term.

Comments

[casirafics.livejournal.com]

Pretty Davids with pretty long fingers....

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*is ded*

[casirafics.livejournal.com]

Mmm, and what those hands could do....



ahem. :)