Doctor Who - The Next Doctor
(dir. Andy Goddard)
BBC One
In what's become a staple of UK Christmas schedules, David Tennant's back for another festive one-off. This time, the Tardis has fetched up in suitably festive realm of Victorian London, where amongst all the dirty-faced urchins and Dickensian snow, he quickly runs into a brave chap called... The Doctor - complete with his own assistant, Tardis and sonic screwdriver. He's also taking on a batch of Cybermen who are hanging out with villainous Miss Hartigan (Dervla Kirwan in a fetching scarlet number) and plotting to bring about the rise of the Cyber King...
Much better than last year's Titanic w Kylie special, there's enough plot and energy from Tennant to get you over the mince pie sentimentality, and occasional lapses into self-congratulation that the new Who sometimes falls into. It's much more of a decent kids show than the multi-generational sci-fi it gets given credit for - which is fine in my book, but always a bit confusing to see it so over-praised all the time. Still, it's good to see the BBC putting some of the licence fee into producing decent family viewing - having seen the first episode of ITV1's new teatime monster show Demons, it's so easy to get this stuff wildly wrong, and you'd have to be in a pretty full-on humbug mode to diss this year's Who present too much... Won't go into any more details, except to say i also quite enjoyed the fluffy Cyberhounds.
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21st Dec 2008 - Tumblr
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