The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon

The Leisure Hive: Part One (30/08/20) Well, that was a bit unexpectedly lush! It's a new Production team, but I wasn't quite prepared for exactly how new  it looks! Aside from the fact that the theme tune has had a reboot, all bursting electronica and Gary Numan synths, and the credits are a massive, fancy starfield using cool computer effects, the incidental music has also been overhauled. Bye bye Dudley Simpson and his predictable orchestrations; Hello Peter Howell and his lush, dramatic synths! It really does sound very modern and quite exciting, and if that wasn't enough, the Direction is superb! So, okay, the design isn't that far removed from the Disco feel of last series' opener but, damn! does it feel arty! To be honest, not a great deal happened this week but it looked fantastic. Maybe I should elaborate on the plot. The Doctor took Romana to Brighton but got the season and year wrong so she had a strop, tried to kill K9 (blaming the Doctor for getting his ...

Peter Capaldi's era was a step up from his predecessor. Whilst there were still issues with the writing and (often glaringly) the plotting of each season, Steven Moffat seemed to be pulling his act together. With commitments to Sherlock waning (only one episode would air during Capaldi's tenure), the Show Runner seemed able to finally focus on Doctor Who and ensure that it was almost coherent and vaguely watchable. Granted, the first three quarters of Series 8 were littered with malfunctioning computers and misunderstood aliens - the dreary stalwarts which had populated Matt Smith's stories - and even featured the revelation that the Moon is an egg and, Moffat's most audacious conceit in his time as show runner, a story with no plot and no monster and no explanation as to why! But then came along  Flatline It had been a while since there'd been anything that actually felt like a threat in Doctor Who (other than a diminishing number of episodes per year). Fro...