purplecat

On parrot_knights recommendation I recorded then watched Mark Lawson talking to Russell T Davies on BBC4 late last week. While I accept the arguments many have put forward that RTD is no more likely to tell the truth when talking to Mark Lawson on BBC 4 than he is when talking to Dr Who Confidential on BBC3, I think his interest here was in selling the "Russell T Davies" brand rather than the Dr Who brand and that he recognised this audience wanted a little more by way of self-criticism and introspection that the relentless "fantastic!, wow!, daleks!, lovely people! amazing!" that he spouts whenever asked about Dr Who. Though, to be honest, there wasn't a great deal of self-criticism on show even here.

As well as the points parrot_knight picked out I was interested to hear a new justification for the lack of exotic alien worlds. Usually, when asked, RTD asserts that viewers are not interested in aliens; in fact this was clearly the answer Mark Lawson was expecting since he framed the question in terms of his personal relief that Rose opened in an everyday department store. Instead RTD said that on a BBC budget an alien world almost inevitably looked crap, and like a quarry. He compared the show to Heroes which, he claimed (and I've not seen any of season 2) couldn't make Orange County look like Feudal Japan on a much large budget so they were almost bound to fail in trying to make a quarry in Wales look like an alien planet on Dr Who's budget. Whether this is the real reason, or perhaps that he was worried that BBC4 viewers probably were (with the exception of Mark Lawson) interested in alien planets I couldn't say.

parrot_knight's recent post has got me thinking.

For five weeks I've been reading comments in reviews which boil down to "Martha had promise in the first episode but has turned into little more than a love-sick puppy" - Francine's reaction to the Doctor in the Lazarus Experiment seemed to echo this sentiment - Martha has ceased to be an independent woman and become someone who follows the Doctor. It suggests the writing team are aware that Martha's potential is being wasted and that, in fact, it is deliberate. I just hope they are going somewhere interesting with this as I feel New Who frequently sets up potentially interesting themes or poses itself interesting questions in this way and then fails to resolve them in a satisfactory fashion.

( Relevant Torchwood Ranting )