Tuesday 1 March 2016

Doctor Who, Season 2 (2006)


I've watched every episode of the 21st century Doctor Who, which just wrapped up its ninth season, but this is the last series that I have enjoyed enough to purchase on DVD.

Varying quality has always been a fact within the show, with classics and clangers dotted through every series since its launch in 1963.  And it's not like this season is any exception: the Xmas special is pretty poor and Fear Her is a complete stinker, for example.  Heck, even otherwise good episodes like School Reunion have their moments of stupid (the bad guys are allergic to themselves?  They really couldn't have come up with something better than that?).

Overall, however, season two is the last time where I felt like the good far outweighed the bad.  The first episode of the season proper, New Earth, has some genuinely funny sequences - notable in a show that frequently goes for laughs and gets eyerolls, instead - and also some touching ones.  Then there's The Girl in the Fireplace, which remains my personal favourite episode of the show's history, and three solid two-parters, including the season finale which I think is the strongest of any series since the show's return.

So yeah, I think we have a strong set of stories here as the Doctor (now played by David Tennant after regenerating at the end of series one) and his companion Rose Tyler careen through time and space, invariably stumbling into one crisis or another as they do so, whether it be in Victorian Scotland, on a 51st century spaceship, or in a parallel reality where Zeppelins rule the skies.

Solid family-friendly SF.

No comments:

Post a Comment