Yup, I have another one! (Ignores chorus of groans.) It’s not that I haven’t had anything more to say on the subject, I’ve just been preoccupied with other things. This one will be short, though. (Ignores sighs of relief.) Anyway… now, I like the new series a lot, but it’s not perfect. And among the many imperfections of the new series is the apparent attitude on the part of the new show’s creators that Rose Tyler was the “perfect companion” to the Doctor. Excuse me, I think not — while I think Rose was a fine character she had lots of flaws, and if you ask me her effect on the Doctor was not a good one, despite what current production team might think. She might be the favorite companion among those who have only watched the new series, but anyone who cut their teeth, so to speak, on the old “classic” Who will tell you the perfect companion now and forever will remain Sarah Jane Smith. (And I think the new series people know that, which is why I suspect they fobbed her character off so abruptly at the end of the Season 4 finale. I mean what was up with that — she just runs off? After all, Donna wasn’t jealous like Rose was; she would have been glad to invite Sarah Jane into the Tardis for a cup of tea or something. Anyway, the whole ending of the last episode was bizarre — I’ll get into that someday.)
6 Responses to “A Doctor Who post”
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October 11th, 2008 at 10:31 am
After the foreshadowing in “Silence in the Library” they needed to come up with some way to maker Donna’s departure permanent and poignant — but there was an understandable reluctance to kill her off.
Not that it’s never been done before, mind you.
October 11th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Oh, killing people off in Doctor Who is rarely permanent. Adric was a rare exception; then again, his character was widely detested.
October 12th, 2008 at 5:10 am
Sarah Jane Smith the perfect companion? You’re right – no way. One of my earliest boyhood crushes was on Romana. Sarah Jane was majorly annoying. Haven’t really taken to the post classic series. This was the sound in most/many Australian houses at 6.30 pm back in the day. When the theme changed to this, it was flagged in the local paper and everyone tuned in excitedly.* Wow, it was good.
*Hey, we only had two channels where I lived.
October 12th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Romana was good too. Let’s say Sarah Jane was the perfect human companion, then. (Maybe you only saw the later episodes where she was basically turned into a perpetual damsel in distress — in her early appearances they gave her a bit more substance, and her clothes weren’t quite so clownish.)
PS: I think you misread what I wrote — I was disagreeing with the notion that Rose from the new Who was the “perfect companion,” not Sarah Jane. I could understand the writers of the new show wanting to get away from that whole “shrieking female needing to be rescued by the Doctor” situation, but they went overboard in making Rose super-confident, always right, approving her every decision (including treating her boyfriend Mickey like trash), and so on.
God, I am such a geek. I could write about this stuff forever.
October 12th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Who exegesis is always enjoyable. Every so often my siblings and I have had Who name-that-monster discussions over the years. Sarah invariably gets bad reviews, Romana and Leela being more popular.
Baker was so good that I think his departure affected the franchise during the years that bridged my boyhood and adulthood. Same for many others whose wisened lamentations for the series of yore can still be heard whenever folks drink beer and talk Sontarans, Autons, Raston Warrior Robots and Zygons – probably to the eye-rolling annoyance of current enthusiasts.
October 12th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I wish they’d drop some of the old monsters, though. I’m so sick of the Daleks I could scream. Steven Moffat, who is taking over the series as exec producer in 2010, says he’s not going to bring them back, but over 2009 there are going to be three or four special episodes — instead of a full series — and Russell T. Davies, the current producer, is writing one or two of them, and he loves him some Daleks. As for the Sontarans, they’re the sort of “super soldier” concept that someone who knows nothing about how the military operates except that it’s all about rules and order, man, comes up with, and I was tired of them the first time I saw them.