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Well, that didn't quite work for me somehow.
It started to go wrong at the beginning - there was something not quite right about Maureen Lipman's BBC announcer asking viewers to 'tune in' in 1953 - in 1953 there was no point in manipulating the dial because BBC Television was all that there was, and it's just too colloquial. I might be wrong, of course. I can't help thinking that Maureen Lipman was miscast as well - with due respect to her performance (slightly too far over the top) the announcers of the period were younger and fresh-faced. I'm sure that she was cast because of her long-running act as Joyce Grenfell, but that imported an association with archness which damaged her credibility for me.
In Doctor Who Confidential afterwards, Mark Gatiss praised the Connolly family home set as 'drab'. I don't think that it was drab enough; the house was too pink for a domestic tyrant like Eddie, whatever the colour's imperial associations.
There was also a sense of the story being rushed, as earlier in the season with 'New Earth', but worse; we are introduced to the police inspector for the sake of what Gatiss describes as a 'sketch', but there is no chance for him to become anything more than a plot device as the Wire is allowed to drain him completely when the Doctor and Tommy escape unscathed.
I also found David Tennant's performance uneven in this one, sadly; I think his Mockney accent is pitched too high in his vocal range for him to consistently convey spoken anger with conviction; he recalls Sylvester McCoy sometimes, unfortunately. In the latter part of the story, I kept forgetting that the Doctor has a personal stake in defeating the Wire, and I don't think that I would have forgotten that in an earlier episode this season, or certainly last year. I find that I'm missing Christopher Eccleston much more than I expected.
Still, I have high hopes of next week. The Ood are essentially the Monoids from 'The Ark' refashioned after the Pakma'ra, but they seem effective already, and from the trailer the guest cast look as if they will be playing their roles with the right kind of conviction.
( Possible spoiler, if the identity of the villain has been deducted accurately from recent casting announcements )
It started to go wrong at the beginning - there was something not quite right about Maureen Lipman's BBC announcer asking viewers to 'tune in' in 1953 - in 1953 there was no point in manipulating the dial because BBC Television was all that there was, and it's just too colloquial. I might be wrong, of course. I can't help thinking that Maureen Lipman was miscast as well - with due respect to her performance (slightly too far over the top) the announcers of the period were younger and fresh-faced. I'm sure that she was cast because of her long-running act as Joyce Grenfell, but that imported an association with archness which damaged her credibility for me.
In Doctor Who Confidential afterwards, Mark Gatiss praised the Connolly family home set as 'drab'. I don't think that it was drab enough; the house was too pink for a domestic tyrant like Eddie, whatever the colour's imperial associations.
There was also a sense of the story being rushed, as earlier in the season with 'New Earth', but worse; we are introduced to the police inspector for the sake of what Gatiss describes as a 'sketch', but there is no chance for him to become anything more than a plot device as the Wire is allowed to drain him completely when the Doctor and Tommy escape unscathed.
I also found David Tennant's performance uneven in this one, sadly; I think his Mockney accent is pitched too high in his vocal range for him to consistently convey spoken anger with conviction; he recalls Sylvester McCoy sometimes, unfortunately. In the latter part of the story, I kept forgetting that the Doctor has a personal stake in defeating the Wire, and I don't think that I would have forgotten that in an earlier episode this season, or certainly last year. I find that I'm missing Christopher Eccleston much more than I expected.
Still, I have high hopes of next week. The Ood are essentially the Monoids from 'The Ark' refashioned after the Pakma'ra, but they seem effective already, and from the trailer the guest cast look as if they will be playing their roles with the right kind of conviction.
( Possible spoiler, if the identity of the villain has been deducted accurately from recent casting announcements )
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