![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A few weeks ago, when I reviewed Sweeney Todd, I remarked that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
calliope85 and I both thought that the cinema trailer for series 4 (season 30 if you prefer) of Doctor Who cast Donna's relationship with the Doctor from the same family of romantic moulds as that of the Doctor and Rose and the Doctor and Martha. This was disputed by wonderwelsh. The cinema trailer made its television debut on Saturday. It's available at various points on the internet; I'm openly embedding a version uploaded to YouTube outside the official BBC channel so that non-UK residents can see it.
From what I know of the plot of 4.1, Partners in Crime, Donna's search for 'the right man' could be understood as a search for the right man to deal with the 'alien threat' with which Donna is confronted. However, I still think that the trailer is calculated to present David Tennant's Doctor as a romantic lead, and the Doctor-companion relationship in these terms. Given that the Catherine Tate-Bernard Cribbins framing scenes for the trailer were specially shot and express a promotional agenda which might not be closely related to the arc of the series itself, I think that we might not be too bothered by this.
Last year's spin regarding Doctor Who seemed much more geared to children than the first two years; interviews with production staff emphasised the problems of writing for children; the emphasis was very much on Martha as a new fellow-adventurer. This year, while the cinema trailer uses Donna as a framing device, it doesn't focus on her exclusively. The teaser trailers so far feature monsters: Ood, Sontarans, and the Daleks - and it's only in the latter one that the Doctor appears. So early signs are that this campaign is a little more multi-stranded than last year's.
calliope85 and I both thought that the cinema trailer for series 4 (season 30 if you prefer) of Doctor Who cast Donna's relationship with the Doctor from the same family of romantic moulds as that of the Doctor and Rose and the Doctor and Martha. This was disputed by wonderwelsh. The cinema trailer made its television debut on Saturday. It's available at various points on the internet; I'm openly embedding a version uploaded to YouTube outside the official BBC channel so that non-UK residents can see it.From what I know of the plot of 4.1, Partners in Crime, Donna's search for 'the right man' could be understood as a search for the right man to deal with the 'alien threat' with which Donna is confronted. However, I still think that the trailer is calculated to present David Tennant's Doctor as a romantic lead, and the Doctor-companion relationship in these terms. Given that the Catherine Tate-Bernard Cribbins framing scenes for the trailer were specially shot and express a promotional agenda which might not be closely related to the arc of the series itself, I think that we might not be too bothered by this.
Last year's spin regarding Doctor Who seemed much more geared to children than the first two years; interviews with production staff emphasised the problems of writing for children; the emphasis was very much on Martha as a new fellow-adventurer. This year, while the cinema trailer uses Donna as a framing device, it doesn't focus on her exclusively. The teaser trailers so far feature monsters: Ood, Sontarans, and the Daleks - and it's only in the latter one that the Doctor appears. So early signs are that this campaign is a little more multi-stranded than last year's.
Tags: