WHOah!

I’ve always considered myself as a “fringe geek”, not someone who likes the TV show Fringe (I do), but someone who is on the fringes of geekdom. To me, Star Wars was acceptable, as were Marvel movies, but Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, and Dr Who were just too geeky for my liking. All that changed last year when JJ Abrams had to ruin it all and make a bloody good Star Trek film. It’s ok I said to myself, it’s just one film, and I like JJ Abrams. Alias was good (kind of), and apparently he created Lost, that was good (most of the time), and he did something on Cloverfield, he was the grip or the best boy or something I think. It’s a one off I thought, I have not crossed the line into pure geekdom.

As months passed, it was time for a new series (are we saying season in the UK yet?) of Dr Who, and strangely enough, I was intrigued enough to watch it. I had seen perhaps one and a half episodes of the David Tennant Who, and I like Tennant, but I found the show very silly, and considered it to be very geeky, so I ignored it, and carried on with my life. In retrospect it was only a matter of time before I became a Who fan, after watching Star Trek and loving it, anything could happen, I read H.G. Wells, subscribed to New Scientist and bought Batman pyjamas! I was doomed to like Dr Who!

Along with a new doctor, they had a chance to introduce a whole new audience to the show, me being part of it. I think I watched it initially just to judge it. Who can replace Tennant? Matt Smith will be awful! I was rubbing my palms watching the first episode, anticipating to absolutely hate it and spit seething abhorrent bile at the TV shouting “YOUR’RE SHIT!” every 30 seconds.

I loved it. I usually resent myself for liking something that I want to hate, and for the first few episodes, I became more and more shocked that I kept on liking it. Sure it had it’s flaws, but it was fun, and its very rare that a British TV show will have a story arc throughout the series, and even have more than 6 episodes. It seems that we are finally taking note of all of those brilliant American shows out there, and taking more time in actually writing something that is more like a novel rather than just a collection of 6 short stories.

The story arc itself though was hit and miss. While it didn’t get in the way of the narrative in each episode, it eventually became very repetitive, the last few seconds of every episode showing a crack in a wall. It was a very imaginative premise, cracks in time that would end the universe and everything in it, but it didn’t seem like anyone really cared that much, and in the end was a bit of an anti-climax. As we progressed through the series, we knew that the Doctor was the cause of the cracks, so there was little left to be uncovered in the finale. We never got to find out why the Doctor was such a threat though, and this was a bit disappointing, but the writers were thinking, and for me that’s good enough for now.

The Americans love a big finale and this is what the cracks were leading up to. There were more cameos than in a Ben Stiller movie, the Daleks being the Will Ferrell of the Whooniverse (is that what we call it?), and this made it all feel a bit silly, rather than spectacular. In the end (and boy did it take a while to get to the end) everything turned out all ok, and Rory came back! AGAIN! He’s like the T-1000 in Terminator 2.

My opinion of the show’s silliness has not changed, as it is actually very silly indeed. A Scottish Van Gogh? James “look how funny I am” Corden? It actually makes the show more fun, and going the uber serious route could be very dull, replacing bow tie with a drug addiction, and the sonic screwdriver with a shotgun, actually that sounds fucking insane.

Matt Smith was brilliant, maintaining a likeability throughout the series, even while getting very angry in places, very very angry (it made me like him more). Karen Gillan was also excellent, playing the feisty can do girl, and also the damsel in distress. Gillan was criticised for being “too sexy”, I didn’t know there was such a thing as being “too sexy”, but it is BBC One. I thought the sexiness was part of the fun, and in all honesty, probably one of the reasons I started watching. Catherine Tate certainly wasn’t going to hook me in, and if the BBC should be criticised for anything, it should be for not being sexy enough.

Now that the Doctor has faced the end of the universe, and won, it doesn’t leave much for the next season (I’m just going to use season from now on), and you wonder what they can do with the character without recycling any old rivals. Though a showdown with this season’s arch nemesis wouldn’t go amiss, that cartoon Graham Norton has it coming to him!