Although I have had a little experience with British Television (namely through the shows Sherlock and Misfits), I had never before had the opportunity to watch Doctor Who. Having heard great things about the program and its quirky style, I went into the screening with very high expectations. Unfortunately, I left a little underwhelmed.
Despite loving the main characters and the creative science-fiction aspects of the program, I was sort of, for lack of a better word, “put off” by the show. Between the two episodes that we watched, it just felt like the show was trying to be too many things at once. Bounding almost incessantly from moments of terror to moments of absolute goofiness and even ridiculously overdone emotional scenes (i.e. the final art museum scene in the second episode) made the show feel like it came from the mind of a multiple personality individual with heavy mood swings. This sentiment was echoed in class on Thursday in regards to how American shows tend to assign themselves to one genre or stereotype which sometimes makes it hard for preconditioned American viewers (like myself) to become fully absorbed into a television program that is so across the board like Doctor Who. This idea about the differences in the very nature of American and British programming is very interesting and will be interesting to follow and observe as the semester progresses.
Before concluding, I want to raise another dilemma that the first episode “Blink” raised. Throughout the introduction of this course, we have been discussing the BBC’s initiative to put education and information before entertainment. Although I do believe that this a great and commendable mission that should be required for any public service broadcaster, I do not know if BBC kept this initiative in mind when creating the episode “Blink.” My reason for this qualm is that throughout the episode there were very little educational messages or moral lessons and instead a whole lot of entertaining and scaring. In fact, the only lesson I took away from the episode was an even deeper fear of ominous garden statues. The closest the show ever comes to teaching is when the Doctor tries to explain some of the concepts of time travel. Unfortunately, this too comes up completely short as even Doc Brown’s flux capacitor lectures in “Back to the Future” are far more informative than the “timey wimey” logic that the Doctor tries to explain in the episode. Nevertheless, “Blink” is a more creative and overall better episode than the highly educational “Vincent and the Doctor” which raises an interesting question on whether sometimes BBC must sacrifice certain educational standards in order to create unique and engaging content.
Although I did appreciate and enjoy certain aspects of the series, there were just too many inconsistencies for me to completely fall in love. Fortunately for me, it is just one less program I need to add to my already far too crowded Netflix queue.
I completely agree with you Michael, I left the screening feeling slightly unimpressed. I can see why Doctor Who would do especially well in British television, but do not think it compares with successful American shows. I appreciated the episodes for managing to pack in every genre and emotion, however, left feeling as if the show’s creators were trying to hard. Subtle quality television is something I appreciate, and Who’s over-the-top-ness misses this mark.