\tAlthough 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. <\/p>\n
Despite loving the main characters and the creative science-fiction aspects of the program, I was sort of, for lack of a better word, \u201cput off\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Before concluding, I want to raise another dilemma that the first episode \u201cBlink\u201d raised. Throughout the introduction of this course, we have been discussing the BBC\u2019s 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 \u201cBlink.\u201d 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\u2019s flux capacitor lectures in \u201cBack to the Future\u201d are far more informative than the \u201ctimey wimey\u201d logic that the Doctor tries to explain in the episode. Nevertheless, \u201cBlink\u201d is a more creative and overall better episode than the highly educational \u201cVincent and the Doctor\u201d which raises an interesting question on whether sometimes BBC must sacrifice certain educational standards in order to create unique and engaging content. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … Continue reading