During a bout with the deadly Motaba virus last week, when I was bedridden for nearly four days, I decided to start watching Doctor Who.
I'm now into Series 3, and I'm starting to get sick of it. It's extremely formulaic. Here's almost every Doctor Who episode up to what I've seen:
1) Doctor and his companion travel to a new place. Doctor may have miscalculated the year; he does that a lot. They might also be chasing a distress call. There are a lot of those.
2) Doctor and his companion get mixed up in a supernatural, paranormal, or extra terrestrial sort of adventure. Things like werewolves, witches, and ghosts are explained away via alien science.
3) Doctor and his companion, under very dangerous and deadly conditions, become separated. They cry out for each other. If it's his companion, she says stuff like, "I believe in the Doctor!" over and over again. If it's the Doctor, he says stuff like, "I won't let her die!" over and over again.
4) Either Doctor or his companion saves the day, often through technobabbley solutions like staring into the time matrix, creating a gamma wave, or reversing polarity.
5) Doctor and his companion are reunited in a very emotional, running hug.
6) See step 1.
When episodes don't go beyond this formula in any powerful or meaningful way, the show becomes incredibly repetitive and stale. There are examples of brilliant writing in the show; the Charles Dickens appearance was wonderful. But it seems like the further the show goes along, the less and less these moments appear, because the writers are simply relying on the ongoing sexual and romantic tension between the Doctor and his companion to carry the show through and make us care what happens to them. They've been dangling that relationship in front of me through 3 seasons now, and if they don't settle it once and for all and go in a new direction, I'm going to tune out.
I'm now into Series 3, and I'm starting to get sick of it. It's extremely formulaic. Here's almost every Doctor Who episode up to what I've seen:
1) Doctor and his companion travel to a new place. Doctor may have miscalculated the year; he does that a lot. They might also be chasing a distress call. There are a lot of those.
2) Doctor and his companion get mixed up in a supernatural, paranormal, or extra terrestrial sort of adventure. Things like werewolves, witches, and ghosts are explained away via alien science.
3) Doctor and his companion, under very dangerous and deadly conditions, become separated. They cry out for each other. If it's his companion, she says stuff like, "I believe in the Doctor!" over and over again. If it's the Doctor, he says stuff like, "I won't let her die!" over and over again.
4) Either Doctor or his companion saves the day, often through technobabbley solutions like staring into the time matrix, creating a gamma wave, or reversing polarity.
5) Doctor and his companion are reunited in a very emotional, running hug.
6) See step 1.
When episodes don't go beyond this formula in any powerful or meaningful way, the show becomes incredibly repetitive and stale. There are examples of brilliant writing in the show; the Charles Dickens appearance was wonderful. But it seems like the further the show goes along, the less and less these moments appear, because the writers are simply relying on the ongoing sexual and romantic tension between the Doctor and his companion to carry the show through and make us care what happens to them. They've been dangling that relationship in front of me through 3 seasons now, and if they don't settle it once and for all and go in a new direction, I'm going to tune out.
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
Thank you though, I'm taking it as a compliment