Never get on a plane with Doctor Who...

Doctor Who returned on New Years Day ...at the same time I've been watching the very first Doctor Whos as Ava bought me some William Hartnell DVDs for my birthday and christmas as the old VHS tapes are starting to refuse to go through the machine...

New Doctor Who looks very cinematic.  I seem to remember them going on about how cinematic it looks because they have special lenses or something.  Last year (or was it the year before) they told us they were using Cooke anamorphic Prime lenses and Angenieux Optimo anamorphic zooms that will be used with Arri Alexa XT and Alex Mini cameras.  I don't know who that press release was supposed to appeal to apart from Emmanuel Lubezk who I doubt was watching anyway but you never know...

However now they have these lenses we get lots of sweeping panoramas... which is great but the show seems to forget sometime that it is television.  If you want to make a feature film why not do that? and we promise to traipse over to Vue and endure other people's children...

In the photo above first Doctor William Hartnell grabs onto his lapels ... a unique style of acting he created for the then very small screen because the sets and screen were so small if he waved his arms about no one could see them and he'd knock over the other actors... This crampedness makes early Doctor Who very intimate and I can't help feeling that with the expanded visuals new Doctor Who sometimes loses this intimacy a bit.  Don't get me wrong it's great that the small screen can now compete with the big screen but I think it sometimes forgets what the advantages are of the small screen over the big screen?  Well, I had to find something to complain about as there's no point in a review if you're not going to be critical.  At least that's what Dorothy Parker told me the last time I met up with her vicious circle in our local speakeasy.

There were some nice plot twists in the Doctor's latest outing but also quite a few cliches ... like why does anyone ever get on a plane with the Doctor?  And has he ever been on a plane that hasn't crashed since the series was rebooted?  Seriously ... he is the Jonah of planes...  and if he/she asks you to go to a remote base anywhere ...trust me ...just don't go ... you're only going to get stuck in a seige...