Blog: Watching Doctor Who

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Lots of things OCCURRED over the last few days which I'll deal with ANON, but I thought I ought first to report on the culmination of the Doctor Who Kerfuffle of last week i.e. when I actually WATCHED the "Dinosaurs On A Spaceship" episode.

I usually watch the show the day after, and had intended to do so THIS week - The Plimptons were playing their first EVER London Gig, which i REALLY wanted to go to, with the added impetus of Keith Top Of The Pops & His Minor UK Indie All-Star Celebrity Backing Band ALSO on the bill, who I'd not seen for AGES. I was RIGHT excited about it, so GUTTED to come down with a HORRIBLE stomach bug on Saturday afternoon which LAID me up in bed.

HOWEVER this did mean I was able to watch Doctor Who LIVE, although it also meant I ended up watching it for the first time with TWITTER on. I know LOADS of people do this every week, and I thought I'd have a go in case it was VERY similar to Dinosaur Planet, but GOODNESS ME I shall never be doing it again. Watching Doctor Who while tweeting is RUBBISH - it's not surprising people on twitter make so many idiotic remarks, or come up with some many stupid complaints! If you're not actually concentrating, you miss LOADS. For instance, at the time and ESPECIALLY afterwards loads of people were going "ooh, if the Doctor's meant to be dead, how did the Indian Space Agency know to call him in?" Having NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION myself I also thought "Yeah! That was rubbish! CONTINUITY ERROR!" However, on re-watching the first five minutes i saw that, actually, it explicitly said that HE saw the news and HE went to see THEM. It's easy!

And to be honest, that was one of the biggest similarities with Dinosaur Planet - KIDS seem to understand it very easily, and follow the plot with ease, but lots of adults seem to have trouble! During the whole live run of the show I'd often get adults needing to ask queries about how it all worked, but NEVER from children. I did get questions about the back story, or suggestions about motivations, or indeed Actual Plot Holes, but never about the plot itself. This is something, I must say, I am very proud about!

So anyway - was it a direct rip-off of Dinosaur Planet? Well, much as it pains me to say so, clearly not - the day was not saved by good quality academic research, it wasn't the ROBOTS who had stolen the dinosaurs, nor (SADLY) had the Dinosaurs evolved into super terrifying space monsters.

HOWEVER! There WERE lots of bits that made me wonder if C.Chibnall had indirectly heard bits of the show. After all, i DID send copies of the album to various Doctor Who related types, and it WAS in several sci-fi websites, so maybe - MAYBE - the idea of mixing in space pirates, stolen dinosaurs, EVOLVED dinosaurs (which is what SILURIANS are, after all) escaping the first asteroid, beligerent giant robots, a returning "asteroid" that isn't actually an asteroid and - hey hey! - a motley group of adventurers including a slightly clueless lad and his dad/grandad - MAYBE there was a part of that that started with Dinosaur Planet.

We may never know - but if anybody at the Doctor Who offices reads this and feels any trace of responsibility, it is easily fixed: just let me do a MUSICAL EPISODE some time. I've got a great idea for an episode about The Doctor and a HORSE (and robot) that he meets on the moon!

posted 11/9/2012 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

Sadly, a lot of fanboys are a bit like Lennie from "Of Mice and Men": they love a show like "Doctor Who" so much and with such intensity, they end up crushing its fragile magic in their great lumpy hands.
posted 11/9/2012 by The Silver Fox

Holy crap, YES :D The one thing I haven't seen them do yet is an in-continuity musical... like Buffy et al. All it needs is some McGuffin reason for everyone to be singing and dancing, and away we go.
posted 11/9/2012 by MarkP

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