This one’s a step up from “New Earth”, but still not one that I think of too fondly (or at all, really).
Warrior monks! Neat! Unfortunately, their sweet martial arts are ruined in the edit, so I guess that’s that.
I’m honestly not sure what to say…it’s pretty paint-by-numbers, for the most part. RTD dips his toes into the supernatural-folklore-but-actually-they’re-aliens well, which…I think I preferred the approach in his most recent run, just letting magic be magic.
The CGI werewolf actually looks pretty great - good design, well-animated, and kept in the darkness to paper over any jankiness. My only complaint is that it seems pretty weightless at times, which is a common issue.
The cast is good. The story is contrived-but-serviceable.
As for the theme of the episode, with the Doctor and Rose not taking the situation as seriously as they should…it almost feels like this episode should come toward the end of the series, after they’ve had more adventures together (of course, it’s entirely possible that they have had more adventures together, but we didn’t see them). You could swap this with “Fear Her” and it would seem better-placed within the series.
Mind you, that would have meant that I had to watch “Fear Her” this week, and I don’t know why I would do that to myself.
The bit about them not taking it seriously is a good point. The Doctor spotted pretty quickly that rose was acting oddly in the previous episode. Given how badly the landlord was trying to make it seem like something wasn’t right, Doctor should have spotted it right away.
I agree about the “just let it be a werewolf”. The bit at the close of the episode where they go on about werewolves, the way people react to the monster, it would have been perfectly fine to just let it be a werewolf.
This one’s a step up from “New Earth”, but still not one that I think of too fondly (or at all, really).
Warrior monks! Neat! Unfortunately, their sweet martial arts are ruined in the edit, so I guess that’s that.
I’m honestly not sure what to say…it’s pretty paint-by-numbers, for the most part. RTD dips his toes into the supernatural-folklore-but-actually-they’re-aliens well, which…I think I preferred the approach in his most recent run, just letting magic be magic.
The CGI werewolf actually looks pretty great - good design, well-animated, and kept in the darkness to paper over any jankiness. My only complaint is that it seems pretty weightless at times, which is a common issue.
The cast is good. The story is contrived-but-serviceable.
As for the theme of the episode, with the Doctor and Rose not taking the situation as seriously as they should…it almost feels like this episode should come toward the end of the series, after they’ve had more adventures together (of course, it’s entirely possible that they have had more adventures together, but we didn’t see them). You could swap this with “Fear Her” and it would seem better-placed within the series.
Mind you, that would have meant that I had to watch “Fear Her” this week, and I don’t know why I would do that to myself.
The bit about them not taking it seriously is a good point. The Doctor spotted pretty quickly that rose was acting oddly in the previous episode. Given how badly the landlord was trying to make it seem like something wasn’t right, Doctor should have spotted it right away.
I agree about the “just let it be a werewolf”. The bit at the close of the episode where they go on about werewolves, the way people react to the monster, it would have been perfectly fine to just let it be a werewolf.