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A-B

7 Days on the Breadline

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"Ah fuck it - the cunt bit me" - a Steve Irwin tribute

Alive: Back To The Andes

Amy Winehouse on Never Mind the Buzzcocks

Amy Winehouse on the Charlotte Church show

Anti-Social Old Buggers

The Apprentice

The Apprentice Series Three Final

The Apprentice Series 3 half-term report

The Apprentice Season 4

The Apprentice Series 4 Finale

The Armstrongs

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Ashes to Ashes

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Battlestar Galactica Season 3 finale

Battlestar Galactica Season 4

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Being... N-Dubz

Bernard Manning From Beyond the Grave

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Big Brother 2005

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Big Brother 2008 - It's a Wonderful Life (when you're not in it

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Big Brother 2008: Stuart tapped the compassion vending machine and it toppled over and fell on top of him

Big Brother 2010 final

Big Brother's Big Mouth

Big Brother, Emily Parr and racism

Big Brother got no gas, Sienna Miller got no ass, Mark Ronson got no class

Big Brother poetry

Big Brother, Shilpa Shetty and racism

Bionic Woman pre-air pilot

Bo! in the USA

Bodies

Bodies series finale

Body Shock: Half Ton Man

Bollocks To Cancer

Bonekickers

The Boys Who Killed Stephen Lawrence

Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad Season 2 finale

Breaking Bad Season 3

Bring Back...Grange Hill

Britain's Got Talent Series 4

Britney and Kevin: Chaotic

Bruce Forsyth - A Comedy Roast

Bully Beatdown

C-D

Californication

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Caprica pilot

Castrating Galactica - why Faceman needs to can it

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Doctor Who

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Hard Sell: BT

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In This Corner

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The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret

Inside Waco

REVIEWS | A-B | C-D | E-I | J-M | N-R | S-T | U-Z | MISC


Doctor Who Series Five Premiere

Doctor Who Series Five Premiere

BBC1

We're always telling children not to walk off with strange men yet Doctor Who hightails in with his schizoid time goon routine, offers his hands to a nine-year-old Scottish girl and off they wonder to her bedroom to see some puppies.  He's, like, a thousand years old but that doesn't matter to Amelia Pond, oddball infant Jock with a "crack" in her "wall" (that'll be a tear in the very fabric of space-time, my guess).  And as strange men go the man who steps out of the crash landed police box in her garden is one of the stranger ones.  Suffering from  post-regeneration traumatic syndrome, he's twitching, babbling and jerking like Judy Finnigan.  He flirts with Amelia for a while before leaping into the Tardis and telling her he'll be back in five.  Turns out, he's back in 12.  Years.  And he calls himself a timelord? 

"She'll catch some flak for being sexually attractive but her ginger ostrich chasing around in hen night fancy dress shtick was the only entertaining thing about this opener.  There's a palpable phone-this-in-they'll-give-us-rave-reviews-anyway attitude that infects everything."

Amelia Pond is now Amy Pieond (Karen Gillan), sexy flame haired kissogram with a fiery yet vulnerable heart in La Senza police uniform.  Together, they are menaced by a shit monster that looks like the Curious Alien from This Morning with Richard Not Judy. Curious Alien's alien captors decide to destroy planet Earth for harbouring a multi dimensional criminal.  Doctor Poo starts quoting intergalactic bylaws and all of a sudden we're in Hitchhiker's Guide.

As the doctor gurns, leaps and gambols, Amy spends most of her time pulling her microskirt down and looking surprised.  She'll catch some flak for being sexually attractive but her ginger ostrich chasing around in hen night fancy dress shtick was the only entertaining thing about this opener.  Take out the da-daa-da-da-da-daa-daa incidental music and you're left with a seriously dull plot, depressingly derivative baddies and a palpable phone-this-in-they'll-give-us-rave-reviews-anyway attitude that infects everything.  It's all quirk and no substance.

"The deux ex machina employed to defeat the Eyeball of Doom clunked like the Lee 'Scratch' Perry dub remix of a chain being dropped down a 500 foot toilet in the centre of the Grand Canyon"

How anyone thinks Matt Smith is some kind of fresh take on the Doctor is beyond my ken.  There is not a mannerism, character point or idiosyncrasy that hasn't been done by Tennant or Ecclestone.  It's not like he does it particularly badly.  Few actors do a bad Doctor Who because it's a showy role requiring little nuance or range, just a willingness to show off.  How hard is it a find an actor who likes to do that?

Babble about the breathless pace all you like, Doctor Who stopped being good television some time ago and is now sci-fi by numbers hackwork.  There is no subversion, no ingenuity and the deux ex machina employed to defeat the CGI Eyeball of Doom clunked like the Lee "Scratch" Perry dub remix of a chain being dropped down a 500 foot toilet in the centre of the Grand Canyon. 

Sparky overwritten dialogue that advances neither character nor story abounds.  This was smoke and mirrors to deflect attention away from a dying leader. Brezhnev is comatose.  And Doctor Who is done. Remember where you were when you first heard it.  Aerial Telly called it. 

Welcome return?  Get the fuck out of here.

The verdict on Doctor Who Series Five Premiere: Doctor Poo .

Marks out of 10: 5

 

 

Imagined: Thursday, April 08, 2010


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REVIEWS (cont'd)

J-M

Jericho

John From Cincinnati

Jordan and Peter: Marriage And Mayhem

Joss Whedon's Dollhouse will be the greatest television show in history

Journeyman

jPod

Keys To The Vip

The Kill Point

Kings

King Of Shaves advert

Life

The Life and Times of Tim

Life on Mars

Lip Service

Live From Studio Five

Louie

Louis Theroux - The City Addicted to Crystal Meth

Loose Women

Lost

Lost Season 2

Lost Season 3 Finale

Lost Season 3: half-term report

Lost Season 3 Premiere

Lost Season 4 Half Term report

Lost Season 6 Premiere

Lost Season 6x09 - Ab Aeterno

Lost Series Finale

Luther

Luther Series One finale

Mad Men

Mad Men Season 2

Mad Men Season 2 Finale

Mad Men Season 3 Premiere

Mad Men Season 3 Finale

Mad Men Season 4

The Madness of Boy George

Mars Believe World Cup Campaign

Man vs Wild

Martina Cole's The Take

Mary Archer

The Mentalist

Mercy Series Premiere

Michael Carroll: King Of Chavs

Misfits

The Mitchell Brothers' Return

Mock the Week

Modern Family

Mongrels

Monkey Dust

Morales v Barrera III

My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding

My Family

My Name Is Earl

My Penis And I

My Supermodel Baby

 

N-R

Nibble Nobby's Nuts adverts

Nigella

Neighbours 20th anniversary show

No Angels

No Heroics

Old Enough To Be His Mother

Oscars 2005

Only Yesterday - The Carpenters' Story

Pacific

Paradox

Party Animals

Party Down

The Persuasionists

Peaches Geldof: Teen America

Pete Burns' Cosmetic Surgery Nightmares

The Peter Serafinowicz Show

PhoneShop

The Pick-up Artist

The Pickup Artist Season 2 Premiere

Pineapple Dance Studios

Preston's Walk Out on Never Mind The Buzzcocks

Prison Break

Prison Break 2

Prison Break Season Two: half-term report

Prison Break Season Two Premiere

Prison Break Season Two Finale

Prison Break Season 4 Half Term Report

Pulling

Pulse

Pushing Daisies series premiere...

Richard and Judy

Rev

Rome Season One

S-T

Saxondale

The Secret Life of A Manic Depressive

The Secret Policemen's Ball

Seduction School: Size Doesn't Matter

Sex Addict

Seymour Butts

Shameless

Shameless Season 4

Shane

Sherlock

Sherlock series 1 finale: The Great Game

The Shield

The Shield - Season Five Finale

The Shield - Season 6

The Shield series finale

Six Feet Under

Skins

Skins Season 2

Smoking Room

Sons of Anarchy

Sons of Anarchy Season 2 Premiere

The Sopranos Season 6

Space Cadets

Spartacus: Blood and Sand

Spartacus: Blood and Sand Season One Finale

The Spy Who Stole My Life

State of the TV Nation Address

Stepkids In Love

Strike Back

Studs of Suburbia

Summer Heights High

Supernanny

Surviving Disaster

Take That... for the Record

Talk to me

Take Me Out

Ted Bundy - Natural Porn Killer

Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles

The Thick Of It

The Thick of It Series 3

This Life +10

This World: Kidnap Cops

Top 30 TV Shows of 2010

Tower Block of Commons

Treme

True Stories - The Trials Of Amanda Knox

Too Ugly For Love

True Blood

True Blood Season 2 Final

TV's Naughtiest Blunders

U-Z

Unanimous

Underbelly

Undercover Princesses

Veronica Mars

Veronica Mars Season Three Half-term Report

Veronica Mars Season Two

Veronica Mars Season Three Premiere

Veronica Mars Season Three finale

A Very Social Secretary

Vexed

Weeds

Weeds Season 3

Weeds Season 4

Weeds Season 5 Finale

Weeds Season 5 Premiere

When Fearne Met Peaches

When Lineker Met Maradona

Wimbledon coverage

The Wire Season 3

The Wire, Season 4

The Wire Season 5 Premiere

The Wire Series Finale

World Cup coverage

World Cup Final 2010

The World Cup has been kidnapped and molested

World's Deadliest Gangs

Worried About the Boy

X Factor 2005

X-Factor 2007

X-Factor 2008

X-Factor 2009

MISC REVIEWS

40 Pupils Suspended For Bullying

606 with Danny Baker

Amazon Review Scum

Blowjob monologues and the like

Everything is retro, funky and kitsch on eBay nowadays

Floyd Mayweather v Carlos Manuel Baldomir

An Illustrated History of Dis

Fooled By Randomness

Hip-hop

Indie kids - munching on cock all day, every day, from now until forever

Listen up, douchebags: Larry Merchant KO1 murdering rapist hype merchant scum that constitute boxing's deal-making fight-avoiding turd elite

Love skunk Vernon Kay sprays his rat jism

Morales v Barrera III

Music Sounds Better With You(tube)

NME cool list

Playlouder Reviews

Roid Jones jnr? You must be joking, Joke

Stan Collymore

The Streets

Vertigolf

War Winehouse!

We Expose Palace Security As A Bag Of Shite