Tuesday, April 06, 2010

My informed opinions

I've been added to the otherwise impressive line-up of guests at the Utopia Doctor Who convention at posh Heythorp Park Hotel over the weekend of 15-16 May. Think I'm there to stand next to Jean Marsh and flog lots of Sara Kingdom product. Do come along and say hi.

ETA: I'll also be at Sci-Fi London on 2 May for "The Birth of Modern Doctor Who". Very excited by the live Bernice Summerfield reading.

Also, here's what I wrote immediately after Saturday's Doctor Who and then fired off to the Sunday Herald. It appeared on page 3 the next day. (Typical: they want my smiley, happy views on important topics of the day, but not a smiley, topless picture.)
"So: immediate reactions on having just watched the new Doctor Who. The closing theme is still playing, my heart's hammering through my ribs and the wife and her friend Gemma are cackling away as they recall all the rude bits.

Matt Smith is immediately compelling as the Doctor, a fantastically funny and wild performance. We never know which way he'll go next – and neither, it seems, does he.

Karen Gillan's Amy manages to be smart and sexy and real, with a life and job and all sorts of friends and relations to ground in her that reality. She's as wary of the Doctor as she is entranced.

All those brilliant, simple ideas right out of a child's imagination – a crack in a bedroom wall, a small girl who has to wait, monsters with the wrong voices. The visceral terror of a monster you can only glimpse who's sneaking up behind you.

A script packed full of perfect jokes and details, crying out to be picked over again and again.

Patrick Moore! Amy not looking away when the Doctor puts his clothes on! The new TARDIS! All of it bold and new and full of promise and excitement. And yet still no shadow of a doubt that this is the same old man who first appeared through the London fog back in black-and-white and the sixties.

Awesome. Properly awesome, before the word got all devalued. Provoking awe and amazement and not a little fear.

There are people who don't like Doctor Who. Like people who get no joy from biscuits or balloons. How can you not have loved that? I feel like a kid again.

And what's even more exciting, the wife says that if I'm good there'll be more Doctor Who next week."

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