Post by magnusgreel on May 2, 2009 6:06:55 GMT
Impressions... Interesting, diverting things going on. Heathrow, interesting. Five invokes UNIT, Tardis stuffed into Concorde (those are mothballed now, right?), Five miffed at remarks about his Tardis from pilot and at being told he was "wrong" about where they end up later. It's a string of semi-interesting things rather than a plot.
I really like the prehistorical backdrop. It certainly beats Star Trek's red-sky boulder planets. The clouds are great, and it's hard to see much with people annoyingly standing in the way and talking, but the landscape made me wish for a little creativity that would have made the light patterns cast on the land shift around. I got the impression of one of those days where light sneaks through heavy cloud cover and casts shapes of brighter light green which keep shifting. They had wind sounds, but there should have been a fan to actually make some wind.
I'm screaming to get out of this dark box I live in and get outdoors, can you tell?!
Too much of this story was a throwback to the '60s children's-show days. The one enormous example that could not be ignored was the ill-defined, preposterous Emperor Ming villain. The Doctor acted a bit suspicious, but he really should have laid into Pseudo-Ming Mercilessly. I can see him as the Master's contemptuous, warped idea of a disguise that stupid Earthlings would accept. Five needed to start mocking from the second he laid eyes on him.
That's what Four would have done. "You can manipulate time, yet you're filming a Flash Gordon serial? What's that voice meant to be? You seem to be playing to a very unsophisticated audience, I guess you didn't expect me to show up! Leela, why haven't you knifed him yet? Not that I actively encourage that sort of thing.... "
Then, toward the end, we finally get an explanation, in the form of a lecture from a sort of spirit of an individual Xeraphim who has arisen out of their power source and/or corporate creature. I never noticed it in years past, because my head was probably nodding at that point. You know what, I think that story's interesting. They should have filmed that one and dispensed with Time Flight. It's a little too close to Star Trek's "Return to Tomorrow", but that could have been fixed.
Everything that's just hinted at or whizzed by with exposition, the backstory and what happens after this story on Xerafass, that's where the real story is. They're out to torture me, that's it. It reminds me of one of the worse (to me) Voyager episodes, where they say there are unimaginably fabulous cities of human beings from Earth, descended from alien abductees over the centuries, on a particular planet across the galaxy, with technology and culture that would make your jaw drop.... then the show skips over their amazing trip to visit these cities and they're back in the ship having boring discussions in the next scene. We never see it.
That's probably all, but I may remember more things to complain about later.
I really like the prehistorical backdrop. It certainly beats Star Trek's red-sky boulder planets. The clouds are great, and it's hard to see much with people annoyingly standing in the way and talking, but the landscape made me wish for a little creativity that would have made the light patterns cast on the land shift around. I got the impression of one of those days where light sneaks through heavy cloud cover and casts shapes of brighter light green which keep shifting. They had wind sounds, but there should have been a fan to actually make some wind.
I'm screaming to get out of this dark box I live in and get outdoors, can you tell?!
Too much of this story was a throwback to the '60s children's-show days. The one enormous example that could not be ignored was the ill-defined, preposterous Emperor Ming villain. The Doctor acted a bit suspicious, but he really should have laid into Pseudo-Ming Mercilessly. I can see him as the Master's contemptuous, warped idea of a disguise that stupid Earthlings would accept. Five needed to start mocking from the second he laid eyes on him.
That's what Four would have done. "You can manipulate time, yet you're filming a Flash Gordon serial? What's that voice meant to be? You seem to be playing to a very unsophisticated audience, I guess you didn't expect me to show up! Leela, why haven't you knifed him yet? Not that I actively encourage that sort of thing.... "
Then, toward the end, we finally get an explanation, in the form of a lecture from a sort of spirit of an individual Xeraphim who has arisen out of their power source and/or corporate creature. I never noticed it in years past, because my head was probably nodding at that point. You know what, I think that story's interesting. They should have filmed that one and dispensed with Time Flight. It's a little too close to Star Trek's "Return to Tomorrow", but that could have been fixed.
Everything that's just hinted at or whizzed by with exposition, the backstory and what happens after this story on Xerafass, that's where the real story is. They're out to torture me, that's it. It reminds me of one of the worse (to me) Voyager episodes, where they say there are unimaginably fabulous cities of human beings from Earth, descended from alien abductees over the centuries, on a particular planet across the galaxy, with technology and culture that would make your jaw drop.... then the show skips over their amazing trip to visit these cities and they're back in the ship having boring discussions in the next scene. We never see it.
That's probably all, but I may remember more things to complain about later.