I had a moment on the train today that warmed the very cockles of my Who fan heart. A skinny little kid on the train was reading Doctor Who novels and trying to interest a cute schoolgirl in them. Fool that he was… he gave her ‘Last of the Gadarene’ by Mark ‘Idiot’s Lantern’ Gatiss. That’s not going to impress a girl. Girls like magic realism and postmodernism. Should’ve gone for ‘The Blue Angel’, kid. You live and learn. She read the blurb, had a quick look through it and handed it back, which I thought was a pretty impressive effort.

But now, I need to talk about something less pleasant. I don’t remember getting so irritated reading reviews of Doctor Who last year. It’s like internet fandom has taken a whole bottle of wanker-pills each. Oh yes, you can get wanker pills. Just a few things I’d like to clear up.

• If you don’t know anything about science, don’t try to nitpick the science in an episode, or at least be hesitant instead of loudly proclaiming “Oh, and I notice Scooti didn’t explode in space! Hah! Wrong! I saw a movie one time!”

• The Doctor is arrogant, he’s always been arrogant, he always will be arrogant. It’s always been funny in the past, how the hell has it suddenly become an issue? He’s also pretty awesome, have you noticed? Keeps saving the day. How many times does he have to save the day before he’s justified in his arrogance?

• Rose is not a perfect human being. There’s less of them about these days; even Jesus had his selfish moments. Saying something slightly selfish to try to get your neglected but loved boyfriend to stay with you is not grounds for h8, however you spell it. I dread to think how some of you people would cope watching Six Feet Under. There wouldn’t be enough h8 in your soul to cope with all the selfish stupid things people do on that show.

• I take that back, that bit before. Stop spelling h8 with an eight. It’s silly. Unless it means ‘mild dislike’ when you write it like that, in which case I apologise.

• I agree that the technical details of how the science works are not unimportant. I’d like it if all the episodes fitted together as neatly as ‘The Empty Child’. But in the grand scheme of weighting of episodes, this factor is not the plot and does not count for half the episode’s worth. Stop making it out that because the Wire doesn’t immediately make consistent sense that ‘The Idiot’s Lantern’ is below average.

• Murray Gold writes the music — he does not mix the final edit of the show. If you don’t like the sound balance you’re blaming the wrong person. Probably.

• Stop ignoring explanations given in the show so that you can go on to criticise the show for not making sense. The Clockwork Men in ‘Girl in the Fireplace’ were broken. That’s why they do crazy things. How can you in all seriousness start saying “Waiting for Mme de Pompadour to reach 35 years of age is just silly”?

• When two people are happy, that’s not a justifiable reason to want to slap them. Seriously, it might be better if you didn’t leave the house until you work through your issues. That time with the werewolf, that was a bit off. The Queen called them on it. Making a joke when they leave the TARDIS before they meet anyone is not on the same level.

That’ll do for now. I hope this has been a learning experience for all of us.

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Sunday, June 4th, 2006. It concerns such pressing issues as books, Doctor Who, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.