Monday, 4 January 2010

Doctor Who Nation




Sci Fi has a bit more cred over here in the UK. It is a well-respected Christmas tradition to sit around and watch the good doctor save the planet (or at least London). Coffee-vending police boxes make coy references to Torchwood and the Tardis. In fact, Tardis is a word in common usage amongst the general public. And paraphernalia from the show is considered worth appearing in special exhibitions at publicly-owned museums (which we went to see in Glasgow before Christmas, Mike forgot to mention that in his previous post).

As mentioned in a previous post, we have been blessed with plenty of snow this year. We returned home Saturday night to discover our neighbours had been busy building a Snow Ood (photographed above). As someone who did an "interest talk" in grade 5 on set and costume design for Doctor Who, I have to say I'm enjoying living in a country where such interests are not seen as a sign of incurably nerdiness.

(I'm sure Mike will want me to make it perfectly clear that it is me, AJW, writing this and not him.)

Having just watched all five episodes of Torchwood: Children of Earth, I have to say that the Doctor Who spin-off series has finally found it's legs. The previous two seasons suffered from silliness, but in Children of Earth Russell T. Davies treats his characters brutally and creates a gripping story-arc that provides an at-times painful portrayal of what people are capable of when their backs are to the wall. Well worth watching if it makes it across the pond.

1 comment:

Dave said...

And the final David Tennant Doctor Who was apparently shown here, 'across the pond', on saturday on the Space channel, on the same night that we watched it in Edinburgh