Dr Who - Alien meets 24 » Why Dont You Blog?

Dr Who - Alien meets 24

article written by Heather.

Another pretty good Dr Who episode tonight.

Visually, Dr Who is getting better and better. There was better rendering (a good space ship and a bubbling sun) and more interesting lighting (red and blue on the face close-ups) than we’d expect from normally cash-short British tv.

Altogether, it had the look and feel of “proper” sci-fi. Racing headlong into the sun is par for the course. (Solaris, and the film where Bruce Willis has to destroy an asteroid.) So is being trapped on a space ship with an unknown evil entity. (Alien, 2001.) As well as being stalked by a mechanical humanoid figure. (Predator, Terminator, Judge Dredd.) The computer female voice that keeps giving out unemotional messages of the pressure of time (can’t think of a reference sorry, but it seems standard…)

The main visual influence seemed to be the Alien movies (with a nod to Das Boot, but maybe that’s just me.) Both male and female technicians looked like the crew of Alien (vests, combat suits, artfully arranged sweat) . The ship also had the same sort of look and there was an intense claustrophobic feel to the plot, as well as to the sets.

This episode was called “42″, with a nod to Douglas Adams (the “answer to the universe”) and to “24″ (the episode was supposed to be in real-time and there was a 42 minute timer countdown providing constant pressure).

So, a bit of an art-house-for-nerds episode. This series is shaping up to be the best one ever. Although this is from someone who loves sci-fi clichés. And who thinks that the very first Dr Who series - with that weird Quatermassy feel and the old man with long white hair - and the mainly-played for laughs Tom Baker Dr Who were the only really good bits, out of what was often dire.

[tags]42, dr-who, episode, rave, sci-fi, sci-fi-cliches, television, tv, BBC, Douglas Adams[/tags]

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Tags: BBC, Douglas-Adams, Dr-Who, episode, rave, sci-fi, sci-fi-cliches, Television, tv.

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11 Responses to “Dr Who - Alien meets 24”

Ben wrote:

The female computer voice is another one from Alien - after Ripley sets the ship to self-destruct ‘Mother’ periodically announces how long the crew have left in which to cheese it. It also features in the recent sci-fi ‘Sunshine’, where the possibility of plunging headlong into the sun is ever present, which brings us back in a neat, if admittedly pointless, circle to tonight’s Who, which was most enjoyable.

This comment was written at May 19th, 2007 at 20:31,
TW wrote:

Well said, both of you

This comment was written at May 19th, 2007 at 20:46,
nullifidian wrote:

I was going to say what Ben said: “Mother” from Alien certainly was first in line to pop into my head as the impersonal-countdown-to-certain-DOOM-on-a-spaceship voice, although I’ve yet to see Sunshine.

Tonight’s episode was definitely one of the better ones (aside from the obviously dodgy ~~wire-work~~physics as opposed to the usual suspension of disbelief stuff) when compared to the likes of the (IMO) very poor “motorway” episode, even within the universe of Dr Who.

Thought I’d pop by and say “hi” too, seeing as I’ve quite quiet for the past couple of weeks. Erm, so, “hi!”

This comment was written at May 20th, 2007 at 2:11,
TW wrote:

Hi

This comment was written at May 20th, 2007 at 2:15,
Lyle Bateman (aka Elron Steele) wrote:

This comment was written at May 20th, 2007 at 5:44,
TW wrote:

well said. It would be funny if the BBC went for it…

This comment was written at May 20th, 2007 at 13:41,
TW wrote:

For some reason Lyle’s post is not showing up properly. I dont know why, but the blog wont show the text when the hyperlink is made active. It read:

Tom Baker and William Hartnell defined Dr. Who for me, prior to the current series, with Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee and Sylvester McCoy as runner’s up. I must admit, that I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen of the Tennant Doctor … he seems to have the character down, IMO. I mentioned in a recent blog post (http://blog.globalparadigms.com/2007/01/23/the-good-doctor/) once of the fascinating aspects of Dr Who is how much of it has seeped into the rest of SF imagery without attribution. I can’t watch (or more accurately, LISTEN to) the Borg from Star Trek without hearing and seeing Daleks, right down with the human/machine hybrid horror aspect of. And who can truly look at Storm Troopers or classic Cylons the same after seeing the venerable Dr of William Hartnell do battle with the dreaded Cybermen? Makes the copyright infringement lawsuit by Lucas against the makers of Battlestar Gallactica a bit silly in perspective … BBC shoulda been suing both their asses, lol.
Nice to see another fan of the Good Doctor

This comment was written at May 20th, 2007 at 13:59,
TW wrote:

http://blog.globalparadigms.com/2007/01/23/the-good-doctor/

This comment was written at May 20th, 2007 at 14:10,
Lyle Bateman (aka Elron Steele) wrote:

Thanx for reposting this … I’ll remember not to put links in the body of my messages again

This comment was written at May 20th, 2007 at 16:08,
TW wrote:

I don’t know why it doesn’t work in your post. It didn’t work when I copied your post, but when I put the link in on its own, it worked. Madness.

Normally there is no problems with links going into posts, so this is confusing.

http://www.example.com/ should work - for example

This comment was written at May 20th, 2007 at 18:09,
Why Dont You Blog? » Sci-fi cliches wrote:

[...] is further to the post about Dr Who’s references to other sci-fi and some very knowledgeable comments, one of which pointed out that sci-fi movies owe a fair bit to [...]

This comment was written at May 21st, 2007 at 21:23,