Amph The OFFICIAL Doctor Who Episode Countdown - Nos. 3 & 4

Right, but I think it's probably like the attitude Capcom takes towards Devil May Cry 2 - you avoid the black sheep in the franchise, and in a massively long running series like Doctor Who, that translates as the one that immediately preceded being cancelled for two decades.

 

Really? You'd put Baker II over McCoy?

 

That's really not related to my point but yes. Baker has the superior audio plays.

 

Well, in the Audio by Big Finish, Colin Baker finally was allowed to play the Doctor the way he wanted to, instead of the way JNT insisted he do it. And I think The Fear Monger ranks up pretty high of the first 100 BFP. On the other hand, Colin Baker did not have to deal with stories like Happiness Patrol, Ghost Light, Silver Nemesis, or the all-time worst story (of classic who), Greatest Show in the Galaxy.

Are we ever going to get the rest of this countdown?

 

Er anyway, on the subject of the countdown... I actually kind of agree with RTD about Blink v. Silence. I think Blink is well constructed and nicely tense and atmospheric, but way overrated. I guess we'll get to that discussion later

Anyway, suffice it to say that I absolutely love this two-parter. Probably a top 5 story in NuWho for me. The way River's and his relationship is slowly unfolded and delved into is great, and culminates in that absolutely brilliant ending "everybody knows that everybody dies" voice over bit. Then snapping his fingers to open the TARDIS? Beautiful. As you guys know, I really love episodes that explore and build on the Doctor's character and I think this is one that does both that AND is suspenseful and creepy all at the same time. So yeah, I definitely love Silence. Though perhaps I like Forest even better.

 

When I watch "The Doctor's Wife" the only other NuWho moment that enters my mind is the moment Ten snaps his fingers and the TARDIS door swings open in "Forest of the Dead". Gaiman wrote their relationship beautifully, but Moffat captured it in one moment.

 

Yeah, that moment is absolutely beautiful. When it was echoed in The Eleventh Hour I got a big stupid grin on my face. One of the things I love about Silence/Forest is that you get a character coming in and asserting that, as much as the Doctor (and the audience) thinks he's seen everything, there's still more to come. It's one of the core notions of the show, but having River come in and straight up say that she's seen so much more was incredibly exciting. I think that led really perfectly into the epicness of Ten's ending, not to mention the increasingly magnificent adventures of Eleven (thanks BBCA for bringing in money for the production budget ).

 

7. The Empty Child

Chasing a metallic object through the vortex, the Ninth Doctor and Rose arrive in London during the Blitz. There, they find homeless children being terrorised, dead bodies with unexplained marks on their hands, a strange cylinder guarded by the army and the dashing Captain Jack Harkness. Just another day in the life of a time traveller.

Score: 17.27
Lowest: 14
Highest: 20

TRIVIA

The only word the Empty Child says not in relation to his mummy is "balloon".

When the Doctor opens the phone compartment, it's blue but the interior doors of the phone compartment are white.

 

This is the only Doctor Who story that ever really scared me (excluding the stuff I saw when I was a kid in the 70's). The gas-mask zombie kid creeped me out so bad I found myself turning the volume down on the TV, and that just never happens when watching Who. But there's so much more to this episode than scares: great dialogue, Captain Jack, Nancy (who's a great little character, imo), and some really ambitious visuals (for NuWho at the time) that bring WWII to life. It's kind of epic.

Until this episode I had kind of written off NuWho, but Moffat completely made me revise my opinion. One of the best.

 

This ep combined with The Doctor Dances makes up my favorite two parter to date.

 

I really liked this episode, that kid was freaky and we were introduced to Jack.

 

See, if Moffat can be responsible for an episode like that, why can't he write anything good now that he's in charge of the show?

 

Why hello there, Koohii, we've missed you and your joyful and optimistic posts.

 

"Optimism: An irrational belief, bordering on the insane, that everything will work out right in the end" --Douglas Adams via K-9

 

And the Doctor has it in spades.

 

Also you can just be a realist. As in "realistically, Moffat is a very good writer whom I just happen to not like because I have weird tastes."

I like this two-parter. It along with Father's Day is the best part of series 1. I should probably rewatch these episodes. The only thing is that I feel like it drags just a little bit too long. However, it has Captain Jack, so It also features some of the best chances for Eccleston to explore deeper aspects of the character, and I enjoy that a lot. And yes, obviously as people have noted, it's genuinely creepy.

 

I would throw in Dalek as well if we're talking about great performances by Eccleston as the Doctor.

 

That's true. I just always forget that Adam is in Dalek, then I watch it again and get annoyed that he is

 

True. Which is why I fast forward through most of the Adam parts and focus on Nine.

 

The best aspects of Dalek were watered down from "Jubilee" by Big Finish Productions.

 

You really do hate the New Who era don't you?

 

No. I strongly dislike the Moffat era.
Big Finish and NuWho have a huge amount of cross pollination. David Tennent's first involvement with Doctor Who was though BFP. Various cast and production staff (including Nicholas "Dalek & Cyberman Voice" Briggs). I find it lamentable that so many of the ideas from the new series that I thought were great or original were simply pirated.

 

What's wrong with adapting good audio/comic book stories for TV?

 

There is nothing wrong in theory, if the adaptation is equal to or superior to the original. I do not feel this is the case. Granted, that's largely because I find Evelyn Smythe to be a much more interesting and enjoyable character than Rose.
Take a glass of beer or soda. Drink half. Top up the existing glass with water. Still want to drink?

 

So this is me trying to get hal to post moar.

On The Empty Child: The two-parter made up of The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances is still my favorite Doctor Who two-parter to date, and, along with Blink, tied for my favorite episodes period. If I was pressed I might actually say that of the three The Empty Child is my favorite. There's a lot going for this episode: we get London during the Blitz, a fantastic (to crib from Nine) new Companion in Jack Harkness, and, in my opinion most importantly, an absolutely terrifying villain.

One of the major reasons why I watch Doctor Whois because it has this great essence of fear and suspense. I typically dislike horror movies and the like, but mostly because I dislike the splatter blood-and-guts take usually used in them. I very much appreciate horror as a genre, and as a tool for eliciting psychological and primal reactions from and audience. This is why I love horror literature, because it generally can't use such gory methods as a crutch. Doctor Who has always been adept at this. If you just look back at Classic Who and remember the old adage that kids used to watch it from behind the sofa then you'll see where I'm coming from. The writers have generally been very good at using horror as a tool to tell their stories.

To me The Empty Child is simply the best as capturing this aspect of Who. More than the second episode in the two-parter. More than Blink, or Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, or The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon (notice a pattern here; this is absolutely one of Moffat's specialties). While all of these episodes are terrifying in that there's a genuine feeling of being hunted by a nigh unstoppable force, in the end The Empty Child is partly so terrifying because it plays out much like a mystery. For most of the episode we don't know the extent or cause of the danger, and this brings about a feeling of helplessness because how can we combat a danger that we don't understand? This beings right at the start of the episode after the TARDIS's phone rings, and we're left guessing at what kind of thing could have done this, especially after The Doctor points out how this is simply something that shouldn't be possible in the first place. Well, we've just taken the bait and been hooked into watching the episode because we want our curiosity to be rewarded, but as we go on the tension keeps on increasing until it becomes all-encompassing! Moffat has just played us like an expert violinist. Add to this the VERY uncanny valley of the Empty Child's actual appearance, and we've got a cocktail for something really, really scary.

And yet only at the end of the episode after our understanding of the situation has been mostly brought about do we fully come to realize just how scary everything leading up to this has been, and how absolutely horrible a situation the characters are in now. This happens at the hospital. As Dr. Constantine explains the situation to The Doctor more fully, demonstrating with the patients, and then culminating in his own transformation, the full gravity of the situation dawns upon us. And it's made especially nasty now that we know that it's essentially like a zombie apocalypse only becoming airborne. We think not only about the dangers of being caught by the Empty Child, but of becoming like him, a shell of a person with no individuality and a single burning desire to find its mummy. At the end of the day what can The Doctor do? What can Rose or Captain Jack or Nancy or any of them do?

Well, of course that's why we have to stay tuned to the next week.