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You could tell the end was near for David Tennant’s
tenure as Doctor Who was at an end; the writing by producer/show
runner Russell T. Davies was less than inspired falling
into the hackneyed and clichéd. The Xmas special was up
to the high quality of the best episodes of teh show and
so was the third film. By the end it was time for a change.
In particular the very last two part special “The End of
Time” had a great premise that falls apart by the second
part of the show. The saving grace for the two part episode
are David Tennant’s performance and John Simm (“Life on
Mars”) who plays the Doctor’s most famous foil outside of
the Dalek’s and the only surviving Time Lord aside from
the Doctor, the Master. ***
In “The End of Time” the Master has regenerated and
plans on transforming the residents of Earth to serve him.
He also has “super” powers that enable him to fly and shoot
energy bolts out of his hands (the use of super powers smacks
of desperation on the part of Davies). The Doctor must stop
him. They both must contend with the return of the Time
Lords as they reach across time from a protected “time bubble”
to try and use Earth to bring back their world. We do get
a brief glimpse of the new 10th incarnation of the Doctor
(Matt Smith)and based on the BBC previews I’ve seen, it
looks as if Moffat (who wrote many of the best episodes
of the last three seasons)plans on recreating the Doctor
in his image as a bit more of a hands-on action hero compared
to previous incarnations. ***
Michelle Ryan (“The Bionic Woman”) appears in “Planet
of the Dead” where a London bus is transported to an alien
desert planet where the only living creatures appear to
be refugees from “Pitch Black”. It demonstrates the paucity
of Davies’ imagination towards the end of his tenure as
executive producer and primary writer for the series. While
Davies did a memorable job during the first three years
by the fourth the best scripts were coming from other writers
such as Stephen Moffat (the current executive producer and
head writer for the fifth season of the “new” Doctor). ***
“The Waters of Mars” and “The Next Doctor” are probably
the two strongest ones TV specials included here and that
isn’t saying much because these would be very mediocre episodes
of the second and third season when the series was at its
prime. ---
Image & Sound:
The original series was shot in standard definition
video so the Blu-ray presentation here is a bit of a step
up as the specials were all shot in high def. Images are
crisper, colors quite good although blacks aren’t quite
as solid as I would have liked. Detail is good without too
much digital over processing with a nice light grain added
to the digital presentation making it look like film. ***
Audio sounds equally as good. One of the issues that
dogged the early season sets were a 5.1 mix that had the
surround channels mix often dominating the dialogue (I suspect
that this was to make the show “play” better on stereo TV’s).
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