Doctor Who: 3x04 Daleks In Manhatten

[kerravonsen]

Hmmm. It's a bit hard to judge a two-parter, but this feels like a "just okay" one.

Good:
"But you're the smartest guy I've ever dated!"

The dancing, the feathers, the girls -- very pretty.

Bad:
Er, why pigs?

And I don't think much of the Dalek-human hybrid, really. What does it remind me of? Oh, I remember! The alien in "City of Death" -- Scaroth.

Other musings:
The Doctor seems to be giving Martha a travelogue of the seamy underside, doesn't he?


And it looks like my flist agrees that it's rather lacklustre, considering that nobody else has bothered to post anything about it yet.

Comments

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

The alien in "City of Death" -- Scaroth.

Absolutely, my first thought too. And I don't get this obsession with putting animal heads on actors. (We've already had pigs, too, two seasons back.) Nor did I understand why captives had to be pigged before mental conditioning, rather than as a part of it, or indeed at all. Presumably there was some connection with the genetic experiment, but slaves who could pass as ordinary humans would have been far more useful, in the short term at least.

That and several other complaints apart, I actually enjoyed this episode more than most in the past two seasons. I think a lot of it was down to Hugh Quarshie and Hooverville. For some reason, the moment the Doctor mentioned the Depression (and Martha knew about it), I started thinking "this is much more interesting than it looked in the trailer". And the Art Deco was lovely, too.

[kerravonsen]

Agree with you about the pigs; it's actually scarier when you've got mindless people -- but I think the reason for the pigging was that they wanted a sort of Phantom Of The Opera thing between Laslow and Tallulah. And also to show off their makeup department. But I much preferred the cats.

I think a lot of it was down to Hugh Quarshie and Hooverville.

I agree, he's nicely charismatic, carries it well.

Thanks for the name of the actor; it had been bugging me where I'd seen him before. Now able to look him up, seems the most likely is Kastagir in Highlander, since I rewatched that relatively recently.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

That's interesting, why did my mind immediately assume the boyfriend was spelled Laszlo? No, I don't expect you to answer that question.

Yes, I imagined the pigginess was all there for Tallulah's benefit (or not-benefit). But it annoyed me that it didn't appear to make sense within the plot. The cats I didn't mind because... ah... maybe because they were cats. But somehow they seemed more natural, anyway.

I'm a long-time admirer of Hugh Quarshie - I used to see him on stage a lot in the 1980s. I associate him with seventeenth-century drama, so I was slightly surprised to see that he'd turned down Othello because he thought the part demeaning. (He has played Aaron in Titus Andronicus, who's a black villain redeemed only by his love for his newborn child, but I saw him play romantic leads in colour-blind casting.) I'd like to read his thoughts on the Othello question.

Despite Quarshie, my favourite scene was the Cult of Skaro whinging and Sec trying to keep control of his little band. "'Snot fair there's only four of us!" "Now, now, we've all had to make sacrifices!"

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

[laughs at the last bit]

I thought he was Laszlo too. He isn't? [goes to look] But he is, according to the Wiki entry. We were right. :-)

[kerravonsen]

Hmmm, someone must have changed the Wiki entry -- it was Laslow when I looked.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Ah, the joys of Wiki! :-P

[tptigger.livejournal.com]

*blinks* He's Professor Galt.

You weren't doing the "hey, we're adding to the Dr. Who/Tomorrow People shared actors list in a big way squee?"

Just me, I guess.

*looks innocent and starts whistling the new series theme*

[kerravonsen]

*blinks* He's Professor Galt.

Oh!

Well, I guess that's another reason he looked familiar.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

I had exactly the same thoughts about the pigmen.

I liked the wisdom of Solomon being demonstrated by his dividing a loaf of bread in half, as opposed to proposing to divide a baby in half. :)

[tptigger.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking the hybrid dalek is from City of Death. I was worried I might just have Douglas Adams on the brain. :)

Yes, Martha does seem to be seeing a lot of the seamy underside.

I giggled a lot, but this wasn't as good as the first couple stories in the season to be sure. :)

[eve11]

Having not seen City of Death, the Dalek-human was new to me, and I thought it was a cool new twist on old baddies.

Hadn't commented yesterday b/c I hadn't seen it yet, but actually I liked it quite a bit. I love when they take history and mix in aliens and mythos: the Globe being built to the parameters set by the witches, the Empire State Building being a Dalek master plan... that stuff is always cool.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I thought the pigs were lame too, but then I realized that creating a hybrid of humans with another creature was their way of practicing for creating a hybrid between Dalek and human. If they'd merely turned the humans into their robotic slaves by altering their brains, that wouldn't have advanced their abilities at splicing two sets of DNA, or whatever you want to call it. That's also why the merger of Sec with the human guy was called the "Final Experiment".