Robot of Sherwood
Sep. 7th, 2014 01:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcWow, that was fun!
And by "fun" I mean "I couldn't stop laughing". This was the funniest Doctor Who episode I've seen in ages - Moffat always puts lots of clever and witty lines in his scripts but. perhaps because that's his background, he always seems to be resistant to ever making an outright comedy. So get Gattis to do it instead.
(My favourite Twitter comment on the episode so far has been "If Doctor Who is never allowed to be silly it becomes Babylon 5. And nobody wants that." I actually quite like Babylon 5, but still.)
ETA: In the face of multiple comments on the subject, no, B5 isn't all grim and depressing and I know that -- as I said, I liked it. But I appreciated the tone of the above comment even if I disagreed about the example used. I apologise to Babylon 5 for repeating this calumny.
Portraying Robin Hood -- in the face of decades of Robin of Sherwood/Prince of Thieves this-is-what-a-bunch-of-outlaws-would-actually-be-like -- as somwhere between Errol Flynn and panto was comedy genius. But beating that is the Doctor's entirely justified sceptical reaction to him.
Gattis knows that even a comedy episode needs to have some meat to it, though, and shows Robin, regardless of the Doctor's opinion, as a real person behind the laughing rogue persona. (The Sheriff, on the other hand, is a boo-hiss panto baddie, which is exactly what is needed). (ETA: And a robot, apparently, which didn't really come across in the final edit; I only learned this when I asked about the cut scenes.)
And the first half was a checklist of everything else a Robin Hood story needed: Battle on a stream, check. Sheriff terrorising peasants, check. Introduction to the Merry Men, check. Archery contest for golden arrow, check. (And bonus points for, much later, making said arrow relevant to the plot!) Captured and thrown in dungeons, check. Sheriff being creepy toMarian Clara, check.
The multiple revelations and reversals in the second half, culminating in the "reveal" that Robin Hood was exactly who he claimed to be, were nicely done. "The Promised Land" gets namechecked again, but no sign of Missy (do these robots not get to go to heaven?)
Favourite line, well there's so much to choose from, but I'm choosing to believe that Clara suggesting the Sheriff might conquer Worksop is a deliberate reference.
And by "fun" I mean "I couldn't stop laughing". This was the funniest Doctor Who episode I've seen in ages - Moffat always puts lots of clever and witty lines in his scripts but. perhaps because that's his background, he always seems to be resistant to ever making an outright comedy. So get Gattis to do it instead.
(My favourite Twitter comment on the episode so far has been "If Doctor Who is never allowed to be silly it becomes Babylon 5. And nobody wants that." I actually quite like Babylon 5, but still.)
ETA: In the face of multiple comments on the subject, no, B5 isn't all grim and depressing and I know that -- as I said, I liked it. But I appreciated the tone of the above comment even if I disagreed about the example used. I apologise to Babylon 5 for repeating this calumny.
Portraying Robin Hood -- in the face of decades of Robin of Sherwood/Prince of Thieves this-is-what-a-bunch-of-outlaws-would-actually-be-like -- as somwhere between Errol Flynn and panto was comedy genius. But beating that is the Doctor's entirely justified sceptical reaction to him.
Gattis knows that even a comedy episode needs to have some meat to it, though, and shows Robin, regardless of the Doctor's opinion, as a real person behind the laughing rogue persona. (The Sheriff, on the other hand, is a boo-hiss panto baddie, which is exactly what is needed). (ETA: And a robot, apparently, which didn't really come across in the final edit; I only learned this when I asked about the cut scenes.)
And the first half was a checklist of everything else a Robin Hood story needed: Battle on a stream, check. Sheriff terrorising peasants, check. Introduction to the Merry Men, check. Archery contest for golden arrow, check. (And bonus points for, much later, making said arrow relevant to the plot!) Captured and thrown in dungeons, check. Sheriff being creepy to
The multiple revelations and reversals in the second half, culminating in the "reveal" that Robin Hood was exactly who he claimed to be, were nicely done. "The Promised Land" gets namechecked again, but no sign of Missy (do these robots not get to go to heaven?)
Favourite line, well there's so much to choose from, but I'm choosing to believe that Clara suggesting the Sheriff might conquer Worksop is a deliberate reference.
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no subject
Date: 2014-09-07 01:13 pm (UTC)Actually that really bugged me. B5 was frequently very silly. Even at the height of the various wars there was plenty of absurdity, one-liners, sight-gags etc. This revisionist view of it being the ultimate in po-faced Grimdark is pretty weak. BSG would be a better example, and even that had Gaius Baltar.
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Date: 2014-09-07 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-07 06:44 pm (UTC)and picking on Babylon 5 as a thing DW doesn't want to be is a bit random. Shouldn't they choose something either rubbish or joyless? (I mean, G'Kar loved it when he met a fake King Arthur; he'd probably have enjoyed being a Merry Man for a week.)