Starting this week, I will be posting a formal review for each of the Doctor Who Episodes beginning with the reign of Christopher Eccleston. The reviews will be thorough and I will welcome all comments and feedback on my opinions. New reviews will follow every week and each will follow a common layout and will culminate in an overall rating besing assigned to the episode. The following outlines the guidelines and sections for each review.
- Story Synopsis – a quick overview for the episode with major plot highlights
- Things I Liked – elements of the episode which added value & distinction
- Things I Didn’t Like - elements of the episode that we could have done without
- Best Lines – The top 3 quotes that we’ll commit to memory going forward
- Overall Rating – On a 5 star basis (1-5) with the following guidelines
[5] = A true Doctor Who “classic” which leaves the viewer with a strong emotional connection to the story and characters. The show breaks ground for originality or themes.
[4] = A very strong episode which features a riveting story line, lots of memorable moments and strong acting while offering science-fiction “freshness”.
[3] = A good episode which maintains or positively advances the Doctor Who canon. It can utilize a previoulsy explored theme or plot devices as long as the viewer leaves feeling satisfied.
[2] = An episode which falls short in numerous key areas (plot device, acting, originality, special effects) and leaves the viewer feeling cheated.
[1] = An episode which just should never have been made. It is slow, boring or simply features BAD, BAD acting. No redeemable qualities, an episode we’d never want to watch again!
- Episodes can receive a “half-star” in their overall rating rating when appropriate.
A few last thoughts and parameters:
- I will not compare the new series to the old series in any way other than those things I thought represented positive continuity references or “valentine” elements.
- I will review each episode in the order in which it was aired, and will not compare episodes from the new series unless I feel that a later episode borrowed too heavily from another, previously shown episode.
- Music, special effects, costuming & sets will play an important role in all of my reviews.
Tags: Doctor Who
As a huge fan of Doctor Who, I’ve been trying to come up with legitimate ways of watching the new series episodes as quickly as I can get my hands on them. Unfortunately, immediate DVD releases of the new episodes are limited only to R2 releases from the UK. Fortuantely, I have a spare DVD-ROM drive that I have dedicated to playing R2 DVDs. Now this is all well and good if I were to be content to always watch the latest David Tennant stories on my PC. However, sometimes you want that Blue Box on the big screen in your family room. So to get around this, I am transcoding my R2 discs using #1 DVD Ripper (#1DR) and the lastest DivX Codec. Using #1DR’s highest quality setting for standard DVDs, I am able to compress a 45 minute episode down into a more manageable ~575MB .AVI file. This can then be streamed directly to my Home Theater setup via a networked multimedia player from IOData (http://www.iodata.com/usa/products/products.php?cat=HNP&sc=AVEL&ts=2&tsc=&sc=AVEL&pId=AVLP2%2FDVDLAV).
To paraphrase the Master, ” … So … a new format … at last!”
Starting next week, I’m going to begin posting my reviews of the lastest incarnation of Doctor Who – starting with the Christopher Eccleston episodes.
Tags: Doctor Who
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