The new Who: copycat or continuity?

[acroyear]

I finished watching Dr. Who The Unquiet Dead (episode 3 of the new series) on Sci-Fi (yes, I'd seen it before).  Its certainly one of the best of the new series and was the first to really show they could capture what made the original series work.

When it finished, I felt rather...driven...to watch an older story.  I was called, in a sense, to watch the 1976 Tom Baker & Leela classic, Image of the Fendhal.  The differences hit first, of course.  The pace was so much slower back then, taking 5 minutes to introduce sideline characters rather than 15 seconds, and even then there was much in the way of backstory left out.

But then the similarities started to hit.

• A time fisure
• which the doctor says can lead to the impression that a place is haunted
• and where someone living in or near it has psychic abilities, and
• an alien has taken advantage of it to take control of the resident population, including
• the only attractive non-companion female in the story (who dies as a result),
  
• and, finally, the doctor wins by convincing a skeptic that its all real, just he's not ready to explain the alien science behind it all.
  

It's all in how one looks at it, I guess.

Comments

[thatwasjen]

Is that an observation or a complaint?

I've been half-watching the new series on Sci-Fi; I never caught onto any of the Dr. Who series. But I was a ST:TNG fan, and they more than once re-used or re-examined an original series plot. It often failed, but not because the plot was old -- it's all in the execution, really, isn't it?

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

observation. topic for discussion.

at least, in contrast to the ST:TNG, Dr Who hasn't run into something from the past series and said "its like nothing we've ever encountered before", which is precisely what Data said in Farpoint when they ran into something that could have been seen as a fast-acting version of the Tholian Web.