Aug 282011
 

A curious thought arrived here at THT Worldwide whilst watching Let's Kill Hitler.  The story itself was bumping along quite nicely, what we as longtime fans of the show and of Moffat's stories in particular have come to recognize and expect.  What we were struck by now just how ambitious this style of storytelling is and has become. 

Moffat himself has said as much in the days leading up to the premiere of the back half of this disjointed (as the calendar goes) season.  But he's also clever enough to know that you can't keep stringing along the audience for this type of show, so, in the main he gave out answers in Let's Kill Hitler and resolved questions which go all the way back to Forest of the Dead.

Let's Kill Hitler was basically River's story, despite some of the wackier, shall we say, smaller elements that carried the story along.  But the larger story of the past season and a half was fully in play here, even if the sometimes serendipitous events, and people, that kept this timey-wimey distilled romance moving both forward and backward, couldn't have possibly been predicted when Moffat took the reins back in 2009.  We hope the general audience is staying on board since we fully trust that the fans are.  And isn't it nice to say that because that means that new Doctor Who is in the air.  As fans we should cherish it because we fear we're about due for another drought.

Images and caps for Let's Kill Hitler are now online.

 Posted by at 8:30 pm
Aug 212011
 

Here we are at the precipice of more new-Who, and lucky us we are getting two premieres this year (of a sort naturally).  The Tour saunters along as it always has getting ready for the batch of new episodes by running out a site-wide update, the first in four months, this time adding 14,000 images (including lots and lots and lots of new screen caps) raising the overall image count to 131,500.  For a bit of perspective it took 5 years just for the Tour to get the first 10,000 images together, and here we're dropping 40% more, lucky lucky you.

As always you can cheat a bit for finding what's new by going to The Master List.

Now we turn our collective attention the the new run of stories.  We'll be here to see the relevant story images and caps after each story has aired.  Let's get going…

 Posted by at 11:17 am
Aug 102011
 

You know how it goes… You have the summer to get things done and then with the clock ticking down, something catches your eye and resets your previously carefully laid plans. 

With that said, the previously announced site-wide update will now be delayed a week while the THT Brain Wizards experiment with a few things on the back end of the site, plus we know from previous experience these things always, always take longer than intended.  Best to be upfront about it know than white-knuckle a rushed final product, it if works at all.

Time will tell. Always does.

 Posted by at 5:48 pm
Jun 052011
 

Three or so years ago when Journey's End aired we wrote that Somewhere JN-T Must be Smiling About Now… noting at the time the similarity of feeling between that story and portions of the JN-T era of production.  There's a bit more than a bit of that going on in thinking about A Good Man Goes to War in relation to Journey's End and other RTD season ending stories.  Certainly the inclusion of so many "monster elements" echoes not only The Pandorica Opens but other nu-Who styled stories, even though it's mostly a bluff, just a glorified excuse to empty out the costume closet.

But what an episode, taking the top spot on this season's Dynamic Ratings Table.  The story breezed along, doing that canny trick that The Christmas Invasion employed of holding back the Doctor to make his eventual appearance all-the-more meaningful.  The moment where the story turned against the Doctor, and you know what that was, was truly breathtaking.  Matt Smith never flags and his anger, and the consequences of it, are all well-earned.

Images and caps for A Good Man Goes to War are now online.

This is it until the fall.  Even the website will be taking a bit of break be catch our collective breath.  We'll be around, just a bit more in the background until the mid-season site-wide update descends.

 Posted by at 1:49 pm
May 292011
 

Expectations, for good or bad, are the bane of a fans existence.  Sometimes stories surprise because of low expectations, Gridlock is a story which springs to mind for this reason perhaps.  But when a "game changing" twist for whatever reason doesn't surprise because of over-inflated expectations, then this fan might have only himself to blame.  The Almost People is perfectly serviceable conclusion to The Rebel Flesh, although it should be said that the main plot developed more holes as the Flesh seemed to stretch further and further as the story moved along.

The Moffat-izer said earlier this season that good storytelling depends on the surprises you didn't see coming.  That the Doctor(s) switched shoes and Amy fell for it was a genuine surprise, along with the unintended confidences she let slip, was a neat twist…. and as for next week and the mid-season break.  Who knows.

Sadly for those who feast on images, there have been precious few floating about for The Almost People, and all of them it seems have been available for a while.  But there's always the requisite set of caps.

 Posted by at 7:18 pm
May 222011
 

make a gifAny fan (especially long-term fans it must be said) who has a fondness, much less a longing, for the Troughton era could be forgiven for feeling a bit @ home watching The Rebel Flesh.  Another 'base-under-seige' story (like The Moonbase or Fury from the Deep).  A doubles-make-troubles story like The Enemy of the World.  It goes on…

Like almost all nu-Who two-part stories, it's a little difficult to gauge The Rebel Flesh until The Almost People finishes the story.  In terms of Matt Smith stories, I couldn't pull away in some sense from thinking about The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood but with the twist that the agent for breaking a very fragile peace came from the humans this time around.

However unlike that two-parter which tried too, too hard to evoke the Pertwee era and finished last in our 2010 Dynamic Ratings, the direction of this story puts it on a much higher trajectory.

Gooey fingers crossed.  Images and caps for The Rebel Flesh are now online.

 Posted by at 8:42 pm