Doctor Who: Love and Monsters

[Doc Beechler]

Mild spoilers ahead...

I really liked this episode and, given the ELO music, it is now Holly's (my wife) favorite Doctor Who ep ever.

It reminded me of a lot of Will Eisner's Spirit stories in that they were often more about the people around the Spirit or The Spirit comes in at the very end to wrap things up...most of the stories aren't actually about Denny Colt, really. Of course, the sequence showing Elton in the midst of other Who stories was very Astro City or Rosencrantz & Guildenstern.

OK...two Scooby-Doo references this season AND the Simon Pegg Spaced episode I watched last week had an extended Scooby joke...I never realized how big the great dane was in the UK.

I like how LINDA initially came together as a group just to discuss the mysterious Doctor and later became a sort-of family, lending support to one another...reminds me of a message board community.

Of course, this band of "misfits" are absorbed by a monster clothed in the boring adult pursuits of business and learning the "truth". Wasn't the actor playing the monster a big UK comedian?

I listened to a Doctor Who fan podcast about this episode and, MAN, did they hate it. They were bending backwards to explain away the episode by saying that Elton was abandoned by his mother and had gone insane, creating this reality in his head as an escape. I guess someone has even taken the final scene and "fixed" it so that Elton was just talking to a plain square of concrete and placed it on YouTube...OK...lighten up guys.

According to Russell Davies...from the commentaries on iTunes...the BBC wanted 14 episodes in that same amount of time given for 13 the season before. So, he wrote an episode which allowed Tennant and Piper to film "The Impossible Planet" at the same time this one was being filmed. It was a very creative way to solve a real world problem.

Again, I really enjoyed this episode...and I have to say I found it more life-affirming than sad. Davies has said a few times that, in his view, the Doctor should inspire regular people to do heroic things...he shouldn't do most of the heavy lifting. He will in a pinch, but he'd rather see others rise to a potential they had no idea they possessed. He sort of is the stand-in for God in that way.

And...this has to be the only Doctor Who episode with an oral sex joke in it...ever...right?

[The Craig]

One of my favourite Tennant episodes.

For those aware of the British comedian Peter Kay, he plays a truly disgusting villain in this.

OMAC

[Doc Beechler]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/

Hey...here's a cool Doctor Who advent calendar...full of downloads, wallpaper, games, etc...Merry Christmas!

[NewChad]

For me this was the low-point of the season. It was too OTT.

I liked the premise, just thought the execution was too too much.

[Yannick_B]

Its a pretty good episode.
Theres one bit that might support the "unreliable narrator" theory--when Elton remembers his LINDA friends playing ELO the second time, they sound exactly like ELO, not their amateur version.

However, this goes against the whole point of the episode (and eventually the season) that you have to be careful of what you wish for, because getting it might be the best thing ever, it might also be the worst.

Still Russell T Davies could've ended the episode in a pretty conventional way but he didnt--he ended the episode in a way that would surely get people to love it or hate it and thats pretty damn ballsy.

[artimoff]

I can't think of a worse hour of scripted TV. Simply awful.

[Kensington]

If not for the ending, it would have been my favorite episode of the season. I loved, loved LOVED the Scooby Who sequence at the beginning, and it saddens me how many Who fans are not willing to come along for that particular ride. Imagine the Whedon fans complaining because of one of the incidental throwaway monster fights that would populate an Angel episode befor the plot proper kicked in. Who needs this kind of flexibility, and I'm delighted with Russell Davies for going there.

The ending did trouble me, though. I thought that "restoring" Elton's girlfriend as a slab of concrete was short-sighted at best and filled with potentially awful ramifications, completely unaddressed, at worst. As she's talking about how she'll never age, I'm thinking: Elton's going to age. And when he gets old and dies, what's going to happen to her? What was the Doctor thinking?

That said, I enjoy Doctor Who Podshock, but those guys are examples of the saddest kinds of Who fans, the people who will spend their time contorting what we've all seen onscreen in order to deny some fundamental aspect (the whole "Elton's crazy" theory) just because they didn't like it. Some of them openly wish that the episode had never even been made, and that makes me really sad. I adored "Love & Monsters," yet a significant subset of Who fans would rather I be denied that experience than live with an episode they didn't conform to all their expectations and stereotypes. How pathetic.

In tangential Who news, by the way, Outpost Gallifrey reports that last night's episode of Torchwood beat a first run episode of Lost! Imagine!

[Unknown Kadath]

For me this was the low-point of the season. It was too OTT.

I liked the premise, just thought the execution was too too much.

This is exactly how I feel about this episode too. It isn't even the execution that spoils it for me, it's that awful, awful monster. "Fear Her," on the other hand, was just plain boring. Amazing that it was scripted by the guy who created "Life On Mars." Those are the only two episodes in series 2 that I couldn't get behind.

[Kensington]

This is exactly how I feel about this episode too. It isn't even the execution that spoils it for me, it's that awful, awful monster. "Fear Her," on the other hand, was just plain boring. Amazing that it was scripted by the guy who created "Life On Mars." Those are the only two episodes in series 2 that I couldn't get behind.

That awful, awful monster was created by a child who submitted it in a competition, and I loved how the characters kind of played around and acknowledged it by having the Doctor sort of throwing out a series of different names for it until hitting on "Absorbalof" at which point the Absorbaloff says "Yes, I like that!" in an "okay, that sounds good enough for me" tone. It was tongue-in-cheek in a way that was sweet and sort of child-like, almost like they were playing that directly to the child who won the competition.

Now "Fear Her," this week is kind of a rough one. I appreciated it conceptually, but it's mediocre, at best. Fortunately the absolutely kick-ass season finale begins next week!

[Bandit Chimera]

That awful, awful monster was created by a child who submitted it in a competition, and I loved how the episode kind of played around with it by having the Doctor sort of of figure out what the Hell it was and it confirming the name with a sort of "yeah, sounds good to me" tone. I thought the tongue-in-cheek aspect of that was kind of sweet and child-like.

Now, "Fear Her," this week, yeah, that's a rough one. I appreciated it conceptually, but it's pretty weak. At least it's followed by the absolutely kick-ass two-part season finale.

tottaly agree with everything you said there. Next weeks episode is very week. But the 2 part finale is fabulous