Some furthermoreness
I missed out on regularly watching Doctor Who as a child - growing up in a television-free household it was a rare treat I only got to enjoy when visiting grandparents or cousins. So when I got myself Sky about 7 years ago I would get up on Saturday mornings to watch entire episodes on UK Gold.

Seen through 30-year old eyes, the costumes, sets, models etc. were obviously pretty unconvincing BUT the storytelling made up for it. In the Tom Baker era, a story would typically find the Doctor and companion(s) on an alien planet, spaceship, space station etc. in the middle of a fiendish plot that puts them all in peril. We would never see much beyond a throne room/bridge/communications room plus a couple of corridors, cell, cabin etc. and a matte painting of a planetscape or building, and if lucky a model spacecraft, but through the exposition in the script we would implicity accept that there was much more beyond what we saw on screen, and wouldn't need to see massing troops, intricate cityscapes etc. Once you could accept and understand the backdrop and situation, you could enjoy the story, many of which were well-crafted murder mysteries or spy thrillers, albeit set in the future or in exotic locations.

I was excited as anybody when Doctor Who returned, but sadly most stories seem to be a case of style over story. Fancy CGI is all well and good, but the modern stories are more a combination of the Doctor's angst and personality defects, his companion's personal life and backstory and an overdose of OMG TEH WHOLE UNIVERSE IS GOING TO END presented in as many clichéd over-dramatic ways as possible. Though Moffatt's scripts all seem to have avoided that, and only put a few people in peril rather than the entire galaxy.

Though that's just my own personal view.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Mon 1 Mar 2010, 15:50, Reply)