Yeah, I'm pretty torn. The first ep was pretty good, I thought, in pulling me in, especially when it had to overcome my annoyance at the overlong tasting scene ... but it's hard to point to what I liked rather than what I didn't. I did like that Amy wasn't especially quick (well, in the show's terms) to forgive him for abandoning her. It kept moving, but at the same time there were a few places where the path ahead was patently obvious (of course he won't be back in five minutes! Especially not now that he's promised a little girl! Of course the aliens mean the whole planet! How did they not get that the moment they heard the transmission from the ice cream truck?) and yet the script sloooowly dragged out the reveal. I got a Ten vibe off of Eleven several times, and no real sense of who he was outside that.
It was the second episode that really fell apart in the "telling over showing" problem. Amy chose to forget to spare the Doctor having to choose between many humans and an alien ... when he's only properly confirmed he's alien that same episode, not long at all narratively, and the only thing she's ever seen him do is defend humans against aliens? They didn't just have her state the parallels between the whale and the Doctor over and over and OVER, they had her state character traits she really had no reason to have processed yet. (And all she's been told is that objecting/abdicating will dissolve the ship, isn't it? So how does she know that actually means "oh, we expect the whale will try to break free and that will break the ship"?) Like a souffle, the collapse of the plot arc left me with little benefit from the episode. I did like that we had to keep guessing who was "good" or "bad", though — that was quite effective — and Liz Ten was fantastic until we learned just what she'd done (which made her actions that much more devastating).
But yeah, the characters need something to distinguish them naturally. Eleven needs to be more than a less shouty, less stable (!) Ten. (Thanks to a posted macro, I do wonder if he's capable of turning to his right without instead twirling around to his left, which isn't enough to define a character but is amusing.) Amy needs to be more than Rose's small-town dissatisfaction plus Donna's fiesty compassion. They all need to trust the actors more and rely explicit dialogue less.
And OMFG, if I never see another bleeding Dalek again it'll be too soon.
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It was the second episode that really fell apart in the "telling over showing" problem. Amy chose to forget to spare the Doctor having to choose between many humans and an alien ... when he's only properly confirmed he's alien that same episode, not long at all narratively, and the only thing she's ever seen him do is defend humans against aliens? They didn't just have her state the parallels between the whale and the Doctor over and over and OVER, they had her state character traits she really had no reason to have processed yet. (And all she's been told is that objecting/abdicating will dissolve the ship, isn't it? So how does she know that actually means "oh, we expect the whale will try to break free and that will break the ship"?) Like a souffle, the collapse of the plot arc left me with little benefit from the episode. I did like that we had to keep guessing who was "good" or "bad", though — that was quite effective — and Liz Ten was fantastic until we learned just what she'd done (which made her actions that much more devastating).
But yeah, the characters need something to distinguish them naturally. Eleven needs to be more than a less shouty, less stable (!) Ten. (Thanks to a posted macro, I do wonder if he's capable of turning to his right without instead twirling around to his left, which isn't enough to define a character but is amusing.) Amy needs to be more than Rose's small-town dissatisfaction plus Donna's fiesty compassion. They all need to trust the actors more and rely explicit dialogue less.
And OMFG, if I never see another bleeding Dalek again it'll be too soon.