French civil war – what’s not to love?
Well first of all the TARDIS materializes without a sound. What the hell is that about?
Anyway, our travellers go for a wander, as they do, and find themselves a small boy who can’t act. A bit more wandering around and they find a house. There’s a lot of wandering around in this story. Can you tell? The highlight of episode 1 is the French characters. They all speak with broad English accents but when they set fire to the farmhouse in which The Doctor is hiding, they all run away doing the “Haw-he-haw-he-haw” laughter that all French people are apparently famous for.
This is a very plodding story I’m afraid. A typical model of capture/escape/capture/escape and the one target for the travellers is just to get all 4 of them together again in the same place so that they can bugger off away. The French Revolution is just a background.
The Doctor is fairly proactive in this story, however, which makes a nice change. Early on he hits a bloke in the head with a stick, then he wander about a bit pretending to be a high ranking civil servant. And then he hits another bloke over the head, this time with a wine jug. Sadly he’s about the only one of the travellers who’s interesting though as the other three just keep on getting caught.
We get to see the birth of the Doctor’s penchant for silly hats as he chooses something absurd with massive feathers sticking out of the top.
Maybe I had high hopes after we’d been spoiled by Marco Polo and The Aztecs. I was perhaps thinking that all historical stories would be as good as those two but sadly this is not the case. In some ways I think it is trying to be a political drama in parts but it’s just not done very well. There is a scene in episode 5 that wouldn’t feel out of place in the West Wing. If you removed all the sparkling wit and repartee and just left in the political stuff.
The story has obviously lost episodes 4 & 5 to the furnaces of the BBC and I thankfully timed this marathon with the recent release of the DVD with those episodes animated. I don’t think the story loses much from the animation and the animated episodes flow nicely between the existing ones. I do think it's just as well these episodes exist as animation as I suspect episode 5 especially would be almost unbearable in reconstructed form. The story certainly could have done with being 4 episodes long. And having a better scriptwriter certainly wouldn't have hurt. There’s simply no zing to the script, it just drags along.
There is a vaguely nice twist in episode 6 and finally the pace starts to hot up a bit. There’s more action in the last 10 minutes than in the first 5 episodes combined. But it’s not really enough to save it overall from being somewhat disappointing.
Well first of all the TARDIS materializes without a sound. What the hell is that about?
Anyway, our travellers go for a wander, as they do, and find themselves a small boy who can’t act. A bit more wandering around and they find a house. There’s a lot of wandering around in this story. Can you tell? The highlight of episode 1 is the French characters. They all speak with broad English accents but when they set fire to the farmhouse in which The Doctor is hiding, they all run away doing the “Haw-he-haw-he-haw” laughter that all French people are apparently famous for.
This is a very plodding story I’m afraid. A typical model of capture/escape/capture/escape and the one target for the travellers is just to get all 4 of them together again in the same place so that they can bugger off away. The French Revolution is just a background.
The Doctor is fairly proactive in this story, however, which makes a nice change. Early on he hits a bloke in the head with a stick, then he wander about a bit pretending to be a high ranking civil servant. And then he hits another bloke over the head, this time with a wine jug. Sadly he’s about the only one of the travellers who’s interesting though as the other three just keep on getting caught.
We get to see the birth of the Doctor’s penchant for silly hats as he chooses something absurd with massive feathers sticking out of the top.
Maybe I had high hopes after we’d been spoiled by Marco Polo and The Aztecs. I was perhaps thinking that all historical stories would be as good as those two but sadly this is not the case. In some ways I think it is trying to be a political drama in parts but it’s just not done very well. There is a scene in episode 5 that wouldn’t feel out of place in the West Wing. If you removed all the sparkling wit and repartee and just left in the political stuff.
The story has obviously lost episodes 4 & 5 to the furnaces of the BBC and I thankfully timed this marathon with the recent release of the DVD with those episodes animated. I don’t think the story loses much from the animation and the animated episodes flow nicely between the existing ones. I do think it's just as well these episodes exist as animation as I suspect episode 5 especially would be almost unbearable in reconstructed form. The story certainly could have done with being 4 episodes long. And having a better scriptwriter certainly wouldn't have hurt. There’s simply no zing to the script, it just drags along.
There is a vaguely nice twist in episode 6 and finally the pace starts to hot up a bit. There’s more action in the last 10 minutes than in the first 5 episodes combined. But it’s not really enough to save it overall from being somewhat disappointing.