Pretty Decent Hokum

A friend of mine emailed me Troy Patterson's review on Slate of the new Doctor Who, now showing on the SciFi Channel.

I actually started to watch the Doctor Who pilot a few months ago, courtesy some people in the UK with little regard for the finer points of legality, but I had to stop abruptly at the point where Rose started to wrestle with a disembodied plastic arm. It looked as though they alternated between shots of the actress vaguely faking "wrestling" with a plain old plastic arm, and shots where a guy portraying the plastic arm squatted out of frame and wiggled his white-painted fingers menacingly at the actress. The scene was so amazingly, embarassingly awful, I just couldn't watch it. Last night, I got around to watching a recording of the show's SciFi channel debut, and made myself endure that scene and watch the rest of the show.

Based only on the pilot, I'd have to say: the new Doctor Who isn't great SF. Folks looking for something of the caliber of the new Battlestar Galactica to replace that show during its hiatus will be very disappointed. Nevertheless, I'd agree with the Slate reviewer that "[Doctor Who is] pretty decent hokum—fast, corny, genial, honest in its schlock."

Doctor Who has always been, at its best, all of those things. (Remember, it was always a kids' show.) I'll keep watching it for now; I think there's room on TV for a little bit of honest schlock.