Why Catherine Tate WHY!?

I've been a huge fan of recent (and all) Doctor Who but this series just.........lacked. There were a few good episodes, usually written by Stephen Moffat or Russel Davis but on the whole it just never clicked the way the other"new who" did. Cathrine Tate is fantastically irritating, although I can't help feel that's because her"comedy" series has left an ashen taint in my mouth. After the last series finale (with the master) I did get an uncofortable feeling that Doctor Who had reached it's apex, and this series proves it. Sure there's a couple of good episodes here, but none better than anything previously done on the show. Nothing new here. Davros was massively disappointing too, he himself was brillaintly realised and played but he just felt pointless. As much as it pains me to say, I think David Tennant has made the right choice to leave after next year, it's getting a bit stale. Bruce Willis for Doctor in 2010!

Buy this now

If anyone ever asks you why you can't go out until after 8pm on a Saturday evening you need to show them this box set.

Perfect weekend entertainment for kids aged one and up!

Veering for light and breezy to touching and heart-wrentching (sometimes within the same episode) this is the series that got me hooked on Who.

The series finale will leave you breathless.

It does exactly what it says on the...

Okay, my review is going to be a lot like this dvd box set, great value without the frills. You've got a BBC sci-fi comedy, one of the best and most orginal of its era in a no frills dvd boxset (at the time of this review) at under £35. Mr Flibble can't even be cross with that!

FABULOUS

although i write this, i must say that the doctor was far more mellow than in DT's first season. although,sometimes, the snarling and shouting does come to the front every now and then, its not as in your face.
i could list the episodes one by one, but i think they each have their on merrits and each, like evryhting ever made for tv has faults as well, but my reasoning behind this review is more to do with the overall season.
it started off well.. very well, and freema appeared to be more mature that drooling rose, and its obvious that martha has an instant attraction to the doctor, the show appears to have gone more adult, more mature and worked at a good enjoyable pace.
the annual non-doctor story was so great, i didn't miss the regulars as those angels freaked me out no end.. GREAT STUFF..CRACKING..
UTOPIA done it for me, and although i knew YANA was going to be who he turned out to be, the change, the build up and the drama of the script and acting was second to none.
I did think however, the last two episodes were the best, and it goes to show how fit martha is, walking the entire planet in a year.. Paula Radcliffe, eat ur heart out!!! ;-)

"His Dark Materials: The Northern Doc!"

My favourite show returned and in better form than anyone could have believed. Overall this is a triumphant return in the form of a very rare beast; an updating that works. The roots of The Police Box Show are still there; tardis, lovely new version of the theme, a slightly mysterious loner, companions, monsters, time and space and good triumphing over evil.

The 1st new doctor for some time Christopher Eccelston is great. He is a dark loner but this is subtle and never overdone. Intense but not in a pretentious way that would have gone against family entertainment. He is less obviously eccentric than his predecessors but has a fondness for corny humor that is topped off with a toothy grin.

Billie Piper is the best companion in some time and works as the viewer identification.

Of the stories themselves are all of a good standard, with only"the Long Game" a tale of aliens running news feed statellites having ideas that don't gel too well.

The opener Rose introduces the concept of the show in a way Paul McGann's movie failed to. This is a high incident romp that whets the appetite for what's to come featuring old monsters Nestenes & Autons.

After the contemporary opener it's into the far future for"The End of the World" & Victorian Cardiff for"the Unquiet Dead" the new show's 1st classic.

There is more emotion at the core of new Who as we frequently meet Rose's mother and her ex-boyfriend and look at the consequences of being the people left behind. Also Rose instinctively saves her father's life after visiting the day of his death and then the resulting time paradox is meshed with the emotional fallout.

The Daleks triumpantly return with better effects and design and re-establish their menace in an episode featuring just 1 and then in a breathtaking CGI battle for the series finale.

New villains the Slitheen getting similar airtime, are a hit too with their wearing victims skins like a suit and their"gas exchange" causing excessive wind! Guaranteed to have the young ones sniggering.

New character Captain Jack is introduced in the blitz and goes on to be an excellent addition with Steven Moffat's writing and John Barrowman's acting.

This is the same old show and nods to the past are subtle not suffocating, Unit soldiers in the background, daleks ships like in their comic strips.

The extras include a fun commentary for every story, cut down versions of all the companion documentary show Dr Who: Confidential episodes, some video diaries and featurettes. All in all it's a pretty full package and sets the template for furture box sets.

The only gripe is the lack of Eccleston's presence on the extras. He is in some Confidential bits and a Breakfast Time interview, not the better 1 out of the 2 he gave either.

Still a highly recommended purchase especially at the marked down prices that it's come down to after 2 years.

The Police Box show is in safe hands

the new gold standard for special features

Even if you are you are not a fan of this sci-fi fantasy genre, the special features of this dvd are an oeuvre of its own kind and worth a try. Disc five is a bit redundant because every film has its dedicated bonus dvd.

mediocre

Kinda dissapointing, the new doctor who episodes are supposed to grab us and take us on an endless climatic roller coaster, but this was just average. The cybermen were back... again. notice the use of exact same costumes - they were too lazy to re-design them but at least they gave a pathetic reason. Also as some people on here have said the fluffy cybermen things are very archaic and laughable. However david tennents charm and loveability bring the episode back up to average - too bad he's leaving soon. Lets hope the new doctor will live up to his standards or maybe stephen moffat can write better than russel T. Davis (god knows most people can ¬_¬)

Nice to get back to the series

After watching the second X files film (which was a bit disappointing) I felt very nostalgic for the series which had spawned it. Only £65 or so on amazon, so that's about 30p per episode, plus you get the first feature film. Most people must know what the show is about, right? An x file is a case which has been deemed to be unsolvable by the FBI, usually because it has some sort of paranormal explanation which no normal agent will think about. Agent Fox Mulder set about investigating the X Files and became an expert in the paranormal, after coming to believe he witnessed his little sister being abducted by aliens. His partner is Dana Scully, who is assigned to work with him to use her scientific and medical background. Each episode usually starts off with a weird occurence, often a murder. The agents are called in, Mulder has some weird explanation (vampires, zombies, ghosts, aliens, mutants, freaks, time travel) and scully tries to come up with more plausible ideas. Usually mulder is right. About 10% of the episodes involve an ongoing storyline about a conspiracy in the government to hide evidence of aliens and their plot to colonise the planet, linked to Mulder's sister's abduction. Those episodes often show us the most personal sides of the agents and their lives.

Having forgotten most of the episodes, it was a bit of a shock to see just how ridiculous and awful some of them really were! Too many of them had a weird, vague ending with no clear resolution, this became more and more evident in season 9, esp whenever Monica Reyes was involved.

Watch from season 1, when the characters are still fresh, and you see Dana Scully as a bright young agent, yet to be dragged into giving up her normal life to an endless search for the truth, all the way to season 9, where Mulder has gone into hiding and been replaced by new agents Doggett and Reyes, with scully having finally had to give up her skepticism and take on the role of a believer. The evolution of the two key characters is great, as is that of their supervisor, Assistant director Skinner. I mentioned there were many awful espisodes, but you get to see all the great ones too - Beyond the sea, Tooms, Sleepless, One Breath, Clyde Bruckman's final repose, Small potatoes, Demons.... list goes on and on! The worst has got to be fearful symmetry - where aliens are abducting and impregnating zoo animals.... Plus you get to watch all the mythology episodes.

There are extras of course. Many episodes have deleted scenes (almost none of them were of any interest, except for in the pilot episode where Dana Scully was supposed to have a boyfriend). There are little documentaries discussing each season, most of which are dull. There are also a few shows trying to pull together the various threads of the mythology to make them easier to understand - alien abduction, the black oil, colonisation, supersoldiers.

Box set is a bargain, v glad to be back with these episodes. Seasons 6,7 and 9 were prob the worst of the series, but every series has at least one gem, so try going through them all!

Fantastic!

What is with the unenthusiastic reviews? This is one of my favourite Doctor Who stories ever. The standards of production and acting are very high and so the whole thing holds up very well today. This is Sylvester McCoy at his best.

As to the DVD itself: You get the original televised version and a feature-length film style special edition with lots of added snippets and new effects. The effects don't add much, but like with 'Curse of Fenric', after watching the extended VHS I can't go back to watching the originals which now seem incomplete. Therefore it is a bit annoying with the special editions that you can't turn off the added effects or watch them as single episodes as well.

The bonus features are very enjoyable, especially the one on the water tank fiasco. (If only to hear Sylvester swear like Tom Baker, though for better reason.)

I'm looking forward to the E-space trilogy (pre-ordered with amazon).

Season 7

I thought I'd buy it as I really liked DS9 and I'm very happy I did! It definitely differs in tone being a bit more light-hearted, but it does have a few dark episodes, which tend to be the more enjoyable ones.
I very much enjoyed 'Critical Care', which focuses on The Doctor, by far the most interesting and funny character, and the episode also poses a few moral dilemmas (like 'Repentance, another great episode!), so its not just a simple kind of story. I also really liked 'Shattered', as Voyager is split into many time periods and we get to see back in the past and a little bit of the future.
The episode 'Natural Law' was really a nice episode, and finally the last ever episode 'Endgame' was both fun and enjoyable! I loved the end sequence.
The captain becomes a bit less harsh this season, and there is a rather disturbing sequence with her in a bathtub with John De Lancie ('Q').
The extra features are all good, and some are hidden too so make sure you find them all, but the disc menus, the background beeping and noise is a bit tiring after like 30 seconds, so be quick when you choose an episode!
It really is an extremely good buy, and so I'm going to buy the rest in reverse chronological order.
'Reverse the polarity of the shield' or 'Emit a tachyon pulse'. Solves anything.

Laughed my head off

Just watched it on a big screen, blu-ray, lights down low. I was so absorbed by the plot that I was left as cold as the victims. It must have taken some effort on the part of the sound engineers to suppress the creaking. It's all been done before; mistrusted psycics that may or may not be the real thing are in so many scripts. What was that incidental bulbous thing in the FBI lab, getting the blowtorch treatment?? And a printer stopping without an on-screen message?? I was waiting for some creepy cross-cutting between the two surgical areas, which would have added some real-time tension, but the opportunity was missed. So, humble opinion: A routine and predictable vehicle. I want to be leaving.

Tom Baker at his best....

Well, here it is. One of the best sections of Doctor Who that was made.
There can be no denying that John Nathan Turner, much as people grew to loath him for what happened to the programme in its later years under his 'care', did great things in his first season as producer.
This season does away with the rather silly humour that had crept in in the late 70's, (all the more poignant when JNT made the same mistake in the McCoy era and introduced too much humour) and replaced it with a more serious sci-fi air that had not really been seen since Pertwee's first season.
A raft of good stories, and Tom Baker in atmospherically subdued form; some people say the tone of this season was funereal, and all the better for it.
And so to the E-Space trilogy. What a brilliant concept. Doctor Who had done parallel worlds before, and Russel T Davies would do so again in the new series. But here we have a slightly different spin on the idea; that of a negative universe with negative co-ordinates. It made perfect sense to the 10 year old me, who was doing negative co-ordinates in Maths at school and i found the idea fascinating. I still do 28 years later.
The stories are great;
Full Circle, is in some ways a classic Who; people trapped in a confined space; a horrible monster lurking about, and Tom Baker and Lalla Ward on good form.
But the story is intriguing, and i won't give it away.
Its a shame that good use wasn't made of K9 here, as in many stories, the writers simply get him out of the way to avoid writing for him. But, there are some good moments nonetheless.
This story is notable for introducing the character of Adric, a companion hated by many.
I rather liked him as a viewer back then as he was a change to the tiresome screaming girls that had been around for seemingly ever, (i was ten!) and i thought it was great that there should be a boy companion.
I think Adric was a really good idea, and was well realised by Matt Waterhouse, and was exactly as he should have been portrayed, so i have trouble seeing why people don't like the character. In the Davison era he would go on to contribute well to the Tardis 'family' which made the show more interesting and enjoyable then. Oh well, each to their own!
State of Decay is a Terrance Dicks masterpiece, has vampires, a civilisation descended from the crew of an ancient space ship and sees technology lost and a people in decline. This is fantastic stuff and has some genuinely creepy moments.
The last story Warriors Gate is perhaps the most confusing and needs to be watched a few times for it to make sense, but, without giving anything away, it sees a goodbye or two, another fascinating concept and higher than average production values. The model work is good and the incidental music evokes real atmosphere.

I cannot think of any negatives here really. These three tales stand up well today. Obviosly the effetcs are of their time, but very good considering that, and there are some impressive shots in the last story particularly.

This set of stories really is top notch. This is Doctor Who at its finest and should be added to anyones collection.

Mid Season and a kick up the borg aputure!.

Season 5 comes out great for voyager, the UFP (federation) trembles at hearing that the Voyager did survive after being taken to the Delta Quadrant and many stories on this ship suggested it was destroyed long ago. it was all thanks to the Doctor, now with more constant contact around the corner because of a starfleet project dubbed"the pathfinder project", specifically for commication with the missing voyager starship. the crew also gets more contact with the hirogen after the first successful relay via the doctor the hirogen stations and the prometheus.

Brilliant trek series at its best.

The worst value Voyager boxset

So like The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine the slimline version of voyager rolls around.
Season 1 is by far Voyager's weakest season with the show in its teething period trying to establish itself but some of the scripts just seem like cast-offs from TNG or DS9
The stand out epsiodes this first season are the feature lenght pilot 'caretaker', the organ harvesting aliens in 'the phage' and a double agent amongst the crew in 'state of flux', not to say that the other episodes are bad just not very memorable.
The show improves in season 2 before coming into its own in season 3.
This boxset is also only five discs as opposed to the other seven disc voyager boxsets, with only sixteen epsiodes instead of twenty-six spread over four discs and the fifth disc housing the special features.
The box itself is roughly the size of a video taking up little space unlike the previous chunky box release this is the version to get but wait until it drops in price a little to get better value for your money

Season 4 - Resitance is Futile!

As Season Three of Star Trek: Voyager neared its conclusion the show really hit its stride. And Season Four just got better. Starting with the second part of Scorpion (which introduced Jerry Ryan as Seven of Nine) almost every story is a cracker. The lost of Kes was unfortunate (losing the irritating Neelix would have been a better option!), but gaining Seven of Nine, later to be know Seven, was a masterstroke. Although maybe too many of the later stories revolved around her - but then she is a great character. There are a couple of great two-parters: The Year of Hell and The Killing Game (which features the Hirogen, who featured in an earlier story in the season).
The actors all know their characters inside and out and have become comfortable with the set up. Kate Mulgrew makes a formidable (and, at times, quite sexy) captain who sparks off of Seven quite fequently. Quite possibly the most completely satisfying Season in Voyagers seven years, with strong stories, great effects and good writing and acting. There are some quite good extras, not over burdend with them, but then there are seven seasons to fill - and there are several 'easter eggs' dotted about (on all seasons).

Mediocre season 2

after season 1's dissapointment comes season 2 which picks up a bit better, the crew encounter the kazon much more then previously encountered and masterminded by the vengeful cardassian woman, Seska whos cover was broken by Kes and the doctor in season 1. meanwhile exploration is put on back burner this season as it involves a bit more action which makes up for the ok or dire storyline. however the end episode of season 2 works out a great springboard to work off for season 3 to begin with a bang.

recommended in order to find out why the voyager crew was dumped on a primitive planet by the kazon, and what plans a few rogue crewmembers have in-store for the kazon on board voyager as well as outside.

Series one disc one blues

Well I have always liked B5 and took the oppotunity to pick up the 5 series in one complete compact box.

It duly came and series 1 disc 1 episodes 3 and 4 were unplayable. I checked out the rest of the box and in a woefully short period of timwe watched the other 108 episodes crusades 13 and all the films.. even the aweful lost tales. Square eyes indeed.
I then contact Amazons Cust Serv. Please give me new disc1. NO. we will give u money back and you return. OR a whole new BOxed set. OH AND YOU HAVE TO POST BACK THE OTHER...what! WE WILL REFUND POSTAGE. Well new set came. Series 1 disc 1 episodes 3 and 4 are unplayable.!!!!!wtf!!!!.. ring up cust services... nice accented girl says WELL I CAN SEND ANOTHER ANOTHER SET AND YOU RETURN 2 SETS OR REFUND AND YOU RETURN 2

But all i want is 1 working disc 1. I am disabled. carying this stuff to post office is a pain.. well in fact imposible for me. Do they care . no. So I say just send me a set one which you do seperately. save you postage costs both way. Oh No cant do that have to send the entire set a third time. !! How can this make any sense for amazon... and is every one of this boxed set faulty.. looks like so far

blahhhhhhhhh.;'/#-)(*&^%$£"!

imagine yourself in this place - and just think of how everybody belongs to a race or creed and just think of the interactions that take place - free food and bet you they have a free basic living set up as well - and the only thing you had to do - was to live?

makes you think you don't want to be born for a couple of hundred of years - out of all the charecters sisko's son is the most i admire/dream/.... - he just persofies how life should be

All I wanted to believe it would be...

Once again we are treated to another extended episode of the X-Files. It's been around 6 years since we saw the finale disapointing episode.
That's not being harsh, it's just my own opinion of the last episode being largely cobbled together with clips of this fantastic show's entire run.
I was so nervous on my way to the cinema. I wanted so much to see that the show's creator, Chris Carter had got back on the right train and was heading down the right track after the over complicated show's mythology lost it's way during the last few seasons.
I wasn't disapointed. This film is awesome. If you have read the books, Ground Zero, Goblins, Whirlwind & the excellent Antibodies that really captured what was best about the series, then you'll get a good idea of the tone of this movie. It too is slow paced, intelligent and critics fail to mention the little fun in jokes too.
Billy Connoly is brilliantly cast and the Mulder/Scully relationship is further explored. I loved this film. It took me right back to season 2, my favorite season of the show & and it just felt so authentic.
John Doggett & Monica Ryes who later joined the cast and had a few excellent episodes of their own during the last two seasons, should be given their own spin off movie in my opinion, because everything you could hope for was here in this excellent movie except for them.
Hint like crazy to your family so they'll buy it you for Christmas (that was a hint to my family in case they read this, lol) enjoy it & don't forget to check out the little extra scene after the credits. I was, and still remain a huge fan of the x-files.
Can't wait for the next one. Welcome back Mulder and Scully. We missed you.