My Thoughts on The Return Of Doctor Mysterio

Wait… is Doctor Who good again? 

Well I certainly think it seems to be heading back in the right direction based on the 2016 Christmas Special, The Return of Doctor Mysterio. This episode was a fun romp with moments of creepiness and emotional drama that would not have felt out of place in the David Tennant era of the show. I could write a lot about where Doctor Who has gone wrong recently, what I’d like to see happen and why I even liked it in the first place but for the purpose of this blog post I’m not going to dwell on that.

When I first heard that Doctor Who was doing superheroes I was very worried that it would come across as bitter. After all, in recent years Marvel and DC have just become bigger and bigger as Doctor Who has struggled to retain its fan base. But The Return of Doctor Mysterio wasn’t bitter, it knew the tropes of the genre and it had fun with them but not in a way that seemed resentful or insulting to superhero fans. Also does anyone else think it was intentional that The Ghost’s alter ego was called Grant given the Flash is played by Grant Gustin and both The Flash and The Ghost have super speed and have a quiff?

The monsters – Harmony Shoal - might not be new classics but they served the story well. This whole story had the feel of trying to evoke the spirit of noughties Doctor Who and let’s be honest the Harmony Shoal were very reminiscent of the Slitheen. But is it a bad thing to have a monster that’s like a monster from a fan favourite era of the show when you’re trying to relaunch?

To me it’s often felt like Peter Capaldi has never been allowed to reach his full potential as the Doctor. Sure he’s got to do dramatic stuff but a lot of the scripts have required him to be overly grumpy in a not very Doctorish way. In The Return of Doctor Mysterio he was allowed a sense of humour, there were moments that genuinely made me and my family laugh whilst we were watching. Capaldi always comes across in interviews as an incredibly warm hearted and kind person and that’s a very Doctorish trait but one he’s never really been allowed to express too much in the role. However I felt like The Return of Doctor Mysterio finally allowed us to see that, it remained us that yes the Doctor does love humans and that’s why he saves the Earth so many times.

So is Doctor Who good again? I think that yes it possibly is. I think it feels like the show is returning tonally to the run of mostly amazing episodes from 2005 – 2013. I am tentatively excited and if the trailer at the end of the episode is anything to go by then we should be in for another good season of Doctor Who in 2017!

How is it Christmas Eve already?

Happy Christmas to everyone who’s been reading my blog so far!

But I suspect I’m not the only one here who on Christmas Eve is wondering how it can possibly be December 24^th already!

I know there’s something of a cliché that advent flies by every year but this year it really feels like it’s gone by fast. A lot has happened over the past 24 days, such as finding out where I’m going on my Year Abroad next year (I’ll be in Ontario, Canada!), my university was also quite late in breaking up for Christmas this year (we started a week later), and I’ve written a ton of coursework (seriously in the past month I’ve written about 11,000 words of coursework!)

Obviously I am very excited about Christmas tomorrow, I wouldn’t be writing a blog post about Christmas Eve if I wasn’t! It’s just that every single year the countdown to Christmas takes me by surprise.

(Also I know it’s been a while since I last posted on here, but I promise I am going to try to get better next year!)

A Few Thoughts on Moana (Spoiler Free)

I saw Moana in 3D this afternoon and here’s a few of my (spoiler free) thoughts on the latest Disney movie.

My main reaction upon leaving the cinema was that whilst I had enjoyed the movie - and it is a good movie - I didn’t love it. This the type of movie that’s good but it could have been great. I remember back in early 2014 Disney announced that Moana had jumped forward a year in the schedule (partially as a result of the crazy success of Frozen) I feel that Moana probably would have really benefited from that extra year in production.

To me Moana felt like a strange hybrid of a movie that both wanted to be a Disney Princess movie and a movie that really didn’t want to be a Disney Princess movie. It used a lot of the tropes that we’ve come to expect from the Disney Princess movies – like the way Tangled lovingly used the tropes of the Princess movies – but Moana didn’t own its use of those tropes. Moana also defied a lot of the tropes from the Disney Princess movies – like Brave did – however it never fully went with rejecting the tropes we’ve seen from the Princess movies.

Another problem was that Maui was not a strong enough character to hold the number of scenes he had. I feel this movie needed a character like Olaf from Frozen – someone to provide helpful advice, heart-warming moments, humour and just generally help keep the plot moving. But instead of Olaf we got stuck with Maui.

Also I have to mention the music. What a let-down! The songs just don’t really work – there’s no Let It Go, Almost There, I See The Light, A Whole New World or Colours of the Wind. I found them really forgettable and unneeded. I think Moana would have been a stronger movie if like Brave it had chosen to not include songs. Perhaps without the forced songs it would have felt like the filmmakers knew more what they were doing with the tropes of the Disney Princess movies?

That’s enough of the negative. I’m making it sound like I hated the movie when I really didn’t!

Here’s a list of a few of the thing I really enjoyed about Moana…

• ·         Moana herself is a cool character.
• ·         The visuals are stunning.
• ·         Moana grows as a character throughout the movie. She’s not automatically perfect.
• ·         The scenes in the ‘Realm of Monsters’ is like nothing Disney have ever done before.
• ·         Pua (Moana’s pet pig) is adorable!
• ·         Seriously the animation is incredible.
• ·         Moana did a great job at world building.
• ·         The Kakamora were a really interesting and creative adversary.
• ·         Did I mention that the animation is REALLY good looking!

In conclusion I did enjoy Moana but considering how good Disney have been lately this is a bit of a let-down after Princess and the Frog, Tangled, Frozen, Big Hero 6 and Zootropolis. Moana is a good movie but it really suffers from the bar being set so high by what came before it.