The Hangover: A Review (Review #25)

THE HANGOVER

Try To Remember, The Night of Your Bender...

Las Vegas, Nevada has come to be seen as the center of total decadence, where one is freed from all restraints of morality and can indulge in whatever carnal desires one has without having to worry about the end result. There are no rules or boundaries. Whatever inhibitions you may have are gone in Vegas: you can do whatever you want, wherever you want, whenever you want, whoever you want.

In reality, this is not true, but people still flock to Sin City in the belief that "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas". The Hangover is a chronicle of four men who test out that theory, and find themselves in the wildest, most outrageous, outlandish and funniest bender in film.

Doug (Justin Bartha) is getting married in a few days. For his bachelor party, he, his two friends Stu (Ed Helms), Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Doug's future brother-in-law Alan (Zach Galifianakis) go to Las Vegas for a night they won't forget.

At least, that's the original plan. 

The next morning, Stu, Phil, and Alan wake up in their suite to find not only the room beyond trashed, but a tiger in the bathroom, a chicken in the hallway, a baby in the closet, and both Stu's tooth and Doug missing. None of them has any idea what happened to get them in the situation. Trying to reconstruct the previous evening in order to find Doug and get him back to the wedding, they find the evening involved not only the above, but a stolen police car, a Vegas wedding to a stripper/escort (Heather Graham), fey Asian crime lord Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) and Mike Tyson.

The situations the self-named "Wolf-Pack" finds itself in are outrageous, but in a curious sense it all makes sense. It reminds me of a line from All About Eve. In the party scene, Marilyn Monroe is reprimanded for calling a waiter "butler". "Well I can't yell, 'Oh Butler', can I? Somebody's name could be Butler". "You have a point," George Sanders concedes. "An idiotic one, but a point". 

In the same way, The Hangover should be on the surface, completely unbelievable: the situations go beyond what could be even remotely plausible. However, there is a logic to everything albeit a very strained one, and one of the positives of the script is that it makes the circumstances these average guys get into at least acceptable enough to go along with it.

Yes, everything in The Hangover veers into almost insanity, but one should remember that the film is meant to be an outrageous, crude enterprise. As such, you roll with the logic presented to you even if it is an absurdist one.

Credit also has to go to the performances. Each of the male characters has their moments. Helms brings a loveable nebbishness to Stu, forever chafing under his girlfriend but who manages to come alive. Cooper gives a star-turning performance with his Phil, a guy looking for a good time but who leads his crew in their efforts to find Doug. He has the looks of a leader while using his teacher logic to find a way to conclusions. 

A clear standout is Galifianakis, who makes Alan both completely crazy and oddly endearing in his lunacy. Few people could ask about if the actual Caesar actually lived at Caesar's Palace and make it sound rational. 

Although Graham and Jeffrey Tambor as Doug's future father-in-law have small roles, they still bring out the laughs. Mike Tyson, playing himself, also adds not just a hint of menace but also a delightful sense of self-parody that makes him both more frightening and endearing.

The reason The Hangover works is because the story has a sense of logic, and the guys are relatable. The audience knows and identifies with them, and wants them to succeed. The laughs don't stop once the mysteries have been solved: both the reception and the closing credit montage of vacation photos are also some of the funniest moments in the film. Granted, I had to have the Candy Shop cover explained to me, but in the setting it makes it all the more hilarious even if you've never heard of 50 Cent. 

My only complaint is that we never got an explanation for the chicken. 

Still, that's a minor point. The Hangover is outlandish and outrageous but oddly rational; the film is just flat-out funny from beginning to end.  It does what it set out to do: make me laugh, hard, at its outrageousness and silliness, and what can one ask out of comedies other than that. 

DECISION: A-

Public Enemies: A Review

PUBLIC ENEMIES

G-Man, This Movie's Dull...

Perhaps rather than give a full review for Public Enemies, it would be more instructive to write the thoughts that came to me while I was watching it.

"Here's John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), acting rather slowly while breaking people out...I wonder who the guy who fell out of the car was".

"Oh, I didn't know Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum) died by Melvin Purvis' (Christian Bale) hands".

"These Sweet Tarts are good".

"Is that Edith Piaf as Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard)? I don't believe for one moment she has any Native American blood".

"Was that Diana Krall singing in the club? I only have one of her albums. When I Look Into Your Eyes I think it's called. It was OK".

"These Sweet Tarts are really good. I don't think I've had a bad one yet. Normally I can tell when I get a green one, but they are all good tonight".

Blank. Blank. Blank.

"I didn't know Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham) worked with Dillinger. FINALLY, some action."

"Is Baby Face Nelson the same guy who was Dane Cook's obnoxious buddy in Good Luck Chuck? Either he's a great actor or I'm still in a state of semi-consciousness".

"I'm running out of Sweet Tarts. Better save one for when Dillinger goes to the Biograph Theater".

"I didn't know The Lady in Red really wore orange. No, I think I heard that on the History Channel, or A & E".

"Manhattan Melodrama...looks like a good movie. I wonder if it's on DVD. William Powell, that's what I call an actor. Pity he never won an Oscar. He & Myrna Loy. Both got robbed. Come to think of it, I haven't seen any of the Thin Man movies. I should check them out. I don't think I've seen them together in any film. How awful. ".

"Clark Gable--a STAR if ever there was one. Pity most people here have NO idea who William Powell or Myrna Loy are. Some haven't even heard of Gable. How can you not have heard of Clark Gable? People can't be THAT dumb, can they?"

"No, I tell a lie. I did see Powell and Loy in The Great Ziegfeld, and he did have a small role in How to Marry A Millionaire. Class all the way".

"Why are going back to this movie? Put Manhattan Melodrama back on".

"OK, Dillinger's been killed. Time to pop in the last Sweet Tart".

"There's MORE?! Fine, fine, fine. Let's find out what happened to the girl."

"Oh, it WAS Diana Krall! I KNEW I was right. I would have thought Channing Tatum would have gotten a bigger role as Pretty Boy Floyd. Yes, he is pretty, but the jury's still out as to his acting skills. I can't tell him apart from the guys on Gossip Girl. Saw only one episode, didn't think there was any actual acting".

"I believe these were the BEST Sweet Tarts I've ever had, bar none".

I was entirely flippant early on in my reviewing career, but in retrospect, I kinda liked how freewheeling I used to be. As I look at it, while Public Enemies tried to be in the style of early Warner Brothers' gangster films, it failed.

In short, Public Enemies is not a gangster movie in the style of a White Heat or The Public Enemy. It isn't even a good character study of Dillinger. He couldn't have been as boring as he's seen in the film. That's no reflection on Depp: he's one of the finest actor of his generation, period. It's the pacing. Public Enemies is so slow that it makes the movie drag. If people think it's a gangster film, forget it.

There are few action scenes to speak of. As for everyone else, I will give Cotillard credit for sounding somewhat like an American, same with Bale. However, Purvis doesn't come across as a diligent officer determined to bring Dillinger to justice. He, like Depp, are more like those animatronics at Disney World. In fact, the Cagney figure in Disney's Hollywood Studios' The Great Movie Ride is more lifelike than the actors on the screen.

Slow, slow, slow. It's unfortunate, since this could have been a great opportunity to remind modern audiences of the great genre gangster films were. Ultimately, by showing clips of Manhattan Melodrama during Public Enemies, we can compare & contrast just how good those movies were...and how bad this was is.

Slow, dull, with lifeless characters, Public Enemies will soon be forgotten, a blip in the careers of Depp, Cotillard, and Bale to where some of their fans won't even remember they were in this movie, let alone the movie itself.

1903-1934

DECISION: F

Michael Jackson's This Is It: A Review (Review #23)

MICHAEL JACKSON'S THIS IS IT

Farewell Performance...

You can remember Michael Jackson in many ways, depending on when you saw him first. Some remember him as the wildly talented youngster from the Jackson 5, singing and dancing like nobody's business. Others remember him as the man behind some of the most innovative music and videos of all time: lighting the ground with his feet in Billy Jean, a dancing zombie in Thriller, in the subway, telling the world who's Bad. For those who came after his heyday, he is known as "that crazy man who slept with boys and dangled a baby from a hotel balcony". 

Michael Jackson's This Is It, the documentary film about his never-to-be comeback concert series, doesn't answer questions about Jackson the man. It does remind us of the man's extraordinary and exceptional musical talent and the catalog he left behind. 

The film is a hybrid of documentary and concert film. The documentary part is supplemented by interviews with the dancers, band, and technical crew as they rehearse for the planned This Is It series of spectacular concerts. The concert part comes from Jackson's performances of his songs, where he excelled even when his audience consisted solely of no more than fifty.

It may sound wrong, but I think This Is It looks better here than it would have looked if Jackson had lived to perform the entire show as planned. The concert would have to me been ostentatious and extravagant, but here, we can concentrate on the music and dancing that Jackson could still perform at age 50. We soon forget that this is rehearsal footage, not because of the quality of the footage. Instead, we get a chance to essentially sit in on a dress rehearsal, and as such concentrated on both the intense work of the planned show but more importantly the music.

We can hear how brilliant Jackson's catalog is with few if any distractions. Seeing him perform songs such as The Way You Make Me Feel, I Just Can't Stop Loving You, and Beat It, reminds one of the sheer talent Jackson had. 

I was pleased to hear one of my personal favorites, Smooth Criminal. In this particular number he & director Kenny Ortega had planned, audiences would have had an amazing number that had Jackson be an audience member when Rita Hayworth performed Put the Blame on Mame in Gilda. Perhaps on a stage this would not have translated well. In This Is It, it works wonders.

To be fair, his Earth Song was to my mind both overblown and far too syrupy, but there it is. 

This Is It is probably not the way Michael Jackson would have wanted to be seen as this footage was not intended for public view. However, that ironically ends up being one of its benefits: here we have Jackson, the singer, the dancer, stripped from all the weirdness and lunacy and tragedy that were as much part of his life as his enormous talent. We can judge the man as artist, not his eccentricities, his musical legacy, not his tabloid legacy.

Is it exploitive? I don't think so. The people behind the camera were put in an extremely difficult position after Jackson's death, and they did the best they could under the circumstances. Director Ortega and company should be congratulated for being able to make a great musical experience out of behind-the-scenes footage, and the film is quite respectful of the man. The various interviews show that those working with Jackson thought exceptionally well of him.

This Is It does not dwell into the allegations of child abuse, and it is up to the individual if one wants to spend time watching a man accused of child molestation. Ultimately, This Is It won't change how people perceive Michael Jackson, the man. It might not even change how people perceive Michael Jackson, the artist. It never set out to be about Michael Jackson, person, but Michael Jackson, artist. 

Stripped of the allegations, the bizarre antics and imagery of this person, we can see just how much talent he had, and if we judge him on that, his legacy is secure.

1958-2009

DECISION: A-

The First Ten Doctors: An Introduction

And Pretty Doctors All in A Row

**Author's Note: I had planned to review the Doctor Who catalog on this site, but given the sheer number of stories I opted to spin-off those reviews to a separate site: Gallifrey Exile. As such, readers will find reviews may hop from one site to another. Reviews are collected at a link at the end of this essay. Also, this essay was updated on January 2021.

Now we come to the end of this brief sojourn into the First Ten Doctors. 

Who is the Best Who? Who is the best Actor to have played the role? What are the best Doctor Who stories? 

I don't like those questions. Each version, in my view, brought his own interpretation to the role, and each one has one perfect story. William Hartnell, who originated it, to be fair didn't have the burden of comparing his performance with anyone else. As we look back though, we can compare him and his stories to those of his successors. 

Patrick Troughton brought humor. 

Jon Pertwee brought action.

Tom Baker brought alien eccentricity.

Peter Davison brought a greater compassion and innocence.

Colin Baker brought outrageous egocentricity. 

Sylvester McCoy brought righteous anger.

Paul McGann brought a greater romanticism.

Christopher Eccleston brought a manic moodiness.

David Tennant brought a touch of wistfulness.

Since the original posting, we've had three more Doctors.

Matt Smith brought naïveté slipping to stupidity.

Peter Capaldi brought a menace to dark danger.

Jodie Whitaker brought nothing.

 

Now, each has his detractors and defenders, but all I think did the best their talents allowed them to, with varying degrees of success. Colin Baker and Peter Capaldi were good Doctors stuck with lousy scripts, yet they did their best. 

We can argue about individual stories, but that is another matter. Ultimately, Doctor Who the program will continue, or at least I thought so. Now with the dual damage Whitaker and showrunner Chris Chibnall has done, I think Doctor Who 2.0 is done. Even with a new Doctor on the horizon, the damage has already been done. Even if Whitaker had made the role her own versus coming across as a bad Tennant/Smith cosplayer, I find that Chibnall has given her such a succession of terrible stories that no actress could have rescued the Doctor.

It's all such a shame, all this to placate a group of people who didn't have an interest in the show and didn't bother sticking around once they'd accomplish their great triumph. I gave Her a chance, but even if the Doctor had maintained being a man I would have thought such awful stories.

In the future, I hope to write reviews on the stories themselves, but I can wait. I hope to have more time.  

Looking back twelve years later, I think I have the time. 

What I don't have is the interest.

The Eleventh Doctor: An Introduction

The Eleventh Doctor:
Matt Smith (Born 1982)

**Author's Note: I had planned to review the Doctor Who catalog on this site, but given the sheer number of stories I opted to spin-off those reviews to a separate site: Gallifrey Exile. As such, readers will find reviews may hop from one site to another. Reviews are collected at a link at the end of this essay. Also, this essay was updated on January 2021.

Ah, to be young and naïve.

At the time I wrote this essay, I had great hopes for the newest Doctor. I wrote: 

"I am looking forward to Matt Smith's tenure as The Doctor even though I've never seen him act or heard his voice. Colin Baker had an excellent point about regeneration. You don't want Your Doctor to go, he said, but you're also excited because you wonder what The Next Doctor will be like (pun intended). 

The change from Hartnell to Troughton brought a different Doctor, as did the change to Pertwee, Tom Baker, Davison, Colin Baker, McCoy, McGann, Eccleston and Tennant. Each made it his own, and I hope Smith will do the same.

Tom Baker also made an interesting point. The Doctor, he said, is actor-proof. You could take an established character and make him your own. Each of the Doctors has done so, so why is Smith any different? It will depend on the scripts and the willingness of the public to accept one in the role.

For my part, I'm hoping for great things, and wishing Matt Smith well".

Now, looking back a good ten years since his debut story, I can see so many things that should have told me this was going to be the beginnings of a disaster. 

One thing I had not counted on was the emotional impact that having Tenth Doctor David Tennant regenerate to Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith would have on NuWho fans. I saw wails of tears from many fans at the transformation. This counters Colin Baker's view that fans usually are generally excited to see what the Next Doctor would do and be like.

Instead, I saw a fandom that could not tolerate change, that was dreading rather than looking forward to another actor in the role. Things only got worse when Smith would eventually regenerate to Capaldi. The regeneration was transformed from a somewhat routine but non-dramatic moment into this epic change requiring explosions and long, dramatic monologues. 

How could fans be so simple? I'd seen many regenerations, and only once did I actually cry. That was the regeneration from Third to Fourth, and it had nothing to do with my unwillingness to see Pertwee become Tom Baker. It had to do with Pertwee and Elisabeth Sladen's actual acting. 

Another problem that I did not foresee was in how diminished the character would become. There's eccentric and then there's stupid. Smith's Doctor not only passed that line but smashed it beyond anything imaginable. In a future post, I was pretty positive about Smith but did warn that "he does...run the risk of going too far in the comedic take", and I found that such fears would come to pass. The Eleventh Doctor became stupider and stupider. His fixations with fezes and bow ties, as well as his growing inability to function with a hint of sense, made him an object of ridicule. In short, a joke.

The Doctor could be eccentric, but Smith's version eventually came across as a near-total nitwit. 

Add to that how other characters eclipsed him. At times, The Doctor became a guest star on his own program, the dominant figures being the bossy Amy Pond and the Legendary Legend of Legendness Herself, River Song. First, we see with Amy just how stupid The Eleventh Doctor became. After centuries of dealing with humans, why did this Doctor think that Amy's husband Rory Williams was "Rory Pond", insisting that men took on their wives' names? Some men do, but fandom's insistence on calling the "The Ponds" when Rory was never a Pond was eye-rolling.

In Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, Rory's father made it a point to say "I AM NOT A POND!" to an either oblivious or downright imbecilic Doctor. Smith's Doctor went from frantic to dysfunctional. 

Worse, there was River Song. Granted, I had missed her debut story but soon River not only started appearing more and more prominent in other stories but went from a guest character to the almost de facto star. She was built up as this great figure with her catchphrases "Hello, Sweetie" and "Spoilers!", who not only knew how to pilot the TARDIS better but ridiculed the Doctor for "leaving the parking brake on". It was beyond cringe-inducing.

River Song eventually not only became the child of Amy and her husband "Mr. Pond" but managed to regenerate herself because she was conceived by the power of the Holy TARDIS. I don't know what the motivation was to diminish the lead character to celebrate a minor, obnoxious insignificant one, but it was a terrible mistake. This would not stop with Amy or her daughter, but with Clara Oswald, another obnoxious Companion know-it-all who somehow became this most important of figures.

She told the First Doctor which TARDIS to take, despite the TARDIS saying she select him in The Doctor's Wife, a title later reserved for River Song.  A total mess.

Finally, I saw a group of absolutely dreadful stories: the aforementioned DOAS, A Town Called Mercy, Closing Time, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS. 

I left the Matt Smith Era so bitterly disillusioned, and grew disenchanted with Smith's portrayal. 

Oh, but little did I know...

Next, The Ten Doctors: Some Thoughts

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The Tenth Doctor: An Introduction

The Tenth Doctor:
David Tennant (Born 1971)

**Author's Note: I had planned to review the Doctor Who catalog on this site, but given the sheer number of stories I opted to spin-off those reviews to a separate site: Gallifrey Exile. As such, readers will find reviews may hop from one site to another. Reviews are collected at a link at the end of this essay. Also, this essay was updated on January 2021.

My mother never understood my love of Doctor Who. She thought it was a stupid show and made it a point to tell me as such. She would also add that being ugly was a prerequisite to play the Doctor...with one exception. After looking at David Tennant, she decided he was halfway decent-looking. 

This seems to be the consensus: that David Tennant is perhaps one of the most attractive men to play the role. In retrospect, a good fifteen years separated from his debut story, Tennant's physical appeal and crafting the Doctor as an object of romantic yearning, even physical desire, may have been a mistake. The romanticism and lust factors may have been both a blessing and a curse to the show. He was certainly swoon-worthy to many a fangirl and fanboy, but could Tennant's looks have been the catalyst for creating whole seasons where every Companion save Donna fell in love with him?

He was perhaps the most romantic of Doctors, one that loved sweeping in to rescue damsels in distress (case in point, The Girl in the Fireplace). Oftentimes, it was suggested that he fell in love to those women he encountered (the aforementioned Girl in the Fireplace, Doomsday, Forest of the Dead). This goes against the Third Doctor Jon Pertwee's view that there should be even a hint of romance between the Doctor and his Companions. 

I think that was a good policy, to make The Doctor a mentor not a lover, someone who in Pertwee's words was fond of his Companions but that fondness is different from desire. However, perhaps Tennant's good looks and easy manner made him too hard to resist. It now makes me wonder whether the emphasis on romance shifted Doctor Who from a good, family science-fiction show into a space soap opera: Lust in Space if you like. 

Perhaps this is why, in the future, the then 34-year-old Tennant was succeeded by the even younger Matt Smith, to continue making The Doctor not into an intellectual hero but an object of worship and erotic fixation. That may explain why when the much older Peter Capaldi came around, more than a few fans objected to not having that romantic, swooning figure but a crotchety old man.

Tennant's looks are not his fault, and he showed himself to be a fine actor and one of the best Doctors. However, with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps the focus shifted from "The Doctor" to "David Tennant", and in the same way Classic Who never fully recovered once Tom Baker left, NuWho has yet to hit the heights the Tennant Era had. 

At the time, I thought David Tennant was a welcome change from Christopher Eccleston. This isn't to say the latter was terrible, but he was a terribly unhappy Doctor. Tennant, on the other hand, is for the most part quite jolly. He has a touch of Troughton: a sense of wonder about the things going on around him. He gets Pertwee's ability to be authoritative, even a bit bossy when the need arises. Tennant also brings something of Davison's vulnerability to the role. This is informed by the fact that The Doctor's home world of Gallifrey is supposed to have been destroyed. While he is a happier Doctor than Eccleston, Tennant can also rage like the best of them.

As I revisit this essay a good twelve years later, I can now confess that I was like many a NuWho fan too enthralled with the show to be analytical. I let my emotions carry me, until Love & Monsters. 

Love & Monsters shook me from my fever dream of thinking every Doctor Who episode was brilliant. I was angry at how insulting it was to the fanbase. I was horrified at the oral sex joke, one that left me so stunned I had to watch that part just to be sure I had heard what I had heard. It was an ugly, ugly episode, one so horrifying and hideous I essentially quit watching Doctor Who right then and there. I skipped Fear Her out of protest (which I have since seen and thought it too was awful), stumbled through Army of Ghosts Parts I & II, then stopped watching altogether. 

That's how awful I thought it was. The association was simply too awful for me to have anything to do with it. I also thought the battle between the Daleks and the Cybermen was not all it could have been. All the pity. I did think his first season (Series Two) was overall quite good.

It wasn't until Matt Smith took over that I decided to give Doctor Who another try. When he handed over Smith. I hoped for great things.

I was, sadly, unprepared for that Legendary Legend of Legendness, River Song, but that's for next time.

Next, The Eleventh Doctor: An Introduction

Visit Here for Tenth Doctor Reviews.

The Ninth Doctor: An Introduction

The Ninth Doctor:
Christopher Eccleston (Born 1964)

**Author's Note: I had planned to review the Doctor Who catalog on this site, but given the sheer number of stories I opted to spin-off those reviews to a separate site: Gallifrey Exile. As such, readers will find reviews may hop from one site to another. Reviews are collected at a link at the end of this essay. Also, this essay was updated on January 2021.

I was very excited when Doctor Who was revived in 2005. So excited that I cajoled a friend of mine to let me watch it at his house since I didn't have cable or satellite. I believe my faith is justified.

Christopher Eccleston's Doctor is in a word: manic. He seems in a hurry to get things done. If the storyline is to be believed, Gallifrey no longer exists. His home world has been destroyed, with him the only survivor. This would make him more dour than his predecessors, and while Eccleston's performance shows him to be angrier, he also does allow some goofiness to come through. 

There is a tinge of regret to him, as if a shadow will always be with him, haunting him perpetually. He also oddly seems to be the most "regular guy" Doctor. There's no air of sophistication or culture that the Third or Fifth Doctor had. Instead, he seems like just a bloke who happens to be a Time Lord.

This might explain that chip on his shoulder he seems to carry, as if he's always worried someone will look down on him. He has a Northern accent, which distinguishes him from all other Doctors and reinforces that outsider status. Perhaps to the class-conscious British this might be an issue of concern.

The Ninth Doctor's anger also seems to find more comfort with violence than McCoy's. He has no problem being vengeful, downright evil, with the 'last' Dalek. He goes so far as to threaten to kill him. Yes, it was to save his Companion Rose Tyler, but it still is a marked departure for someone who used to rail against violence to solve things. Perhaps this was a manifestation of the actor himself, who left the series after one season. I don't know what his plans in relation to Doctor Who are, but he seems to be taking a page from Tom Baker: respect but a wary distance.

Now, with the new series there is a change. Rather than having two-to-four part stories, each story is an individual episode with one or two exceptions. Out of the stories in his tenure, the best to my mind is Dalek. It finally makes the Daleks the terrifying creatures they could be. I also thought The Unquiet Dead (where he meets Charles Dickens, brilliantly played by Simon Callow), and Father's Day were well-written and executed. I really don't think there was a bad episode in the bunch.

Now that I've had well over a decade to reflect on NuWho, I think Eccleston has been wildly underrated. He brought a mix of mirth and menace to the role, both goofy and frightening. I think in retrospect that his costume worked well: the leather jacket and overall black ensemble showed him to both working-class and dark.

The teaming of the Ninth with Billie Piper's Rose was a mix between romantic and friendship. If memory serves correct I don't think the romance was built up to the extent it would be in the future, and perhaps if Eccelston had stayed on it would have been tapered down.

I also think that my wild enthusiasm was perhaps an emotional rather than intellectual reaction, for as good as I think some of the stories are, I cannot recall any of them with great detail apart from The Unquiet Dead and The Empty Child Parts 1 & 2. The "farting aliens" perhaps should have been a sign that things were not as I imagined them, and while Captain Jack Harkness made for a good guest character, his eventual dominance in Who lore may have been a mistake.

On the whole, I think well of Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor, mercurial as both character and actor are. Time has softened my love of Series/Season One, but that is for another day.

Next, The Tenth Doctor: An Introduction

Visit Here for Ninth Doctor Reviews