Doctor Who, deja vu (spoilers)

I wasn't going to watch it yet, but I succumbed to tempation. So now I've seen the first five episodes of season three, and... it's the first season (of "new" Who) all over again.

"Smith and Jones": here we go with a new companion, Martha. So far she doesn't seem as heartless as Rose, but she's fallen into the making goo-goo eyes at the Doctor thing all too soon. Look, the Sontarans have gone in for a bit of cosmetic makeover and hired out as galactic police thugs! Oh, they're "Judoon". Riiiight. Not that bad, overall. I enjoyed it while I was watching it.

"Shakespeare Code": and here's our trip of a few hundred years back into British history, meeting with a literary genius while foiling the attempt of some quasi-magical aliens to break into our world. Yay. I actually liked this much better than "Unquiet Dead". This Shakespeare was more fun than that Dickens (despite a few lame jokes...some were amusing.)

"Gridlock": and here's our trip to the far future. Where once again, I'm reminded that Russell T. Davies has a sadly limited imagination. I don't think he can truly grasp just how long ten thousand years is, let alone five BILLION years. Only about 15 New New Yorks in that time? That's an average of one only every 67 million years. Please. RTD, do you even know how long ONE million years is? And we get the cat-headed people from the second season "future" episode again. And look, it's the Face of Boe again! Come on, if you have some big secret, why wait until you're on your dying breath to spill it? What was the big deal that he couldn't tell the Doctor before? It makes it look dumber, not more dramatic. But I did like it better than "New Earth" from the second season. First of all, Rose wasn't in it, so it wasn't so insufferably smug. Second, there weren't stupid disease zombies running around. Saving the last human/catfolk population of the planet by having them drive around in circles for years was an interesting concept (ultimately full of holes, but not as badly as the concepts behind "New Earth".)

"Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of Daleks": The Dalek AND the pig-person and aliens invading Earth story for season 3. Didn't we already have the last Dalek? And the last Daleks again? No, wait, this time it's really truly I mean it the very last Dalek in the universe. Oh, Daleks "tainted" with human DNA (thus making them emotionally unstable yadda yadda yadda) again. Why am I watching this? I can't stop myself! The Doctor makes one of his rare trips to
to America, landing in New York in 1930.

Quit mentioning Rose every damn episode! GAHHH! Gah!!!! No, she's NOT your one speshul twue wuv, dammit.

The real romance story is between the Doctor and the Daleks. They've known each other for hundreds of years. A very INTENSE relationship, considering all the times they've nearly killed each other (I count the Daleks more or less as one entity, with a few mutations and Davroses here and there). Now they're both the last of their races. And no matter who the Doctor kisses, and no matter how many humans flirt with him, it's only the Daleks that he's actually mixed his genes with to create new life forms (on screen, anyway.) Poor kids. Killed within ten minutes of their introduction. Very tragic.

So, enough with the emergency time shifts. Clearly the last of the Daleks should team up with the last of the Timelords as companions. As the show girlsaid, "There's someone out there for everyone", even, presumably, Daleks.

Return of the Condor Heros 2006: ARRGH!

It's another damn remake. I complain about Hollywood having no imagination, about them recycling old movies and TV shows, etc., but the Chinese are even worse. It's getting to be like a folk art, where the point is not the newness of the story (everyone already knows the story), but how interestingly you tell it. So there's a seemingly endless stream of Jin Yong and Gu Long (probably the two most famous wuxia writers) and to a lesser extent Liang Yusheng (sp?) adaptations, whether chopped up (and nearly incomprehensible) movie versions or TV serials. TVB (Hong Kong) has done lots of them, and now mainland China's getting into the game. I was very impressed with their Xiao Ao Jiang Hu (Smiling Proud Wanderer/State of Divinity/whatever) 2001, not so much with their Legend of the Condor Heroes.

And now here's their version of Return of the Condor Heroes. As usual, the scenery is nice. Beyond that...heh...so far I've watched the first 2-3 episodes.

Music. Bleah. Woman singing Ah ah ah ah ah, something like that. Got on my nerves, so I fast forwarded through it.

So. They decided to start with the bloody handprints: Scarlet Fairy Li Mouchou (excuse my pinyin, can't be bothered looking it up now)'s calling card. One handprint for each person she's planning to kill. Ok, very dramatic, but right away we see the serial is going to have way too much CGI and frozen shots of people hanging in the air and not so much in the way of "grounded" fight scenes. They skip over a whole bunch of backstory, completely omitting the crazy man and his wife and their two sons who are mixed up with the LMC tragedy. Blah blah blah.

When we see Yang Guo, he's already been adopted by Guo Jing. And oh boy. What an irritating little brat he is. I suppose he was a bit of a brat in the book, but this depiction just makes it worse. I like the child Yang Guo from the...1985? TVB version better, actually.

And there's tooo much of him. Geez, this is dragging... They skip over a lot of Yang Guo meeting West Poison, and his time on Peach Island (he explains it later, but they never SHOW it). They take WAAAAY too much time with Uncle Guo taking Yang Guo up the mountain to the Taoists. The Taoists are ridiculous. They can't fight, but they can do cool synchronized sword dancing with a good deal of CGI assistance. (Yeah, yeah, Big Dipper formation yadda yadda yadda...it wasn't that plausible to begin with, but they make it look COMPLETELY USELESS!)

Anyway, that's enough ranting for now. More later, as I watch more of it. I'm hoping it improves once the adult Yang Guo is introduced. I can't take the little kid YG's whine whine whine cry cry cry woe is me....agh. Yeah, he had a hard life, but still...does he have to whine about every little thing?