Doctor Who:
Love &
Monsters
By Russell T.
Davies
“Mr. Blue Sky
is living here today.”
Elton is
filming a video log of how he met The Doctor and what meeting The Doctor meant
to his life. He ends up searching London
and actually runs into him battling a creature in a warehouse. Elton goes on to tel about how he was there
when The Autons invaded, when the space ship hit Big Ben and when the Sycorax
ship appeared. His looking for The
Doctor has him meeting up with others how have the same experience. They end up forming a group and call
themselves LINDA.
They are soon
visited by Victor Kennedy and he is their salvation. He has info on how to find the Doctor and
tricks the group into finding him. One
by one the group is disappearing and they are not even answering their cell
phones. Elton and Ursula soon discover
that Victor is not all who seems to be as he is in fact The Absorboloff and he
has absorbed the other members of LINDA.
After absorbing Ursula he is after Elton and hopefully The Doctor shows
up and save him.
What utter crap. That phrase is appropriate to sum up Lave & Monsters by Russell T. Davies in a single phrase without using any expletives. This episode is truly in the mode of such classics as “Delta and The Bannermen”, “Timelash”, “Time –Flight” and “The Space Pirates”. Unfortunately those stories are classics compared to “Love & Monsters”. I’ll give RTD credit for trying something new but unfortunately I did not care for it very much.
First off The
Doctor and Rose weren’t in all that much as this was the Doctor lite episode
and those were not really a favorite of mine, except “Blink”, but when they do make an appearance they
seemed out of character and not really acting a we have known them to. They were more of a pantomime of their
characters. Especially Rose when she
confronts Elton about upsetting her Mom.
Well Elton was about to absorbed by the Absorbaloff and all Rose was
concerned about telling off Elton. That
scene did not make any sense to me at all. Save Elton first and then tell him
off.
I think Love
& Monsters would have benefitted if The Doctor and Rose were not in it at
all. It would have been more enjoyable
to see Elton and LINDA fight off the Absorbaloff. That would have been something different and
not all that bad as the silliness would have worked with those characters and
not Rose and The Doctor. Myself I did
not care for the silliness as it just seemed really stupid in parts and The
Doctor and Rose came off as morons and that’s not what they are. An example was the Scooby Doo tribute there
that just did not seem to work at all and was not funny either.
There were
some good aspects to “Love & Monsters”.
I liked how they developed Jackie’s character. You get to see a different side of her that
we wouldn’t normally get to see. We
actually see what she gets up to while Rose is traveling and in a sense you
start to feel sorry for her as she explains she is always being left
behind. Plus I liked the Electric Light
Orchestra songs that were included like Mr. Blue Sky, Turn to Stone and Don’t
Bring Me Down. Those songs made it
tolerable to watch Love & Monsters but not much. For some reason the music seemed to fit in
with the action and silliness going on.
This was also the story that was centered upon a Blue Peter design a
monster contest. The Absorbaloff was
actually not a bad creation for the show but unfortunately the story was
utterly poor.
Grade F
Come on - how dare you grade this so high. There has to be something lower than that. This was the worst RTD by far - it wasn't Doctor Who and it bordered on Benny Hill. The show virtually becomes self aware of Doctor Who and does it badly.
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