Nothing To Write Home About: The Lazarus Experiment

This past Saturday's episode of Doctor Who continued the recent trend of stories that leave you wanting more. More entertaining stories that is.

Spoilers may settle in shipping.

The Doctor finally brings Martha back home to present day London. And just like he told Rose before her, he tells her she's only been gone 12 hours. Although this time he's correct.

As is becoming all to common of late, the story opens well, and just seems to go nowhere exciting. Kind of like Gridlock before it, this story's most interesting bits are the few minutes of foreshadowing for the series story arc rather than the actual episode itself. For Doctor Who, and sci-fi in general, the story has been done in oh so many ways before. Tell me if this sounds familiar at all.

A scientist has come up with an amazing device that will change the world. He tests it on himself, and becomes a monster. He attacks people and drains their life. The hero appears to defeat said monster, but the monster escapes and heads for (drum roll) a huge gothic church. The hero follows, hero's friend is in imminent danger, and then the monster is vanquished, only to turn back into the scientist as it dies.

Even though this story is nothing new, it could have been done in a much more interesting way. I know the BBC has a limited budget, but the monster looked like any of a dozen other CG monsters out there. Very lackluster. And, as is the whole of this new incarnation of Doctor Who, the story is way too rushed for us to get a feeling of why we should care about any characters other than the Doctor and his companion.

The interesting bits were, as I mentioned, the bits that alluded to the mysterious Mr. Saxon, who is to be played by John Simm (Life on Mars) in upcoming episodes, if rumors are correct. And also if rumors are correct, he could end up being one of the Doctor's oldest foes returned to the new series.

The best part of the broadcast was in fact the trailer for the rest of the series. As the show will not air this Saturday due to Eurovision being on in it's place, the BBC ran a trailer that makes the rest of the series look really exciting.

Here are some screen grabs, with more on my flickr account;