Day 675: Silver Nemesis Part 1

It's been around two months since I've had an episode of Doctor Who to watch that I've never seen before (the most recent one that I'd seen for the first time was Planet of Fire Part 4), so I've been looking forward to watching Silver Nemesis. However, I've also had a small degree of trepidation regarding this as the general fan consensus is that this is not a very good story, and that I should prepare myself for disappointment. To some degree, the consensus is right; the story doesn't have much weight to it and a lot of the acting is fairly poor. But, on the other hand, there is enough in this for me to enjoy it.

It all feels very different to the normal Doctor Who 'Part 1'. We don't spend time in one setting getting to know the situation, instead, we go on an adventure that crosses through time and space as we discover the background to the adventure, mainly through exposition from the Doctor as he desperately tries to figure out his strategy. This all feels very much like a New Series episode (e.g. The Stolen Earth, The Pandorica Opens) where the exposition has a momentum attached to it, through simple changes of scenery as events rapidly approach some sort of climax. The only problem is that, in the case of a New Series episode, this sort of thing would generally be done within the first five minutes, whereas here it's stretched out to the full 25 minute long episode, which makes things somewhat less appealing and a little but dull.

However, it's still kind of fun to watch, and I'm actually rather looking forward to seeing how the rest of Silver Nemesis pans out.