purplecat | Dec. 26th, 2008

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Dec. 26th, 2008

I thought this was easily the best of RTD's Christmas Specials and I suspect that was because he found a way to marry the kind of emotional beats that he is interested in and is generally very good at, with the science fiction/fantasy and spectacle he clearly feels is a vital part of a Christmas Special. I'm also a bit of a sucker for steam punk in any form.

( Spoilers under the Cut )

who_daily HTML: <lj user=louisedennis> thought it was <a href="http://louisedennis.livejournal.com/102882.html">easily the best of RTD's Christmas Specials</a>

You know sometimes a plot point becomes a cliche merely through over-use. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with it and there is no shame in using again sparingly especially in something written for a young audience who may well not have got to the stage of rolling their eyes and saying "I know how this one goes". Sometimes something is a cliche because it's a let out for lazy writing and you really need to be doing something special with it to make it work at all, even the first time someone encounters it.

( Spoilers for Enemy of the Bane )

Back in October I posted a mildly positive review of the first Merlin episode and then promptly forgot to watch it ever again. My nieces and nephew, in a slightly haphazard fashion, undertook to correct this oversight and showed me The Gates of Avalon which, after much argument, they agreed "was not the second". I felt it was very similar in style to the first but was slightly less engaging. There was nothing egregiously wrong with it but I still feel no frantic urge to find and watch the rest.

( More spoilerly ruminations under the cut )

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