The End of the World took place a couple of hours ago, but I’m alive and well to tell the tale! I am of course talking about the latest episode of Doctor Who. I didn’t enjoy it as much as Rose, but I think I loved that first episode so much and was so excited by it that it was inevitable that I would be slightly disappointed.

I think the same thing happened with The Two Towers after I was so blown away by The Fellowship of the Ring. I’d not been to the cinema much, since there isn’t one here in Dolgellau, and so not seen many blockbusters on the big screen, and it had been a long time since I’d read the book. As a result, the experience of watching it was just wonderful!

The trouble was, I then ran out to reread the books and paid close attention to all the information about the next film. By the time I went into the cinema to see The Two Towers, the book was fresh in my mind and I’d imagined in my mind how big and wonderful and amazing it would be. So when I watched it, my mind was too busy making comparisons both with the book and with my imagined version, and I just wasn’t able to enjoy it properly for what it was. Now that I’ve seen it again a couple more times (alright, several times… okay, I admit it, lots!) I’ve really come to enjoy it much more than when I first saw it. I think I came to the second episode with something of this sense of hightened expectation

This is probably why lots of Doctor Who fans didn’t love the first episode. One of the reviews said that every Doctor Who fan had in their mind their ideal version of The Return Of Doctor Who to which no actual episode would be able to live up to, or something like that. But I didn’t, and I think that my relative lack of expectations and preconceptions allowed me to enjoy it more. My trouble was that I then built up loads of expectations and preconceptions after watching the first episode. Which is very annoying, because I want to enjoy Doctor Who as much as possible. The End of the World didn’t “wow!” me, but I hope that after a bit I’ll be able to enjoy it for what it is, rather than not enjoy it for what it isn’t.

I’ve barely talked about the episode itself, so I might do a proper review sometime soon. I’m really looking forward to next week’s episode, The Unquiet Dead, a spooky tale set in Victorian Cardiff featuring Charles Dickens. Unfortunately, I don’t yet know whether I’ll be able to see it then, because I don’t have a television set with me in Cardiff and haven’t yet worked anything out regarding seeing the episodes, except for equipping my Mum with a supply of blank videos and hoping she can remember how to use the video recorder!