Not just the day, but it is a all purpose magic tool capable of anything the plot requires. I imagine it saves the show a fortune in prop creation.
Surely it will not be the first "all purpose panacea magic tool" seen on the screen, and just as it magically solves problems, it also just as magically fails to work when the script demands it.
As my previous comparison with Marvel; they love to have these ridiculously overpowered superpowers, that, don't actually go all the way. This should in theory affect the script ("how does Superman shave?"), and also has practical aspects (if Luke Cage is immune to rocket blasts, surely the villain with a gun doesn't pose enough of a threat to advance the plot?) which are normally ignored in the name of suspension of disbelief.
The sonic screwdriver is the same. It's just a way to create suspense of a sense of urgency, and the same, the very same exists in every other film where Character has Tool.
war film: The bunker door is locked? A: we can blast it with C4!
teen film: The principal's office is locked? A: we can pick it with a hairpin!
spy film: The mainframe entry door is locked? A: we can hack it with this terminal!
So the protagonist has to waste some time, maybe the villain could be alerted to their presence, maybe we are unsure if they OH BUT YES, THEY OPEN THE DOOR! OH JOY, I RELATE TO THIS CHARACTER !!
come on, this is filmwriting 101 stuff.
Doctor Who is. exceptional.
You need a summary here: original, pre-reboot Doctor Who was a tv show for children. Nobody ever gets hit by the bad guys shooting, the bad guys move awkwardly and slowly, the heroes never die, and most important, everyone is happy in the end.
New Doctor Who is not like that. There have been attempts to introduce "a dark side" of the Doctor but the end result was just a slightly more somber tone, or, in some cases (like the 3rd Doctor) outright camp (when a guy in cape and monkey suit tries to be all dark and gloomy and serious .. ), but New Doctor Who made it clear that "this isn't a kid's show anymore".
And yet, it still is. And here is the magic of New Doctor Who, if you accept it: it still has the air of nonchalant attitude to danger, but occasionally some pretty deep shit happens. People get really hurt, there is a lot of pain in New Doctor Who, for it being a Doctor Who show. The parallel to Star Trek totally fits, TNG did the same thing to TOS - now there is tactics where before there was doublefist punching, now there is torture where poreviously they stole Spock's brain (!), now there are monsters who cannot be defeated by the end of the episode !!
But, at heart, TNG is still the same show as TOS.
And so is Doctor Who. But just like TNG, New Doctor Who has some pretty deep shit, hidden in all that cartoony rubbersuit monster stuff.
The new Doctor isn't quite allright anymore, he emerges from his many years of absence having fought a Time War that destroyed both his worst enemies and nearly all of his own species. This made him deeply angry and somewhat unstable. The fantastic adventures - where nobody every questions being exposed to a potentially fatal situation every time they travel through time - still all end in happiness and a good, heartfelt moral story, until someone GETS FUCKING MURDERED. And that just did not happen in Doctor Who.
So it's both a shocking breach of canon, but also an interesting story of its own. You *do* have to put up with the weird characters of british tv (which, incidentally, really got polished after New Doctor Who, nothing of the production quality of Broadchurch was seen before, brits are allergic to postproduction), but, in my opinion, it is well worth it, for the following reasons:
1. the doctor always has travelling companions; generally they are nothing more than redhsirts who spout exposition-demanding questions, but here, they form strong, real relationships that often have terrible endings.
2. there are still rubber suit monsters, but there are also "campaign" themes running through the show which are totally serious .. again, similar to TNG - the week's "energy mosnter" maybe easily defeated, but the Borg take a whole season to challenge, and they may even kill a permanent crewmember too.
3. the Doctor has to come to terms with both his limits, and the arrogance that stems from his powers.
.. i'm going to leave it at that, but i will explain that this show has David Tennant, Catherine Tate, Billie Piper, John Simm, and also some amazing characters. No, you do not need previous Doctor Who knowledge to understand any of it.
I wouldn't say "oh the first episode is boring". The first episode is not as involved in any of the stories which will come later. But, i foudn this show to be really superb, if you think that the "i am the one who knocks" scene was cool, then stuff like "i am the master, REBORN" will leave you shitting your pants.
Yeah, it takes a bit of time. The show has to cast off the remnants of a puppet show for children, and it takes some time to form the bonds which are then in danger in the later episodes.
But, i do not want to waste your time.
Here is a single clip; the Doctor, who changes body instead of dying, and has this habit of just leaving people he's been going around with, meets his old companion, Sarah Jane Smith. To him - an immortal dickhead - he's just housecalling a friend, to her, who has thought him lost for half her life, it's both a shock, and a resentment for having abandoned her. I get goosebumps EVERY TIME i watch this, so if you don't like this, you will never like Doctor Who.
clip:
www.imdb.com
www.flickeringmyth.com
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