The New ‘Doctor Who’ Trailer Tries To Be Dark And Gritty, Fails Miserably
Because it's a show about robots and British people.
This whole “give a franchise a dark and gritty reboot” thing has gotten out of hand. Star Trek made sense, Superman kind of made sense, but we’re now at the point where a gang of goofy stoner turtles who wear colour-coded bandannas and live in the sewer together are being reimagined as surly, conflicted antiheroes who don’t play by the rules.
Then comes the new trailer for the upcoming eighth season of Doctor Who, starring everyone’s favourite misanthropic Scotsman Peter Capaldi — who admittedly did a pretty stellar job of tapping into some of the darker corners of the human subconscious as Malcolm Tucker in The Thick Of It.
The trailer makes a valiant effort of trying to present The Doctor as an outer-space Christian Bale-era Batman, what with the growling industrial noises and shots of people looking grimly into the camera, but all the standard “look how dark we’re being” tropes in the world aren’t enough to change the fact that Doctor Who is a show about a man who flies around the universe in a telephone box and fights off bit-part British actors wearing elaborate facepaint.
Also undermining the grittiness somewhat is the monster with penises for eyes, the giant dinosaur bumbling around the Houses of Parliament, and the very short shot of Capaldi dramatically riding a horse down a London street while wearing a nightie.
“Where are we going?” Pretty Female Sidekick #317 asks breathlessly, as Capaldi stares into the middle distance with suitable world-weariness.
“Into darkness.”
Get it? Because that’s where the moral ambiguity is. In the darkness. It’s a metaphor, guys! Or an analogy, whichever. But it’s deep.
Anyway, the new season premieres on August 23, so that’s nice. Be sure to wear a cape or something.