Bad Vibrations (2010) Review

Patrick Troughton is smiling somewhere.

Bad Vibrations has a great setup that could form the basis of a much better story.

WRITTEN BY

Eddie Robson, a prolific Big Finish and comic writer. Hope to see him expand on his ideas in the future.

PLOT

The TARDIS lands in the Echo Sphere, where every noise is amplified and carried across the city. When the ship's grinding sets off a chain reaction, it's up to the Doctor and Amy to find a way to muffle the noise before the Echo Sphere falls apart.

ANALYSIS

I really like the notion of the Doctor screwing up merely by landing somewhere, but solving it by using what I'm pretty sure is a physically impossible explosion of foam covering all the walls is just kinda lame and wastes what could've been a compelling, longer story.

The artwork is rather nice and colourful, and pleasingly simplistic. Characterisationwise, I guess it would've been nice to learn more about the alien birds and whether or not they were sentient(the Echo Sphere would certainly suggest so, but they never interact with the Doctor or Amy).

Characterisationwise, I think the Eleventh Doctor and Amy are as well written as they can be, given the length of the story.

NOTES

*It's interesting to see the poetic aspect of Moffat's direction carry over to the Eleventh Doctor's comics, what with the alien birds who only sing sad songs every once in a while.

*For some reason, I find the idea of the Doctor having a fire extinguisher hilarious.

*According to the comic, the TARDIS lands ON the Echo Sphere... right after establishing that all the birds live inside(hence the vocal resonation effect). So, which is it?

*Shouldn't all of the Doctor and Amy's shouting also resonate?

*The foam explosion towards the end just screams of Mr. Bean... and that episode was proven to be scientifically inaccurate, unfortunately.

CONCLUSION

Don't spend terrific ideas on throwaway one-offs.