This has provided me much amusement the past couple of days, seeing overzealous, overserious Dr Who fans’ heads spin round and round.
Now I do think that the BBC are guilty of overhyping Tate. Still Game, the wonderful Scottish sitcom reportedly pulls in more viewers on BBC2 than Tate’s show, but you don’t see Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill get Dr. Who roles. (Note to the BBC: give Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill roles on Dr. Who). And her sketch show is wildly variable, in that her performances are, on whole, pretty good, but the scripts prove repetitive.
But you know what? The Christmas special with her in was fun. And fun is the minimum I want from Dr Who, sure it’s great when it soars to heights like Blink, but fun is more than enough for a TV sci-fi show. Because most aren’t.
Now, I can see how some people found the character annoying to begin with, but it was toned down and became more serious as the show went on. And the one thing I really loved was that the character was somewhat atypical for a Dr Who companion.
Certainly one weakness of this last series is that a lot of writers didn’t seem write Martha as well as she came across in her first episode, and so in some episodes it could have just as easily been Rose there. I don’t think a character like Donna will have the same problem, if simply because she’s an older character. And a gobshite.
But most of all I like the idea of using her ongoing, because it will wind up the sort of fan who takes it personally when a show doesn’t adhere to their preconceived idea of what the show should be.