Am I the only one who thinks fandom overreacts to that joke? You know it could just mean they kiss (the line says they have ‘love life’ not a ‘sex life’).
I can imagine RTD chortling away as he wrote it - and maybe then regretting it once he saw it on screen - hindsight is 20/20 but I think it is such a tiny thing in a story packed with so much goodness.
The Abzorbaloff - silly? He’s grotesque and horrifying. His victims are still sentient and absorbed in his flesh - what the ■■■■! I can’t help but be reminded of the horror film Society which scarred me as a teenager watching it by myself in my room.
Is Peter Kay right for the role? I don’t think he’s bad but maybe a bit ‘large’ when he is being the monster - but as Victor I think he’s pretty good. Is he a spoof of Ian Levine? Who can say?
But this is a story about fandom. It is a group of people brought together by a shared interest and then discovering they have even more in common and from that true relationships are formed. LINDA are all of us - it’s my friendship group in real life; it’s TARDiS Guide’s community. Those scenes with LINDA hanging out are so lovely and - when you know what’s coming - horribly tragic.
And then along comes Victor and his ‘super-fan’ tendencies. He just wants information. He just wants fandom to be conducted the way he wants it to be conducted because that’s how his obsession works. He sucks all the joy from the group and then literally sucks all the life from the group.
A group of people who found a way of dealing with their own personal tragedies - and way of moving on - have that cruelly taken away - and it’s the Doctor’s fault. Love & Monsters is a tragic tale (in the best possible sense).
That RTD created this story out of a Blue Peter competition is astounding (and it will never stop being funny that no one realised the boy who drew it meant the monster to be gigantic and that he was terribly disappointed when he eventually saw a normal man-sized Peter Kay).
And wrapped around this tragic story are some brilliant comic moments - the Scooby Doo Hoix chase; Jackie Tyler’s flirting; Elton being part of various Doctor Who stories in flashback; the twin planet of Raxacoricofallapatorius, Clom.
Does one silly gag - which is only as filthy as we choose to make it - ruin all that? Not even in the slightest.
I watched this episode in unusual circumstances. It aired on the day of my brother’s stag do and we were all at a party at his house share in Manchester. I didn’t know anyone there except my brother but was made to feel pretty welcome. Time for Doctor Who came and my brother told me to go and watch it if I wanted. I sat on the floor in front of the TV like a kid at Christmas and was joined by one of my brother’s work colleagues (who was clearly a bit of a geek too). I loved the episode although I remember the other guy being a bit nonplussed by it. But I certainly didn’t feel the embarrassment some fans seems to have about this episode existing.
This is a definite 8/10 for me and it only loses a couple of points because of it looking slightly too cheap in places and Rose, as is common in this time in the show, being fairly insufferable.