Doctor Who: 10 Funniest Moments From Nu-Who
As is becoming shocking predictable for me - let me start this with a disclaimer. 'Funny' is a highly subjective thing. Much more so than 'Romantic' or 'Strange' and while Doctor Who has a long and proud history of clever and amusing, it doesn't broadly speaking go for laugh out loud funny terribly often. Particularly as this is part of a sequence with the 'Romantic' and 'Strange' articles and so I feel obliged to follow the same rules; which means we're strictly discussing Nu-Who and City of Death is not eligible. (Which is probably for the best as it would pretty much take up most of the list and, honestly, you'd be better off just popping in the DVD) So, that said - Here are the top ten moments of the new series that made me personally laugh. I'm hopeful actually that your choices would be different. That's one of the best things about 'funny', honestly. 10. We Are Damn Well Seeing The Glass Break This Time
At the risk of quoting Bart Simpson, this first item isn't really laughing 'with' the production. And while it's not exactly laughing 'at' them, there's certainly a case to be made for 'toward' them. To Explain: Back in the halcyon days when 'Jon Pertwee was the Best Doctor ever' (Just before the days when 'Tom Baker was The Best Doctor ever', which themselves gave way to the days when 'John Nathan Turner Totally is Ruining Our Show') there was a very popular line of discussion which you were guaranteed to hear at least once at every convention and about which Russell T. Davies himself wrote at least twice. 'I remember seeing the glass break'
The reference of course is to Spearhead From Space. When the Autons break out of the shop windows, there's a shot of them behind the glass, then a shot of a startled bystander over which we hear the sound of glass breaking, then a cut back to the shot of Autons stepping out of a neatly glass free window. Because obviously the crew couldn't afford to show them breaking glass because that was crazy expensive at the time. However- because kids process television in terms of story rather than in terms of image we all retained very clear memories of seeing the glass break. This made the dawn of the video age a bit of a disappointment when we could finally go back and re-watch them and discover that we never saw any such thing. As I said - this was discussed Ad Infinitum in the 80s and 90s. So when the series relaunched in 2005 with an Auton invasion story, it was perhaps unsurprising that at least 35 minutes of the programs 43 minute run time seemed to be devoted to showing Autons breaking sugar glass in beautiful Hi-Def close-ups. Over. And Over. And Over again. It was hard not to picture the entire production staff frantically pleasuring themselves off camera, and it made me laugh enormously.