The End Of The World

I was very impressed by the first episode, "Rose", but there's a few things that made me cringle in this second episode. 

I'm probably one of the biggest Doctor Who fans around and I really want to see it succeed. If it is to do that the effects need to improve. The story itself was exceptional. Very original entertaining and fun as hell, but a few things almost made the whole thing fall apart for me.

The digital animation outside the platform and in space where just horrid. I happen to own a 3D animation studio and some of the demo reels I get from amatures look better than this. The models are too simplistic looking, textures are plain, the lighting is all wrong, and the animation itself is jittery. Not smooth at all. Better lighting could have done wonders. Now when I refer to lighting I'm talking about the lights set up in the 3D software as well as shader attributes like phong. the platform looked plastic and not metal. Too much phong shading. It all just looks cheap. 

The sun and Earth blowing up was just cheap particle effects that where not convincing at all. The planet explosions in Star Trek are far better.

As for the indoor effects...

The spiders often did not blend in with the scene and the shadows didn't match. No shadow being given off by the egg in one scene. Also the blades, though they looked pretty cool all had the exact same texture map. Each blade should have had a variation of the texture. It just looks bizarre when each blade looks weathered exactly the same. 

As a 3D animator myself I know they could have done much better on the same budget. It's just the guy (s) doing these effects are not very good. I don't expect Star Wars quality stuff from a TV budget but come on you can't get away with such shoddy effects these days. These scenes are probably what made the Sci Fi channel say it's lacking and they where right.

I love Doctor Who and I just hate seeing less than 100% effort being put into it. Hire a professional 3D animator next season.

A few things like the Tardis somehow telepathically translating alien languages into human just seemed totally unplausable as well as the cell phone attachment to call mum from 5 billion years into the past. The show needs to stick to plausable science or it's going to fail. Telepathy and mind stuff always turns me off.

Over all though it was a great story. Iloved the humor and at the end of the day I was very entertained. 

Oh and not to nick pick but on the closeup of the spindle the Doctor rotates in the Tardis you can see numbers on it and it's in english. They need to watch those little details. They obviously used some junk part and forgot about the numbers written on the part. file those numbers off. Details!

I really hate being negative about Doctor Who because I am a huge fan, but I call it like I see it, but hey the story was fantastic overall.