To Review or Not To Review?

OK, time to take this one on.

First of all, let's get a bit of perspective going. The last episode of Doctor Who was watched by 10 million people. My blog gets about 150-200 readers a day, mostly the same people every day, with a bit of a peak after an episode of Doctor Who, but only a small peak - say up to 100 extra readers. But obviously a few more find it over time. So even if you think eventually 1000 people might read one of my reviews - and that is being generous - we are talking about 0.01pc of people who watch Doctor Who. It's practically a pub conversation. And of course, of those, many will disagree with my views.

Also, I do like Doctor Who and I do write positively about it. Looking back over my reviews of this season, eight were broadly positive and five were broadly negative, with a bit of a grey area in both cases, as there were quite a few middling ones this time round. So overall I liked most of them. To put that in a bit more context, over the four seasons of Who, this has come third as far as I am concerned - I liked season 2 best, then season 1, then season 4 and lastly Season 3. And even so, Season 3 had my favourite episodes of all time in them: the 'Family of Blood' two-parter. So I do not 'not like Doctor Who' and I am not going to stop watching. Why would I? I don't know if it's going to be a bad episode until it's over. Or a good one - I didn't think much of 'The Stolen Earth' until the last five minutes, and there's no way I'd have wanted to miss that.

One of the things that makes Doctor Who fun to write about is that it's such a mixed bag. It can be so good and so bad that it's hard to believe that each episode goes past the same exec producers. I've worked in TV myself and I know it can be bloody hard to get things in, on time, and well-made, but Doctor Who is one of the most watched, highest budgeted programmes on television. It's not just a kids programme, it's a BBC flagship show and it should be good. So it's legitimate to point out when it isn't. One of the things that makes Russell T Davies fun to write about is that the work he does is also such a mixed bag. Casanova is one of my all-time favourite dramas, and not just because of the presence of lovely David Tennant. Queer as Folk was exceptional. Loads of his episodes of Doctor Who have been brilliant - notably Midnight, this season, which got a rave from me. I am also, as far as I know, the only person alive who liked the Cat Nuns. But that doesn't make this season finale any better. I review Doctor Who because there is a lot to say about it, and because, judging by my comments, people like reading my reviews and discussing their own - often opposing - views. These are good reasons to write reviews. I'm sorry that I don't like every episode. But I just don't.

It's never fun getting a bad review. I should know, I've had them myself. If you want to read some, try this one, which describes one of my sentences as "surely one of the clunkiest published sentences of the year", or this one which says that my book is "so bad... it's the kind of book that could be made into the kind of movie someone might accidentally watch on an airplane" or indeed this one, in the New York Times of all places - circulation a bit more than 1000 - which says that my book is "so conventionally constructed that it suggests the help of fiction-writing software". I don't enjoy reading this kind of thing, but I do read it, and I put up with it, for two reasons: 1. My book is out there. I have put it in the public domain, and people are entitled to say what they like about it. And 2. It is impossible to make a piece of work that everybody will like. Not possible. It has never happened to anyone, and never will.

So I will carry on watching Doctor Who and I will carry on reviewing it for as long as I enjoy watching it most of the time and I enjoy writing about it. I've been told that if I don't like Doctor Who, I don't have to watch it. The same goes for my reviews. If you don't like reading them, nobody is forcing you to. On the other hand, if you like reading them because you hate them so very much and enjoy coming onto my blog to slag them off in the comments, don't start telling me what I should or shouldn't write about, because you leave yourself open to accusations of hypocrisy.

However, I do accept certain things. It is easier to write a bad review than a good review, mainly because bad reviews are funnier. There's definitely a risk of being vicious just for effect. That's something to watch for, and in future I will. Also, when I am watching something with a view to reviewing it, I do have my critical mind on, which means that I don't just relax and lose myself into it, I am looking for points to raise, in favour and against. So that can go against the spirit of just enjoying it. I'll look out for that too. And there is always the risk of slipping from attacking the product to attacking the person, which I do try to avoid, though Russell T Davies might feel entitled to disagree. (Ah, Russell, still my number one choice for adapting Gods Behaving Badly for TV. The chances of that are receeding into the distance at quite some rate, I imagine, after all this.)

Ultimately, if I am going to review, I am going to write bad reviews. If I don't enjoy something, I am going to say so, I am going to say why, and I am going to do it in a way that I hope others will find entertaining. I am not seeking out the people who made the work to attack them directly, I am doing it here, on my own site, which people can choose to read or ignore as they wish. And there is a comments facility so that if anybody wants to disagree, or to exercise the right of reply, they can do so. Preferably not anonymously.

So, over to you.