Doctor Who - The Angels Take Manhattan

Melody’s Song

Doctor Who - The Angels Take Manhattan
Airdate: 29th September 2012. UK. BBC1

Warning: Absolutely loads of spoilers in this one, sweetie!

Right then. Following on from last week’s sentiments... I’m kinda glad I don’t have to write anymore reviews of new Doctor Who for a while after this week (although, stay tuned to my blog... Silurians and Sea Devils will be coming). It’s getting to feel a little disappointing when every episode seems to be a little less than I was expecting/hoping. It’s like writing up Torchwood 4 all over again.

So, anyway...

The much publicised “departure of The Ponds and return of The Weeping Angels” episode started off really well with some moody, 1930s New York set ups and an appearance from a creature who I knew would have to be in it, but whom I was expecting to be saved until the end as a “big gun”. That is to say, and it’s all pretty obvious even to a child, I’m afraid, that as soon as you hear the episode is going to feature these popular foes and the title is going to be The Angels Take Manhattan, you pretty much have expectations that you’re going to see The Statue Of Liberty running around. They obviously thought it was obvious too, because they stuck it  in right from the start... although you don’t see it running around because, presumably, the budget wasn’t big enough. Yes, I know you’re not supposed to see the angels moving but, let’s face it, they did in the last one (even though it made absolutely no sense and broke all the “rules” that were set up in the excellent episode Blink) and, frankly, it’s not like nobody’s not going to notice The Statue Of Liberty running around anyway. It really wouldn’t have made it off its island without being spotted so, well... it’s not really making a lot of sense is it.

The episode starts off intriguing and quite charming until about half way through when all bets are off and you really find yourself drifting through an episode of... um... not much really. The chemistry between River Song (one of my favourite characters) and The Doctor seemed a little stale this time... some of the lines were good but it really wasn’t done with the same sense of fun coming across I usually get from episodes with this character. Still, The Doctor hasn’t sent her off to her final fate as yet (as seen in the David Tennant episodes) and so there’s plenty of time for her to come back and do good in future installments. Although, if The Doctor is supposed to be whisking her away each night from her prison and she’s been pardoned for murdering someone who doesn’t exist... how does that all work? She’s not in jail now for her adventures and, presumably, she’s served some time already for... um... not killing someone? Hmmm... this was all thought through properly wasn't it, eh? I’m kinda feeling let down like there’s not going to be any magical “fixing” of this storyline in future episodes now.

I think, to date, this has been the worst series of Doctor Who I’ve seen in quite some time... and I seem to be saying that a lot just lately. On the other hand there was some good stuff in this one too.

The production values... despite not having the money for miniatures to show The Statue Of Liberty walking... were pretty cool. The thing looked nice and moved along at a good pace... I really think the main weakness on this one was the writing I’m afraid. Apologies about that but there you have it. It’s how I feel. Although, saying that, the idea of having a recurring and constant “human battery farm” of a meal by recycling would be rescuers of their own future selves was a little touch of genius... just not enough to cut it the kind of slack i would prefer to.

Oh well, time will tell for the programme, I think. New companion this Christmas, although she seems to be a Dalek, so it’ll be interesting how they address that issue... and Asylum Of The Daleks was my favourite story of this series so maybe the new gal will breathe life into the show and give it the impetus it so greatly needs right now.  Hopefully I’ll be able to review that for you all on Boxing Day if nothing drastic happens to me, like death or senility, so I’ll enjoy my welcome break from reviewing these shows for now, methinks. Thank you for reading. More film reviews here very soon (hopefully tomorrow sometime).

Doctor Who - The Power Of Three

The Three Whomigos

Doctor Who - The Power Of Three
Airdate: 22nd September 2012. UK. BBC1

Warning: A few right angled spoilers lurking in this one.

You know, I'll be kinda relieved about not having to write any more of these Saturday night reviews once Doctor Who takes a little break from our airwaves after next week's episode. Not because they’re in any way terrible, similarly, not because I am having to heap praise on them on a weekly basis (I wish). That’s the thing though... these episodes aren’t that terrible but they aren’t that great either. The last two series especially had their share of “not so great” episodes in them... but they also had some great “stand out” event episodes in them too. This season it all feels just a little bit... I dunno... a bit humdrum?

I was expecting, quite honestly, for this weeks episode to be the best of the current bunch re-materialising onto our television screens. Truth be told though, if you’re comparing just the stories from the last four weeks, that honour has to go to the season opener, Asylum Of The Daleks. This weeks installment though, it has to be said, runs it a close second in the entertainment stakes and I have to admit I found myself well and truly entertained this time around... up until a point.

The episode had a great slow burn premise of an invasion of harmless seeming black cubes which lay low for a bit while the entire population of the planet get used to them. The Doctor, therefore, comes to stay with the Ponds and also, we see a welcome return from Rory’s dad from the Dinosaurs On A Spaceship episode... as played, wonderfully, by Mark Williams. The cubes stay for a few months or a year... depending on whether you believe what Amy Pond says in UNITs secret Tower Of London base or, if you believe the much more credible evidence of Rory’s dad’s invasion log, which lasts for over 361 days. These little and easily fixed continuity errors creeping into Doctor Who again is actually quite alarming and it should be stopped. I’m not saying it’s limited to this programme... it seems every movie I see has problems which seem to have been based on decisions to cut stuff out or use alternate takes of a scene which doesn't match up with others. It seems to be a blasé attitude which has crept into modern day thinking and which allows for these kind of slap-dash decisions to be made. I’m not impressed.

But anyway... moving swiftly on...

The Doctor comes to stay with The Ponds and though it would be true to say that the episode has a lot of scope for comic moments and genuine feeling, it doesn’t quite take all the opportunities it presents itself with, if truth be told... but I don’t care really because if you get a script which places The Ponds and The Doctor in a social setting, then I’m all for it.

Unfortunately, this one did seem like a combination of two old episodes combined. The “coming to stay” scenes did seem to feel like they’d been stolen from a previous Matt Smith story, The Lodger, from his debut season... while the invasion of the cubes who are accepted into humanity as an anxious UNIT ponder their meaning was very similar to the opening of the two part finale of David Tennant’s second season... Army Of Ghosts. Still, self referential plaguerism aside, the episode kinda worked well, with Rory and Amy in the process of making a decision as to whether to stop their adventuring with The Doctor for good or carry on “in the loop” so to speak. Along the way there were some references to a new adventure with the Zygons (last seen in their debut episode in Tom Bakers Fourth Doctor story Terror Of The Zygons) and a new UNIT character introduced called Kate Stewart, who happens to be the daughter of a long serving and endearing character from Doctor Who history, Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge Stewart... so that was a nice touch.

So yeah, the episode was good, like I said... up to a point.

Alas, that point was roughly the last fifteen minutes when things started going all "extra-terrestrial action stations" and the threat was finally understood, only to be reversed in mere minutes as The Doctor became a really terrible example of a "deus ex machina" and everything was as it was again. Pretty rubbish and definitely felt a little rushed if you ask me. Could have done with being a two parter, perhaps, and adding more dramatic weight and a more harder earned victory, don’t you think?

The whole episode led up to the dramatic point that Rory’s dad has encouraged The Ponds to carry on their adventures, after The Doctor has all but promised that they’ll never die on him. Yeah, right, well we can all see where this one is going can’t we? Maybe they’ll just die of old age but next week is being touted as The Ponds last episode on the series, so we’ll just have to see. Personally, I’m hoping that we don’t lose River Song too in the process, but I’m guessing we will. I think something funny and irreversible may be about to happen on the show concerning the last few years of Doctor Who history... and all I can say is, I hope I’m wrong.

Not a bad episode, though...on the whole. Could have done with a little more emotion and a little less running about but I’m guessing there’s going to be a lot of running about next week so maybe that’ll make up for it. Still looking forward to it... just about.

Doctor Who - A Town Called Mercy

Once A Pond A Time In The West

Doctor Who - A Town Called Mercy
Airdate: 15th September 2012. UK. BBC1

Warning: A fistful of spoilers.

When I first read that tonight's episode of Doctor Who was going to be a western, the first since Hartnell’s Doctor in the sixties, I was thoroughly expecting something as rudimentary as the Spectre Of A Gun episode from the original Star Trek series or the Living In Harmony episode of the prisoner. Instead, I think what we got was something much less interesting. So my apologies to any readers perusing this now but... it’s, once again, going to be an uncharacteristically short review.

This episode had no real story arc woven into it (as far as we know) and there’s nothing wrong with that... but I just felt it needed something. Can’t really fault the writing which probably looked quite edgy on paper since it’s basically dealing with the alien equivalent of a nazi war criminal and a cyborg victim of said criminal seeking revenge. Oh... and about that ‘borg in this episode. Are they all going to start looking like that now since Star Trek The Next Generation? That’s got to be a copyright prosecution waiting to happen, is my feeling. Mind you, I felt the same back in ‘95 when I turned up at the cinema to watch Jeunet’s latest at the time, The City Of Lost Children... so what do I know, eh?

I think maybe a big contribution to my disappointment on this one was the fact that this was almost set up to be something bigger than it was. When an alien doctor is mentioned during the pre-credits sequence, we get the idea that The Doctor is going up against someone he’s met before and that there’s going to be some big reveal right at the end. Unfortunately, that conclusion gets shot down very quickly into the episode and you realise quite sharpish that the opening narrative hook really was just that, a hook with no real substance to back it up.

In the end, all we got was a conflict between two opposing people which just happened to be transplanted onto a cowboy backdrop. Granted, you could argue that pretty much all genre fiction is constructed in much the same way but this one just seemed a bit of a waste of the BBC going all the way to the legendary Almeria in Spain, where gazillions of legendary Italian (Spaghetti) Westerns were shot back in the day. I was expecting some more spectacular Western tropes and references on display than I actually got in this one. Maybe I was just expecting too much though because it is a genre I hold dear to my heart... although I’m by no means an expert on them.

The acting in this was okay too, not that I’d expect anything less from Doctor Who, but I must say that the flow of the narrative seemed to be a bit unnecessarily jumpy at times. Jumpy to the point that things weren’t quite making sense. For instance, The Doctor leaving the sheriff’s office off on a plan he’s concocted and leaving the others behind... followed by his friends involved in a sequence of events that could only have been briefed by The Doctor after he’d hatched his plan. What’s that all about then? Did we miss an embarrassing scene where his companions call him back and say... “Okay, Doc, we’ll help you... but first tell us what your plan is and tell us what you want us to do.” Because, frankly, the stage direction, so to speak, of these two sequences didn’t make any sense.

And then you have The Doctor talking outside the sheriff’s office again in the middle of the night. However, when he goes back in, unless i was somehow interpreting things wrong, the barely glimpsed background out one of the windows was broad daylight... or at least lit so it looked like broad daylight.

Similarly the music seemed a bit uneven in tone. At times it was aping the Italian Westerns in style, with the kind of orchestrations popularised by composers like Ennio Morricone for the films, before suddenly lapsing into the kind of Aaron Copland/Elmer Bernstein Americana feel of the classic American Westerns of the first half of the 20th Century. I’m not saying it was undeliberate, it obviously was what the composer was doing, but I did find the juxtaposition of the two musical styles somewhat jarring and it popped me out of things when I really didn’t want to be.

There was, however, a really nice sequence with The Doctor riding a gender-challenged horse called Sue in which he reveals that “horse” is also a language he can speak, as a nod to his speaking baby from last series I suspect. If you have a popular episode... echo it back to the audience when you can. That’s a common track taken with most Hollywood movie sequels, as it happens.

Amy and Rory didn’t have much to do in this one and, well... I really don’t want to knock the efforts of all the people who have sweated blood making that episode, it’s not nice, but I have to at least acknowledge that I thought tonights episode was possibly the most boring episode I’ve seen since the show started back up again in 2005. I thought last week's was going to be the worst episode in this series but, frankly I was wrong. I’m guessing, and hoping for that matter, that this was the dullest one we’re going to be getting this year. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that.

Next weeks looks more interesting though and when I first read the brief teaser for it a few weeks back in the Radio Times, it’s the one I pegged to be the most coolest episode of this year’s offerings. Let’s hope I’m right as I am still, in spite of tonights pseudo-western, looking forward eagerly to next weeks installment.

Now I just wish I had a time machine to get me there quicker.

Doctor Who - Dinosaurs On A Spaceship

Whodyathunkysaurus!

Doctor Who - Dinosaurs On A Spaceship
Airdate: 8th September 2012. UK. BBC1

Warning: Hark the stomping footsteps of reptilian spoilers.

Yeah, okay. That wasn’t a bad one but, sadly, I can’t think of anything much to say about it, to be honest. I’m sure this is going to be one of the shortest reviews I’ve done here in a while. Don’t worry though... I’m bound to make up for that again tomorrow. ;-)

This doesn’t seem to be a major part of any story arc... just a standalone adventure featuring a silurian on a view screen, some CGI and model dinosaurs, some comically camp robots and a nasty villain. Oh, and an interesting group comprising The Doctor’s “gang” of companions, counting Queen Nefertiti among them, no less. The silurians are already wiped out before The Doctor, Amy Pond, Rory, Rory’s Dad, Nefertiti and a big game hunter played by Rupert Graves (perhaps best known at the moment for his portrayal of Lestrade in Sherlock) even arrive to try to turn back a spaceship full of dinosaurs heading towards Earth before our planet’s defenders destroy it with missiles.

Actually, the Silurians seem to have made a habit of being wiped out to almost extinction in Doctor Who over the years and I wish they’d bring back that damned sexy, lesbian Silurian from Victorian London who featured in the episode A Good Man Goes To War (reviewed here) because then I might have a bit more to say about this one. Still, it’s not a bad episode so I mustn’t be too grumpy.

Good things on this one were the tease of an old enemy/stroke acquaintance... who turned out ot be anything but someone we knew. Got all excited because I thought that somehow Tom Baker’s/Peter Davidson's companion Adric had somehow managed to survive crashing into the Earth to wipe out the dinosaurs and instead was flying around with some, an embittered old man. Unfortunately, or possibly fortunately depending on your take on that, it was not to be.

Also, the episode had some comedy gold moments from Rory’s dad... a man who knows where his trowel is!

The chemistry between all the actors, in fact, was really good stuff that would be good if it was bottled and sold. Nefertiti was sexy and made part of a happy ending for two of the characters. The villain was also really nasty... which made it a little less of a bitter pill when The Doctor quite deliberately sends him to his death near the end of the episode. He has done this kind of thing before, especially lately (wiping out a fleet of cybermen to get the answer to a question, anyone?) but I suspect people might raise the odd eyebrow over that one if their memory is particularly short. The Doctor may not carry a gun but he’s never been less than deadly when required.

The much publicised “riding a triceratops” sequence was lovely and the dinosaur in question was treated in much the same way is it was in the first Jurassic Park film (cutesy n’ cuddles)... as were the velociraptors which also, in this one, were strangely hunting in packs. It’s interesting how highly influential well-loved, high profile films and novels can be. It’s like a lot of our perceptions of the behaviour of dinosaurs over the last ten years or so have come from Spielberg’s first dino opus.

The real thing which did add to the overall arc of the Moffat years (as they are so far) is the continual concept that The Doctor doesn’t have ”The Ponds” as constant companions. He drops in every few months or so for an adventure and that’s it. This is slowly building up to a sense of loss and leaving as Amy in tonight’s episode introduced the concept that, well, The Ponds aren’t getting any younger. I suspect there’s going to be a marked change in the (ageing) make-up of the couple as the few weeks we have left with them go by and The Doctor is once again forced to come to terms with the length of his many lives compared to the short ones of his companions. I also get the feeling there’s going to be lots of tears being shed across the country when episode five hits in a few weeks and The Angels Take Manhattan. Don’t blink people... your tear ducts might dry out in time to say good bye!

And that’s all I’ve got to say about this one. Nicely done but somehow felt a little lacking in places. Nothing really to grumble about and a solid bunch of actors working at their best. Roll on the next one.

Doctor Who: Asylum Of The Daleks

Kaled Days

Doctor Who: Asylum Of The Daleks
Airdate: 1st September 2012. UK. BBC1

Warning: Yep. Loads of spoilers trundling around on 
their little coasters, ready to exterminate you. Most of 
these things you will figure out within the first ten minutes 
anyway... but it’s always gratifying to figure them 
out on your own.

Weehay! That was a good one then.

I’m always a bit more optimistic when the start of a Moffat helmed Doctor Who season begins because the openers are usually pretty good, or at least intriguing enough to pull you in and suffer the potential decline of the rest of the series. Yeah, I know, I’m still cynical but the last season of Sherlock was nowhere near as good as the first either.

Anyway, this season gets off to a cracking start following the five short webisodes of Pond Life that the BBC made available as a lead in to this series.

The Doctor is suckered on to Skaro to undertake a rescue mission but it’s soon made clear that he’s trapped and he’s whisked away to help the Daleks lower a forcefield on their Asylum planet so the much better designed, but completely insane, nutter Daleks don’t get out into the universe. He’s given a kidnapped Amy Pond and Rory Williams, who have literally just signed their divorce papers, to help him and he’s baited with a crash landed survivor on the planet, who he needs to go and rescue.

And, yeah, okay... it’s completely predictable this female survivor who’s a computer genius is obviously going to turn out to be a Dalek in the final scenes... so much so that I wondered why they didn’t reveal it properly earlier and play with the drama of that subject a little more rather than pretend to surprise everybody at the last minute. However, the good news is, this didn’t make this particular episode any less enjoyable and I really liked the girl playing the Dalek stand in as it happened. Of course, it wasn’t until the end of the show that I realised, and this was then confirmed by the cast list since that character and actress are conspicuously absent from the Radio Times listing for the episode, that this is The Doctor’s new, post-Pond companion. Now whether she is playing the same character is another matter. I suppose she could be playing a relation of this character like what happened when Martha Jones joined the TARDIS crew as the same actress playing the sister of a dead character from a previous episode... but something tells me that’s not it.

It’s actually quite intriguing. I guess she could be playing the same character and there’s some time-wimey stuff going on, which if Amy and Rory get completely written out of the history of time and space as I’m expecting them to at the moment, might be a possibility. Or it could be the Daleks know who The Doctor’s future companion is going to be and are using it as a signal for themselves or something for a future attack. Don't forget The Doctor would have a hard time ever recognising her as he doesn't know what she looks like. All he's seen is a Dalek. She could well be something left behind from The Doctor’s future timeline which, lets face it, would fit the writer’s modus operandi really well.

Either way, this true revelation of the Daleks in that they possibly have his future companion in their midst (and, of course, the jury’s still out on that one) means two things to me. One, Jenna Louise Coleman could well be a truly great personality to have in the show if her dialogue is written as well as it was in tonight’s show and I look forward to her true arrival as much as I’m dreading the departure of Amy, Rory and, possibly, River. Also, I am looking forward to Moffat teasing me with the three or four possibilities as to how this person can be the new companion for a while.. possibly this year, possibly next year... but either way it will give me something to write and complain about.

There were some bad things in this one too which I can grumble about now and keep myself happy with. Number one is... what the heck are all those old Daleks doing on their starship. I mean, c’mon, I hate... hate... the new designed Daleks but they exterminated all the old ones as being inferior (something which this episode specifically states they wouldn’t do, by the way, which seems to mess continuity up on a second level to my main point anyway) and then, as if by magic, they seem to be peacefully coexisting with their old incarnations in a way that defies logic... or rather... seems to point to clumsy writing continuity. This kind of fuzzy thinking seems to be happening a lot with Doctor Who over the last couple of years, since Steven Moffat took over the production. Take Pond Life, for example. The Doctor can’t get in to see the Ponds in the last webisode because they are not answering the door... but in other episodes it’s fine for him to shilly-shally around their house without an invite and leave a displaced Ood there and then come and get him again without them even noticing him. So I repeat... The Doctor can’t get in because they’re not answering the door? What?

Something else is... we were told was that this was going to make the Daleks scary again. Sorry. No it didn’t. Enjoyable to see them again but no, not scary. Certainly not as bone chilling as they were in their early stories with Hartnell, nor, for that matter, as chilling as we’ve seen them in the Russel T. Davies years. Nicely written, interesting concept (if full of holes the size of a Rasillon wormhole) but scary... nope. Not this one.

Would have liked to have seen a bit more of the older Daleks from all points in history of the show too, as it happens. Didn’t have time to morbidly dwell on the Dalek design details of yesteryear, or really even notice them, during the course of this episode. Never mind. I’m sure they won’t waste these new “retro models” and I’m sure we’ll see them all again really soon, is my guess.

Of course, not soon enough that some fans won’t notice that the BBC are only airing 5 regular episodes this year before the Christmas special. 5 episodes! I told you this would happen. The BBC are playing very tight with their budgets just lately and the inevitable result of those “split seasons” is they start putting half in one year and the other half in the next year... thus saving the cash for thirteen whole episodes some of the show’s fans won’t even realising they’re missing. Mind you... if they can lie about when the new actress is starting her stint in Doctor Who they can get away with anything I guess. I still haven’t forgiven them for saying Christopher Eccleston wasn’t leaving the show on national television just a week or two before his final episode. This is behaviour some of the shows legion of fans won’t take too lightly.

Another thing they won’t take too lightly is changing the bloody opening titles again. For goodness sake, the last two seasons had bad enough titles... this augmented version is even worse. Stop being crap with the Doctor Who graphics please! Bring back the 80s neon tube if it’ll help, but please do something!

Still... go out on a positive note. Good episode, well paced, bit obvious but stylishly done with some nice bright and colourful lighting in some places and, naturally, some great acting. And a new companion who dies shouting the words “Remember Me?” Intriguing, no? Worth taking a look at if you’ve been following the show thus far, methinks.

Doctor Who: The God Complex

Monosyllabic Monotheism

Doctor Who: The God Complex

Airdate: September 17th 2011. UK. BBC1

Warning: A sprinkling of spoilers for that

extra touch of seasoning on the food supply.

Woohoo. Finally a really great humdinger of a Doctor Who episode! The Doctor is in everybody. He's well and truly back.

That’s what I just tweeted anyway... and then I figured, why waste a nice strong burst of enthusiasm like that. So I’m shamelessly using it as the opening to this review and there’s probably nothing or, at least, not much that you can do about it. Bwahahahahahaha!

Okay, so where to begin. Cheapish episode I imagine as it’s only got a few sets which are constantly redressed I would think. All set in a 1980s hotel setting straight out of Kubrik’s The Shining... but it’s a hotel in space because- hey I’m not spoiling it that much. You might not have seen it yet. If you haven’t, on yer bike because there’s probably much worse coming down the page I reckon... once I get into full flow.

So, a handful of people running scared around a hotel with the only thing to keep them company... their worst fears ensconced in one of the many rooms and a big, hungry minotaur feeding off their resolute belief in their faith symbol as they try to conquer their fears. Good stuff.

And the good Doctor and Rory have been whisked there by accident by Amy whose unshakable faith in the Doctor has acted like bait to the broken down prison ship feeding the minotaur with the strength of their conviction. Except the minotaur doesn’t want to carry on and is only doing it on instinct... which The Doctor recognises and he does his best to help the minotaur out by cutting off his food supply and letting him die.

And the way he cuts off his food supply is by pulling himself down as a pillar of virtuous heroism for Amy and letting her see a more tarnished interpretation of him... which of course is an image he will be reversing for her in just a short couple of weeks time I suspect but we have to get there yet.

So what else was great about this episode?

Well, we had a couple more references to classic Who in the sound of the cloister bell and also, a lovely throw away line stating that the minotaur was an alien cousin to the Nimon from the Tom Baker story Horns Of The Nimon. Well it had to be really didn’t it? After all, you can’t really go anywhere in the Who universe without associating Minotaurs with the Nimon can you?

But never mind the fan pleasing references... there was some fantastic photography taking place and some brilliant lighting which, in one memorable scene involving a bunch of mirrors and the “source lighting” through a fish bowl (which it almost certainly wasn’t), being almost an homage to that shot by Vittorio Storaro in Bertolluci’s early seventies classic Il Conformista (aka The Conformist)... fans of that movie will know exactly which shot I’m talking about. Saw it decades ago myself and remember none of it... except for that one shot!

You had a possible new companion... except you didn’t because you knew as soon as The Doctor got interested in her she’d get herself killed... or in this case snuffed by the minotaur. And there was even a side swipe at amateur bloggers portraying them as long haired, bespectacled computer nerds spouting nonsense conspiracy theories. Ha! Bit wild that one. Spectacles? Long hair? What an imagination! Ahem. Moving swiftly on...

I think the one scene where this let itself down a little was in an overtly melodramatic good bye sequence where The Doctor dumps Amy Pond and Rory and says goodbye to them... yeah right. For the umpteenth time! He’s alway’s doing that with these two particular companions for some reason. Why the writers saw the need to drag that one out is beyond me. Especially since the last episode of this series is entitled The Wedding Of River Song (can’t be missing yer daughters wedding now, can you Amy?) and since it’s obvious it’s all just a ploy to let The Doctor have some time to himself to get to grips with his upcoming death.The last person he needs to have running around while he deals with that issue is a future-knowledge Amy Pond who might tip her younger self off. That would be silly wouldn’t it?

And, of course, even more so since we know that Amy Pond features in the next series too as confirmed by Karen Gillan a few weeks ago. So anybody who thinks they're leaving the companions in this manner is on crack I reckon (although I suspect it’s high time they killed off Rory now and for good this time when his death can still be of dramatic use as a catapult of emotional situations for the surviving characters). Anybody who thinks this is the last we’ll see of Amy and Rory and that the last 8 or so minutes of this episode wasn’t a huge waste of preparatory time raise your hands now! Didn’t think so.

So where do we go from here... well, back to see Craig from the excellent The Lodger episode of last season by the looks of it. And dressed in a lot of the trailers as someone who would make an excellent best man at a certain someone’s wedding if they made an additional appearance in the last episode of the series if I’m not mistaken? Oh, well... I guess I might be mistaken but that’s my guess for now anyway.

Right then... two episodes to tie up all the plot holes or will they leave it for the Christmas special do you think? I reckon we’ll be seeing a few “scene” cameos from the last series thrown in for good measure too... at least that’s my guess. I don’t think we’re quite done with the fall out from the Pandorica yet... again I’m guessing but that seems to be everybody’s “funnest” game with Doctor Who these days... and why not?

A thrilling episode with the possibility of at least one more good one out of two before the season’s end and I’m genuinely enthused after that one. Can’t wait!

Doctor Who: The Girl Who Waited

AMYthing Goes!

Doctor Who: The Girl Who Waited

Airdate: September 10th 2011. UK. BBC1

Warning: Spoilers I suppose... not many surprises in this one though.

Okay... here we go again. Hopefully this won’t sound like too much of a repeat of last episode’s review but it pretty much left me feeling in much the same way and since it wasn’t exactly all that thought provoking again, it’s probably going to be a very short review because I don’t have too much to say about this one.

In short then, last nights episode was a standalone story (or so it seems) and it dealt with Amy Pond getting separated by accident from The Doctor and Rory via a “time shift quarantine zone” (for want of a better term) and due to the timing of trying to lock on to her via a dodgy “time magnifying glass” they go to rescue the wrong Amy Pond... that is to say, a bitter Amy Pond who has been waiting and surviving against alien vaccine spitting “killing you with kindness” robots for over 36 years. And so we get all the tension with Rory and The Doctor trying to talk old Amy into helping them re-allign with young Amy and the writer did at least have a go at wringing as much drama out of that stuff as he could.

There were some nice touches in the episode... the seeing through time magnifying glass was a nice “prop” analogy and the “ridiculous looking” glasses that allowed The Doctor to see through Rory’s eyes because his Timelord body would be contaminated with an alien virus if he went to rescue Amy himself. And by this time in Amy’s history, she’s had thirty six years to become a clever clogs brainbox and so she’s made a sonic screwdriver and also constructed a “pet Rory” out of one of the hospital robots. All very cute stuff and worthy of Doctor Who as a show with some sound concepts.

Big sticky-out downer for me though was the fact that she had already passed a week in a few of The Doctor’s and Rory’s seconds before she’s even booked into the reception. So... you know. Did she not notice? How did she get ahold of some food and bathroom facilities etc? What the heck is going on that the writers don’t see these big glaring plot holes? Especially since the “trick” she says she learnt on her first day must therefore have been at least a week after she arrived! C’mon people... this is supposed to be “quality” sci-fi!

Also... although time twisting episodes have always been good for Doctor Who (Blink, the River Song cycle etc) and for science fiction in general (the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Time’s Arrow for example) this one really was “Basic Temporal Mechanics 101”, that is to say, time travel conundrums you’d dream up for yourself when you were a child of six rather than something that is going to keep someone challenged for very long. Yeah, I know it’s a “family show” and therefore a large percentage of the audience of this one is kids... and yes, I know that’s a very thin writing tightrope to balance on and remain stable... but honestly this was stuff most of the teeny tiny viewers would also have run through a dozen times in their heads and so I was a mite disappointed that there were no real complications other than the expected “dramatic” obstacles put up by old Amy... and let’s be honest, we all knew there was only one possible outcome for that one anyway.

But... it really wasn’t a bad episode and certainly a respectable entry into a season that, although it’s definitely had its low points, is certainly a lot less rubbishy than the last series was. It didn’t let the side down in any way, shape or form and was certainly a strong dramatic contender for this years episodes... just didn’t do much for me is all. But that’s not a problem... and unlike the current series of Torchwood, it’s certainly not outstayed its welcome in any way. The three leads were all very good and the hospital robots (and their home environment) were somewhat iconic again in their echoes of classic Doctor Who from decades long gone.

Definitely worth a watch but don’t expect to be blown off your feet by this one.

Doctor Who 6.8 Let's Kill Hitler

WHO do you think you are kidding Mr. Hitler?

Doctor Who: Let's Kill Hitler

Airdate: August 27th 2011.

UK. BBC1

Warning: Yep. Loadsa spoilers bound to cascade into this review as I write it. Don’t be reading this if you haven’t seen the episode but are intending to at some point soon!

Well that was just utterly brilliant, mad fun and unbelievably did-you-really-just-drop-the-ball-that-badly-Mr.-Moffet-? both at the same time. Maybe it’s just because I’m three quarters of the way through what is almost certainly the dullest and most unredeemable series of Torchwood imaginable at the moment, but for once the parent show of the that particular spin-off managed to give me the heady cocktail of fast moving science-fiction and generally the best all round Doctor Who-ing in an incredibly long time.

There were, however, downsides to it and these downsides were pretty hefty dents in the Gallifreyan armour I'm afraid.

Still, it certainly went somewhere I didn’t expect the episode to go... well... even after it started telegraphing itself in the pre-credits sequence. And, of course, the wonderful episode title which they hit you with at the end of the mid-season finale, which by the way BBC, I’m so totally not buying into as it’s a stupidly ignorant contradiction in terms (mid-season "finale"... what rot!), “Let's Kill Hitler” is a bluff lured you into watching what was, admittedly, an astonishingly strong episode which, it has to be said, moved along at a rate of knots which I truly wasn’t expecting. Who says expositional dialogue set-ups for future episodes have to be dull? This one certainly wasn’t. And, of course, it was absolutely nothing really to do with killing Hitler whatsoever... but "Hey! Made you look!" I guess. That's what they were thinking, right?

So we had a very strong opening pre-credits sequence where a totally new character turns up after Amy and Rory have brilliantly summoned The Doctor with a dynamically scrawled home-made crop circle style rendering of his name... or term such as it is. After the titles have finished rolling you get a potted history of this character being best mates with Amy and Rory throughout their life together as they all grow older and by now you’re all probably thinking to yourself... well that’s probably another incarnation of River then is it? Because, you know, new character suddenly dropped out of the blue and given an entire history means it probably somebody important and, frankly, you’re not going to have many important people wandering around the Whoniverse that you don’t already know, are you? And since you know Moffet is hit and miss but he’s certainly a lot smarter than to drop a bit of story like that spun totally from air for the sake of convenience... then you do kinda suspect it. Jasper Fforde already caught me out that way with his "Granny Next" character in the "Thursday Next" novels which I thought was an incredibly bit of totally new character pop-up bad writing in the second book... until I read the fourth book. Same kinda thing here... just a ten minute wait instead of a couple of years in book terms for the resolution. So telegraphing early on then but, you know what, it doesn’t matter because it’s such a brilliant episode that you can forgive the writer from quickly running through the wet paint out of that corner he’s painted himself into.

Now then, the next bit does matter as it seems, at least on what we know so far, that it was a real clunker. River Song's regeneration into the woman we best know her as was a great entrance and Alex Kingston played the part with absolute relish and had fun in this “earlyish” version of River Song... however, after she’d poisoned The Doctor and been machine gunned by a troop of Nazis we hit a problem. She absorbed the bullets and flung out burts of “timelordy” energy to knockout her antagonists and came out with the line that you should never try to kill a gal mid-generation. Hang on a minute folks. We’ve already seen what happens when you kill a timelord mid-regeneration remember? He dies by a lake in the US of A! He doesn’t get a second wind and turn up right as rain does he? No... he gets burnt on the water by his friends.

But that’s alright... it was such a great episode anyway and I’ve got every confidence... well... every hope that Moffet will sort all that out before the final episode (please keep it together... please!).

So then... the timeline goes thus...

1. Amy and Rory give birth to Melody Pond.

2. Melody Pond is kidnapped and programmed to kill The Doctor.

3. Melody Pond, dressed as an astronaut and rising from the lake, kills the Doctor... but she must know she failed (or at least think that because there’s another younger version of The Doctor on the scene soon after). So she comes for him again but Amy shoots her... she regenerates at the end of Day of the Moon and goes on to...

4. Grow up with her parents as their best friend (making sure they get together to give birth to her) until she sabotages the TARDIS by shooting it, gets shot, regenerates into Alex Kingston and attempts to kill the Doctor with a poison kiss before saving him in a fit of “identity recognition guilt” by giving up the energy for her remaining lives (not that she’s strictly a timelord or anything but nice to know they’re now going to have to categorically address that rule at some point soon... maybe even in this current series).

And that was almost it... brilliant action, humour and witty banter all the way through except... yeah there was another big clunker which may or may not be the fault of the writer... could be an editing thing. Amy Pond robot zapped Amy and Rory and miniaturised them... why I don’t know because the robots were only going to kill them anyway. However, when Amy and Rory wake up miniaturised inside a mechanised Amy Pond... they instantly know that they have been... well... miniaturised inside a mechanised Amy Pond. How? Not even The Doctor’s figured that one out yet! How do these characters suddenly get this kind of knowledge? Maybe it was in a scene that was either not shot or edited out... or maybe it was just bad writing. Either way... it was a bit of a leap to ask of the audience I felt.

As was the other clunker. Amy sonics everyone on the mechanised Amy’s bracelets, including her own, which revokes everyones privileges over the mechanised beings that seem to be “running” the... well let’s call it a “mechanaut” shall we? I feel that’s a good term for it. So how is it, after that’s happened, Amy can still ask for access to their records. No family privileges for The Doctor’s files I would imagine.

So there was that... which was a real clunker of a how-to-move-a-story-on-device if you ask me. That and the fact that all the above timeline isn’t quite as complete as it should be. We have, after all, seen an eye-patch wearing version of River, echoing evil eye-patch lady, in the trailers for this half a season... so there’s more revelations coming I reckon.

But.... you know... wanted to like this one and it turns out I did. It delivered in spades and is easily the best episode of the current series so far for me. I know not everyone will agree with me as I heard bad things about the previews... so what? I can only judge it by my own standards and this one hit all the right “fun” buttons for me. Strong "mid-season opener" Mr. Moffet... even if that is a contradiction in terms!

Doctor Who: A Good Man Goes To War

Unchained Melody

Doctor Who: A Good Man Goes To War

Airdate: June 4th 2011. UK. BBC1

Warning: I kinda already spoiled this on Twitter when I figured out who River Song definitely was last night and tweeted it this morning... if you even think like this review is even going to be possible to write without spoilers now that I've actually seen the episode then think again... not only will you know everything but I’m going to give in to some cold, hard speculation so you might get the ending of the other half of the series spoiled too for you if you haven’t already figured things out. Fair warning and here I go...

Ok... a long, long time ago, I think last year when I first started writing this blog... I’m sure I mentioned that Moffett liked watery names such as River and Pond and expressed that they could be one and the same person or perhaps somehow related... well that has now come to pass.

In what is probably the best and most postmodernistically (is that even a word?) referential episode of the so called "sixth series" so far, all was revealed... it was a bit like a big chocolatey dessert served up as a little treat for the fans. Now I’m sure if you’ve not been following the show thus far for the last seven weeks (let alone since the first appearance of River Song in the Tennant/Tate years of the show) then you’ll probably have found this episode mostly as dull as dishwater... even with the great one liners. It’s almost like it's a little bit of an episode which is there to just answer questions for regular viewers and tie up everything in one big package which is clearly labelled, “For Fans Only... Have A Merry Christmas, Love Steven Moffett.” So it’s much like the fifth of the sixth of Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob movies, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back... so self referential that if you don’t appreciate or at least know of the foundations on which it is built... the whole thing will fall over for you like an unsteady house of cards. But if you’re in on the joke... well... I was really happy with this one.

So what we have here is a very fast paced, blink and you’ll miss another surprisingly consistent dose of all round episode seven goodness... and when I say surprisingly, believe me nobody is more surprised than I that Moffett could deliver such an entertaining slice of the Doctor Who cake after what I see as a mostly poor performance last season. Yeah, I moaned and whined a lot about it last year and doubtless I’ll moan and whinge a lot more later in the year if he lets me down again... but this one was just great. I’m going to have me a mini River Song season next year when all the DVDs are out.

Okay, so the Doctor raises an army in this one, wipes out petty much a whole fleet of cybermen to demonstrate the non-emptiness of a threat and generally gets as close to being a warrior as we’re ever likely to see him. This episode is full of drama as we see Moffett push the Doctor into places he’s not really been before... well... I say that... not really been in a long time may be a little more accurate but what the hell. I only finished watching it a half an hour ago so I’m still caught up in things (glad I didn’t have that second glass of wine now).

On the way to the final revelation, which picks up from the set-up of Amy having been a replicant version of herself with her mind beamed into her fleshy husk (see the previous episode, reviewed here), we see the Doctor raise an army against... um... some shady people aligned with some Headless Monks (the shady people are a bit UNIT like and I’m wondering if they’re anything to do with the plot lines established in The Death of the Doctor episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures last year - reviewed here) and pretty much become a very un-Doctor-like warrior figure... calling in debts from various races and with the appearance of some rather whimsical and utterly delightful creations such as a Sontaran Warrior-turned-Nurse and a warrior Silurian and her human lesbian lover who has been hobnobbing around London in the 1880s... particularly the Whitechapel area because we meet her just after she’s despatched Jack the Ripper as it happens (oh well... there’s another potential historical figure The Doctor won’t get to meet now unless there are some pretty grim continuity errors). She would have been awesome giving Leila and The Doctor a helping hand against that giant rat in The Talons Of Weng Chian methinks.

Added to the mix of action and adventure are some really funny lines and references to past episodes (those bloody laser cannon spitfires are back again) and it’s all wrapped together in a little bundle which has the final revelation (or not if you’ve been concentrating throughout the series) of River Song’s identity. So last spoiler warning right now for all who haven’t seen the episode yet... here are the facts and also a little bit of speculation.

1. River Song meets The Doctor and pretty much dies - Silence In The Library and Forest Of The Dead.

2. River meets grown Amy but doesn’t really say "Hi" or anything much to Amy on meeting her as I recall. Anyone else remember that... kept thinking, this is not the first time she’s met Amy... wonder how longs she’s known her and why is she’s staying quiet? Anyone else remember that? Now we know for sure. And by the way... it’s River who doesn’t give up on Amy and rescues her from the angels in that one! - The Time Of Angels reviewed here and Flesh and Stone reviewed here.

3. Amy is replaced by replicant Amy pre-Series Six.

4. After a few more adventures with the Matt Smith incarnation of The Doctor, River shoots at a little girl in a spacesuit after that little girl kills an older version of The Doctor. SPECULATION: The little girl is Amy and Rory’s daughter Melody Pond (the name you see written in the first couple of minutes of the latest episode and which gives you the answer right from the start... after all, how can River Song know about the events at Demon’s Run when she’s not technically there at that age in her timeline unless she’s heard of things from her mother?)... trained by the ones we shall call, for the time being, “the bad guys” to be a weapon to kill The Doctor. Which she does but somehow gets damaged (we’ll find out later in the year, don’t sweat it) and regenerates to heal (because she was conceived in the TARDIS so has timey-wimey DNA) and probably regenerates into a slightly older looking version of herself... like the River we all know and love? - The Impossible Astronaut reviewed here and Day Of The Moon reviewed here.

5. And then tonight... Amy has given birth to her and Rory’s daughter Melody Pond... who it transpires is young River Song and is a bit timelord in her make-up due to being conceived on the TARDIS (I think I’ve got that right) and is substituted for a replicant Melody/River and kidnapped by “the bad guys” and... SPECULATION: is trained as the perfect weapon and kills The Doctor (which I’ve no doubt he’ll get out of at some point later in the year). She then goes to prison and carries on seeing The Doctor whenever she can. And, of course, she is trained to be a very good killing machine, hence the Dalek begging for mercy in the last episode from last series called The Big Bang... and reviewed here.

And there you go. All wrapped up in a nice little bundle. The Doctor goes off to rescue young Melody while older, wiser River stays to comfort her mum and dad, Amy and Rory, at the end of this episode.

And, of course, being as it’s Moffett, this all raises a whole load of other perfectly reasonable questions with which Moffett can tease us with for a while... but we can easily see the light at the end of the tunnel on this one now so I’m feeling a little more relaxed about the whole thing. Especially seeing that the next episode after the mid-season break will be called Let’s Kill Hitler and especially since we had such a great little teaser trailer for the next half a series in the form of a cold, skeletal hand clutching a sonic screwdriver. Way to treat us to some iconic Doctor Who imagery which I suspect is going to stay with a lot of the little kiddies (and possibly some of us much older kiddies) watching this show for quite some time.

And that’s me done with the current show for a while.. obviously... and I’ll miss reviewing the show live on a Saturday night until the next half a series starts later on in the year. However, please stay tuned if you’re Doctor Who fans because I’m really not done with The Doctor just yet. First up I’ll be reviewing legendary sci-fi/fantasy writer Michael Moorcock’s take on the good Doctor with a little look at his novel Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles. Then at some point soonish I hope to be viewing and reviewing the Doctor Who classics The Claws of Axos and The Dominators. And I might also get to work on a little time-line illustration project at some point soon on one of the characters who has been featuring regularly on the series at various points over the last three or four years... I wonder who that could be then?

Thanks, as always, for reading. It’s always very much appreciated and I’m very grateful to my readers for taking the time to stop here.

Doctor Who: The Almost People

Acid Reflux

Doctor Who: The Almost People

Airdate: May 28th 2011. UK. BBC1

Warning: Spoilers... huge spoilery spoilers. Abandon innocence all ye who here enter!

There that was better. That was a whole lot better than last weeks set up episode (reviewed here) to this weeks conclusion (of sorts). And of course, once you’ve had the main appetiser of a kinda humdrum (in my opinion) set up... it’s always nice to go for dessert and add some extra action, comedy and intrigue in with your old style corridor running.

Tonights Doctor Who episode dealt with the gangers from last weeks episode (who are basically home grown replicants of a team of workers on... oh I don’t know... some kind of acid world) battling their human counterparts in a bid for survival until The Doctor... or possibly his ganger clone, show them all (or most of them) the error of their ways and they all live reasonably happily ever after... except The Doctor of course, who destroys Amy Pond with his sonic screwdriver and embarks on a crash course with destiny. I understand destiny will probably be calling around about next episode (although I think we’ve already seen the hand of destiny at work somehow) and will probably be finishing up somewhere nearer the winter, later in the year.

And if you’ve really gone this far without having seen this episode yet then you probably need to know that everything I just said was almost certainly not a lie but, just in case, you probably ought to go and watch the actual episode like Uncle Moffett would like you to do before reading any more of this cobbled together review. You have been fairly and duly warned... twice now. So no more pandering if you’re foolish enough to still be reading without seeing the episode first.

Right.

This weeks episode was fast paced and inventive. It’s true there was a lot of obvious stuff happening... like for instance, you knew as soon as Amy Pond (or should I call her pseudo-Amelia) started displaying the least bit of prejudice that she was going to get it all wrong and they’d switched Doctors on us... I’m really surprised that they tried it on though. Maybe playing up to audience expectations a little too much?

Secondly... you may already have guessed that Amy Pond was... well, not Amy Pond. Now I wasn’t sure myself, their have been inklings all the way through but I’d forgotten about that aspect... to tell the truth I didn’t really see the specifics coming. I knew that either Amy or Rory were going to turn out to be not Amy or Rory. That much seemed like a good way to go with this season story wise but I was just too stupid to know which one would be the key. Yeah, should have guessed it was going to be Amy but... oh well... I admit to being a bear of very little brain.

So yeah... some obvious things happening in this one and also some tracks pretty hastily covered. New Doctor Two has been destroyed in a blast from his sonic screwdriver... or has he? After all... The Doctor was scanned. Maybe the “memory” of the new flesh is all that’s required to make another Doctor. That would explain a lot about the event of the first ten minutes or so of the first episode of this season wouldn’t it? But of course the writers know that the general audience at large are going to leap at the conclusion that a second Doctor running around explains everything... and even if it doesn’t it would relax that audience to the point where they stop engaging their brains with that aspect of the series. And so the writers killed off Doctor number 2 to take that crutch away from us.

But, you know, there’s still a possibility The New Flesh will turn up again as part of the solution in four or five months time. So I’m not ruling it out completely. The writers of this show are so very much not done with playing cat and mouse games with the audience just yet, thank you very much. So leave it in your brain and file it away for future use.

There was a lot of running about with doubles of everyone in this episode and one of the few problems with it was that there was a lot of confusion... at least in this household. People were getting confused as to who was dead and who wasn’t... it got to the point where someone in my house confused Marshall Lancaster’s characters death with the death of Rory (which of course didn’t happen... well done Rory, that’s two episodes you’ve survived in a row without dying again... you’re really beginning to get the knack of this now). That being said I’m getting a feeling in my bones that there’s going to be at least one character leaving us this season and it wouldn’t surprise me if either Rory or the current incarnation of The Doctor (or possibly both) were leaving at the end of the latest series... but I guess we’ll have to wait until somewhere towards the end of the year to find out for sure.

So... what else?

Well, I keep getting so preoccupied on the plot elements of these episodes just lately that I keep forgetting to highlight some of the things that really worked. So here’s one... the musical score. Last week seemed nothing special (or I’m sure I would have mentioned it) but the scoring in some of the scenes this week was quite brilliant. A lovely see-sawing, descent into madness style motif which wouldn’t have been out of place in a fifties sci-fi movie was used at one point which then kinda segued into the Amelia Pond sub-theme which we hadn’t heard from in quite a while. All very nice. And there’s cybermen next week so no doubt we’ll get that damned “new cyberman” leitmotif clubbing us over the head again... therefore I’m making the most of the more effective elements of the scoring this week.

There was some nice lighting in this weeks too I noticed and some very welcome comedy moments with the two Doctors playing off each other like a time travelling tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. Also some solid references to previous incarnations of The Doctor (including a much remembered William Hartnell speech as he said goodbye to a leaving companion which might be a Moffett-like omen of foreboding as to how things might be going down later this series possibly?). Some nice performances all around and nice things happening this episode then... as a result, I’m really having a hard time trying to reconcile my drab and bored reaction to the first part of this story with the classic modern Who-fest upon us in this episode. But I guess I’ll get over it.

So... now then. Half looking forward to next week (which the BBC kinda neglected to show a trailer for... wonder why?) and half dreading it. There’s no way that Moffetts going to leave us with anything other than a nasty cliff hanger at the mid season split methinks. Chances are that we’ll find out just who River Song is (and that better be a whopper of a reveal now Mr. Moffett or your fans are going to lynch you I expect) and a “good man will die”... or possibly a good companion?

Either way... I’m sure I’ll be fairly glued to my seat subjecting myself to the last five minutes of whatever dancy-dancy-feel-good programme the BBC are running before Doctor Who at present with the phone turned off and ready to pick up on all the clues I can when battle commences next week. I just hope that whatever happens next week isn’t followed up with a drab second part later on in the year. Or Mr. Moffett might just have to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow this time around.

And all who sail in her...

Doctor Who: The Doctor’s Wife

Airdate: May 14th 2011. UK. BBC1

Warning: Here be spoilers... so if you’re Steven Moffet, definitely don’t read anymore of this.

Well that was quite a bit better than a kick in the Krynoids!

This weeks episode was written by a stalwart of the fantasy genre, Neil Gaiman, possibly best known for his 75 issue comic series for DC/Vertigo... The Sandman. And best loved by me for the creation of one of my favourite comic-book characters Death (Oh come on! Who can’t resist a cheery young lady in black... even if she has come to take you to your final resting place?).

Now I’ll have to admit I was sceptical when I heard Gaiman was writing an episode of the good Doctor’s travels because, frankly, I’m not sure his writing necessarily translates well on the screen... he writes with a very deft touch and you need a director, actors and a whole bunch of other people to work some similarly subtle magic to bring his words and concepts to life without them falling flat and... well... um... falling flat. :-o

The past couple of weeks of the show have not done anything to reassure me that the production crew were able to match that kind of subtlety. I knew the principal actors could and so I wasn’t too concerned about them... but I was unsure about whether the tone and editing would be able to match what I expected to be an incredibly subtle script.

Well I’m more than happy to say that I this case I was proved dead wrong. Thank Rassilon’s teeth for that then. Phew. This is probably the most refreshing and watchable episode of Doctor Who I’ve seen since... hmmmm... maybe The Lodger. Oh well, hang on there that wasn’t all that long ago I’m sure I can do better than that. Scratches head... thinks a bit more... no The Lodger was about right. There were some definite hits as well as the molasses of misses last season and fair is fair.

So anyway... this episode is special because you get to see the TARDIS’ soul transplanted into a human shell and The Doctor is trapped with her in a junkyard on the edge of the universe while Amy and Rory are trapped in the shell of The Doctor’s TARDIS who is having deadly fun with them, running them around corridors and playing mind games. However, the real spirit of the TARDIS is housed in a rapidly failing humanoid host and it’s a race against time to somehow catch up with the old Type 40 shell... which has gone off gallivanting around our universe in search of other TARDIS' to feed from... and replace the soul of the TARDIS, rescue Amy and Rory from both the malevolent force inside the TARDIS and a rampant Ood (Ood have thought that we’d be seeing a villainous Ood again, ay?) before time leaves our heroes high and dry and dead. And dead is not much good I’m afraid... have TARDIS, will travel.

And that’s all I want to say about specific plot details this time around (but really, isn’t it more than enough).

I was a bit disappointed at the start of the episode as a distress beacon cube which came a knocking on the Doctor’s TARDIS door was, frankly, a terrible looking cheap effect and I thought that could have been done a lot better... maybe it was a little reference to the good old days of the BBC in the 80s (when the special effects seemed to get even more pedestrian than the not so brilliant effects work in the 60s and 70s) but once this little sequence was out of the way it was “all systems are go” for the special effects and the story they were there to support was a really nice addition to the Doctor Who episodes of the show that will probably be really affectionately remembered in years to come. Like Blink, The Girl In The Fireplace, The Mind Robber, Tomb of the Cybermen and The Talons of Weng-Chiang (to name a few of my favourites).

There are some very touching moments where The Doctor and the living personification of his TARDIS are conversing in the junkyard and it really adds a new spin on the old, almost used up idea of The Doctor stealing the TARDIS. The TARDIS apparently chose him and stole him, leaving herself unlocked so she could shanghai the willing timelord and see the universe. Nice concept... I like it. Some may say that this kind of revisionism smacks of "Greedo shooting first" but, what the heck! It was delivered with such sentiment and feeling that I was really sold on the concept. Well done Mr. Gaiman (or possibly Mr. Moffet, depending on whose idea that was)... that really worked out rather well.

And as an antidote to that, the mind games played on the TARDIS with an old, hateful and vengeful Rory and the writing on the TARDIS walls (which one can only presume was an homage to The Shining) was almost as chilling and foreboding as an episode of The Deadly Assassin. Well no, alright, not quite then... but as close as we’re probably going to get in this era of over-censored, dumbed down television.

So all in all I was completely bowled over this week. Really great episode. It’s a shorter review this week due to there being nothing much for me to grumble about I guess? That’s okay, less typing for me and now there’s nothing to do but go over to Hypnogoria’s and Flaysomewench’s blogs and read their latest Doctor Who reviews... because their insights are always different from mine and always house a little touch of genius. Check them out as soon as you can... they’re well worth a look.

Doctor Who: The Curse of the Black Spot

Under The Spotlight

Doctor Who: The Curse of the Black Spot

Airdate: May 7th 2011. UK. BBC1

Warning: Avast there me lovelies. There be spoilers laying in these uncharted waters! I mean it... the "twists" were so obvious that I need to highlight them to criticise them. Sorry!

Okay... that wasn’t too terrible. A bit obvious and full of holes but certainly not a bad episode. And I think the edges of Moffet’s game plan are just beginning to sail into view in this episode.

So okay, we have a disappearing or possibly dead pirate who has been taken by “the demon” in the pre-credits section which culminates with The Doctor, Amy and Rory ascending from the bowels of the ship and facing the remaining pirate crew of a vessel that has been stranded in a still ocean for many days with a "demonic" entity which has been slowly picking off the crew. “Yo ho ho!” says The Doctor... “Or do pirates not really say that” (or some such, I can’t remember the exact line and I can’t be bothered to consult the modern oracle of miss it and it’s gone truth and knowledge known as the i-player - so sue me!). Anyway... what I’m trying to say here is... not a bad opening and so cue the music and credits (wish they’d get rid of those awful lightning strikes and the dumb ass re-arrangement of the intro to the Ron Grainer theme though).

This is actually quite a classic piece of Doctor Who storytelling as people are picked off one by one while The Doctor is figuring out how to put things right. I’m thinking of stories like The Moonbase now (novelised as Doctor Who and the Cybermen) which have common themes of plague hiding a malevolent force which, in the case of tonights story, is actually benign... but if you’d have been paying attention to the early parts of the episode you would already know that.

That is to say...

When the first pirate marked for death alongside Rory by being “plagued” with a black spot went to the “demonic” singing siren (played by Lily Cole who was so wonderful in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) and was instantly vapourised, supposedly, I reckon at least half the audience (and certainly me) was thinking “oh... nothing left behind... some kind of teleportation device then?" And of course, that’s exactly what this turned out to be... The pirates interpretation of events was that when one of them was even slightly cut, a demon could smell the blood and take them away. But the explanation - oh wait! Please! Don’t be reading any further if you havent seen it yet... watch the damn thing and work it out for yourself, it’s not exactly a hard one this week... but please come back and read the rest of this review.

Now where was I? Oh, yeah. In reality this was nothing but a lonely equivalent of the holographic sick-bay doctor from Star Trek Voyager from a similarly stranded (crewless... they all died) ship occupying the exact same place in a different dimension and teleporting any injured crewmen to the other ship for treatment. Now the teleportation and lack of hostility on the part of the “siren” in this episode were all easily worked out in the first 10 minutes or so... so that’s not good.

But I tell you what was good! Amy Pond in pirate coat and hat swinging a cutlass and swinging from a rope. That was cool. Nice to see some good old buckling of the swashes in a regular, modern TV show for once.., even if it was quite brief. And come to think of it... I don’t remember having seen any old timey non-space style pirates in Doctor Who before... I’m sure there must have been occurrences, I just can’t remember any off hand... I’m sure somebody on Twitter will let me know about it though.

And did I mention that we’re beginning to see more of Moffet’s plan coming to fruition? Well I think what’s going on here, structurally at any rate, is that... well, as you may or may not know, this years series of Doctor Who is being split into two parts to give it... um... more exposure over the year. Now the cynic in me says that this is just part one of the BBC game plan to ultimately reduce the number of Doctor Who episodes per year to six or seven due to... well... not wanting to pay so much for it. At the first sniff of that I’m sure a gazillion fans will forcefully voice their displeasure at that outcome. I still haven’t forgiven them for the final year of Tennant’s reign as The Doctor being cut to five specials... especially when those last two episodes were pretty much the weakest episodes of the previous five years. Quick note to the BBC... if you want to increase the exposure of Doctor Who and not have the “fans” wait so long between series breaks... make each series 24 episodes long! You know... like in the old days?

I can’t help but notice they’re releasing a boxed set of just the first half of the season this year... hmmm.... it’s almost like they want to jack up the price slightly and make us buy the new series in two halfs for much more money. No... that can’t be right... I’m way too cynical here methinks.

Anyway, where was I... again? Oh yeah... so look, Moffet knows he’s producing a season of two halves now so what we’ve actually got now is two different recurring story threads coming in to haunt us... and that’s not including (or very well and probably is including, actually) the River Song stuff.

So we have The Doctors death which is alluded to very blatantly and on numerous times in this episode... that’s one thread. And we have that “dreamlike” woman with the eyepatch checking in on Amy again and then winking back out of existence who I predicted would be back from last week's review... it’s like the whole series is taking place in Amy’s head and none of it is real (or is real but now she’s in a coma reliving it)... I hope not because that really would be a letdown, Anyway... so we’ve got these two threads and they’re possibly linked but we have two season finales that I can see... so I’m wondering now if one of these threads will be resolved in four weeks time (or seem to be) and the other part will be picked up as a final solution endgame which will link in both these little dangling carrots and possibly tie in River Song’s past at the same time. Quite possible... in fact highly probable... but I know I’m kinda getting a little tired of this kind of plotting now. It’s like the writers are trying to pander to the expectations stoked from last years series by summoning up the same kind of, admittedly effective, ingredients again like modern Hollywood sequels to successful films tend to do. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it is a noble mentality to have... but possibly not when that same approach straight-jackets you in to a particular type of storytelling and creativity goes out the window a little bit.

Another bad thing was a terrible mistake in the continuity... or so it seems anyway. At one point a little boy cuts a pirate and leaves him open to “The Curse of the Black Spot”. The Doctor and the pirate captain then go off to have their own little adventure (where they kind of lose the TARDIS) and when they reunite with the others the specific pirate seems to have dropped out of continuity completely. Just winked out of existence without any help from the siren/surgeon who is inadvertently terrorising the crew of the ship. Now I’d like to think that this wasn’t a terrible continuity blunder that the producers and director created by cutting out an explanatory scene and which they hoped the audience wouldn’t notice. Maybe these continuity blunders are going to be a regular thing, say, and the extra people are “visitors” to Amy’s brain while she lays in some sort of coma? But I worry about that because, honestly, I think they just may be absolutely shoddy continuity errors on the part of a time cut or, worse, a censorship issue. Time will tell I guess.

Now this may seem like a very critical review of this episode but, honestly, it’s really not meant to be. It’s actually quite a fun and entertaining episode and, despite any possible faults, was a lot of an easier and relaxing watch than, say, last weeks episode. And with more delights to look forward too by all accounts. I believe next weeks episode has been penned by the great fantasy writer Neil Gaiman... so I’m looking forward to that one quite a bit, I must say. I’m expecting it to be quite fairytale-like but, you know, fairly dark... which is not a bad thing to aspire to when you’re writing one of the great British Science Fiction characters of all time I guess. There are worse approaches you can take... I just hope we don’t see some of them occurring this season.

Fingers crossed, eh?