Douglas Is Cancelled: Episode 4

 "I'm an avenging angel of dearth, from Newsnight. And you're Prince Andrew."

Wow. This episode is a tour de force of television scriptwriting and performance, and surely the extraordinary highlight of Karen Gillan's career so far. She truly is superb as Madeline here, as she finally and cleverly takes down Douglas, an unstoppable righteous force in an episode that brilliantly examines all of the issues arising from #MeToo. Wow.

So many elements here compliment the core message personally. We have the hapless, thick, casually misogynisic "comedian", tasked with coming up with "family friendly misogyny from a happier time". We have Douglas's increasing panic, followed by misplaced confidence. We have the slow destruction of Claudia's faith in her father. We have that gloeious confrontation between Madeline and Sheila in the ladies'.

And yes, we have Douglas cancelled, hot unfairly, because of a joke that truly was awful. There's nothing really unjust about that, despite the twist that his career ends because of an entirely separate joke for which he bears no real blame: the joke he did tell was inexcusable. And yet... Toby gets away with far worse, because Madeline, in a world of double standards, woukd bring herself down with him. And perhaps the point, the real point, as Madeline says, is that we men who are not like Toby really do need to step up.

Douglas Is Cancelled: Episode 3

 "You do want the job, don't you...?"

Wow. This is a sudden, effective and blatantly deliberate shift of tone from the previous two epidsodes. And it's incredible.

The whole episode is a flashback to Madeleine's past, her first meeting with Douglas... and how she got the job. By the end, we pretty much know what Douglas said at the wedding, and how utterly unforgiveable it was.. And that isn't even the point.

The vast majority of the episode is a two hander between Madeline and Toby. Ben Miles is excellent but Karen Gillan is utterly sublime, playing the discomfort, fear and resignation of a woman who, despite her poise, despite being wise to the gaslighting, The script is outstanding here, showing us the horrible reality of #MeToo as experienced in reality by so many women. So many nuances are there in the script. The gaslighting, the power imbalance, the sheer horror.

And, in the end, Douglas opens the door, sees what Madeline is going through... and advises her, in those words we've heard before, that whatever she has to wade through, it's worth it.

Wow. This isn't the type of first class television I was expecting after the first two episodes. But it's certainly first class television.

Douglas Is Cancelled: Episode 2

 "They execute gay people and it won't stop raining!"

Two episodrs in... and this is wonderful. Rain in Dubai, the crap comedy writer, the awkwardness between Toby and the taxi driver. But mostly, it's the wit, and the characters. Oh, the characters.

Madeline is much more centtre stage this time. We get to see first hand how she manipulates Douglas. On this occasion he's gone in there all cross and about to demand she remove the tweet... and she gets him to retweet it. But the whole thing is a kind of fight over Douglas between Madeline and Sheila, both of whom want to prep him for the interview he's going to have to endure soon... and then we end with Madeline dropping that bombshell. She's an utterly fascinating character, with far more depth to her than initially meets the eye, and so much cleverer than everyone else.

This is masterful storytelling, and halfway through the series we still don't know what Douglas' joke actually was. But the whole thing is engrossing. The entire cast shines, but Karen Gillan, Alex Kingston and Ben Miles are utterly superb. The real star, though, is the script. Steven Moffat can sooo do comedy thst makes you think.#

Is it me, or is Douglas inexorably headed towards absolute doom?

Douglas Is Cancelled: Episode 1

 "That's not ambiguity.That's plausible deniability."

Yes, I know, I've sort of had to temporarily pause my ongoing series that I'm blogging in order to frantically catch up with The Boys after three episodes bloody landed at once. Now ITV have gone and released a new comedy drama by Steven Moffat, so my schedule lies even more in tatters. Grr.

I must say, though, this first episode is bloody brilliant. The premise seems very ho-hum and meh: a news presenter is overheard telling a sexist joke at a wedding and suddenly his career is in the balance. At first glance it looks as though we're in for a tiresome, heavy-handed rant about "cancel culture"... but of course, not.This is Steven Moffat, and he's much cleverer than that.

What's particularly clever is the actual joke itself is held back. It's "Schrodinger's joke". We end the episode on tenterhooks not kmnowing how bad it is or how bad things are.

Hugh Bonneville is excellent as the eponymous Douglas, and so is Karen Gillan as his subtly clever co-host Madeline. But utterly standout performances from Ben Miles as the most cynical producer, and Alex Kingston as the gloriously weary Sheila, utterly steal the show. This is clever, witty, topical (we get lines like "I work with people who hack your phone") and very thoughtful comedy drama. I'm hooked.

Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song

"What's that? Are you... thinking? Stop it. You're a man. It looks weird."

The Moff ended the series just gone by subverting the Big Epic Season Finale through rejecting all of the epicness in favour of a more human, character-based episode. Here he uses the Christmas episode to give us a perfect little character piece, albeit with plenty of entertainment along the way. This is almost certainly the swansong for River Song, and an extremely fitting one, and rumour has it that it was almost- but not quite- the Moff's last script for the series. Long may he reign, say I.

The plot is a glorious Christmas caper, but we shall say little about it other than to note the nice little nods to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and The Brain of Morbius. There are some splendid comedy turns from Matt Lucas and (in a part that must have been enormous fun to play) Greg Davies. Oh, and I love the way the Doctor defeats Hydroflax's body by using the fact that the stock market is so utterly incomprehensible. But the episode is essentially both a screwball comedy and entirely about the relationship between River and the Doctor. So let's proceed to talk about nothing else, shall we?

The main conceit, of course, is that River spends the whole episode failing, rather amusingly, to notice that the man she's with is the Doctor. In a lesser script this could have made the character look stupid, but not here; it's nicely counterbalanced by River being portrayed as cool and resourceful. Indeed, the Doctor/companion relationship is essentially reversed to the point where River holds the Doctor's hand and runs and, in the episode's funniest scene, the Doctor pretends to be amazed that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside, seizing the chance to do it "properly". Both Kingston and Capaldi are superlative, and so is their chemistry together; the two of them on screen together work wonderfully well as a believable couple. Capaldi's ongoing moments of annoyance at River's other "husbands" are a joy, as is River's casual comment that she's always "borrowing" the TARDIS without the Doctor ever noticing.

And yet.. River is sad. Her diary is running out of pages, and the man who gave it to her would have known how many pages she needed. Silence in the Library beckons, especially as the Doctor here gives her the sonic screwdriver that she uses in that story. A nice touch, although the sonic trowel is cool and perfect for an archaeologist, as my fellow Time Team fans would know.

The scene where the penny finally drops for River ("Hello, sweetie"- more role reversal between them) is wonderful, as is her passionate speech about the Doctor; she loves him with all her heart, but you don't expect a phenomenon as big as the Doctor to love you back as a mere mortal would. And she's fine with that.

Their last ever date before River's death (I love the revelation that River's last night will last 24 years!) is wonderfully written with dialogue that sings like the towers, which are themselves a metaphor for the awesome monolith that is the Doctor. It's the perfect ending to what may well be the finest ever Christmas episode.

But how long will we have to wait for more Doctor Who?

Doctor Who: The Name of the Doctor

“No way my wife is buried out here…”

“Your what?!”.

Nearly twenty-four hours on, and I’m still fangasming. I loved it, obviously, but don’t expect any serious critical engagement with this episode, or indeed reviewing, in this “review”. Instead, I shall flail about like a flaily thing and, uhm, squee incessantly.

At last we know the solution to the Clara conundrum, and it’s a neatly elegant one. She is indeed just an ordinary person, if a little more magnificent than usual, and it’s only when she sacrifices herself, and shards of her persona are scattered throughout space and time that she becomes extraordinary. The other Claras are the soufflés; the original Clara is the recipe. It is at the same time so gloriously complicated and so elegantly simple. And this is what leads to the cliff hanger, as the Doctor heads into his own timeline to save her.

We see River again, or rather a backup of her from after her death in The Silence in the Library two-parter. She is therefore at the latest part in her life, if you can call it that, than we have ever seen her. She has what seems to be her final goodbye to the Doctor and they share a passionate kiss such as has never quite seen before in Doctor Who. Intriguingly, we discover towards the end that River is solid and seems to have a physical existence. This added mystery implies we will be seeing her again. Spoilers, sweetie!

Vastra, Jenny and Strax are brilliantly used, as always. They are the glue that holds the story together. The concept of a séance across time is inspired, and also rather convenient, as this is the means by which Moffat assembles his cast of the Doctor’s friends, and thus allows the plot to happen. We get a touching glimpse into the kinky but loving relationship between Vastra and Jenny. Vastra is distraught when Jenny “dies”, and her comments to Strax are revealing: he remarks that the heart is a simple thing and she replies, simply “I have not found it so”.

Strax, of course, is at his comical best, but in this case this serves as a contrast with his radically different behaviour after the Great Intelligence has begun to erase the Doctor’s time stream, becoming hostile and humorous. And, yes, this is my cue to flail about wildly at all the old clips, old Doctors and such forth.

The continuity porn begins immediately, and has me jumping up and down like a kangaroo on a trampoline on speed, as we see the Doctor and Susan nicking the TARDIS all those years ago! At last, we have it confirmed that Susan was with him at the time and, oddly, he’s wearing the same Edwardian clothes that we see him wearing in An Unearthly Child, un-Gallifreyan though they are. Loads more clips follow, in which all the Doctors appear in varying levels of detail, including an interesting one in which footage of Patrick Troughton from The Five Doctors is inserted in to footage of modern California. Many of the clips look a little odd, as the picture quality does not match modern HD, but it is awesome to see them.

Almost as fangasmy is the fact that we finally get to see Trenzalore and the Doctor’s tomb. We do not, after all, hear the Doctor’s name spoken, but it is both the key to the Great Intelligence’s scheme and important to the final scene, of which more shortly. I expected to see the Silence in this episode, but they are, it is perhaps implied, the good guys in that they only intend to prevent the Doctor being erased from history and the great suffering that would cause. Instead, we get another great Moffat villain in the Whisper Men, who remind me of the Gentlemen from the Buffy episode Hush.

But the thing we’re all really hyper about, twenty-four hours later, is John Hurt’s previously unknown Doctor. Who is he, and why is he so beyond the pale to his subsequent incarnations? We face the challenging task of waiting a whole six months to find out. See you on the twenty-third of November. Excited much?!

Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan

"He went to get coffee, and turned up in a book. How does that work?"

"I don't know. We're in New York."

Damn you, Moffat. You sadistic evil genius, you. You distract us with scares, timey-wimey cleverness and a story title that makes us think of Muppets, and then you go and make us have all these damn feelings, damn you. Even those of us who like to think we have hearts of stone. The Angels Take Manhattan is twisted, evil, and possibly the best thing in Doctor Who since, well, the last story you wrote with the Weeping Angels. Once again: DAMN YOU!!!

Let's leave Amy and Rory until we've talked about the other stuff, because I won't be able to talk about the other stuff otherwise. Bloody feelings…

This is a much, much better use of New York than the last time. We get iconic locations, including the Statue of Liberty being used as a Weeping Angel (!). Everything looks great. There's a definite Raymond Chandler / Dashiell Hammett influence, what with the private eye in the opening teaser and, ahem, "Melody Malone", whose identity, I'm sure, was never intended to surprise anyone.

Speaking of River, she and the Doctor are, of course, married, meaning that the heroes of the episode are two married couples. And it's fun to see River and the Doctor acting just like a married couple. There are the witty lines alluding to this, of course ("Sorry I'm late, honey. Traffic was Hell"), but there are also fault lines in this very strange marriage. River loves the Doctor, which is why she slaps him for using his regenerative energy to heal her broken wrist. But she's terrified of his seeing her aging and becoming aware of her mortality. The Doctor hates endings, and is therefore unlikely to be keen on commitment, hardly a deep observation given his lifestyle.

Oh, and River alludes to the long-running season thread, namely that the Doctor has been deleting all records of himself. It means that the man she's supposed to have murdered no longer exists, so she's been freed and made a professor. There's one ripple from the Doctor's "absence": what about the others, I wonder?

The Angels are horribly scary, too. The baby Angels, with their terrible giggling, are well scary, especially when Rory is trapped alone with them in a darkened cellar with a match. And all throughout the story the set pieces, and the excellent direction, keep making you jump. Scares along with heartbreak- damn you once again, Moffat!

The typically Moffat-esque timey-wimeyness is gobsmackingly clever here, probably the cleverest we've seen since Blink. The concept of the Doctor and Amy possessing a book, from their personal future, recounting the adventure they're having now, is devilishly clever. And the fact that they can't read ahead without fixing their futures is even more so. It's hard to talk about the way this is used without getting all emotional about Amy and Rory, but the bit where the Doctor accidentally sees the last two chapter titles ("Death at Winter's Quay" and "Amy's Last Farewell") is a hugely clever moment, as well as being pure evil.

But let's get back to the elephant in the room, shall we? There are all sorts of ominous signs. It's constantly reiterated that the Doctor doesn't like endings, hence the fact that Amy and Rory are still around even after being officially dumped in The God Complex. This is where he has to face up to what he doesn't like.

Of course, Moffat being evil, he tortures us with three endings, all of them heart-breaking. First, we're told that Rory is fated to be sent back in time, to spend the rest of his miserable life in a little room, without Amy. Worse, the only way out for him is to destroy the Angel by creating a paradox, and he can only do this by jumping off a building to his death. This sequence just breaks your heart, and then Amy goes and jumps too because she can't bear to be without him. DAMN YOU, MOFFAT.

Except there's one more, equally evil, timey-wimey twist. All of that has been un-happened, everyone's ok, and they will all live happily ever after. Except they won't, because the one remaining Angel sends them back in time, one by one, with lots of tears. The Doctor has to face it: this is an ending. It's also unbelievably good telly. But still evil.

We end with a final message from an unreachable Amy to the Doctor: don't be alone. As Donna once said, he still needs someone to stop him. As for who that someone is, and how we resolve the puzzle that was set by Asylum of the Daleks… we have to wait until Christmas. Damn you, Moffat.

Doctor Who: Closing Time

“I’m the Doctor. I work in a shop now.”

Oh dear. I seem to have fallen into a bit of a rut in lavishing praise on how nicely shot the pre-titles sequences are. Shall we just take it as read that I’ve done that and move swiftly on?

This is the umpteenth bloody good episode in a row, and maintains Gareth Roberts’ impressive record. His four episodes might not be quite up there with the very best, but all of them are consistently brilliant, and this one is probably his best yet. Even the sickly-sweet resolution is appropriate given the context of Cybermen vis-à-vis emotions.

It’s good to see Craig again; James Corden is bloody fantastic with his subtle physical comedy and nice balance between humour and pathos. It helps that he and Matt Smith are a great double act. The “fact” that Matt Smith speaks baby is a fab gimmick, too.

Two centuries have passed since the last episode tomorrow. Tomorrow (by the Doctor’s subjective timeline- how does this work? He’s a time traveller. I suppose he has to die at his present age because it was stated in The Impossible Astronaut, but why this particular day? Is it the day before his next birthday or summat?) he gets shot dead. He’s spending his last day visiting Craig (and others, I assume).

There’s a lot of great humorous dialogue. We get a “You’ve redecorated. I don’t like it.” to please the fans and a hilarious “Social call. Thought I’d try one out.” There’s a lot of nicely metatextual humour here; we all know perfectly know that noticing g things and sorting out the baddies is all the Doctor ever does; of course there’s going to be a massively coincidental alien invasion.

Once again it’s nice to see the Doctor in a contemporary setting; combined with this episode’s comic focus it gives Matt Smith’s Doctor a chance to breathe and be really Doctorish. His interaction with George, Kelly and the Fabulous Val (the great Lynda Barron, again!) is great; this is a sweet, likeable Doctor who is liked and trusted by all. Midnight feels a long time ago. Plus, we have a nice little mystery with Cybermen. Yay! This is a particularly good story for them, not least because they lurk in the background being menacing and hardly say a word, as they do in all their best stories. The new Cybermats are great, too, with real and very pointy teeth. We even get a small snatch of Murray Gold’s old Cyber-theme. If only we could have that “Space Adventure” theme from the ‘60s again…

Of course, it’s in no way surprising to see Amy and Rory here. You were expecting them too, right? And I don’t need to have seen any spoilers to know that they’ll be back full-time next week. But it’s great that Amy has stopped being a kissogram and become a model, although there still a certain objectification-of-women thing going on, and I understand the fashion industry is largely run by bastards. Still, it’s great that she’s advertising something called “Petrichor”.

The Doctor gets a nice little monologue to the baby, but his mournful admission to Craig that he’s going to die because he’s “a stupid, selfish man” gets the perfect response. Craig knows the Doctor- he’s been inside his head- and instinctively knows that this is all a load of pants; the Doctor has saved loads of people and can be forgiven a little vanity and self-indulgence.

Oh, and we get that line again: “Silence will fall when the question is asked”. On which story arc-y note I really ought to do what I ought have done a few paragraphs ago, and point out that this is the first time since 1989 that a series has ended without a two-part season finale. The next episode, if it really is going to wrap everything up, has a lot of work to do in forty-five minutes, or an hour, or whatever.

The actual alien plot is rather prosaic, and very much takes second fiddle to the stuff about the Doctor and Craig. Six Cybermen and their ship have recently been woken up after centuries of slumber (Cyber continuity? Let’s not go there…), are a bit rubbish, they try to Cybernise Craig (always nice to see the Cybermen trying to do this; it brings out the full body horror), but it doesn’t work because he’s a great dad, and he kills them with love for his son. That’s it. It should be tacky and sentimental, but somehow manages to be brilliant instead.

Interesting, too, that the Cybermen are more impressed by Craig than they are by the Doctor, and even see him as potential Cyber Controller material.

We end with some throwbacks to the start of the series; the Doctor has bought some nice blue envelopes, and Craig gives him a Stetson. The scene then suddenly shifts to River Song, who’s just got her Doctorate. Suddenly, along comes Madame Kovarian, she who has pulled River’s strings for her entire life. She’s accompanied by a couple of Silents (“Your owners”). River is put into an astronaut suit and shoved at the bottom of Lake Silencio…

I shouldn’t really mention the “Next Time” trailer, but it’s all about to kick off. I can’t wait…

Doctor Who: Let's Kill Hitler

“Well, I was off to this gay gypsy bar mitzvah for the disabled when I thought ‘Gosh, the Third Reich’s a bit rubbish. I think I’ll kill the Fuhrer.’”

Wow. Still reeling a bit from that. Also, I took a lot more notes than I usually do. Lots of writing ahead, and I want to get this review out tonight. Damn you, Moffat, with your intricate and cool story arcs.

Amy and Rory are driving about a cornfield in a rubbish old mini, making crop circles just to summon the Doctor. He arrives, and asks permission from Mr Pond to hug Mrs Pond- nice touch! We establish that the Doctor hasn’t made any progress in tracking down their baby.

Then, suddenly, in a very flash car, comes someone we haven’t met before. She’s called Mels, she’s known Amy and Rory for a long time, she doesn’t do weddings, she’s heard all about the Doctor, and she’s on the run from the fuzz. Oh, and she has a gun. And a plan. Cue opening titles.

We now get a flashback, inserting Mels into the childhoods of Amelia and Rory, whom we now discover to have been childhood sweethearts. Mels, of course, is always getting in trouble. There’s a particularly nice bit in which Mels alerts Amy to the fact Rory fancies her, which not only firmly draws her tightly into both of their lives and leads the audience to accept this new character as an old friend, but introduces a little verbal meme (“The penny drops…”) which will become important later.

In a particularly nice shot from Richard Senior, we cut from a spinning model TARDIS in Amy’s bedroom to a spinning real TARDIS in the sky. Mels has just shot the console, to test whether the Doctor’s talk about “temporal grace” really is just a “clever lie”…

Berlin, 1938, and there are already time travellers here, in the form of lots of little people controlling a chap’s body. This reminds me so much of a certain strip from the Beezer that I’m going to refer to them as the Numbskulls. The Numbskulls set about copying the body of a Nazi officer, and send the now miniaturised Nazi into the body’s head, where he is promptly knocked off by an “antibody”. I love the antibody’s officious language and instructions to remain calm!

Incidentally, is it just me or does one of the numbskulls look exactly like Peter Andre?

The numbskull body seems to be about to assassinate Hitler when the TARDIS crashes through the window. Our TARDISeers are pleasingly rude to Adolf, but are taken unawares when he suddenly shoots his putative assassin. They are rather annoyed at this, and Adolf duly spends the rest of the episode in the cupboard.

All is not well, though; the bullet also hit Mels, and she seems to be dying. And, interestingly, the numbskulls suddenly detect the presence of an even greater war criminal than Hitler. I thought for a moment that they were referring to the Doctor but no; it’s Mels. And she’s regenerating. “Last time I did this,” she says, “I ended up a toddler. In the middle of New York.” Suddenly, a lot of things make sense. As the Doctor says, Amy and Rory named their daughter after… herself.

Melody regenerates into Alex Kingston (incidentally, this would seem to put to bed the tiresome debate about whether or not an “ethnic” actor could ever play the Doctor with a resounding affirmative!). “Who’s River Song?” she asks. “Spoilers!”

There’s a problem, though. The Numbskulls recognise her as “the woman who kills the Doctor”, and she’s been trained and conditioned to do so ever since her kidnap as a baby. This is the fulfilment of Madame Kovorkian’s plan.

She tries to kill the Doctor in a fun little timey-wimey scene which borrows quite liberally from Moffat’s own The Curse of the Fatal Death. I love the bit with the banana, with its nod to The Doctor Dances. During all this, though, she poisons him with a kiss. He’s dying.

Melody, pausing only to get briefly shot point blank by a whole bunch of Nazis, steals a motorbike and rides off. Amy and Rory follow on another bike, only for the Numbskulls to follow.

The Numbskulls are confused. They know River / Melody kills the Doctor, but she does so in Utah, in 2011. (This seems to tell us pretty conclusively who was in that spacesuit.) And we discover that the Doctor’s death is a fixed point in time, immutable. Get out of that one, Moffat.

The Doctor utilises the TARDIS interface, which shows us briefly that he feels increasingly guilty about Rose, Martha and, especially, Donna, settling on the form of the young Amelia, “before it all went wring”. This is highly revealing about how he sees his relationships with his companions, especially in the light of what we learned in Amy’s Choice. Still, he gets the useful information that he has thirty-two minutes to live.

Melody steals the clothes at gunpoint from all the guests at a posh Nazi do, just so that she can have the equivalent of the Doctor’s own post-regeneration dressing room scene. Here she’s found by Amy, Rory, and the Numbskull. Unfortunately, Amy and Rory suddenly end up inside the robot replica, and are almost killed by an antibody before Peter Andre issues them with some bracelets.

Here we get some answers. Numbskull Amy reads out the charge: “You killed the Doctor on the orders of the movement known as the Silence and the Academy of the Question.” The Numbskulls, it seems, use time travel to find notorious criminals who historically remained unpunished, and torture them horribly just before their natural deaths. Sound like a right bunch of bloody Daily Mail readers…

Fortunately, the Numbskulls have hardly started torturing Melody when the Doctor arrives and stops it. He may be dying, but he’s still bothered to take the time to dress up in white tie. We get more answers; the Silence are not a species, but a movement, a religious order. How are they linked to the Clerics, I wonder? It seems they believe that “Silence will fall when the Question is asked”. The Question is, apparently the first and oldest in the universe. I take it the Silence haven’t heard / read / seen The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The Numbskulls start torturing Melody again, but fortunately her parents manage to stop it. Unfortunately, this leads to their being surrounded by antibodies that want to kill them. Fortunately, they are saved by the TARDIS materialising around them. It’s piloted by their daughter, who is surprised to find that she can instinctively pilot the Ship because she’s a “child of the TARDIS”, whatever that means. Of course, she was conceived aboard the Ship…

Rule One: The Doctor dies. Except he doesn’t, because Melody somehow uses up all her remaining regenerations to save him. Appropriately, this too is done with a kiss. We leave her in hospital, where the Doctor has left her a present: a diary decorated as a TARDIS.

We end with some unanswered questions. The Doctor, we see, is well aware of the time and place of his impending death. Does River kill him? Is that why she’s in prison?

Doctor Who: A Good Man Goes to War

“I have gene-spliced myself for all nursing duties. I can provide magnificent quantities of lactic fluid.”

If we didn’t already know this episode wasn’t going to be a big ‘un, we get a massive recap. And the scene is set: Amy is in a place called Demons Run, apparently a massive spaceship, she’s “popped”, as Eyepatch Lady put it, and her baby is called Melody. She’s not best pleased, but she’s convinced that someone’s coming, someone legendary. And in a nice twist at the end, we discover that this legendary figure is Rory. And I suspect the title is supposed to be ambiguous; is it referring to the Doctor, or Rory.

It’s an odd episode, this, completely unlike anything we’ve ever seen in Doctor Who. More so even that this series’ opening two-parter, this is an episode of pure story arc, and doesn’t really exist as an end unto itself. It reminds me of Angel seasons three and four with their very heavy arc plots. So while this episode is very well executed, in terms of both script and production, it’s rather difficult to pass judgement except as part of a larger whole, much of which we don’t yet know.

It’s cool, though. I can say that. Certainly Rory has never been so badass. I love the fact that they dusted off the Cybermen costumes and got the Mill to do a whole Cyber-fleet just so that Rory could be made to look well ‘ard.

The baddies (or at least their redshirts) are the military clerics from the Time of Angels two-parter, as well as the mysterious Headless Monks, who were briefly mentioned in the same story. It looks as though the future’s gone all mediaeval, what with Space Teutonic Knights / Space Knights Templar / whatever, and a kind of Headless Spanish Inquisition. I wasn’t expecting that.

We get introduced to a few lowly soldiers; Lorna Bucket from the Gamma Forests, who’s quietly sewing and had an “encounter” with the legendary Doctor as a child; the Thin One; and the Fat One (We’re thin, fat, gay Anglican marines. Why would we need names as well?”) Unfortunately, the Fat One learns more than he bargains for during his “conversion tutorial” with the Headless Monks. A box is put over his head, and we cut to a locker coming down vertically. Ouch.

Meanwhile, we get a succession of the Doctor’s mates. First off, we have a lesbian Silurian consulting detective(!) whose name I didn’t catch, and Jenny, her maid and lover (kinky combination, that), living in the London of 1888, where she’s just killed Jack the Ripper. I noticed she referred to an Inspector Abberline, and being a card-carrying geek I recognised the name from Alan Moore and Kevin Campbell’s From Hell. That’s even cooler than the Thunderbirds reference.

Next up we have Strax, the Sontaran nurse at the Battle of Zarathustra in 4037 AD, a future where fashions are seemingly inspired by the Crimean War. He’s a great character. I love the jocular threats he makes to kill his patients.

The odd one out is River Song. She starts out in a rather jolly mood as she smugly breaks into the Stormcage. But the appearance of the Lonely Centurion, and the realisation that it’s time for the Battle of Demons Run, suddenly turn her very sober indeed. “Because this is it,” she says portentously, “This is the day he finds out who I am.” And yes, it’s particularly interesting watching Alex Kingston’s performance the second time round.

Dorium, who already feels like an old friend after just one brief appearance, gets a magnificent speech in which he gets to be rather cool while at the same time explaining the plot to our baddies, Eyepatch Lady (or Madame Kovarian) and Colonel Manton. Because the Doctor is recruiting an army, by calling in favours. And a blue box lands right by Dorium…

Lorna has a brief encounter with Amy in which we find out her allegiances are somewhat ambiguous, and our attention is drawn again to the prayer leaf she’s been knitting, with the name of the child sewn on to both sides.

Manton’s the next one to get a speech. Although it would normally be a “level one heresy”, he is able, “by the divine grant of the Papal Mainframe herself” to remove the hoods of the headless monks, beneath which is… no head, but a stump, which is more horrible than nothing would have been. But behind the third hood, making a late and typically dramatic entrance, is the Doctor.

And suddenly the Doctor and his mates, who are popping up everywhere, are winning very quickly. The Doctor fools the clerics into fighting against the Monks, while the Silurian and Jenny take care of the control room. There’s a nice, subtle little naughty bit here: “I don’t know why you put up with me,” says Silurian Lady to Jenny, before flicking her very long, undulating tongue to knock out a baddie. The look on Jenny’s face makes it clear that we’ve just seen one very good reason for putting up with her…

Manton is quick-thinking enough to put an end to the fighting between clerics and monks, but his problems are mounting; we have more Silurians, Judoon, even Danny Boy and the Space Spitfires. Rory gets his share of the glory, confronting Kovarian, as we now learn that Captain Avery now controls the ship. And Manton gets the opposite, as the Doctor makes damn sure that he’ll be known for ever after as “Colonel Run-Away”.

There’s a knock at Amy’s door, and it’s Rory… with their baby. Rory is at such a high point that he gets to call his wife “Mrs Williams”-Although the baby is Melody Pond, of course. He even gets to shout “Oi, you! Get in here now!” at the Doctor.

There’s a bit of a clue for us as the baby doesn’t like the TARDIS noise, but the Doctor is able to stop her crying by producing a cot, apparently from the days when he himself was a Time Tot.

We get a few answers: Amy was replaced with a Ganger “just before America”, but the Doctor is typically evasive about whether or not there’s something he’s not telling the Ponds.

But, away from the Ponds we learn some more: Melody, conceived in the TARDIS on the Ponds’ wedding night, has “human plus” DNA; it seems she was born with a “time head” after all. It’s suggested that perhaps she might be able to regenerate, and immediately we know that she’s the little girl in the opening two-parter, unless we’re getting a massive dose of misdirection. And, given the clips we then see, I don’t think we are.

But things aren’t as they seem; the Headless Monks are still at large, and Kovarian appears on-screen, telling the Doctor of the “endless war”. “Against who?”, asks the Doctor, who really should know perfectly well that he should have said “Against whom?” Tut tut. “Against you!” replies Kovarian, baffling the Doctor. And then the Headless Monks strike. Dorium is the first to die. Shame. I would have liked to have seen more of him.

Suddenly, the Doctor’s bloodless victory turns into a tragic loss of lives which, we soon learn, will all be for nothing. Kovarian appears again, this time through a hatch in reality, and we discover that the baby itself is just a Ganger.

It’s all going horribly wrong. Strax finds his death is not as enjoyable as he’d hoped, although at nearly twelve he’s had a decent innings. Lorna dies, and the Doctor (who may not yet have met her) doesn’t even remember her. Things are very grim indeed.

And then River appears, too late. Solemnly, she makes it very clear that all of this is the Doctor’s fault for. In the language of the Gamma Forests the word “Doctor” means “great warrior”, and that is what his reputation is becoming. He is causing alliances to be formed against him through his vanity, and innocents are killed in the crossfire.

But then, suddenly, the Doctor understands who River is. And promptly buggers off in the TARDIS, leaving a very angry and upset Amy and Rory with River. And her we learn the truth. “The only water in the forest is a river.” On the prayer leaf which Lorna made for Amy is the Gamma Forest version of the baby Melody Pond’s name: River Song. And on that bombshell…

Lots of people have told me this was obvious but, to my slow-on-the-uptake and spoiler-free self, this was a huge moment.

Right. More Doctor Who as it airs, and obviously Torchwood as that airs too. In the meantime, more Blake’s 7, followed by lots and lots of other things

Doctor Who: Day of the Moon

“We are not fighting an alien invasion. We’re leading a revolution.”

I’ve just looked at my notes and we’re looking at three and a half pages. This is going to be epic.

Steven Moffat does what RTD did in Last of the Time Lords, having a considerable amount of time (three months in this case) pass. It’s now July 1969, the month of the moon landing, and all three of our regulars are hunted fugitives whose time is running out. A bearded Doctor, meanwhile, languishes in Area 51 as a gloating Canton supervises the constriction of a dome of Dwarf Star Alloy (nice bit of continuity porn there), the perfect prison.

Things look pretty grim, although they also look pretty amazing. Certainly the Valley of the Gods in Utah, where Amy meets the end of the road, looks utterly sublime. Not that you’d notice as you waited to be shot, eyeing the empty body bag on the floor. Rory gets a very similar scene, this time among the spectacular scenery of the Glen Canyon Dam. River’s exit gives us a sliver of hop, though. Just before Canton is about to shoot her, she jumps from the top of a very tall building. We all know what happened when River leaps backwards from the tops of very tall buildings.

All three of them have covered their arms with tallies of the Silence they’ve sighted, a cleverly self-explanatory indication of what they’ve been up to. But the Doctor and Canton have been even cleverer. As soon as the Dwarf Star Alloy igloo is complete and the door closes, the tables turn and they spring into action. Canton was in on the plan all along, and the invisible TARDIS is right behind the Doctor. As soon as Amy and Rory get out of their body bags, and River is rescued in the usual way, we start to get some answers.

There’s some significant stuff here, too. So significant, we even get flashbacks from the mentions of the Silence last series. But we have it confirmed that you forget the Silence as soon as you hear them, they have the power of auto-hypnotic suggestion, and that, after you’ve seen them, you “sometimes feel a bit sick” but “not always”. This isn’t explained in this episode, so it’ll probably be important later. Oh, and it now seems that Amy is not pregnant.

The Doctor’s explanation of the nano-recorder, using an image of the Silent from Amy’s camera phone to trick Canton and underline his point, is very creepy indeed. Possibly even creepier is the orphanage where the little girl seems to have lives. The surroundings are creepy for a start, and then there’s all the writing on the walls. The only person present, Dr. Renfrew, is in a state of constant confusion from the constant memory wipes, still thinking 1967 is in the future and only being half-aware that he’s been in charge of just one child for years.

There’s a bit of light relief as we cut to the Doctor, having just made adjustments to Apollo 11, although there is of course a bit left over. But the creepiness intensifies in the orphanage as Amy and Canton split up. The scenes with Amy, alone, gradually realising through the increasing tally marks and her own voice message that the ceiling is crawling with Silence, is the scariest thing ever. Renfrew explains to Canton that “the child” must be cared for, because that’s what “they” said. Amy, meanwhile, sees a hatch in reality popping open. A woman with an eyepatch then pokes her head through and announces “No, I think she’s just dreaming.” How very weird. This happens shortly after Amy splits from Canton: there’s been scope for stuff to happen between then and now, let us note. We’re soon back to the usual weirdness, though. Amy enters a child’s room- presumably the little girl’s room, as it looks as though it’s in current use. There are photos of the little girl- and of Amy, holding a baby. This immediately hints at who this little girl may be.

Speaking of whom, here she is. She’s still in her spacesuit; Amy missed. Parallel to this, Canton finds a Silent. Being the capable type, he records it, and is told that “This world is ours. We have ruled it since the wheel and the fire.” Judging by the fact he immediately shoots it, we can probably assume he’s displeased to hear this. The Silence seem to be perfectly susceptible to bullets.

Taping (broadly one of Moffat’s personal tropes anyway) is central to this episode- the Doctor even urges Nixon to tape everything that happens in the Oval Office. That’ll turn out well.

The Doctor and Rory arrive to find Amy gone, but still able to communicate with them, Miss Evangelista-like, via a chip. Why has this chip been left behind to be found? Again, something which could be significant.

The Doctor’s chat with the Silent shot by Canton gives us another “Silence will fall”. What does this mean? Is it predicting the defeat of the Silence at the end of the episode, or something deeper? It’s something deeper, innit?

The little girl has disappeared, but River is able to find out a lot about the spacesuit. It can sustain its occupant through sunlight alone- no need for food, or presumably oxygen. It can hack, and communicate, and defaults to the highest authority, hence the calls to the President. The little girl seems to be human, but incredibly strong. As for where it came from, the Silence don’t make anything themselves. They’re parasites. And the Doctor insists that the only reason the Moon landing is happening now is because the Silence needed a spacesuit. What’s so important about this little girl and what do the Silence propose to do with her?

I like what’s not being said here: the Silence are getting humanity to do things by hypnotic suggestion, but all the ingenuity and brilliance is 100% human. This isn’t one of those annoying Death to the Daleks / Erich von Daniken theories which propose humans couldn’t possible be responsible for our own achievements.

That humans are in fact a bit clever is demonstrated by Canton, happily recording the Silent with Amy’s camera phone as it gloats that “We have ruled your lives since your lives began. You should kill us all on sight.” That’ll come in handy later. River, meanwhile, has worked out that the suit could possibly move on its own, and recalls that the little girl said that the “spaceman” was “coming to eat” her.

There’s an interesting scene where Rory listens to Amy’s voice from far away- is it him or the Doctor she loves? This is unresolved as he and the Doctor have one of those chats which avoid the issue but somehow don’t. Rory remembers his two thousand years of waiting, but “not all the time”- there’s a door in his head that he can open to reach the memories. This is probably necessary to give him a realistic psychology. It’s also very fairytale.

Amy awakens, as it’s implies she has done many times over several days, in a room, surrounded by Silence. She’s told, interestingly, that “We do you honour. You will bring the Silence. But your part will soon be over.” How will she “bring the Silence?” Is this connected to her pregnancy? Is she pregnant with the little girl? Is the Silence plan something much deeper than we expect?

The Doctor arrives, and notices the continuity to The Lodger.” Very Aickman Road. Seen one of these before. Abandoned. Wonder how that happened.” I bet this is significant, too. I notice, too, that he tells River and Rory to “keep one Silent in shot at all times”, confirming that the singular form is indeed “Silent”, plural “Silence”. Sorry. I’m a bit of a grammar freak. I have to know these things.

The Doctor seems ok with River shooting people, although he again insists on not doing it himself. He’s unlike his previous incarnation, too. This Doctor ostentatiously doesn’t offer his foe a chance to surrender before carrying out his plan. He also flirts outrageously with River. His plan is very clever, though: apparently the footage of Neil Armstrong stepping on to the moon, which we’ve all seen and which countless generations will also see, carries a post-hypnotic suggestion to “kill us all on sight.” Very clever, and very ruthless. River is pretty badass, too, shooting Silence left, right and centre just like, well, the Doctor in Frontier in Space.

It’s a satisfying ending, and there are some nice codas, too. There’s a heartwarming reunion between Mr and Mrs Pond, with any though of a love triangle involving the Doctor now firmly banished. The Doctor feeds Nixon’s paranoia. Canton wants to get married. And River, returning to prison (“I escape often enough, thank you. Besides, I have a promise to live up to. You’ll understand, soon enough.” Bet that’s significant.) kisses the Doctor. For him, it’s their first. And then she realises that for her, it’s their last.

The penultimate scene has the Doctor speculating on the identity of the little girl but then changing tack: “Or we could just go off and have adventures.” This seems deliberate. Has the Doctor realised or guessed something which he wants to delay facing up to? It wouldn’t be the first time. Oh, Amy should perhaps name her baby “Schrödinger”.

Six months later… that’s quite a scene. And that was quite a story. Doctor Who doesn’t get much better than this.

Doctor Who: The Impossible Astronaut

“I’m going to need a SWAT team ready to mobilise; street level maps covering all of Florida; a pot of coffee; twelve jammie dodgers and a fez.”

Right. Well, I was going to do both this and Day of the Moon in a single post, but my notes for this episode alone stretch to more than three pages, so there’s no way I’m doing that. This is going to be long.

I watched this from a recording I made at the time, so I’ve just been briefly reminded of Don’t Scare the Hare and its cutting-edge animatronics and gripping quiz show suspense, surely the very high point of Sue Perkins’ career. My, wasn’t the world a rather odd place a few weeks ago? Anyway, we get quite a bang of an opening, don’t we? Cavaliers, The Great Escape, silent comedy- it all looks rather swish. And those days of people imagining the Doctor might possibly be asexual are a long way behind us. Time has passed and things have happened, though: Amy and Rory have set up house together, and surely that must have taken a few months; their house seems quite fully furnished. It’s made clear that this isn’t permanent, though; they’re confidently expecting the Doctor to explode back into their lives at any moment. And sure enough, in a scene resonant with Back to the Future II and, indeed, Moffat’s own Blink, someone at the door has an invitation, with a time and a place…

Elsewhere and elsewhen, in the Stormcage, River Song has received the same message. In a rather amusing comment on how often she seems to escape these days, there’s an awful lot of hoo-hah over the mere fact that she’s packing.

We get our first shot of the location scenes shot in America next, and it’s truly magnificent, as are a lot of shots to come. Amy and Rory get off a big American yellow bus into the red Utah desert with all those fantastic sticky-uppy things. And there they meet the Doctor (“I wear a Stetson now. Stetsons are cool.), and then River. It seems that was a pistol she was packing. And her opinions of the Doctor and headgear are as firmly expressed as ever.

The Doctor’s being a bit cryptic, though. He was 908 when Amy and Rory last met him; now he’s 1,103. Not only that, but he seems to remember a lot of the events from River’s diary. And he says ominous sounding things, like “I’ve been running faster than I’ve ever run. I’ve been running my whole life. Now it’s time for me to stop.”

The scene switches from a diner (how American!) to a picnic by a lake, surrounded by some breathtaking landscape. The Doctor, sadly, still needs educating about wine. But Amy sees a watching figure: a Silence. (An aside: my hearing is a bit dodgy and I watch pretty much all telly with subtitles when I can. The subtitles always have the Silence as “the Silence”, not “The Silents”: singular “Silence”, plural “Silence”. Are subtitles canon?). And then an older bloke in a car pulls up nearby and waits.

A figure in a late 1960s NASA spacesuit emerges from the waters like a Sea Devil, and the Doctor sees that the time has come. “Stay back,” he warns Amy, Rory and River. “Whatever happens now, you do not interfere.” So the astronaut shoots him point-blank. Twice. He starts to regenerate. The astronaut shoots him again. Dead. At this point the bloke in the distance (Canton Everett Delaware III, who has also received an invitation) helpfully assures us that the Doctor is “most certainly dead.” And Amy, in voicing aloud the clone / duplicate hypothesis, seems to have ensured it can’t happen. Oh dear. It’s all looking rather unambiguous.

Except that, back in the diner, they find a fourth envelope. And the Doctor. It’s his earlier self- he’s only 909- but River slaps him anyway. We now have a situation where Amy, River, and Rory can’t tell the Doctor what just happened in case bad timey-wimey stuff happens. This is a problem, as the Doctor is bound to notice that they’re hiding something big. He does. And he’s not pleased. In fact he’s only convinced by Amy swearing on fish fingers and custard, as you do. And yet… surely the Doctor would have correctly guessed what this would mean? He’s not the type to be satisfied with not knowing, and surely he already knows enough for the possibility to have occurred to him?

In 1969, a young Canton has been called in by President Nixon. Tricky Dicky is being telephoned, every day, by a child who’s afraid of the “spaceman”. The child seems to be called Jefferson Hamilton Adams. Oh, and the Doctor is taking notes, right there in the Oval Office, which gets quite a reaction. But the Doctor, soon joined by the Legs, the Nose and Mrs Robinson, is soon able to get everyone on his side by Being Very Clever. Midnight this ain’t.

That doesn’t mean they’re safe though: Amy sees a Silence again, and remembers the earlier time. Does this imply that the earlier time was the first time she’d seen one? She doesn’t wait long until the next time either; there’s a Silence in the ladies’ loo. A male one, too. What a perv. It’s quite horribly effective how the other woman in the room sees it, forgets, sees it, forgets, and is then dismissively and shockingly killed by a lightning effect similar to that we saw at the end of The Lodger. Amy keeps her wits about her; she takes a pic on her phone, and the Silence doesn’t seem to know what it is any more than would anyone from 1969. There’s an interesting exchange, too. Amy must tell the Doctor “What he must know. And what he must never know.” Interesting. I wonder if we’ve all been understanding this correctly at all? The vague wording suggests some prior conditioning. And it seems that Amy is being told to actively tell the Doctor both what he must know and what he must not, instead of just telling him one thing but not another. Am I reading too much into this?

The Doctor traces where in Florida the calls are coming from (somewhere close to Cape Kennedy), and drops heavy hints at Canton that he should come along for the ride. He knows, of course, that it’s an obvious trap, but it’s intriguing; why is so much ultra-modern, yet indisputably NASA, technology found around here? There’s a manhole cover, too, which River decides to investigate. She’s “quite the screamer”, apparently. Ooh er.

River sees loads and loads of Silence just underneath, and then returns to pronounce the all clear. Interestingly, though, she goes back underground, this time with Rory, and feels momentarily sick. Is this significant?

These tunnels are “really, really old”, and have been here for “centuries” and run underneath the entire planet. Yet no one has ever noticed them, implying one of Moffat’s perception filters. Yet, if that is the case, how come the Doctor & Co noticed this one?

River’s conversation with Rory here is most interesting and tragic. When she first met the Doctor, this mysterious and unflappable stranger, he knew everything about her, and she found him irresistible. But every time she meets him, he knows her less and less: the Doctor’s confrontation with her earlier, in which he made it clear he didn’t trust her, must have really hurt. She knows that one day the Doctor won’t recognise her at all, and “I think it’s going to kill me.” Certainly ironic in the light of Silence in the Library. Speaking of which, about that title… you don’t think? Naaah…

They emerge into a control room exactly the same as the one in The Lodger. They’re surrounded by Silence, all identically dressed. Why are the Silence wearing suits, by the way? Do they dress like humans, or is it the other way around?

Amy and Canton have an interesting little chat too, and Amy says that she hasn’t seen the Doctor for “a while”- I’m asking this a lot, but is this significant? She then chooses one precise moment, just after they all hear the little girl’s voice, to tell the Doctor that she’s apparent. The exact timing of this bombshell certainly is significant: Amy even says that “It has to be now.”

Inside the spacesuit is a little girl. And Amy shoots her. The credits roll. And... one of the actors was playing “The Silent”. You should probably ignore what I said earlier about the Silence / Silents thing. Subtitles might not be canon after all…

That was well good.

Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang

The Pandorica Opens



“I hate good wizards in fairy tales. They always turn out to be him.”

So. This is, actually, it. The end of the Marathon for me. It’s not the end of my reviews (or my blog), which will continue elsewhere (if you're reading this on my blog, that means here!) until they reach the present. But it feels great to have finally reach a goal which was set way back on 23rd November 2008 when all this began. I’ve got an awful lot to say about the Marathon, but I’ll leave that to another post in another thread. This review is going to be long enough.

Like its successor, this episode begins with a very long, very epic and very cool pre-titles teaser. We get cameos from Churchill, Liz Ten (she and River are contemporaries, and it’s 5145, which is not in the 51st century. Continuity error?) and Van Gogh, and another amusing escape from the Stormcage by River in what is fast becoming a standard trope of the series under Moffat. I love the Mos Eisley scene, where River acquires a Vortex Manipulator. The “hello sweetie” moment is a particularly good one, although of course Moffat will have to top it next time. And again. And again. Interestingly, by now the Doctor is by now looking rather pleased to be summoned by River. It’s all looking like a long game of romantic comedy, written by someone who’s supremely well-qualified.

The set-up takes us to Rome, 102 AD, where River’s determination to pose as Cleopatra is not dented by the fact that said monarch had died 131 years previously. We learn that Vincent has painted a… painting, of an exploding TARDIS, with some co-ordinates. It shares a title with this episode. What does this mean?

The Doctor declares the Pandorica to be a fairytale (fairytales again), said to be for imprisoning the most feared thing in the universe. Then we’re off on location to Stonehenge, before budgetary issues send us back to the studio and the “Underhenge”. And here’s the Pandorica. It certainly looks the part.

But the Pandorica’s opening. And many people known. They have for some time. And the skies are swarming with starships. Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans are mentioned. Then River reels off the names: “Terileptil. Slitheen. Chelonian. Nestene. Drahvin. Sycorax. Haemo-Goth, Zygon. Atraxi. Draconian.” This is such x-rated fanwank porn. Especially for we admirers of Gareth Roberts’ New Adventures novels.

I was relieved by the Doctor’s reaction to Amy finding the ring; however awkward it may be for him, he doesn’t lie to her and urges her to remember forgotten things. This, of course, hints rather heavily that something is about to happen Rory-wise. More hints follow- the Doctor refers back to Amy’s house, and how big and empty and strange it is, with “Too many empty rooms”. Amy’s life doesn’t make sense; the crack has evidently made her forget more things than just Rory.

There follows a rather excellent action sequence with a particularly scary Cyberman (we can’t have all exposition, no matter how brilliant it is), and Amy is saved by… Rory! And faints. I love the Doctor’s reaction to him- failing to spot the obvious and then poking him to make sure he’s real. Matt Smith and Arthur Darvill are bloody good actors.

While River vworps off in the TARDIS, the Doctor recaps the season arc to Rory (and the audience). River lands somewhere, and the camera pans to the screen. It’s 26/06/2010, and there’s a crack in the screen. Suddenly a voice says “Silence will fall!” I’m keeping note of exactly what that voice sounds like. No reason. And what’s this unexplained external force controlling the Ship?

River soon uncovers the truth; the entire Roman encampment, and even the Pandorica itself, are constructed from Amy’s memories. This entire situation is an elaborate trap. The Pandorica opens…

Meanwhile, in some rather brilliant scenes, Amy gradually remembers Rory. And he turns into an Auton and shoots her. Shoots her dead, apparently. Things are not going well. Particularly as the Doctor is going to be unable to stop the explosion of the TARDIS from erasing all of creation from history itself, on account of his being forever sealed in the Pandorica. Bummer. It seems a strange alliance, though. The last time the Daleks and Cybermen met, they didn’t actually get on. And Silurians? What are the Adherents of the Repeated Meme doing there?



The Big Bang



“It’s a fez. I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool.”

Lots of witty lines this ep, but only one of them was ever going to be used for the quote…

It’s The Eleventh Hour all over again, shot for shot, as Amelia Pond prays to Santa. But things soon diverge; no TARDIS lands, and there are no stars in the sky, whatever that star cultist Richard Dawkins may think. But who’s that befezzed figure posting something through her letterbox?

All this timey-wimey stuff is such fun, and it’s great watching it start to unfurl. Amy’s words as she’s released from the Pandorica by her younger self are such a brilliant tease. After all, things have been simple so far, right?

So, Rory rescues the Doctor with some help from said befezzed future Doctor, and we’re off. Earth is the only thing left in the universe, the last light to go out. And Amy can only be saved by putting her in the Pandorica to slowly heal, to be revived by the touch of her future, younger self 1,894 years hence. And Auton Rory stands and guards the Pandorica for 1,839 of those years, disappearing only during the Blitz.

We get to see the timey-wimey stuff as the Doctor sets everything up. With a fez and a mop, naturally. And a drink snatched from Amelia’s younger self as she’s now thirsty. I love that bit. There follows a bit of bother with a stone Dalek, but luckily they’re saved by a security guard, who turns out to be Rory. Unsurprisingly, Amy snogs Rory. For a long, long time.

Unfortunately, a future version of the Doctor pops up from twelve minutes in the future, and immediately snuffs it. There’s nothing like a deadline to focus the mind, and the Doctor springs into action. All of history is already starting to collapse, so there’s no time to lose; the young Amelia, now superfluous to the plot, has already been erased.

There are no stars, so the Doctor reasons that the big fiery thing in the sky is in fact the exploding TARDIS, complete with River, in a time loop. Good job it’s coincidentally providing the earth with exactly the same amount of energy as the Sun did, eh? But following a bit of fervent fashion criticism from Amy and the now-rescued River, the Doctor is apparently shot and killed just as he’s explaining his plans for “Big Bang Two”.

But, as River says, “Rule One: the Doctor dies”. All that stuff with the Dalek (and River being really rather bad-ass) is all just a distraction so the Doctor can do stuff with the Pandorica.

The Doctor plans to pilot the Pandorica into the heart of the TARDIS, which will get all of the pre-end-of-universe stuff still inside the Pandorica to explode, which will apparently put the universe back the way it was. One snag; the Doctor will be the wrong side of the cracks as they disappear, and will be erased from existence. He explains this to Amy is one last conversation, and urges her to remember her absent patents. She has no memory of them, because “There’s a crack in time in the wall of your bedroom. And it’s been eating away at your life for a long time now.”

The Doctor’s plan works, the universe is saved, and he slowly rewinds back through his life on the way to oblivion. We see the trip to Space Florida last week (love the specs, Amy), and Amy posting a certain note on the window of Craig’s local newsagent. We then see a certain scene from Flesh and Stone from a new perspective. Then it’s Amelia again, sleeping as she waits for the Doctor to return. Matt Smith is magnificent as he delivers one last speech to the sleeping Amelia. He accepts his melancholy fate, but knows that if only Amelia can remember him, there’s a chance.

At last, the morning of the wedding has arrived. We meet Amy’s parents. We cut to the wedding breakfast, and we’re waiting for the father of the bride to make his speech. And here, wonderfully, a gift from River, and the Doctor’s words from years ago, give Amy all that she needs to bring him back. Suddenly even Rory remembers: “I was plastic. He was the stripper at my stag. Long story.” Amy’s friends and family finally get to meet Amy’s notorious imaginary friend. And all the children present get to learn the notorious “drunk giraffe” dance.

I love Rory’s matter-of-fact acceptance that, from now on, he’s “Mr. Pond”. That says so much about him! River’s words don’t say much about her, though. I love it when she’s enigmatic like that. She’s still got the vortex manipulator, I notice.

The Doctor can’t sneak away; the happy couple follow him into the TARDIS and say their goodbyes, but not in the way he expects. There are things to do and adventures to have. And who exploded the TARDIS, and how? To be continued…

Wow. That was a bit good. 5/5.

As for this season, it’s in joint seventeenth place with 3.8/5, a somewhat middling score. This is a surprise to me; it feels much better than that, only being let down by a couple of less good stories, neither of which were absolute clunkers. Certainly the series arc stuff was better than anything we’ve seen before. I can’t wait to continue my viewing…

Doctor Who: The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone

The Time of Angels



“It’s the 51st century. The Church has moved on.”

Now that’s more like it. Bloody hell.

River Song, in what I’m sure is going to develop into a long-running tradition, gets quite an entrance. Having literally stunned Mike Skinner off of The Streets with some hallucinogenic lipstick, she casually leaves a message in Old High Galifreyan for the Doctor to find twelve thousand years later, and then arranges to for him to be her getaway driver, all in the coolest way possible. All whilst wearing the sort of heels that make me quite pleased to have been born with a y chromosome. Very cool indeed.

The River / Doctor dynamic is great, and this time she’s found entirely new things about the way he flies the TARDIS to annoy him with. Then there’s the whole “spoilers” angle, with which she can annoy him so more. And Matt Smith does annoyed so well. Better still, Amy is added to the mix, teasing him about “’er indoors”. The three of them together are great.

So, we have Amy’s first alien planet, and somewhere on it there are Weeping Angels which actually kill people. We also have a bishop, leading a squad of fighting clerics. Here’s hoping they have Cure Light Wounds memorised. Pity that Turn to Stone isn’t a clerical spell. That was an in-joke for those of us who have played D&D. Thought I’d better point that out for the benefit of the other 100% of you, if I may semi-steal a remark from the Moff himself to the great Neil Gaiman.

We get an excellent spin on an old Moffat meme as some footage of a Weeping Angel turns out to be more than just footage. The scenes with Amy trapped alone with the footage are terrifying, especially as we keep cutting to the Doctor reciting some wonderfully evocative quotes from a book which underline exactly how much trouble Amy is in. This is proper scary. Fortunately, Amy is proper clever.

There are brilliant concepts scattered around like confetti- the gravity globe (which will become important later), the Maze of the Dead- and we get our first inkling of some dark secrets of River’s. Only when they’re deep into the cave do we realise that every single statue is a Weeping Angel. Oh, and Amy is turning to stone. This is even scarier than the earlier scary bit. Moffat is very good at scary, I’ll give him that. Sod it, he’s very good at pretty much everything.

The friction between the Doctor and the clerics and his interaction with Bob before and after his death are great moments. And this adds power to the Miss Evangelista-like use of Bob’s voice, and forelock-tugging personality, as the mouthpiece of the Angels.

This whole thing was planned by the Angel on board the Byzantium, in fact: it crashed the ship to wake up a massive army of Angels. An army which is surrounding the Doctor and co, and draining the energy from their torches. That’s what I call a proper cliffhanger.




Flesh and Stone



“A forest in a bottle in a spaceship in a maze. Have I impressed you yet, Amy Pond?”

If there’s one thing I love more than a proper cliffhanger, it’s a proper resolution. And this is one of the most proper resolutions ever. It doesn’t cheat; it uses elements which were subtly hinted to us earlier; I for one never guessed how they’d get out of that one. Nice one, Moffatt. Again. This sort of thing with shifting gravity on a spaceship is exactly the sort of thing that space opera sci fi really should be doing all the time.

We have intrigue amongst the danger as the bishop threatens to tell the Doctor who River really is, but much more than that is to come. It’s the crack in the wall again, and the arc plot is very much back in play in only the fifth episode of the season. New showrunner, new rules.

Of course, this being Moffat, we get scary, too. Amy’s counting down to her doom, which the Angels are doing purely to terrify her, for “fun”, is but a prelude to the ordeal she’s got coming. She has to spend most of the episode with her eyes closed, surrounded by really scary things. She has to walk through the Angels as though she can see. But she can’t, so we even see them start to move.

But, of course, the crack is a much greater threat than the Angels, whose plans for harnessing its power suddenly don’t seem so clever. The Doctor now realises the potential of a crack that can rewrite time, and it’s been happening around him; a duck pond with no ducks, Amy not remembering the Daleks and, best of all, “The Cyberking. A giant Cyberman walks over all of Victorian London, and no one even remembers.” Ha!

There’s coolness with the characters too, though. This new Doctor can be wonderfully Doctorish (I use tautologies now. Tautologies are cool.), with his seat of the pants spontaneity and his “Respect the thing!” And then there’s that scene with Amy and a jacketed Doctor, which just might possibly be revealed to have been frightfully clever. But there are plenty of revelations for now; the bishop is River’s probation officer. The crack was caused by an explosion on what we find out is the date of Amy’s wedding, 26/06/2010.

The bishop gets a fantastic, dignified death, perfectly scripted and performed, and gets a wonderful last line. He also gets to die with exactly the sort of cryptic revelation I hope to have ready for the time when I duly snuff it: “She killed a man. A good man. A hero to many.” But he has a reason to be satisfied with his death in a way the other clerics don’t. For those who believe in an afterlife, the thought of being erased from history and being irrevocably dead must be truly terrifying, and he at least is spared that thought.

The resolution, with the number of Angels present being just enough to seal the crack, is a little neat. But I think it’s earned. This is a fantastic two-parter. 5/5.

But we’re not done yet. There’s a fascinating conversation between the Doctor and a handcuffed River. “The Pandorica?” scoffs the Doctor, on being told they’ll meet again when it opens. “That’s a fairy tale!” “Oh, Doctor,” River replies. “Aren’t we all?” For a subtext, this fairy tale stuff is being foregrounded rather a lot. Could we eventually find out there’s more to it than we assume?

And yes, there’s the scene in which Amy is quite determined to get inside the Doctor’s pants. Ooh. Controversial. Dare I wade in? Well… I think this is perfectly fine. It arises naturally from the characters and their heightened recent circumstances. Think back to the extreme terror Amy’s being put through, keeping her eyes shut right until just before they say goodbye to River. Plus, women are allowed to be actively sexual, y’know. Yes, she’s getting married soon, and to have actually done it in those circumstances would have been wrong, but she doesn’t. And she clearly isn’t thinking anything close to normally after her last few hours. This is in character and, while Amy is wrong to do what she does, she can legitimately plead temporary insanity, I think. And the consequences (Rory joining them on the TARDIS) are quite proportionate, I think.

Oh, and speaking of consequences, I’ve just seen the second new scene on the DVD. Top stuff!