Doctor Who, Series 5 - Episodes 12 & 13 - The Pandorica Opens and TheBig Bang

SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUTS


THE PLOT

Through a complicated chain of events, a message for The Doctor is sent across time through a string of colleagues; from the visionary Vincent Van Gogh through a painting delivered to Winston Churchill to a phone-call rerouted to River Song to an ancient message carved into a mountainside at the beginning of time, The Doctor and Amy are sent to a Roman-Empire era Britain. It is there, under Stonehenge, that River has discovered The Pandorica - a legendary artifact spoken of in the legends of all sentient races that is said to contain the greatest threat to life in the universe.

Things get complicated when The Doctor discovers that The Pandorica is broadcasting a signal across time and throughout the universe and that a grab bag of his greatest enemies are en route to seize The Pandorica. Throw in the fact that Rory - thought dead and erased from time - is now living among the Roman soldiers stationed nearby and that River and the TARDIS become lost in time and space following a trip to 21st Century Britian and things go beyond complicated. And when an alliance unseen leaves The Doctor trapped, Amy dead and the entire universe minutes away from never having existed in the first place, things go so far beyond complicated that we need an entirely different word to describe just how complicated things have become!





THE GOOD PARTS

* The true nature of The Pandorica. While I guessed fairly early on that it contained The Doctor ("...Goblin. Or a trickster, or a warrior. A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies.") I was not expecting it to be empty at the moment or that it was the result of every single Doctor Who villain teaming up to contain The Doctor after it becomes apparent that he is - somehow - responsible for the increasing destabilization of the universe. It's a concept that has been explored before - that The Doctor causes more trouble than he fixes - but it's never been presented in quite so staggering a manner.

* Matt Smith gets a lengthy speech worthy of The Doctor which manages to be all his own even as it gives literal shout-outs to battles fought by the the Ninth (I - AM - TALKING!) and Tenth (IT - IS - PROTECTED!) Doctors.

Come on! Look at me! No plan, no back-up, no weapons worth a damn! Oh, and something else I don't have: anything to lose! So! If you're sitting up there in your silly little spaceships with all your silly little guns and you've got any plans on taking the Pandorica tonight, just remember who's standing in your way! Remember every black day I ever stopped you and then, and then... do the smart thing: Let somebody else try first.


* Rory really comes into his own as a character in these episodes, proving to be all too human even as a robot. (Trust me - that makes perfect sense if you've seen this episode.) The Boy Who Waited Indeed.




THE PROBLEMS

* The only real problem with this story is that - by all rights - it would have been the perfect final Doctor Who adventure. The bittersweet near ending, in which The Doctor comforts the young, sleeping Amelia Pond as part of one last good deed before seemingly heading off to save the universe one last time by sacrificing himself to seal the hole in reality, leaving behind a more mundane world free of the threats of Dalkes and Cybermen... that would be a great way to end the series if it ever must end.

* The whole twisted logic chain in The Big Bang in which Steven Moffat indulges in the sort of time-travel trickery more often associated with Bill and Ted than Doctor Who. And unlike the last time Steven Moffat did this in Curse of the Fatal Death, it's not all that funny. That being said, I did like The Doctor running around in a fez.



The Final Verdict: A rare season finale that would be a serviceable series finale as well. It has very few problems, save that this story would be a perfect ending but it isn't an ending and that the comedic use of Time Travel really doesn't seem appropriate given the dire circumstances at the time. Still, these two episodes made the whole season worthwhile. Even Victory of the Daleks.

Doctor Who, Series 5 - Episode 11: The Lodger

SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUTS


THE PLOT

Stranded in modern times after a sudden jolt knocks him out of the TARDIS and sends Amy spiraling out of control through the Time Vortex, The Doctor is forced to find a place to stay and blend in while trying to get Amy and the TARDIS back. This leads The Doctor to the building of one Craig Owens and the room he is renting.

Craig is a rather ordinary man - Bit overweight. Bit of a geek. Dull job working in a call-center. Hopelessly crushing on his friend Sophie. The sort of bloke whose typical evening plans consist of "pizza, booze, telly" and whose weekends are filled with football with his mates before a night out at the pub.

Being a reasonable sort, Craig has no problem with trying to reach out to his new flatmate and trying to help him get to know people. 3000 pounds in hard cash, up-front for the rent and the ability to cook omelets like a gourmet French chef will buy a lot of good will. At least up until the point that The Doctor proves to be a natural footballer despite not being sure if you need sticks to play it or not, starts encouraging Sophie to follow her dreams of working on a wildlife preserve and move away and, in what proves to be the final straw, fills in for Craig at his job and proves to be beloved by all even after insulting Craig's biggest client.

But The Doctor will not be moved when Craig demands that he move out. Because The Doctor is not the strangest lodger in Craig's house. There is something upstairs powerful enough to stop the TARDIS from landing properly and it will take some low-tech jiggery-pokery and yes - Craig's help - in order for The Doctor to sort things out.

Thankfully, things end happily with The Doctor recovering the TARDIS and Amy, setting up the stable time loop that enabled him to save her (she wrote him a note telling him he needed to go to Craig's house in the future) and Craig - having finally opened up to Sophie about his feelings - allowing The Doctor to keep his apartment keys, saying he'll always have a place to stay if he needs it.

Of course everybody is in such good spirits that they fail to notice the glowing crack behind the fridge in Craig's kitchen...





THE GOOD PARTS

* More than any episode so far this year (and, possibly, in the entire new series), this one truly explores the nature of The Doctor as the eternal outsider and does it well.

* This episode also sets up and explores the differences between the Eleventh Doctor compared to the Ninth and Tenth Doctors. Whereas Nine and Ten seemed to recoil in horror from the idea of living a mundane or domestic existence (remember how pained he looked when Rose broached the subject of settling down and getting a job when it looked like the TARDIS was lost forever?), Smith's Doctor seems to revel in the novelty of the mundane and things like having an ordinary job or just hanging out...even as he proves to be truly horrible at managing it.

* Craig is a wonderful character and you can really feel with his plight in trying to deal with his strange new roommate and the weirdness around him as his routine is shattered.




THE PROBLEMS

* Really, I only have one problem with this episode but it is a big one. Namely. there are some aspects of The Doctor's lack of knowledge regarding what ordinary people do that seem a little far-fetched.

* To my mind, it would make more sense for The Doctor to be overly-knowledgeable to the point of confusion rather than ignorant, as he is here for the most part. The Doctor fixing up a gourmet meal as a light snack is believable. The Doctor not remembering what the standard month's rent is in the year 2010 and overpaying is believable. The Doctor not knowing what Football is and being unable to understand basic metaphors (i.e. annihilate the other team) isn't.

* On that note, granting that it is generally accepted that sometimes The Doctor's memories can fade somewhat following a regeneration and that skills and knowledge don't necessarily carry over between incarnations, it seems a little hard to believe that Eleven would be totally unfamiliar with how Earth screwdrivers don't have on-switches. After all, this is the same man (well, nearly) who criticized Romana's lack of historical sense when she complained that none of the artwork in the 1979 Louvre had been made on a computer.

* We get that Eleven is not nearly as much as a people person as Ten but it's a little hard to believe that The Doctor need instructions on how to hang out at a pub considering he spent a goodly while hanging out at a pub with Vincent Van Gogh not one episode ago!





THE DOCTOR'S DICK MOVE OF THE WEEK

It's hardly intentional but The Doctor cock-blocking Craig as he's trying to make his move on Sophie is heartbreaking. You can see him wanting to say "I Love You." You can see her wanting to hear him say "I Love You." Everybody can see what is happening and what SHOULD be happening... except for The Doctor, who is more than happy to socialize at the worst possible time.



The Final Verdict: Despite several large leaps in logic regarding what The Doctor shouldn't reasonably be able to know about modern British culture, this is a rather enjoyable episode that explores The Doctor's alien nature even as the personality of his 11th Incarnation. It is enjoyable enough but it really should have come earlier in the season where it really could have helped introduce the new Doctor to the masses.

Doctor Who, Series 5 - Episode 10: Vincent and the Doctor

SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUTS


THE PLOT

Taking Amy to an art museum - apparently determined to do as many things as she wants following Rory's death - The Doctor notices something odd a painting by Vincent van Gogh. Some sort of face in a church window that The Doctor can't identify but knows - somehow - isn't right.

One trip back in time later, and The Doctor and Amy are quickly hob-nobbing with Vincent. Reluctant at first to accept their friendship (Vincent's brother has sent a LOT of Doctors to try and help him, he says), he is quickly won over by Amy's charms and praise of his paintings. The three are forced to flee to Vincent's house after a dead body is discovered and Vincent - considered a madman, bum and terrible artist by the villagers - is blamed.

The Doctor quickly discovers that the culprit is some manner of alien beast, invisible to his senses but somehow visible to the unusual perspective of Vincent van Gogh. He is able to identify the monster using some equipment from the TARDIS and a trap is quickly set for the monster. Naturally, The Doctor and Amy wind up in danger and it is Vincent who saves them using the sharpened points of his easel legs as a weapon to stake the beast's heart.

Grateful for the save, and for his attempts to show them the night sky as he sees it, The Doctor and Amy take Vincent for a ride in the TARDIS and take him to the present, where his paintings are now in museums and he is considered the greatest artist ever by a respected curator. They return Vincent to his home time and go back to the present again, with Amy running into the museum to see what other new paintings Vincent must have made. She is disappointed to find that there are no new paintings and that her inspiration did not prevent Vincent from committing suicide... although one of his paintings now features a dedication to Amy.





THE GOOD PARTS

* I like that they don't explain exactly how Vincent is able to see the monster. All too often Doctor Who does try to assign spectacular abilities to historical figures through some unconvincing technobabble (i.e. William Shakespeare in The Shakespeare Code) and it's nice to see them decide that no explanation is necessary for once, since true genius cannot be defined.

* I also like the twist that it is Vincent who winds up saving The Doctor - not the other way around. Okay, it's hardly the first time a historical figure has been the one to save the day (think Charles Dickens in The Unquiet Dead) but it's still rare enough to be enjoyable.

* I'm not ashamed to admit I cried during the scenes where Vincent tries to show The Doctor and Amy how he sees the world or the magical moment when The Doctor takes Vincent to a modern day museum and shows Vincent that not only is his work remembered but that he is widely regarded as one of the greatest painters ever.




THE PROBLEMS

* Amy doesn't really get to do much but look cute and inspire Vincent, which does little to refute the accusations of her being a Mary Sue.

* Just how DOES a race of bestial giant space chickens with inoperable wings travel through space? Anyone?





THE DOCTOR'S DICK MOVE OF THE WEEK

It's a subtle point, but I'd say that it's The Doctor apparently throwing himself into the role of amusing Amy without having even tried to tell her that her fiancee and the love of her life has been erased from reality. Admittedly, I'm not sure how he could even begin to go about convincing her of this... but keeping it a secret can't possibly be healthy - especially given the obvious signs that SOMETHING inside her realizes that something is wrong.



The Final Verdict: A solid episode that gets to the heart of what Doctor Who should be about; history, the human condition and hope.

Doctor Who, Series 5 - Episode 9: Cold Blood

SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUTS


THE PLOT

Exploring what turns out to be a vast Silurian city, The Doctor and the older scientist lady are captured by The Silurians even as Amy and the dad are able to escape from the medical lab. Amy and Dad are quickly recaptured as they try to save The Doctor and the older scientist lady and their lives are threatened as the Silurians make contact with Rory, the older scientist and the mom on the surface.

While all this has been going on, things have been going from bad to worse with the mom having tasered the captured Silurian soldier to death. The Silurian military leader threatens to kill their hostages when Rory refuses to show her THEIR hostage and is about to shoot Amy when the Silurian's political leader shows up, dresses down the military leader and tells her to get lost.

The Doctor immediately tries to set up negotations between the Silurians and the Humans - trade advanced technology in exchange for a place to live on the surface. And it's all going great until Rory and company show up with a dead Silurian hostage and Mom makes a few unenlightened remarks about living in peace with lizardmen that are roughly the equivalent of using the N-word in an insulting manner in Harlem.

Well, there is much running around as The Doctor makes arrangements for everyone human to get back to the TARDIS, the Silurian Leader agrees to put his people back into hibernation for 1000 years in the hopes that mankind will be ready for them then and the poisoned older male scientist is put into hibernation as well, along with the older female scientist, eager to see the world of the future and help ease the transition between the two races.

So it looks like things are okay. Until another Crack in reality opens. The Doctor thinks he sees something in the Crack and tries to reach in and take it. Unfortunately, the leader of the Silurian military chooses this moment to crawl in, declare her desire for revenge and try to kill The Doctor. Rory takes the shot for The Doctor, dies, and is enveloped by energy as The Doctor pulls a screaming Amy back onto the TARDIS.

Despite The Doctor's best efforts, Amy is unable to rememeber her fiancee as the energy from The Crack erases Rory from history. The only sign that he ever existed seems to be the engagement ring Rory left on the TARDIS counsel. And so the episode ends with The Doctor dropping Mom, Dad and Elliot back in 2020, telling them that it is up to them to start preparing people for the Silurian's inevitable return and The Doctor finally examining the object he pulled out of The Crack... which turns out to be a piece of the TARDIS.





THE GOOD PARTS

* The make-up effects on the Silurians are some of the best I've ever seen on Doctor Who.

* The plot is a nice, modernized take on the themes that inspired the original Silurian stories. The key difference is that instead of being a metaphor for the Capitalist cultures of Western Europe and the Communist cultures of the East, this story is a rather effective parable about the evils of racism and how fear and hatred make monsters of us all; a very relevant subject in both the US and the UK right now.




THE PROBLEMS

* Amy pick-pockets the guard with her hands cuffed down. Really?

* The Doctor asks Elliot to forgive him for letting him run off alone. While it's nice to see this Doctor admitting that he can make mistakes, I don't think this is something he should have to apologize for... at least not without all the other adults who weren't keeping an eye on the kid apologizing too.

* Those noises the Silurian makes as she is tasered to death? I don't think those are "pain" noises.

* The supporting characters STILL aren't very distinct or interesting and I can't be arsed to remember their names.

* Even the rather loose laws of time that Doctor Who follows are stretched to the breaking point by Rory's death and subsequent removal from time. To wit, he died pushing The Doctor out of the way of an energy blast, which kills Rory and leads - indirectly - to his body being absorbed by the energy from The Crack and erased from time. But if there was no Rory, then The Doctor should have been shot. And yet, he was perfectly fine after Rory was erased. Even if you grant that once a person is erased, a logical paradox can't save them (i.e. if Rory wasn't there to die, he wasn't there to be erased either) The Doctor should have been retroactively wounded.





THE DOCTOR'S DICK MOVE OF THE WEEK

Amazingly enough, he didn't have one.

The closest he comes is telling off Mom for giving into her fear and anger in a profoundly dickish manner. But since she actually deserved it, it's not really all that dickish.



The Final Verdict: A brilliant idea with a strong script heavy in allegory and some amazing visuals is left grounded on the runway by some questionable acting choices, uninteresting supporting characters and ludicrous leaps in logic.

Doctor Who, Series 5 - Episode 8: The Hungry Earth

SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUTS


THE PLOT

Accidentally traveling to 10 years in the future (2020), The Doctor, Amy and Rory find themselves in a Welsh village. The Doctor and Amy wind up investigating a nearby mining site after The Doctor feels something strange in the Earth below. Meanwhile, Rory - who returned to the TARDIS to drop off Amy's engagement ring for safe-keeping - is mistaken for a plain-clothes policeman and is recruited to investigate an apparent grave robbery on his own,

It turns out the mine is home to the most ambitious digging project ever. Naturally, like the dwarves of Moria, they dug too deep and uncovered something best left buried. But unlike the dwarves, they uncovered not a giant made of shadow and fire, but a group of Silurians.

Silurians, for those of you who haven't seen the Original Series, are a race of lizard men who took refuge within the Earth before the mammals took over. They don't much like humans in general, trespassers in specific and are - not surprisingly - responsible for both the grave robbery and the disappearance of several other living people... including Amy.

Taking refuge in a church, The Doctor and Rory manage to trap one of the Silurians in the basement. The Doctor and one of the head miners then descend into The Earth to find Amy and the other missing people as Rory and the rest of the miners are pushed by their hostage to kill her, thus starting an official war between their races. And under the Earth, The Doctor is horrified to find that what he thought was a small hole with a dozen Silurians is actually a great cavern, stretching for miles, housing an entire civilization.





THE GOOD PARTS

* Rory continues to impress here, honestly trying to muddle through helping the people who mistake him for an cop.

* The reveal of the Silurians as the culprits is a good one and not immediately obvious, even to long-time fans of the show. They are explained well enough even if The Doctor's history with them is somewhat glossed over.





THE PROBLEMS

* Not enough Amy.

* The Doctor/Rory alpha-male posturing was old after two episodes. Three is more than enough.

* The Doctor's "I'm not scared of monsters. They're scared of me" speech is painfully stilted and a sad echo of a similar speech David Tenant once gave.

* The supporting cast don't stand out at all. I can't remember any of their names or any personality traits apart from old male scientist, old female scientist, mother and the kid.





THE DOCTOR'S DICK MOVE OF THE WEEK

This line says it all.

Old Male Scientist: You're not making any sense, man.
The Doctor: Excuse me! I'm making perfect sense! You're just not keeping up!



The Final Verdict: A fairly weak opening for what will hopefully be a stronger Part Two. Karen Gillian's charisma becomes apparent the minute she disappears from the show and we are left with a weak supporting cast, The Doctor and Rory fighting for supremacy (albeit briefly) and the return of a Classic Series villain whose return is, frankly, a surprise for once.

Doctor Who, Series 5 - Episode 7: Amy's Choice

SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUTS


THE PLOT

Five years in the future, Amy Pond is married, settled down with Rory Williams and pregnant. Their quiet life is thrown into sharp relief when The Doctor comes for a visit.

Meanwhile, in the present, The TARDIS is dead in space and slowly drifting into a cold star - a star that radiates the coldness of the void as an ordinary star radiates heat. Here it is still the relative present for The Doctor, Amy and Rory and they are in very serious danger.

A switch in time and suddenly it is the future again. And a parasitic alien race that is hiding inside the bodies the village's elderly citizens emerges, intent on invasion and conquering the Earth.

A switch again and our heroes are back on an increasingly cold TARDIS.

A switch again and they are surrounded by zombie-like old people, who exhale an acidic mist through eyes in their mouths that kills within seconds.

A switch again and ice is forming on the TARDIS controls.

Which world is the fantasy? Which is reality?

Do you choose the mundane life with Rory or the life of adventure with The Doctor?

This is the choice that is leveled at Amy by The Dream Lord - an all-powerful being who is to the world of dreams what The Doctor is to Time, who has apparently set up this little test of wills - not only as a test of the character of our three heroes - but also to help Amy decide what is most important to her, as The Doctor and Rory both fight over which reality is the true one.





THE GOOD PARTS

* The Dream Lord is easily one of the best new villains to be created in the new Doctor Who series and a great callback to the classic cosmic villains of the original series, such as The Celestial Toymaker. The nature of his creation also seems to be a shoutout to The Valeyard - another villain whom many fans (including yours truly) have suggested may be appearing in the new series very soon.

* The mystery of which reality is the fake one is played off VERY well.

* Lots of good drama here as Amy's obvious attraction to both of her "boys" and what they have to offer her is explored.

* Rory finally comes into his own here, both in his actions to save an unconcious Amy and in - once again - telling off The Doctor. He's not quite as forceful as Mickey but he does prove himself to be capable in a crisis.





THE PROBLEMS

* The only real problem is The Dream Lord's motivation - if The Doctor dies, doesn't that mean he dies as well since he is a part of The Doctor? I suppose he could be the kind of crazy evil that doesn't care so long as the enemy is destroyed but still...

* Additionally, the hordes of old people shambling around on their walkers is more comical than sinister, which may well have been the intent.





THE DOCTOR'S DICK MOVE OF THE WEEK

The Doctor's assertion that he never abandons companions brought a chorus of "Yes You Do!" from everyone in my viewing group.

Seriously - just ask Sarah Jane Smith about The Doctor's ability to stay in touch after leaving the TARDIS.



The Final Verdict: Easily the best episode of Series 5 so far. A new villain. A story set in the classical mode of the early William Hartnell stories. And a Doctor who is horribly out of his element and dealing with forces even he can barely cope with for once. But - once again - the real treat and center of the action is Amy's inner struggle as she tries to decide what she really wants out of life. Almost a perfect episode.

Doctor Who, Series 5 - Episode 6: The Vampires Of Venice

SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUTS


THE PLOT

The Doctor crashes the bachelor party of Amy's fiance, who is revealed to be Rory (aka the male nurse from The Eleventh Hour. After telling Rory that he snogged his fiancee in front of all his friends, The Doctor drags him off to go on a romantic trip with Amy. Why? Well, The Doctor figures that the stress of time travel was getting to her - which is what led to the whole "take me now" incident last episode - and that sooner or later relationships where one person has traveled in time and the other one hasn't are doomed to fail.

So they go to Venice in 1580. Nice romantic setting spoiled only by an outbreak of the plague and everyone getting dragged into a mystery involving creatures that appear to be vampires after only being on the ground for five minutes.

The Doctor's attention is grabbed after he sees Guido - a man who gave his daughter over to the girl's school run by local noble Rosanna Calvierri - trying to find his daughter among a series of veiled girls, only to be horrified when he finds his own daughter doesn't recognize him. Meanwhile, Amy and Rory discover Rosanna's son Francesca draining the fluids from a local flower girl in a shaded alley. The Doctor manages to sneak inside the school briefly, but flees after discovering that all the girls in the school have fangs and do not appear to cast reflections.

The four reconvene and discuss what they know. Amy quickly comes up with a plan that Rory will pose as her brother, put her in the school and then she can unlock a storm gate which connects to a tunnel under the school that Guido discovered. The plan does work, but it turns out that Madame Calvierri saw through Amy's psychic paper credentials and Amy is taken into the basement shortly after unlocking the gate and locating Isabella, Guido's daughter.

Amy discovers that the "vampires" are indeed taking young women and changing them into creatures like them but that instead of sucking blood, they suck all the water out of their victims before injecting them with their own blood. This triggers a transformation that either kills the victim or changes them into a "vampire". Amy is also told that she will soon have her pick of over 10,000 husbands.

The good news is that Isabella recovers enough of her senses to help Amy escape. The bad news is that she is unable to exit out of the tunnel (the light is too bright for her) and she is quickly recaptured. She is then made to "walk the plank" over the canals of Venice for being a traitor and no sooner does she hit the water than she is pulled under by... something.

It is here The Doctor decides to take the direct approach and just breaks into the school alone, catching Madame Calvierri alone in her throne room and offering to trade an answer for an answer. She agrees because she's awfully curious as to who is running around 1580 Venice with psychic paper. The Doctor reveals himself as a Time Lord and Madame Calvierri explains why she and her students appear to be vampires with a wonderful bit of Whovian technobabble.

(Short answer: their race is naturally sensitive to intense light and heat, a bug in the device that makes them look human makes it unable to replicate reflections and their lamprey-like teeth show up as normal due to a "self-preservation loophole")

We find out that Madame Calviverri is the last female survivor of a fish-like race known as the Saturnynian and that she and her sons became trapped on Earth in this time period after a crack in reality opened, destroying their world. Most of her sons are living in the canals of Venice, unable to stand the light of the surface. Her plan was to take in unfortunate women - who probably would have died anyway - and change them into women of her own species, in order to insure that her race will continue on. She asks the Doctor to help he with establishing a new colony elsewhere, which he flatly refuses to do after learning that they killed Isabella because "you didn't even know her name!"

Make a long story short (too late) Guido dies after blowing up his own house to destroy the vampire girls, Amy kills the one male human vampire with sunlight reflected by a mirror and The Doctor disables a weather control device Madame Calviverri was going to use sink Venice. Defeated, Madame Calviverri - still disguises as a human woman - throws herself to her own sons and is devoured, shortly after telling The Doctor that he shall have yet another dead race on his conscience. As the group are leaving Venice, with Rory having agreed to travel a bit longer with The Doctor and Amy, an eerie silence - like the one Madame Calviverri described - falls over Venice.





THE GOOD PARTS

* The dialogue here sizzles and there's a lot of good comedic moments. Small surprise given that this was written by Toby Whithouse - the same bloke who wrote the Second Season episode School Reunion.

* The mystery around the Vampires is a good one and the technobabble regarding them highly plausible - at least by Doctor Who standards.

* The conceit that The Doctor is actually trying to help preserve Amy and Toby's relationship after his experiences with Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith is a nice touch.




THE PROBLEMS

* They are REALLY inconsistent about just how badly sunlight affects the vampires. One focused sunbeam reflected in a mirror is enough to trigger a fiery explosion and the girls all walk about the town in heavy veils. But pulling the veils off during the day doesn't seem to have any ill physical effect and at the end Madame Calviverri is able to walk about on a relatively clear day in her nightgown with no apparent ill effects.

* Rory isn't very well developed as a character. In fact, the best way to sum up his character and role in the episode is this.

1. Take Season One Mickey Smith.
2. Take out all the charm and competence.
3. Make him a white boy.

That's Rory in a nutshell so far. Even his speech where he tells off The Doctor for making people do dangerous things to impress him comes off as a bit weird, given that Rory barely knows The Doctor at this point. No offense, but it's hard to see why Amy got engaged to the twit and not at all hard to see why she ran off with The Doctor the night before her wedding.

* Speaking of Amy, I've been joking about how this has become The Amy Pond Show (indeed, there's even a Facebook page devoted to this concept now) but now it really does seem to be the reality, with Amy calling The Doctor and Rory "her boys" and The Doctor not arguing at all with the concept.

* There's one major problem with the core idea of this episode. And I'm going to discuss that in a new regular part of these reviews that I call...





THE DOCTOR'S DICK MOVE OF THE WEEK

We've pretty much established at this point that The Eleventh Doctor is a colossal dick. So from now on, rather than discussing my current opinion on the newest Doctor's personality, I'm going to chronicle the many ways in which he practices what is known in the American vernacular as "Superdickery".

This week? The fact that there is no good reason for The Doctor NOT to offer to help Madame Calviverri and that his direct actions doom an entire race to extinction.

Hear me out on this.

Yes, she is a technical and actual murderess - having basically ended the lives of dozens of young women and actually killing several others in the process or to cover up her secrets.

Yes, she is plotting to destroy an entire city for the sake of her family and her species.

But she offers to stop.

She asks The Doctor for help.

She says she'll be happy to set up a colony elsewhere and start her species anew someplace besides Earth... and the Doctor refuses her because she didn't know the name of one Earth girl he never even met past a few seconds running away from the vampire hordes?

Now, granting that it is totally in character for The Doctor to hold someone he likes (or, rather, the daughter of someone he likes, but let's not quibble on that point just yet) as being more important than the welfare of an entire race or the sanctity of the time-line, there are two things we have to consider.

1. This Isn't The First Time The Doctor Has Been In This Situation - The Doctor being asked to help save a dying race who is perusing questionable means to continue their existence is hardly a new occurrence. Just from the new series you have the Gelth from The Unquiet Dead, the Krillitane in School Reunion and the Human/Dalek hybrids in Evolution of the Daleks.

And in all of those situations - even when dealing with his worst enemies - The Doctor was always willing to consider helping them out until a better solution could be found. Which brings us to...

2. He'll Save The Daleks But Not The Saturnynian? - Seriously? He offered to save Davros and The Daleks in Journey's End and they're a HELL of a lot less innocent than Madame Calviverri and her sons! Davros was a mad scientist of the old-school who was out to rule the universe through genetic engineering before going completely insane and setting out to destroy the universe. The Daleks are born and bred fascists out to destroy everything that isn't 100% genetically pure Dalek by their standard. Not much chance for reform, there.

Compare that to the Saturnynian who - yes - are a race of monsters straight out of Lovecraft (fish-people changing human women into their own race for breeding purposes... why does that seem familiar?) but whom have only resorted to doing this to keep their species going after their home world was destroyed by an accident that The Doctor seems to be at least partly responsible for. They're monsters but at least they have a motivation beyond "EXTERMINATE!" and have been trying to mitigate the damage by limiting themselves to converting women who were going to just die anyway. And sure - they were going to destroy the whole city - but The Doctor didn't know that until AFTER he'd already refused to help them.

When you get right down to it, the only reason The Doctor won't help is because Madame Calviverri didn't bother to learn the name of some person whose identity she was erasing anyway and whom The Doctor NEVER EVEN MET!



The Final Verdict: A brilliant premise and sparking dialogue can't disguise inconsistent rules regarding the vampires, the utter blandness of Amy's fiance and The Doctor's own hypocrisy when it comes to just when he can be arsed to save someone.

Doctor Who, Series 5 - Episode 5: Flesh and Stone

SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUTS


THE PLOT

Continuing from where we left off last time, we find that the Doctor's shooting the gravity globe allowed the local gravity of the spaceship to extend to the point that by jumping upward, the party was able to "fly" toward the spaceship and away from the Weeping Angels.

Moving into the ship and further into "the oxygen factory" (i.e. forest) contained within it, everyone continues to flee into the woods as the Angels start to penetrate the ship. It is then that things become even more complicated as a crack - identical to the one in Amy's wall - begins to open up in reality and time energy begins to flood the area. Energy that threatens to erase a person from reality completely so it is as if they never existed.

And as if this weren't enough, it turns out that by looking a Weeping Angel in the eye, Amy has "captured" one in her optical nerves and - similar to the video image that slowly allowed a Weeping Angel to be born - is causing another Weeping Angel to be born inside her head. Thankfully, closing her eyes cuts off the stimulus that is feeding the angel. Unfortunately, this leaves her totally defenseless to the other Weeping Angels already in the forest, as the soldiers begin to blink out of existence, one by one, with nobody but Amy remembering that they ever existed.

Thankfully, it all works out in the end as The Doctor comes up with a cunning plan mixed with a bad joke (gravity of the situation), The Angels are all sucked into the crack (which seals it) and River Song is taken back into custody by The Church having earned a few more brownie points toward parole. We learn that her crime involved her killing a good man - "the best man I ever knew" and she cryptically tells The Doctor that he will see her next "when the Pandorica opens".

The Doctor takes Amy home at her request, some five minutes after they left. She shows him her wedding dress and explains that she is supposed to get married in the morning before trying to seduce The Doctor - an act he will have no truck with. It is then, looking at her clock, that The Doctor makes a connection between some numbers he got while scanning the crack and Amy. The numbers he got were 26062010 or 26-06-2010 or 26th of June 2010 - the day of Amy's wedding.





THE GOOD PARTS

* The story here is very well paced with a lot going on but everything moving well.

* The scene with The Doctor comforting Amy finally gave Eleven some heart... and it raised some more interesting questions. More on this below.

* The conceit of having a blind woman having to move around a group of Weeping Angels is brilliant!

* We finally get to see the statues move... and it is every bit as creepy as we could hope for.

* A few more details about River Song, which give us nothing but more questions but they are the good kind of questions that lead to fun geeky discussions. Such as who is the good man that she killed? (Okay, obviously we're MEANT to think it is The Doctor... but who is it really?)




THE PROBLEMS

* Why can't the angels hear The Doctor talking to Amy over the communicator? Are they deaf in statue form? This may explain why The Doctor explains that the statues turned to stone on reflex upon seeing Amy, because otherwise they should have known she couldn't see them when they moved in and they didn't change. Still seems a bit cheap though.

* For that matter, why don't the rules about Weeping Angels seeing one another triggering the stone reflex seem to apply anymore? The Doctor gets surrounded by angels at one point, which means those angels SHOULD have been frozen since they were on both sides of The Doctor at that point.

* The 'gravity of the situation' pun. Dear gods...





WHAT DO I THINK OF THE DOCTOR NOW?

I really liked the scene where he comforts Amy and kisses her on the forehead. But I liked it more upon the second viewing when I noticed something odd I missed the first time.

THE DOCTOR IS WEARING HIS COAT!

Earlier in the episode, one of the Weeping Angels was able to get close enough to grab his coat. He left it behind and was without it for the rest of the episode... except during the scene where he goes away with River and then seems to come back right away to comfort Amy.

The operative word being "seems".

Unless there was one big whopping continuity error while they were filming this, it looks like The Doctor - either through deliberate travel or a wrinkle in time later - came back to comfort Amy at a time when she very much needed someone but he couldn't really spare the time to do so.

Either way, that's kinda cool. And it says a lot about how The Doctor feels about Amy given that he was willing to violate one of the bigger rules of crossing your own timeline just to give her some comfort. Of course if it turns out this IS just a continuity error, all bets are off. But if I'm right, this would seem to fit my theory regarding how the regeneration shapes the personality of each incarnation. Everything we've seen paints a portrait of Eleven being a much gruffer and less expressive man than Ten but still caring deep down.

This seems to have been confirmed with the scene at the end where... oh good lord... Amy tries to have her way with The Doctor. And he is appropriately horrified by her behavior, further driving a wedge between him and his previous incarnation - the man who snogged Madame Du Pompadour, fell in love with a shopgirl from London and probably deflowered The Virgin Queen.



The Final Verdict: A strong conclusion to a relatively slow starting first part. Fast-paced and exciting, even if it does raise more questions than it answers. The Doctor is starting to grow on me and I no longer mind him so much though I still miss David Tenant in the role. And Amy continues to be awesome beyond even the dimensions that Scottish redheads in short skirts are awesome in general.

Doctor Who, Series 5 - Episode 4: The Time of Angels

SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUTS


THE PLOT

While showing off in a museum by pointing out everything that is mislabeled or just plain wrong to Amy ("It's how you keep score, isn't it?"), The Doctor stumbles across an alien black box with words inscribed on it in the ancient Time Lord language. Figuring out that the message was left by River Song (a companion from The Doctor's future he hadn't met yet, whom first appeared in the Steven Moffat story Silence in The Library and whom knew far more about the Time Lords and The Doctor himself than The Doctor ever thought he'd tell anyone willingly), The Doctor uses the black box recording to track down just where and when River was and get a message of her saying a list of TARDIS coordinates. He arrives just in the nick of time to save her from being lost in space after she blows the airlock of the ship.

Following the crashed ship, The Doctor finds out that River was trying to get his attention because of what was inside the ship - a dormant Weeping Angel (aka the quantum assassin monsters from the Steven Moffat story Blink) - and that she is working for The Church (now a much more militant body than on 21st Century Earth) to destroy the creature. The Doctor, having suffered at the hands of a Weeping Angel before, is all too eager to help despite his own dislike/aversion to River, who is just as eager to flaunt everything she knows that other people don't as he is.

Amy just barely survives an attack by the Weeping Angel, after it is discovered that any image of a Weeping Angel - drawings, photographs, video captures - can become a Weeping Angel. The encounter obviously had some kind of an effect on Amy, who hands sand pouring out of her eyes at one point and later hallucinates that her hand has turned to stone.

Going into the caverns underneath the crashed space-ship, The Doctor and Company find a series of catacombs filled with primitive statues. It is not until he is they are well inside the cavern that The Doctor recalls something disturbing - the inhabitants of this planet were two-headed and yet all the statues they see only have one head. A quick flick of the lights confirms The Doctor's fears - the statues around them are all severely deformed Weeping Angels, made weak and indistinct by centuries without food... and the radiation from the crashed starship has given them power enough to wake up. Trapped between a literal rock and a hard-place, The Doctor asks his companions if they trust him, takes a gun from the leader of The Church soldiers, and shoots out one of the gravity globes in the base of the ship.




THE PROBLEMS

* There's just too much going on here. Between an expansion of the lore regarding what little we know about the Weeping Angels, the drama between THIS Doctor and River Song, the subplot regarding just why River is working for the church and why she was in prison at one point in the past, Amy's continued adjustment to the general weirdness around her and the central thrust with The Doctor and company going on a bug-hunt ("Game over, man! Game Over!"), it's a little hard to follow everything even if you know the characters. I can only imagine how confusing this episode must be for any newbies who HAVEN'T seen Series 3 and Series 4.

* Quite honestly, the mysteries and subplots of the supporting cast (River Song's past, what is up with Amy after her encounter with the angel) and what we learn about the Weeping Angels are much more interesting than The Doctor and the main plot.

* The Doctor continues to be an unlikeable dick. More on this later.






THE GOOD PARTS

* The opening scene with River Song IS a glorious spy-epic tribute that plays really well.

* Amy continues to impress, managing to save herself - well, mostly - from the Weeping Angel by pausing the video during a skip in the recording of the Weeping Angel.

* The Weeping Angel coming through the video screen scene is pretty damned effective. Not quite as scary as Blink but it does answer some longed-joked about questions regarding how Weeping Angels reproduce - they just wait for some idiot to come along and do their portrait. :)





WHAT DO I THINK OF THE DOCTOR NOW?

He's not just a dick in general. He's a dick who goes out of his way to push people's buttons.

He seems to hate River - not just because she used him to get out of a tight spot - but because she does seem to be smarter than he is. He goes out of his way to stick it to the Bishop and his men, to the point of acting like a kid poking an anthill with a stick. In fact, he's so obnoxious that I actually cheered at the end when the Weeping Angel (speaking through a simulation of the soldier it just killed) mocks The Doctor for allowing other people to die while he is showing off.



The Final Verdict: The action in the background is more interesting than the main story. That's a problem when you're bringing back the most feared monsters of the current series. As it is, there's just way too much going on to focus on anything what with the return of River Song, the hint of her secret past, the loathing between The Doctor and River AND the return of the Weeping Angels. Even the ending is anti-climactic.

Doctor Who: The Greater Regeneration/Personality Adaptation Theory

In my reviews of Series 5/Season 31, I made reference to my theory regarding The Eleventh Doctor's personality in the wake of his regeneration from Doctor Number Ten to Doctor Number Eleven and said, in grand Doctor Who fashion, that I would explain later.

It is now later.



A quick catch-up for those who are new to the party. Regeneration is a Time Lord super-power that... well, why not let The Ninth Doctor explain it?

"See, Time Lords have this little trick, it's sort of a way of cheating death. Except... it means I'm going to change. And you're not going to see me again... Not like this. Not with this daft old face."

That's it in a nutshell. Any time a Time Lord suffers several physical trauma, they can regenerate their body. But this has the dual side-effects of changing the Time Lord's appearance AND personality.

In reality, this is a very clever way of allowing the show to continue with a new Doctor every time the current actor playing The Doctor retires from the role. But it has never been explained in the reality of the show (or at least, not in any of the episodes or books I've seen) just WHY a Time Lord's personality and appearance has to change whenever they regenerate and how the nature of death might influence their next incarnation.

The popular theory which I subscribe to is that a Time Lord's thoughts and emotions during regeneration will influence the base personality of their next incarnation. This is hardly a new theory, I found out, but I cannot remember where I first read the idea after I proposed it to my friends following the regeneration of Nine into Ten. I haven't seen all of the episodes of the old series involving The Doctor regenerating but I have seen enough of them to think there's some merit to the idea. Of the ones which I have seen...


1. Three to Four - The Third Doctor was a very much the man-of-action and the closest The Doctor ever came to being a James Bond hero. Exiled to the planet Earth for most of his "life", the Third Doctor worked with the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (U.N.I.T.) as a scientific adviser, protecting the Earth from various alien and supernatural threats.

Shortly before his regeneration into The Fourth Doctor, The Doctor was granted the privilege of a working TARDIS and was able to explore Time and Space freely again. He still worked with UNIT during this time but it was apparent he was coming to resent being tied down to a military organization though he did still wish to help protect Earth.

When his death came about because of a mutual need to "confront his fear" and to prevent a disaster he was directly responsible for causing, it is easy to see how The Doctor might come to be frustrated about his responsibilities and at having "died" so soon after finally getting a chance to explore the universe once again.

The Fourth Doctor was probably the most anti-authoritarian incarnation The Doctor had. He also had the strongest sense of wanderlust. As soon as he had recovered, he was very quick to hop in the TARDIS and try and get away from Earth. He was reluctantly dragged into helping UNIT fight a corrupt group of scientists attempting to take over The Earth with an indestructible robot and left to explore the universe again at the earliest opportunity. And only the promise of a chance to stop the Daleks once and for all could get him to submit to the authority and commands of the Time Lords.


2. Four to Five - When the Fourth Doctor died, disabling a doomsday device that arch-enemy The Master was using to ransom the universe (say what you will about The Master: he never thought small), his final thoughts were of his many companions as he lay surrounded by his current companions. His final words were a reassurance that he was fine and that he had been prepared for this moment.

The Fifth Doctor was a much more protective and loving man than his previous incarnation. Not that The Fourth Doctor didn't value those he traveled with but with the Fifth Doctor the relationship was more paternal... more protective.


3. Eight To Nine - We don't know anything about exactly how The Eight Doctor became The Ninth Doctor, save that it was definitely a result of the end of The Time War, when The Doctor sealed both The Time Lords AND The Daleks away from the rest of the universe for all time.

Forged in war, The Ninth Doctor was a harder, more violent man than any other Doctor before. He was quick to seek violent solutions to problems, thinking nothing of - in his first appearance - blowing up a department store in order to disable an alien transmitter device when he could have probably could have disabled it with less fuss.


4. Nine To Ten - The first on-screen regeneration in the new series, The Ninth Doctor sacrificed himself to save his companion Rose's life after she - in turn - risked her life in order to save him as he faced down a revived Dalek army.

Looking into the heart of his TARDIS, Rose had absorbed a dangerous amount of Time Vortex energy that temporarily gave her god-like powers over time and space. Rose spoke about being able to perceive everything that had happened or would happen all at once - a sensation The Doctor had described to her before when trying to convince her of his alien nature. Taking her hands, he said "I think you need a Doctor," before kissing her and absorbing the excess energy into himself, thus saving her life at the cost of his own.

A lot of fans were upset by this - the idea of The Doctor expressing his love of a companion in such a dramatic fashion much less the suggestion of the alien Doctor being able to feel attraction for a human female. However, I think it made a certain amount of sense precisely because The Ninth Doctor WASN'T that comfortable with expressing emotions and he probably felt - in that moment - that they were both likely to die anyway. He was the last of his kind in the universe and had made himself hard in order to cope. When Rose met him, he was saving the Earth more out of habit than out of any honest love of the place. And it was Rose who got him to start coming out of his shell - to start seeing the people he was saving as individuals and not as a faceless mass that needed protection.

It was only in this final moment - when he realized the depth of Rose's feelings and what she was willing to do to save him - that he realized his own feelings for her and what she had done to heal his heart. And it was in this moment that he was able to express himself.

So what does this have to do with The Tenth Doctor?

While the Ninth Doctor did loosen up a fair bit in his travels with Rose, he still wasn't a good fit for her. For one thing, people kept saying he looked too old for her. (If they only knew, eh?) So what better way - now that he realized his feelings - than to regenerate into a younger-looking, more empathic man who could more easily express his emotions?

Not that this totally freed him up to express himself openly. And the whole "I'll still look the same once you are dead and buried" thing was still an issue for him throughout Season Two. But by the time of Doomsday, it seemed that he and Rose had achieved some measure of understanding. And while saying "I love you" might have been a bit beyond him, he certainly showed his feelings in other, smaller ways. But there was no doubt to his feelings once the end of Series Four came around.


5. Ten To Eleven - Toward the end of his life, Ten wound up causing a lot or problems for himself due to his ability to emotionally attach to his companions in specific and people in general. He wound up damaging the Timeline due to his efforts to save the life of one woman he was fond of in The Waters of Mars and he ultimately died to save the life of one man - his companion, Wilf - after risking his life to save all of reality from the Time Lords and somehow surviving what he expected to be his certain death.

So in the final hours - during which he found time to help all his old companions out one lsat time - it probably occurred to The Tenth Doctor that had he been more concerned with his duties than his friends he might have avoided hubris. And had he been a harder man, willing to let an old soldier die a heroic death instead of taking it upon himself so that that man might be spared - that he might have lived a longer life. Of course such ideas are unthinkable to somebody as noble and sacrificing as The Tenth Doctor and it probably scared him that he could think such things. But in the end, his final words said it all: "I don't want to go."

So where does this leave the Eleventh Doctor?

Thus far, of the three episodes, I've seen - he certainly seems to be a much harder man then Ten. Less empathic. More cerebral. Very Sherlock Holmes like. More focused upon his duties as the last of the Time Lords than he is upon impressing his companions or meeting interesting people around the whole of Space and Time.

It's a bit too early to say but I THINK that is how this is playing out with Eleven.

What do you all think? Any other Doctor fans out there have any light to shed on the regenerations I didn't cover?

Doctor Who, Series 5 - Episode 3: Victory of the Daleks

SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUTS


THE PLOT

Answering the call from Winston Churchill, The Doctor arrives one month late. It seems Churchill originally wanted to have The Doctor inspect the new "Ironsides" weapon that one of the British scientists created - a robot with highly advanced weaponry. Now he is content to brag about the new devices which will enable them to win the war easily.

The Doctor is quick to identify the "Ironsides" as Daleks and will not let the subject drop, going as so far as to keep hitting one of the Daleks with a wrench until it confesses, all the while shouting that they are Daleks and he is The Doctor. This leads to the scientist who created the Ironsides being exposed as a Dalek-built android and the Daleks themselves having .. a cunning plan.

The Daleks uncovered a device containing pure Dalek DNA - these Daleks presumably being some of the ones left over from Journey's End who were made from Davros's DNA and thus not Pure Daleks. The device wouldn't recognize their request to start making new Daleks until they got conformation from an outside source (i.e. their worst enemy, The Doctor) identifying them as Daleks. Not that this stops the pure-bred Daleks from destroying the impure Daleks once they are cloned, mind you...

With The Daleks using a device to force the lights in London to stay on, making the whole city an inviting target for an approaching fleet of German bombers, it falls to Amy and Winston to persuade the Dalek android to make use of some other ideas he "had" and put them to work, enabling a squadron of Spitfires to enter orbit and do battle with the Dalek flying saucer, thus disabling the uber-light-switch.

They are successful, but the Daleks have one card left to play - a bomb capable of destroying the Earth built into the android. The Doctor lets the Daleks flee rather than risk the Earth but - naturally - the Daleks power on the bomb anyway. The Doctor tries to disarm the bomb by getting the android to recall memories of his human life but it is Amy who actually gets the bomb to shut down by making the android recall a woman he was in love with once.

The Doctor and Amy leave, with Winston cursing the Doctor's refusal to help them win the war and Amy's noticing his trying to pickpocket the TARDIS key. Still, he and The Doctor part as friends, Amy comments on The Doctor's ability to make enemies so easily and as the TARDIS fades out... we see another glowing crack in the wall...




THE PROBLEMS

The short version is that this episode raises a whole lot of questions and none of them are particularly nice ones or questions that can be neatly answered. The long version is... well...

1. Only The End Of The World Again - We all know it's inevitable that sooner or later, The Daleks WILL return somehow, so long as there is still a Doctor to fight them. Still, would it have hurt them to have waited a LITTLE while longer before bringing them back?


2. Why does Winston Churchill have The Doctor's phone number? - Given that The Doctor never saw fit to give that information to most of his old companions, it seems a bit unbelievable that he'd give it to someone that important - much less someone who is actively trying to get him to change the course of history.


3. Why doesn't Amy's outfit raise more eyebrows? - A leggy redhead in a denim mini-skirt is going to get a lot of attention today. I can't imagine what the response would be in a 1940s British military bunker. I wouldn't expect a lot of "Oh, I say!" talk and sputtering with tea being spit out in shock... but I'd expect at least some staring or a comment upon the "revealing garment".


4. The Dalek's Plan - Okay. So let's just ignore that the Daleks are back. Again. After having been destroyed for all time. Again. And that the one ship that survived just happened to wind up in the vicinity of Earth. Again.

Ignoring ALL of that, consider this. Their entire plan to get The Doctor's testimony that they are real Daleks depends upon...

a) The Doctor just happening along to World War II England.
b) The Doctor taking issue with the "Ironsides" on the grounds that they are Daleks and not that The British Forces using them in the first place because of the obvious anachronism this causes.
c) The Doctor declaring loudly, in front of them, that he is The Doctor and they are Daleks.

I can grant the third point since most of The Doctor's incarnations DO love to make speeches about why various people suck. And I'll even spot you the second point that The Doctor would attack the Dalek problem from the viewpoint of "worst enemy" rather than trying to convince Churchill that using this technology could damage the timeline. But actively taking part in a Terran conflict on the odd chance that The Doctor might show up... yeah.


5. So does this mean that Steve Jobs is Davros? - Apparently I wasn't the first one to comment on this but I did crack wise about this while watching the episode with my friends. The Daleks - much like Apple Computers - are now available in a wide variety of colors.

iDalek - THINK DIFFERENTLY.. OR YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!

I realize that this is apparently meant to be a tribute to old Doctor Who movies with Peter Cushing and the Original Series tradition of a Dalek's casing color equating to what faction they were a part of or what their main function was. That doesn't stop a bright yellow Dalek from looking any less "off".


6. The Ator Factor - The title for this section may require some explanation if you aren't a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 or - more specifically - their screening of the movie Cave Dwellers.

Our hero is Ator - a fantasy hero who was half-Conan and half-MacGuvyer. The plot centers upon Ator being summoned by the daughter of his scientist mentor, to rescue her father from the warlord who holds him captive. The first two-thirds of the movie is pretty standard Beastmaster/Xena territory up until the part where Ator gets to his former mentor's home and needs to create a distraction. This leads to a scene where... well, thank goodness for YouTube, because I don't think I have the words to describe this.

Amusing, I hope you'll agree. But what does this have to do with Doctor Who and this episode in particular?

Because a barbarian suddenly building a working hang-glider and bombs with no resources is only slightly less ridiculous than the Dalek's android scientist...

a) building a working receiver that lets them listen-in on the Dalek's transmissions...
b) actualizing his sketched-out concepts for laser-cannons on Spitfires and a "gravity bubble" that can allow terrestrial aircraft to survive in outer space.
c) getting all of this built and installed on several planes
d) getting those planes into orbit where they can disable the Dalek device that is forcing all the lights in London on.
e) doing all of this in the less than ten minutes that they have before the incoming German bombers reach London.

It might have been fine if he'd said he was already working on this technology and it was all in the prototype phase. But they outright said that they didn't have any of this built yet when the news came in that the lights were on and The Germans were in the air.

And this is all ignoring how much take-off and prep-time you'd need to get a Spitfire ready and up in the air... even if you did have some kind of gravity-powered device that could presumably propel it way from the Earth safely at a faster than usual rate.


7. The Power Of Love Can Stop A Bomb - So The Daleks build themselves a realistic human android that believes it is a scientist who invented the Daleks. Fine. I can believe that. Very plausible.

And it turns out that this android has a doomsday device planted in him that will destroy the whole planet. I can believe that as well. That's a paranoid, plotting ahead, Dalekish thing to do.

And the doomsday device countdown can be dialed back and eventually reset by causing the robot to feel emotions.

THAT I CAN'T BELIEVE!

This is a Dalek machine we're talking about. The Daleks are cold, mechanical killers without a speck of emotion in them. Well, apart from Hatred For Everything That Isn't A Dalek and Fear Of The Doctor, of course. It's inconceivable that they'd have the capacity to build a robot that can feel real emotions in the first place, much less that they'd allow for the capacity that the robot feeling emotions would alter how the doomsday device inside it functioned.


8. Amelia Pond - Defender of The Earth - It just occurred to me that since the first episode of this Season, Amy has done a lot more to save The Earth than The Doctor has. Last episode, it was Amy who realized that The Beast Below was sentient enough to protect children which led to her taking the actions that freed The Beast and prevented the destruction of the Great Britain spaceship. This episode, she is the one who realizes that shouting at a robot to feel something is a poor way to inspire emotion and it is she who started asking it about specific people rather than things it remembers as The Doctor does. Hell, she spots Winston Churchill attempting a bit of slight-of-hand that The Doctor misses when Sir Winston tries to steal the TARDIS Key.

9. Great Idea, Bad Execution. - In the end, I find myself more interested in how The Doctor met Winston Churchill the first time and how they became good friends than I was in this story. And when the idea behind a story is more interesting than the story itself, you have a serious problem.




THE GOOD PARTS

* The actor playing Winston Churchill is brilliant in the part and picture-perfect to boot.

* The idea that Amy doesn't remember the Dalek's abduction of Earth (i.e. The Season Four finale Stolen Earth/Journey's End) is an intriguing bit of mystery.

* The Doctor bluffing the Daleks with a Jammy Dodger he claims is a weapon of mass destruction. Now THAT'S The Doctor we know and love in action!

* Amy continues to appeal more and more as a companion. In fact, she's in serious danger of eclipsing The Doctor as the main hero of the show. More on this in a bit.

* As much as I hated the ham-fisted way in which they were brought about... I do actually like the idea of how we now have some real Daleks again. Not the manipulated humanoid or Davros-cloned ones the Ninth and Tenth Doctor dealt with... but some REAL pure-bred Daleks.





WHAT DO I THINK OF THE DOCTOR NOW?

At the end of the last episode, I thought he was a bit of a dick.

At the end of this episode, I thought he was a bit of a dick AND an idiot savant. And I'm not sure about the savant.

As I noted above, Amy has saved the day twice now by being a lot more emphatically aware than The Doctor. While this does fit in very nicely with my theory vis-à-vis his emotional state and thoughts while dying influencing the personality of his next incarnation, it does little to endear me to Matt Smith's take on The Doctor. Not when he's blundering into traps The Tenth Doctor would have seen from a mile away and not reacting in the least to some strange woman crying over bad news.



The Final Verdict: Oh look! The Daleks are back. Again. And nothing will ever be the same again. Again. The new Doctor continues to fail to impress, though Amy is growing on me as a companion. The idea of Winston Churchill meeting The Doctor proves to be far more interesting than his actually working with The Doctor this time. And a host of plot holes and big questions distract away from the novel concept when the plot proves to be too weak to hold our interest.

Doctor Who, Series 5 - Episode 2: The Beast Below

Right. Delayed a day due to some sort of programming bug messing up the DVRs of both of my friends who have BBC America. Luckily the rerun was tonight and I was able to catch it.

SPOILERS BEHIND THE CUTS


THE PLOT

The Doctor and Amy Pond arrive on The Starship UK - a ship containing the whole of the United Kingdom - flying through space, fleeing an Earth made uninhabitable by solar flares. Breaking out of observation mode in order to investigate a crying girl who is being steadily ignored by the people around her, The Doctor discovers that there is something very wrong with the ship.

Joined by a masked woman who calls herself Liz Ten, The Doctor further discovers that the ship somehow moves smoothly through space despite not having any obvious means of propulsion. At the same time, Amy goes investigating on her own, encounters the tentacle of some giant beast and is eventually released into a voting booth, where she is told that she may learn the truth behind the Starship UK and then must choose to either protest the truth or accept it and have her mind erased.

Eventually, The Doctor uncovers the terrible secret of Starship UK on his own. Namely, that it was built around the body of a giant, sentient space whale - the last known member of its' species - and that the creature has been steadily tortured through several centuries in order to keep the people of the UK safe on their journey. The Doctor is ready to damage the whale's brain, allowing it to hold the ship together and continue traveling but without feeling any further pain. This would, it is pointed out, effectively be the same as killing it but the Doctor is not in any mood to hear backtalk from the people responsible for enslaving a creature like this in the first place.

It is Amy who realizes that while the whale has been force fed numerous "protesters", it had never eaten any of the children that were tossed to it. Making a connection between The Doctor and the space-whale - both the last of their kind - Amy realizes that the whale showing up was no miracle, as the history of the Starship UK says. The space whale heard the screams of the children dying in the disaster that threatened the Earth and came to help. It is Amy who deactivates the controls holding the whale back... but the Starship continues to function and the whale actually swims faster than ever.

As the two are getting ready to depart, a phone rings inside The TARDIS. The man on the other end of the phone is Winston Churchill. And he tells The Doctor that he thinks he will need his help very soon... as the shadow of a Dalek falls upon the wall behind his desk...




THE GOOD PARTS

* The scene where The Doctor explains his logic in figuring out several basic facts about the sort of society he is walking into based on how he people are reacting (or rather NOT reacting) to a crying girl is very well done. It explains how The Doctor seems to know so much even when he is walking into a place that he couldn't know anything about.

* Amy proves to be a very resourceful - if somewhat reluctant, at first - companion. She's naturally curious, as we see her move behind a "KEEP OUT" sign and start picking the locks on the doors there. And we definitely see some nerve and attitude when she tells off The Doctor after he condemns her for trying to hide the horrible truth of the Starship UK from him.

* The doll-like Smilers are a suitably creepy robotic villain and well in keeping with Moffat's ability to find the horrors in the mundane aspects of childhood.





THE PROBLEMS

* It's a little unbelievable that The Doctor is shown to have a fine deductive mind and yet he misses the rather obvious connection between the children being actively spared by "The Beast" and The Beast being far more intelligent and friendly than it seems.

* The relationship between The Eleventh Doctor and Amy is already seemingly a little derivative of Rose and The Ninth Doctor. The ordinary working-class girl who is a calming influence on an angry, vengeful demi-god.

* The no-win situation Moffat proposes here is a great philosophical point... but one has to wonder why on Earth any engineer would develop a system that causes the whole thing to stop working - as well as the utter collapse of society and the death of millions - if The Queen has a brief moment of guilt and pushes a button.





WHAT DO I THINK OF THE DOCTOR NOW?

... he's kind of a dick.

It's in the same way that The Third Doctor was kind of a dick and The Sixth Doctor was REALLY a dick. He's already coming across as much more alien and more oblivious than any recent incarnation of The Doctor.

For instance, he drags Amy into a futuristic marketplace, not noticing or - once she points it out - caring that she is running around in public in her nightgown. Granting that it IS a modest nightgown.... still! He's also very quick to push Amy - who is still adjusting to the whole idea of what he is - into the standard companion role. He abandons her to go investigate the ship engines on his own while she is supposed to talk to the crying girl and figure out why she is upset. The Standard Doctor/Companion ploy of "you talk to the people and charm them while I'll figure out what's going on here."

Eleven is also a lot quicker to jump to violent solutions than Ten was and he's certainly a lot quicker to anger, getting a very nice speech after he learns the truth about Starship UK, in which he says that nobody who is human has any right lecturing him about his plan to turn the space whale into a vegetable just so that it will stop feeling pain.

This actually fits in nicely with a theory of my own regarding how The Doctor changes with each regeneration... but that is for another time.



The Final Verdict: Probably Moffat's weakest story with The Doctor to date. It isn't bad but there are some logical problems with the base concept- brilliant though it is as a philosophical exercise. Amy is growing as a companion but The Eleventh Doctor is proving to be a much harsher man than Ten was and I'm not sure I like the change.

Doctor Who, Series 5 - Episode 1: The Eleventh Hour

As some of you who aren't fans may have heard, a new season of Doctor Who just started with a new actor (Matt Smith) playing the titular Doctor. I've been approached by friends who aren't fans asking me if this would be a good time to get into the show and friends who are fans asking me what I think of the new series.

So by popular request, personal inclination, a desire to help ease some new Whovians into the show and a desire to put a more diverse line of geeky content on this blog, I have decided to begin writing upon my thoughts on the new season of Doctor Who.

SPOILERS AND VIDEOS BEHIND THE CUT!



Okay. First things first - Who is The Doctor?

No, this isn't going to lead into an Abbot and Costello routine.

Doctor Who centers upon a character known only as The Doctor. He claims to be just over 900 years old and is, despite looking perfectly human, an alien. He is also the last surviving member of a group known as The Time Lords.

The Time Lords were, as you might guess from the name, Lords (and Ladies!) of Time. They were able to travel anywhere in time and space using devices called TARDISes - Time And Relative Dimension In Space. At some point in the past, The Time Lords got into a war with various evil alien races - chief among them the war-mongering Daleks - and the conflict between the two races spread out into a vast conflict that became known in legend as The Time War.

The good news is that for the most part (some survivors keep showing up in small groups) The Daleks were totally wiped out and it was as if they never existed. The bad news is that all The Time Lords, save The Doctor, were basically erased from the timeline along with the Daleks.

The Doctor now wanders the universe and all of the time stream, going where he fancies but usually finding people in need and wrongs in need of righting. He has a particular fondness for Earth, however, and frequently takes on companions whom he delights in showing the wonders of the universe.

One other thing must be mentioned: why there have been several Doctors and why The Doctors are usually referred to by number (The Fourth Doctor, The Seventh Doctor, etc.)

The Time Lords have a unique ability called Regeneration that allows them to cheat death for a limited number of times (12 to be exact) in cases of extreme old age or severe physical trauma. The Time Lord's physical body reshapes itself as does - usually - some aspects of The Doctor's mind and personality. While the core of The Doctor's personality remains the same (all of The Doctors have been curious and intelligent), other aspects - such as how likely they are to choose a physical fight over a cunning plan - are changed with each regeneration.

As the new series opens, The Doctor has just regenerated into his 11th body.





The show has always favored dramatic openings, with every version of The Doctor having their own unique introduction.



As you can see, each opening shares common themes. All of them depict something in motion, be it the Doctor's own face or his TARDIS. All of them show this motion through space or some sort of ever-shifting extra-dimensional space. And since The Fifth Doctor, all of them have their own unique remix of the Doctor Who theme.

So how does the new intro stack up against the older ones? See for yourself!



Personally, I think it's a worthy continuation of the line. Replacing the more vague blue/red Doppler shift of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors with blue storms and red lava fields gives the introduction an even greater sense of motion and danger. Lighting strikes the TARDIS, for crying out loud! Mixed with the more orchestral version of the Doctor Who theme, this opening creates a greater sense of urgency





Along with the new Doctor, the show has a new head honcho - Steven Moffat. Despite being new to the command post, Moffat is no stranger to Doctor Who having been a writer for the show ever since it the series was revived in 2005. Indeed, many fans believe that his episodes (including The Doctor Dances, The Girl In The Fireplace and Blink) are among the best episodes in the new series, if not THE best.

He wrote this first episode of the new season, The Eleventh Hour and it is true to his usual form. More than any other writer on the new series, Moffat seems to understand and honor Doctor Who's roots as a children's program. Nearly all of Moffat's Doctor Who work to date has been based around ideas that are - and understand that this not an insult - childlike. The sort of waking nightmare ideas that you have as a child where everything in the world is new... and at times, very very frightening. And you see the evils and think of dangers that no adult would ever think of because they know that you're a silly child and that such things do not happen.

Living shadows who can eat you alive in milliseconds if you step out of the light. Fireplaces that are portals in time and space a young girl can call for help through. Angel statues that are the most dangerous killers in the universe the minute you take your eyes off them. Such are the mundane horrors that Moffat introduced so effectively that many grown adults have reported being nervous around angel statues after watching Blink.





The Eleventh Hour starts off with a perfect note and the perfect metaphor for The Doctor as a character. Crashed on Earth and left with little to do as he waits for his TARDIS to repair itself, The Doctor is asked by a Amelia Pond - the young girl whose backyard he crashed in - to take a look at the crack in the wall of her bedroom because it scares her.

Now THAT is a perfectly childish thing to be afraid of. Crack in the wall. Totally harmless in and of itself. True, it may be a sign of a foundation problem that could cause the whole house to collapse on you, but that's a rather remote possibility and the crack itself isn't a dangerous thing.

It is in these scenes with The Doctor and the young Amelia Pond that we start to get a feeling for this New Doctor and how he relates to The Doctor as a whole. Of course The Doctor is wise enough to know to trust the feelings of children and sure enough - the crack turns out to be far more than it seems. But in this scene - and throughout the episode - The Doctor is treated like an imaginary friend made flesh - The Raggedy Doctor they call him, due to his clothes being a bit torn after the TARDIS crash.

And that makes perfect sense, because at his core, The Doctor is the manifest dream of what all young children wish for adults to be and most of them dream of in an imaginary friend at some point or another. He knows everything but is more than willing to listen to you. He's a child at heart when it comes to seeing new things and exploring but he has an adult's wisdom. And he's more than capable of fighting the monsters in the closet that force you to hide behind the couch.

Anyway, The Doctor tries to get the TARDIS repaired and offers to take Amelia for a ride after he takes a brief five minute trip to get things recharged. Five minutes, however, becomes 12 years and The Doctor quickly finds himself being assaulted by a grown up Amy Pond, who has apparently become a policewoman but never forgotten about The Raggedy Doctor, despite years of therapy.

The two are forced to unite, despite Amy's misgivings, as it becomes clear that a monster escaped to Earth through the crack in her wall and the wardens of its' prison are ready to destroy the Earth rather than let it get away.





I'd like another episode or two to fully judge Matt Smith but so far... I'm cautiously optimistic. I admit to being worried when I first saw a picture of Mr. Smith and thought "Ick! He's way too young and he's got Emo Hair and he looks like a dork in that outfit!" Wisely, Moffat has Smith start out in David Tennant's old suit and his hair - at first - somewhat resembles Tennant's trademark spiky hair-do. As the episode progresses, Smith gradually changes more and more of his appearance and clothing until finally - near the end - he is in his "uniform" as it were. And he manages to establish who he is - in a scene similar to one David Tennant had in his first story, when confronting a group of would be alien invaders. And he does so with a greater economy of language.

Hello, I'm The Doctor. Basically... run.

It's a bit early to tell, but... I think the new kid is going to be alright. And I comfort myself in knowing that it took a few episodes for me to get used to David Tennant too.





I'm also enjoying Karen Gillan as Amy Pond. She seems to have combined Donna Noble's nerve with Rose Tyler's adventurous spirit to create something that is... well, not wholly definable yet. Still, it says a lot that she winds up knocking out The Doctor, tries to bluff him with her costume (she's really a Kiss-o-gram girl in a policewoman's costume - not a real cop) and is ready to keep him bound and helpless until she gets an explanation for his just randomly appearing in her house.

Besides... redhead with a Scottish accent... what's not to like?



The Final Verdict: It's not the best episode ever. It's not even the best introductory episode ever. (Rose still holds that honor, in my opinion.) But it is a solid episode and a good start for the new season, the new Doctor and the new show runner. I can't wait for the next episode.

Dr... Who The Hell Is This Guy?

SOURCE: Relative newcomer tapped to take over title role of Doctor Who

From the look of my friends list, The Doctor Who fandom is - as so eloquently put it - "losing its' shit" over this announcement.

On one-hand, I can understand these feelings coming from part of the fan-base.

Perhaps the biggest cause for contention is that there were several reputable rumors that Paterson Joseph (probably best known to American sci-fi audiences for playing The Marquis De Carabas in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere) was up for the part and was practically a lock. Personally, I'm disappointed Patterson didn't get the part - not because of the step-forward in having an actor of African descent playing The Doctor - but because he's a damn good actor and his take on The Marquis De Carabas would be a PERFECT tone for The Doctor.

And then there were the rumors/hopes that The Doctor could regenerate into a woman and that ceiling could be broken. Those rumors were especially hot given that Stefan Moffat - many fans pick for the best individual writer the New Who has had - is now the show-runner and his first published Doctor Who story depicted The Doctor as being capable of regenerating into a woman. The fact that this story - Curse of the Fatal Death - was a Comic Relief Special hasn't defused any enthusiasm for the idea among some fans.

On the other-hand, I can't understand these people who are freaking out because of the age issue.

Okay. Matt Smith is 26. He's relatively inexperienced and the youngest actor ever to be cast in the part. But he's not THAT much younger than Peter Davidson, who was - at the age of 29 - cast as The Doctor back in 1981. And I have it on good authority that people complained about HIM being too young back then and he did okay.

For that matter, let us stretch our memories back to three years ago. I can recall several people - myself included - who complained about David Tennant LOOKING too young to be The Doctor even though he was 35 when his first season aired and he'll be nearly 39 by the time this last batch of movies is done. That's a few years younger than Tom Baker was when he STARTED playing The Doctor.

If the show has taught us nothing, it has shown that chronological age is meaningless. As long as the actor has the right temperament to play a character who has an old man's wisdom, a child's sense of wonder and a young man's righteous indignation at the stupidity of the world, the rest is all gravy on the meat.

If nothing else, let's have a little faith in Steven Moffat and take him at his word when he says that Smith "...blew us away with a bold and brand new take on the Time Lord...". He's a fan. He was a Doctor Who fan long before he got into writing other TV Shows and he always dreamed of writing Doctor Who as a kid. Trust in the guy who wrote something as creepy as Blink. Trust in the guy who wrote something as revolutionary as The Girl In The Fireplace. Trust in the guy who created Captain Jack Harkness. I don't think he's going to steer us wrong.