The Girl Who Waited (For A Decent Episode): Doctor Who Review

** CONTAINS SPOILERS **

Third week of Doctor Who and you have no idea how happy I am to be typing that it’s third time lucky. After two fairly disappointing weeks “The Girl Who Waited”, written by Tom McRae, really renewed my faith in the series with a well-developed and deep plotline. It brought out some raw emotion and heartbreaking decisions, unhidden or obstructed by unfathomable alien technology and complex (and sometimes unnecessary) character backstories.

First off, Saturday (10^th September)’s episode took less than 5 minutes for the danger to begin. Too many Moffat episodes (most notably the half-series finale “Demons Run”) try to throw in too much at the beginning that can have me thinking, “Will you get to the point already?” No sooner have they landed on Apalapucia (say it three times fast), Amy is separated from the Doctor and Rory and landed in a separate, faster time stream. Very quickly the threat of time slipping away becomes obvious when Amy asks, “Where have you been?! I’ve been here a week!” It’s immediate, and it’s not painfully overcomplicated whilst still being interesting and making you think.

The ‘villains’ in this episode posing a second threat other than time, are the faceless white robots that work in the Apalapucia “kindness facility” helping to deal with a plague known as “Chen7” that affects races with two hearts (thus stranding the Doctor in the TARDIS for the remainder of the episode). The robots, however, are not villains at all and merely do not understand that their medicine will be fatal to humans such as Amy and Rory. This is a plot device I always find wonderfully ironic and always interesting, when the threat is great but no one actually means anyone any harm. Like the treat of time passing quickly in Amy’s time stream, it is merely bad circumstance and misunderstanding that lands the characters in danger. I think that this can sometimes be even more worrying than a conscious villain with bad intentions, as it isn’t something that can be reasoned with or appealed to.

"Do not be alarmed, this is a kindness..."

Another thing I thought was extremely well written in this episode was the characterisation of Future Amy, the Amy that has been through thirty-six solitary years in the time it took Rory and the Doctor to park the TARDIS in a different room. She was completely believable as the hardened, bitter future version of Amy Pond, who began to (understandably) hate the Doctor as she entered her fourth decade waiting to be saved. However it was the small human touches that made her character perfect for me. How her hand nervously brushed back her hair and she muttered “Thanks…” when Rory was shocked at hold old she was. The way she almost applied her old lipstick to look nice for her husband. How she had painted a smile on the faceless robot she had reprogrammed to keep her company. That after all this time alone and hating the Doctor, she still wanted to be taken away in the TARIDS and travel the stars. She was definitely a changed Amy… but still Amy nonetheless, and still in tune with the present version of herself wandering the halls of the “kindness facility” in a separate time stream. Brilliantly written, and brilliantly played.  

I also loved that this episode wasn’t quite as predictable as past ones have been. When is becomes apparent that both the present and future versions of Amy will be returning to the TARDIS, and after both Amys and Rory have battled past the robots and look as if they’re going to make it into the TARDIS… the Doctor slams the door in future Amy’s face. Rule number one: the Doctor lies, and future Amy cannot possibly travel on board the TARDIS with another version of herself. It almost seemed out of character of the Doctor to simply abandon someone like that, especially Amy, and to let the responsibility fall on someone else by making Rory decide whether or not to let her in. However it did give Amy the opportunity to show the best of herself, by taking the weight of the decision off of Rory’s shoulders and telling him not to open the door for her. In this way she wasn’t abandoned again; she took control, and gave herself up to the Apalapucian robots who killed her with kindness as she reminisced about “a boy she once met”. Although tragic it was a perfectly rounded ending, especially when the present Amy woke up in the TARIDS and her first words were, “Where is she?”

If I had to say one negative thing about this week’s episode (there’s always something…) I would have to point out that there was a severe absence of the Doctor… he was only really required to pilot the TARDIS. He even refuses to make the big decision in this episode, as after he shuts out the future Amy he ultimately leaves the choice about whether to let her on board again up to Rory, delivers his second impact-heavy line of the episode, “This isn’t fair! You’re trying to turn me into you!” (The other of course being “Then I don’t want to travel with you anymore!”, perhaps foreshadowing more of these feelings to emerge in later episodes?). However apart from that, this has definitely been my favorite episode out of the three so far!

Next week; “The God Complex”, and I think the trailer speaks for itself. Absolutely can't wait, and really hoping that it matches up with this episode’s level of quality and pace!

Night Terrors: Doctor Who Review

** CONTAINS SPOILERS **

Week two of Doctor Who, and this week it was “Night Terrors” penned by Mark Gatiss . As I said at the end of my last review, this episode looked like it was set to be one of my favorites. I love the Doctor Who episodes that play on the fears of the eight-year-old inside us all, the part of our brain that whispers cruel things to us when the lights are off and the shadows on our bedroom walls look like they’ve been cast by something other than our desk chair. These plots work so well because pretty much everyone can relate to them, and can scare even the least superstitious amongst us. Episodes that do this so well include “Silence in the Library” and “Forrest of the Dead”, which justifies a very primal fear of the dark. Another is “Blink”, which ends beautifully by suggesting that every statue is in fact a Weeping Angel. The drive “Night Terrors” can be summed up by one of the Doctor’s opening lines; “We’re going to the scariest place in the universe; a child’s bedroom”.

I really enjoyed watching the character of Alex in this episode, as he was quite believable as the confused and worried father of George, the little boy whose desperate plea to “Save me from the monsters” called the Doctor from across the universe. I love watching the interactions between various human personalities and the Doctor, and this one was particularly enjoyable with echoes of the relationship between the Doctor and Craig Owen (from “The Lodger”, series 5). Alex will do anything to try and help his frightened son, though once the Doctor starts talking about real monsters he panics and demands he leave the apartment, accusing him of making George worse. Once he accepts the idea that George’s monsters in the closet are genuine, the pair of them make a great team at eliminating them. When separated from his companions, I love watching the Doctor make new acquaintances and introduce them to his crazy, scary, wonderful alien world.



The Doctor and Alex

Some more in depth character development for George would have benefitted this episode. Revealed to be a Tenza child, an empathic alien, we discover that George that out Alex and Claire who were desperate to have children but unable to conceive. But apart from this revelation, all George seemed to do was stand/sit there terrified, which was fine for the first half of the episode. I think it would have been brilliant for him to have full on faced his fears instead of just staring at them, and for him to have opened up the cupboard that held everything he was most scared of and shout “I’m not afraid of you!” at the contents, vanquishing the creepy wooden dolls and saving all those inside the doll house. Personally I feel that would have been a more satisfying ending that the whole “Whoever you are, you’re my son” thing with Alex, which was bordering on cheesy.



"Thanks Dad, but I asked for an X Box..."



I would have also really liked to know a bit more about the monsters of this episode, the eerie clockwork dolls that haunted the dollhouse in George’s wardrobe. Were they merely figments of George’s terrified imagination, animations of real dolls (though I’m not entirely sure what kind of parent would buy their child any toy that looked that creepy)? They were a brilliant concept, and beautifully scary… my step-sister whom I was watching this episode with could barely look at them. To me, this means that the idea is spot on. But I still don’t quite understand what they were in relation to George. I’m all for mystery, but some things an audience needs to know otherwise they’re just left confused rather than spooked. For example, why did other characters in the episode, including Amy and Rory, fall through into the miniature doll house world from various parts of the apartment building? It is explained that George is terrified of the lift, so it sort of makes sense that he would “put this in the cupboard” with the doll house. But the living room floor of the landlord? The overloaded bins outside? This needs a bit more than the sweeping generalization that “George is scared of everything” to explain why people disappear in these places.

Sweet dreams kids!

Finally, I really wish the writers would stop using the whole “perception filter” as a shortcut in every other plot. It was a great idea in “The Eleventh Hour”, acceptable to use in “The Time of Angels”, and getting old by the time it was used in “The Lodger”. Now it just feels like cheating. Maybe it has something to do with the Silence, the fantastically haunting race of aliens that you forget as soon as you look away, but personally I’m getting a little board of every other alien using a perception filter to hide their misdeeds. If anything, you’d think that the Doctor would be completely used to it by now.

Once more, this episode has all the components, characters and concepts to be a classic Who episode. Unfortunately the plot remains jagged and doesn’t flow as well as it could do, without the much needed explanation and development. Though I have to say I did enjoy Rory’s reference to the fact that Moffat loves to kill him off whenever possible, with his line “We’re dead, aren’t we? Again.” Something to make the regular fans chuckle is always appreciated.

Here’s hoping that next week’s episode “The Girl Who Waited” will approach some of the personal dilemmas that were disappointingly absent in “Let’s Kill Hitler”.

Let's Kill Hitler (Or Just Put Him in the Cupboard): Doctor Who Review

** CONTAINS SPOILERS **

For those who were not aware, as well as being a huge Potterhead I also consider myself to be a fairly hardcore Doctor Who fan (or ‘Whovian’ for those familiar with the term).  I recently commissioned a very cool charm bracelet off of Etsy.com on a Doctor Who theme. You can call me a geek all you like, but I have already received several compliments and I love it to pieces.

Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond, TARDIS, Weeping Angel, Dalek

Seeing as my blog has been distinctly inactive all summer (I know, I’m sorry) and that the second half of Doctor Who series 6  started on Saturday, I thought I’d give the internet the benefit of my thoughts on each episode. This is mostly to get myself back into blogging regularly, but also because I think if I try and talk to my friends about my opinions on the subject one more time they might disown me.

Kicking off with episode one, “Let’s Kill Hitler”, and I’m sorry to say I was actually less than impressed.

There were three main things I took issue with in this episode, the first being that the entire episode was answer, answer, answer. For me the only redeeming thing about the character of River Song was the air of mystery that surrounded her. It was endearing, and put the Doctor on edge in a way he usually isn’t. He didn’t know who she was, and that made for some excellent chemistry between the two characters. I really love the idea of River… but aside the series 4 double episodes “Silence in the Library” and “Forrest of the Dead”, her personality really grates on me. I’m not even going to get started on the inappropriate and, for the Doctor, out-of-character flirting that goes on. In front of her parents no less, something that they may not know but she sure does. Now her mystery is almost entirely gone. We know she’s Amy and Rory’s daughter, we know that she has Time Lord DNA, we know the reason we never see her regenerate after she does from Mels (a character I will come to shortly). There’s hardly any mystery left in her anymore, and for a character I have a love/hate relationship with anyway, this just pushes her more in the red.



Can't help but question if this shot was really necessary...

 Another thing about the opening episode that I really disliked was the character of Mels. Or rather, not the character but the way that she was simply thrown in for this episode but is shown to be a friend to Amy and Rory from very early on. The flashback scenes of young Amy and Rory were wonderful for the most part, exactly how you’d have imagined their childhood days to have been like. A particular favourite of mine was a young Rory coming into Amy’s bedroom, dejectedly stating “I thought we were playing hide and seek. I’ve been hiding for hours.” The character of Mels herself wasn’t bad. A sassy, over-confident and rebellious friend to both Amy and Rory, not to mention a perfect fit to regenerate into who we know as River Song. But the revelation that she indeed was Amy’s daughter Melody all along sort of flops on screen as she is not an established character. There has been absolutely no mention of her before this episode, but she is supposedly a lifelong friend of the two companions. It wasn’t so much “Oh my goodness!” as “What just happened here?” This would have worked so much better if it had been thought of last series, so we could catch a glimpse of her (even a mention would have been nice) before this “big” revelation.

Finally, this episode is another classic example of how Head Writer Moffat tries to cram in too much at once. With such a striking, speculation inducing title and a very delicate interesting concept to play with, fans of the show were probably expecting to see more of Hitler than about five minutes at the beginning before Rory is told to “put Hitler in that cupboard”. While this was indeed comical, this is the last we see of him. The idea of the Doctor meeting Hitler had the potential to be another brilliant utilitarian versus deontological head battle, after series 4’s “The Fires of Pompeii”, but was reduced to a couple of one-liners for the sake of comedy. A better developed storyline was sacrificed for the sake of the anti-body robots and miniature space police inside a human-sized morphing robot. I’m not saying this idea wasn’t good; on the contrary. It was so good it could have held itself in its own episode, with a more developed plotline. I don’t know what happened on the cutting room floor for this episode, but it almost felt like two storylines had accidentally been spliced together.



I still wonder who let him out of the cupboard in the end



As I have said many times to literally anybody that will listen (and even to those whose eyes glaze over as soon as I approach the subject), I love Moffat for his plots, his characters, his villains and his hilarious one-liners. He’s a fantastic ideas man, and his stand alone episodes in past series (Blink, and the Weeping Angels? Genius) are some of my absolute favorites. But unfortunately, for me, his writing is jerky, flows poorly, and leaves a lot to be desired. “Let’s Kill Hitler” is a classic example of this. Aside from the one-liners, for me this episode’s only plus point was the fact that Matt Smith’s Doctor finally seems to remember his past companions, in the form of the TARDIS’s hologram. Most fans were beginning to wonder if he’d suffered a hit to the head shortly after regenerating causing him to forget about Rose, Martha and Donna completely.

The trailer for this Saturday’s (3^rd September) episode “Night Terrors” looks a lot more promising, looking like it will play to Moffat’s strengths; one-shot episodes about things that go bump in the night. He always creates wonderfully scary Who monsters, and your classic hide-behind-the-sofa episodes. I am a huge fan of the Silence and the Weeping Angels, so am very much looking forward to this Saturday evening!