The Time Of Angels

The weeping angels and River Song in an episode of Doctor Who at the same time, quite possibly couldn’t get any better than this (except, it can and does next week)

River Song is really one of those characters that I find myself always wanting to know more about but at the same time enjoying the mystery surrounding her and it was great that this was maintained throughout this episode.

A very interesting Intro, messages through time and once again an insight into how well River knows the Doctor, but as with her last appearance the salient details are held back.

I found the Clerics interesting, the military and the church together – a nice little quirk.

The image of the angel stuff was a touch overstated, I think every viewer realised what was happening well before the reveal, but it was a nice moment anyway.

In fact my one complaint about this episode would be that it was a little slow going, it was obvious that the angels were taking the clerics voices but we saw three of them lured away and killed before it became apparent, I can only assume this was due to stretching out the story for a two parter and since most of this episode and almost all of the next are amazing I can forgive them for it.

The reveal that the statues were actually angels was really good however, ever since the first time we encountered there has been something extremely haunting about the angels and how they move when unseen, seeing them appear closer and closer, reaching out from tunnels in the caves was chilling.

The episode ends on a cliff-hanger and we see the hotly discussed trailer clip of the Doctor firing a gun, we’ll find out next week whether he actually fired it at anybody…

Victory Of The Daleks

Need to apologise first for the lateness of these reviews, ironic that I have to talk about a lack of time at the top of a Dr Who review but unfortunately things were a little crazy busy these last few weeks and my Doctor Who reviews fell by the wayside.

This episode was a funny one for me, not funny ha ha but just not as good as I was expecting, anybody who reads my stuff will know im not big on change and maybe that’s the reason I wasn’t a fan, in this episode we changed the Daleks, changed them quite significantly in fact.

As you’ve probably noticed they are now referred to by many as the iDaleks, these shiny colourful Daleks that are now, if we are to follow the logic of this episode the Dalek race, with the last remaining old style Daleks destroyed.

Im not a fan…

I wasn’t old enough to be of the generation hiding behind the sofa when Daleks appeared, but I saw enough repeated Dr Who as a child to get the crap scared out of me by them and even though older and less prone to being spooked by TV monsters when the revamped Dr Who began I still found the Daleks menacing and creepy, but in a familiar way.

I don’t see the iDaleks having the same effect; they are almost tellytubby-esc…

But anyway, other than the iDaleks I really did like this episode, we got a small hint of what is shaping up to be the overreaching theme of this series, time is wrong and its probably to do with the cracks we keep running into (hopefully everybody noticed it again in this episode, behind the TARDIS as it dematerialized)

All in all it was one of those episodes of Doctor Who that I don’t have huge problems with, but I don’t find myself raving about it… which isn’t a bad thing, unfortunately a lot of its down to personal preference, the multi-coloured Daleks put a damper on it for me.

Doctor Who – The Beast Below

I find that these next few episodes after a new regeneration are always my favourites, even though they require us to go back over information we already know (time lords, the doctor, gallifrey ect) they give us an insight into this new Doctor and how they bond with their new companion, whether they tell all right away or whether they avoid the subject entirely.

We find ourselves on Starship UK with a new Doctor, who we find out early on is a more analytical Doctor to those we’ve had recently, not only does he notice everything but he explains it, whether this is a decision of the writing team as far as something that’s been lacking in the last few regenerations under RTD or a conscious decision to make it part of this Doctor I don’t know but it was interesting to see and I hope to see more of it.

As always, something isn’t quite right and the Doctor and Amy go to investigate.

All in all, I found myself willing this episode to get towards the reveal and climax because, well I found  of Liz 10 & the smile’s really annoying, the premise worked well in principle but I just didn’t enjoy it, the accent, the cheesy lines none of it really worked for me.

Although, once we reached the tower and it all began to fall into place, those elements are soon forgotten, although the theme was a little reminiscent of the matrix (a recurring loop)

The explanation of the star whale and the impossible truth were great as well as the Doctors realisation that he would have to choose between ending one life or ending millions and that Amy had tried to protect him from that choice.

If anything I was a little confused about how well Amy seemed to know the Doctor considering this was her first day on the Tardis, again I’m not sure if they are going down the route of making Amy special like they did with Donna, or whether this is just a by-product of her having years to think, dream and “obsess” about the doctor in the time between their first encounter and their second.

In the end things worked out and we were treated to another view of a crack in the universe, I’m wondering whether the Doctor actually saw the one on the Tardis display last week and is going to places he knows they are occurring without revealing it to us, however scenes from next episode contradict that.

The Eleventh Hour

Like many people, of the re-imagined Doctor Who, it was David Tennant and Russell T Davies who made the show into one of my favourite shows on TV at the moment, so for both them to leave at the same time I was concerned about the amount of changes as Doctor Who returned.

By the end of this episode Im happy to say that while a lot had changed, it was still WHO and it was still excellent.

It seems clear that Steven Moffat came into the showrunners position with a number of things he wanted to change about the Doctor Who we had become familiar with, changes to the TARDIS, the way the doctor saw the world (over countless doctors we’ve been told he sees things differently but this was the first time we saw a visual representation of it with some form of semi photographic recall)

The beginning of the episode was impressive, the TARDIS crash visually was stunning, however I really didn’t like the “goofy” intro with the Doctor craving certain foods and disliking each one, hitting its low low point for me with the bread and butter being thrown outside and told to “stay out”

Luckily, it started to improve after that point and continued to improve throughout the episode (and is a distant memory by the next episode)

The introduction of the new companion was really interesting however, somebody who the Doctor met as a child and then didn’t see again until they were an adult, we learn through the episode that Emilia (Amy) Pond had spent much of her childhood obsessing about the raggedy doctor.

The aliens were interesting, both Prisoner Zero and his prison guards, both something new and interesting, more CGI than we’ve seen lately.

I think the core scene in this episode for me is when the Doctor becomes the Doctor, this is, in my mind at least the scene where David Tennant stopped being the Doctor and Matt Smith became him, this didn’t happen with the regeneration, or the end of End of Time, nor the beginning of this episode – it happened when the Doctor called the aliens back to earth and told them off, this scene echoes David Tenants’ scene on the Sycorax ship in “The Christmas Invasion”

For me, that was the moment the torch was handed over.

To sum up, the episode was really nice, it didn’t wow me I have to be honest, but it was a nice fun introduction to the new Doctor, Amy Pond, her family and the town she lives in

It also seems to have been the introduction to a continuing theme throughout this series, “the cracks” the crack in the wall that was actually a crack in the skin of the universe, actually appeared twice in this episode on the wall and on the screen of a piece of TARDIS equipment, equipment which the Doctor promptly turned off – it remains unclear whether he saw it and turned it off on purpose, but knowing the Doctor as we do – we can assume he did.

You should be on the look out for these cracks in future episodes since they have appeared consistently so far.