The Hippest Kids In Town

The Wedding of River Song was the culmination of show-runner Steven Moffat’s master-plan. A plan that had been in the working for over two series. A plan that required time, patience, and dedication, often confusing and complicated, but always fun and entertaining, and most importantly, a plan that had a purpose. I’m not talking necessarily about the story of River Song, or The Silence, or the Ponds, I’m talking about the fall of the Doctor, and returning him to his origins.

Moffat has been, and continues to be, playing the long-game. I don’t for a second think that he had all the story details mapped out, I don’t believe he knew all the intricacies of River Song’s time-line, nor the ins and outs of the Silence, it would be mad to suggest otherwise. I believe Moffat had an overall idea of where he wanted these stories to go, and what these characters’ purpose was, and he filled in the gaps as he went along - that’s how most television shows operate. What he did know, was the over-arcing master-plan, the story of the Doctor, and stripping him back to his bare essentials.

In the Doctor’s own words he had become “too big”, like a rock band with indie credentials becoming too mainstream, the Doctor needed to return to his roots, take a sabbatical, find himself. The Doctor had developed a God complex, he was known by too many, simultaneously loved and feared, a persona that was created through the Russell T Davies era, and continued by Moffat as part of his master-plan to destroy that image. In The Wedding of River Song we did witness the death of the Doctor, not physically, but metaphorically; the legend, the idea of the Doctor is dead, and he can now return to lurking in the shadows, the lone mad-man in a box, travelling through time and space in secret, having all sorts of adventures. The Doctor of old has returned and it opens up some hugely exciting prospects for Series 7.

Doctor Who Episode 13 Review - Tick, Tock

The exhilarating series finale opens up in London, April 22nd, 2011, 5:02pm. Time is frozen, and all of history is happening at once. Steam trains pass through the Gerkin building in modern day London, hot air balloons float through the sky carrying cars, pterodactyls attack children in a park, Roman guards stop their horse drawn carriages at traffic lights, Charles Dickens promotes his next Christmas Special on BBC Breakfast (excellent self-plug), and Holy Roman Emperor Winston Churchill resides in the Buckingham Senate.

These opening scenes were breathtaking, perhaps visually the best Doctor Who has ever looked. The idea of all of history happening at once is a great concept, and it could have easily had a full episode to explore the idea. Churchill, who we last saw in The Victory of the Daleks, questions why time has become stuck, and demands to speak to the soothsayer, who of course is the Doctor, being held prisoner for so long that he has once again grown a beard. The Doctor tells Churchill that time has gone wrong because of “a woman”.

As the Doctor narrates his story to Churchill, we go back and see how this all came about. The Doctor, still on his farewell tour, goes on the search for information regarding the Silence. He encounters a Dalek on it’s death bed, and scans it’s memory to find out everything it knows about the Silence. It was a neat little scene, especially as I thought we weren’t getting any Daleks this year. The Dalek’s information leads him to Gideon Vandalar, an envoy of the Silence, but who is actually the Tesselecta, in robot form - now, for many, at this point you probably guessed that the Tesselecta would tie in to the Doctor’s escape from death, but I tried to switch my theory brain off for this episode, so that I could be fully engrossed, and it didn’t click for me.

The Tesselecta leads the Doctor to an alien Viking, who also works for the Silence. Before any more information is gleaned, the Doctor must play Live Chess, literally live, because the pieces have 4 million volts running through them. I think Live Chess would make a great game-show, more exciting than Red or Black anyway.

After conceding the chess game to the Viking, the Doctor is taken through an Indiana Jones style tunnel, complete with carnivorous skulls. He is brought to Dorium, now just a head in a box after his encounter with the Headless Monks. Can I just say before I continue, that the scene with the Viking getting eaten in the pit of skulls was some proper old school horror, it was bloody fantastic!

Dorium explains to the Doctor why the Silence want him dead, because he has a long and dangerous past, and an even more dangerous future. I found this a little odd, because even the briefest mention of a future for the Doctor means he must survive. Dorium tells him of the events in his future, including the fields of Trenzalor, the fall of the 11th, and the question which must never be answered. Moffat continues to play the long-game, evidently setting up the next regeneration story here.

The Doctor holds a terrible secret, a secret that must never be known, I assume this secret is the answer to the question, and Silence will fall when the question is asked. If so, then this series isn’t the last we have seen of the Silence. As the Doctor explains this to Churchill, he notices a tally mark on his arm, and as we know from The Day of the Moon, this means there are Silents in the vicinity.

We return to the story, with the Doctor and Dorium’s head aboard the TARDIS. Dorium says that the Doctor’s death is a “fixed point” in time that cannot be changed. But the Doctor refuses to die, exclaiming that time “has never laid a glove on me!” He plans to continue travelling through time and space, having adventures with his friends, both Rose Tyler and Captain Jack are referenced.

But when the Doctor calls one of his oldest friends, the Brigadier, and discovers that he has passed away, it is a moment of realisation for the Doctor, that everyone must die eventually, including himself. This was a touching tribute to Nicholas Courtney, who played the Brigadier, and who sadly passed away earlier this year. To take a moment out of the finale for him demonstrates the love the people working on Doctor Who have for the show and its legacy.

The Doctor accepts that his death is approaching, but he doesn’t want to die alone, so has the Tesselecta deliver his invitations. What the Doctor doesn’t account for is River Song’s stubbornness, and her refusal to kill him, she stands opposite him at Lake Silencio, in her astronaut suit, and drains her weapon power, effectively changing a “fixed point” in time, and causing time to go wrong, frozen, with all of history occurring at once. Time and the universe is disintegrating, and all because of River, she really is hell in high-heels.

Before the Doctor and Churchill are set upon by a bunch of Silents, Amelia Pond, back in black, and her army of guards come to save the day. Amy takes the Doctor to her office on the Orient Express, and although this is an alternate time-line, Amy remembers the Doctor by having drawings of events that remind her of him, however she is still looking for “her Rory”, not realising his resemblance to Captain Williams. The Doctor sharpens up, has a shave, and puts on his old jacket and trusty bow-tie.

Inside Area 52, an Egyptian pyramid marked with an American flag, Silents are seemingly being held captive in water tanks, to stop their electricity wielding powers. All of the people working in Area 52, including Amy and Rory are wearing eye-patches, which are called Eye-drives (or i-Drives?), that tap in to the external memory and allow you to remember the Silence, which I called last week, and is one of my many theories to actually come true! This scene includes the episode’s funniest line, when the Doctor is trying to convince Rory to ask out Amy for “texting and scones” - what a date!

In a room within the pyramid, River Song holds Madame Kovarian prisoner. After River flirts with the Doctor, making Kovarian almost physically sick, she tells him that she refuses to kill him, despite knowing it will destroy time. When the Doctor and River touch the connection is re-established and time starts moving again.

Before the Doctor and River can decide what to do, the Silence breaks out. They were never trapped, they were simply waiting for the Doctor all this time. Even the i-Drives were a set-up, programmed to use against those wearing them, including Kovarian. River takes the Doctor away to show him something, while the rest stay to fight the Silence.

In one of my favourite scenes of the episode, Rory remains behind to fend off the Silence, still wearing his i-Drive despite the fact that it could kill him, and he has to put up with the Silence mocking him about the amount of times he has died. But this time it is Amy that saves Rory, as she goes all bad-ass and machine guns down the Silents. Afterwards, Kovarian begs Amy for her life, telling her that she has to save her because that’s what the Doctor would do, but Amy responds “He isn’t here,” and she puts Kovarian’s i-Drive back on, leaving her to die. It is a dark turn for Amy as a character.

Atop of the pyramid, River shows the Doctor a beacon that is sending out a distress message across the universe, a message begging for help to save the Doctor. River tells him that there are so many people that love him, and no one who loves him as much as her. River would rather let the universe be destroyed than to kill the Doctor.

But the Doctor always has a plan, and he asks Amy and Rory for their consent to marry River. Rory is confused, “We’re married, and that’s our daughter,” Amy quickly explains. The Doctor uses his bow-tie to bind his and River’s arms together, and then he whispers something in her ear. He says that he told her his name, which we find out isn’t the case, but River does know his name in The Silence in the Library, so he must tell her at some point, perhaps in Let’s Kill Hitler?

I’m not sure if this marriage is legally binding, it did happen in an aborted time-line, a divorce probably wouldn’t hold up in court. Plus, who would get what? Who would keep the TARDIS? I don’t think they signed a pre-nup, and if they did, would River get…half of time and space?

When River and the Doctor kiss, time is reconnected, they return to Lake Silencio, and this time River kills the Doctor. Time resumes as normal, all of history returning to it’s original time period.

Back at the Ponds house, Amy drowns her sorrows in a bottle of wine. River turns up, fresh from her latest adventure with the Doctor, “I’ve just climbed out of the Byzantium.” Amy has guilt over her murder of Kovarian, despite it happening in an aborted time-line. She says if she could speak to the Doctor it would help, and then River delivers her secret. Rule number one, the Doctor lies, and so does River, she has been lying for quite some time, and she informs Amy and Rory that the Doctor is still alive.

In the Indiana Jones tunnel, Dorium is returned by a cloaked figure, the Doctor, our Doctor! Dorium asks how he survived, and we flashback to the Tesselecta asking the Doctor if there is anything else they can do - and that’s the twist. The Doctor that was killed at Lake Silencio was the Tesselecta, a robot Doctor controlled by miniaturised humans. When the Doctor whispered in River’s ear he told her to “Look in to my eye”, and as she did she saw the real Doctor inside, waving back.

For a complex episode the explanation was really straight-forward, I’m sure some felt it was a cop-out, but the answer was never going to satisfy everyone, I’m just happy it didn’t include Gangers. Some have asked how the Tesselecta was able to fake a regeneration, well it’s design was to emulate people and objects, so it isn’t impossible that it could emulate an orange glow. Others have said that did those inside the Tesselecta die when the “Doctor’s” body was burnt, I’m pretty sure they teleported out of there before that happened, plus the Doctor had his TARDIS aboard, so there was more than one method of escape.

So the Doctor didn’t die, but the universe thinks that he has, and that’s what is important. That’s what the “fixed point” was about, the idea of the Doctor’s death, it didn’t matter whether it was the real Doctor or a fake Doctor, just as long as people believed it was the Doctor that died. As he tells Dorium, he can now return to the shadows, without the baggage.

And as he leaves to once again be the lone mad-man in a box, Dorium teases us for what is to come for the Doctor, and the viewers. The fields of Trenzalor, the fall of the 11th, and the question which must never be answered, hidden in plain sight, the first question - Doctor who? I called this as well (yay!), and I said it would be a bit corny, and it kind of was, but it does put the focus on the origins of the Doctor and it could lead to some very interesting places. Or maybe it isn’t Doctor who? Maybe it is “Doctor, who?” as in a question posed to the Doctor about someone else, but I choose to believe it is the former, especially as Moffat appears to be tying it in to his long-game, and having it lead to the 11th Doctor’s regeneration, which I predict will happen in the shows 50th anniversary episode in 2013!

Series 6 has been one hell of a ride, at times complex and confusing, but also fun and entertaining, mixing a whole genre of styles and tones along the way. Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, and Arthur Darvill has really developed in to their roles and upped up their performances with each episode. Steven Moffat has constructed an epic journey and an epic fall for the Doctor, and returned him to his roots, which leaves the door wide open for what is to come in the future.

by Martin Holmes

What’s the best line you’ve ever used on a girl? Because I bet it doesn’t come any where close to “I would rip apart time for you.” But then again, we aren’t all Rory Williams, nurse, husband, father, and former Centurion automaton. The Girl Who Waited was a timey-wimey love story with robots. We have seen many Amy/Rory love stories in previous episodes, and this one didn’t exactly cover any new ground, but it was put together so sublimely it was difficult to fault it. 

Tom Macrae’s script kept the action and sets minimal, allowing the acting ability of both Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill to take centre stage. And to any of those naysayers that still claim Gillan and Darvill can’t act, well this episode proved them embarrassingly wrong. Both Gillan and Darvill were at the top of their game, and gave their best performances of the series so far. Their chemistry feels so real, their emotions so raw, they are able to tug at the heart-strings, and make us laugh at the same time. Matt Smith usually steals the show, but here he took a back-seat to the Ponds, and allowed them to shine.

Doctor Who Episode 10 Review - Killing With Kindness

Much like last week’s episode Night Terrors, this was a stand-alone episode that didn’t continue the series-arc. It did however begin to lay the ground-work for events to come, specifically in regards to how the Doctor will escape his future death. If this episode proved anything it’s that the future can be re-written.

The Doctor and the Ponds arrive at a quarantine facility, all white walls and doors, very clinical looking. The facility was built for victims of an alien plague, the “one day plague” as the Doctor calls it, because you get it, and then you die within a day. While Amy searches for her camera-phone aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor and Rory push the Green Anchor button and enter a room, inside is a table and a large magnifying glass, the door closes behind them.

When Amy tries to join them, she presses the Red Waterfall button, which takes her in to the same room but within a different time-stream. “Time’s gone wobbly” as the Doctor so eloquently puts it.

Through the looking glass, you have the ability to see in to different time-streams, so Rory and the Doctor can see Amy, and she can see them. I’m sure the Through The Looking Glass imagery was intentional, as that is a book itself that plays around with frequent changes in time and space. While only a couple of minutes have passed for Rory and the Doctor, a whole week has gone by for Amy, “Two different time-streams running parallel but at different speeds.”

“You have a choice. Sit at their bedside for 24 hours and watch them die, or sit in here for 24 hours and watch them live. Which would you choose?” This is an episode all about choices; choices regarding life and death, and Rory is the man in the middle.

The Doctor commits a small act of vandalism and steals the looking glass, locks on to Amy’s stream, and plans to use the TARDIS to smash through the time-stream, and save Amy. Amy has to hide somewhere within the facility while the TARDIS follows the signal, whilst avoiding injections from the Hand-bots.

The facility is kind of like a futuristic airport/aeroplane, with it’s own built in entertainment system, providing everything from an aquarium to a roller-coaster zone, it’s a bit like Center Parcs. There is an interface that acts as a guide, teacher, and friend.

The Hand-bots are the most persistent nurses of all time, despite having it explained to them that their medicine will kill the likes of Amy and Rory, they simply reject the statement and continue to fire needles all over the place. The only place Amy can hide from them is by the temporal engines which provide the power of the time-streams.

The garden scene looked beautiful, up until this point we were surrounded by white walls, so the sudden change of imagery was very effective. Perhaps another Through The Looking Glass reference, which also included a mystical garden.

Meanwhile Rory and the Doctor lock on to Amy’s time-stream, and things turn in to a 1990s point and click game. The Doctor controls Rory, who is equipped with some geek-chic glasses that allow the Doctor to see the action - Rory-cam. Rory has to go in to the time-stream because he is immune to the infection, it only affects species with two hearts, such as time-lords, and as the Doctor reminds us, he currently has his regeneration powers turned off. But unfortunately they have arrived too late in Amy’s time-stream, specifically 36 years too late, and Amy has grown old alone.

I was impressed by the make-up job, it wasn’t too over-the-top, it looked real. And Karen Gillan excelled as the bitter, wiser, old Amy Pond. Having spent 36 years alone, fighting Hand-bots, Amy has grown more knowledgeable, she discovered how to out-think the Hand-bots, she hacked in to the interface, and she even made her own sonic-screwdriver (probe). She lives within a make-shift room by the temporal engines, with nothing but a disarmed Hand-bot for company, whom she named Rory - her very own Wilson.

But she has also grown resentful, she claims that she hates the Doctor “I hate him more than I’ve hated anyone in my entire life.” I like it when things don’t always go quite right for the Doctor. “Don’t you lecture me, blue box man, flying through time and space on a whimsy.” Sometimes he needs to hear the truth, much like in A Good Man Goes To War, the Doctor realises the extent his existence effects others, and not always in a positive way.

Amy laughs for the first time in 36 years, and the man to make her laugh was of course Rory. It was a touching scene, and the music here was excellent, it reminded me slightly of Jon Brion’s soundtrack to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

The Doctor has a new plan, hijack the temporal engines and use their energy to fix a point between the two time-streams and bring them together. There is only one fault in that plan, Amy doesn’t want to be saved, for her it is too late.

If the Doctor rescues the ‘past Amy’ then the ‘old Amy’ will cease to exist, the past 36 years won’t have happened, and Amy won’t allow that, instead she asks Rory to save her, meaning that ‘past Amy’ will have to wait 36 years to be rescued - essentially Rory has to choose which wife he wants to save. Now it is Rory’s turn to be angry at the Doctor, if this is the way the Doctor travels then “I do not want to travel with you!” Rory screams.

Then comes Karen Gillan’s defining moment as Amy Pond. In this monologue to herself, Karen Gillan proves she has the acting chops to stand toe-to-toe with Matt Smith, and any of the previous companions. Amy has to basically convince herself to let the Doctor and Rory save her, and to do that she utters three words “What about Rory?” It’s another scene that pulls at the heart-strings, as both Amy’s reminisce about how they fell in love with Rory, the most beautiful man they have ever met.

Old Amy agrees to be save the past Amy, but only if Rory saves her too, two Amy’s aboard the TARDIS. The Doctor tells Rory that this could be possible, that the TARDIS could sustain the paradox.

Who would’ve thought that it would be the macarena that helped rip through two time-streams? But this was the memory of Amy and Rory’s first kiss, a memory so strong that it allowed the time-streams to join together, bringing both past Amy and old Amy in to contact. “You always say at Christmas you could do with two of you,” is Rory’s positive spin on the situation.

As Rory and his wifes make a run for the TARDIS, Old Amy goes all Kill Bill with her samurai sword on the Hand-bots. Past Amy is touched by one of the Hand-bots and his put to sleep, Rory picks her up and carries her on to the TARDIS, effectively making his choice over which Amy he wants to save. Then comes a moment that seemed so cruel, but necessary, the Doctor locks the TARDIS door on Old Amy. The Doctor reasons with Rory that once they save Past Amy then the Old Amy will cease to exist, that none of this will have happened, the future would be re-written, but for Rory this doesn’t make it any easier.

Old Amy tells Rory that if he loves her then he won’t let her in, she sacrifices her “days” for her past self and for Rory, the love of her life. She gives up her 36 years so that Amy and Rory can be together, and grow old with each other. If your heart wasn’t wrenching earlier in the episode, then surely it got you here. Again, Gillan and Darvill were just superb.

Rory locks the door, and Old Amy accepts her fate, taking one last look at earth before the Hand-bots put her to sleep.

The Girl Who Waited was another Rory and Amy love story, but perfectly told and brilliantly performed. It also put in to place the idea that the future isn’t set in stone and can be re-written, which is surely foreboding for how the Doctor escapes his date with death at the end of the series.

One of the great things about Doctor Who is its variation in tone, genre, and pace. It’s how it can go from the high-adrenaline, exciting confusion of a Steven Moffat written episode, to a more slower-paced, traditional story-led episode, and appeal to different sections of the audience.

Night Terrors, penned by Mark Gatiss, was definitely a slower-paced, stand-alone episode. Like Gatiss’s previous Who episodes, it was simple yet slick, creepy in places, and full of pastiche and nods to 1970s horror films and tv shows. I think Mark Gatiss is a talented writer, and I’m a huge fan of the League of Gentlemen, so I’ll always have a soft spot for him, but I just think his Doctor Who episodes, except for The Unquiet Dead, tend to be rather predictable and uninspiring. That’s not to say they are bad, although the less we say about the Victory of the Daleks the better, it’s just that they feel a little stagnant, and this is highlighted even more so now that Moffat is the show-runner.

But I just have to accept that this episode wasn’t made for me. I know it was liked by plenty of other Who fans, old and new. For those that complain about the complicated series-arc, this was an episode for them to enjoy for what it was. And I’m sure it frightened and entertained children in equal measure.

Doctor Who Episode 9 Review - Monsters Are Real

There is a reason why Night Terrors perhaps felt out of place, and that’s because, well, it was out of place. This episode was originally intended to air in the first half of the series, somewhere before The Rebel Flesh. We don’t know the exact reasons why it was moved, maybe Moffat felt there were too many “dark” episodes in a row, although the episode that replaced it was The Curse of the Black Spot, which was also set at night.

The moving around of the episode would certainly explain Amy and Rory’s indifference in finding their daughter Melody, because of course, when this episode was filmed their daughter wasn’t born yet. And also, at this point Amy is a ganger and not the real Amy Pond, hence the Doctor’s line “Back in the flesh”, which instead of a neat little foreshadowing now sounds like an insensitive dig.

Night Terrors felt similar to the Series 2 episode Fear Her, except this one didn’t seem like it was a sixth form college video project. Night Terrors was beautifully shot, I love when the dank and dreary can be made dazzling, and the shots of the block of flats looked incredible. But it was similar to Fear Her in concept; a child has a psychic ability to control things based on their fears and imagination - and both episodes featured something evil lurking inside a cupboard.

The Doctor has always had a connection with children, the original target audience of the show was children, and this episode was all about the fears children have, and how to help them. Little George’s cry for help travelled through the stars and the galaxies, and reached the Doctor on his TARDIS. “He needs a Doctor,” his Mother says, and that is exactly what George is about to get.

George, a seven year old boy, lives with his parents in a block of flats in London, and he is terrified of things that go bump in the night. He is spooked by old toys, he thinks the old woman next door is a witch, he is even afraid of the noise the lift makes.

When George is scared of something he locks it away in his cupboard, it is a ritual that he and his parents have set up to control his fears, this also involves switching the light on and off five times. The Doctor, posing as the social services, tries to get to the bottom of George’s fears, at first trying to cheer George up by impressing him with gadgets, like his sonic screwdriver. But when the screwdriver can’t pick up a read on the cupboard, the Doctor starts to become fearful himself, as he tells Alex, George’s Dad, that “George’s monsters are real.”

Meanwhile the Ponds have taken a lift to hell, “We’re dead — again!” Rory says, in a self-depreciating nod to the many deaths Rory has had during his time on the show. But the Ponds aren’t dead, rather they are trapped in what turns out to be a freaky dolls house, complete with wooden pans, glass eyes, and painted on clocks. Oh, and some walking, talking, living dolls, that look like Chuckie on steroids!

Gatiss is good at coming up with sinister looking monsters, I’ll give him that. The dolls were genuinely unsettling, and the transformation of the other characters from humans in to porcelain monstrosities was very well done, and probably got a fair few of the children watching locking themselves in the cupboard!

It soon became apparent that George’s fears were being held captive inside the dolls house. The old woman, that George believed was a witch, was sucked in through a pile of rubbish, which I thought was a metaphor for her acting ability. The evil landlord was sucked in through the carpet. And the Ponds were brought there via the lift, but why was George afraid of Amy and Rory? Well, earlier in the episode when Amy and Rory walked by George’s window he overheard Rory saying “Maybe we should let the monsters gobble him up”.

Even though the episode was fairly safe and straight-forward it did have a nice twist with George turning out to be some kind of alien, a Tenser the Doctor called him, a creature that seeks out a home and can adapt itself to its surroundings. Alex remembers that his wife Claire wasn’t able to have babies of her own, a fact that had been all but erased from his memory. George just wants to be wanted, but he is scared that his parents want to send him away, and this aggravates his other fears, which he can physically lock away inside of the dolls house - a psychic repository as the Doctor puts it.

Amy is turned in to a doll, again this would have been a nice reference to Amy not being the true Amy had this episode aired during the first half of the series. I wonder if we will be seeing Amy dolls (not those kind of dolls) in Toys R Us this Christmas.

The Doctor and Alex are sucked in to the dolls house as well, and find themselves surrounded by the evil dolls. It isn’t up to the Doctor to save the day this time, it is up to George and his father, and acceptance, the acceptance of fear and love. Alex battles the dolls and protects George, telling him that he is his son no matter what he is.

Everything is returned to normal, almost as if it was all a dream, and the Doctor and the Ponds go on their way, successful in their house-call.

As I said, it was a stand-alone episode that was slightly slow-going but told it’s story well, and had convincing monsters. There wasn’t anything to get my teeth stuck in to story-arc wise, apart from the reminder of the Doctor’s date of death at the end of the episode. I personally think that this episode would’ve worked better in it’s original slot within the first half of the series, and perhaps on the DVD release it will be returned to its intended spot.

The preview for next week’s episode was madness, I have no idea what is going on, it was like Amy was stuck in a sadistic version of The Cube! Again, that is the beauty of Doctor Who, how it can flip pace week to week and continuously deliver entertaining television.

by Martin Holmes

The Impossible Astronaut Review: http://bit.ly/esSJmD

The Day of the Moon Review: http://bit.ly/iMyZ1f

The Curse of the Black Spot Review: http://bit.ly/iTFn59

The Doctor’s Wife Review: http://bit.ly/kdpoD3

The Rebel Flesh: http://bit.ly/k6qbKl

The Almost People: http://bit.ly/k4xiCu

A Good Man Goes to War: http://bit.ly/ioNf8M

Let’s Kill Hitler: http://bit.ly/qQOy74

It feels good to have it back doesn’t it? After a summer of riots and phone-hacking scandals, nothing could be more appropriate to lighten the mood than locking Hitler in a cupboard. The beauty of this episode was that it managed to be fun and silly while still clearing up a lot of questions left dangling from the first half of the series, particularly regarding one River Song/Melody Pond.

Despite it’s comical title, Let’s Kill Hitler, this wasn’t the type of episode I was expecting to open up the second half of the series. The mid-series finale, A Good Man Goes To War, was very dark and grim in places, especially towards the end when the Doctor realises the extent of pain and destruction he has caused the universe, so I was assuming we would continue in that vein for a while. But instead, Let’s Kill Hitler was a fun-filled rollick around 1930s Berlin, who’d have thunk it?

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“He will rise higher than ever before, but then fall so much further.”

I’m not a religious man at all but it was hard to ignore the religious references in this episode, from the headless monks, to sentient computers, to soldiers of God, and the most significant religious symbolism, the Fall. In the Bible the Fall of Man refers to the disobedience of Adam and Eve, eating the fruit from the Forbidden Tree, and in doing so losing their innocence for guilt and shame, corrupting the natural world, and causing people to be born in to original sin.

In A Good Man Goes to War, the mid-series finale of Doctor Who, we witness the Fall of the Doctor; a so called “innocent”, a hero, a champion, becomes exposed as a hypocrite, a man who brings with him death and destruction, a man who will lie to those on their death-bed (Lorna Bucket), a man so feared that his enemies will go to the most desperate lengths to kill him - this was truly the Doctor’s darkest hour.

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Misdirection - a form of deception in which the attention of an audience is focused on one thing in order to distract its attention from another.

There’s nothing I love more in fiction than a good plot twist, something that forces you to re-evaluate everything that came before it, and makes you see that what you thought was happening was actually something else. From The Mayor of Casterbridge, a book brimming with delicious plot twists, to films such as The Usual Suspects, Fight Club, and Memento, they all have a place in my “all-time-favourites” list because they trigger that shiver down your spine moment when you realise you’ve been duped, but in a good way.

Doctor Who delivered it’s first shiver down the spine moment of the series in The Almost People, as we discover that the Amy we have been watching for the last several weeks is not the “real” Amy, and is in fact made of the Flesh. While I’ve been too busy focusing on River Song, the Little Girl, and the Doctor’s death, I have been quick to ignore Amy, or at least underestimate her importance to the overall plot.

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(WARNING: Contains spoiler for the film Moon)

Running through corridors, steam-bursting valves, monstered-up guest stars, questionable moralising, if any episode comes close to traditional Who, then The Rebel Flesh is it. But along with that traditional feel also comes predictability, dodgy performances, and bad dialogue. That’s not to say that there weren’t parts of the episode I enjoyed, I liked Rory having a more significant role, the Voldemort looking doppelgangers were creepy, and the final twist, albiet obvious, was pulled off very well. But I found the majority of the episode to be very slow moving, too expositional, and awkwardly acted by the guest stars.

Rather than focusing on all the negatives of the episode though, I instead will discuss my theories based off the events that took place in The Rebel Flesh, which I think will make for much more interesting reading.

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When we think of the greatest love stories ever told, those that come to mind are Romeo and Juliet, Cathy and Heathcliff, Mr Darcy and Elizabeth, but we often forget about one of the strongest and longest relationships ever known, at least in the realm of sci-fi, and that is the Doctor and the TARDIS.

The Doctor’s Wife was a celebration of the bond between Doctor and TARDIS, a heart-warming episode written by legendary sci-fi writer Neil Gaiman. Gaiman is clearly a fan of Doctor Who and brought much care and attention to the script, taking the simple concept of man and machine, and creating an original story of love, heartache, and triumph. The Doctor’s Wife was just lovely.

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Doctor Who has a tradition of making pseudo-historical episodes, in which the Doctor travels back to a significant point in history, and often meets someone famous from that era, learns about them, and then helps them out. It has been an important element of the show since the original incarnation, as evidenced by episodes such as Marco Polo, The Aztecs, and The Highlanders. And this continued in the new series in episodes such as The Empty Child, The Shakespeare Code, Victory of the Daleks, and the excellent Vincent and the Doctor. It is fun to see the Doctor play around in these memorable moments from history, and it is also semi-educational for children, who make up a large portion of Doctor Who’s audience.

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One small step for man, one giant leap for mainstream television. Just as the 1969 moon landing was a monumental occasion in human history, this week’s episode of Doctor Who was a momentous occasion in television history, on a smaller scale perhaps, but important nonetheless. At the climax of The Day of the Moon all I could say was “wow”. Not only had we just witnessed a brilliantly constructed and appropriately mind-bending episode, but I believe we saw Doctor Who take a giant leap in to becoming a legitimate sci-fi drama.

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