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

I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t a little underwhelmed by the penultimate episode of Doctor Who. It just felt like it could have been so much more heading in to next week’s series finale, and instead it was a fun but throw-away romp around a department store. It wasn’t a bad episode but it was just a little oddly placed within the arc of the series.

Closing Time did continue one of the major themes of the series however, in the importance of children. Craig survives due to the cries of his baby boy Alfie, the power of fatherhood and parenthood thrust to the centre stage. This has been a common factor all series long, in The Curse of the Black Spot, Captain Avery leaves his planet to ensure the survival of his son Toby. In The Almost People the ganger Jimmy discovers his humanity because of his son. In Night Terrors the father’s acceptance of his son is what saves the day. And of course, the most pivotal child related story of the series, Melody Pond, the daughter of Amy and Rory.

Doctor Who Episode 12 Review - Silver Rat

The Doctor is on his farewell tour, or at least that’s what he says, but like many famous rock bands that claim to be on their “farewell tour”, I’m sure this isn’t the last we have seen of the Doctor - there is a Christmas special currently being filmed for one thing! But as far as the Doctor is concerned, he believes this is the eve of his death, and is visiting his friends, which leads him to Craig (James Corden).

Craig, who we last saw in The Lodger, is now living a relatively normal life with his girlfriend Sophie, and newly born son Alfie or Stormageddon as he likes to call himself (the Doctor can speak “baby”). I’m not sure why Craig would be the character the Doctor chooses to see last on his farewell tour, but alas, his visit isn’t as short-lived as he was intending because there is something strange going on nearby. As much as the Doctor tries not to notice the flickering lights and eeriness in the air, he can’t resist investigating, and scans the area with his sonic screwdriver, and detects that some kind of teleportation device has been in operation.

The Doctor gets himself a job at a local department store, Sanderson & Grainger, which was actually a House of Fraser store in Cardiff. This made the episode particularly entertaining for me as I work at House of Fraser, not that specific one, but it was fun nonetheless, seeing our Buy & Collect counters on display, our Spring Event signage (which I had hours of joy putting out earlier this year), and our amazingly old-fashioned till systems. If only we had a spaceship of Cybermen in our basement, it’d make work-days so much more interesting.

Staff members have been going missing under suspicious circumstances, and on top of that, there is silver rat scurrying around the shop. The silver rat is not a toy, nor in fact a rat, it is a Cybermat, a fish-looking, piranha-mouthed, kind of pet of the Cybermen, made up of living things which aren’t “upgradable”. Cybermats were last seen on a Doctor Who television episode in the 1975 episode Revenge of the Cybermen.

(Then)

(Now)

As the Doctor tries to get Craig and Alfie out of the store, by taking the “out of order” lift, they find themselves teleported on to a spaceship, with a Cyberman looming towards them, the Doctor manages to quickly reverse it, disabling the teleportation device in the process. The Doctor tries to convince Craig to leave, knowing that he is risking his and his son’s life by being with him, but Craig believes the safest place for him and his son is by the Doctor’s side.

While the Doctor has been on his around the universe farewell tour, it appears Amy has become a celebrity of sorts. The Doctor sees Amy and Rory in the department store, and he watches from a distance as a young girl asks Amy for her autograph. Behind the Doctor is a huge poster featuring Amy’s face, advertising a perfume called Petrichor, which if you remember was the password Amy needed to think of in The Doctor’s Wife. I’m not sure how I feel about Amy being semi-famous, I suppose it shows that she has made something of herself without the Doctor, and having the perfume named Petrichor suggests she is more than just the face of the brand.

Craig and the Doctor stake out the department store after closing time, waiting to catch themselves a Cybermat. Although successful in their mission, the Doctor doesn’t escape fully unscathed. Following the screams of security guard George, the Doctor enters the basement, and he his assaulted by a Cyberman. The Doctor survives the attack, but he can’t explain how the Cyberman returned to the store so soon with the teleportation device switched off.

To me this was the least threatening the Cybermen have ever been. The idea of a crashed Cybership, with a small group of Cybermen trying to rebuild their “race” out of anything they can find, is a neat idea, but it was half-baked, and dealt with far too quickly.

With Craig out at the shops to buy milk, the Doctor has a heart to heart with baby Alfie. He confesses that he is going to die soon, that his time is almost at an end. How the Doctor is at his most truthful when talking to a baby is another mark for the importance of children in the Who universe.

Craig returns with the milk, and gets in to a fight with the Cybermat, which are stronger than they look. Luckily the fight takes place in the kitchen, so there are plenty of weapons around, such as frying pans and baking trays, it was like a Reeves & Mortimer sketch. With the Cybermat subdued, the Doctor reprogrammes it.

Returning to the store without Craig but with the reprogrammed Cybermat, the Doctor discovers an entrance hidden within one of the fitting rooms (an ideal escape for shoplifters). The entrance takes him in to the Cybership, which is not in space like the Doctor assumed, but is in fact on Earth, crashed years earlier, and the store was built on top of it. The Cybermen that survived have been taking scraps of all they could find to rebuild themselves, and are planning on converting the human race once they have enough power for their ship.

The Doctor is captured by the Cybermen who recognise him as the Timelord. Craig, attempting to save the day, enters the ship, but is also captured. Now, although I said the Cybermen were at their least threatening in this episode, this one scene did almost make up for it, when they converted Craig in to a Cyberman. Both Smith and Corden acted it perfectly, and for a second I really thought they were going to continue the fall of the Doctor, by having Craig stay converted. That would have been traumatic, perhaps a bit too much for tea-time tele.

Craig is able to reverse the conversion when he hears the cries of Alfie over the video-system, much like in Night Terrors, the father/son relationship is the defining factor. This overload of emotion causes the Cybermen to go in to meltdown and destroys their ship, while the Doctor and Craig teleport out of there. The whole “power of love” thing saving the day can become a bit weary, but I think it was very self-knowing in this episode, especially with Craig and the Doctor’s dialogue afterwards, “It was love!”.

As a parting gift, the Doctor uses time travel to clean up the mess in Craig’s house, before Sophie arrives home and finds the place in a state. The Doctor lets Craig know that Alfie is proud of him, and now wants to be called Alfie, rather than Stormageddon: Dark Lord of All. The Doctor tells Craig that tomorrow is the day of his death, and here things begin to set in motion the events of The Impossible Astronaut. Craig provides the Doctor with the stetson that we saw him wearing at the beginning of this series, and the Doctor borrows a bunch of blue envelopes, which we saw River and the Ponds receive.

I’m a little confused with the time-lines here. Is this episode happening in the future? Because when the Ponds receive their blue envelope in The Impossible Astronaut, they are living at their old house, not the house the Doctor gave them in The God Complex, and I believe they get the letter a few days before the Doctor is shot at Lake Silencio, not the day before. If the Doctor really dies tomorrow, then the Pond’s should already be in Utah, not gallivanting around a department store signing autographs. It only really makes sense if the Doctor travelled to see Craig in the future, perhaps a year later, picked up the blue envelopes, got his stetson, and then travelled back to April 2011, posted the envelopes, and travelled to Lake Silencio.

Before the Doctor enters the TARDIS for what he considers his last journey, he provides some parting words to a group of children playing on the street. We then cut to River Song, in the far future, researching the Doctor, and reading eye-witness accounts from those very same children. She notes the date and location of the Doctor’s death, before our favourite eye-patch wearing villain, Madame Kovarian enters, guarded by two Silence monsters - I knew we hadn’t seen the last of those suited skeletors! And the fact that Kovarian is working with the Silence, that leads me to believe that the eye-patch some how negates the Silence’s powers.

Kovarian informs River that she is basically their property, and has been since she was a child, the Silence have been around her for so long that it has effected her memory severely. She tells River that it is her that will kill the Doctor, and they force her in to the astronaut suit, and submerge her in lake Silencio, setting up the events of The Impossible Astronaut.

Closing Time was a fun but out of place episode, not really delivering as a penultimate episode leading in to what should be an eventful series finale. The last scene did however provide a great teaser heading in to The Wedding of River Song, and judging by the teaser, this one is going to be all sorts of crazy, and I cannot wait!

Almost every one has faith. Whether it be religious faith, the belief in a god or higher power, or the belief in a certain code of ethics or way of life, or the belief in humanity, a parent, a sibling, a friend. Faith is the ultimate trust in someone or something - there for you in your time of need, to protect you, help you, save you. Faith can be strong and powerful, but it can also blind us, leaving us weak and vulnerable.

How many people over the years have had faith in The Doctor? And how many times has that faith lead to heartache and misery, and in some cases, death? The God Complex could very well have been called The Doctor Complex. The Doctor’s need to save people, and his control over the universe is at best egocentric, and at worst highly irresponsible. Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Donna Noble, they all had faith in the Doctor, and did their lives turn out for the better? It’s debatable. But perhaps nobody has as much faith in the Doctor as Amy Pond, who has worshipped him since she was a little girl, sitting on her suitcase, waiting for him to come and save her. It comes to a point where people have to let go of their faith, and stand on their own two feet, before that faith destroys them.

Doctor Who Episode 11 Review - Reach Out And Touch Faith

Welcome to Hotel Nightmare, you can check out any time you’d like, but you can never leave. The God Complex borrowed heavily from Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic adaptation of The Shining, not only in a stylistic sense but the theme of “hell on earth” is certainly prevalent in both. The individual rooms home to various horrors, in The Shining it is acts of depravity and sordid desires, in The God Complex the rooms are occupied by “bad dreams”, the fears of the hotel’s various guests.

Once you are exposed to your room and thereby brought face to face with your fear, you become prone to worship, almost as if you are possessed, like we see with Lucy Hayward at the beginning of the episode. After opening the door to her room, she begins to lose sense of herself, she manages to scribble her last thoughts on to a piece of paper, before she starts to give herself over to the monster that lurks the corridors, an alien Minotaur that seemingly feeds off people’s fears. “Praise him,” Lucy says over and over.

Again, the TARDIS has ventured off course and landed somewhere it wasn’t supposed to, either the Doctor needs to invest in a sat-nav, or the TARDIS is taking the Doctor not where he wants to be, but where ne needs to be, which is what he was told earlier this series in The Doctor’s Wife. The Doctor has a theory, although you should be prepared to ignore it, he believes that they are not on earth but are in fact in a hotel that has been made to look like Earth, although for what purpose is not yet known.

The walls are adorned with photographs of the Minotaur’s victims, each labelled with their fear “Commander Halke - Defeat” “Lady Silvertear - Daleks” “Lucy Hayward - That brutal Gorilla.”

“It’s okay, we’re nice,” Rory pleads to the three hotel guests that appear in reception, screaming and waving various weapons. The three people are, Gibbis, a native of Tivoli, a planet whose inhabitants willingly surrender and welcome being conquered. Howie, a young conspiracy theory nut. And Rita, a Muslim nurse who is quite the clever cloggs. Rita tells the Doctor and co that the hotel is alive, rooms change, corridors stretch, things appear elsewhere, and that each room contains “bad dreams”.

There is also Joe, who is tied up at the minute, and enjoying a good old chuckle with a room full of creepy ventriloquist dolls. Joe is already possessed, he tells the Doctor that they are not yet ready, that they are still raw, and they must first find their room, because even the Doctor has a room. When they have found their room and given themselves over, “he will feast”.

In Howie’s room there was a group of pretty young girls mocking him about his stammer.

In what was supposedly Gibbis’s room there were two Weeping Angels, still as frightening as ever.

In Rita’s room was her father chastising her for only getting a ‘B’ in her exams.

In Amy’s room was her as a little girl sat waiting for the Doctor to return.

And in the Doctor’s room (Room 11)? We didn’t get to find out but I have a pretty good idea of what it was, and I’ll come back to that.

The Doctor, from what he has seen and read in Lucy Hayward’s note, tells them all that the Minotaur is feeding off of their fear, and that they need to put faith in to whatever they believe in, whether that be religion or “a basket of kittens.” But this doesn’t appear to stop anything, because one by one those that have seen their rooms begin to praise, starting with Howie. 

In a plan to trap the Minotaur, the Doctor and co tie Howie up and pipe his praising through a tannoy system, leading the monster to the Doctor. It becomes question time for the Minotaur as he must answer to the Doctor, it explains that the hotel is a prison, and that he is the guard. But more importantly, he lets the Doctor know that he wants it all to stop, that it is so old it has forgotten it’s name. Before the Doctor can get an answer on how to put it out of its misery, the Minotaur smashes through the doors, pursuing Howie, who Gibbis, in an act of pure cowardice, set free.

With Howie and Joe now literally shells of their former selves, Rita is next. This death perhaps meant the most because Rita had been set up as a potential companion to the Doctor throughout the episode, the Doctor, doing his best Alan Sugar impression, even jokingly fired Amy. But the Doctor couldn’t save Rita, he had to watch her death on the CCTV cameras. This brought out the angry Doctor, which is always welcome in my eyes, and he started to ‘rearrange’ some of the furniture.

During Amy’s speech to Gibbis about how the Doctor will save them eventually, because “he always does”, it suddenly clicks in to place. The Doctor realises that it isn’t fear that the Minotaur is feeding on, but faith. The reason Rory didn’t find his room, and why he was shown exits was because he has no faith, he isn’t religious or superstitious (this could be read as slight against religion). But all of the others believed in someone or something. Joe was a gambler, he had faith in luck. Howie believed in conspiracy theories. Rita was a Muslim so had religious faith. Gibbis believes in subjugation. And of course, Amy has faith in the Doctor, and the strength of her faith in him means she is next.

In order to stop the Minotaur feasting on Amy, the Doctor has to destroy Amy’s faith in him. They enter Amy’s room, with the young Amelia Pond sitting on her suitcase, awaiting her raggedy man in a blue box. The Doctor, simultaneously talking to the young Amy and present Amy, tells her that he knew all along that he would lead her to her death, this was always going to happen and he did nothing to stop it, he says that she should forget him, let go of her faith in him, and become who she really is, Amy Williams. It was a beautiful little scene, and tightly performed by Matt Smith, not too over-the-top, it was just right.

I know this is probably going to get me lots of stick from the Tennant fan boys and girls, but it is the reason I prefer Smith to Tennant, I think there is much more subtly to Smith’s performance, whereas Tennant would often ham it up, especially in emotional scenes. That’s not to say Tennant was bad, he was often fantastic, I just think Smith has taken the Doctor to another level.

As the Minotaur slowly begins to die, the hotel falls apart, revealing a Tron-like environment based in outer-space. Before the Minotaur passes, he reveals some home truths, and this is where the episode links thematically with A Good Man Goes To War, in regards to the fall of the Doctor. Here is the Minotaur’s speech:

“An ancient creature drenched in the blood of the innocent, drifting in space, through an endless shifting maze. For such a creature death would be a gift.”

Whilst the Doctor believes the Minotaur is talking about himself, before they step back on the TARDIS, the monster reveals “I wasn’t talking about myself.” I still think this path we are heading down is very dark and very brave for Doctor Who. They’ve always played with the notion that what the Doctor does can cause pain and destruction, but I don’t think it has ever plagued the Doctor’s mind like it has done recently, I mean “drenched in the blood of the innocent” is pretty explicit.

The Doctor’s fall is continuing from A Good Man Goes To War, in Let’s Kill Hitler he was almost brought to his death, it ended up with River Song saving his life. In last week’s episode The Girl Who Waited we saw the Doctor at his most devious, locking the future Amy out of the TARDIS despite telling Rory that both Amy’s could survive. Night Terrors kind of disrupted the fall, but as that episode was supposed to air in the first half of the season, I’m going to ignore it. And of course, The God Complex brought the realisation once again that bad things happen to those that meet the Doctor.

There is no choice left for the Doctor but to return the Ponds, or I suppose I should now say, the Williams’, home. But not their old home, this is a new home that the Doctor has bought them, along with a flash new car. At first I thought this was the house they were living in at the beginning of The Impossible Astronaut, and it had me confused. I did have a theory that this was taking place before the events of The Impossible Astronaut, because there was also some strange timey-wimey madness when Rory spoke in the past tense to the Doctor, when he said “After all the time I spent with you in the TARDIS, what’s left to fear.” But I think this was maybe Rory having already made his decision to leave the TARDIS, last week he did tell the Doctor that he didn’t want to travel with him anymore.

The Doctor does tell Amy that they will see him again some day, and as we know, Amy and Rory are present for the Doctor’s death. But for now he has to leave them behind in order to save them, he doesn’t want to be standing over Amy and/or Rory’s dead bodies, and he knows that the longer they travel with him the more that becomes a severe possibility. It may be a bit harsh on the Doctor to say that he ruins the lives of those that travel with him, because I don’t think that is true. His companions often are looking for meaning, they were outcasts or underachievers in the real world, and travelling through time and space with the Doctor brought them a sense of purpose, and arguably made them better people. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that they are risking their lives every second they are with the Doctor, and it is a risk our favourite Time Lord is no longer willing to take.

The parting shot of the lonely Doctor in his TARDIS is beautifully poignant. And I believe this is what the Doctor saw in his room, himself, alone. The Doctor’s greatest fear is loneliness. “Of course. Who else?” he says when he opens the door to his room, and I’m sure this is exactly what he says before he his shot by the astronaut - does this mean the Doctor kills himself? Suicide may be going a little bit too far for tea-time entertainment. We may never know what was inside the Doctor’s room, and I think it is probably better if it remains a secret.

The Doctor won’t be lonely for too long though, as in next weeks penultimate episode he once again finds Craig (James Corden), and they prepare to do battle with some…Cybermen!

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

“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.

Read More

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.

Read More

(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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More