A Christmas Carol, The Impossible Astronaut, Day of the Moon & The Curse of the Black Spot

A Christmas Carol

Katherine Jenkins

The 2010 Christmas special was easily the most Christmassy of all thus far, taking it’s tale from the classic story by Charles Dickens. Sure it’s set on another planet with a space ship about to crash into the planet and kill a lot of people, and it features songstress Katherine Jenkins. Not only that but we have (the second) Dumbledore himself, Michael Gambon as this story’s ‘Mr Scrooge’ –  Sardick . So what more could you want?

It really feels like an episode outside of cannon in a lot of ways. All the Christmas episodes feel separate from the rest of the series in some ways with perhaps the exception of ‘The End of Time’, but this seems to elevate the Christmas special to another place entirely. As it stands it’s a pretty good piece of work, written by Steven Moffat, the first time the special has not be written by RTD.

It’s not very fast paced, and it has a bit of singing which wouldn’t have been so bad but to be honest it was clearly to make the best use of Catherine Jenkins. The music sadly, lovely though it is, is clearly pre-recorded and so it almost doesn’t seem to belong. There is an art to making songs sound like they belong in the world of the movie, or in this case TV show. Look at the Buffy Musical. Now this is not a musical, I must stress that, but when Jenkins starts singing it is blatantly obvious it is not live.

Gambon as Sardick

The look of it all is rather superb though, even if it is all very blue! It’s also kinda sad I guess, another love story taking centre stage in a Doctor Who adventure. Clever use of time again. It’s a little slow, and it would have been nice for Amy and Rory to have more to do. I thought I was going too hate it, so I am glad you know, I didn’t.

7/10

The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon

Silence.

For the first time a series starts with a two-part episode, setting up what appears to be a series arc as well and perhaps giving us the most impressive story visually in the show’s history. Steven Moffat makes a big statement here at the start of a 7 episode run, series six is the first season to be ‘split’ into two, airing in 2011 from April and then September.

It’s certainly epic, and that in part could be an issue going forward. When you start the series with an epic two-parter, where do you go? Can you lift it another cog or two? Is it actually possible? The story is set and filmed (location stuff at least) in America, and involves Richard Nixon (wonderfully played by Stuart Milligan) so again another figure from history. Moffat carefully is not very judgemental on the guy apart from a couple of comments.

But it all starts in Utah where Amy, Rory and River see the Doctor being killed by an astronaut, or at least a person in an astronaut suit. That evening, after they have burnt the Doctor’s body, they see the Doctor again! It seems the doctor that died, still Matt Smith looking pretty much the same, is the Doctor from 200 years in the future. Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey!

Milligan as Nixon.

The alien menace in this one is the ‘Silence’ or ‘Silents’ as I have seen some people write. They look excellent, very creepy indeed but that are very similar to the Ood. In fact I would say somewhere between the Ood and the gentlemen, from the Buffy episode ‘Hush’. The idea is wonderful – that they can erase themselves from your memory the second you don’t see them, and it presents some clever solutions too.

We begin the second episode months after the first, and to be honest I don’t think it made a hell of a lot of

sense. Everyone has split up and is found in different areas of the USA, gathering information on the Silence. Except they really don’t know anything new. Rory and Amy appear to spend a very long time inside body-bags as well which wasn’t very convincing. The Doctor is being held as a sort of mad prisoner, it seems like Moffat had a series of images he wanted to include in the story.

Then there is the little girl, because it’s

Rory and Amy share a moment.

all about her. She’s been calling Nixon, she is found in Florida in a space suit, and was apparently put there by the Silence. In the second part she forces her way out of the suit, rips it to get out. It’s full of wiring, has it been keeping her alive.

Who is the little girl? Is it Amy’s baby? Because big hints are dropped that it might be! We are setting up a big series six here it seems. Series Five had a spooky voice calling ‘Silence will fall’ a lot. Is this the Silence from this two part story? I am presuming it is.

Some wonderful, creepy images by the director too, Toby Haynes. Amy especially will the marks she makes to signify she has seen a Silent. Have to say they have used mostly if not entirely American actors this time for American characters which really helps (as compared with ‘Daleks in Manhatten’). Can they find another  gear through Series Six? We will have to see. But a very strong opening.

7.5/10

The Curse of the Black Spot

The Siren rises.

Arggghhh!

The third episode/second story of the series was always never going to match the opening for grandeur this time, and so taking it back to a simple, self-contained episode was the logical thing to do. ‘The Curse of the Black Spot’ starts off as a bit of fun, with Matt Smith being suitably awkward before the threat of the Siren reveals herself. Are we falling into clichés? Sure, but that’s ok. I liked the episode, although it does sag in the middle.

What’s haunting the pirate ship becalmed on the ocean? In fact it’s another space ship in a different dimension occupying the same space. The Siren appears at the first sign of illness, injury or blood and whisks the pirates back to her space ship and puts them into stasis. It’s a rather nice idea that probably wasn’t played out as well as it could have been.

The guest cast are very good, and the pirates leave Earth in the space ship although I

Patients in stasis. 

am a little confused as to how the little boy will survive out of stasis. I guess the Siren takes care of that. The biggest issue is continuing on from ‘Day of the Moon’ – with a bunch of questions left unanswered such as who killed the Doctor in the space suit and who is the girl. Oh, and why did Amy think she was pregnant and then say she is not?

To just go ‘let’s have more adventures’ in the wake of that seems unlikely for the characters and proved frustrating for this viewer. Moffat has set up a list of questions we may well have to wait a further 11 episodes to understand. But hey, no-one’s perfect, right?

7/10

Vincent and the Doctor, The Lodger, The Pandorica Opens & The Big Bang

Vincent and the Doctor

From the bland to the sublime, this is the series that never fails to surprise. To think that an episode so simple could be so perfect, this is without a doubt the best new series episode I have seen so far. It deals with depression as a topic, and Vincent Van Gogh as an inspiration. It has lighter moments, sad moments, and a great deal of empathy. It is gloriously shot, it looks superb on the screen with a wonderful mix of colours akin to that in Van Gogh’s paintings.

Tony Curran - brilliant as Vincent Van Gogh.

We start some time after the previous episode, so we have conveniently bypassed the affects of losing Rory (for the Doctor at least as Amy has forgotten) and we start in Paris with a lovely guest appearance by one of Britain’s finest actors, Bill Nighy. Some lovely bi-play between him and Matt Smith concerning their bow-ties mostly. Then we are transported back in time and meet Vincent Van Gogh himself, and Tony Curran gives an amazing performance as the tortured painter.

Bill Nighy.

And here’s the rub – what makes this episode so special. Other than it was written by the amazing Richard Curtis of course. When we saw Churchill, Dickens and Shakespeare they were somewhere near their best. Lively, amazing characters, but with Van Gogh we see a sadder side. A truer side you might say – going from highs to lows, the extremes of his bi-polar condition. The monster in the story is as much a metaphor for his condition than any real monster, which shows an incredible subtlety and care in the writing which elevates the episode far beyond the ordinary tale.

The climax, when Van Gogh sees the future and how his work is regarded today is an emotional high point of the story, I challenge anyone watching not to be incredibly moved by that moment. Then the sadness that all that happened didn’t prolong Van Gogh’s life juxtaposes emotional highs with grim reality.

Is this a traditional Doctor Who episode? Far from it. The plot is actually very thin to non-existent, but we see that when handled with care we can get an amazing 45 minutes from little to no plot, but a lot of love. And yes, apparently by this stage Van Gogh should be missing an ear. Can’t say that affected the story for me at all though…

9.5/10

The Lodger

James Corden guest stars as Craig Owens.

‘The Lodger’ is a bit of fun. A lot of fun actually. A very different story to the previous episode, this one really highlights the emphasis on comedy that has been a feature of series 5. Karen Gillan takes a back seat in this ‘companion-light’ tale, interestingly the Doctor-light stories appear to be a thing of the past. Probably for the best there’s only so much that could be done with that format.

We are introduced to Craig Owens, played by James Corden who apparently is well known in Britain for ‘Gavin and Stacey’ (I think that’s the name, a sitcom, again I think). And it all works very well thanks mostly to Matt Smith who really gives a fantastic comic performance. Being really ‘alien’ seems to be what distinguishes Matt Smith from David Tennant, who I think is the most human of all the Doctors. When Moffatt replaced Tennant with Smith, he still had a young actor in the role and so

they needed to differentiate the two in some way. Smith still runs around a lot, relies on the sonic screwdriver for everything and speaks very very fast, especially when explaining things. All these things Tennant did too. But Smith’s Doctor seems to understand humans a lot less than Tennant’s. He easily becomes a fish out of water when he doesn’t understand things.

Here we have him confusing football with cricket at one point, interesting as the Doctor has in the past been a huge cricket fan, especially in his fourth and fifth incarnations. Anyways, the misunderstanding (he offers up 3000 pounds for rent at the start for example) is where in lies the interest for this story. Yes, we have an alien spaceship on top of a stair case in the house, but that’s by the by. It’s more about watching the Doctor trying to infiltrate and appear like a human (as the TARDIS can’t land until the space ship is dealt with) as anything else. And it’s about Craig’s life too, about him falling in love, not wanting to leave where he lives.

We even have a scene where the Doctor plays football and is brilliant at it. Interesting choice. Oh well, we’ve already seen him be brilliant at cricket. Is there much to the tale? Not really. It doesn’t move the series on as a whole, it’s almost a place holder as we build for the big finale. But the episode is highly enjoyable, and next to ‘Vincent and the Doctor’ we see that the show can be many things, side by side.

8/10

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang

River Song impersonates Cleopatra. 

The first series ‘finale’ under the new regime. It’s a hard story to rate. Firstly,  I’d rate it as better than any of the RTD series finales. There’s no question there. It was suitably big enough, interesting enough, and packed a punch. It mostly made sense, BUT it did fall straight back into the trap of solving everything with a big ol’ reset button. AND the ending is either confusing or just a plain fairytale, devoid of any science fiction type of explanation.

The Cyberman comes back to life.

So where does that leave us? Well we start with a look back at some of the guest stars from the season as Winston Churchill (Ian McNiece) makes a reappearance and then Liz Ten (Sophie Okonedo). River Song (Alex Kingston) said they would meet again when the Pandorica opens in ‘Flesh and Stone’, so we can presume that this one is going backwards in time for her.

Rory is back.

The first episode is fantastic in many aspects. Rory (Arthur Darvill) is back as a Roman soldier – turns out as an Auton. There is a host of the Doctor’s enemies in this, although this is not a story about fighting off an invasion or the alien hordes. They see the Doctor will be responsible for destroying the universe, that his TARDIS is responsible for the cracks and the universe destruction. So they trap him in the pandorica. Rory shoots Amy because he’s an Auton, but then all the baddies disappear and he becomes his own man.

The Doctor goes with a Fez.

Amy is kept alive by being put in the Pandorica, opened by the sonic screwdriver as the Doctor from the future gives it to Rory. There’s a lot of playing with time in the story. Meanwhile River Song is trapped in the TARDIS as it is exploding, presumably what destroys the universe and makes the cracks. Why is it exploding? No explanation is offered. HOWEVER Amy, Rory and River are talking in the first episode of series six (spoilers) saying that the Doctor shouldn’t meet himself, last time he did, the universe was nearly destroyed. Well the Doctor does meet himself in the museum in the future where the Pandorica is being held. He is using River’s vortex manipulator, he gets shot by a Dalek, ends up in the Pandorica, uses the Pandorica to reboot the universe by moving it to the TARDIS and the original atoms of the universe explode through the TARDIS recreating the universe.

Amy inside the Pandorica.

However, the TARDIS was at the centre of the explosion with the Doctor on board. River says the Doctor will die. The universe is reborn, it’s Amy and Rory’s wedding day, they have all forgotten the Doctor. But seeing River’s TARDIS diary sparks a hidden memory for Amy and she remembers him, and then the TARDIS reappears with the Doctor dressed for the wedding. So Moffatt seems to be saying the Doctor was saved because Amy remembered him. Also, the base

The Daleks rises.

code of the Universe has been mentioned as being the date of the wedding – but it’s never actually intimated as the significance of the date. Was the Doctor always destined to return on  that day?

To me this was a well made episode, with several questions left unanswered. It is possibly the most confusing Doctor Who has been since episode one. Are these questions which will get answered? I doubt it now. And thus it was made a

very difficult episode to judge. I loved the stone Dalek, I loved the timey-wimey stuff, but I find ‘remembering the Doctor’ a weak way to bring him back, and why was the TARDIS exploding? That’s the biggest question mark of all and no-one seems to have a good answer for that!

PS. Caitlin Blackwood returns also as young Amy and again is brilliant!

7/10

The Time of Angels, Flesh and Stone & Vampires in Venice

Allow me to start by apologising. I had meant to follow the worst stories of all by the best, but I have decided to reserve judgement until I have got through every single episode. Sorry for the break as well, it's been the anniversary week so a lot has been going on. For now, I return to the marathon where I left off, early in Series 5...

Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

Alex Kingston is back!

Amy looks at a recording of an angel.

River Song (Alex Kingston) returns in this two-part story featuring the return of the Weeping Angels. It’s a strong story, well-paced full of suspense and in most ways living up to the promise of the Angels returning, although you’d have to say they are not the Daleks and if they bring them back again we are talking about the law of diminishing returns. But they worked well in this story.

Instead of River Song becoming clearer, Moffat (the writer) appears to have gone down the track of

making her more mysterious and confusing, deliberately posing the question ‘who is she’? to the audience. I’m not sure how this will all play out, and I still think she was best as a one off character. It’s straight away confusing because she is obviously younger than ‘Silence in the Library’ – where she died, and yet she not only recognised the tenth Doctor, but was surprised he didn’t know who she was.

And she lets us know she’s coming back later in the series at the end. She’s a prisoner, she killed ‘a good man’, who it is strongly hinted at was the Doctor. So waters are murkier still.

Still darn creepy on their second outing.

The story is shot in some caves and with the addition of a bit of CGI they look stunning, Moffat creates some amazing and gripping moments, like when Amy is stuck in a trailer with a video of an angel and she can’t get out. The time crack from episode one is back – although we’ve seen it reappear at the end of the previous two episodes two, which is the series theme it seems. On the other side of the cracks lives the vortex, and when you get sucked out, you are erased from time.

This leads to some great scenes with Amy when some of the soldiers disappear through it and they can’t remember, but Amy does as she’s a time traveller. The ending is great too, when the ship’s gravity is powered down and all the angels fall through the crack. It was a clever twist, and a very effecting ending to a strong tale.

And of course, we also have Ser Jorah Mormont himself (Iain Glen) in this one. What more could you want. Good to see the show back on its feet after two wobbly weeks.

8/10

Vampires of Venice

Redesigned console room.

The Doctor is confronted with some interesting ladies.

The previous episode ended on a strange note, with the Doctor and Amy returning to England, the Doctor finding out Amy is about to get married and then Amy throwing herself at the Doctor. So when this story opens on Rory’s stag party (Amy is marrying Rory by the way), the weirdness continues and the Doctor pops out of a cake (instead of a stripper).

The Doctor is being portrayed by Matt Smith as someone who really doesn’t have much idea about

Helen McCrory guest stars.

people. It’s strange that the Doctor can regress in such a way after regeneration, but I have to say it works nicely and provides some great comic moments. The Doctor takes Amy and Rory on a getaway to Venice back a few hundred years.

Turns out there are vampires there – ok fish from another planet, but for want of a better word. It looks beautiful, they did a great job in recreating Venice. We get a somewhat stock-standard story with

The Doctor does what he does best - he saves the day!

lots of running around and danger, and the Doctor winning through in the end. It’s all very competent without being a stand-out episode, the creatures look rather good, the plot is not complicated, there’s a healthy dose of humour mixed with the sci-fi and historical elements. I liked it.

7/10

Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead, Midnight & Turn Left

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead

Steven Moffat wrote this two-part story for series 4, and again he provides us with a fantastic tale full of terror, thought, and great characters. Enter Professor River Song (Alex Kingston), a character from the Doctor’s future who has travelled with the Doctor and it seems is much more than just a travelling companion, greeting the Doctor with ‘Hello Sweetie’.

The sets and CGI of the library planet are excellent in this one, it’s just very strong all round. We have as our monsters the Vasta Narada, who hide in the shadows and eat a person’s flesh in a split second. We have the central computer which is connected to the mind of a small girl, who saved everyone in the library before they died to the hard drive. We have elements, such as life inside the girl’s mind, which seems completely separate to the action in the library until things slowly come together in the second part.

It’s wonderfully crafted, emotional, clever, as good as Steven’s previous episodes which all bear the hallmarks of someone who loves to create and paint with his scripts. Donna Noble is sidelined a bit in this one. She ends up saved to the hard drive living a life out with children and a family before she is restored, and whilst it’s a nice story-arc for her, I don’t feel her character progresses throughout the story – which has been a hallmark of every story she’s been

in so far. But that’s ok, suddenly we have River Song who proves to be a very interesting character. Will River Song come back? Although she professes to be a big part of the Doctor’s future, I don’t think she needs to. Especially as we’ll have a new Doctor in the not so distant future (I am told this is David Tennant’s last full series as the Doctor).

And we also have the twist that the library was built on the home planet of the Vastra Narada. They lived in the forests there, but the forests were destroyed by the humans to make books and the library. So again life is not all black and white, they are bad and humans are good.

Alex Kingston

The humans have this strange device attached to their collars which allows them to speak very briefly after they die. It makes for a couple of very sad and moving scenes, but I have to question whether there would be any logical reason to invent such a thing. All in all though, the story has a wonderfully scary atmosphere. It’s written in such a way that you slowly understand what has been going on, where much of the first episode, whilst creepy, is rather strange and difficult to process.

Wonderful piece of writing, direction, everything really. So much time and care went into this one.

9/10

Midnight

‘Midnight’, I think, is Russel T Davies’ best work for Doctor Who, writing-wise that is. It’s a great twist on the character of our hero, the Doctor, that he basically loses the plot when people don’t stand in awe of him and do whatever he tells them to do. ‘Midnight’ is a claustrophobic masterpiece, incredibly creepy and scary, brilliantly played by the cast, including David Tennant, and it is one of the simplest Doctor Who stories there has ever been.

Lesley Sharp.

The Doctor and a group of people on a tour are trapped by a creature that lives outside on the planet Midnight where deadly exitonic sunlight shines and supposedly nothing can live in direct contact with the sun’s rays. The creature gets inside the tour vehicle and possesses Mrs Silvestri (Lesley Sharp) who starts to mimic what everyone says. Then she catches up and we have an eerie few minutes where everything the characters say Mrs Sivestri says at exactly the same time. She then

Lesley Sharp and David Troughton

starts mimicking only the Doctor, but before e speaks!

People become convinced that the Doctor is behind it all and are about to throw him out of the capsule, but the stewardess realises the Doctor is not to blame and pull Mrs. Silvestri out. It’s wonderfully played out by all, including David Troughton (formally of ‘The War Games’ and ‘The Curse of Peladon’, not to mention son of Patrick), Ayesha Antoine and Rakie Ayola. Excellent, scary stuff, presumably a cheapish episode to film too mostly stuck in the capsule.

9/10

Turn Left

Rose is back. Had a little work done I thinks!

For Series Four Russel T Davies took a different approach to the ‘Doctor-lite’ story compared to the previous two. Usually one story featured the Doctor and companion very little. However, for series four we have one story which doesn’t feature Donna a lot (‘Midnight’) and then ‘Turn Left’, all about Donna with only the Doctor featuring at the start and end. And both of these episodes worked very well.

‘Turn Left’ is perhaps a style of story the concept of time travel immediately lends itself too, yet I don’t think we’ve ever had a story that went down this exact route until ‘Turn Left’. What would have happened if you’d made a different choice earlier in your life? How would your life have been different? How would the world have been different?

Refugee life.

If Donna hadn’t taken the job at HC Clements where she was working when she met the Doctor in ‘The Runaway Bride’, then the events of this episode would have happened. The Doctor is killed in the encounter with the Racnos, and the world is open to the threat of invasion. This episode basically shows us an apocalypse on Earth, Donna and her family living as refugees, and then the return of Rose who is working with UNIT (in this Universe). She has to return to the decision and change it back to the way it was meant to go.

Chipo Chung returns as a sort of soothsayer who is working on behalf of a big bug which sits on Donna’s back (occasionally mentioned through this series in fact, now we know why) and feeds off alternative timelines or something like that. It’s a great episode, it’s thoughtful, confronting too when immigrant refugees are sent away to labour camps, moving and gets everything except the unconvincing bug just about right.

Bernard Cribbins is as always wonderful as Wilfred Mott, and Catherine Tate has shown so much depth and range during the series that I can’t believe I ever doubted her. This episode is sheer brilliance.

9/10