More more more....how do you like your Whoooooo??

Admittedly the new series is looking rather good...

Mmm I wonder why they shoved in so many clips of Utah and the US desert in an advert for BBC America??

The sixth coming

It's coming back!!



I've got to say, I am slightly apprehensive cos hyper-critical me was rather disappointed by the last series...

Time will tell.

Dr Who - a quick(ish) spin through the remainder of Season Five

Blimey oh riley. It's taken me enough time to get round to tackling this one hasn't it? (DW S5 that is, to use the abbreviated version). By now most of you will be way familiar with my busy life and how quite often I am forced to relegate blogging to the back burner. But it's better to be here sometimes than not atall; I hope you will all agree??

Anyhow, it's half term now (hoorah!!) and I for one am feeling pretty damn happy....Mums and Dads of kiddies may not be feeling quite so gleeful. I've got a few nice things lined up this week too which gives me something to look forward to!

Anyway (have you noticed that "anyhow" and "anyway" are two of the most overused words in this Cheeser's vocabulary? Time to consult that thesaurus, something I am always recommending that my students do...) I digress...(oooh that's better, isn't it?) Here goes nothing, following on from where I left off last time...

The Vampires of Venice

Not actually filmed in Venice, but Croatia, but still looked suitably Venetian. All about a race of fishy aliens disguised as humans who were planning to breed and take over the Earth - hence a watery setting was an ideal place for them to hatch their plans...

...Oh and I forget to mention the aliens were also vampires....the ones disguised as schoolgirls in nighties were bound to appeal to the fantasies of Hammer House of Horror fans/pervy old dads.

The pre-titles sequence, in which the Dr burst out of a wedding cake unexpectedly at Rory's stag party, ready to whisk the huband-to-be off on a TARDIS trip and reunite him with Amy, was funny stuff. The bemused look on Matt Smith's face was hilarious - there really is something adorable about this guy. Unfortunately, the comedy element ended up subsuming much of the rest of the story - what should have been an altogether darker tale, given the setting and theme, became something rather too farcical.

Helen McCrory, as lead vamp Signora Rosanna Calvierri, put in a decent performance; an imperious presence and a decent actress to boot. However there was also quite a lot of running around in the episode and Rory's "comic" fight Rosanna's son Francesco was pretty silly (attempting to beat him off with a broom). There was one good scene in which the Dr faced off with Rosanna and told her that he won't help because she didn't know the name of one of the human victims, classic Time Lord vs Villain confrontational stuff. The ending, in which the Doc had to ascend a bell tower to deactivate a device that threatened to sink Venice, smacked of Logopolis/The Idiot's Lantern/Evolution of the Daleks though i.e. a method that has been used way too many times before. And what happened to all the fishy aliens that were still in the water at the end of the story?

Venice has been used as a scary dramatic backdrop many times before - Don't Look Now, Comfort of Strangers etc- but the tone of this story felt much more lightweight than heavy, which left moi feeling rather short-changed.

2.5 out of 5

Amy's Choice

Much more interesting. In which the Dr, Amy and Rory become trapped in two "realities" - one in which Rory and Amy are living a happily married in Leadworth and the ginger Scots one is also up the duff with the Doc as reluctant visitor; the other in which the two companions and Time Lord are stuck in a rapidly deteriorating TARDIS control room. In both of these worlds they are constantly taunted by a "Dream Lord" - an evil cosmic trickster who seems determined to put the time travelling threesome through their paces and who keeps them guessing which of the two worlds is the "real" one. Oh and they need to make up their minds about this, cos they stand to die in both places.

The village setting worked well again as in the season's debut story, this time playing on the "eccentric villagers" angle even more - it transpires that the local OAPs are actually all aliens and they're out to get the Dr, Amy and Rory - the siege scenes e.g. in Amy's house, the children's' playground, were quite sinister and the tension was cranked up quite nicely. The worm-like things that came out of the old fogies' mouths were pretty horrid too, and the stuff of classic DW. The part when they vaporised Rory was also sad..

Toby Jones put in a sly performance as the Dream Lord (though I felt he could have been even more nasty at times) and had some good lines, especially his taunting of the Dr: "If you show any more tawdry quirks you could open a tawdry quirks shop...." It turns out that the Dream Lord was actually a manifestation of the Dr's "dark side" (rather like the Valeyard?) brought about by psychic pollen falling into the time rotor causing the Dr and his companions to hallucinate (aaah I see...) I liked the moment when the Dr sees the Dream Lord reflected back at him in the TARDIS console near the end (creepy) and Amy's question to the Doc, "Were those things about you true?" remained unanswered, suggesting it may not all be over yet...

Arthur Darvill and Karen Gillan continued to demonstrate their decent acting abilities - streets ahead of Freema Agyeman for instance - in what was essentially an Amy and Rory focused story...although I must say the title "Amy's Choice" is a bit of a misnomer, as in the end it isn't really her who makes the choice. I still find Amy's sarcastic and up-herself persona too much to take at times however.

Not an out-and-out classic but definitely one of the best of the season.

3.5 out of 5

The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood

The one in which the Silurians came back! Yay! Except by the end of the two-parter I was left with the distinct feeling that they needn't have bothered....

In terms of the eagerly-awaited resurrection of the Eocene creatures, their new look was definitely more convincing than in "Warriors of the Deep" (plus there was no Myrka)...however I actually thought they looked better with their masks on, than off! The "bug-eyed" look of the masks looked rather good and I'd assumed this was what they'd be like from the Season 5 pre-broadcast trailer...

...however when the masks were off, the Silurians had very human-looking peepers indeed. And what happened to the third "eye" that could zap people? Their voices were decidedly human-sounding too i.e. no voice modulation, no vocal effects...which, for me, detracted from their menace to quite a large degree. Okay, so Alaya/Restac, played by the rather good Neve McIntosh, had a suitably sibilant, hissing delivery, but the utterances of the other Silurian folk sounded way too normal. In fact one of them sounded like he had a Yorkshire accent!

The Silurians' subterranean base was impressive though, in large part down to the far better special / visual effects of the Noughties...

However, as a vehicle for bringing the reptilian ones back, I felt this could have been handled better. The action for the first half of the story centred around a small Welsh community and a local drilling project, supervised by Dr Nasreen Chaudhry, boring down into the earth and disturbing...guess who? The reasons for the project could have been better fleshed out and I felt kind of disappointed with the "smallscale" focus here - an "every family" group of characters - father Mo, wife Ambrose, son Eliot and grandfather - who were all affected by the arrival of the Silurians on the earth's surface. Probably trying to give the story a more intimate feel but I was hoping for a more "grand scale" invasion scenario as in The Silurians or The Sea Devils, with more of humankind affected, but this never happened. Even the drilling project itself felt very "smallscale" and I yearned for some big "Nuclear powerbase" sets with loads of computers and important-looking white-coated technicians with clipboards striding around, as in in "The Silurians". Could the budget not stretch to all of this having blown it all on the underground Silurian base? More on this in a mo...

Admittedly opening episode "The Hungry Earth" did build up the suspense very nicely - scenes of the project workers, then Amy, getting pulled down into the ground and the fleeting glimpses of Silurian Alaya running around the churchyard were some of the scariest moments in the whole of this series (the churchyard bits in particular). However once we progressed onto episode two "Cold Blood", things started to nose-dive. The "exchange of the hostages" plot line took up too much time - even though there was a nice sense of impending, inevitable doom once the grandfather accidentally shot Alaya - and the "let's discuss sharing the Earth" scenes later on with Nasreen and the old Silurian scientist were, well, discussions that precluded anything more exciting from occurring. The only real action came towards the end when the Silurian warriors, led by the vengeful sister of Alaya, Restac, chased the Doc and co down corridors but that was virtually the conclusion of the story. As a whole the two parter was obviously trying to go for the "cerebral" approach but going back to what I said before, this meant that the potential for a cracking "invasion of the earth" story was lost. It never felt like the threat progressed beyond a small bunch of characters, because, well, it didn't. However the Silurian troops are still stacked up in their millions down below, so perhaps there's potential for a sequel...

A few other observations...Meera Syall, decent actress / comedian / writer though she is, was really kind of wasted as Nasreen. It was neither here nor there that she was a scientist as she just seemed to be playing....herself. Not much authority to the character and it was hard to credit that she'd just let the Dr and Amy walk into the drilling complex like that!

Matt Smith continued to impress though; nice little exchange with the boy Eliot (incidentally another instance of decent child acting, after the rather good little girl who played young Amy earlier on):

Eliot (asking the Dr about escaping the destruction of Gallifrey): Did you get away?
Dr: Yeah.
Eliot: Do you miss it?
Dr (pause): So much.

The final scenes, in which a dying Restac shoots Rory and he then dissolves, claimed by the crack in time, suddenly upped the ante and resulted in a nice "I wasn't expecting that atall" cliffhanger.

Moreover, Karen Gillan was very convincing in conveying Amy's grief at Rory's "death" and demonstrated some of her best acting in the show thus far - I almost forgot how smug she can sometimes be. Shame the rest of the story wasn't really up to par though. It made me want to dig out my DVD of "The Silurians" and watch it all over again, which in fact I have already started doing as I write this. Jon Pertwee, Liz Shaw, the Brig and UNIT did it so much better. As did Geoffey Palmer and commuters dying all over the place in London, in suitably apocalyptic style. Now that's what an invasion can really do to you.

3 out of 5

Vincent and the Doctor

Another of those perennial "The Dr meets famous historical figure" story of which we get at least one per season...in this case centred around the Doc and Amy's encounter with the painter Vincent Van Gogh. With Rory now "dead" and off the scene, this was essentially a three-hander - with the Doc, Amy and the mad Dutch painter occupying centre stage. And a charming episode this was (if somewhat meandering and thin on the ground in terms of plot).

Firstly Tony Curran did a very passable job of portraying the ginger genius painter - although I wasn't sure why they let him have a Scottish accent? Was he incapable of "doing Dutch"? Vincent's so-called "madness" was also dealt with by means of a clever metaphor - Van Gogh was able to see the Krafayis monster, a pack predator alien abandoned on Earth, whereas no-one else could (to the Doc, Amy and everyone else it was invisible). Vincent's unique "second sight" thus allowed him to assist the Dr and Amy in their defeat of the monster. Neat device there.

As said, there wasn't much else to the story in terms of plot - this was essentially a much more character-driven tale. But you know what? There's no harm in having a diversion from the norm every once in a while.

I loved the recreation of Van Gogh's paintings and their incorporation into the narrative - e.g. the cafe scene - so clever!

Best scene of all (and in fact one of my favourite in the entire season) occurred towards the end of the episode, when the Doc takes Van Gogh to the Louvre in modern day Paris to prove exactly how much of an impact the Dutch artists has made on world culture. The Doc asks the gallery guide (a lovely cameo from the ever-droll Bill Nighy) to espouse the virtues of Van Gogh, whilst the man himself watchs and listens, undetected and moved to tears at the revelations he hears...Vincent then goes up to Bill N and hugs him, thanking him...he and the Doc walk off...and Bill N does a great double take...was that really....no....it couldn't be...This scene was so lovely and virtually reduced me to tears too. It also epitomised - I'm trying to put this into words and finding it really hard - one of the essential ideas of Dr Who: that time travel can be used as a force for good; a way of looking into the future with positive consequences; of showing an individual that their memory and legacy can endure, long after their physical death. And it was just so lovely that we saw the Dr allowing someone such a privilege.

I never rated episode writer Richard Curtis very highly before (I'm not a fan of "Four Weddings and a Funeral" - everything that is quintessentially cliched and stereotyped about representations of English culture) but he proved his worth here as a penner of DW episodes and I for one wouldn't mind a second outing from him.

3.75 out of 5 (okay I'm cheating on the ratings but it's as near as damnit...)

The Lodger

Mmmm. I thought this was going to be the "Doctor-lite" story of the seaon but it seems that's all been scrapped under the new reign of Steven Moffat. In fact it was more of an "Amy-lite" tale, with the sarcy Scots one stuck in the TARDIS for the majority of the story. Meanwhile separated from his beloved time machine by some freak cosmic disturbance, the Dr is stranded on Earth and tracks down the source of the trouble to the second floor of a house. In order to get closer to the problem, he is forced to infiltrate the house and pose as the lodger of Craig Owens, the tenant occuping the downstairs flat...

A reasonable enough idea for a story, but it was all a bit lame for my liking. This was a very "human-interest" story, with a lot of the focus taking place on Craig, played by current fave actor James Corden, and his blossoming relationship with co-worker Sophie. Corden is a decent enough actor I guess and with his down to earth manner I can see why people find him endearing. However all of this domestic, lovey-dovey stuff reminded me more of a Russell T Davies story and I was half expecting the Tyler family to pop up at some stage.

We also got "comedy Dr" with the Time Lord (gasp!) walking around half naked in a towel, which got me all in a tizzy some time back....

...and joining Craig and his laddie mates for some footballing shenanigans (a chance for Matt Smith to demonstrate his real life football skills - he nearly became a professional player, but due to a back injury had to forget that one and opt for an acting career instead - all I can say is, good thing, although Mr Smith may not agree...) All mildly amusing and diverting but not exactly rivetting drama. Oh, am I become boring in my old age...?

The denouement - that there was an alien spaceship occupying the top floor (which wasn't really a top floor after all) and that the deaths of the human passersby were caused by the aliens in their desire to escape - wasn't very ground-breaking and also felt kind of rushed. The "solution" - Craig admits his love for Sophie, that he doesn't want to leave and then touches the controls - was corny.

James Corden was generally fine as Craig as was Daisy Haggard as Sophie but I couldn't help all thinking of this rom-com stuff was better suited to some 9.30pm show on BBC2. A very average story for me.

2.5 out of 5

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang

And so we reach yet another season finale. Once more, the concluding two-parter had been hyped up to the max weeks before actual transmission, not least through the recurrent "cracks in time" motif we'd been hammered with in every episode thus far this season. I can honestly say I'd be quite happy to see a concluding story which didn't bear any relation to its preceding ones - for me, (the only ones which I really liked were Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways in Season One and Army of Ghosts/Doomsday in Season Two).

The first episode set up things intriguingly: River Song summons the Dr to Stonehenge, Roman Britain, 102 AD, where the fabled Pandorica is found, hidden in a vault beneath the stone circle...

...it transpires that the giant device (which rather reminded me of one of the Borg's ships from Star Trek/that cube thing from the Hellraiser movies all those years back) is opening from inside and transmitting a message across time and space using the rocks of Stonehenge, a signal drawing "everything that ever hated the Doctor" to Earth that night.

And lo and behold, just about every baddy from the Doc's past suddenly materialises - Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans etc - orbitting the stone circle. I loved the revelation that the whole Roman world was an imaginary construct/trap devised by the Dr's enemies - ideas that they had taken ideas from books Amy had read as a child, representing Pandora's box and Roman soldiers...

And yikes - Rory suddenly reappears, reincarnated as a Roman soldier, with no knowledge of how he ended up there...until it turns out that he, along with the other soldiers, is a now an Auton (an interesting idea which never got sufficiently explained) and he then shoots Amy!

The cliffhanger - another revelation that the Pandorica has actually been built to imprison the Dr and does not in fact contain "all the evils of the universe" made for a good twist and set things up promisingly for the next episode...

...which is where things all got incredibly complicated for me, with some convuluted techno-speak and plot developments. I found it a bit of a let-down really. The exploding TARDIS in which River was trapped was triggering the end of the Universe. I can't actually be bothered to go into masses of detail here (as you might have realised, my "quick spin" has turned into anything but and one grows tired - you probably are by now!!). Except to say:

- Nice to say the little girl actress back as young Amy.
- The idea of Centurion Rory guarding the Pandorica through the centuries, thus creating a mythology, was a good un - but how did he make sure that he was always there? Oh, he was an Auton and they never die, do they?
- All that "Amy's dead except she's not" stuff got too bewildering.

- Setting up such an effective cliffhanger with all the Doc's enemies finally getting one over on the Time Lord boded well for the next episode - then when we get there and the Doc manages to escape the Pandorica, they've all been frozen to death!! Threat quickly and too conveniently disposed of, except for a stray, fossilised Dalek that kept getting reactivated and was frankly, annoying...
- This leads to my next point - having got rid of the Dr's adversaries so quickly, there was no "real enemy" for the Time Lord in this story. Just a load of techno-gubbins about the TARDIS being at the heart of the Big Bang and the Dr having to pilot the TARDIS back into the explosion to create a second explosion...? I confess I got lost here.
- The Dr coming back "from the void/death" at Amy's wedding just because Amy was able to wish it - phew! How convenient!

- The "soapy" focus on Amy and Rory's relationship - again. In some respects their getting spliced felt more important than the so-called universal threat of the Big Bang itself. It's ironic, cos I thought we were moving away from the soap opera theatrics of RTD when Steven M took over as lead writer - but we haven't exactly....

- River Song. Alex Kingston really is very good and the presence of her character was one of the saving graces of the story. We were given more tantalising clues about her real identity at the end - who is she? Apparently we find out more next season.

Anyway, my overall rating would be:
3 out of 5 - just.

And that's it for my reviews of Season 5. As I said, so much for the quick spin...but hey guys and gals, I got there eventually!

Now I've looked at the series as a whole, I can honestly say that S5 unfortunately left me feeling quite short-changed. The best stories for me were The Eleventh Hour, The Beast Below and The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone; most of the rest I rated 3 stars or below and some didn't even make that. There's no doubt that Steven Moffat has a different style of writing to Russell TD, but I'm not entirely sold on his style - in spite of the fact that he penned some of the best stories in previous seasons e.g. The Empty Child/The Dr Dances etc. One aspect of Moffat's new reign that has surprised me has been the sacrificing of "hardcore" sci-fi ideas at the expense of the human interest/relationships stuff. As said, I thought we were moving away from this...I've got to say I've lost a bit of my enthusiasm for the prog and am actually not feeling all that excited about the forthcoming Season 6. (One interesting development about the up and coming next series, in case you didn't know, it's that it's going to be split down the middle on broadcast: the first half of the series will start around March/April 2011 and continue until episode 7 is aired - apparently there's a big mid-season cliffhanger at that point - episode 8 and the remainder of the run will then recommence in the Autumn. At least that way we won't have to wait so long inbetween series, I guess...)


One large positive which I won't deny has been the arrival of Matt Smith - a decent actor and he's brought many of the right qualities to the role of the Doctor - quirkiness, eccentricity, intelligence, humour, whackiness and more besides. I really am quite fond of him and prefer him to David Tennant.

I feel bad that I have spent a lot of this post whinging, but as I think I've mentioned before, as a pretty big DW fan I am even more critical of the show than some...ho hum! I just can't help the way I feel....But I'm not at the point where I'm giving up on my favourite show quite yet...! Anyway thanks for reading.

A post, a post, my kingdom for a post

...which doesn't make sense really, but I thought it was time for another (rare these days) update. I'm sooo busy at work with marking and the like...take my advice, my little fruity tartlets, don't become a teacher!! My A Level students have all recently completed coursework that needed marking, to top that my Access students are doing oodles of asssements which will all involve even more checking and marking, and as if I wasn't enough of a glutton for punishment, I'm doing even more marking for an exam board this Summer! Well, extra cash for a holiday, I'm hoping for a trip to San Francisco, actually, Matty, hope you've noted that one.

Anyway that's not desperately interesting news is it? Of course the big thing I should be writing about is the current state of politics in the UK. Okay, confession time. I didn't vote during this election. Ahem, ahem. Largely because I hadn't got round to putting myself put on the electoral role when I moved from my last abode, but also, if truth be known, because I couldn't be a*sed and my way of thinking is "one vote isn't going to make the world of difference". Yes I know you're probably all shaking your heads and thinking "Well, if everyone took that attitude it would mean that parties who people don't want running the country would get in..." But I don't actually think that's the case. Confession number two - those of you who visit this blog at least semi-regularly will probably have gathered that I'm not exactly a political animal. A pop cultural animal with cheesy/retro obsessions and leanings, that's for sure. But not political. Well that isn't strictly true, I mean I do believe in fighting for gay rights and other worthy causes etc...Mmm feels like I'm digging myself a bit a hole now. Actually, another confession (number 3 - at the rate I'm going I'll have more confessions than Madonna) - I know that David Cameron and Nick Clegg have now formed a "coalition" but I don't really understand what this means in terms of politics and how the country is run. Would anyone care to enlighten a rather thick old 41 year old man??

Anyway one must move on. One other thing that's been overdue, and you just knew it was coming, was a bit of comment on the current series of Doctor Who. Yes you'd be forgiven for thinking that's all I can write about at the moment...I promise to try and devise some differently-themed posts...the problem is my average week seems to revolve around working Monday-Friday including evenings, working some of my weekend and - oh! - watching DW...my gosh, isn't my existence sooo exciting!

The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

Loved this two parter, well, to be precise I really, really liked it and it was a definite improvement on the previous Dalek one. Steven Moffat proved his writing abilities again with an involving tale that brought back not only the gorgeous River Song but also those nasty stone angels that advance on you if you so much as blink. On closer analysis the story itself was a little laboured and slow in places and nothing out of the ordinary - ship crashes on planet, weeping angel escapes, River and her team go to find it, team get hunted down by more angels and the Dr must find a way to stop it...But the way it was all conveyed raised the story above the average stakes.

Shades of Marilyn...

I liked the opening Dr-River reunion scenes - great shots of her red high heels and forcibly ejecting herself out of an airlock, then flying towards the TARDIS (which confused me as I couldn't help but wonder how she could breath, let alone not actually explode in the vacuum of space - but as Dan informed me, if you listen carefully there's a line in there the Dr says about creating an air corridor - and someone else on his blog says that apparently you can survive for 1-2 minutes in space without asphyxiating! So there - and anyone remember what happened to Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect when they were ejected from the Vogon ship in Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy? God that was a long bracket bit).

River also looked fab in her party dress and the dialogue between her and the Doc was sparky and fun (including the revelation that the wheezing noise when the TARDIS materialises comes from the Dr leaving the breaks on when landing - has he been doing it wrong all these years?!) River's TARDIS style diary was on show once again and there were further hints about future developments in her relationship with the Dr. I was kind of hoping, if not expecting, that this story would show the first meeting between the Time Lord and Ms Song, but no, that wasn't the case. It's another meeting somewhere down the line ... gets a bit confusing when you think about it too much but also kind of intriguing.

Girl talk

Amy's inquisitive involvement, wanting to know exactly who River was to the Dr, also made for some entertaining moments. And we also got the revelation that River had - gasp - killed a man ... not the Dr surely? Later on we got River in combats and her role in the story became slightly more pedestrian with her doing the usual "help the Dr out" assistant type stuff. But it won't be too long til we see her again...

If you go down to the woods today...

The angels themselves were back in force and even nastier this time round.

Going down the garden centre shouldn't be such an ordeal...

There were some genuinely chilling scenes, especially the one where Amy has to walk through a cluster of the stoney ones with her eyes shut. And the counting bit with the image of the angel in her eye was quite nasty. Also liked the bit when they all actually moved! Their method of defeat smacked too much of "Doomsday" though (when the Dr opened the rift and all the Daleks and Cybermen flew into it) - this was exactly the same. Would have been nice if they'd thought up a different solution.

The supporting cast were okayish - Ian Glenn was kind of bland but alright.

And did anyone spot black Steve from Eastenders as one of the clerics? As for the regulars, in case you weren't aware, this was actually the first story that Matt Smith and Karen Gillan filmed ("The Eleventh Hour" was the fourth one to be recorded I think. Similar to what they did with Peter Davison in "Four To Doomsday"...) If you look carefully you'll see that both Smith and Gillan have longer hair in this story than the previous one and in the very last scene in Amy's bedroom (I'll come to that in a minute) their hair is shorter, seeming to prove that this scene was shot and inserted later. God I am such a geek. It's no wonder I don't have time to vote, dwelling on such things...Anyway watching the performances of Matt and Kaz, I thought there was actually very little difference between the way they play the Doc and Amy in this one to previous (later shot) stories - they seemed to inhabit the parts automatically, and that was good to see. The only slightly jarring bits for Matt Smith were some "shouty-hyper" bits, reminscent of David Tennant. Well the guy was finding his feet I guess...

Then there was the closing bedroom scene. Erm, I must admit I hadn't seen that one coming and I'm not 100% sure if I liked it. Amy is a bit of a tart, isn't she? At least she didn't admit to a full on Rose/Martha style crush on the Dr, which frankly, would have been too much - no more mooning and pining over the Time Lord type companions, purlease! But snogging the Dr and asking him to sh*g her? Mmm.... Matt Smith's reactions were funny though -"Amy, I'm a 976 year old Time Lord!" (or words to that effect, I may have got the age wrong). I hope this plot strand gets forgotten to be honest - as good as it is to see Dr Who acknowledging adult grown up relationships and sex (which the Old Who largely didn't) these kind of soap opera theatrics do kind of detract from the storyline sometimes, something that RTD revelled in during the "Tyler" period of the show. Actually, "Vampires of Venice" has already been broadcast and most of us have seen what happens next ...

Anyways, in terms of overall rating, I'd give this two-parter 4 out of 5.

And talking of the aforementioned Vampires tale, that's the next one to be reviewed of course and yep, I'm late with it again! Got to say though, on first viewing, I wasn't massively enamoured with it and my rating might have to drop...Oh no!

So, see you in the not too distant...Ciao my lovelies....

OC xx

Victory of the Daleks

Here comes my review, slightly late ...

Summoned by none other than Sir Winston Churchill, the Dr and Amy arrive in London during the height of World War 2 and find that Professor Bracewell has come up with a "new invention" to help the Brits win the war - fighting machines called "ironsides". Except they're not ironsides atall ... they're the dastardly Daleks!! With the pepperpots trundling around the war HQ continutally declaring "I am your servant" and "Fancy a cuppa?" (actually that last line is a slight lie, but it's a close enough approximation) the Dr's suspicions are naturally aroused... since when were the Daleks patriotic? And more to the point, on the human's side?

The twist of having the Daleks as "the goodies" made for an interesting start to the episode, but you just knew that their cover was going to be blown eventually - and sure enough some 20 mins or so into the story their evil intentions were revealed. A shame as this could have been sustained for longer - for instance if the story had been a two-parter, the Daleks' "exposure" could have been left til the end - but once again the (sometimes constricting) one episode format precluded this ... once aboard the Dalek spaceship it was business as usual ... and, what a surprise, some of the Daleks had escaped their "total destruction" (a phrase we'll now learn to take with a pinch of salt) at the end of "Journey's End". It's never bloody ending, eh? As iconic as they are, I do wish they'd let the metal monsters lie dormant for longer...

We also got brand new day glo Daleks into the bargain and I'm not sure whether I like them or not. Kind of reminded me of duplo and they're rather ... clunky. A merchandiser's dream though and one that will get all the geeky fans parting with shed loads of cash for the latest "model" (and that does not include me I hasten to add... surprise, surprise! Okay, I do have just about every DVD of the Pertwee, Baker and Davison DW years... )

And everything else? Though undeniably entertaining, the story wasn't Mark Gatiss' best and pretty formulaic and pedestrian overall. Sir Winston was midly endearing but a bit of a cigar-chomping stereotype; Bill Paterson put in an okayish performance as the mandroid Bracewell who turned out to be more human than machine. The Dr-Amy dynamic continued to work well but for the first time Matt Smith jarred a bit - especially his delivery of the lines "I am the Doctor! And you are the Daaaaleks!" The spitfires in space, though giving the opportunity for some great special effects (some of the best yet this season) were kind of far-fetched (yes I know lot's of things in DW are far-fetched, but...) and seemed to have been modified in a remarkably quick amount of time. I did like the revelation that Amy had never seen the Daleks before in spite of their previous Earth invasions - leading to some possible theories e.g. does Amy come from an alternative universe? Is it all tied up with the cracks that keep appearing ...

Probably my least favourite story of the season so far and I'd give it 3 out of 5. However in comparison with some RTD stories it was an improvement, so that ain't no bad thing ...

Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone review coming very soon!

The Beast Below

I'm a bit late with my review of the most recent DW episode. Reasons being: 1. It takes me a while to garner my thoughts 2. I usually require more than one viewing to take in everything that's worth writing about 3. Bloody blogger went and buggered up yesterday (how's that for alliteration) and all that I wrote didn't save! (Anyone else experience the same problems??)

Anyhow, I'm happy to report that The Beast Below was (in my oh-so-humble view) every bit as good as the previous week's offering, and the future of DW under Mr Steven Moffat continues to look very rosy indeed.

The good

Liked the whole central conceit: the entire population of the future UK, in order to escape the crippling of planet Earth by solar flares, have fled to the stars aboard a giant spaceship.

However, unbeknown to them, the "motor" for this vast collosus is a star whale, which mankind has enslaved in order to guarantee their survival and a permanent passage through space. Actually, this concept isn't particularly original. Anyone read Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels - about a whole world which is carried on the back of a giant space turtle? Was Steven M innocent or guilty of pilfering here?

The "Forget" or "Protest" voting plotline. Rather neatly tying in with the General Election, eh?? Good timing on the part of the Beeb and the Who team. The whole episode was about people making choices - the citizens of the UK are allowed to know the truth about what’s basically kept them safe, and are given the instant opportunity to either protest or forget once they know the full horror of it. Society as a whole chooses to forget, having their minds wiped, and then going about their everyday lives, freed from knowing what keeps them alive. Except for Amy at the end, going for the unthinkable option and freeing the whale, thus saving the Dr from making an agonising decision himself - I liked her instinct and recognition that the whale was basically a benevolent creature that has voluntarily been carrying the humans - clever girl.

Also liked the bit where Amy sits in the "Forget" or "Protest" chamber with all of the images flickering across her eyes - freaky - I wish we could have seen what she did, though.

Liz 10. Although a bit self-conciously cockney laddette at times, Sophie Okonedo (an actress I like - once a young soul rebel) put in a spirited and entertaining performance as the below-the-decks-Monarch of Starship UK (I wasn't exactly sure WHY she had to stay hidden though?)

Loved the scene where she told the Doc and co to duck, shot down two of the "smilers" and promptly stated: "I'm the bloody Queen, mate. Basically I rule" (making appropriate gun-toting gestures whilst she delivered the last bit). But the bolshy Queen also had a lot of heart - witness her pre-recorded speech in which the truth about the star whale and Starship UK was revealed - delivered very sensitively and sadly by Sophie O, even if her accent inexplicably "went posh" at this point. Still, a great character of whom I would have liked to have seen more, but the 45 minute 1 episode format precludes this sometimes.

The Dr-Amy dynamic. It's warming up nicely now and the tension between the two, brought on as a result of Amy pressing the "Forget" button, was well realised. Karen Gillan really is proving to be a good actress and was a little less "up herself" this week than the last, for instance in her exchanges with the schoolgirl Mandy (another example of a decent child actress, hallelujah!) and her ultimately altruistic gesture at the end of the episode. Matt Smith remains delightfully quirky and we got to witness some genuine Time Lord anger at the end when he opted to turn the star whale into a vegetable, a decision which obviously sat very badly with him...

More fun dialogue, e.g. the Dr, in the scene when he picks up a glass of water from a couple's table, and then places it on the floor, to their consternation: "We're checking all the water in the area - there's an escaped fish."

And between the Doc and Amy, when they first arrive on Starship UK:

Amy: What you gonna do?
Dr: What I always do - stay out out of trouble. Badly.

The segue into the next episode was a nice touch - ringing TARDIS telephone, Amy takes a call from Winston Churchill, aforementioned PM speaks to the Doc and we see the silhouette of something all-too-familiar gliding behind him - tantalising stuff to whet our appetites for next time. Some DW stories have utilised this tactic and back in the days of William Hartnell it was a regular motif. Having wrapped up one particular adventure, the TARDIS travellers barely had time to draw a collective breath before being launched straight into their next escapade - made you wonder when they had time to eat, sleep or answer the call of nature, really. Still I'd quite like to see this method used a bit more!

The not so good

Fortunately, there isn't much to put here. A solid story with solid performances and ideas from all concerned.

Okay, I thought the Smilers, after being hyped up quite a bit, weren't quite as scarey and intimidating as they could have been.

One other point of note which I've already mentioned - and I thank Dan for this as I'm in agreement with him (hope you don't mind me duplicating your ideas a bit, Dan!) - for the one episode stories, 45 minutes is a very short time to cram everything in, and this can be problematic sometimes. The Beast Below had lots of interesting ideas - mankind escaping the solar flares, the arrival of the whale, the type of society that existed aboard Starship UK - all of which could have easily been fleshed out across two episodes rather than watered down into a constraining one. We've come a long way since the Dr Who of the 60s, 70s and 80s, and granted, the style and format used then probably wouldn't work now - things had to change. But that isn't to say that the 25 minute episode format of yore didn't have its merits - there was time for the viewer to digest ideas and plotlines, characters could be (reasonably) developed, you were kept on the edge of your seat until the next episode, and most stories ran to at least 4 episodes which made for 1 hour 40 minutes screen time. It's kind of symptomatic of today's generation I reckon - lower patience thresholds, the desire to have "everything at once" - okay I'm not putting this into words very well, but you know what I mean, don't you? In fact old DW and new DW and the subsequent differences have engendered some very interesting debates ... but that's for another time, before this rant gets even more elongated than it already is ...

All of this notwithstanding, The Beast Below made a pretty solid 4 out of 5 for me. Keep it up, chaps!

The Eleventh Hour (which is roughly when I've finished this review)

So. I'm a little behind some people with my review, but what were my thoughts on the Season Five opener/Matt & Kaz's debut??

The good

Well .... let's start with the obvious. Mr Matt Smith. Prior to his Doctor-debut, I'd seen him in very little (TV/film/drama wise) and knew even less about the man himself, so he's been something of a blank slate for me. I'm pleased to report that I really liked him. All the right qualities needed for the Doc - entertaining, eccentric, endearing, energetic (right, that's enough "e" words), funny and ... cute! I just quickly nipped over to my fellow blogger Steve's site to see what he had to say (no, not steal!) and Stevenage states that Smith has "... an eccentricity that appears to be genuine and is, I suspect, as much a part of Smith's true real-life make-up as that of the character he plays" - which I am fully in agreement with - from the few interviews I've seen of Matt S, he really does seem to be delightfully oddball in real life, which can only lend further weight to his performance as the Time Lord. Favourite Dr bits in this episode included:

- the comic food-eating/rejection scenes with the young Amelia at the start of the episode - a nice piece of role reversal with the Doc coming across as exceedingly kid like and all over the place, whilst Amelia played the part of the grown up doing the cooking - "Beans are evil! Bad, bad beans!"

- the scene when the Doc enters Mrs Angelo's house and is lecturing Amy:
Amy: "You're worse than my Aunt."
Dr: "I'm the Dr and I'm worse than everybody's Aunt."

What am I doing in my nightie? And oh - why is this place bigger on the inside than the - actually that's NOT what I said!

...What a jolly chap! And a lovely little smile there ...

- the final scene in the TARDIS when the Dr persuades Amy to follow in a long line of travelling companions - Amy: "I started to think that you were just a mad man with a box". Dr: "Amy Pond, there's something you better understand about me because it's important, and one day, your life may depend on it. I am definitely a mad man with a box. (Amy laughs) Ha ha - yeah!" (I loved Matt S's delivery of these last lines and the laugh - sweet and rather unnerving at the same time.).

- on entering the newly regenerated TARDIS: "Oh, you sexy thing."

Lots more that was good about Mr S too but too much to trawl through - all in all though an engaging debut from "Who dat man" (Oh yeah another comic bit - and the Whovian geek in me feels obliged to tell you that this was actually about the third or fourth story that Matt Smith filmed, so not, strictly speaking, his "debut" - there you go). I look forward to more of the same! One other thing I should add - whilst I acknowledge David Tennant's merits, I was never his greatest fan - the silly tics and OTT elements of his incarnation of the Dr ("New-new-new-new York") really grated at times and its refreshing to see these aspects are largely absent from Matt S's performance. I hope I'm going to like Matt Smith more.

(And he got his shirt off in the first episode!!)

What jolly japes!

And Miss Amelia Pond - well, I've got to say, I actually liked the younger version of Amy more than the grown-up version - a relatively rare occasion where a little girl actress isn't cloying and irritating but manages to convey innocence and knowingness at the same time which Caitlin Blackwood did very well (fact: did you know she's Karen Gillan's real-life cousin?) The opening scenes, with young Amelia and the Doc, made for fun viewing and a different approach to the "first new Dr"story. I kind of wish that "little girl" Amy has been given the chance to travel with the Time Lord after all, rather than being left high and dry sitting on her suitcase - then again, it would have probably led to floods of letters of complaint being sent into the BBC, with accusations of the show promoting "dodgy" and "corrupting" adult/child relationships, or probably worse, if you get my drift.

Still on the subject of Amy, I also loved the whole "Raggedy Dr" fairy tale aspect of the story, with the Dr's encounter with the wee Scotts lass becoming the stuff of legend (or should that be myth?) amongst the villagers of Leadworth. The idea that the older Amy had been creating dolls and drawing pictures of the Dr since his crash, 12 years previously, plus the revelation that she'd been forced to undergo years of psychoanalysis because no-one believed what had happened to her, made the Dr-companion dynamic a lot more different and unusual - good writing on the part of Mr Moffat here.

As for the older Amy who we shall of course be seeing much more of over the next 12 weeks, Karen Gillan was very good in her own way too - intelligent, independent, feisty and sarcastic. In spite of my comments about the potential cheapening of the character through making her a "kissogram", this was dealt with in a nicely satirical way that did not detract from the character - her rather defensive conversation in Mrs Angelo's house, for instance:

Mrs A: Hello Amy dear, are you a policewoman now?

Amy: Well, sometimes -

Mrs A: I thought you were a nurse.

Amy: I can - be a nurse ...

Mrs A: Or actually a nun?

Amy: I dabble (nervous laugh)

...

Dr: And what sort of job's a kissogram?

Amy: "I go to parties and I kiss people ... (self conscious throat clearing) ... it's a laugh! (last lines uttered very aggressively/defensively).

Amy at her mad, starey-eyed best

It's also clear (even from just one episode) that Karen G is a gifted actress - her vocal delivery was spot on at times (see above, and her mocking pronunciation of the Dr's "bow tie" near the end, for instance) not to mention her facial expressions - she can do wide, starey eyes very well - whilst this could be deemed annoying if overused, it was very appropriate in the scene where she discovered the "extra" bedroom in her house and the revelation that something nasty was hiding inside.

Cheeky!

I also loved the look on her face as the Dr stripped off in the hospital corridor and her response to Rory's question: "Aren't you going to turn your back?": "Nope".

I did find older Amy ever so slightly up herself though - a bit too self-assured and self-reliant to the point where she sometimes came across as contemptuous of others. But as I recall reading somewhere else, I guess you've got to take into account the traumatising effect of a) meeting a strange man from outer space who then promptly buggers off for 12 years b) having no-one believe you regarding a) - which has presumably made Amy into the defensive and rather guarded young lady she now is. Hopefully we'll see the ice on "the Pond" start to thaw over the resultant weeks and the ginger one showing a few more vulnerabilities.

The English village setting was also nicely used (as others have observed, shades of the Pertwee era), the guest cast also put in some nice turns, especially Annette Crosbie and the handsome young fella playing Jeff (damn, why can't he be the new "half-companion" instead of the rather dull Rory? Erm, presumably cos if he was Amy's boyfriend, she's have less reason to stay on Earth and forgo the excitement of travelling with the Dr for another kind of excitement ... )

Nasty lady

Also good to see actress Olivia Colman (of Mitchell and Webb fame / other comedies) as a nasty alien Mum.

New console room

Old typewriter

And I like the newly designed TARDIS - after blowing up at the end of the last story, the reborn space/time machine is definitely futuristic but this time round with more retro and antique touches (the typewriter on the keyboard, the "ding ding" bell, the 80s style trim phone ... the Time Lords are a kitsch old bunch really aren't they?) One thing that bothered me prior to seeing this episode were the rumours I'd heard that the Dr would be given a "more modern", "replacement" TARDIS for this series only because the old one was such a write-off - which didn't really ring true - where would he get it from? So to have the same craft literally regenerating like the Dr himself made more sense.

The not so good

That was a long enough "good" list, wasn't it? I'm pleased to report there was far less "not so good" about this episode. Only:

As mentioned Rory isn't a desperately exciting character - somewhat bland and dull. And we're gonna get some more of him later on this season. Ho hum.

Hello love! I won't bite, I'm CGI ...

Prisoner O, though a frightening proposition when in the form of a barking man and dog, or a mother and two little girlies (liked the stretched n' fanged teeth) was less so when in alien form - looked like a plastic/airfix worm and you could tell it wasn't really there. Presumably the Beeb are saving the really good special effects, not to mention the budget, for the remainder of the season (and if you look at the Star Wars style spaceship battles in the trailer you can kind of see why...)

And that is that. Until next week (although I suspect I'll have less time on my hands then owing to the fact that it's now Easter and I've had time off work...) One other quick observation to make (which should really go in the "good" list): under the new regime of Steven Moffat, Dr Who already feels different to the Russell T Davies era - whilst still recognisably DW, the show seems to be moving in a maturer, more quirky direction, which was sometimes lacking during RTD's reign. The jarring "soap opera" elements - e.g. the Tyler family and their bust ups and all of the self-conscious pop cultural references - are largely gone. And I'm not particularly sorry about that.

4 out of 5 btw. A tip top start to a tip top show!