Doctor Who and Downton Abbey Christmas episodes

I keep putting off commenting on the Christmas Day episodes of the above shows. Well, here's my thoughts.

Doctor Who was a bit odd. I don't mean odd as in strange or weird as its normally strange and weird. I mean odd as the story was a bit more straightforward than what I've come to expect from Stephen Moffat. Then again, maybe I'm getting used to his stories.

In any event it concerned the doctor crashing to earth in 1938 in a borrowed space suit and being helped by a lady played by Claire Skinner. He promises to help her in return, all she has to do is wish. Yeah.

So it's 1941 and she's had a telegram to say her RAF husband is missing presumed dead. She and the kids end up at a big house in the country wher the doctor is playing the part of the caretaker.

To cut a long story slightly less long, one of the kids goes through a present to a snowy tree world and disappears while following a wooden tree person.

Ok, that is a bit weird, I'll grant you that.

The doctor and the other kid follow and then the mum follows them. It turns out they are on Androzani Major (in a bit of name-checking to the last Peter Davidson story) and the bad humans are about to kill the trees with acid rain and the tree souls take refuge in Claire Skinner who pilots a big globe thing through the time vortex back to earth. And it turns out her husband isn't dead as he follows her trough the vortex as well.

So that's all ok, it's fine, not bad, I think as I look at my watch.

Then it goes brilliant as Claire Skinner convinces the doctor to go tell his friends he's not dead. He arrives outside Amy Pond's house and knocks on her (TARDIS blue) door. Amy answers and they stare at each other for a bit.

'So, you’re not dead,' Amy says. 'And a happy New Year,' smiles the doctor, embarrassed. 'River told us,' Amy finally reveals.

Karen Gillan is in full Amy frown mode. Is brilliant. That couple of minutes of them standing at the door makes me realise how sad it will be when Karen leaves next year. Sniff.

So, on to Downton Abbey.

According to the tv listings the episode lasted 2 hours. It probably did but in some ways it seems to have lasted about a week. There must have been about 27 advert breaks in it. Ok, 27 is an exaggeration. It was probably only 24.

For such a long running time not much actually seemed to happen. The main plot thread concerned Mary's impending marriage to Iain Glen, that actor bloke with the cool voice. It turned out that he was blackmailing her to marry him. As long as they were to be wed he was preventing the scandal getting out. You know, the scandle about her and the Turkish gentleman who went and died in her bed?

She discovers her dad knew about it when he tells her not to marry Iain Glen. Then she tells Wet Matthew. You remember Wet Matthew? He's the one who was paralysed in the war and then 'got better'. He was the one engaged to that nice Miss Swire who made the deathbed plee that he should get together with cousin Mary in order to be happy. Which then prompted him to go off in a huff and say that he could never marry cousin Mary and never forgive himself, etc.

Well, guess what? He's forgiven himself and asked cousin Mary to marry him. Honestly, you can't rely on him to make up his mind at all.

What helped the episode immeasurably was the complete absence of Lady Sybil and the Irish chauffeur. Let me state that I have no problem with the actress ho plays Sybil as she is quite pretty, and I don't object to the character. But that story line where she and the Irish chauffeur hooked up after displaying zero chemistry felt like a crudely engineered plot development that was jammed into the script as an afterthought.

Some other stuff happened involving a dog, and Bates was found guilty for murder much to the other character's surprise. Bates and his wife became slightly more interesting characters as they had to do all their scenes together in prison, and him in period manacles.

So, a slightly longer post than intended.

What to watch on TV this Christmas

Here's a few things that I will be watching on TV this Christmas.

On Christmas Day there is of course Doctor Who on BBC1 at 7pm. I expect there will be lots of running around and a soppy ending. Flying sharks will be unlikely this year. That's so 2010.

Later that evening there is a two-hour special of Downton Abbey. If there isn't anything better on I expect I'll give it a go while eating After Eights and Terrys Chocolate Orange segments.

(I'm still a bit miffed that they killed off the nice Miss Swire in the last episode. The poor thing had doomed written all over her the moment she turned up with Wet Matthew.)

Anyway. Back on the BBC from Tuesday 27 December to Thursday 29 December we have a new adaptation of Charles Dickens Great Expectations. Do we need another one so soon since the last one in 1999? Maybe not, but we're getting one and I'll be watching. Gillian Anderson (returning to Dickens after 2005's Bleak House) plays Miss Haversham. But here's a photo of Vanessa Kirby as Estella, mainly because she looks prettttyyyy.

Finally on New Years Day we can look forward to the return of Sherlock and the long awaited event that is Lara Pulver as Irene Adler. I expect I'll have something to write about that.

Two Missing Doctor Who Episodes Found

During the summer I found myself getting into classic Doctor Who and in the process purchased numerous Target novels, video tapes and DVDs. Along the way I got an appreciation for just how frustrating it is that so many 1960s episodes are missing due to the BBCs policy of junking film copies and wiping video tapes.

Therefore I spotted what was some unexpected good news online this morning, namely the discovery of two more missing episodes of 1960s Doctor Who. It had been a number of years since an episode was discovered and the count of missing episodes now stands at 106.

The episodes discovered were from the William Hartnell story Galaxy Four and the Patrick Troughton story The Underwater Menace. Hopefully this will inspire film buffs to double-check their attics for episodes from The Power of the Daleks or The Wheel in Space!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16136521

Doctor Who 'The Wedding of River Song'

And so we arrive at episode 13 of series 6. It's 5:02pm on 22 April 2011.

And the problem is that it's always 5:02pm on 22 April 2011 because time has gone "wrong". All of history is happening at once, so Winston Churchill is the head of the Roman Empire and Charles Dickens is being interviewed on Breakfast TV about his next Christmas Special.

It's all because River Song didn't shoot the doctor in Utah. Two versions of history have come into existence and it's all a mess.

The doctor describes to Churchill how he made preparations for his forthcoming death in Utah. He met the disembodied head of the blue-skinned guy from a previous episode who explained that The Silence want to prevent the Doctor asking the question that must not be answered. And the blue head guy actually knows what the question is...

The Doctor in the messed-up universe meets up with Amy who is now some sort of special agent. (She introduces herself as "Pond, Amy Pond".) She and her fellow agents all wear the eye patch thing. It turns out it's an eye drive (probably spelt "iDrive") that lets the wearer remember seeing The Silence when they are not around. She takes the Doctor to an Egyptian pyramid that has Area 52 painted on the side. There lots of The Silence are being help captive. Only they've been biding their time, waiting for the Doctor.

On top of the pyramid the Doctor and River get married, mainly so he can whisper his name in her ear, Except the Doctor lies and is not his name he is whispering, but rather "Teselecta", the name of the time-traveling humanoid space ship that has a miniature crew inside it from episode 8.

We discover that he asked the Teselecta to make itself look like him so it gets shot and the Doctor lives and all is right with the universe.

So having typed all the above I am struck by the fact that (a) it's not a stand alone episode and (b) it all sounds a little bit silly. In fact it's the second time that Steven Moffat has ended a season in a "not real" universe. While entertaining enough it does leave me with the somewhat dissatisfied feeling that the season adds up to less than the sum of its parts. I applaud the intent to do a complicated time travel story across two seasons but perhaps it would be better to stick to a more stand-alone season in 2012.

The glimpse of the Dalek in the trailer was slightly misleading, I'm sure intentionally. One Dalek briefly appeared at the start of the episode.

It's nice to see the Brigadier get a mention. The Doctor is told that he passed away at his nursing home.

Oh, I forgot, the question that must not be asked:

Doctor who?

Doctor Who 'Closing Time'

With Closing Time we reach the penultimate episode of series 6. The Doctor is on his farewell tour before the astronaut in the lake shoots him and he decides to pop by and see Craig from last years The Lodger.

Craig now has a baby son, Alfie, although the Doctor claims to 'speak baby' and that Alfie actually calls himself Stormageddon.

The lights are flickering in Colchester so the Doctor does the logical thing and gets a job in a department store, complete with name tag reading 'The Doctor'.

Along the way we get a glimpse of Amy and Rory in the shop when a little girl asks Amy for an autograph. The Doctor is watching from a distance and notices a big perfume advertisement using Amy's face, 'For the girl who is tired of waiting'. 

The main plot involves Cybermen teleporting from their spaceship into the shop's lift where they grab unfortunate staff for the cyber conversion process. The Doctor deactivates the teleporter but the Cybermen keep coming. It turns out that the spaceship is not actually in space but is buried under the shop.

The Cybermen decide to use Craig as their new cyber leader but he hears the sound of the baby crying and his emotional feedback makes the Cybermen's heads blow up.

Yes, really.

This was an entertaining enough episode, but it's a pity to see the Cybermen appear so useless and unthreatening. I remember the thrill of watching Earthshock for the first time back in 1982. This was no Earthshock. It was nice to see the return of the cybermats though.

It's another stand-alone episode, although the last few minutes get interesting. As the doctor is about to embark on his last journey he sees three kids watching him. They know something is up and we hear voiceovers looking back describing what they saw.

Then we are with the newly qualified doctor River Song who has been researching the Doctor's last days. In walks the eyepatch lady accompanied by the silent scream aliens. It turns out that River is still under the control of The Silence and is placed in the space suit in preparation for next week's episode...

Speaking of which, is that a Dalek eyestalk I saw in the trailer?

Doctor Who 'The God Complex'

A pretty good episode this week. The previews and reviews I read went a little more easy on the superlatives so my expectations were not unduly raised too high.

The Doctor once again promises Amy and Rory another exciting planet. Instead they materialise in what appears to be an hotel done out in 1980s decor

They soon encounter a group of people from Earth (and elsewhere) who have been gathered in the hotel for some reason. They appear to be compelled to open bedroom doors at random where they are faced with someone's greatest fear, e.g. a clown, a PE instructor, girls laughing at a stutter, the Weeping Angels, etc. Eventually they stumble upon their own fear and start to 'praise him'.

Him being a big monster bloke with horns who is wandering around the hotel looking for the person currently doing the praising. Whereupon they are dead.

So understandably the Doctor wants to get his chums out of danger. Along the way he works out that the monster doesn't want their fear, rather he feeds on their faith. The fear is just a way of exposing one's faith.

Amy is next to utter the dreaded 'praise him' and the Doctor finds the room with her fear: It's young Amelia sitting waiting for the doctor to return as promised. Amy's faith is in the Doctor so he he convinces Amy that she shouldn't have faith in him, that he only tool her along in the Tardis to impress her.

That pretty much defeats the monster bloke and the hotel is revealed to be a space prison. The unfortunates that ended up there were basically delivered as the monster's food.

The Doctor brings Amy and Rory back to Earth and gives them a house and a red sports car. It's goodbye as he's worried he'll get them killed.

So it appears to be goodbye Amy, at least for now. However given that the series finalie is almost upon us I would expect it to deal with the Silence, River Song, the astronaut in the lake that kills the Doctor, and that woman with the eyepatche thing. I think Amy needs to be back for all that.

Ah, but I have forgotten something. While exploring the hotel the Doctor opens the door to room 11. We don't sew what's inside but the Doctor says 'of course' and we hear what sounds like the Tardis cloister bell... Interesting.

Next week: the bloke from last years Lodger episode and Cybermen.

Doctor Who 'The Girl Who Waited'

I felt that last week's superlative-laden episode didn't quite live up to it's raised expectations. Then this week I noticed the preview writers were at it again, so I automatically lowered my expectations accordingly. However I'm happy to report that this week's episode is pretty decent and will probably be remembered as one of the more memorable instalments of this series.

The Doctor, Amy and Rory are off on holiday, so it appears that any pretense of looking for baby Melody/River has been well an truly jettisoned. When the Tardis materialises on the universe's second most popular holiday destination they are presented, not with glittering colonnades, but a sterile white featureless room. Rory and the Doctor enter another room by pressing a green anchor button. Amy has been lagging behind and presses a red waterfall button instead. She ends up in the same room but there's no Doctor or Rory.

It transpires that there are two time streams, one faster than the other with Amy in the fast stream. The reason given has to do with the planet being under quarantine from a virus that kills you in a day. Uninfected people could live out their lives in the fast stream and still have the company of their infected loved ones who stay in the slower stream. At least thats my interpertation. The Doctor seemed to suggest the opposite and I think that the point was poorly explained.

The Doctor promises to slip over to the fast stream to rescue Amy, however when he arrives he discovers that she has aged 36 years. Oops. She's not the same Amy after being left alone to fend for herself. Rory wants to go back and somehow rescue Amy when she first got trapped so she doesn't have to wait all that time. Understandably the older Amy wants to live and not vanish from existence.

And Doctor tells Rory that he must make a choice.

The old Amy make up is pretty well done and Karen Gillan does a good job playing the same character differently. At the episodes heart is the relationship between Rory and Amy with the doctor actually taking a bit of a back seat. The story doesn't shy away from having what is actually a bit of a downbeat ending. Credit to Arthur Darvill for taking the potential fifth wheel Rory and making him essential to the show.

On another note I quite enjoyed the white rooms which reminded me a little of the empty white space where the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find themselves in The Mind Robber. And I've just realised both stories have mysterious white robots...

Doctor Who 'Night Terrors'

I expected big things from episode 9 as some of the previews/reviews I had read about it were brimming with superlatives. There were suggestions that it was the best episode ever, or scariest episode ever. That immediately made me sit up and take notice. 'Better than Blink? Really? That good? Wow!'

No, it's not better than Blink, but I was silly for thinking it could be.

So we have a Mark Gatiss written stand-alone episode in a series that has pretty much steered clear from stand-alone episodes. Basically a little boy is scared of his bedroom wardrobe. And the little boy turns out to be an alien. And that's about it really apart from stuff where our heroes run around a dolls house and Amy gets turned into a wooden doll. But she gets better I am happy to say.

The guy from Outcasts who reminded me of Danny Dyer is in is as the alien boy's human dad.

Doctor Who 'Lets Kill Hitler'

I managed not to write anything about the first seven spidodes of the current series but I'll hopefully be able to make an effort for the rest of the episodes.

But what an episode to begin with! Let's put it this way, this is not an episode to use as an introduction to the show.

The last episode shown was 'A Good Man Goes to War' where there was a cliffhanger of sorts. Amy's baby had been taken by The Silence to be used as a weapon and we discovered that Melody Pond = River Song so Alex Kingston was actually Amy and Rory's kid.

The new episode kicks off with the introduction of Amy's old childhood friend Mel who we have never met before. In an enterataining sequence we see her being a bit of a trouble-maker at school with young Amelia and Rory. She turns up with a gun and hijacks the Doctor and the Tardis, and forces the Doctor to take her to 1938 Berlin to kill Hitler.

This is where things get a little bit complicated.

Because also in 1938 we meet the miniaturised crew of a human-shaped space ship tha travel through time to punish war criminals. They are here for Hitler but get sidetracked when the Tardis delivers a better catch.

Mel gets shot and STARTS TO REGENERATE! Next thing we know Alex Kington is back.

Mel is Melody is River. 'You named your daughter after your daughter,' the Doctor tells Amy.

This River does not yet call herself River so we've gone right back to her first meeting with the Doctor. Probably.

And now things get complicated. Again. Because Mel/River tries to kill the doctor and ends up poisoning him with her lipstick. But that actually makes sense if we remember that The Silence took her and programmed her to do that.

In the end Mel/River uses up her regenerations to heal the Doctor, although we are reminded that he will get killed in Utah by the Astronaut in the lake.

So overall it was an entertaining episode that answers a few questions about the River Song saga, but obviously raises a few more. I expect it will be worth rewatching when the series is finished in a few weeks time.

Doctor Who 1984 (Peri flavoured)

This weekend I picked up a cheap Doctor Who DVD from the end of the Peter Davidson era, The Caves of Androzani.

This is one of the storylines I would have seen bits of pieces of when it was originally broadcast back in 1984 without really following what was going on.

I think I made the effort of tuning in for the final episode of the story because it was Peter Davidson's last.

Revisiting it after more than 25 years I note three things:

One, the production values are probably worse than I remember. The underground dragon creature is a particular low point.

Two, it's quite a good little story with a fair amount of "which faction is working for who?" going on. There's Scottish gunrunners, soldiers, androids impersonating soldiers, a substance that gives eternal youth, political blackmail and assassination.

Three, Nicola Bryant as companion Peri is gorgeous. I dare say I am influenced by the 13 or 14 year old version of myself. But she is.

Early in the first episode she and the Doctor get stung by some webby alien egg thing they find in a cave. It turns out they have caught a bad case of "spectrox toxaemia" and poor Peri gets weaker and progressively more wheezy as the episodes progress. Meanwhile one of the the villains, the masked Sharaz Jek, captures Peri and wants to spend eternity gazing on her beauty. Fair enough.


"Peri, I don't fancy yours much."



Eventually the Doctor get some of the bat milk antidote and gives it all to Peri. He then succumbs to the disease and regenerates into Colin Baker.

Peri would go on to be the Colin Baker companion through nearly all of his tenure as the Doctor. Looking up the episode list I am reminded that in the space of the 1985 season she encounters Cybermen, Daleks, Sontarans and even meets Patrick Troughton's version of the Doctor in The Two Doctors. All while maintaining an American accent.

However I will jumping ahead to watch my other purchase from this weekend, 1986's The Trial of a Time Lord...

Amy Pond in police uniform revisited

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that there was an Amy Pond in police uniform action figure, but bemoaned the fact that it was only available with a Tardis and Doctor figure, setting you back almost £30.

Well, the toy people have seen sense and Amy is now available as part of the Pandorica wave of figures. Each figure in that wave comes with a side of the Pandorica cube containing a CD audio adventure from the Doctor's past adventures.

They sell for a considerable £9.99 each but at least it's an improvement from having to spend three times that.

Doctor Who 2010 Christmas Episode

I will preface this review by saying that I've been constantly underwhelmed by the Christmas episodes since they started back in 2005 with The Christmas Invasion. Oh, they have their moments but overall there's lots of sound and thunder signifying nothing. I even skipped the one with David Morrissey as "The Next Doctor" completely.

So, can Stephen Moffet succeed where Russel T Davis failed, i.e. make me happy on Christmas Day?

Yes he can.

The first bit of the episode, say the first 20 minutes, was just bizarre and weird and... bizarrely weird. Now I like weird, but this took the cake. There were flying fish and sharks on some alien planet. I still don't know what was up with that.

But the flying shark was just a "MacGuffin" to get Katherine Jenkins thawed out to sing.

You see there's this planet that Michael Gambon seems to control and if you owe him money then he has a family member frozen as collateral. He's a bit mean and Scrooge-like. Along comes the doctor to ask him to turn off his cloud machine so the space liner that Amy and Rory are on can land without crashing. Gambon refuses.

But the doctor knows he's not all bad so he recovers a video recording that Gambon made as a child. Gambon is unimpressed so the Doctor decides to change his mind. Literally.

With the black and white recording projected on the wall of the room the doctor exits through the door and moments later appears in the kid's room in the recording.

Brilliant.

Cue adventures with flying sharks, one of which needs Katherine Jenkins to sing to it so they thaw her out. The Doctor and the young Gambon continue to thaw her out every Christmas Eve and have more adventures, meanwhile the audience notices that each time she goes back in the box a counter keeps subtracting 1. Eventually she tells young Gambon not to thaw her out anymore because she will only have one day left to live.

I don't want to regurgitate the whole plot but eventually the Doctor convinces older Gambon to help the space liner people and he is forced to thaw Katherine Jenkins out one last time, knowing it will be the last day they can spend together.

=sniff=

The only minus point is the paucity of Amy Pond content. She and Rory are hardly in the episode, although it does make sense to concentrate on the "Christmas Carol" story.

Then at the end of the episode we get a peek at the new series with lots of Arizona looking deserty stuff.

I smile.

Amy Pond in Police Uniform action figure

I got word of this via some Forbidden Planet emails a few weeks ago but now it's out in the shops. Doctor Who fans can buy an Amy Pond in police uniform! Here's the visual proof:

Unfortinately you can't buy the figure alone, you have to spend neary thirty quid on a (non-electronic) Tardis and an Eleventh Doctor as well. nothing wrong with that, but what about those of us who just want Amy? =Sigh=

Doctor Who "The Big Bang"

Right. That was a busy episode.

I had assumed that the Doctor might be absent for a chunk of the running time seeing as he had been shut in the ultimate prison. Oh no. As it turns out all you need is some lovely circular time travel logic.

Future Doctor travels back in time (using River Song's vortex manipulator) and gives Plastic Rory his sonic screwdriver that will release the present Doctor. Then Amy is placed in the Pandorica as it's such a good prison not even death is an escape. It will keep her not-quite-dead until a sample of her living DNA can be found. Plastic Rory offers to stand guard over the box to keep Amy safe.

So now it's 1996 again. Seven year old Amelia is praying to Santa if he could send someone to fix the crack in her wall. There is a noise outside and she goes to the window and sees... Well nothing as it happens. In the sky there is the moon but no stars. We discover that this universe has the Earth in it and nothing else. The rest of the universe doesn't exist.

Amelia finds a museum leaflet telling her to visit the Pandorica exhibition. She does so and we also see a stone Dalek display in the museum. She presses her hand on the box and it opens having got the DNA it needs to revive adult Amy.

The Doctor appears and uses the vortex manipulator to go back and give Rory the sonic screwdriver and Amelia the museum leaflet. Sorted.

Except the light from the Pandorica revives one of the stone Daleks and it attacks. Plastic Rory appears in a museum security guard uniform. He has continued watching over Amy. The stone Dalek shoots a version of the doctor from 12 minutes in the future.

Yes, as Amy says, it's complicated.

On the roof of the museum they see what looks like the sun, except it is the Tardis exploding, the only thing keeping the earth from been wiped from existence like the rest of the universe. The doctor rescues River Song who has been caught in a time loop.

The Doctor does indeed get shot by the dalek. In a neat little scene River faces off against the Dalek and it asks for "Mercy!" Not likely.

The Doctor is placed in the Pandorica. He realises the light from it will interact with the Tardis explosion and create Bing Bang 2 that will restore the universe. The only problem is that he will be on the wrong side of the explosion and will disappear because everyone will forget he has existed.

He launches the Pandorica towards the exploding Tardis and sure enough the universe is put right. The Doctor finds himself rewinding back through time. When he gets to 1996 he finds Amelia sleeping in the garden where she was waiting for him to return. He tells her to remember him.

It is 2010 and Amy is getting married. She is surprised to find her parents alive but is not sure whey she is surprised. At the wedding reception she is handed River Song's blue Tardis "spoiler" book and find s herself crying because she is sad but can't remember why. Then she remembers the Doctor and stands up and shouts that her imaginary friend was real. Cue much embarrassment from the guests. Until the Tardis appears in their midst.

Later the Doctor wonders what caused the Tardis to malfunction in the first place but the phone rings with the promise of a new adventure in store. The episode ends with the Doctor, Amy and Rory setting off once more.

This summary really can't adequately describe what a clever scripe Steven Moffat has come up with. The mad thing is that it all makes sense as well as tying up the preceding 12 episodes together.

Good stuff.

Now, where can I get an Amy Pond action figure?

Doctor Who "The Pandorica Opens"

Spoilers!

Well. How about that? This is the episode where it all starts happening and there are quite a few surprises along the way.

The start of the episode jumps around through time and manages to reference quite a few of the previous 11 episodes. It's 1890 and Van Gogh lies dying after completing his last painting. Now it's 1941 and Churchill tries to phone the Doctor to warn him of what the paining contains. Now it's 5145 and River Song takes the call. She leaves a message for the Doctor written on the oldest cliff in the universe with time coordinates of where to meet her. Now it's 102 AD and the Doctor and Amy arrive in Roman Britain. (Note, this River has yet to encounter the Weeping Angels from the episode earlier in this series!)

River shows the Doctor the painting of the Tardis exploding. They trace a signal to Stonehenge. Under Stonehenge they discover the Pandorica, a big box that was built as a prison for the most feared being in the universe. It's sending out signals announcing it's opening and the Doctor realises that every alien race will come for it. River confirms that Daleks, Cypermen and just about everyone else have arrived above Earth.

One of the Roman soldiers turns out to be Rory who is as a loss how to explain how he's been resurrected. Amy doesn't remember him but finds herself crying because she is happy.

River goes to fetch the Tardis but it takes off and arrives at Amy's house on 26/06/2010. Inside she finds Amy's childhood books on Roman Britain and Pandora's Box. She warns the Doctor that Amy's memories have been used to create a trap.

The Romans turn out to be the plastic Auton guys and capture the Doctor. Soon Daleks, Cyberman, Sontarians and lots of other Doctor Who aliens appear. They have formed an Alliance to defeat the Doctor because they know the Tardis will explode and destroy the universe.

The Pandorica opens. It is empty. They drag the Doctor towards his prison. He shouts that the Tardis will explode anyway and he is the only person who can stop it. They shut him inside anyway.

Auton Rory shoots Amy who appears to die.

The Tardis explodes with River inside it.

Around Earth all the galaxies disappear from existence.

Bloody Hell!

So what do we know about the concluding part? the Radio Times interview with Karen Gillan implied she was filming the new series this summer so I assume she survives. Also a promotional image for the next episode shows the Doctor with 7-year-old Amy so perhaps somehow he goes back to stop things from happening.

Very good episode. In particular I felt the music was of movie-quality and made good use of the "Matt Smith theme" that was introduced in this series.

I look forward to the conclusion.

Karen Gillan in Radio Times

Sometimes the the people who put together the Radio Times make it very easy for me to decide to buy it. Take the new issue out today. Karen Gillan? On the cover? Four-page article inside? Sold!







They have an added bonus of some more Karen on their website:
http://www.radiotimes.com/content/features/galleries/karen-gillan/01/

Doctor Who "The Lodger"

A harmless enough episode I suppose. Somethings wrong with the Tardis and it won't land properly. The Doctor is stuck on earth and has to work out what's keeping it (and Amy) from landing. He moves into a ground floor flat as a lodger because there is something very odd going on upstairs. People are being lured in off the street to "help" the occupant upstairs. And then they disappear.

So there's lots of comedy about the Doctor trying to fit in, play football, interrupt romantic moments, etc. All well and good but frankly I'm glad it didn't overstay it's welcome.

Eventually we get to what's going on upstairs. Quite a nice idea actually. There is no upstairs, it's another Tardis like ship camouflaged like an upstairs flat. It's stuck on Earth and is looking for a new pilot to continue its journey.

So danger averted the other time ship implodes and the top floor disappears from existence. No mention of who's ship it was which is either deliberate or an oversight.

Minor plot niggle, why didn't the Doctor just go and investigate upstairs as soon as he arrived?

And yes, I know I skipped writing anything about last week's episode. Frankly it was fairly weak and I couldn't work up any enthusiasm about it.

Doctor Who "Cold Blood"

Just time for a few quick thoughts about last Saturday's episode. It was an entertaining follow-up to the first part with the threat of a human/Silurian war hanging over proceedings, especially when the lizard lady on the surface doesn't survive the human mother's questioning.

But the real "wow" moments of the episode come right at the end.

Firstly that "crack" reappears, the one that is a rip in the fabric of time and space, the one cause by some unimaginable release of energy.

The Doctor concludes that there must be some "shrapnel" from that explosion in the crack and reaches in. As he does so the other lizard lady (also played by Neve McIntosh) fires at the Doctor. Rory pushes the Doctor aside and get shot. The crack energy reaches out for Rory and the Doctor and Amy realise that he will be wiped from history and will hever have existed. Amy tearfully struggles to hold on to his memory but by the time the Tardis reaches the surface she has forgotten him.


And the other "wow" moment? It's a good one.

The Doctor unwraps the piece of shrapnel to discover it's a piece of the Tardis.

Oh. Dear.

Doctor Who "The Hungry Earth"

I was a little lukewarm about the last couple of stories but I'm happy to say I enjoyed last night's episode very much.

The Doctor and gang arrive in 2020 Wales where a drilling project has passed 21 km under the earth. As a result something has been awoken. Amy get sucked into the earth in front of the Doctor's eyes and he's reduced to making vague promises about getting her back. Later after a creepy scene in a church graveyard where something is prowing around a small boy similarly vanishes. The Doctor realises he was the last one to see him and had absent-mindedly let the boy leave the church.

However the Doctor manages to capture his own "hostage" and it turns out to be a Silurian, a creature that I believe Jon Pertwee first encounted as the Third Doctor. These lizard people are interesting characters because they evolved on Earth millions of years before us ape-people came along and messed everything up. One could understand them being a bit annoyed at the apes running around on the surface.

Doctor Who makeup has improved greatly over the old show and the makeup on the lead Silurian lady is impressive. Speaking of which I noticed the actress who played said lizard lady was Neve McIntosh who played nurse Donna Rix in Bodies a few years back on BBC3. Talk about unrecognisable.

I also feld that there was more than a hint of the BBC's old Quatermass shows in this episode. In particular Quatermass and the Pit where an ancient alien spaceship is found buried under a London tube station. It was remade as a Hammer movie in the 1960s if you want to check it out.

A good episode and I look forward to the next part.

Doctor Who "Amy's Choice"

In this week's episode the Doctor, Amy and Rory are reunited five years in the future. Amy is heavily pregnant and Rory is sporting a hideous ponytail. And it might be best to avoid all the residents of the old folk's home.

And in this week's episode the Tardis looses power as it falls towards a "cold star" and the Doctor, Amy and Rory are reduced to wearing "Peruvian folk group" ponchos to keep warm.

Which one is real? It's important because, as Toby Jones says, if you die in a dream you wake up, whereas if you die in reality you, er, die.

Nothing Earth-shattering in this episode. The viewer knows at least one of the realities is fake so the sense of jeopardy is lessened. However the Doctor is forced to face his "friendships" with his companions and Amy is forced to realise how she feels about Rory.