Thoughts on: Let’s Kill Hitler

I’ve always considered this episode a bit unspectacular, a bit of a misfire as an attempt at a mid-series “opener”. I’ve had to somewhat reevaluate this impression after this viewing. Although the episode has many problems and is far from perfect, there’s also a lot to like in there. Far from being a story about knocking off Hitler, this episode resolves the burning question about Amy and Rory’s daughter, i.e. River Song, hanging over from A Good Man Goes to War. It’s substantially a story with little in the way of plot, except concerning River’s attempted assassination of the Doctor. Maybe this is my main scruple with the episode. Without an actual story anchoring the episode, it all feels a bit messy and uncoordinated. I appreciate the revelations about River Song/Mels, and the arc development concerning the Silence’s conspiracy to kill the Doctor, and River’s role therein, but I find hard to look past how disjointed and poorly choreographed this episode feels.

Let’s talk about River, though. The “River” we see at the beginning of the episode, the delinquent Mels, is different from the River we know and love. Both River and Mels are “bad girls” with a rebellious streak, but unlike River’s misbehaviour, there’s no method to Mels’ madness, no purpose to her anarchy. Perhaps that reflects the subsequent influence of the Doctor over River? Mels was raised by a cult to be a psychopath with the sole purpose of killing the Doctor—it’s no wonder she was perennially in trouble with authority. Mels is portrayed as a delightfully diabolical woman; this was particularly apparent to me when the Doctor first realised he’d been poisoned, and his body had begun to give way, and Mels merely stood there smiling wickedly… before proceeding to terrorise the people of Berlin. But right at the end, with the Doctor on his deathbed, she becomes the River Song we recognise, giving him her regeneration energy to save his life. “Hello, sweetie.” It’s a beautiful moment. Alex Kingston was enjoyable to watch; she carried out really well both the comical (“So I was on my way to this gay Gypsy bar-mitzvah…”) and the more villainous stuff that she obviously had riveting fun playing, but also the more emotive and agonised material near the end.

The last fifteen minutes or so of this episode, in general, redeem it in my estimation. While the first half hour was messy and over-pitched, the final third was close to sublime, beginning with the Doctor struggling to hold onto life in the TARDIS, arguing with the TARDIS’s voice interface, successively taking the forms of himself, Rose, Martha, Donna and finally little Amelia Pond. The Doctor’s argument with voice-interface Pond was funny while it lasted, but also touching that Amelia Pond’s hologram’s utterance “fish fingers and custard” roused the Doctor into action. So was it also touching watching the Doctor, dying and weakening by the second, trying to force himself to save his friends, and River. Matt Smith conveyed powerfully the physical and emotional turmoil the Doctor was in as he tried in vain to struggle through his impending death to help his best friends. Supremely selfless, even at the point of death. And I’m as moved by the resolution to this episode as much as anyone: the beginning of River Song, when she rejects her conditioning and selflessly delivers the Doctor from death.

Some final thoughts. I thought the story of Mels’ growing up with Amy and Rory was charming. Especially the moment we see Amy and Rory get together. Too cute. Rory himself was written well in this episode. He’s steadily becoming less of the wimp he was when we first met him, and more of a brave action man. Marriage apparently suits him. Although, as I said, the episode is not without its very visible problems, the last fifteen minutes are exceptional, absorbing viewing, and effectively redeem the episode in my eyes. That raises out the company of “meh” episodes and into that of “good” episodes, in my book.

Rating: 7/10.

Thoughts on: A Good Man Goes to War

What would provoke the Doctor enough for him to mobilise an army? That’s the question this episode answers as we see the Doctor mounting an armed assault upon the people who’ve stolen Amy and her baby. It’s an epic, barnstorming culmination of certain arc threads that have built up over the first half of Series 6, manifesting as something like a mid-series “finale” in its scale and drama, but still leaving an intolerable cliffhanger to be resolved when the series “returns” in Let’s Kill Hitler. In truth, this episode was a bit of a mess, trying to do an awful lot in 45 minutes, with a distinct dearth of actual plot as substance was crowded out by arc resolution and show-stopping action sequences. However, the essence of this episode was the arc stuff—which was as gratifying as it was jaw-dropping—as well as the numerous character moments that interspersed the action. It’s a great one to watch, but, of course, watched best in its proper chronological place in Series 6.

After the torturous cliffhanger that The Almost People left us with, we’re naturally ravenous to discover who had taken Amy and who the eyepatch woman was. We’re presented with scenes of a fully-blown army mobilising themselves against the Doctor. And Cybermen. I wasn’t sure what the Cybermen were there for, actually. They could have made that more clear. But these scenes of these heavily-armed and -manned adversaries of the Doctor making preparations to do battle against him really conveyed a sense of there being some greater, momentous plot at work here—of which not even the Doctor seems to be aware. Those who’ve seen The Time of the Doctor would know what this is all leading up to, of course, but viewing this for the first time would be baffling. Especially given Madame Kovarian’s pronouncement about “this endless, bitter war… against you, Doctor.” What war? What could possibly drive an army, that isn’t comprised of Daleks or Cybermen, to take up arms against the Doctor? And why on Earth would they want to turn Amy’s baby into a weapon? This episode offers no answers to those questions… they are to be left hanging, some of them for a very long time. But the payoff is great, if confusing. I promise.

This episode displays another interesting, rarely seen, side of the Doctor. “A Good Man Goes to War” is exactly what it says: what would make the Doctor, the supreme pacifist, amass an army and go to war? We have an answer: committing such an outrage against him as attacking the people he loves to get to him. The “Colonel Runaway” scene shows the terrible vengefulness that animated the Doctor over this enormity. And the Doctor’s spittle-flecked anger in that scene is genuinely frightening. He’s a foreboding presence when he chillingly pronounces, “Good men don’t need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.” Matt’s Doctor is usually so cuddly and frivolous that it’s always a shock seeing real, cold fury in his eyes. And Matt does anger really well. One of the reasons Matt’s unpredictable, mercurial, inscrutable Doctor is my favourite. More generally, the episode also successfully conveys a sense of the almost mythological enigma that the Doctor has become through his travels, so much so that his very name strikes fear into armies. Lorna Bucket described him as a “dark legend”, leaving Amy befuddled, but little does she know of the twelve lifetimes he’s spent (not unjustifiably) acquiring a reputation, such that his name has all but passed into myth and legend. I think sometimes we get so familiar with the Doctor, especially Matt Smith’s and David Tennant’s more extroverted Doctors, that we forget that this is how the rest of the universe would see him.

All the cinematic action was interspersed by a number of wonderful character scenes. Lorna Bucket recounting the time she met the Doctor to Amy. Amy and Rory sharing a happy moment over their recovered child. The Doctor realising in astonishment who River Song was. River revealing to Amy and Rory who she was… and, God, that cliffhanger was amazing. Jaw-dropping. I remember exactly where I was, what I was eating (pizza), where my jaw was, and how I felt when I first watched that moment. The effect of that revelation has dulled with time, and now that I know who River Song is, but I still recall vividly what it was like watching it when it was broadcast. I thought Amy superbly written, and acted by Karen Gillan, in this episode. She was a woman under great emotional strain, but holding out strong nevertheless, which was portrayed brilliantly by Gillan. It was painful to watch Amy (in a good way) in profound emotional trauma after she’d realised she’d been tricked and her baby had been stolen from her at the end of the episode. This episode added layers to Amy’s character; the wise-cracking, sarcastic, vivacious Scots girl was nowhere to be seen here, although Amy did bravely force a smile through the pain and trauma she was experiencing.

Rating: 8/10.

Thoughts on: The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People

This two-parter, I feel, is something of an underrated gem. It’s sometimes written off as tedious, plodding and boring by fans, but I can’t say that I share this perspective. To me, it’s a captivating story, immersed in very dark, heavy themes involving a compelling moral dilemma. The premise that establishes the conflict of the story, sentient “flesh” taking the forms and personalities of their “hosts”, is intriguing, and if you buy into the moral dilemma that follows from that premise, this story can be truly mesmerising. In truth, I think it’s one of the most provocative, philosophical stories we’ve seen on Doctor Who—or at least on New Who. Certainly this story represents a much darker, more mature shift in tone from Series 5, which was primarily pitched at a younger audience and was more fantastical rather than discursive. To be sure, the story could have done with more pace and substance, but I think the “slower” sections were more than made up for, or filled, by the relentless exploration of the moral or philosophical dilemma at the heart of this story, i.e. the humanity, or lack thereof, of the Gangers, and the way they were perceived by the humans.

So I’ll get right to it and congratulate this story for having the boldness to discuss the meaning of life. Or the meaning of humanity, in any case. It was a really intriguing theme which was explored compellingly in the conflict between the Gangers and the humans. There was no doubt as to what “side” the story ultimately came down on: the Gangers were, emphatically, human, their lives and souls human lives and souls. It’s enthralling viewing as we’re not sure if the Gangers can be trusted or not, whether they’re human enough or not, with their vacillating between seeming undeniably human to something quite else. Only at the end where the Ganger Jimmy sees his son does it become emphatically clear that the Gangers are just as human as their counterparts. I also wonder if the story contained a very subtle subtext on related moral dilemmas surrounding the contentious issue of abortion; the show did the same thing subsequently in Kill the Moon. There was a brief tidbit of the Doctor’s dialogue in particular that piqued my attention in this respect: “We were all jelly once. Little jelly eggs sitting in goop. … We are not talking about an accident that needs to be mopped up. We are talking about sacred life.”

The story also portrayed quite accurately, and uncomfortably, the prejudice and aversion and mistrust that would naturally be displayed by humans to something perceived as almost human but not entirely. Perhaps a warning against human cloning: be prepared for lynchings. It also disturbingly portrayed the human inclination to bigotry against the unusual, the abnormal, the not-quite-right. The Doctor knew from the outset that the Gangers at least had the potential to be indistinguishable from their human counterparts. He played an ingenious trick on Amy and the others when he switched shoes with his Ganger, leading Amy to treat the “real” him as if he were a Ganger, much revealing Amy’s own latent prejudice—wonderfully resolved when Amy admitted she had been wrong to assume about the Ganger Doctor. “You’re twice the man I thought you were.” The moment when, after the Ganger Jimmy saw his son over the hologram and, the penny having dropped, went to save his counterpart, the humans finally saw their Gangers for what they were—not monsters, but themselves—was very gratifying. And human Jimmy’s death in the arms of his Ganger, giving his Ganger his blessing to take over his life, was a touching moment.

The Doctor, and the Ganger Doctor, had a brilliant role in this story. After the initial astonishment of seeing two Doctors (of the same incarnation no less), an “omfg” moment if there ever was one, it was delightful watching the Doctors interact together. That it was Eleven who was cloned made it all the funnier; they bounced off each other wonderfully, and all of Eleven’s quirky idiosyncrasies and eccentricities were amplified with hilarious effect when there’s two of him straightening their bow-ties and making distracted, enigmatic remarks. Matt acted against himself with brilliant precision, making the sequences where we see the two Doctors interacting not only convincing, but genuinely amusing. In particular, I liked the Ganger Doctor, fresh from the vat, struggling to cope with twelve lifetimes’ memories, overwhelmed by the Doctor’s twelve personas running around his head. The human Gangers were distressed by finding themselves in possession of whole lives, imagine what it must have been like for the Doctor’s Ganger to find himself with twelve. I wonder if the Ganger Doctor’s tortured screaming at one point was his reliving his undoubtedly vivid memories of the Time War… In any case, I liked the interesting way the Doctor was portrayed in this episode. He was more manipulative than we’ve seen him before, tricking Amy and the others into thinking the real Doctor was the Ganger Doctor, a beastly trick if there ever was one. There’s a few brief moments, when the (real-pretending-to-be-an-evil-Ganger) Doctor is with the other Gangers and Rory, in which the Doctor is genuinely scary, and you become frightened as the formidable thought of the Doctor teaming up with a gang of evil Gangers to orchestrate revolution hits you. It was revealed soon enough that that was all an act, but it was exhilarating, if unnerving, seeing the Doctor’s manipulative side.

But dat cliffhanger tho. Wtf? Omfg!!!

Rating: 9/10.

Thoughts on: The Doctor’s Wife

On occasion, New Who throws up a truly remarkable story whose conceit is so inspired, but also so simple, that you find yourself dumbfounded as to why the episode has never been made before. The Doctor’s Wife is such a story. It’s astounding that it took 48 years for the Doctor to meet his TARDIS in human form. When the idea was finally put into execution, it delivered consummately. The idea was audacious and daring, oh yes. The episode could have been totally ruined if the idea wasn’t done brilliantly. But, here, the TARDIS (henceforth referred to as “Idris”) in human form was simply delightful to watch.

When we first see Idris (as the TARDIS) she seems completely doolally. I was reminded with some amusement that this is what the Doctor’s post-regenerative trauma is often like. And the TARDIS’s matrix being deposited in Idris’s body would be much like the sensation of regeneration: finding oneself suddenly and disconcertingly in a completely different body and mind. Even when Idris had calmed down, she was every bit as mad as the Doctor (if not more so), with the additional charming idiosyncrasy of having all of time and space coursing through her, leading her to enigmatically pronounce things ahead of when they were supposed to be said, and reply to questions that haven’t yet been asked. This conveyed humorously what I suppose the TARDIS, as a supposedly sentient entity, must be like: a being that defies the constraints imposed on us mere animals by time. Idris’s trouble with comprehending tenses also alluded amusingly to this. In any case, I love how Idris’s personality was portrayed: a kind of Helena Bonham-Carter style madness. Although I’m quite sceptical about the idea of a female Doctor, Idris’s portrayal is actually a lot like how I imagine the Doctor would be like if he were a Time Lady. And Suranne Jones’ portrayal of Idris was exceptional, of course.

It was also gratifying seeing the Doctor and the TARDIS interact, after all this time. This is the ultimate fangasm episode, and, thankfully, the interaction between the Doctor and Idris actually did work really well. I think Idris’s portrayal would have had a lot to do with it—the TARDIS had to be as mad as the Doctor, or it would have been like just another Doctor-Companion dynamic. And I think the Doctor and Idris had excellent, electrifying chemistry together. They were delightful to watch. At times they seemed like an old married couple: “You are not my mother!” said the Doctor. “And you are not my child!” retorted Idris. Which actually says a whole lot about the strength and depth of their relationship, as Amy pithily observed: it’s always him and her, after all the rest are gone. At other times they seemed flirty and excitable, marvelling at the novelty of being able to talk to one another. It was also a cheeky but compelling idea to suggest that it was the TARDIS who stole the Doctor, rather than the other way around. Now that we’ve seen them interacting together, it doesn’t seem that laughable a suggestion. Finally, their “goodbye” moment was utterly beautiful. Surely one of the show’s most memorable moments, even if only for the reason of what was actually happening in that moment: the Doctor and the TARDIS had such a brief, special time talking to one another, and now they have to say goodbye to each other. No, I’m not crying. There’s just something in my eye. Shut up.

If I was to criticise something about the way the Doctor and Idris’s interaction was portrayed in this episode, I would say there wasn’t enough of it. If one is going to write an episode about the Doctor and the TARDIS being able to talk to each other, then, for God’s sake, milk as much out of that idea as humanly possible. Never mind Amy and Rory being chased around the TARDIS, let’s see the Doctor and the (living) TARDIS bickering, bonding, laughing, kissing, and more. Of course, this episode needed a substantive plot, not just a clever conceit, and to that extent House’s “stealing” the TARDIS with Amy and Rory trapped inside worked well, but I think the sequences we got that showed the Doctor and Idris actually talking and interacting meaningfully were too brief and too few. I feel we didn’t explore the Doctor and TARDIS relationship as deeply as we could have (although, in fairness, what we did get was still excellent in that regard). This episode could therefore have worked better if it were slower, with less rushing about, less focus on the relatively less important plot, and more intimate one-on-one sequences between the Doctor and Idris.

After putting in a somewhat lacklustre performance in the previous episode, Matt Smith is back in exceptional form here. He displayed an impressive range here, from the Doctor’s giddy excitement at finding himself the recipient of a Time Lord communication cube (much appreciated nod to The War Games, by the way), to his frightening resentment at discovering he’d been tricked about the presence of non-existent Time Lords, to his plaintiveness and heartbreak at being forced to say farewell to Idris. There was an intimate moment when the Doctor affirms that he wants to find Time Lords here because he wants to be forgiven for what he did. We haven’t seen the sorrow over the fate of his people from Smith’s Doctor to the degree that we saw it from Eccleston’s and Tennant’s Doctors. I have the idea that he represses his sorrow, like he represses much else. But this moment provided an unusual glimpse of the degree to which the memory of the Time War still pains the Doctor deeply. His frightening mood swing when he realised there were no Time Lords on this rock and he’d been tricked by the ghosts of their voices also conveyed powerfully the Doctor’s intense feelings about his people.

Some final thoughts. Rory’s and Amy’s being chased around the intestines of the TARDIS was captivating viewing. I may be wrong, but I think this was the first time we’ve seen inside the TARDIS beyond the console room in the revived series. Although Karen and Arthur were basically just running down the same corridor over and over again (Classic-style), those scenes really conveyed a sense of the Byzantine insides of the TARDIS. Rory’s being aged to death in the TARDIS was quite grisly viewing, that last scenario in which Amy finds Rory a withered husk very shocking and confronting. The first time I saw that I was actually very disturbed; it might have been the reason why I developed an aversion to watching this episode for a while. In any case, though, I think this episode is, on the whole, superb. A classic, to be sure, although there was, perhaps regrettably, still potential untapped in this idea.

Rating: 9/10.

Thoughts on: The Curse of the Black Spot

This episode is often maligned by fans as the underwhelming follow-up to the explosive Series 6 opener, a mundane pirate story with Hugh Bonneville its only redeeming feature. That used to be largely my opinion, too, but, upon this viewing of the episode I found it a lot better than I remembered, and I found myself appreciating it more than I used to. It’s an inventive use of the base-under-siege formula, involving a pirate ship under “attack” by an infatuating feminine spectre which spirits away the injured and sick. Perhaps the premise itself is pretty ho-hum, fairly uninspired, but it was executed well enough that it kept me interested throughout. It was at least as interesting as the two least impressive stories from Series 5, The Beast Below and Victory of the Daleks. I compare it to those two stories because it occupies the same place as them—the front end of the series following on the series’ opening story. And I think it compares favourably with both of them, which were both fraught with problems despite ultimately holding up well enough; this story is pretty well-rounded and doesn’t sport any glaring faults, and is even actually enjoyable and memorable (I find it enjoyable, at least).

One thing at which this episode succeeds is comedy: this script is just overflowing with genuinely funny dialogue, almost from the moment we see the Doctor and the Ponds. “A bit more laughter guys?” the Doctor coaxes as he stands at the end of a gangplank. “What kind of rubbish pirates are you?” Amy scoffs as the gang of brutish-looking pirates quail at the sight of the cutlass in her hand. “I’d like a beard. I’m going to grow a beard,” announces Rory in a daze as he ogles the pirates. “You’re not,” Amy stoutly rebukes him. And so on. Not everyone (few, in fact) would count it among the best stories of Series 6, but, God, it’s funny. And who, honestly, would deny that Amy’s sword-fighting with the pirates was pretty damned awesome? The Doctor’s alpha-male competition with Captain Avery was also very amusing to watch. Hugh Bonneville made an excellent arch-pirate, giving a very entertaining and convincing performance. However, the one significant criticism I would make of this episode is Matt Smith’s performance; he lacked the authority and the energy and the conviction that he usually carries, which he displayed as recently as the previous story, the opener. This is the first time in my marathon of Matt Smith’s era that I’ve noticed his performance being distinctly lacklustre. Perhaps I am seeing the first signs of the phenomenon, remarked upon by some fans, but which I haven’t noticed before, of the gradual decline in the quality of Matt’s performance over time?

One of the moments in this episode that really did stand out was Amy’s resuscitation of Rory at the end. It truly conveyed the strength of the love between these two, especially Rory’s confidence in Amy’s capacity to resuscitate him because he knew she would “never give up”. That was touching. It was torturous viewing watching Amy desperately, tearfully attempting to revive her husband, and the relief was sweet when, after a couple of horrific seconds, Rory began to cough up water and breathe again. They’ve been through a lot, these two, but this show keeps putting them through more trials and traumas, it’s no wonder they’re as close and as strong as they are. By the way, I thought I saw something poignant in the Doctor’s visible relief when Rory came back to life. I think he was reminded all too uncomfortably of how dangerous he and his lifestyle is to the friends he brings with him. He thought he’d almost lost another one. That was why he began to travel alone before he picked up Amy, after all. I wonder if he’s rather recklessly kicking the matter into the long grass here. If Rory had died (for real this time; there’s no coming back from actual real-world death), he would have been forced to confront directly his companion issue, but here it looks like he’s put the matter out of his mind because it’s too uncomfortable to think about. If only he knew…

Rating: 7/10.

Thoughts on: The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon

Steven Moffat has gone for a big, explosive opening for Series 6 in this creepy, exciting, showy romp of a two-parter. They’ve pulled out all the stops and gone to film in the colonies the United States, and, just to prove they’ve been there, there’s a delightful masquerade of American imagery and symbolism, a celebration of Americana. The story opens with Amy and Rory and River Song summoned to the beautiful wild landscapes of Utah. If that wasn’t enough to pique your interest, within the first fifteen minutes we witness the Doctor being killed by a mysterious astronaut that emerges from a lake, an incredibly surreal and mesmerising scene. Moffat couldn’t have begun Series 6 on a more audaciously thrilling note. It couldn’t have set up more compellingly the series arc that would play out over Series 6 (an arc that I personally love).

This story is about the Doctor and Co. chasing the clue that the Doctor’s future self left them before he died. The little girl and the Silence. This story is bursting at the seams with mystery and intrigue and unanswered questions, which effectively makes for captivating viewing. It oozes conspiracy and suspense: this isn’t a “Doctor fights the monsters” story, it’s a “Doctor investigates something very mysterious” story, and it’s done sublimely here. It manages to combine the thick, compelling mystery of the little girl and the Silence with a succession of wonderfully entertaining comedy moments. It also contains a number of gratifying character moments: Amy’s grieving over the seemingly dead Doctor, River Song’s sad contemplation to Rory of her bittersweet relationship with the Doctor–that poignant “foreshadowing” of Silence in the Library, the renewed tension between Rory and the Doctor after Amy disappears. River’s pained reflection upon what was coming for her and the Doctor I thought was particularly poignant, if only because we all already know how it all ends for her, and how too true were her words: “And the day is coming when I’ll look into that man’s eyes, my Doctor, and he won’t have the faintest idea who I am. And I think it’s going to kill me.”

The Silence though. Steven Moffat is at it again. God, that man has a knack for scaring viewers. This two-parter is positively seized with creepiness, featuring what I consider Moffat’s scariest creation, the Silence. They’re ghoulish, husk-like apparitions with withered, hollowed-out faces who speak in unsettling, raspy voices. Their appearance is terrifying enough, but they also come with the ingenious gimmick of being completely forgotten as soon as those who see them look away from them. Oh, and, if that wasn’t enough to make you start glancing around nervously everywhere you go, they can persuade you to do things subconsciously after you’ve looked away from them. Their first appearance, when Amy sees the Silent watching her in the distance at Utah, was really creepy. And surely when the Silent in the White House bathroom kills the woman, contorting and inflating and filling the room like some kind of foul ghoul, was one of the scariest things Doctor Who has ever screened? The scene with Amy in the room in the orphanage was also tremendously scary, the lighting and cinematography manipulated expertly to induce an unnerving sense of panic and suspense. Imagine you’re a child seeing the Silence for the first time. I think it’s only when you imagine watching this story as a child that you realise the genius of this monster, how terrifying they really are. It’s almost as though the Silence were designed to frighten children away from Doctor Who. I was 16 when this story was first broadcast and even at 16 they freaked me out.

Although it’s controversial among many fans, I love the resolution, the way the Doctor uses the Silence’s power against them and raises a “revolution” against the Silence. It’s a clever, ingenious ploy to bring down the Silence’s infestation of the planet that’s a testament to the Doctor’s wits and ingenuity. That said, there is an element of truth to the controversy around the Doctor’s actions. The Doctor’s actions seem ostensibly out-of-character: the Doctor is, truth be told, effectively manipulating the human race into committing genocide against the Silence. The Doctor is apparently wronging two groups here: the Silence, whose wanton genocide he is orchestrating, and humanity, whom he is turning into unknowing instruments of his mass murder, deprived of the free will to resist the impulse to murder. More than that, the Doctor is condemning the Silence to death without really knowing what they are. He’s figuratively (or perhaps not) shooting before asking questions. I remember being somewhat uncomfortable with this when I first saw the episode, and, to some extent, it’s still hard to justify the Doctor’s actions. Perhaps we just need to keep in mind that the Doctor is hardly as indisposed to violence and death as he usually pretends to be, and that he probably did think he was doing the right thing, or at least that he had no other choice. I will, in any case, at least say that the scene where the Doctor confronts the Silence in their base and triumphantly reveals his victory was awesome, as was River’s badass taking down the Silence single-handedly.

The story leaves a number of burning questions unanswered, such as what the Silence are, who the little girl is, what her relationship to Amy was, how she can regenerate, and what’s going to happen about the Doctor’s death. That’s good. I want unanswered questions. I want series-long, even multi-series, narratives and arcs. I want to be kept interested. I want constant mystery hanging over this show. I love it when Doctor Who becomes a serialised show with an ongoing plotline. Others are less taken with Moffat’s penchant for series arcs, Series 6 being the series arc par excellence, but I like having the sense that there’s an ongoing mystery that’s leading up to something big and profound. This story has left my appetite wholesomely whetted, excited to see more. A fantastic start to Series 6.

Rating: 10/10.

Thoughts on: A Christmas Carol

I thought this was the strongest Christmas special yet. A Doctor Who “adaptation” of Charles Dickens’ beloved Christmas tale could easily have been very embarrassing, but Steven Moffat pulled it off wonderfully here. This was easily the most “Christmassy” of Doctor Who’s Christmas specials; apart from The End of Time, previous years’ tended to be fairly light, mindless throwaway fluff without much substance, paying only cosmetic lip-service to seasonal themes. This Christmas special was fairly light on substance, as well, but unlike in previous years, it totally indulged itself in the Yuletide spirit. That’s the kind of story premise that tends to make me sceptical, but this Christmas special was an absorbing, magical standalone story. It’s filled with enchanting moments. It oozes wonder. It’ll make you, as it did me, laugh and cry and not even be ashamed to admit it. It’s just the perfect Christmas special.

Moffat has put an ingenious Doctor Who twist upon the original A Christmas Carol as the Doctor finds himself in a situation remarkably similar to that in Charles Dickens’ story and seizes the opportunity to employ his time machine to recreate Ebenzer Scrooge’s life-changing visitations in the life of Kazran Sardick. I thought this was a brilliant use, once again, of time travel as a plot device by Moffat. This show is about a time traveller, after all, and it’s surprising, to say the least, that the full potential and the possibilities of this show’s central conceit only begun to be fully exploited under Moffat. I can’t believe that there’s someone who wouldn’t grin indulgently at seeing the Doctor announce that he’ll “be back… way back” and then reappear a second later in a film recording made decades ago. The idea of Kazran watching the Doctor invading and changing his own memories in real (relative) time was just brilliant. The Doctor, the Ghost of Christmas Past. I love it.

And it was magical viewing watching the Doctor on his adventures with younger versions of Kazran. The Doctor makes a delightfully mad “babysitter”, the babysitter of every child’s dreams. Kind of like Mary Poppins, but more completely bonkers. It was touching to see that Kazran was really quite a kind, sympathetic person inside, as the Doctor knew he’d see when he visited Kazran as a boy. Compare the boy who seemed anguished over a dying shark to the hardened old man who callously insisted he didn’t care if 4003 people died. Or young Kazran, who seemed romantically enamoured with the idea that the fish liked Abigail’s beautiful singing (vehemently protesting the Doctor’s assertions to the contrary), to old Kazran, who seemed too cold-hearted to let Abigail’s family have her back for just one Christmas. More than anything, Kazran and Abigail’s love story showed what a kind and loving person Kazran is inside. Their love story was beautiful, even if it ended on quite a sad note.

The performances in this episode were all fantastic. Michael Gambon was a triumph of a choice as Kazran the Elder, giving at times both a provoking and sympathetic performance. His best moment was when the Doctor conscripted the elder Kazran into the role of the ghost of Christmas future, and Kazran breaks down when he realises that, in becoming what he was, he had betrayed himself. I felt myself welling up at that moment, so moving it was. Laurence Belcher as young Kazran and Danny Horn as also-young-but-not-quite-as-young Kazran were both excellent as well. Katherine Jenkins was luminous as Abigail. Her singing alone was entrancing, but she also played a sweet and lovesome Abigail. Matt Smith was electric. He’s as strong as he’s ever been in the role, treading masterfully, as Peter Capaldi remarked of him in a recent interview with Doctor Who: The Fan Show, that fine, careful line between comic and dramatic.

I felt that this Christmas special in general was an excellent story. It’s not just good Doctor Who, it also makes for wonderful television in general. It stands by itself as a perfect, heartwarming Christmas story. Top marks.

Rating: 10/10.

Thoughts on: The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang

There’s a reason Pandorica is my favourite finale. I was vividly reminded of this upon this rewatch. Apart from being astoundingly well-written and well-made, it’s also profoundly different from anything that’s come before. In Pandorica, Steven Moffat emphatically distinguishes his style and vision for Doctor Who from Russell T Davies’. This is Steven Moffat with the stabilisers off, and it’s amazing. It revels in the timey-wimey in a way no previous story has dared to do, culminating the intriguing cracks in time arc in epic style. While Russell T Davies went “bigger and better” with every successive finale, finally raising the stakes to absolute maximum with the destruction of all reality in The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End, Steven Moffat has ingeniously gone one up in a way only Steven Moffat could convincingly do by capitalising on his penchant for timey-wimey: the universe is not only going to be destroyed; it will never have existed at all. Cue fans writhing with glee.

I think the genius of this story is that it starts out as fairly standard Doctor Who fare, but then, at the end of the first half, all of the sudden becomes something entirely different. This finale at first pretends to be a story about a big scary monster escaping from the strongest prison in the universe. That idea is captivating enough in its own right, and has us fans salivating over the mystery of what could possibly be inside it, as helpfully articulated for us onscreen by the Doctor: “Think of the fear that went into making this box. What could inspire that level of fear? Hello, you. Have we met?” Doubtless fans’ imaginations were going haywire as all this was happening, trying to predict what would emerge from that box. The episode even gave us an awesome, blood-pounding speech—which was so good that it’s routinely recited by past Doctors at conventions—leading us in the direction of this clever red herring. That the Doctor’s chest-beating actually worked should have been our first red light that not all was as it seemed.

Meanwhile, we also had the shock reappearance of Rory as a Roman to grapple with. This, also, should have indicated that there was some bigger plot at work here; the mystery of Rory’s reappearance was irresistibly intriguing. There were a hilarious few moments when the Doctor first encountered Rory again and belatedly realised his non-existent friend had somehow returned from temporal limbo, Matt and Arthur both adeptly milking those moments for brilliant comical effect. Roman Rory’s less than validating reunion with his fiancée was a delicate, well-written character sequence amidst the imposing mystery of the Pandorica and everything else, with the moment Amy finally remembered Rory gratifying but bittersweet, given that Rory was writhing in agony trying to hold onto his humanity.

In an absolute coup of plotting, everything gets turned on its head as the Pandorica situation is revealed to be a sham, created as a bait for the Doctor. And the Pandorica itself—to hold the Doctor. After that fast-paced beginning to this episode, the slowing down of pace as what we thought we knew from the previous forty minutes began to unravel before our eyes made for absorbing viewing, thickening the suspense wonderfully. Up until then this plot had been fairly standard fare for Doctor Who, but that twist can only be described as a masterstroke. I think the “carnival of monsters” was a bit indulgent on the part of Moffat, but at least it effectively conveyed a sense of the scale and magnitude of the greater threat to the universe: if all the Doctor’s enemies have allied for a single purpose, this must be serious business indeed. The Doctor’s pleading as his enemies prepare to lock him inside the Pandorica was an amazing moment, and we’re left on an absolutely agonising cliffhanger, with the universe imploding, the Doctor locked inside the Pandorica, the TARDIS exploding with River inside it, and Amy seemingly dead.

Of course, within the first ten minutes of the second episode the cliffhanger is resolved, with the Doctor miraculously freeing himself through an absurd time paradox, and saving Amy by making her wait 2000 years in the Pandorica. The story has morphed into something completely different, though. The ante has been distinctly upped: this is no longer a story about a monster escaping from a cage, but about all of time and space imploding upon itself because the TARDIS is exploding, rapidly deleting swaths of history from temporal existence. Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey. Epic. Nevertheless, in the throes of this, there’s another touching character sequence as Rory pledges himself to guard Amy in her box for two thousand years. That’s what I love about this finale, as much as I adore the amazing plot: it’s punctured by quiet, touching character moments and sequences like these. The end of the universe means not just the destruction of planets, stars and species, it’s also, as Moffat reminds us in these wonderful moments, the erasure of human lives and all that entails: love, relationships, a trillion billion unique, special lives. Moffat reminds us that, yes, Rory’s girlfriend is as important as the whole universe, because to save the universe is to save exactly that: Rory’s and Amy’s love and the love of a trillion others.

The conundrum is actually resolved pretty straightforwardly. No show-stopping twist, no companion gaining godlike powers, no questionable deus ex machina; just the Doctor applying his wits to the problem and divining a way to fix it. He’ll pilot the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS and create a restoration field encompassing everything to “reboot” the rapidly decaying universe. And that’s fine. There’s no need for a jaw-dropping resolution that the showrunner promises we’ll never see coming; providing it’s convincing and suitably dramatically satisfying (the only thing worse than a stupid deus ex machina is an anticlimax), the Doctor applying his own wits and powers to cobble together a makeshift fix to save the universe works just as well as Rose consuming the time vortex and dissolving a legion of Daleks, or a biological metacrisis that turns Donna into the cleverest being in the universe. One thing I’ll say for the resolution was that it was at least really ingenious and really well conceived. “The Doctor reboots the universe” is just an awesome idea.

That the Doctor would be trapped on the other side of the cracks, to sacrifice his very existence to save the universe, was an excellent narrative ploy. The final fifteen minutes of the story were totally unnecessary from a narrative point of view. The episode could simply have shown the Doctor remaining safe on the right side of the cracks, and it would hardly have mattered from a plotting point of view. But aren’t we profoundly grateful for those last fifteen minutes? The Doctor retracing his steps through Amy’s life, delivering his moving, pathetic farewell to little Amelia in her bedroom, and Amy’s restoring the Doctor to the universe through her memories of him. That scene always gives me goosebumps. It’s powerful and exhilarating, Amy conjuring the TARDIS into existence as though through an enchantment. In my opinion, it’s one of the most memorable scenes in the history of this show, a thrilling coda to what had already been a fantastic series finale. When you realise the Doctor actually engineered his own salvation through Amy, it makes it all the more impressive.

I want to give the final word to Matt Smith, who delivered what I’m confident in describing as an absolutely magisterial performance in this finale. His acting was unquestionably peerless throughout. If any were in doubt of Matt’s suitability for the role, surely all uncertainties would have been swept away by Matt’s performance here. Surely no one could deny that Matt is excellent in the role after this. Matt has thoroughly entrenched himself in the role, and has delivered one of the classic performances as the Doctor. There was more than one moment that really showcased Matt’s talents. His “farewell” to Amy as he prepared to fly the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS was one, an emotive scene which Matt performed with sympathy and sad resignation. And the scene in little Amelia’s bedroom, in which he convincingly radiated age and weariness. It’s naturally difficult for Matt Smith, with his youthful looks, to come across as the old man that the Doctor is, but here he did it masterfully. His speech, that of a tired old man saying farewell to his friend, was so moving as to bring a tear to one’s eye. It was really powerful. Well done, Matt.

I’ve already written eight paragraphs on why this finale is amazing, so I won’t repeat myself, other than to affirm that, for the aforementioned reasons, it’s my favourite finale of all. It’s easily Moffat’s best finale, and he hasn’t matched himself since (I write this in eager anticipation for what Series 9 brings us, however). This finale was only part of a much greater narrative, though: Moffat cleverly leaves some itching questions hanging: namely, who blew up the TARDIS? And what on earth is the Silence? We know now that this was all part of Moffat’s grand era-long plan ultimately culminating in The Time of the Doctor (and the ramifications of the events of that story are still being explored). Looking back on it now, from the vantage point of what it’s all leading up to, I’m in awe of how meticulous and far-sighted his planning and narrative mapping was. For the benefit of those who haven’t watched that far ahead, I won’t reveal spoilers, but I’ll just say that Moffat has a an epic, exciting long-term vision for Doctor Who that’s only now becoming clear. This wonderful finale is just a pit stop along the way.

Rating: 10/10.

Thoughts on: The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood

The Silurians are the latest classic monster to be brought back in this gripping two-parter. Although it was in many ways a rehash of the same themes featured in previous Silurian stories, I think this story stands in its own right and does a fantastic job of re-introducing this classic villain to a modern audience, just as The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky did with respect to the Sontarans and Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel did the Cybermen. The story successfully established who the Silurians were, what they were about, and even gave us a privileged glimpse of the Silurians’ civilisation. Accordingly, the story adroitly avoided casting the Silurians, or anyone really, as the “bad guys”, except for perhaps the deranged warmonger Restac, and the theme of the story was the same inter-species political dilemma that played out in Doctor Who and the Silurians and other Silurian/Sea Devil stories.

In general this story had a very interesting and compelling plot, although my major criticism of the story would be that it seemed overlong. There simply wasn’t enough happening to fill the full ninety minutes and keep the viewers interested. Perhaps more plot could have been written to convincingly fill the two episodes, but, as it is, the story felt slow. That said, I thought the first episode, although not all that much necessarily happened, was more exciting than the second half. It played out as a unique iteration of the base-under-siege format as the humans attempted to hunker down in an old Welsh village church while unknown subterranean enemies assailed them from beneath the earth. It was seized with urgency and irresistible mystery and made for very gripping viewing. The second half had more in the way of plot and action, but somehow seemed to plod along without the urgency of the first half. One thing I’ll say for the second episode, though, is that it offered wonderful insight into the Silurians’ civilisation, with stunning scenes of the Silurian city and tantalising glimpses of their technology and science and social organisation. It felt like convincingly alien surroundings, something a show about space and time travel doesn’t, presumably for budgetary reasons, show as often as you’d expect it would.

Like the classic Silurian stories, these episodes were heavy with political undercurrents and intelligent parallels with real-world political issues. Does not the conflict between a group of original owners of a territory and that territory’s present inhabitants carry certain pertinent real-world associations? I’m reminded of Israel and Palestine, or issues surrounding indigenous peoples of the world and settler populations, such as in Australia and North America. Like these real-world issues, the Silurian situation has no easy solutions, and, to its credit, the story confronted and recognised that. Other parallels with these real world-issues were seen in the conflict between the more conciliatory tendencies and the more hardliner fundamentalists on each side, with Eldane and Malohkeh representing the conciliatory voices among the Silurians and Restec representing the militant fundamentalists, while Ambrose arguably represented hardliner attitudes among the humans. I think the script’s moralising about sharing and finding common ground between disparate groups was a refreshing and heartwarming ecumenical message, but I found it did get a bit cringe-inducingly preachy at times, as near the end where the Doctor was telling the humans to spread the “prophecy” that the Earth was to be shared.

There were robust performances all-round in this story from the leads and the supporting cast. Elliot was an endearing child and the child actor Samuel Davies really made the audience care about his character. Meera Syal was excellent as Nasreen Chaudhry, a singular, spirited woman who had the potential of a fantastic would-have-been companion. Nia Roberts was also very strong and convincing as the flawed but redeemable Ambrose. Matt Smith delivered an understated but commanding performance as the Doctor—there were no standout “Doctor” moments as such in this story, but there were several subtle little moments where Matt shined, such as his confrontations with Alaya and Ambrose. Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill were both excellent, as always. Particularly in that whopper of an ending. Rory’s death and Amy’s desperate struggle to cling onto her rapidly fading memories of Rory were heartbreaking, tear-jerking stuff. Both Gillan and Darvill are to be commended for profoundly affecting performances. Moffat has really upped the ante here in regards to his series arc, though; you know now that the “cracks in time” motif is building up to something big. Really big.

Rating: 8/10.

Thoughts on: Amy’s Choice

Witnessing the Doctor’s dark side is always confronting. That was the compelling conceit at the heart of this episode’s “monster”. Although it doesn’t become clear until the very end of the story that the sinister and unsettling Dream Lord is an animated manifestation of the Doctor’s inner darkness, this understated but startling revelation is an “Oh!” moment that suddenly casts the previous forty-five minutes in an entirely different, more chilling light. The writer Simon Nye cleverly had us wondering who the Dream Lord could possibly be, with the repeated references to the Doctor and the Dream Lord being known to each other; could it be the Valeyard? The Black Guardian? Some old nemesis of the Doctor?

The revelation that the Dream Lord was the Doctor himself was much more satisfying and compelling. We’ve seen before glimpses of the darkness that festers away inside the Doctor, but here it is in all its ugly glory (apologies to Toby Jones). The Dream Lord manifested all the Doctor’s centuries of self-loathing as well as his foulest thoughts and the worst of his character, as shown in the Dream Lord’s scathing contempt for the Doctor, the way he torments the Doctor about his every regret and insecurity, his relationships with his “friends”, and in his cruel taunting of Rory. This episode did a superb job in giving a captivating and distinctive insight into the Doctor’s dark side in the way it contrasted the Dream Lord with the Doctor as he normally is: it’s all the more compelling at that moment when you realise they were one and the same person.

The way the episode set at odds the two possible realities of Upper Leadworth and the TARDIS made for an engaging conflict for Amy to choose between an idyllic domestic life with Rory and her life of adventure and peril in the TARDIS. I said the series had sorted out the love triangle at the end of the last episode, but I spoke too soon (should’ve known better, honestly). There is still a conflict going on in Amy’s heart and mind over who she wants more: her fiancée or her Raggedy Doctor. And the Doctor and Rory were obviously competing for Amy’s attention. This all made for an engaging emotional sub-plot as the Doctor, Amy and Rory confronted their own insecurities about each other: Rory over whether Amy really wants to be with him or not; Amy over whether she really wants to be with Rory or the Doctor; the Doctor over the nature of Amy’s loyalties to him vis-à-vis Rory. It was emotionally riveting stuff that added layers to each of the three characters and developed (and resolved) the “love triangle” in a non-comical and decisive way, with Amy deciding, seemingly only upon having Rory cruelly taken from her, that it’s Rory she puts first. It’s times like these in a serialised drama that the characters would go forward in a much better place in their relationship, after having worked each other out and resolved any latent emotional conflicts between them. That seems to be what the series is doing here by sorting out the emotional triangle between the three leads, although (and I realise I’m contradicting what I said in previous reviews), I think there could have been potential for further development of this theme, providing it was resolved satisfactorily at the end of the series.

Some final thoughts. Although this episode was in general exceptional, one of the only things that let it down was the creatures inside the old people in the Leadworth dream, the Eknodine, which were more than a bit unconvincing. The “attack of the pensioners” was also a bit of a self-consciously ridiculous idea for what was supposed to be quite a dark and surreal episode, although, that said, the vicious, zombie-like old people were actually quite creepy. In addition, I thought the dialogue in this episode was just excellent; there were some laugh-out-loud funny lines in there, testament to Simon Nye’s background as a comedy writer. A pick of the best ones include: “I’m getting on a bit, you see. Don’t let the cool gear fool you.” “If you had any more tawdry quirks you could open up a tawdry quirk shop.” “If we’re going to die, let’s die looking like a Peruvian folk band.”

Rating: 9/10.