Doctor Who

Here it is. I could say so many things about this, but I shall restrict my comments to being that riding a triceratops is awesome.

Turlough is one of my favourite companions. The dynamic between him and the Doctor is genuinely fascinating, and something that I'm hoping will be attempted again in the new series.

Yes - sad to hear about Mary Tamm. Still, 62's not bad innings when you consider it.

Certainly this was my favourite of the season, alongside The Doctor's Wife. Tension and build up; the story had plenty of both. All done on what seems to be a pretty small budget (i think the opening two parter ate the majority of the season money pot ) A story I like revisiting frequently.

Afraid I haven't bothered reviewing any episodes since before the halfway-hiatus. Reason? They've been so boring, predictable and infantile ever since A Good Man Goes To War that, frankly, C.B.A. And I still can't. If the makers don't feel like making an effort, why should I? I'll give a few thoughts, but not a proper review. This season, just like last year's, started so well and has since sunk into the mire of a whimsical, self-indulgent, infantile ideas-void. We've known since week one that the Doctor faces an appointment with destiny in the final part, we've known since about week eight that River Song is the likely murderer, and so ever since, the season has been frantically treading water, trying to find ways of filling out its episode-run before it's allowed to drag itself back to the inevitable. This is an indictment of the story arcs that modern Dr. Who has become so dependent on. It counts on its audience being so eager to see how the running theme plays itself out that they'll keep coming back to watch subsequent episodes regardless, so it feels it doesn't have to bother with making individual stories any good. The impression I get though is that this is not the case. The signs are that a lot of story-starved fans, myself included, are so exhausted with the meandering season-arcs, the crowbarred over-emotional exposition, and the zany smugness that permeate the series that they are on the brink of deserting it. Most of the crudeness of the RTD era is thankfully gone, but little else has improved, at least not to a consistent standard. As for this episode itself, about the only thing I liked about it was the subtle tribute to Patrick Troughton's lines in The Three Doctors/The Five Doctors ("Been doing up your flat? I don't like it at all." - only a rough quote there, as I refuse to re-watch the episode and get it right). The puerile attempts at homoerotic humour would have made the cast of the Carry On films go red in the face, and the "killed them with love" trash near the end made me want to throw up. I don't want to sound like some testosterone-fuelled, soldier-boy macho-pants, but bloody man the hell up a bit, Dr Who! In fact, this was so bad, even my mum, who's usually an unashamed squueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-shrieker for the rebooted series, admitted she found it tiresome and childish. Normally you'll never hear her speaking up for the old series in favour of the new, but I was sure I heard her muttering, "Bring back Colin Baker..." at least once while the story failed to progress. Rubbish, just utter rubbish. 3/10.

This is more like it. After the hit-and-miss "Let's Kill Hitler", "Night Terrors" was much better in comparison. Mark Gatiss is one of my favourite DW writers, who's penned some classic adventures. There's no confusing twists/arc's, just excellent one-off storys reminiscent of Classic-Who. The fact that all of his episodes to date have been earthbound, show's that he's a fan of the Pertwee era. He once again proved that to make great Who, you just need an excellent story & a superb cast to do it justice. The Peg Dolls were a mixture of the Vashta Nerada (Series 4), the Gas Mask kid (Series 1) and The Flood (Waters of Mars). Their appearance was equally similar to the Clockwork Robots from "The Girl in the Fireplace" (Series 2). They may have not been original, but that didn't stop them from being scary. There was also solid performances all round, particularly Jamie Oram as George. Matt Smith was at his usual crazy best, like the Seventh Doctor he just keeps on evolving with each passing series.

It's taken me a week to mull this episode over, I liked it but it had it's problems. There was Action, Comedy, Drama, Hollywood-style CGI, intricate plots, regenerations (plenty of), timey-wimey stuff and Terminator 2 rip offs. In short, there was too much going on and it would have worked better as a two-parter. They could have spent half hour establishing the Mels character more and then ended part 1 with the River reveal. Instead we had it in the first 15 minutes, if you had missed "A Good Man goes to War" then you would have been totally confused. Which is what you get when you make a DW series too arc-heavy. Adolf Hitler should really have been left out altogether, apart from some funny scenes he didn't do anything for the story. Also the lack of he and Zimmerman having thick german accents was a bit annoying too. It wasn't all bad though, "Let's Kill Hitler" had some of the best special effects in DW history. The X-Men & T-2 inspired robot transformation scenes were visually stunning. The greatest peformances came from Matt and Alex Kingston, her portrayal of River as a super confident assasin was superb. Matt Smith gave his 100% as usual. The scene where the TARDIS showed him images of his previous companions, was one for the NuWho fans only. Pity they didn't show any of the Classic companions. Overall it was an enjoyable fast-paced adventure, but there was so much happening that it felt bloated. Series 6 Part 1 opened with the excellent "The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon", sadly LKH didn't live up to that. Bring back the good old-fashioned storytelling of Classic Who, with no series arcs please.

Of course, it goes without saying, Wilf stole the show While Wilf was an enjoyable presence throughout the story, I would have to award the accolade of theft to the Eleventh Doctor. I infinitely prefer Part 2's 'Matt Smith Matt Smith' ending to Part 1's 'Malkovich Malkovich' ending, and Matt Smith's derbis spitting to Timothy Dalton's Gallifreyan salivation.* I'm not sure how to express my feelings about Part 1, except to say that it left me drained and would top a list of my least favourite Dr. Who episodes. Anyway, I'm posting in this thread because of last night's University Challenge, whose Dr. Who-themed music round included a piece from the end of The End of Time. The fact that it was followed by a starter for ten was superbly ironic. *Consider this comment Drassil on Rassilon.

Of course I haven't confirmed it! I had just got it into my head that it was the Ninth, for some reason. Not sure why, that's just what my brain said.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/06/14/no-full-series-of-doctor-who-in-2012-auntie-cops-to-it-but-promises-special-2013/ Only a half-season next year...

Well, Steven Moffatt promised us something epic and he was true to his word. I couldn't agree more. I know I'm not as good as giving in-depth reviews of the DW episodes, but when I watched this on iPlayer a couple of days ago I was well and truly impressed. The confusing plots of the first few series' episodes were completely forgotten as we were all treated to a delightful layered story where as soon as one exciting plotline had been solved, another one immediately took its place. And it has left me completely looking forward to the second half of the series when it reutrns in the autumn. I would actually go as far to say that this genuinely was the best episode of Doctor Who I've seen since Blink.

Is this the version you're referring to? I only ask because the Youtube clip in your link appears to have been disabled.

The two identical Doctor's were handled much better than they were in "Journey's End". The comedy wasn't overdone and it gave Matt Smith a chance to do something different with the part. The best bit about the opening 5 minutes though was hearing Tom Baker again. It may have only been a brief nod, but for 2 wonderful seconds the Fourth Doctor was back. They should have incorparated Jon Pertwee's voice in too for "Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow". "The Almost People" was just as good as the previous episode and it still mantained elements of The Thing (1982). In particular the moment where Rory sees the discarded Flesh, it looked similar too the deformed/mutated corpses that Macready & co. found in the Norwegian camp. Influences can also be seen in the moment where Jennifer's mouth stretches open and how she appears in monster form at the end. Exactly how Jennifer-‘Ganger turns into the giant animal isn’t very clear; if she’s able to do that, why didn’t she just do so hours earlier? I highlighted this in my last review, there was never an indication that the Flesh were able to shape-shift like that. If all of the Gangers had gone into monster mode at the start of the episode, then they probably would have won. The scene was clearly added just to give it an action packed finale, there's nothing wrong with that but it would have been better if it had made sense. The twist ending which revealed that Amy was Flesh too was totally unexpected and the cliffhanger which shows Amy screaming for her life whilst giving birth, is one of the darkest NuWho cliffhangers ever. Karen Gillan conveyed that confusion and terror brilliantly on-screen. Frances Barber was every inch the baddie as Madame Kovarian, she's perfect Rani material and I'm looking forward to seeing how her character develops. Overall it's another 8 out of 10 from me, a strong two parter and as the cliffhanger imply's. Things can only get darker from here on.

I personally loved it too - easily my favourite episode of the series so far, and probably one of my favourites in general. Dark, scary, funny and sweet all at the same time, with wonderfully creepy elements that reminded me of the stories I grew up watching in the '80s. Sure you could nitpick it to death (this is true of any episode) but when the show is this entertaining, I feel no desire to do so. I have to say that (for me) Matt Smith gave his best ever peformance (as yet) in this episode. I thought the same thing. As ever, I found his performance marvellously restrained. His anger about being lured there under false pretences, for example - he was so quietly menacing, which I find infinitely more effective than the belligerent shouting we would have got from Tennant. And I always found the 10th Doctor's weepy tendencies really irritating, but here I thought Matt Smith's wobbly moment showed just the right amount of emotion without overdoing it, which made the scene appropriately touching. I'm so glad he's moved away from the Tennant impersonations he kept doing in the first few episodes of Series 5 - I much prefer his own version of the character. He's brilliant!

the whole "Amy Swann" fight scene, it may have been funny and well choreographed. But it was very silly, unrealistic and it was only included because of the Pirate theme. In reality Amy would have been killed in seconds, as she would have never been able to defeat 3 experienced fighters single handedly. Yes, I was going to mention that in my review but forgot to. I was going to say it has an unhealthy resemblance to the third season of Sliders, during which our mild-mannered, entirely non-military heroes would keep plucking expert soldier skills out of nowhere. Rembrandt, who was supposed to have become a singer straight out of college, suddenly managed to slot in a two-year tour-of-duty in the US navy that had never previously been mentioned. Quinn, who'd never fired a gun in his life until a few months earlier, was suddenly an expert with an AK47 etc. In the same way here, Amy has mastered the art of wielding a seventeenth century cutlass. Now I suppose it's possible that she's had fencing lessons (although she was brought up in an awfully small village for a fencing school, and in any case, given her reputation through her childhood of having psycho-delusional difficulties - including biting a psychiatrist - who would have dared teach her how to use a weapon?), fencing and using a cutlass are not quite the same thing.

Bet you tonight the Doctor says, "Yes, I wear an eyepatch, a three-cornered hat and a hook. Eyepatches, three-cornered hats and hooks are cool!"

This morning I've gone back to the mid-80's and watched The Caves Of Androzani. Peter Davison's final hour as the Doctor and surely his finest, although the script cheats somewhat to get the absolute best out of him; it's clear from the Doctor's snappier dialogue and more assured behaviour that it was written with Tom Baker in mind. The Fourth Doctor was always a more pro-active and self-confident figure than the slightly breathless charmer of his fifth incarnation, and that clearly does wonders for Davison's own confidence. In any event, it's a brilliant story, the best of the 80's by a significant leap. It's brutal, subtextual, insightful, and has a cynical edge that the modern series in all its self-aware quip-heavy zaniness would never dare to imitate. The characters are a cast of opportunistic, morally-bankrupt achilles-heels, everyone on both sides of the Spectrox conflict clearly out only for themselves. Even Sharaz Jek, the scarred idealist, is more consumed in angry self-pity and his dangerous lust for Peri than he is in altruistic aims. Morgus and Stotz are two of the most ruthless, greedy and animalistic villains the series ever gave us, and even a less hideous figure like Salateen finds time to laugh at his impending survival when he realises that the Doctor and Peri are likely to die in his place. Morgus' soliloquy style of expressing his innermost thoughts to the camera takes some getting used to, but it works a lot better than many other instances of it happening in series history. In fact, apart from House Of Cards and The Mrs Bradley Myteries, this is the only instance I can think of off the top of my head when actors talking to the camera really works. (Well, Knightmare as well of course, but then that's not quite the same thing; breaking the fourth wall works on KM because KM's a gameshow and so it needs a host.) The plot has enormous amounts to say about society's hunger for resources, and the avarice and political corruption this leads to. Whether it makes it altogether realistic is questionable - if political life were truly this cutthroat, we'd have a full state funeral every fortnight - but beyond doubt it makes for one of the most gripping, hard-edged stories in Dr Who's history, almost trying to emulate the darkness of its sister show Blake's 7, and a story rounded off with one of its more poignant regeneration scenes (only slightly distracted from by the very blatant position of the camera to look down the inside of Nicola Bryant's shirt as she cradles the Fifth Doctor's head - John Nathan-Turner, you really knew how to make a good story seem tacky...). Not only Davison's finest hour, but also probably Nicola Bryant's, and the series' finest hour of the 80's. Most significant of all, it was also Bob Holmes' best-ever script, even beating The Talons Of Weng Chiang. When he returned to the series two years later, the dismal quality of The Trial Of A Time-Lord showed just how much his growing illness had robbed him of his former talent in between times. A shame then that Caves wasn't left to be his swansong. Definite all-time classic, 10/10.

No I reckon I'm lowest-of-the-low, judging by this thread.

Ny boss at work is suggesting that the murder of the Eleventh Doctor is the crime River was imprisoned for in the first place.

Finally got to see this this morning. Just a slightly pointless rehash of the set-piece from early in Logopolis, with some crude jokes about looking up Amy's skirt thrown in to make it a bit more Comic Relief-relevant. Not a good move. These five-minute sketch episodes are always too fleeting to have a real plot, so they need charm to make them work. Crudeness doesn't lead to charm. The story's probably too brief and inconsequential to fuss about, but the resolution is a mixture of utterly meaningless technobabble, and yet another 'The-Doctor-solves-the-problem-by-listening-to-his-future-self-explain-how-it-was-done' paradox, a routine that's been done to death since Time Crash. Hey, I have an idea! Why don't we have a story in which the Doctor actually works out how to solve a problem, instead of him letting it solve itself? Absolute rubbish, but thankfully far too brief to become grating. 4/10.