The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood

Are you afraid of the monsters?
No, the monsters are afraid of me.

The Silurians are a good idea but they are unfortunately rather limited in their application. When you look at the combined catalogue of the Silurian and Sea Devil stories, they all seem to be rehashes of the same story. Thus it is not surprising that this two-parter hits a lot of the same high notes as has been seen in prior stories. If you like those stories, that's not bad as a new telling of an old tale can still be quite enjoyable. But if the Silurian stories of the past are not your cup of tea, this story will be a bit of a slog for you.

Plot Summary

In 2020, a man named Mo reports to work at an experimental drilling site in Wales. The drill has just past 20,000 km and he is to supervise the drill during the night shift. In the night, the drill is rocked by a small earthquake. Going to investigate, he discovers a hole in the floor filled with steam. It then backfills with a surface layer of earth. He reaches down inside it, pushing through to the space beneath. He is then sucked down through the earth and into the hole.

The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive the following morning, intending to go to Rio. The Doctor is distracted by patches of blue grass in the graveyard and wants to investigate. As they look around, the trio spies an older Amy and Rory waving back at them from a nearby hill. The Doctor heads down the hill and Amy follows him. Rory however heads back to the TARDIS, having convinced Amy to leave her engagement ring in there for safe keeping.

Rory emerges from the TARDIS and is mistaken for a plainclothes detective by Mo's wife Ambrose and their son Elliot. Ambrose and Elliot take Rory to an open grave and tells him that town tradition has the people buried in the same plot as other family members. Her uncle had recently died and was to be buried in the same plot as her aunt who had died six years earlier. Yet when they dug up the undisturbed plot, the grave was empty. Elliot is convinced that a monster took the body from below.

The Doctor and Amy enter the drill complex where the owner, Tony, has just restarted the drill. His companion, Nasreen, monitors things while also looking for Mo. As the Doctor examines their equipment, ignoring their questions, the drill complex begins to shake. The Doctor orders them to turn the drill off but as Tony runs to do it, his foot gets caught in a hole that has opened up in the floor. Amy runs back to help him but also gets caught. Nasreen pulls Tony free and the two of them go to deactivate the drill. The Doctor tries to hold on to Amy but she is sucked under the earth just as the drill stops.

When Tony and Nasreen come back, the Doctor looks over their equipment again and scans the area below. He detects mechanical sound coming up from the earth and realizes that something is coming up the drill shaft from an underground chamber. The Doctor also realizes that it is an advanced race as they are manipulating the soil to work as a weapon against those on the surface.

Fleeing from the drill site, the trio reunites with Rory, Ambrose and Elliot. They also observe a force field coming into place over the drill and church sites. Trapped within the dome, the Doctor orders everyone into the church. They gather any cameras and other recording devices they can find and install them throughout the area with Elliot making a map for the Doctor. The Doctor does chastise Ambrose for also gathering weapons and tells her to put them back.

Eliot heads back to the house to get his headphones when the invaders darken the dome for attack. The Doctor herds everyone inside the church and locks the door. As the invaders surface, they cut power, shorting out the watching instruments. Ambrose then realizes that Elliot is missing. Hearing him yelling to be let in the church, they pull the door open but find him gone.

The group heads out to look for him. Ambrose finds his headphones and is attacked by one of the creatures. Tony pulls it off of her but it lashes out with its tongue and stings him. The Doctor has Ambrose take Tony back inside while he looks around using sunglasses modified to detect infra-red. He realizes that the attackers are cold-blooded and immediately guesses what they are. He and Rory set a trap where one attacks him but the Doctor uses a fire extinguisher to drive it into a van where Rory traps it. The remaining invaders retreat leaving each side with hostages.

The Doctor takes the creature, revealed to be a Silurian warrior woman named Alaya into the basement of the church. The Doctor tells the others that he encountered a different tribe of Silurians many years ago and believes he can negotiate with them given that they have a hostage now. They saw the drill as an attack as it threatened their life support systems but he is confident that an agreement can be reached.

Nasreen insists on coming with the Doctor so that leaves Rory, Ambrose and Tony to guard Alaya. Alaya smugly tells them that one of them will end up killing her and initiating a war. Meanwhile the Doctor and Nasreen enter the TARDIS but before the Doctor can start it, it is dragged below the surface. The Doctor and Nasreen explore the caverns below and find that the tribe of Silurians is not a small group as the Doctor expected but instead a vast city. They head down to investigate but are captured by a group of guards.

As the two explore the city, Amy wakes to find herself strapped to an examination table. She sees Mo next to her who warns her that she is going to be dissected and examined just as he was. She sees a Silurian doctor approach her with a scalpel and begins to scream. He uses a remote to lock the clamps on her arms but before he can start, he is called away to examine the Doctor and Nasreen. Amy then unlocks the clamps with the remote that she picked from the doctor's pocket, releasing her and Mo.

Amy and Mo slip out of the examination room and find Elliot being held in suspended animation in a room off the main hallway. Mo tries to rouse him but they are locked out. Amy promises they will come back for him either through the Doctor or by capturing the Silurian doctor and forcing him to open it. They travel down another hallway where they find an army of Silurian warriors being held in suspended animation and standing on disks that will carry them through tunnels to the surface. She and Mo take two guns held by suspended warriors and continue to look for a way out.

The Doctor and Nasreen are taken to the examination room where the Silurian doctor, Malohkeh, starts to decontaminate the Doctor. The Doctor tells Malohkeh that as he is not human, that will kill him. Malohkeh stops and examines him further. The Silurian defense commander, Restac is convinced that the four invaders are the scout party for a planned invasion. The Doctor denies this and notes that he only wants to trade hostages, offering Alaya for the humans. As Alaya is from the same genetic line as Restac, she is interested.

Restac orders the Doctor and Nasreen taken to the great hall. Along the way, the Doctor admits that he's met Silurians before but that that tribe was destroyed in a fight with the humans. Restac doubles down on her contempt and flings them into the great hall. Once in, Amy and Mo burst in with their guns but they are quickly disarmed and tied to the pillars of the hall with the Doctor and Nasreen.

On the surface, Tony sneaks to the basement and offers to free Alaya in exchange for the cure to her venom which is killing him. She scoffs at his treachery and ignores him. Tony begins to show signs of the poison attracting the attention of Ambrose and Rory. Rory tends to him while Ambrose heads to the basement. She demands to know how to cure her father and get her family back but Alaya only taunts her. Ambrose produces a Taser and threatens to shock Alaya if she doesn't help. Seeing the chance of death, Alaya doubles down on her taunts. Ambrose shocks her once and then hits her in the chest with the Taser.

Hearing Alaya's screams, Rory and Tony run down to the basement. Rory tries to revive Alaya but she dies, refusing to speak of her anatomy. As they stand over her body, a CPU monitor comes to life with Restac transmitting to them. She demands to speak to the leader (Rory) and shows the four hostages she has. She then demands to see Alaya. Ambrose refuses, fearful of Alaya's death, demanding instead for her family to freed. Restac refuses and cuts transmission, preparing to execute the hostages via firing squad.

Restac is stopped by the entrance of the city leader, Eldane, summoned by Malohkeh who did not want to see the humans executed. Eldane dismisses Restac and the Doctor sends Mo with Malohkeh to revive Elliot. The Doctor then designates Amy and Nasreen to negotiate with Restac as to how to share the planet. The Doctor contacts Rory and sends up four transport disks, telling the three of them to come down with Alaya.

Rory and the others do come down with Alaya's body but not before Ambrose convinces Tony to set the drill to a delayed start, which will destroy the life support mechanisms of the Silurian city. They eventually arrive with Alaya's body, just as Nasreen and Eldane had come to an initial agreement about habitats. The Doctor gets angry with Ambrose, who confesses to killing Alaya and apologizes to Eldane, hoping that he can see past this. He is also distracted by Tony who collapses, the venom taking hold and mutating his genetic code.

Unbeknownst to any of them, Malohkeh discovers Restac waking several squads of troops, preparing to fight the humans. She kills Malohkeh and then storms the council chamber, just missing Tony being lead to the examination room by Mo to have the toxin cleared out of his body. Restac sees Alaya and declares open war, especially after Ambrose informs all of them that the drill will penetrate the life support system in fifteen minutes. Restac orders her troops to fire but the Doctor disables their guns with his sonic and the group flees to the same examination room, which is defendable by a heavy door. The Doctor pauses in the hallway, giving Restac a chance to make peace but she ignores him.

Barricaded in the examination room, Eldane agrees to activate a toxic gas system designed to purify the city of intruders. It will trigger an automatic response system in the soldiers to return to suspended animation. The Doctor thanks him and tells him to trigger the awakening for 1,000 years in the future, by which the humans will pass down the information of the Silurians and be ready to share the planet by then. He also has Nasreen set up a response to destroy the drill, ending the threat to the Silurian city.

Once the gas is announced, the soldiers abandon the siege and return to their chambers, leaving Restac alone. The group runs out a side door and to the TARDIS but Tony is not purged of the toxin and decides to stay behind and be suspended with the Silurians. Seeing this, Nasreen also elects to stay and be suspended. They will also act as human liaisons when revived. With that agreed, the Doctor also runs for the TARDIS.

They arrive as the gas sweeps over the city. Mo, Ambrose and Elliot all get in the TARDIS. The Doctor, Rory and Amy prepare to enter as well but they are distracted by the appearance of a glowing crack, identical to the one in Amy's bedroom and on the Byzantium. The Doctor wraps his hand with a cloth and reaches in to the crack, pulling out a small object.

Before he can fully examine it, Restac crawls from out of the passage, dying from the gas. With her last bit of strength, she fires her gun at the Doctor. Rory leaps to push the Doctor out of the way and gets hit by the blast. He then dies, confused as to how he could have seen himself on the hill at the start of the adventure.

Amy is devastated but the Doctor drags her into the TARDIS as tendrils of light issue from the crack and envelop Rory's body. In the TARDIS, the Doctor urges Amy to hold on to her memories of Rory as he is being erased from existence by the crack. They land back on the surface but the jolt of the landing breaks Amy's concentration and she gets up with no memory of Rory.

The five of them exit the TARDIS just as the drill explodes. As Mo and Elliot settle back to their house, the Doctor pulls Ambrose aside. She thanks him for not letting the Silurians kill her. The Doctor impresses on her to use her failings to teach Elliot to be the best of humanity; that those traits would be passed on when the time for the Silurians to wake again comes.

Amy and the Doctor return to the TARDIS where Amy sees her future self waving from across the hill. Amy waves back but has a moment's hesitation where she thought she remembered seeing someone with her future self. She dismisses it and suggests they head to Rio as planned. The Doctor stalls and pulls the fragment from his pocket that he got out of the crack. He holds it up to the TARDIS and the pieces match, revealing that his TARDIS exploding appears to be the source of the cracks.

Analysis

It is rather unfortunate the turns this story takes. Before the Silurians are revealed, there is an air of mystery an allusion to Third Doctor stories of the past (Inferno and The Green Death most notably). Even after the Silurians show up, there is still an interesting aspect that keeps your attention through The Hungry Earth. Cold Blood however is like someone who read a quick summary of Doctor Who and the Silurians and then tried to do a slap-dash Malcolm Hulke impression, failing to capture the best of that story on both accounts.

Cold Blood takes a slimmed down view by portraying all the humans, save Nasreen, as emotional idiots and the Silurians, save Eldane and Malohkeh, as racist, bloodthirsty monsters. What little character development is done is all for the purpose of having everything fall apart at the end and very few of the positive aspects of either side are shown. No one is given time to think or explain and the Doctor himself jumps on the humans as morons and murders much quicker than he does with the Silurians, who are also fully prepared to murder.

While Doctor Who and the Silurians is too long at seven parts, it still would have needed at least four or five episodes to breathe and get the proper amount of development that it needed. Here, Chibnall is clearly trying to take everything from about Episode Two on and cram it into one 40-minute block. Actually it's even less than that because the last 5-7 minutes deal with the crack, Rory's death and the denouement where the Doctor imposes the lesson to Ambrose. Compressing to that level robs a story of nuance, character and development. I had some problems with Doctor Who and the Silurians but they were relatively small and dealt as much with perceived fan wisdom than the actual story. But that's nothing compared to how squashed and boiled down Cold Blood is.

Now there were positive aspects. The Doctor, Amy and Rory were all enjoyable. It's interesting to see Amy get most of The Hungry Earth off, counterbalancing Rory's absence in Vincent and the Doctor. What time she does get she does well in, though her false bravado can get grating if used too much. Rory is also good and although he doesn't get as much time with him, I do like the times that Rory and the Doctor are together as they have a very good chemistry together.

Much like the Fifth Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor does well with an older woman acting as his pseudo-companion. Nasreen actually probably would have made a good companion as she is enthusiastic, open-minded and highly intelligent. Her romance with Tony was a bit forced, but I think that's more of a time issue and the fact that the nature of their relationship was not given time to develop.

In their brief instances, I liked Mo and Elliot. I do think Elliot was a waste though. Mo not getting much development is understandable as he was the first victim and there are other things to work on by the time he gets back involved with the plot. But Elliot had a nice little relationship develop with the Doctor, even including the bit about him being dyslexic. To have him be reduced to window dressing with no active role in anything in Cold Blood just feels like a waste. A plot thread that was supposed to do something or have a small pay off but instead went no where.

I'm more ambivalent on Tony. He was wounded in the attack and didn't serve much of a role other than be the thing that keeps Nasreen around and show the more cowardly side of humanity. But it was Ambrose that was the worst. She was the go to bad guy for everything but she wasn't even good at being a bad guy. She shoves a Taser in Alaya's chest while whining about not being given her family back. Anyone with any common sense would have realized that could have stopped a creature's heart. Then, even after realizing that she's totally screwed the pooch, she decides to go Machiavellian and destroy the Silurian city with the drill while being xenophobic. Which is she: a terrified wife and mother or a speciesist? I think we are supposed to feel sympathetic with her fear at first but she never presents redeeming qualities. She is morphed whenever convenient to the plot to become the villain. She is just an annoying, inconsistent character.

The Silurians aren't much better. There is no attempt at communication, it's just instant military invasion when the life support systems are endangered. Yet, despite launching a military raid, the Silurians are somehow indignant that the humans defended themselves from being captured. Restac and Alaya are so one note with their anti-human feelings that they see and act in no other manner. Restac isn't even a good military commander as she assumes there is a human army waiting to attack them despite their recon providing no information on any army and only capturing one unarmed boy. Malohkeh did better in capturing two people (Mo and Amy) with his science and he was fully convinced that the humans were not attacking them.

Restac wasn't even able to pull off her full coup, which at least happened in Doctor Who and the Silurians. Here she tries and fails with another round of terrible shooting. Yes the Doctor disabled some of the guns, but there were clearly a good ten armed soldiers, any of which could have gotten off a shot to take someone out. The only decent shot is Restac's final shot where she kills Rory and there the Doctor was standing still, distracted by the crack, giving Rory no choice but to push the Doctor out of the way. The Silurians in Doctor Who and the Silurians, killed hundreds and would have worked towards total genocide if not for the Doctor and Liz. When compared to the old, the nuance and detail just isn't there for the new Silurians compared to the ones of the classic era.

The direction was nice and I do like the look of the new Silurians over the old ones. One of my complaints about the old Silurians was the overreliance on the third eye which could do anything they wanted. Here, the Silurians are far more obvious in their employment of technology and it fit better. The new design also gives them much more movement and expression which is nice. This comes more to the fore with Madame Vastra in later episodes but the groundwork is here.

Ultimately, this is a good set up undone by trying to do too much in too short a time. Chibnall's attempt to put a seven-part story into the span of less than 80 minutes just leaves so much left undone. Worse, the near identical set up and follow on from the source material leave the viewer pining for the deeper and more textured version. If a viewer hasn't seen Doctor Who and the Silurians, they might get more out of this two-parter but once the source material is known, it's hard to see this one as anything but a pale imitation. It's just not one that I would want to go back to with any regularity.

Overall personal score: The Hungry Earth - 3.5 out of 5; Cold Blood - 1.5 out of 5

The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People

I was going to drop you off for fish and chips but then things happened. There was stuff and shenanigans. Wonderful word: shenanigans.

This story is often derisively referred to as "The Pudding People" two-parter. That is both a bit harsh but also a somewhat apt description when you look at the effects in how they brought the gangers to life. My initial recollections for this one are of a story that had some decent promise but that fizzled out into a generic monster story with some unanswered questions. I also recall it feeling a bit drawn out and not quite worth a two-part entry. But my memory could be off and influenced by negative comments that surround it. Let's see what a second viewing does.

Plot Summary

The Doctor, Amy and Rory are caught in large solar flare which drives them down to Earth in the near future. They land outside a medieval castle that has been converted to a factory to process large volumes of acid. They enter and find four workers linked to machines. Those same workers enter the room when an alarm sounds, along with a fifth.

The Doctor poses as a representative from the Meteorological society, come to inspect things after the flare and warn them about a second. The leader, Cleaves, takes the Doctor to a vat where a substance known as "flesh" is kept. The liquid is poured into a vat and when a worker is hooked into a machine, it forms into a body that is controlled while keeping the worker safe from the acid. Cleaves has the fifth worker, Jennifer, demonstrate by hooking herself up. The Doctor is wary, sensing the emotions and intelligence the flesh has absorbed from them every time they hook themselves up.

A quick surge alerts the Doctor to the approaching solar storm. He warns Cleaves to abandon the factory but she declines to do so, not wanting to extend the tour. The Doctor runs out to disconnect the solar array from the power grid but he is electrocuted while doing so and the flare knocks out everyone else in the facility as well as knocking out the power.

The Doctor wakes up an hour later and re-gathers everyone. Everyone has disconnected from their machine but their flesh bodies are not where they remember being. They examine the crew quarters and find things disheveled there. The Doctor informs them that the power from the flare has given the flesh the spark it needed to become independent, harnessing the emotions, memories and thoughts that were poured into it from the workers.

Jennifer is the most affected by the event and runs to the bathroom, thinking she will be sick. Rory goes after her to help in case she is sick. In the bathroom, a piece of flesh falls off Jennifer revealing her to be a ganger. She lunges at Rory, demanding to be left alone and he runs away. Ganger Jennifer runs after him.

In the quarters, the Doctor microwaves some food and hands it to Cleaves. He then tells her the plate is hot and she drops it, but her reaction was too slow and she is also revealed to be a ganger. She too runs off to join the other gangers, who have assembled in the acid room. The group then splits up. The Doctor goes looking for both Rory and the TARDIS. Jimmy and Amy head out for supplies while Buzzer and Dicken go to get the acid suits.

The Doctor heads down to the flesh pool and triggers something within the pool. He then heads out to the TARDIS to find that it is sinking into a hole caused by a pool of acid. That pool has spread and is now melting his shoes so he retreats back into the building barefoot. Buzzer and Dicken find the acid suits gone and head back to the crew quarters. Amy splits off from Jimmy to look for Rory when he heads back with the supplies.

Rory and Jennifer reconnect and Rory feels compassion to her appeal for help. They head back to the quarters to get help from the Doctor. The Doctor then finds the gangers in the acid room and convinces them to come back to the quarters so they can negotiate a peace between the two sides. As a carrot, he offers to use equipment in the TARDIS, when it has been fished out, that will help stabilize their bodies into a fully human form as they have been oscillating between normal and white flesh.

The gangers come back to the quarters where they tentatively agree to work together. However the original Cleaves, who had been hiding, emerges and declares a state of war. Ganger Buzzer approaches her and she shocks him, stopping his heart. The gangers flee the room as the Doctor grabs the electrical equipment from her. The gangers retreat to the acid room where ganger Jennifer takes command and declares war. Original Cleaves also declares war and the group retreats to the flesh room, which is the most well defended part of the castle, the gangers having seized the weapons.

As the gangers approach the room Rory runs off, having heard the original Jennifer screaming, to help her. The rest are forced to barricade themselves in where they find themselves with a ganger version of the Doctor. The ganger Doctor has trouble adjusting to the download of information from the previous iterations of the Doctor but eventually stabilizes with a set of the Doctor's original shoes while the original Doctor wears a pair borrowed from the factory workers.

With the gangers breaking down the door, the group slips into an air duct and the Doctor seals the entrance behind them with his sonic screwdriver. They pass through the lower tunnels of the castle but are blocked by clouds of gas formed by the acid interacting with the stone. They head to the tower with the communications equipment where Cleaves and the Doctor are able to reactivate the power and get the radio working.

Ganger Cleaves is aware of what they are doing but opts not to engage, knowing it will be too well defended. Instead they monitor on their own equipment and try to break up the radio transmission. Cleaves does manage to get through to the mainland and requests both emergency evacuation and destruction of the facility.

Ganger Jennifer meanwhile makes her way down to the thermal controls but can't access the codes since she is not human. She makes her way back to a bathroom and calls out to Rory, who is nearby. Rory enters and finds two Jennifers, both claiming to be the real one. One is limping and pulls up her pants to show a burn. Rory immediately sides with her, assuming her to be the human one. Angered, the other Jennifer attacks the first one. They fight but the second Jennifer is knocked into a pool of acid that is leaking from the floor and her flesh form quickly dissolves.

In the communication tower the ganger Doctor has a fit, responding to emotions from the other flesh bodies. Amy, who came to check on him, is terrified when he confronts her. She retreats back into the room and refuses to have anything to do with him, already feeling biased against him.

Rory and Jennifer make their way to the thermal controls. Jennifer tells Rory that it will clear the air and has him deactivate the controls. She then takes him to a pile of discarded flesh bodies, viewed as defective and left to rot but still with sentience. Rory is appalled and offers to help show the world how the flesh is being treated.

In the tower the group becomes aware of the deactivation of the thermal controls, which destabilizes everything. The factory has now become a bomb. Worse, the rescue shuttle signals that the atmosphere is too unstable for them to pull the people from the communications tower. Cleaves signals for them to land in the courtyard but the system shorts out before she can finish her transmission. Monitoring, ganger Cleaves finishes the transmission, correctly guessing the code word Cleaves had set up.

While the rest of the group make their way to the courtyard, the ganger Doctor and Buzzer go looking for Rory. They find the body of human Jennifer when Buzzer knocks the Doctor out. He heads down towards the courtyard but is distracted by a noise. He finds ganger Jennifer soothing the pile of discarded flesh bodies. She then attacks and kills him.

The rest of the party is intercepted by Rory who leads them down to the acid room and then locks them in. He had intended to show proof of the discarded flesh but he is soon surrounded by the gangers and ganger Jennifer. He realizes he has been tricked as she drags him away. Cleaves then offers a taunt to her ganger, noting that she will die soon anyway as they are both suffering from a fatal blood clot in the head. Trapped in the room with the acid beginning to boil over, the group tries to buy themselves time by lowering the cap on the reservoir.

In the crew quarters, Rory reacts angrily to Jennifer's trickery. He lashes out at the Doctor as well who distracts him with a received telephone call. The call is one the Doctor had reserved earlier to Jimmy's son. The Doctor asks the boy if he wants to talk to his dad and he starts to call for him. Ganger Jimmy recalls all the emotions and memories and bolts out of the room to rescue the people from the acid room. Thwarted in her desire for a war, Jennifer also storms out, vowing revenge.

Ganger Jimmy opens the door while the humans are trying to seal the tank. The lid ruptures under pressure and human Jimmy has acid projected on him, burning through to his heart. As he dies, he gives his ganger his wedding ring and tells him to go be a father. The whole group returns to the crew quarters and ganger Jimmy talks to his son with the Doctor encouraging him.

With the site nearing critical, the group tries to get to the courtyard but is cut off by Jennifer who has morphed into a more bestial shape. The group retreats to an inner chamber but the door lacks a lock. A second door further down the hall does and human Dicken runs to close it. It is stuck and though he does manage to close it, Jennifer attacks him before he can lock it.

Ganger Cleaves and the Doctor hold the door shut while the ganger Doctor points to a point in the ceiling. The spot gives way and the TARDIS fall though. Ganger Jimmy and Dicken head inside along with human Cleaves. Rory urges Amy but Amy insists that the Doctor come too. It is then that he reveals that the Doctor and the ganger Doctor had switched shoes to learn more and test Amy. The real Doctor tosses the ganger Doctor the sonic and bids him good luck. Ganger Cleaves also insists on staying behind. The rest enter the TARDIS and disappear. The two gangers open the door and as Jennifer moves on them, the ganger Doctor activates the sonic, turning all three of them into puddles.

In the TARDIS, the Doctor stabilizes the gangers, allowing them to stay in their human forms permanently. He also gives Cleaves a vial of liquid that will clear the blood clot in her brain. They drop Jimmy off with his son and then take Cleaves and Dicken to their corporate headquarters where they will explain what happen and advocate for better treatment of gangers.

As they prepare to leave, Amy doubles over in pain. The Doctor takes her and Rory into the TARDIS where he tells Amy that she is going into labor. Amy is confused as she is not visibly pregnant. The Doctor then tells her that he and Rory will find her and to not worry. He points a new sonic screwdriver at her and her flesh body dissolves.

Amy wakes lying in a white tube with a large pregnant belly. A panel slides open above her to reveal the woman with the eye patch whom she had seen randomly ever since The Impossible Astronaut. The woman urges Amy to push and Amy starts to scream.

Analysis

A retread of the territory of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Android Invasion, this is a decidedly mixed story. For just about every positive thing you can say about it, there is a countering negative. That in and of itself is not bad but the fact that it is a two-part story and one that gave a huge reveal about Amy at the end makes it feel like we should have expected more that what it is.

My single biggest gripe of the piece is the convoluted story. The set up through the first half of The Rebel Flesh worked well with tension and a real sense of unease. There was even the good set up where two of the crew had already been replaced with their ganger versions. But after that it starts to fall apart. Cleaves and Jennifer had been replaced by gangers but where were the human versions. We are shown Cleaves hiding and then discovering the group while Jennifer comes limping out of nowhere to be attacked by her ganger. Where were they and why weren't they part of the group of humans that were clustered in the control area?

Things get even more convoluted with the almost schizophrenic difference between human Cleaves and ganger Cleaves to force the fight between the two sides. Ganger Cleaves is shown to think just like her human counterpart but she is also more rational, thoughtful and empathetic. Human Cleaves bursts in and threatens the gangers without any consideration of what is going on and overreacting while her ganger version sits back and lets it happen. The ganger version also lets Jennifer take control where the human Cleaves barely let the Doctor take charge. There is a difference in Jennifer as well but given the mutations ganger Jennifer was undergoing, you can head cannon those into the idea that Jennifer became the primary outlet for the flesh's anger and she was its personality rather than Jennifer's.

All through the remaining parts, characters are constantly doing things that serve the plot. Rory may have compassion for Jennifer but would her well-being overcome his affection for his wife and the desire to be safe? Rory's separation and his manipulation by Jennifer drives most of the action in the second part but it involves him being especially dumb. Why does the Doctor need to get Amy to trust the flesh Doctor when she herself is in a flesh body that it going to be destroyed by the Doctor? Exposing Amy as a "flesh racist" does nothing for the plot other than give her something to do. In fact, the flesh Doctor is mostly unnecessary except that it allows a version of the Doctor to be in both camps.

Consistently, it felt like their were too many characters or versions of characters and they were being pushed in ways to drive the plot, but with bits left hanging. Dicken has exactly one line per episode and mostly stands around doing nothing except to killed by Jennifer in the final attack. Jimmy gets the emotional arc of his son but is also otherwise just there for a body. Buzzer's ganger is killed to start the war while his human counterpart is ganger Jennifer's token victim before becoming a full monster. A larger cast makes sense with the running of a factory, but it makes for a very crowded story, especially when you insert four additional characters in.

It was also rather disappointing that after all the hullabaloo about racism and the definition of what it means to be human, the story ends with just another monster coming at the group. Jennifer goes warped and comes at them like a beast. Keeping everyone looking human and letting the threat be from within would have been a lot more interesting of a resolution. I think it would have actually amplified the tension rather than defusing the situation by giving everyone an ugly bad thing that we all can oppose.

That is a lot of negativity to start things off. So on to the positives. I thought the story was well acted. Those that had enough lines and development to get fleshed out characters (pardon the pun) were genuinely interesting, even if they diverged from what you are conditioned to expect. While the Doctor, Amy and Rory's behavior might have been a bit strange at times, they were all well performed and you genuinely believed in their emotions, especially the enraged outburst by the Doctor that set Amy off against him. I thought it a well controlled bit of acting.

The location and direction was nice as well. The use of the color pallet especially really helped set the mood of the situation. The only real drawback of the location, which looked very nice, was that some of the audio might have been affected. There were several points where I had trouble hearing what was being said and I think that was because the audio was oddly affected by the location. It's a small quibble but when you're having trouble keeping track of why someone is behaving as they are, it goes a long way in influencing the overall mood.

It's frustrating to see a story that has so much potential be wasted. It's not bad at its core but there are so many wanderings, dead ends and loose threads in the plot that it just gets frustrating to watch it rather than enmeshing you in the story as you would hope it would. It is pretty to look at and well acted so it's not a slog to get through. But when you get through a story with that amount of frustration at the plotline, you can't mark it particularly high.

Overall personal score: The Rebel Flesh - 2 out of 5; The Almost People - 2 out of 5

A Christmas Carol

When you're alone, silence is all you know...

A Christmas Carol is the first of the Eleventh Doctor Christmas specials and set the mode for what the Christmas special would be during his tenure. It would continue in the RTD tradition of being a one-off romp but Moffat seemed to put a greater emphasis on both Christmas and comedy, something to which the Eleventh Doctor was well suited. Expectations were mixed as the appearance of Michael Gambon (known especially for playing Dumbledore) excited people but the inclusion of operatic singer Katherine Jenkins (and the knowledge that she would be singing) caused consternation as fears of a Kylie Minogue style stunt cast rippled through fandom. In the end, it paid off with the fans as this is generally considered the best of the Eleventh Doctor Christmas specials and some argue the best of all the Christmas specials.

Plot Summary

Amy and Rory are spending their honeymoon on a space luxury liner that is suffering mechanical failure and crashing through the ice cloud layer of a colonized planet. Amy sends a distress signal and the Doctor lands on the planet to help them.

Control of the cloud layer is done through a machine owned by an old man named Kazran Sardick. As the Doctor leaps out of the fireplace, he is dismissing a family that had asked for the wife's sister, Abigail, to be released for Christmas as she had frozen herself as a deposit against a debt the family had taken out. Kazran declines to stop the machine, indifferent to the potential deaths of the 4,000 people aboard the liner. As the Doctor and the family are shoved out, the young son hits Kazran with a piece of charcoal. Kazran moves to strike the boy but can't bring himself to do it. They are then taken out.

The Doctor notes Kazran's restraint and puts together quickly that Kazran's hatred of Christmas and indifference to people are by-products of his upbringing and hatred of his father. That he could not strike the boy was evidence that he was not his father and not beyond hope. He calls Amy to update her on the situation but having failed to turn off the isomorphic controls is now working on a different plan. He gets an idea by using the Christmas Carol story to change Kazran's mind and salvage his soul.

The Doctor salvages a recording Kazran made one Christmas Eve where he had hoped to see a fish flying in the fog, a natural occurrence on that planet. His father berates him when he discovers him and closes the window. The Doctor dips back into Kazran's past and begins to change things, changing Kazran's memories as he does, also allowing him to watch the recording of the past as it follows the Doctor.

The Doctor arrives outside Kazran's window and after telling him he is his new babysitter, they set a lure for a fish using the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. The lure brings in a small fish which nips at it but it also brings in a shark which eats the smaller fish and the sonic screwdriver before turning to attack the Doctor. It tries to break through the closet door but the Doctor is able to trigger the sonic screwdriver inside to stun the large fish.

Kazran is sad that the fish is dying and wants to try and save it. To do so, they would need a mobile freezing chamber like the Doctor saw earlier. Kazran takes the Doctor to the vault in the basement where the freezer chambers are kept and after getting the passcode from the old Kazran, they enter the chamber. Kazran picks the unit with Abigail in it, knowing that she wouldn't mind as her recorded message included the fact that she is fond of the fish.

The Doctor notices his sonic activating, trying to repair itself as Kazran opens Abigail's chamber. They notice the shark has woken and followed the sonic down. As they hide, Abigail steps out and begins to sing, calming the shark into a docile state. That allows them to get it into the chamber and into the TARDIS where they release it into the clouds.

The Doctor takes them back where Kazran tells Abigail that she has been released for Christmas and they will do it again next year. The Doctor jumps forward another year where he and Kazran release Abail for further adventures including seeing sights on Earth and hooking a carriage to the shark and having it pull them through the clouds. Every year that they release Abigail, the counter on her chamber ticks down by one.

One Christmas, when Kazran is a late teenager, Abigail a more feminine interest in him. She asks that they visit her family, the same one that asked for her release at the Doctor's first arrival. Abigail only watches at first with Kazran standing stoically with her until the Doctor barges in. They have Christmas dinner and celebrate. That night, before going back into her chamber, Abigail kisses Kazran.

The following year, the Doctor takes them to 1950's Hollywood where Abigail discloses her illness to Kazran. Her chamber counter has dropped to 1, indicating that when she goes back in, the next time she is released, she will die. Kazran embraces her as the Doctor tries to get out of marrying Marilyn Monroe. Upon sealing her back in, Kazran informs the Doctor that he is too old for Christmas now and that he should not come back. Puzzled, the Doctor give Kazran the broken half of the sonic screwdriver and tells him to summon him when he needs him. Kazran puts in a drawer, pulling it out only once when his father is about to give him control of the sky machinery. The Doctor appears outside the window but Kazran closes the curtain.

Modern Kazran reflects on these changed memories. The portrait of his father had briefly changed to Abigail before she had told him of her illness but it had changed back to his father. He raged at the Doctor for giving him hope only to see it dashed. As he rages, a hologram of Amy appears acting as the Ghost of Christmas Present. She indicates for him to head to the vault where the passengers of the liner are singing Christmas carols.

Kazran dismisses them and tells Amy how Abigail will die the next time she is let out. It's not fair to him and he feels no obligation to give fairness to anyone else. Amy then tells Rory to expand the hologram field, bringing Kazran's field of view from the vault to the bridge of the ship as it is crashing through the cloud layer. They tell Kazran that the passengers are singing, hoping to manipulate things as Abigail did but it not enough yet. Kazran is still indifferent and Amy signals the Doctor.

The hologram cuts out and Kazran finds himself back in the vault with the Doctor who now invokes the Ghost of Christmas Future. Kazran angrily rebuffs him, railing about how he doesn't care while the Doctor stays silent. When Kazran asks what future he could possibly show him, he steps aside to reveal Kazran's child self watching him, stunned. He whispers his father and the older Kazran moves to strike him in a rage but breaks down crying. He hugs his younger self and apologizes.

The older Kazran moves to deactivate the cloud controls but finds himself locked out. The Doctor changed him too much and his father never gave him access in this form. Kazran offers the half of the sonic screwdriver to help. The Doctor gets and idea to signal the other half of the sonic in the shark which would echo throughout the clouds but he needs the perfect vibration to make it happen. Ruefully, Kazran opens Abigail's chamber once again.

Abigail gently chides Kazran for hoarding her last Christmas like a miser but embraces him nonetheless. The group heads outside where the Doctor connects his sonic to the PA system and has Abigail sing into it. The sharks is attracted by the singing and it resonates throughout the clouds, overriding the cloud controls. A path opens up and luxury liner is able to land safely. It also causes the clouds to break apart and snow falls to the ground.

Rory and Amy meet with the Doctor and enter the TARDIS while the Doctor says goodbye to Kazran and Abigail. The TARDIS vanishes leaving the old carriage with the shark hookup behind. The TARDIS flies through the atmosphere and the Doctor spies Kazran and Abigail flying through the clouds, pulled by the shark.

Analysis

Despite the changes to a personal past being a bit confusing at times, this is a damn fine story. It is well acted, well paced and poignant all at the same time. It is also very hard not to be moved by Abigail's song no matter what your opinion of it is in the context of the story at the time. It's just a story that works well on so many levels.

This story gets the Eleventh Doctor at probably his best point. He is zany, manic and funny. But there is also a slight edge to him, a darkness that will be embraced from time to time. That dark edge is only really seen in the Ghost of Christmas Future scene where the Doctor has an "I've tried to be nice" look to him and then unleashes the killing stroke of letting him see that he has become the man he despised. But for the most part, he's fun and a good guide through the romp. He even gets chided when trying to give exposition that is to be used later but disrupts the mood by the biting fish and that is quite amusing. It's just a fun performance.

Amy and Rory don't do much other than be objects of rescue and provide a touch of comic relief here and there, especially with the callback costumes that they were evidently using for some role play. But they are true to character and their comedic timing is quite enjoyable.

The true companions of this story are obviously Kazran and Abigail. Michael Gambon is as excellent as you would expect with a familiar but still subtly different take on Scrooge. He mixes indifference to others with a bitterness that fleshes out the true source of his refusal to help: he has been brought pain by life so why alleviate that pain for others. I also found it interesting that the Doctor nearly succeeds in replacing the bitterness of the fish experiment night with love of another only to have that bitterness returned and hardened by the knowledge that the development of the love between Kazran and Abigail also contributed to her being taken away from him. Unlike the steady softening of Scrooge throughout the story, Kazran is initially redeemed by the past only to have his old character reinforced. It's just such an enjoyable and compelling arc to watch.

Abigail is also an interesting performance as it could have easily gone so wrong so easily. She is pure and joyful to a point that oversaturation could easily make her annoying. It was very important to have that scene of melancholy, her looking wistfully over her sister's family and seeing something she could never have. It humanized her and gave her joy in the face of sorrow more poignancy. That poignancy comes through so well in her signing, especially the last song which is so swelling and (to me) extraordinarily moving. It is very hard to not well up just slightly whenever I hear that song.

The direction effects were also pretty good in this. Yes it's obvious that the fish are CGI but you go in expecting that. It's only painfully obvious when looking at the schools in the clouds. The individual fish work rather well in my opinion. I also like the constant dark atmosphere of the piece. There is a coldness that reflects Kazran very well as well also hiding some limitations in the production values I'm sure. But it all just flows together and meshes nearly perfectly.

About the only negative bits I can come up with are the lack of detail in the effects of changing the past. The Doctor's initial change of the past had a singular effect that was still alterable. But how will doubling up on it change things further? Boy Kazran now knows that his and the Doctor's adventures will accelerate Abigail's death so will be more resistant and try to change that? Will he remember still having the later adventures with the Doctor and Abigail under that changed condition? Does he remember additional beatings from his father as he refused to become the hard man his father wanted and thus was not given control over the machine controlling the clouds? It's all such a swirl of odd logic that you ignore at the time because you are wrapped in the emotional arc of the story but can come back and niggle at you when you think about it.

Fanboys will also grouse about how the old and young Kazrans are able to hug and fix each other without setting off a massive discharge due to the Blinovitch Limitation effect. But that's something you throw out the window because it doesn't help the arc of the story at all.

So I would highly recommend this one. It's definitely the best of the 11th Doctor specials and probably the best of any that are of the romp-y variety. It's just a fun story that you can go back to without any problem time and again. It's also nice to see just a different take on the Scrooge story when most versions are just window dressing on the same body. This is at least a new view. Watch this one both at Christmas and anytime you're in the mood for a solid, entertaining story.

Overall personal score: 5 out of 5

Vampires of Venice

Most people just nip stationary from work.

I'm not that big into vampire stories. In fact, I'm not that big into much of any kind of horror monster so a sci-fi twist on historic vampires is not necessarily going to grab me. But I do like Rory and Amy and the Eleventh Doctor so I'm trying to go into this one with a more open mind. I recall it not grabbing me with any great gusto the first time but it's also sandwiched between two stories that I really, really like (Angel two-parter and Amy's Choice) so it may be more of a case of being lost in the shuffle.

Plot Summary

A man named Guido petitions the patron of the city of Venice, Rosanna Cavlierri, to accept his daughter Isabella into her school. Rosanna accepts and Guido is promptly thrown out while Isabella is sequestered with the other girls. Guido later tries to see her but he is rejected from entering and Isabella reacts with no recognition when he approaches her on the street.

Meanwhile, the Doctor crashes Rory's bachelor party, concerned when Amy tried to kiss him. He takes the two of them to Venice in 1580 for a romantic getaway. The Doctor is immediately put on his guard when the city magister informs them that the city is in quarantine due to plague outside the city, despite the Doctor knowing that the plague has receded in Italy by this time. He is even more intrigued when he sees Guido being rejected by the passing mass of girls coming from the school. He approaches Guido to learn his story.

Rory and Amy begin to walk through the streets and enjoy themselves when they hear a woman screaming. They rush to the scene and chase off Francesco, son of Rosanna who had attacked and bitten the neck of a flower selling girl. Rory gives chase but Francesco dives into the canals and Rory loses him. The two then go looking for the Doctor.

The Doctor has Guido distract the front gate guards while he slips in via a side gate. The Doctor makes his way down to a chamber where he becomes distracted by a fancy mirror. He is approached by several girls who do not reflect into the mirror. They are puzzled by him but give him the chance to flee as they have no orders concerning him, though they do bare long teeth at him as he lingers.

The Doctor reunites with Rory, Amy and Guido where Amy is excited about the possibility of vampires. They return to Guido's house and devise a plan where Rory will pretend Amy is his sister and he is asking for her to be admitted. Once she is in, she will let the Doctor and Guido in. Guido also notes his stockpile of gunpowder that he had amassed in order to blast his way in if left to no alternative.

Rory takes Amy in and she is accepted due to the psychic paper giving her reference from the King of Sweden. Rory is thrown out while Francesco takes Amy away. She is taken to the girl's room. Most of them slip out when called but Isabella hesitates, allowing Amy to talk to her and tell her about getting her out. Amy then slips down to the ground floor and unbolts the door leading to the cistern from which the Doctor and Rory are climbing.

Amy is grabbed by one of the servants and taken to a chamber. Rosanna was not fooled by the psychic paper and has Amy tied to a chair. She bites Amy's neck and drinks fluid from her. She tells her that others will do the same and her blood will be replaced by that of their kind, transforming her body into them. Amy angrily kicks Rosanna, hitting a perception filter on her body. Rosanna's form transforms briefly into a large fish creature before going back.

Before they can suck Amy again, they are alerted to the Doctor and Rory's presence. The Doctor and Rory work their way through, holding off the vampires with a large UV light. As they are chased, Isabella frees Amy and escorts all of them to an exit. Rosanna orders Francesco to seal the building. The Doctor, Amy and Rory rush through the door to Guido's waiting boat. Isabella comes to but shrinks away from the rising sunlight. This allows the others to grab her and drag her back in. The Doctor tries to follow and grab her but he is electrocuted and knocked out by the door security.

For refusing to fully obey, Isabella is knocked into the pool internal to the building where she is eaten by the brothers of Francesco, too immature to be brought and hidden by perception filters. Rosanna heads back to the throne room to find the Doctor. They interrogate each other and the Doctor learns not only that Isabella has been killed but that the aliens are from the planet Saturnyne and escaped through a crack, similar to that in Amy's bedroom, when their planet was destroyed. With no female survivors, she has transformed girls to repopulate the race after sinking Venice.

The Doctor vows to stop her but she sends the girls to kill him in Guido's house. The Doctor, Rory and Amy escape but Guido kills the lot by luring them in and exploding his store of gunpowder. Unaware of the girls' death, Rosanna activates a weather augmentation machine, designed to sink Venice. The Doctor sends Rory and Amy back to the TARDIS while he tries to stop the machine.

As Rory and Amy run past the Cavlierri palace, Francesco sees them and decides to finish them. He corners Amy but is lured into attacking Rory instead. Rory tries to hold him off but is eventually knocked down. As Francesco leaps on Rory, Amy catches a ray of sunlight in a mirror and shines it directly into Francesco's face. The concentrated sunlight causes his entire body to burst into flame, killing him. Amy and Rory then run back to the palace to help the Doctor.

The Doctor meets Rosanna where she gloats at him until he informs her that her girls are dead. She flees below to the pool where her other children are, leaving the Doctor alone. He uncovers the control mechanism in her throne. Rory and Amy enter and he tells them to destroy the chair, which will send control back to the generator. The Doctor follows the signal of the generator to a ball ornament on top of the bell tower. He deactivates it, causing the storms to stop immediately.

The Doctor finds Rosanna standing near the edge of the pool, having stripped down to her undergarment but also stuck showing her human form due to the damage done to the filer by Amy's kick. With no hope of continuing her race, she jumps into the water where she is eaten by her own children. The Doctor then recollects Amy and Rory where Amy insists that Rory travel with them for a few more adventures. Rory agrees and they depart in the TARDIS.

Analysis

Typically when I find a story that I give middling to low scores for, I can usually cite a number of things that just bothered me or mistakes that were made. In this particular case, I can't really do that except for a few minor niggles. However, this story just doesn't do much for me. I don't think it's the fault of anything particular with the story as much as it is that I'm really not into the gothic vampire genre. Aspects of it worked for me in State of Decay, but here it just came across as more boring than anything else.

What really annoys me about not being engaged with this story is that it's the start of the dynamic between Rory and the Doctor. I'm not much into the whole "Amy choosing between Rory and the Doctor" dynamic but it is a simple fact that the interaction between Rory and the Doctor was very funny and had a smoothness that I just loved in later stories. You can see it already forming in the quiet moments between the two, but the rest of the story just doesn't engage me and I found myself wishing they would ignore Amy and just go back to Rory and the Doctor.

As is the case for most of Series 5, the Eleventh Doctor is in top zany form. He is a nice mix of excitable and happy but also attentive to detail. You can also see a trace of that dark detail that was more prominent with the Tenth Doctor in that he opts to fully deal with Rosanna when she confirms that she didn't know Isabella's name, even after having her killed. He also offers little help when Rosanna opts to let herself be consumed by her children. Though the tone shifts here and there, he shifts and sways with it.

Rory and Amy are also quite good in this story. Rory does the man caught on his heels very well along with the jealous and slightly jilted lover. It gets a touch overplayed in other stories but given that this is his first exposure to it, it's understandable that this would be the driving emotion for him. He is bumbling but also fully committed, the way someone who is trying beyond his means would be.

Amy, by contrast, is acting more in the role of the established veteran. She is seasoned but still impressed by each new situation. She is also confident but still lets the Doctor drive nearly all the decisions. She did not set herself as bait until the Doctor agreed nor did she fight the Doctor about going back to the TARDIS, though she and Rory did go back to the citadel after the fight with Francesco. It's a nice balance for a companion who can be bold but also deferential to the experience of the Doctor.

The villains were very generic in terms of the vampire tropes and the only one I found even partially interesting was Rosanna. She at least had a planning mind and seemed like she could match wits with the Doctor for a time. But even she gave into trope after a while. It made no sense to send all of the girls after the Doctor, knowing there would be a risk of loss in the attack. Likewise, where did Rosanna go after the Doctor told her all the girls were dead and he made to stop the submersion of the city. She could have tried to stop him and nothing was preventing her from starting over once the Doctor had been dealt with. Of course, it made it easy for him to stop the thing without being attacked.

Speaking of attacks, I also didn't like the cop out fight between Francesco and Rory/Amy. It had it's funny moments, especially the makeshift cross of Rory's, but it had too simple a conclusion. We had been shown that the aliens, while they did not like sunlight, could shield themselves from it pretty much through veils and hats. The reflection of a mirror does not intensify sunlight into a concentrated beam but would just reflect the same light that they would have been exposed to if there were no clouds or Francesco was not wearing a hat. It could have easily driven him off but it should have not have caused him to burst into flames. It was a point that gave into the vampire lore a bit too much and was done for a cheap thrill.

The direction was fairly nice, especially with the use of a historical city to stand in for Venice. There was some unfortunately obvious blue screen work but it's at a moment of high action and doesn't detract too much. What detracts more is how it gets prolonged and the lack of other obsticles. Rather than have the Doctor fumble about because of the wind or the height, have him deal with an attack from one of the aliens. That would have probably required a bit too much CGI and been out of budget but it would have been an improvement.

This is not a bad story but if you're not a fan of gothic vampire stories it's not going to do too much for you as that is the only real hook. There is no real twist or surprise save the reality of what the "vampires" actually are. It has action and adventure as well as some comedy but it's pretty rote and can get boring in the middle. Even the ending is something of a let down as Amy and Guido are the only ones who take active steps to actually kill the aliens. It's fine for a mindless watch but the two stories on either side of this one are far better in my opinion.

Overall personal score: 2.5 out of 5

The Wedding of River Song

Doctor who? Doctor who? Doctor WHO?

The Wedding of River Song is the final episode of the Series Six arc regarding the murder of the Doctor at Lake Silencio. Reaction to the resolution seemed to be rather mixed from a fan point of view as it didn't provide a lot of answers to the overarching questions, though it did address the immediate points of the series arc. I recall not having too many problems with it but still thought it a less than satisfying ending to a pretty good set up.

Plot Summary

In a reality where all time has merged into a single moment, Caesar Winston Churchill summons the soothsayer from prison to explain the lack of movement of time. The Soothsayer is the Doctor and he tells Churchill of how things happened.

After his adventure with Craig in Closing Time, the Doctor pursues various leads to help him track why the Silence are so intent on killing him. The trail leads him to the head of Dorium Maldovar, stored in the vaults of the Headless Monks. Dorium reveals that a prophecy was given regarding the oldest question in the universe and the fields of Trenzalore. Upon learning both the prophecy and the question, the Doctor takes Dorium in the TARDIS and begins to set a plan in motion.

The Doctor contacts the team of the Teselecta (Let's Kill Hitler) and has them send the four invitations to his death as seen in The Impossible Astronaut. All things proceed as expected until he meets River in the space suit coming out of the lake. She resists and discharges her weapon without killing the Doctor. However, as this is a fixed point in time, all things are enveloped in white.

The Doctor ends his tale to Churchill as they have come out of his office and into the main hall. They discover they have been fighting off the Silence, who are hanging from the ceiling in large numbers. The Silence are neutralized by a group of soldiers, led by Amy who is wearing an eye patch identical to that of Madame Kovarian. She stuns the Doctor and takes him to a private train for transport to Cairo.

On the train, Amy demonstrates that she remembers the Doctor but not Rory. Rory is serving as an Army Captain in her personal guard. The Doctor tries to make small jogs to her memory regarding Rory but nothing comes of it. Upon arriving at the pyramids in Cairo, they are taken into an American base where the Silence have been stored upon capture in tanks of fluid, though still sentient. Amy also reveals that the eye patches are actually computer drives that store the image of the Silence, allowing people to remember they are there.

At the base, the Doctor finds River with a captured Madame Kovarian. The two flirt a little while the Doctor tries to touch her and resume time. River resists, knowing that she would be forced to kill him if time resumed. They are interrupted by the Silence breaking out of their tanks and attacking the force. In addition to front attacks, they send pulses through the eye drives either killing the wearers or inflicting them with sharp pain.

River takes the Doctor to the roof, beckoning Amy to follow. Rory opts to stay behind but as the Silence break through, Amy returns and gun down those that attack him. She removes his eye drive but reattaches Madame Kovarian's, killing her.

They meet River and the Doctor on the roof where River shows the Doctor a distress signal asking for help for the Doctor throughout time and space. Embarrassed, the Doctor still insists that they must restart time but River still refuses. With no alternative, the Doctor performs a quick marriage ceremony between himself and River. He whispers into River's ear and then they kiss. The contact reestablishes the flow of time and everyone is transported back to Lake Silencio as in The Impossible Astronaut.

Afterwards River, fresh from teleporting from the Byzantium, meets Amy in her back yard. Amy is mourning the Doctor but River tells Amy that when the Doctor whispered in her ear, she looked into his eye and saw that the body of the Doctor was in fact the teselecta and that the Doctor was inside. Thus the "body" that was killed on the lakeshore was not the true Doctor and he has slipped away.

A disguised Doctor returns the head of Dorium to the vault, revealing himself to him. Dorium promises to keep the Doctor's secret but warns him that both the prophecy and the initial question are waiting for him.

Analysis

As a series ending story, this one is only okay. As an episode in and of itself, it's a bit better but still has it's flaws. Of course, it is nearly impossible to watch this one without having familiarity with at least the Eleventh Doctor era. There are all the points of Series Six that are addressed but there are also several other callbacks to prior stories which make the story flow a bit better if you know them.

In a way, I was reminded of Victory of the Daleks in this story in that it started well and was pretty engaging but then it lagged and resolved in an unsatisfying way. River refusing to shoot the Doctor and setting up the fusion of time into a single moment was interesting and gave some rather nice visuals, as well as some amusing throwbacks. Winston Churchill talking about downloads and Charles Dickens doing a modern media tour were particularly amusing. Where it started to go downhill for me is about the time they got to the pyramid. Not only did the narrative bog down but the circumstances of the Doctor's plan just seemed slapped together. Why have the marriage ceremony? The Doctor could have had a quiet moment with River and ordered her to look into his eye at any time without going through the ceremony. I don't mind that he married River but the circumstances of it seemed very forced.

I also didn't care for the slapdash nature of the Doctor's plan. He goes through this elaborate set up of saying goodbye to people he cares about, goes on a long chase to get answers, gets them, seems to resign himself to his fate but then changes his mind at the last minute at a chance offer of the captain of the teselecta. I think it would have worked better if they didn't include that quick seen where the Doctor comes back into the bar after the captain made his offer. If it had just shown the Doctor in the teselecta that would have been enough and we would have known that he took it from the captain eventually but would have been left to ourselves to determine when he entered and when he devised the plan to trick everyone. This is just a bit too much for me.

For the most part all the actors did well. The dialogue for River at the end got a bit saccharine and that led to some melodrama in the delivery but it wasn't too bad. Madame Kovarian's plea for mercy at the end was also a bit melodramatic for my taste but I think that was to be expected. What probably increased the melodrama was that the end felt a bit rushed. The Doctor's tale to Churchill was well paced and built the interest in what was happening. But the scenes at the pyramid took on a feel of hurry up and get this done which meant that the emotional resonance both between the Doctor and River and between Amy and Rory had to be crammed into about fifteen minutes. Emotional development usually takes a bit more time and while this was building on existing canon, it still felt rushed and undeserved. Especially as it did not require River and the Doctor to get married just for her to look into his eye. For the marriage, there should have been a deeper and less melodramatic scene between them so that the marriage was a natural outgrowth and letting River in on the Doctor's secret was secondary.

Even the scenery had it's let downs at points. The team travelled to Utah to film the lake scenes there but apparently the close ups between the Doctor and River didn't come out so they reshot them with a rather poor looking blue screen behind them. It was a decent effort but the contrast was just so sharp as to be very noticeable. Similarly, while the scenes in the pyramid worked well with that claustrophobic sense, the scene at the top looked like a basic set with a blue screen in the background. It was just another little addition that made the final scene between River and the Doctor feel rushed and somewhat poorly prepared. Other direction, such as in the great hall with the Silence by contrast, was quite well done and set up the scenes quite well.

Overall I'd say the fundamental story is sound and the actors did reasonable jobs, but there were little misses here and there. The ending needed either a couple more rewrites or another couple of minutes to breathe. There needed to be extra motivation to drive the conclusion as it felt unearned. Good performances from earlier in the story were undercut by lesser performances much as with shortfalls in the production. It is not bad, but it does feel like a truly satisfying conclusion that one might have hoped for given the scope of the series arc.

Overall personal score: 3 out of 5

Night Terrors

Please save me from the monsters!

I think it would be fair to say that Mark Gatiss has a rather mixed reception when it comes to his Doctor Who writing credits. The Unquiet Dead and An Adventure in Space and Time sit solidly as very strong contributions. But next to them he has The Idiot's Lantern and Victory of the Daleks so it's easy to see how this ends up as a mixed bag. Night Terrors was his Series Six contribution and it has a decidedly mixed reputation among fans.

Plot Summary

The Doctor receives a message on his psychic paper of a child asking for help from the monsters. The message is from George, an eight-year old boy living in a council estate with his parents and suffering from a profound case of fears. His parents have tried to help by setting up a series of rituals such as flicking the lights five times and putting scary things in the closet. At the time of his message, George is lying in bed while his mom has left for work, leaving his dad who has contacted social services to look into George's fears.

The Doctor, Amy and Rory land outside the council estate and begin knocking on doors, looking for George. George overhears Rory joking about letting the monsters get the boy and reacts when he and Amy get into the elevator (the sound of which also frightens him). As the elevator doors close, there is a flash and a gust of wind which knock Rory and Amy back. They awake to find themselves in a darkened manor house and set off to find out about their new surroundings.

At nearly the same time, a neighbor, Mrs. Rossiter takes her garbage out to pile outside. She moves slow due to bad knees but manages to get the bag on to the pile. As she leaves, she hears a rustling and goes to investigate. As she peers in, she is sucked into the pile of trash bags and also finds herself in the darkened manor house.

The Doctor spies George peaking out his window and knocks on his door. His dad, Alex opens the door and assumes he is from social services. The Doctor goes and talks to George, calming the boy a bit. The Doctor also learns about George's quirks, including putting the scary things in the closet.

Alex is distracted by a knock at the front door and goes to investigate. It is the building manager Purcell and his dog, getting after Alex about the rent. The Doctor takes advantage of the distraction by entertaining George with his sonic screwdriver which he uses to activate his motorized toys. He also uses it to scan the closet and gets an off the scale reading of the level of energy from it. When Alex returns, the Doctor forbids him from opening the closet.

In the manor house, Rory finds lights which offer some illumination but also finds most of the decorations are wood painted to look like things or just painted on decorations. The front door of the house has no knob leaving them trapped. Attracted by a mysterious giggling, they open a closet door to find a peg doll. They walk away, assuming their imaginations are getting the better of them, unaware that the doll has gotten up and is preparing to follow them.

The Doctor takes Alex into the kitchen to look for other evidence of energy and also clues in Alex of his alien monster-fighting nature. Alex initially tries to get him to leave but is convinced to let him stay and help George. Meanwhile, Purcell, having gone back to his own apartment, is pulled into the carpet by a mysterious force.

Purcell arrives in the manor house but runs into the dolls immediately. He runs away and stumbles into Rory and Amy. The dolls catch up to him and upon touching him, they transform him into a peg doll. Rory and Amy run away and barricade themselves in a room, though only temporarily as the door has no locks. Amy decides that they need to burst out and catch the dolls by surprise. They do so, but Amy is grabbed and transformed while Rory gets away.

Knowing he must confront things, the Doctor opens the door to the closet to find only clothes and old toys. But he also hears the sound of the elevator and something clicks for the Doctor. He grabs the photo album that Alex had shown him earlier and points out that only a month before George was born, Claire was not pregnant. Alex bursts out that they weren't able to have children and he reacts with immediate confusion as to how he could have forgotten that. The Doctor realizes that George is not human but has adopted Alex and Claire as his parents, but is still manifesting powers. Frightened by this exchange, both the Doctor and Alex are sucked into the closet and find themselves in the doll house.

In the house, the Doctor tells Alex that he believes George is a Tenza, an alien that bonds with species outside it's own to raise it. Upon overhearing George and Claire talking about getting George help for some of his fears, George's Tenza side began manifesting as a fear of rejection, creating fears on top his basic ones. They are set upon by the peg dolls and run into Rory also fighting back the peg dolls advancing on him.

The Doctor calls out to George that he is the only one who could can help and the only one who can drive the monsters away. Hearing the Doctor, George walks into the closet and finds himself in the doll house. The dolls stop initially, but as George's fears manifest again, the dolls spring to life. Encouraged by the Doctor to reassure his son, Alex runs forward and grabs George, promising to love and protect him. As he says this, everyone is immediately transported back outside the doll house. Rory and Amy find themselves in the elevator, Purcell in his apartment and Mrs. Rossiter outside with the garbage bags.

Claire returns to the apartment in the morning to find Alex and George playing with the Doctor. He assures Claire that George will be better now and takes his leave. Alex asks the Doctor about any other effects but the Doctor assures him that George will be fine, although he does promise to drop by during puberty just to be safe. He meets Rory and Amy who are waiting outside and they take off in the TARDIS.

Analysis

For about 3/4 of this story, an argument could be made that this is just a bit of blood shy of an outright horror movie. The scenes in the doll house and even outside it up until the Doctor and Alex get sucked in would easily fit in just about any horror movie. My own children are not much for scary movies and I would be strongly hesitant to show them this episode at the start. However, the last quarter takes the horror element out and I think because of how saturated the story is in that vein, that is where the fault of the story comes from.

Because the story centers around a child, I think there is a knee-jerk instinct to compare this to Fear Her. I would disagree strongly as the primary mistake of Fear Her was to put so much onus on the child actor. Here, the actor playing George is asked to do almost nothing except act like a scared little boy and he does that well. So whatever fault there is, it is not in the same vein as Fear Her.

The Eleventh Doctor is almost always at his best when dealing with children. He has a playful side and you can see his disarming ways with kids. His interactions with George are quite good, although I think his interactions with Alex are even better. Their interactions are similar to those of the Doctor and Craig in The Lodger and Closing Time but significantly less broad in the humor department. Alex is still clearly the bewildered one and playing catch up most of the time. This more subdued humor still works well in making the Doctor fun to be with.

However, the Doctor is somewhat shortchanged by Rory and Amy. It is difficult for a Doctor Who story to upstage the Doctor unless it is a Doctor-lite story (and even then sometimes not) but as entertaining as the Doctor is, Rory and Amy's story consistently draws the viewer back. Theirs is more vintage horror. Rory does the whistling in the dark bit while Amy plays it more straight. Yet there is the additional level of them not realizing the horror potential of their situation so much of Rory's comments are done in a purer comedic fashion. Additional props go for Rory making a joke about being dead again and then topping that by having Amy be the one to get transformed into a doll rather than the cliché of having Rory fall again. There is almost no point in their story that I do not enjoy and I miss them when not on screen.

There is not much of a supporting cast and even they don't get much to do. With the exception of Alex, everyone else is window dressing or cannon fodder and they do their jobs well enough. Alex is good although I think he wears his concern on his sleeve a little much. I'm not sure that changing anything about him would help or hinder his performance but there were moments where I was just starting to get tired of him. I also don't quite get why he was sucked into the closet. If his fear of rejection is driving his powers, how is putting his dad in the closet going to alleviate that? Doesn't that amplify the idea of being sent away because now the child is rejecting the parent as well?

Before getting in to the points where the story started to fall apart, I do want to point out that the doll scenes were very effective. The dolls were very creepy in a zombie way. Amplifying the creepiness was the nursery rhyme that was constantly going in the background. The child's choir singing in that sinister way just amplified the tension and gave a level of creepiness that was quite unexpected from the idea of being shrunk to doll size and being chased by it's wooden inhabitants.

Now, why is story not considered a new classic? I can't speak for others but I think it falls down a bit when resolving the story. As the world of horror is of George's own creation, it makes sense that he is the only one who can fix it. But it also feels like a Deus Ex Machina cheat just to have George's dad come in, give him a hug and tell him he loves him. It works better than it does in Closing Time because, again, George is the master of the rules of the world, but it also is a much sharper contrast in tone. True horror is upended by a boy being resolved of his daddy issues. While not trying to, it subconsciously seems to spit on the tension of before by dismissing it in such a cavalier fashion.

In my mind, it would have played better if only the Doctor had been sucked into the doll house. Alex runs from the room in fear, now scared of the power of his own son. He creeps back in when he hears the Doctor yelling, comforts George (thus prompting the reassurance) and then urging George that he is the one that must save others from the monsters. It's not much different, but it puts the power more in George's hands and lets the fatherly love and reassurance be the catalyst for change rather than the reason for change. It still would have caught some flak, but not quite as much.

The simple truth is that there was not proper horror movie outlet for this story. In a standard horror movie, the protagonists either kill the monster after a series of trials or they get away. Here, the dolls are the villain but they are driven by George's fears and you can't destroy George nor can you have the Doctor, Rory and Amy simply run away. George is not malevolent, only scared. So you must come back with George putting things right and that will never be as satisfying as when the Doctor or his companions deal with the danger.

Tacking back up the positive path, the direction in this story is excellent. There is a wonderful use of light and shadow and even the non-scary scenes are set in a slightly sickly light that is mildly discomforting. There are a couple of points where CGI could have been used but instead a more practical effect is used and it keeps the tension going where it could have easily fallen away.

Overall, I think this story is better than it's reputation. It falls somewhat flat at the end but that is almost inevitable given the scale of tension that had been ratcheted up. I think the ending could have been done better but at the same time we still would have probably found fault with it. But there is so much to enjoy before that that I think it should be given a fair shake. The only real caveat I would put with this story is to not show it to anyone who might be sensitive to scary things. This goes beyond the normal level of scares and dips into the proper horror genre, even though everyone survives at the end. So if they don't like that, skip this one. But if you do, give this one a second pass. It might be better than you remember.

Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5

The Angels Take Manhattan

Melody... you look after him; and you be a good girl and you look after him.

The Angels Take Manhattan is the much hyped dismissal of Rory and Amy. I say much hyped because all of Season 7A was a very drawn out notice on the fact that they were leaving. This story hits you pretty well in all the right emotional points but there are elements where plot and emotional convenience cause things to fall by the wayside.

Plot Summary

A detective named Sam Garner is engaged by a rich mobster named Mr. Grayle. He is given an address to a building called Winter Quay and makes his way there, warned to beware of moving statues. Garner enters the building and finds an old version of himself lying in a bed. He runs but is blocked by a group of Weeping Angels. He runs to the roof where he is captured by an angel in the form of the Statue of Liberty.

In 2012, the Doctor, Rory and Amy are relaxing in Central Park, the Doctor reading a book he found in his pocket about a detective named Melody Malone. He rips out the last page and places it in their picnic basket, not wanting the story to end. Rory decides to go out and get coffee. He does but on his way back, he hears a strange noise. In a darkened portion of the park, he is attacked and transported back to 1938 where he comes face to face with River Song.

As he reads, the Doctor sees his, Amy and Rory's name in the book and how Rory disappeared while getting coffee. They go to search for him but find nothing. They then run to the TARDIS with Amy peeking ahead to get a date. The Doctor tries to land in 1938 but the angels have made so many manipulations of the time stream that the TARDIS is bounced out and they land in a graveyard outside the city back in 2012.

A confused Rory and River are taken by gunmen to the home of Mr. Grayle. Grayle, not interested in Rory, orders him locked in the basement. River is brought to the study where she finds a chained angel. Noting an odd translation on a piece of Chinese porcelain, she transmits the word through her vortex manipulator. Grayle flicks the lights, allowing the angel to grab River by the wrist. Grayle then demands to know everything about the angels.

Amy reads a bit more in the book, revealing that Grayle's house has several examples of Chin Dynasty. The two of them travel back to a porcelain house in the Chin dynasty to send the message. The Doctor also chastises Amy as she reads further along, noting that if she reads it, it will become a fixed point in time. They then receive the word signal from River that he had the painters put on several pieces in Chinese. He follows the signal, creating a large disturbance as he rips through the time distortions surrounding the period.

In the basement, Rory is in the dark and hears skittering around. He lights a match, given by one of the gunmen and sees small stone cherubs looking at him. He lights another match and notes that they have moved closer to him. He tries to back away but is trapped against a wall. He lights another match, only to have it blown out by a cherub next to him. He then vanishes from the dark basement.

As the TARDIS arrives in Grayle's home, there is an electrical discharge which knocks Grayle out. The Doctor finds River while Amy searches for Rory. He is dismayed to learn that he must either break River's wrist or the Angel's just as Amy read. Amy proposes reading the chapter titles of the book to learn things without risking spoilers. However, the Doctor becomes enraged when he reads the title of the last chapter "Amelia's Farewell" and angrily orders River to think of another way to escape the Angel's grasp.

The Doctor follows Amy and pulls her back from the basement, seeing a dropped book of matches and stone cherubs around. River emerges, trying to disguise the fact that she broke her own wrist to escape. They figure they can track Rory's signal as he has been transported in space but not time. Learning that River did break her wrist, the Doctor becomes angry but is chastised by Amy.

Amy waits for the tracker to narrow Rory's location while a chagrined Doctor apologizes to River and spends regeneration energy healing her wrist. This angers her as she sees it as a waste but their renewed spat is cut short by the tracker targeting Winter Quay. They steal a car and drive to the Battery while two angels, posing as statues outside, walk in the left open door to attack the waking Grayle.

The group arrives at Winter Quay and find Rory entering a room with his name on it. An old man calls to Amy from the bed. She goes over to find an old Rory who dies in her arms. The Doctor realizes that the Angels have created a farm, sending anyone who tries to escape back into the past of the building and continuously feeding on that energy. Amy proposes that they run for if Rory dies someplace else, it'll create a paradox and undo what the Angels have done, killing all of them.

Rory and Amy manage to run to the stairs but are cut off from the exit and run towards the roof. The Doctor and River are slightly behind and get attacked by a pack of Angels. They dash out the window and begin climbing up the fire escape.

On the roof, Rory and Amy are trapped by the Angel Statue of Liberty. Keeping their eyes on it, Rory climbs to the edge of the roof and urges Amy to push him off. He figures that if he dies now, it'll undo everything and he'll be fine but can't bring himself to actually jump. Amy, unwilling to lose him, climbs up with him and they fall together as the Doctor and River climb up. As they fall, the paradox manifests and the whole region collapses.

All four reappear in the graveyard where the TARDIS landed earlier. The Doctor proposes they go find a pub but as Amy and Rory walk towards the TARDIS, Rory stops to notice his name on a headstone. As he does, an Angel attacks him from behind, causing him to vanish. Devistated, Amy begs the Doctor to go get Rory in the TARDIS but he can't due to the paradox keeping all time travelers out. Amy then says her goodbyes and turns her back on the Angel, allowing it to send her back to Rory.

The Doctor and River leave in the TARDIS with River going over what she has to do to ensure the Doctor gets the book. She tells him that she will suggest that Amy include an afterward when she has the book published in the past. The Doctor directs the TARDIS back to Central Park and finds the basket with the last page in it. On it, Amy tells the Doctor that she and Rory are fine and charges him not to travel alone. He then travels in the TARDIS to give young Amelia a quick flyby for hope.

Analysis

The Angels Take Manhattan is a good story and resolves one of the main conflicts during the whole of Amy's travels with the Doctor: Rory or the Doctor. Now, I thought it was rather clear for the duration of her time that it was always Rory (which was what made The Asylum of the Daleks so odd) but others felt that needed to be a bit more spelled out so I can understand Steven Moffat being so explicit. It is not without it's flaws though.

The Doctor is fairly good here but he's also a bit overemotional. This is the first manifestation of the "hating goodbyes" and one of the only ones that I can recall. Obviously each personality of the Doctor takes on new characteristics but he seems so hamstrung on the can't say goodbye to Amy that it seems to weaken him to the point of not being able to function. Granted, the Eleventh Doctor has made a special bond with Amy but he should still be better than a gibbering wreck when it comes to losing her.

I do like his interaction with River and this is one of the few episodes where they function on the same plane of knowledge. Usually it's one of them having a leg up on the other in terms of knowledge. Here, they are both working towards the solution with the same info and it makes them function more as a team or even as a married couple. River helps make up for some of the shortfalls in the Doctor's emotional make up and it's a nice balance. I also happen to think that River looks very nice in the detective noir outfit.

Amy and Rory are pretty good although Rory doesn't get much. He gets the nice emotional scene on the rooftop with Amy but he's the damsel in most of this story, but that is where he did tend to be more often than not so it's fitting. Amy is also good as she is a bit more grounded in her reactions. She plays the adult more often than not between the Doctor and River and gives a certain amount of gravity to some scenes that might go awry. She also has two very nice emotional scenes with her commitment to die with Rory in the fall and then in the decision to let the Angel take her to Rory rather than stay with the Doctor. Overall a very strong story for her.

The Angels were pretty good in this. The scene with the cherubs in the basement was properly unnerving with all the various "monster in the dark" tropes you could want. The idea of an Angel farm actually makes a lot of sense, although I'm not sure how well the people could be contained within the building in the past unless it was of tighter security then. Yes the Angels could zap someone into the past but unless there was something in the past to hold them there, they could just escape and be running around turn of the century New York. I can also understand the desire for the visual of the Statue of Liberty as an Angel, but when you but any thought into it, it's really rather stupid, especially in the second scene where it just has to stand there while Amy and Rory decide whether or not to fall off the roof.

That scene is actually one that contains one of the problems with the Angels in this story: inconsistency. It's well known that an Angel moves when you don't look at it. While Rory is climbing on the ledge, Amy locks eyes on the Angel and allows him to look away. However, when Rory is talking to Amy and she is deciding to jump with him, he looks down at her and she looks up at him. At that moment, the Angel should have taken them both. It's dramatic license but if you make such a big deal about your enemy in such a fashion, you shouldn't draw such attention to when you don't do it, especially with such a big Angel hovering in the background.

Everything else about the story worked pretty well. I liked the fact that it was very obviously the actual Central Park they were filming in at the beginning and the end. Most everything else had a nice moody feel to it and I liked the fact that Steven Moffat came as close as he's ever done to indulging in the no-win scenario. He almost never does it so it feels good when he does.

That being said, there is no good reason why the Doctor couldn't travel to New York in the 1940's, several years after Amy and Rory arrived and see them. Perhaps he makes the decision to not let them travel because of the dangers to the time line and I can buy that. But there is no reason he can't at least visit. River certainly makes it clear that she will be traveling to them to ensure the manuscript gets published by Amy so a certain amount of travel to them is not impossible.

My head cannon guess would be that with their deaths fixed in the past (70s-80s), he refuses to visit them for fear that he will take them back into the TARDIS and disrupt the timeline further. That's the only reason I can think of but it also makes the Doctor something of an emotional twat for being so dramatic. He can't trust himself so he has to act as though they've died. Again, Steven Moffat doesn't indulge in the no-win scenario much so his natural habit of trying to find a loophole to ensure a happy ending for all does create some rather nasty plot holes.

Still, especially if you lose yourself in it, the story makes a strong emotional impact and is very easy to enjoy. The good highly outweighs the bad and the bad really only kicks in if you're of the more pedantic nature, which I can be now and again. It's easily the best story of Season 7A and a good send off for Rory and Amy. I'd happily sit down with anyone to watch it, although I clearly wouldn't recommend it to anyone as their first story. There's far too much backstory and emotion required to initiate someone with a story like this.

Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

Guys, comedy gold. Where's a Silurian audience when you need one?


Plot Summary

After helping Queen Nefertiti of Egypt the Doctor receives a signal from 24th century Earth. A space ship has been detected heading towards Earth and they can't signal it. He volunteers to investigate it and change it's course. The head of the space agency tells him that if he does not, they will be forced to destroy it.

The Doctor gathers a team to go along with Queen Nefertiti. He collects a big game hunter named John Riddell as well as Rory and Amy. However, when materializing around Rory and Amy, he scoops up Rory's dad Brian as well. Together they materialize on the ship where two ankylosaurs run down a hall. Fascinated, the Doctor finds a control panel and when investigating, accidentally transports himself, Brian and Rory to the engine room, which utilizes tidal power. They are chased off the beach of the engine room by a flock of pterodactyls and take refuge in a nearby passageway.

Following the Doctor's disappearance, Amy, Nefertiti and Riddell walk through the ship until they find a control panel in a small arboretum. Accessing a database, Amy discovers that the ship is an ark launched by the Silurians when they believed the moon would impact Earth rather than be captured by it. She also discovers that while the dinosaur population has been maintained, the Silurians are all gone.

The Doctor, Rory and Brian are collected by two robots who take them down to a docking bay. On their way to the docking bay, the trio runs into a Triceratops who takes a liking to Brian and the golf balls he has stored in his pockets. They continue on and the Doctor is taken to see Solomon, a trader and pirate who boarded and killed the Silurian crew when they refused to sell some of their dinosaurs to him. Solomon threatens the life of Rory and Brian if he doesn't repair his artificial legs which were created by his robots after he was attacked by a group of raptors. The Doctor does repair the damage, but also learns that Solomon can't steer the ship and it's guidance system implemented a return to Earth program following the attempts to override the controls.

After finishing with Solomon, the Doctor, Rory and Brian flee while Solomon sends his robots after them. They climb aboard the triceratops they met earlier and escape the robots. Reaching another control panel, the Doctor discovers that Earth is launching the missiles to destroy the ship and they will impact in about fifteen minutes.

Solomon and the robots teleport near the Doctor, telling him that since missiles are approaching, he is leaving without the dinosaurs. But he also mentions that in his scans, he detected Queen Nefertiti and demands her. He kills the triceratops to demonstrate his seriousness and prepares to kill the others. Nefertiti, Amy and Riddell teleport to the Doctor's location and Nefertiti gives herself up to Solomon who then teleports with her back to his ship.

A warning signal pops up on screen of the missiles locking on and the Doctor gets an idea. He and the rest teleport to the control room and the Doctor activates a magnetic lock, preventing Solomon's ship from escaping. He also notices that the controls of the ship are tied to run with two people of the same genepool. He has Brian and Rory take the controls while Amy and Riddell keep watch and hold off a group of juvenile T-Rexes that are trying to enter with stun guns.

With the ship moving away from Earth, the Doctor dislodges the signal transponder that the missiles have locked on to. He then teleports to Solomon's ship and disables his robots. Nefertiti breaks loose, knocking down Solomon in the process, and she and the Doctor leave Solomon's ship with the Doctor leaving the transponder behind. He then demagnetizes the ship and Solomon's ship shoots away from the Silurian transport and into space. The missiles follow Solomon's ship and destroy it.

The Doctor returns Rory and Amy home and Nefertiti opts to stay with Riddell on his big game hunt. Brian however, travels with the Doctor to see the dinosaurs established on a new planet they christen Siluria.

Analysis

A lot of folks dismiss Dinosaurs on a Spaceship as overly silly but I disagree. I think it's a lot of fun and a lot darker than people give it credit for. In fact, it is one of the only instances we get of the dark and angry Eleventh Doctor.

I always like the Tenth Doctor when he would give up on negotiation and mercy and just extract vengeance and it was rare to see that in the Eleventh Doctor because he was so much of a negotiator. Here, he is finally confronted with a situation that is non-negotiable and he gives in to those dark tendencies that the Eleventh Doctor kept so well hidden, though even here he hides them behind a mask of cheerfulness. But when he turns as Solomon begs for mercy, he pointedly asks if the Silurians begged for mercy and then walks out. He doesn't show the anger or even much of the cold fury that the Tenth Doctor did, but there is a coldness in his voice, given an unsettling edge by his cheery demeanor in how he delivers the death sentence. It is quite enjoyable.

The gang is interesting although a bit underused as you might expect in a 45-minute story. Brian is obviously brought along for the plot device of being able to steer the ship but he at least is used well for comic relief and to get a touch of depth in with Rory. Rory also does well in bonding with his dad and the two of them function as the true companions in this story.

The other three are highly underused except for some light comic relief and the plot device of giving Solomon something to take and be rescued at the end in the form of Nefertiti. Riddell does even less as his only scene where he does something of value is to hold off some dinosaurs and even then he is with Amy. Amy at least gets some crack lines and functions as a mini-Doctor with two inexperienced companions. I suspect that Chris Chibnall had some extra ideas for Nefertiti and Riddell but was forced to cut them for time.

What I wish could have been cut instead were the two robots. Solomon is an excellent villain: cold, shrewd and merciless. He is a good foe and it is also quite satisfying when he dies. His robots though are just terrible. They were voiced by a comedy duo but their jokes were lame at best and their delivery was pretty poor as well. It needed to be much sharper as a harsher sarcasm would have improved things a bit. It also was a bit lame that when the Doctor, Rory and Brian are escaping on the triceratops, the robots develop stormtrooper aim and couldn't hit such a large and relatively slow moving target. So in either case of how the robots were to be portrayed (henchmen or comic relief), they didn't deliver and pulled down a pretty good villain.

One of the complaints I've heard regarding this story is that the plot is too simple but I didn't see anything wrong with that. There was problem that manifested itself, the Doctor worked at it, thwarted the villain and saved the ship. Contrast to other stories, I don't recall too many instances where I felt the story was padding itself. I think the biggest one was the stuff with the triceratops and that was a by-product of desperately wanting the visual of the Doctor riding a triceratops. It could have been cut but some dinosaurs other than the initial viewing and the juvenile T-Rexes needed to be in to help justify the title.

Regarding the dinosaurs, I thought they did a pretty good job as far as the CGI goes. There were one or two moments where it looked a little bit janky, but for the most part, I thought the integration went well. It helped that the ship was kept dark and that smoothed over what could have been some rough spots where they could fudge in the darkness. But overall, I thought it a pretty good effort and can't recall any significant instance where I was pulled out of the story due to the visual effects.

Overall, I think this is a far better story than it is generally given credit for. Remove the robots (or upgrade their personalities) and give the other companions a little more to do and I think this would be a grand adventure story with a dark twist. It's about as dark as you'll see the Eleventh Doctor get which is a rare sight indeed. At the very least, it is a fun adventure with a good amount of comedy to lighten the mood but not so much as to ruin the darker tone. I'd happily pop this one in at any time for a fun romp.

Overall personal score: 4.5 out of 5