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Tag: Eleven

Obvious Quality

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Review of Hide
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

So close. So close! It was almost another top-notch episode – filled with nods to the pre- and post-Hiatus eras both – but it tripped at the finish line.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2013 BBC

I will admit that those last two minutes didn’t bother me quite as much the second time through, but I was also pausing the recording at regular intervals to make notes. That tends to break up the action in a way that prevents one from getting pulled into it.

What did work for me was practically everything else in the episode. It was wonderfully atmospheric, providing the perfect ambience for a ghost story. I absolutely loved the way that the shots in the main part of the house were all done to give a strong impression of sepia tone photography, down to the brown costumes.

With the exception of the cringe-worthy entrance of the Doctor and (especially) Clara, the seriously spooky tone is well maintained throughout, with the occasional light comic relief to allow a break in the tension. Most of that is courtesy of Clara, or of her relationships with the Doctor or the TARDIS, as when the Doctor tells her that her “pants are so on fire.”

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Chillingly Good

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Review of Cold War
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Hallelujah – finally, an episode I actually liked!


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2013 BBC

Though the pre-credits sequence didn’t grab me quite as much as it did the poor sailor, it was not a bad way to start (and narratively necessary). Where the story really got rolling, though, was immediately after the credits as the ship was heading down. It had an extremely Das Boot feel, and was incredibly tense as a result. And I thought they largely managed to maintain that tension throughout.

I’m not sure how much of my love for this episode comes from the fact that I could utterly relate to the Doctor’s declaration: “hair, shoulder pads, nukes – it’s the ’80s. Everything’s bigger.” It certainly didn’t hurt that I remember the political climate of 1983 so clearly. The episode definitely gave me that rock-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach feeling that “mutually-assured destruction” always did. It was something we lived with daily; the threat of nuclear war hung over the heads of even middle school kids like me. So suffice to say I thought they nailed the feel of the era.

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A Tale of Two Reactions

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Review of The Rings of Akhaten
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

This one’s an odd one, and no doubt. The whole way through, I couldn’t decide if I thought it was wondrous or horrible. (Also – can I just tell you all how much the name of the place messes me up? I seriously keep thinking there should be an n after the initial A.)


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2013 BBC

I still can’t decide, and it looks like I’m not alone. There is no “fan consensus” about this episode, and I find that almost as weird as my own dual reactions. Complicating matters is the fact that I can’t pinpoint what I don’t like about it. All I can say is that somehow it rubs me the wrong way.

Let me begin, then, with a few niggling irritations. First, there’s the leaf. I like the story of “the most important leaf in human history” (though the Doctor’s being a bit stalker-y, which makes me vaguely uncomfortable); every happy couple should have some story about how they met that makes them smile years down the road. What bugs my detail-oriented self is that it’s not the same leaf we saw in the previous episode. I’m not sure what kind this one is – it looks a bit too broad to be an aspen, though that’s the closest I could come, with my limited knowledge of botany – but the one from The Bells of Saint John is most definitely a maple. This one’s supposed to be a maple, too, based on the tree from which it fell, but it’s not. And I’m completely unreasonably put off by it.

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London Calling

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Review of The Bells of Saint John
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I really want to give Clara’s “no, this time we mean it!” introduction story an enthusiastic thumbs-up, but I can’t quite.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2013 BBC

Like most Moffat-penned scripts, it zips along at such a fast pace that it’s easy to get caught up in the moment and come out saying, “Wow! That was great!” But Bells (and what the hell sort of irrelevant title was that, anyway, based on an utterly toss-off portion of the story from 1207?) also suffers from the common problems that plague Moffat’s stories.

To begin, we’ve got the usual casual misogyny, like when the young monk asks if the Doctor is speaking with an evil spirit and when he’s told “it’s a woman,” he crosses himself. This one I’m willing to let slide because, OK, it’s 1207 and the dude’s a monk who’s probably not supposed to have any contact with women. But it’s still in rather poor taste.

More irritating to my mind is the way the Doctor insists that Clara repeat The Question to him three times. I never used to think of the Doctor as a pure narcissist – a bit overly proud of his intellect, perhaps, but not full of himself – but that’s how that scene presented him. The Doctor seems to be exhibiting an ever-increasing number of troubling character traits these days (and I’m not just talking about some “fall into darkness” he might be experiencing), and I find myself watching with more trepidation all the time.

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The Winter of Our Cautious Optimism

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Review of The Snowmen
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I’m not sure there’s much more I could have asked for. (Oh, of course there is. A puppy is always nice, for example…)


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2012 BBC

Seriously, though, I think this is the best Christmas Special in a good long while (the best since Christmas Invasion, in my opinion). No episode is ever absolutely perfect, and I’ll get to the parts that irked me later. Frankly, I wouldn’t be much of a blogger if I couldn’t find something both to love and to hate about any given story, but generally speaking, I have to say I quite enjoyed The Snowmen.

I think a great part of that is because it wasn’t terribly Christmassy. That is, it felt like a “regular” episode (with a bit of extra time for plot development) that just happened to be set at Christmas, much like Nine’s story The Unquiet Dead. Nothing except (here it comes – my first, biggest complaint) the über-sappy, saccharine explanation of “a whole family crying on Christmas Eve” relied on the specific time of year in order to make “sense.”

And, to be honest, it just doesn’t. It’s not like no one else in London has ever – or even in that very year – lost a loved one right at Christmas. It happens to people the world over all the time. Why is this family’s pain special? The simple answer is: it’s not. (No more so than the loss of his most recent Companions is particularly special to the Doctor. But I’ll get to that later.) That fact, combined with the overwrought emotional manipulation that plagues Moffat’s episodes, make the denouement of this part of the story unsatisfactory.

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A Farewell to Aims*

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Review of The Angels Take Manhattan
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

It all makes sense now. Well, I say “all”… Clearly, some of it is still utter nonsense, but at least one of the things that’s been bugging me all series is finally obviously and satisfactorily resolved, at least in my head. But I’ll get to that.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2012 BBC

Let me start by talking about how this – this – is finally the kind of episode I’ve been looking for all series. At long last, here’s one I can get behind wholeheartedly because there’s so much right with it, I can ignore just about everything that isn’t.

I really liked the gumshoe detective novel feel to the 1938 portion of the episode (aside from “bouncing off 1938” – wtf?), though I didn’t cotton on till the second time through that Mr. Grayle was deliberately feeding the Angels, nor that it wasn’t necessarily Mr. Garner himself typing up the chapter on “The Dying Detective.”

Even better, though, the Angels have gone back to the basics and once again become the kill-you-by-letting-you-live-to-death monsters we fell in love with in Blink. Somehow, the insidious nature of this particular mechanism makes them creepier and more interesting to me than the sheer monster in the dark we saw back in The Time of Angels. It’s made even more horrific by the way both Garner and Rory are confronted with their future selves (loved the age makeup, too!). It’s good to have the “original” Weeping Angels back.

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The Weakness of Plot

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Review of The Power of Three
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

“Uh-oh. It’s Chibnall again.” Despite my more-optimistic-than-any-previous-episode reaction to the next-time trailer for The Power of Three, I couldn’t help wincing a bit and bracing for the worst when I realized it was another entry by one of my all-time least favorite writers. I’m happy to report, though, that I didn’t hate it.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2012 BBC

Granted, after some thought and a subsequent viewing, my initial very positive reaction was somewhat dulled as I realized how many plot holes there were, but somehow I was still mostly able to look beyond the letdown-y bits and have fun with it. Because – let’s face it – I’m a sucker for any reference, however oblique, to the Brigadier.

OK, OK… There were other parts to like, too (Rory in his pants (or “underwear,” for us Americans) was clearly among them). In fact, there was a lot I enjoyed. Especially that first time through, I got swept up in the “romp,” willing until the very end to play along with what I was clearly intended to be getting out of it. There was a silly-fun puzzle with the cubes, another fish-out-of-water interlude with the Doctor trying to take the Slow Path with Amy & Rory, more of Rory’s charming dad Brian, a random reference to an attempted Zygon invasion, and the delightful Kate (Lethbridge-) Stewart.

In other words, all the window-dressing was beautiful.

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Respect, If Not Affection

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Review of A Town Called Mercy
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I don’t know what it is about S7/S33, but I’m just not feeling it. Each episode has been beautifully rendered – good acting, good effects, and in this case a gorgeous location – but I have yet to feel a visceral connection with anything going on in the lives of the Doctor, Amy and Rory. Maybe it’s because we’re not really following their collective lives anymore.

Respect Susan's life choices.
Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2012 BBC

Whatever is going on, I still liked this episode better than the last one. In Dinos, everything from the title on down was designed for the kiddies, with a few incongruous bits of very adult themes thrown in for good measure. Here’s its rather the opposite. We’ve got a cool-looking cyborg, but that’s the backdrop for a huge ethical exploration of what it means to be a war criminal. As Sue of Adventures with the Wife in Space would say: Not. For. Kids.

Maybe that’s why I enjoyed Mercy more than Dinos, though. Westerns aren’t my favorite; I vastly prefer The Seven Samurai to The Magnificent Seven. Despite that, I really felt like this was a story I could sink my teeth into – the spaghetti Western bit was just set dressing (as opposed to the first time the Doctor was coerced into becoming a lawman in America’s Old West). Really, it could have been set anywhere, anywhen – they just happened to decide to put it in the 1870 U.S. frontier.

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Some Treasures Among the Coprolites

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Review of Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.
Further warning: Profanity ahead.

I’m going to be up front about this: I didn’t really care for this episode. To start, I’ve never been much of a Chris Chibnall fan. No disrespect meant, but I’ve just never particularly enjoyed his episodes. Mix that with the fact that I thought the whole dinosaurs-on-a-spaceship concept was less than fabulous (not to mention a ridiculously stupid title – I find the Snakes on a Plane reference juvenile and tawdry), and you have a recipe for … well, for a bit of a letdown.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2012 BBC

Before those of you who adored the episode crucify me, let me say I did not hate it unconditionally. There were parts I liked, and I’ll get to those. But having come in with low expectations because of the title and then having my heart sink when I saw Chibnall’s name on the screen, it was bound to be a bumpy ride. And while I could have fun with it from time to time, overall I came away with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

Let’s start at the beginning. Surely I can’t be the only one who’s noticed with chagrin how strongly it’s implied lately that the Doctor is not only sexually irresistible to every (usually historically famous) woman he comes across, but that he is sexually attracted to them in turn. I mean, I thought the whole thing with Ten and Queen Elizabeth I was bad – Queen Nefertiti in the opening moments here (and Mata Hari last week) is just over the top. Now in the interest of full disclosure, I will admit I totally ship Ten/Rose (that’s effectively canon), but that happened gradually over many many episodes. It started as a friendship, and built from there, rather than coming sheerly from a basal place of horndoggery like this. So I was irritated right off the top.

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A Trick with the Memory

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Review of Asylum of the Daleks
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Well. It looks like it’s time to revise Confession #23. In truth, though, there’s still much to be seen about where that particular plot twist takes us as we head into the second half of the series. More on that later, though.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2012 BBC

My initial reaction was generally positive. Having managed to avoid any spoilers, I was suitably surprised by all the key revelations, and had no qualms allowing myself to be swept up in the narrative as it galumphed rapidly toward its conclusion. (Can galumphing ever be rapid? I’m going with “yes.”) The Doctor’s questions niggled at the back of my mind, too, but I was content to let them percolate until the denouement made it all clear. I might have been able to puzzle it out on my own given time, but of course the script never gives you that luxury.

One thing that the pacing made unpleasant for me was that the mass of Daleks wasn’t… errr… massive enough. I know it’s weird to say I didn’t think there were enough Daleks (especially given my recent Confession about my feelings towards Daleks), but all the pre-show hype about “every Dalek ever” made it seem like it would be more obvious to non-experts like myself. I did love the list of survivors of various wars in the Intensive Care ward of the asylum, though (and even recognized many of them before looking them up): Spiridon, Kembel, Aridius, Vulcan, Exxilon… So there was at least some verbal mention of diversity. I’ll still have to go back to the cover of my Doctor Who Magazine #447 and review the physical differences so I know for whom to look. Even with my eyes peeled, I was barely able to find the Special Weapons Dalek.

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