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Tag: Rory Williams

Labyrinthine Clues

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

Perhaps it’s the fact that it was originally intended to be part of Series 5 instead of Series 6, but for some reason The God Complex has had a whole lot of hype. All sorts of superlatives were used, and somehow it was supposed to be something to which we all really looked forward. Having seen it, I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy the episode, but it certainly wasn’t All That. To begin, there were some important ways in which it was quite derivative.

It's OK; we're nice!
Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

I had really mixed feelings, for example, about Rita. Overall, I loved her (nearly as much as the Doctor did), but you really know from the get-go that we’re not taking on a new Companion (even if poor Amy doesn’t when the Doctor pretends to “fire” her). Which, of course, means she’s another Astrid Peth – perfect Companion material doomed to die heroically/horribly. Personally, I’d rather not invest emotional capital where the investment is sure to fail. That makes it hard to engage as fully in the episode as it might deserve.

More blatantly, though, it takes a page straight out of The Curse of Fenric. The climactic scene with Amy is a perfect rehash of how the Doctor has to ruin poor Ace’s faith in him in the earlier story, and for effectively the same reason (though it’s actually done much more gently here). Although I do like the way it sort of references the previous episode by turning Amy Pond: the Girl Who Waited into Amy Williams: the Girl Who Stopped Waiting, there’s no hiding the fact that the major plot point came straight out of Fenric.

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Kicking Ass and Waiting Games

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


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

With a few jarring-moment exceptions, I was able to enjoy this episode as it was intended – an emotional look into Amy’s character and into her relationship with Rory (again). It starts out very contrived, with Amy and Rory both breaking Rule Number Whatever: Don’t Wander Off and making some dumb moves (e.g., telling Amy to “push the button” instead of specifying, or not asking Rory in return, “which one, idiot?”). Then we get the somewhat ridiculous excuse to strand the Doctor in the TARDIS (“Germ 7” is loose, and only affects two-hearted species? That’s the best you’ve got?) so that they can shoot Doctor and Companion material separately a la “The Lodger” (they even go so far as to have a TARDIS-to-planet comm link in the same way).

Once the crew officially splits up, though (and why is Amy so sanguine about letting them fly off to “rescue” her, knowing the vagaries of the TARDIS?), everything steps up a notch. Along with the handbots becoming increasingly creepy and unintentionally (on their part) threatening, we get a few humorous moments as Amy gets oriented (like the available ride “authentically modeled on the famous Warp Speed Death Ride at Disneyland-Clom“), and the beautiful scenery of the Gardens to ease us into the main story.

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This Is the Home That George Built

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


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

I’m not a fan of the horror genre, and last week’s trailer did not inspire me. Further, given that Mark Gatiss’s scripts have been very hit-or-miss for me (loved The Unquiet Dead, was so-so about The Idiot’s Lantern, and abhorred Victory of the Daleks), I was rather apprehensive about what all that boded for the quality of Night Terrors. Although it wasn’t my all-time favorite, it was much better than I’d allowed myself to expect.

I think perhaps I am the target market for the level of horror the Doctor Who team aims to maintain. In other words, I can handle about as much as the average eight-year-old. A little tension is good, but more than the predictable “boo!” moment upon opening a door, drawer, or what-have-you makes me too uncomfortable to watch. Thus, the horror factor in Night Terrors was just about perfect for me. Nothing truly unpredictable ever came of one of those instances, and the scene in which the landlord succumbs was just oogy enough to give me the creeps. (I had a moment of cognitive dissonance there, too – I first thought the shot of his hand morphing was Rory’s going all Auton on us again. That didn’t make sense, but the visual similarity was striking.)

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Same Song, Different ‘Verse

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Review of Let’s Kill Hitler
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

There was a lot going on in this episode. People (aka “fans,” aka “bloggers”) complain a lot about the sense of pacing in Moffat’s writing – how he seems to cram too much into the second half of a two-parter, for example – and I don’t see that changing in regards to Hitler. But for the front end of River Song’s story – from her perspective, anyway – we can hardly expect anything else.

I’ll admit it: by the time the opening credits rolled, I was thinking, “oh, god… this one’s going to be rubbish.” I certainly didn’t buy into the best-friend-we’ve-never-come-across-before thing, either. Before I could get too cranky about that, though, Moffat threw a bone to fandom with the temporal grace comment. “Hmmm…” I thought. “Maybe there’s hope for the episode yet.”

Once Rory got not only to punch Hitler but also to tell him to shut up, I was ready to roll with it. Anything that allows me to see Rory the Badass Roman lurking under that modern exterior is going to earn a few squee!‘s from me (e.g., tricking an officer into saluting long enough to deck him and steal his bike, or even just taking the mickey out of his wife a bit by mimicking her accent back at her (“‘Clues‘? What kind of ‘clues‘?”)). I like that the character development we’ve seen has been kept and expanded, so that he’s really a full-on, capable Companion now.

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The Cat’s (Partly) Out of the Bag

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Review of A Good Man Goes to War
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

This one was a real mixed bag for me. Sure, it was a huge-scale production, with epic tie-ins where the Doctor called in favors from across time and space. But it all felt a bit too much. Also – the Spitfires? I ~edit~ hate the Spitfires-in-Space (…which you’d already know if I’d been blogging last year and had published the scathing review I wrote of Victory of the Daleks)! So take out a few of those called-in favors to make it feel less cobbled together (seriously, it has the kitchen sink feel of some of RTD’s most egregious I’m-trying-too-hard ventures), and the story will drive it just fine.

There is, after all, plenty of drama. Will our heroes recover the baby? What is the real motivation behind her abduction? How far will the Doctor go down the path to the Dark Side? (How far can Moffat take a religious order created via an off-the-cuff text message?) Oh, yeah – and who’s River Song?

The episode started out on a wonderful high. I thought it was a lovely twist how Amy talked up the man who was coming for Melody, making the viewers think she was referring to the Doctor (“he’s the last of his kind”; “he looks young, but he’s lived for hundreds and hundreds of years”). That misdirection made for a wonderful skip-a-beat moment when she said that man was Melody’s father, and in turn gave a slightly different meaning to the episode’s title, if one cares to interpret it that way. Not only that, but it bolsters our view of the Amy/Rory relationship and gives the ring of truth to his assertion that “she always knows that I am coming for her!” in Day of the Moon. God, how I love Rory the Badass Roman!

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The Almost Plot

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


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

OK, I’ll be honest:  the specifics of the ending surprised me.  As for the general shape of it, though, I totally called it (see my previous speculation regarding the Creepy Eyepatch Lady). That part wasn’t as heavily telegraphed as the events of either the previous episode or this one, but it’s all there if you go look for it (“breathe, Pond”).

What was just as obvious as in The Rebel Flesh was the “mistaken” identities. I already pointed out last time that there were almost certainly two Ganger Jennifers (poor Rory – finally grew a pair, only to discover he’d been led around by them). The further hints laid out here were again copious (e.g., the machinery won’t recognize her as a valid operator), but hardly more so than the hints that Amy was saving her affection for the “wrong” Doctor. I’m not even sure how we were supposed to get fooled by that, since just about the only time we see the “distinguishing” shoes is the initial close-up on them; all we have to go on is the other characters’ reactions to the supposed DoppelDoctor. The only surprise would have been if they hadn’t mixed them up. After all, what’s more cliché than the Beast really being a Prince (unless it’s the inverse)?

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It’s Just Gunge

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


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

Derivative much?  It’s been a long time since I saw a story so predictable; I knew the major plot points by the time last week’s trailer was over.  Great:  some sort of it-could-be-human-except-it’s-not-alive technology becomes self-aware and gets in a fight for its life with “real” humans.  ~yawn~

Not only does this echo countless science fiction/horror classics from Frankenstein to Blade Runner to Who‘s own Robots of Death (fear of the nearly-us-but-clearly-Other is deep-seated), the story is a ripoff of other, newer Who stories.  There are obvious parallels with stories as recent as The Waters of Mars and The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, not to mention smatterings of The Doctor’s Daughter, The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit and just about every Auton or base-under-siege story ever made. And did anyone not see the “cliffhanger” coming from the instant the Doctor first touched the Flesh?  If that had been any more heavily telegraphed, viewers would’ve had to set up little cable offices in their living rooms (or wherever they watch their Who) to take the messages down.So let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first. When our heroes first walk into the monastery, the camera POV from behind the stones is suggestive of someone watching them – like a Ganger already going walkabout. Later, it’s only Jennifer who’s not hooked up. Why? Is she already a stabilized, independent Ganger? Could be. Wouldn’t surprise me if that crops up next time (like the one Operator who keeps sneezing; Chekov’s gun much?). And does Ganger-Jennifer mean anything more than that she plans to disable her Operator-self when she says she’s going to “take care of the spare one running around out there”? Or is there a spare Ganger? Truth be told, I don’t really care. I just feel I need to speculate to stay awake…

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Sexy Is As Sexy Does

Review of The Doctor’s Wife
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Oh, me of little faith.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

Even knowing Neil Gaiman’s work both by reputation and by example (e.g., the rather dark novel American Gods), I still doubted the likely quality of the episode he had written once I learned some of the details.   Specifically, when the news of Episode 4’s title came out, I groaned inwardly.  OK, sure, I was 99.9999% certain it was a red herring – nothing “new” and “notable” would be learned about the Doctor’s personal history, and there was going to be some tricky way in which there was and yet wasn’t an actual wife (spot on there) – but just the suggestion was enough to turn my stomach, especially since I knew there were going to be fans out there somewhere saying, “I knew it! Here’s where we learn about River!”

And then there was the Ood.  Now don’t get me wrong – the Ood are an interesting enough race, and they certainly have their place (I happen to believe that place is firmly in the RTD era…).  Regardless, the sight of an Ood at the end of last week’s trailer was enough to reduce my appetite for this episode by about an order of magnitude.  Thank goodness all of that was totally irrelevant.

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In the Manner of a Sorbet…

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Review of The Curse of the Black Spot
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

I have to admit, I like a good pirate story as much as the next Deppophile, and what genre doesn’t get better when you add Doctor Who?  Well, maybe a pirate story…


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2011 BBC

I’m not saying there was anything wrong with Black Spot, but it was a rather run-of-the-mill, overall unremarkable kind of episode.  It was a classic romp – nice and fluffy – something to cleanse the palate between that meaty season-opener and the much-anticipated Gaiman-penned episode coming up next.  I’ve read that it was originally intended to be aired in the episode 10 slot, and I can see that working; there’s clearly no major story arc here.  There are, of course, a few nods at what has come before (e.g., a flashback to the Doctor’s death) and a few hints at things yet to come, like another appearance of Creepy Eyepatch Lady (CEL).

You have to wonder what the CEL signifies.  I think her lines are our biggest clue.  When we first saw her in Day of the Moon, she said something about someone “just dreaming.”  We can interpret that as we may, meaning The Little Girl, Amy, or someone completely different.  My latest hypothesis, based on her comments in Black Spot (“It’s done. You’re doing fine. Just stay calm.”), is that she’s speaking of (and to) Amy.  Might Amy not be undergoing some medical procedure (e.g., insemination with Time Lord DNA), and her current adventures are her subconscious or other-dimensional experiences during said procedure?  I admit that’s pretty out there, but it could fit the (admittedly sparse) data.

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A Pregnant Silence

Review of Day of the Moon
Warning:  This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.  It also contains profanity.  Proceed at your own risk.

This being the first story of the series, I wasn’t expecting resolution for many of the dangling plot threads in the second half of the two-parter. However, I don’t think I expected as many new ones to be woven in, either. And frankly, I’m not convinced that the threads that seemed to get tied up really are. Oh, what a tangled web Moff weaves…

Starting things off in style with a beautifully wrought mind-fuck allows the production team to squeeze in a few more shots of the good ol’ US of A (I have to say, it’s slightly amusing in Confidential to watch the Brits wax poetic about the American landscape; I suppose it’s a grass-is-always-greener situation, since I find the backdrops here beautiful but almost blasé in their familiarity, while I’d be walking around London and surrounds like a slack-jawed yokel, myself), and puts the viewer off-kilter for a beat.

But soon we’re back to the more familiar, with the Doctor having done something incredibly clever (watch him *snap* the TARDIS open), and River having trusted him with her life yet again. A little bit of exposition later, and it’s on to a truly hide-behind-the-sofa-worthy haunted house. I have to say this is one of the creepiest (darkest, if you will – that seems to be the adjective the production team is using) episodes I’ve ever seen, from any era.

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