So it all comes down to this. The day the Doctor dies. Over the last thirteen episodes we have been heading towards the day that the Doctor meets his end and like the last series finale, there is very little that appears to be done to be able to change things. After the end of the previous episode where we learnt that River was the one in the astronaut suit in ‘The Impossible Astronaut’. I had a theory that it was a red herring and that in fact there was a second Doctor that would swap places with River. That theory didn’t last long though. The story was unusually told in flashback form which is very much like Lost. I did like it in this episode as it made it feel different to previous episodes.
The idea that they have raised River/Melody to kill the Doctor only for her to not want to do it because she loves him is a clever thing. This then causes the universe to be stuck at 5:02pm forever. The Doctor knows what needs to be done but River won’t let it happen. So the story is then about the Doctor trying to convince River to do this and save millions and millions of lives in the universe. River of course won’t because she’s selfish and doesn’t want to kill the man she loves. The Doctor quite cleverly resorts to marrying them (answering the question the Doctor asks in The Big Bang).
One of the worst things that Steven Moffat has ever done was writing the scene which saw us hear the news that the Brigadier had died. Of course it was nice that they acknowledged the character but I thought it was totally wrong to say he had died. I think there were two camps of thinking. Those who (like Steven Moffat) thought that he should be honoured in this way and those (like me) who thought he should be in Geneva forever. Now it’s made the loss even more final. Of course he was never going to come back but it still didn’t make it easier. I thought that the Dalek was a complete waste of time. The money that must have been spent on letting the BBC use the Daleks could have been better spent on say a really good special effect. If they were going to use the Daleks then they should have featured in the story a bit more, rather than to provide the Doctor with information about the Silence.
There were some good things. I say some. The idea that the Doctor we see get killed is one of those Teselecta creatures we saw in Let’s Kill Hitler was brilliant and totally unexpected (by me anyway). It didn’t feel like a cop-out and the way that it was revealed was also quite fun. I’m glad they explained the eye patches. I was hoping that the explanation would make sense and thankfully it did. The idea that the patches would turn on the user was also a clever twisty thing to do. The Silence came back and in a rather marvellous way. I think they are a very good creation and the fact that they were waiting in those water cases to make their captures believe that they were being locked up was a nice clever thing to do.
We are introduced to a weird parallel world where Winston Churchill (played by Ian McNeice) is Caesar and living in Buckingham Place and Charles Dickens is still writing plays (as played by Simon Callow like he did in the 2005 story The Unquiet Dead). The sky of London is filled with cars tied to hot air balloons and trains. There are Pterodactyls in the air. The Doctor is telling his story and every so often odd things happen, now it was the Silence doing that thing they do on the roof which was effective in the first episode and managed to be just as impressive second time around.
This episode did air the most gruesome death scene I can remember seeing in Doctor Who. Gantok falls through a hole and gets consumed by a heck of a lot of skulls. This seems to have been heavily edited as there seems something slow and odd about it. Whether it was designed to try and not scare the kids too much I don’t know but it was certainly impressive. Madam Kovarian met a particularly gruesome death as well. She was effectively left for dead by Amy with the eye patch that she has been wearing about to turn on her just like it did on everyone else.
The performances were all quite good. I thought that Matt Smith was on usual good form but he does need to stop wearing that fake beard because it looks terrible and distracts me from his acting. Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill return after their mini break and do their usual thing but it was Alex Kingston who was the one of interest as the episode named her character. I thought that Kingston has played the character with the fun and this episode was no different. This episode was the acting equivalent of polyfiller as we now know everything there is to know about the character but Kingston has been really good in this series and has revelled in what she was given to do. I particularly liked the scene towards the end where Kingston, Gillan and Darvill were in the garden, River had just returned from the events of The Time of the Angels/Flesh and Stone. River has just pretended in that story that she didn’t know she was having an adventure with her mom and dad. Next time I watch those episodes it may have a different feeling for me. That scene was a very well directed scene and well acted.
This is one of the most underwhelming stories since the show returned. At the end the question was Doctor Who with the emphasis on Who. Was that it? Was that what we were supposed to get excited about? Ultimately we have spent the last two years building up to this big moment and it never turned up. I think that Steven Moffat needs to do something new with the next series. Stop being focused with this convoluted story arc and do something that was fun and more importantly didn’t make me fell like I’d pissed away the last two years building up my hopes that we would get an epic finale but as I have said in the past with my references to Lost, this episode has kept that comparison because at the end of Lost you were just left going meh!
Overall this has been a mixed series. The idea to separate it into two blocks isn’t one that I am convinced about. No matter how much I think about I don’t think that it really served to the story. It’s reason was that everyone goes on holiday in the summer and so that last four or five episodes are victims of poor ratings, so I think that splitting it into two could be considered a success. At least as I write this (October 2, 2011) there are only 85 days until the Christmas Special (that’s assuming they broadcast it on Christmas Day).
The idea that they have raised River/Melody to kill the Doctor only for her to not want to do it because she loves him is a clever thing. This then causes the universe to be stuck at 5:02pm forever. The Doctor knows what needs to be done but River won’t let it happen. So the story is then about the Doctor trying to convince River to do this and save millions and millions of lives in the universe. River of course won’t because she’s selfish and doesn’t want to kill the man she loves. The Doctor quite cleverly resorts to marrying them (answering the question the Doctor asks in The Big Bang).
One of the worst things that Steven Moffat has ever done was writing the scene which saw us hear the news that the Brigadier had died. Of course it was nice that they acknowledged the character but I thought it was totally wrong to say he had died. I think there were two camps of thinking. Those who (like Steven Moffat) thought that he should be honoured in this way and those (like me) who thought he should be in Geneva forever. Now it’s made the loss even more final. Of course he was never going to come back but it still didn’t make it easier. I thought that the Dalek was a complete waste of time. The money that must have been spent on letting the BBC use the Daleks could have been better spent on say a really good special effect. If they were going to use the Daleks then they should have featured in the story a bit more, rather than to provide the Doctor with information about the Silence.
There were some good things. I say some. The idea that the Doctor we see get killed is one of those Teselecta creatures we saw in Let’s Kill Hitler was brilliant and totally unexpected (by me anyway). It didn’t feel like a cop-out and the way that it was revealed was also quite fun. I’m glad they explained the eye patches. I was hoping that the explanation would make sense and thankfully it did. The idea that the patches would turn on the user was also a clever twisty thing to do. The Silence came back and in a rather marvellous way. I think they are a very good creation and the fact that they were waiting in those water cases to make their captures believe that they were being locked up was a nice clever thing to do.
We are introduced to a weird parallel world where Winston Churchill (played by Ian McNeice) is Caesar and living in Buckingham Place and Charles Dickens is still writing plays (as played by Simon Callow like he did in the 2005 story The Unquiet Dead). The sky of London is filled with cars tied to hot air balloons and trains. There are Pterodactyls in the air. The Doctor is telling his story and every so often odd things happen, now it was the Silence doing that thing they do on the roof which was effective in the first episode and managed to be just as impressive second time around.
This episode did air the most gruesome death scene I can remember seeing in Doctor Who. Gantok falls through a hole and gets consumed by a heck of a lot of skulls. This seems to have been heavily edited as there seems something slow and odd about it. Whether it was designed to try and not scare the kids too much I don’t know but it was certainly impressive. Madam Kovarian met a particularly gruesome death as well. She was effectively left for dead by Amy with the eye patch that she has been wearing about to turn on her just like it did on everyone else.
The performances were all quite good. I thought that Matt Smith was on usual good form but he does need to stop wearing that fake beard because it looks terrible and distracts me from his acting. Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill return after their mini break and do their usual thing but it was Alex Kingston who was the one of interest as the episode named her character. I thought that Kingston has played the character with the fun and this episode was no different. This episode was the acting equivalent of polyfiller as we now know everything there is to know about the character but Kingston has been really good in this series and has revelled in what she was given to do. I particularly liked the scene towards the end where Kingston, Gillan and Darvill were in the garden, River had just returned from the events of The Time of the Angels/Flesh and Stone. River has just pretended in that story that she didn’t know she was having an adventure with her mom and dad. Next time I watch those episodes it may have a different feeling for me. That scene was a very well directed scene and well acted.
This is one of the most underwhelming stories since the show returned. At the end the question was Doctor Who with the emphasis on Who. Was that it? Was that what we were supposed to get excited about? Ultimately we have spent the last two years building up to this big moment and it never turned up. I think that Steven Moffat needs to do something new with the next series. Stop being focused with this convoluted story arc and do something that was fun and more importantly didn’t make me fell like I’d pissed away the last two years building up my hopes that we would get an epic finale but as I have said in the past with my references to Lost, this episode has kept that comparison because at the end of Lost you were just left going meh!
Overall this has been a mixed series. The idea to separate it into two blocks isn’t one that I am convinced about. No matter how much I think about I don’t think that it really served to the story. It’s reason was that everyone goes on holiday in the summer and so that last four or five episodes are victims of poor ratings, so I think that splitting it into two could be considered a success. At least as I write this (October 2, 2011) there are only 85 days until the Christmas Special (that’s assuming they broadcast it on Christmas Day).
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