The 10th episode ‘Vincent and the Doctor’ was an episode I was really looking forward to. Some of my favorite Doctor Who episodes with David Tennant were the historical episodes. And after having been disappointed with this season’s 3rd episode ‘Victory of the Daleks’, I thought maybe two’s the charm. Continue reading
The eighth episode ‘The Hungry Earth’ was the first part to a two part story. The Doctor had promised Amy and Rory that he would take them to Rio, however they end up landing in a small welsh village in the year 2020.
In the village, Dr. Nasreen Chaudhry with the help of Tony is heading a drilling operation deep into the earth. They have recently achieved their goal of digging 21kms, the deepest anyone has ever dug. However their digging ends up disturbing a civilization of Silurians (homo reptilia), who had inhabited the earth before humans. They have been in hibernation beneath the earth for millions of years. The Silurians believe that the earth belongs to them and that the drilling was a form of attack by the humans. Hence they want to wipe out humanity and reclaim their land.
This episode started off great and seemed very promising however it ended up spiraling downward towards the end. The suspense surrounding the mysterious Silurians was what kept the episode going but after the appearance of one, the episode lost it’d intriguing factor. It was scary to think that a whole civilization of creatures that has lived in hibernation beneath the earth for millions of years, has access to technology way more advanced than its human counterparts in the present.
An interesting storyline in the episode was how Amy gets consumed into a hole by the Silurians while investigating holes in the mine with The Doctor. When she wakes up, she finds herself strapped to a standing surgical table next to Mo, Tony’s daughter Ambrose’s husband, who had earlier been consumed by a hole too. Although we don’t see her for much of the episode, Karen Gillan’s performance was great in whatever parts she was in.
Back on the ground, The Doctor and Rory are able to catch one of the three Silurians who had travelled up the drilling shaft. In a scuffle a bit earlier, Ambrose’s son Elliot had been captured and Tony had been struck with the venomous tongue of one of the Silurians. Upon capturing a Silurian named Alaya, who is a member of the warrior caste, the Doctor interrogates her and tries to negotiate with her, however she declares war.
As this was an Amy-lite episode, It was great to see more of The Doctor’s developing relationship with Rory as they haven’t always agreed in the past. Rory was angry with The Doctor in the start for failing to protect Amy however by the end of the episode you could see that even though they still had their differences, he trusted The Doctor.
The CGI and especially the makeup in the episode were fantastic. I really loved the look of the Silurians as even though they looked reptile like, they still resembled humans, thus making it easier to believe that a race like theirs had lived on earth before apes.
At the end of the episode, the Doctor along with Nasreen, decide to travel down the drilling shaft in order to work out a truce with the Silurians and prevent a war from taking place.
However when they arrive underground in the tardis, they realize that instead of a small group of Silurians they thought they would encounter, a whole civilization lives there, stretching for miles.
Although the pacing of the episode was good and helped maintain the tension, I’m hoping that the second part turns out to better and more fast paced.
The ninth episode ‘cold blood’ starts off with The Doctor and Nasreen getting captured by the Silurians. The Silurians become even more wary of the humans when The Doctor informs them of a branch of Silurians he had met earlier, who had been ultimately been killed by humans.
This episode was disappointing than the previous one. The episode’s pace was also a bit slow and nothing very interesting seemed to happen in it till the very end.
A great topic that the writers touched upon was how humans can be even more monstrous than monsters at times. This is a topic that I believe hasn’t been explored much in the past hence it was a good addition.
In the previous episode before going down to the Silurians, The Doctor had left Alaya in the care of Rory, Ambrose and Tony. He had strictly told them to make sure that no harm comes to her as keeping her alive may be the only way to get Mo, Amy and Elliot back from the other Silurians. However after being taunted by Alaya, Ambrose ends up killing her.
This creates problems for The Doctor who had managed to reach an agreement with the Silurians to let him and the others go back to the ground in exchange for Alaya.
Even though the Silurians might not be the most peaceful race and have many faults, I still felt disappointed with Ambrose for not being ‘the best of humanity’ and instead proving the Silurians right about their original assessment of humans.
As I had mentioned before, this episode had an interesting and shocking ending.
Just as the doctor, Amy, Rory, Ambrose, Mo and Elliot are escaping through the Tardis back to the ground, a crack appears. The Doctor reaches into the crack and pulls out an object which he wraps in a handkerchief. However before he can explain, Rory jumps in front of him and gets shot by Restac, Alaya’s sister. Rory dies and gets surrounded by the time field from the crack. This erases his existence from history and hence from the Amy’s mind. Amy tries to frantically hold on to his memory but not long after, she completely forgets him.
Karen Gillan’s performance as a distressed and hysterical Amy was one of the highlights of this episode and truly gut wrenching to watch.
Overall this episode was a decent conclusion to the previous episode with a few loose ends and unanswered questions which I hope the writers will address In the future.
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Note-
So I have exams coming up in less than 2 weeks. I have two more Doctor Who season 5 posts left which I’ll hopefully finish posting by around the 7th-8th of September. After that I won’t be posting any reviews for the rest of September. I might do a weekly book tag but no promises. However I will return with more reviews and other posts in October!
The weeping angels are back! And as creepy as ever!
The fourth episode ‘The Time of Angels’ (part1) saw the return of the terrifying weeping angels who had earlier appeared in season 3 episode ‘Blink’ (which according to most whovians is one of the best Doctor Who episodes) and River Song, a woman from The Doctor’s future who The Doctor seemed to have met for the first time last season. They keep meeting in the wrong chronological order. Hence in order to avoid ‘spoilers’, River carries a diary with her which, according to The Doctor, contains “her past, my future”.
In this episode, 12,000 years in the future, The Doctor and Amy are exploring the Delirium Archive, the final resting place of the headless monk. The Doctor spots a home box from the starship Byzantium from 12,000 years ago and informs Amy how it basically works like an airplane’s black box. He is fascinated by it as a message in Old High Gallifreyan is scrawled on it. The Doctor tells Amy that the message is for him. When Amy asks what the message says, he replies ‘Hello, sweetie’.
The Doctor and Amy steal the box and connect it to the tardis console and play it. The footage shows River in Byzantium. As guards prepare to shoot her, River says some temporal coordinates and requests an air corridor. The Doctor sets the tardis for River’s coordinates. The airlock in the starship opens and River floats out into space just as the tardis materializes. The Doctor opens the tardis door and River comes inside.
River asks The Doctor to follow Byzantium which ends up taking them to the planet Alfava Metraxis. She informs The Doctor that the Byzantium contains a weeping angel, essentially a statue which can move only when it is not being observed by others. She Calls Father Octavian and his clerics, who are orbiting, to help capture the dormant angel before it feeds on the radiation leaked from the spaceship and becomes too powerful.
This episode was a huge improvement from the previous two weaker episodes. It was thrilling and terrifying at the same time. The scene where Amy gets locked in the trailer where she, River and The Doctor had earlier been reviewing a four second loop of the angel in the Byzantium, and the angel starts coming closer and eventually out of the screen in the form of a hologram whenever Amy is not looking, was my one of my favorite scenes in the episode. That scene really brought out the petrifying nature of the weeping angels. I can safely say that they are one of my favorite Doctor Who villains.
The episode was well written and maintained a gripping and suspenseful pace throughout. I loved how The Doctor and River’s relationship was portrayed like that of an old married couple. Their bickering brought out some much needed humorous elements to the mostly tense episode. Matt Smith is turning out to be a great Doctor and Karen Gillan’s performance is improving every episode. I think I judged her too soon. Alex Kingston is also amazing as River Song and is slowly becoming a favorite character.
Another thing I liked about this episode was that they gave the Angels a voice in the form of Bob, a soldier who’s consciousness is being used by them to communicate with The Doctor. However the climax at the end was the true hero of the episode. While traveling in ‘The Maze of the Dead’ to find the weeping angel, which is basically like finding a needle in a haystack as it contains statues built by the two headed natives of the planet, The Doctor and River realize that all this time they failed to look at a vital clue staring at them right in the face.The statues in ‘The Maze of the Dead’ have only one head, whilst the natives of the planet had two which means that all this time they had actually been surrounded by weeping angels. They look back to see all the statues facing them and also realize that they have moved towards them.
To conclude, this episode was an impressive and great first part to a two part episode.
The fifth episode ‘Flesh and Stone’ (part 2) is a continuation of the previous episode. At the end of the previous episode The Doctor, Amy, River, Father Octavian and his clerics were trapped having realized that they were surrounded by weeping angels who were inching towards them. The basic premise of this episode (without spoiling too much since I’ve pretty much spoiled the previous episode) was The Doctor and the others attempt to escape the weeping angels through the wreckage of Byzantium. It also revealed more information about the time cracks shown in the previous episodes and the reason why Amy had no memory of the Dalek invasion in 2009.
Amy was also at the centre of a major plot line in this episode. The Doctor realizes that throughout their escape attempt Amy has been counting backwards from ten. In the previous episode she had also complained about something being stuck in her eye. Amy continues counting down, but denies doing so. After having a talk with angel Bob, The Doctor realizes that an angel is inside Amy from when she had looked at it directly in the eyes, even though she was repeatedly told not to do so, in the previous episode when she was in the trailer. When Amy reached the number two, The Doctor tells her to close her eyes and continue to keep them closed till the angel inside her has starved or else she will die. The Doctor, River and Octavian proceed to the primary flight deck, leaving Amy behind with the remaining clerics to protect her. However while waiting for rescue, the clerics start approaching a crack, like the one from the previous episodes, in order to investigate it and end up disappearing completely. While Amy remembers the missing clerics, the other clerics seem to suddenly have no memory of them. Amy is left alone. The doctor can’t come rescue her because of the weeping angels so he tells Amy to come to him.
That next scene was just riveting. Amy has to walk towards the primary control room with her eyes shut, while dodging the weeping angels and acting like she can see them in order to fool them. I loved how the scene was shot. It was effective in building up the tension and keeping me at the edge of my seat till Amy finally reached safety. Needless to say Karen Gillan’s performance really stood out in this episode.
We also see the angels actually move for the first time which I thought was a great addition. It added to their creepy persona. However their conversation with The Doctor towards the end of the episode made them sound a little stupid.
Although this episode was an exciting, action packed second part and had its iconic moments, it did not entirely live up to the previous episode which I thought was absolutely amazing. But is was a great conclusion to the two part episode.
‘Geronimo!’
The fifth season of Nuwho marked the departure of David Tennant as The Tenth Doctor and commenced with the debut of Matt Smith as The Eleventh Doctor. In this season the Doctor’s main companion is Amelia/Amy Pond.
The first episode ‘The Eleventh Hour’ was an introduction to the new characters along with a minor storyline. The regenerated Doctor is still getting used to his new body and the Tardis has suffered some major damage after the 10th Doctor’s regeneration.
In 1996, Amy, aged 7, had been praying to Santa to send someone to fix the frightening cracked wall in her room from which she could hear voices. Just as she finishes praying, the Tardis crashes outside her house making her believe that her prayer has been answered. I loved how they depicted the first meeting between Amy and the Doctor. The two found each other in a moment of loneliness, when each of them really needed someone like the other in their life.
The two of them bond and Amy takes the Doctor to the cracked wall In her room. He hears a voice from the other side of the wall saying that ‘prisoner zero’ has escaped. He realizes that prisoner zero probably escaped through the crack in Amy’s room. However before he can investigate, the cloister bell in the Tardis starts ringing. In order to stop the Tardis’s engines from failing, The Doctor decides to make a 5 minute trip into the future. Amy wants to go with him but he tells her it’s too dangerous right now and that he will come back for her in 5 minutes. Amy quickly packs a suitcase and eagerly awaits The Doctor’s return outside her house. However, instead of returning 5 minutes later, The Doctor ends up returning 12 years late! The scene when Amy continues waiting outside all packed and ready to go was quite heartbreaking to watch. Amy, an orphan who lives with her Aunt, had finally found someone who she felt like she could trust and who she sort of idealized. That person seemed to have broken his promise. Anyhow when The Doctor did return she didn’t recognize or trust him. All these years she was led to believe that The Doctor was some imaginary person who didn’t exist. She met with 4 psychiatrists because nobody believed her of The Doctor’s existence.
Matt Smith is quite charming and charismatic as The Doctor. He also seems to be more humorous, quirky and awkward than David Tennant’s Doctor. I really wasn’t sure if I’d like the 11th Doctor considering that there was a lot of pressure on him having followed in the footsteps of the fan favorite 10th Doctor, but he has passed all my expectations even though it’s only been 3 episodes. Although the 10th and 11th Doctors have similar personalities, you can see that Matt has been trying to make his own mark and stand out in his own way. Karan Gillan’s (Amy) acting is decent but I feel like she has a long way to go. Her facial expressions are quite the same and sometimes look a bit dull. Nonetheless, Karen Gillan and Matt Smith have great chemistry; too bad Amy’s engaged. Although I don’t think I would have wanted them to end up together because then it would have sort of been like history repeating itself (10th Doctor,Rose,Martha).
The graphics and CGI also seemed to have improved a bit from the previous seasons. Steven Moffet has done a pretty good job as the new head writer of the series. The first episode was engaging, interesting and well balanced. It was action packed but still had its light and humorous moments. All in all it was a great start to a new season.
However the second episode ‘The Beast Below’ turned out to be a bit boring even though its premise seemed to be very promising. It is Amy’s first proper adventure as The Doctor’s companion. The Doctor and Amy travel to the 33rd century to Starship UK, a vessel on which all citizens of the United Kingdom (except Scotland) live. They are searching for a new home since earth is being roasted by solar flares. However The Doctor feels that something about the vessel is not right so he decides to investigate.
In this episode we also finally catch a glimpse of the interiors of the newly remodelled Tardis. It looks much better than the previous Tardis and is a lot more colourful too! We also see some conflict in The Doctor and Amy’s relationship which I thought was a great addition because it shows that The Doctor/Companion relationship is not always perfect and they too don’t always get along. Also at the end of the episode we see another crack like the one in Amy’s room on the vessel.
Another episode with a great performance by Matt Smith. Karen Gillan also showed improvement. But this episode was one of the weaker ones and I actually found myself wanting the episode to end. I felt like there was just too much happening and the episode felt a bit scattered.
The third episode ‘Victory of the Daleks’ wasn’t much of an improvement. Like the previous episode, the promos and plot summary seemed promising however in the end it turned out to be a quite mundane. This episode marked the return of the Daleks. With only the last of them left, they are desperately trying to rebuild their race. The episode is set during the blitz in London. Winston Churchill had called The Doctor for help at the end of the previous episode so The Doctor and Amy head to assist him. Once The Doctor gets there he is bewildered to see the Daleks living under the disguise of being loyal creatures determined to help win the war. They were supposedly invented by Professor Bracewell, a Scottish man, as part of the Ironside project. The Doctor tries to explain to the prime minister and the others that the Daleks are aliens and were not invented by the professor but nobody seems to believe him. He even asks Amy to inform them of the 2009 Dalek invasion of Earth so that everyone believes the horrific things the Daleks can do but much to his surprise she has no memory of it. The Doctor is then on a mission to figure out why the Daleks do not seem to recognize him and what their greater master plan is.
In this episode we saw a change in the exteriors of the Daleks which have been redisgned into multi colored units. I’m not very happy with this change as now the Daleks look even less menacing then they are supposed to. Furthermore the episode felt a little rushed. Most episodes in Doctor Who involving the Daleks are two part episodes so I was a little surprised to see a standalone one. At the end of the episode we saw another shining crack in the wall behind where the Tardis stood so I’m guessing that the crack is going to have a bigger part in the next few episodes.
For those of you who haven’t ever watched Doctor Who and would like to watch it, here are some helpful links to get you started-
http://sarahbessey.com/beginners-guide-doctor-who/
http://screenrant.com/doctor-who-viewing-guide-episode-list/
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Some of you may be wondering why I decided to review the fifth season of Doctor Who considering it aired 5 years ago. The reason for this is that I actually started watching Doctor Who very recently. Since most of the new seasons for almost all TV shows don’t start airing until mid September, I decided to catch up on Doctor Who till then. I’ve been wanting to watch it for 3 years but I just didn’t know how to since it didn’t air in my country. However around June (I think) they started airing it right from series 1 (the reboot). So my next couple of posts are going to be centred around the fifth season of Doctor Who. My exams start soon so I’m not sure if I’ll also be reviewing season 6. But I hope you like my reviews and let me know what you think!
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