The Angels Take Manhattan review [Steven Moffat]

When Rory is sent back in time to New York 1938, the Doctor and Amy must overcome a mass of temporal-distortion to find him whilst he and Professor Song face the Weeping Angels. 

When and Where: New York in 2012 (for some reason - remember that Amy and Rory aren't from the year that this aired but from 2020 at the earliest) and 1938. For Amy and Rory, this must be after their ten-year anniversary visit to Cwmtaff in The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood. For River, this is after The Diary of River Song: Series 3 and just before The Husbands of River Song.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "I'm only human." / "That's exactly what they're thinking."
• "It means, Mr Grayle, just you wait until my husband gets home."
• Amy's choice has been a recurring theme during her tenure on the show. She waited for the Doctor and left with him on the night of her wedding, apparently falling for him a little and later trying to have sex with him a few feet from her wedding gown. She was, frankly, a terrible person and I maintain that series 5 Amy is one of the worst of the Doctor's companions. In Amy's Choice she finally made her decision between the Doctor and Rory, finding that she couldn't live without Rory and killing herself knowing that she would either wake up and be with Rory or die forever. Amy makes this choice twice more, firstly by again risking killing herself and then condemning herself to a life in 20th century New York to be with him.
  
• For enemies to remain interesting they have to have something new whenever they appear, or it quickly gets stale. In The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, we saw Angels at full-strength, killing people, speaking with the voices of the dead, emerging from video footage, effectively turning Amy into one of them... In this episode, we get baby Angels in the form of giggling cherubs, reminding us that - when unobserved - they are biological creatures that only turn to stone as a defence mechanism. They have children who grow and become Angels. They're creepy and we get a sense of them moving in the dark from their footsteps scurrying about, which we never get from the Angels. Additionally, we've gone back to the Angels' original M.O. of sending people back in time rather than the more generic killing that they did in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone. It's good that the thing that made them fresh hasn't been forgotten about and the idea of a farm where they send people further and further back to get more and more energy from them is a clever one, again giving us something new.
• River doesn't have a massive role to play and doesn't really need to be here, but her choosing to hide her broken wrist from the Doctor to protect him is awfully sweet. It's easy to forget that River is a woman who loves the Doctor. Not who lusts after him or flirts with him like most companions and female guest stars these days, but who genuinely has a deep affection for him. This attempt to cheer him up and protect him from the harsh reality if only for a time is a rare reminder that there's more to their relationship than double entendres and snogging.
  
• Is Sting's "Englishman in New York" a moment of perfection or is it too on the nose? I'm going to be nice and put it in this section.

The Valeyard's Case:

• The Statue of Liberty being an Angel is a ridiculous idea. Even worse, she's superfluous and the episode would have been no different without her. The great hulking Lady Liberty couldn't possibly get off her plinth and stomp around the city to Winter Quay without being seen. This is the city that never sleeps, after all - there are always eyes. It's a "wouldn't that be cool?" idea that should have been nixed from the script for its stupidness and irrelevance.
• It's strange that after getting so much closer to Amy and Rory this series that they feel so distant in their last appearance. Since series 5 (God, Amy was terrible), the pair have become living, breathing characters that we care for and feel a sense of closeness to, particularly after The Power of Three, but where are Amy's worries for Rory after he's sent back in time the first time? Why do they seem to care so little for River? The jump is a highlight but the two feel so far removed this episode.
  
• I spoke about it extensively in my review of The Power of Three, but this isn't the natural end to Amy and Rory's arc this season. They've struggled to choose between the Doctor and their lives on Earth and have grown increasingly attached to the latter. What was the point in all that if it comes to nothing? Their departure here is entirely unrelated to their journey in series 7a, which suggested that they would eventually choose to leave the Doctor to live on Earth rather than the Weeping Angels forcing their hand. This way is more shocking, of course, but it's not good storytelling. Rose's departure was satisfying because she had become so attached to the Tenth Doctor and was suddenly ripped away from him. Martha loved the Doctor and came to realise that she deserved better than to be the Doctor's rebound companion living in Rose's shadow. Donna spent series 4 becoming a better, more well-rounded person and this was snatched away from her when the Doctor was forced to remove her memories and cause her to lose who she had become. Amy and Rory were realising that they wanted to live ordinary lives with friends and jobs and this ending doesn't honour that at all.
• River was in this episode, of course, because it's Amy and Rory's departure and Moffat wanted to have her be there. The problem is that River and her parents have absolutely no relationship. River grew up with them as Mels, met them out of order so had to keep the fact that she was their daughter to herself, and as such this was the only episode where the three Ponds were together all aware of their relationship. There was the reveal at the end of A Good Man Goes to War and a brief scene of them in Amy and Rory's back-garden in The Wedding of River Song, but this is the first and last real time for us to see them together as a family. And there's nothing there. No chemistry, no relationship. Nothing. If somebody tuned in without having seen series 6, they would have had no idea that River and the Ponds were anything more than casual acquaintances without River them Dad and Mother. My solution to this would have been The Power of Three (yes, I do seem unable to stop bringing that episode up. I apologise). They could have had River drop by and choose to stay for the Long Invasion, giving us the time to see not only River and the Doctor living together in our everyday world but also letting us see River spending time developing a relationship with her parents. The Angels Take Manhattan did absolutely nothing for them and was more about River and her husband than River and her parents. A big mistake given that they're leaving and never returning.
  
• Amy and Rory get two endings in this episode. Firstly, Rory makes the brave and selfless decision to kill himself to wipe out the Angels and save New York, with Amy choosing to jump with him so that, whatever happened, they were in it together. This was the far more effective and emotional ending. They survive and arrive in the 2012 graveyard, where Rory gets sent back in time and Amy joins him. Both times, Amy is making her choice and choosing her husband but the second time has none of the poignancy that the first did. Perhaps Amy and Rory jumping and their status being ambiguous would have been a better ending since the graveyard scene added little more.
• The Doctor not being able to get Amy and Rory back has been criticised at length, so I won't focus too much on how little sense it makes. Here's a quote from Moffat explaining why the Doctor can't collect them:  "[...] in normal circumstances he might have gone back and said, ‘look we’ll just put a headstone up and we’ll just write the book’. But there is so much scar tissue, and the number of paradoxes that have already been inflicted on that nexus of timelines, that it will rip apart if you try to do one more thing. He has to leave it alone. Normally he could perform some surgery, this time too much surgery has already been performed." (Source) It's a rubbish explanation given that the Angel situation has been resolved and never happened. The Twelfth Doctor later returns to New York to "calm down" the time-distortions but... it's all sorted. Even if there is scar tissue around New York, the Doctor could just land in the next state over, hail a taxi and find them in no time. Or use a vortex manipulator. There's no real reason he could never see Amy and Rory again.
• River advises Amy not to let the Doctor see her age because he doesn't like endings. What a load of rubbish. 
  
• River slaps the Doctor. A wife should never slap her husband. Imagine the uproar there would have been if the Doctor slapped River. Spousal-slapping shouldn't be seen as something funny or acceptable and if the sexes were reversed it would be seen as abuse.

I'll Explain Later:

• The Williams grave lists Rory as "Rory Arthur Williams". Why isn't Amy listed as "Amelia Jessica Williams"? We learnt her middle name in The Beast Below.
• Why exactly won't River travel with the Doctor full-time? "One psychopath per TARDIS" isn't an answer.
• "That which holds the image of an Angel itself becomes an Angel." Surely the Angels should have overrun the country at the very least given the amount of photos and postcards featuring the Statue of Liberty.
• How come River and the Doctor both referred to the Angel in Mr Grayle's office as a she? 

This Reminds Me...:

• This is the second episode this series to begin with an American narrator.
• Mr Grayle's house is the same set as the Tyler house in Pete's world (Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel).
• Rory dies and comes back again. We've seen him die and return (or were led to believe that he was dead) in Amy's Choice, The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, The Curse of the Black Spot and The Doctor's Wife.
  

The Inquisitor's Judgement: I have a number of problems with Amy and Rory's swan song, the main one being that this isn't an organic end to their story. If I let that go, there's still the issue of the characters not being at their best in this episode and that they have absolutely no connection to their daughter, who's here not because the plot demands it but because her parents are leaving and she should be there. There are some nice ideas and the Amy/Rory suicide is a deeply touching sequence that could pull any heart-string. The Angels are well-handled and the noir-feel of the episode is immersive and consistent. Ignoring Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, series 7a has been a great half-series with three stellar (or near-stellar) episodes. It's unfortunate that it should end on a somewhat disappointing note. Still, The Angels Take Manhattan is a good story and earns itself a B.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

The Power of Three  |  The Angels Take Manhattan  |  The Snowmen

The Power of Three review [Chris Chibnall]

Amy and Rory awake to find that the world is littered with perfect cubes that have appeared overnight. It's an invasion. Of course it's an invasion. But why do they do absolutely nothing?

Previously on Doctor Who...: Not even remotely required to understand this episode, but Kate Stewart was first seen in Downtime, where she was living on a canal boat as a single mother with a son called Gordon. She had grown estranged from her father but reconnected after helping him and Sarah Jane Smith fight against a group of students controlled by the Great Intelligence.

When and Where: Don't ask when this takes place. Kate meets the Doctor for the first time but The Day of the Doctor takes place in 2013 (which we can work out thanks to Class) and this could only take place between 2016 and 2020. Bear with me here. Amy and Rory are married in June 2010, watch the Doctor die at Lake Silencio in April 2011 and travel with the Doctor before being returned after A Good Man Goes to War. They stay on Earth before rejoining the Doctor in Let's Kill Hitler at the end of summer 2011. In The God Complex, they are returned to Earth in April 2011 for some reason (which we know because we see them and a newspaper bearing the date in Closing Time). The Doctor visits them at Christmas two year later in The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe (making it December 2013, i.e. post-The Day of the Doctor). Pond Life takes place from April to August 2014 and then have their divorce almost finalised in Asylum of the Daleks. Divorce in the UK tends to take roughly ten months, so it's June 2015 at the very earliest given that they might not have started divorce proceedings immediately after Amy kicked Rory out. The pair return home and are picked up ten months later in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (making it April 2016 at the earliest), then return to Earth for a few more months (whilst Brian is abroad travelling) before A Town Called Mercy. This makes it June 2016 at least, although it was presumably more than two months. The Power of Three begins in July. This could be July 2016 or 2017. Perhaps even later, but given that Amy says that it's been ten years of travelling with the Doctor for them but not for the rest of the world, it's before 2020.

To conclude, The Power of Three takes place from July 2016-2017 at the earliest and July 2019-2020 at the latest. We have to assume that, for some reason, Kate is pretending not to know the Doctor to maintain the timeline or something. It's impossible to reconcile this with the Clara-era, because The Day of the Doctor was 2013 and Clara was dead by 2016 (which we know thanks to For Tonight We Might Die). Damn you, Class. Without the Class date, The Day of the Doctor could have been post-The Power of Three, but that would mean that Clara travelled with the Eleventh Doctor for at least four years, which clearly isn't the case.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
  
• "I want them vulnerable with a nice Achilles' heel."
• "What happened to the other people who travelled with you?" / "Uh... Some left me. Some got left behind. And some, not many, but some died. Not them, Brian. Never them."
• We've seen the Eleventh Doctor in an ordinary setting living an ordinary life before, in The Lodger and Closing Time. This is definitely the best of the three because it's not the selling-point of the episode. It's funny to see him trying to pass the time and it's sweet to see him try because he misses Amy and Rory.
• This is the first appearance of Kate Stewart since Downtime, this time played by Jemma Redgrave with a convincing dye-job. At the time of writing (between series 10 and 11) I find this to be Kate's best appearance. She's got a humility and vulnerability to her that's completely excised by Dark Water/Death in Heaven when she's delivering sassy dialogue about having the Doctor on the payroll and throwing Cyberman heads. She has a tender moment with the Doctor when they discuss the Brigadier and she's delightfully warm and chatty when they first meet. She loses these aspects and becomes a steely, stolid leader, which is the version we got in Extinction and the rest of UNIT: The New Series.
• In Asylum of the Daleks, Amy and Rory have been away from the Doctor for at least ten months and Amy says that she's missed life-or-death situations. In Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, another ten months have passed and, after the adventure, Amy asks the Doctor to come back for them in a few more months. The struggle between the two lives continues in A Town Called Mercy and comes to a head here, where the couple have started making long-term commitments and have started to lead and enjoy a normal life. It's been interesting to watch this little arc unfold and seems to be leading to the Ponds choosing to settle down and say goodbye to the Doctor once and for all. As Amy says, there was a time in her life when she needed the Doctor, but she doesn't anymore. They want to have friends and jobs and a normal life together. Unfortunately, the way that this arc concludes is in the section below.
  
• Series 5 (to a lesser extent), 6 and 7 have all been more cinematic and Hollywood than the Davies era was. The show under Moffat is less quintessentially British, which was part of his plan to gain traction with the US. In The Power of Three, we get a dose of Daviesness. There are the news reports and the appearances of British pop culture like Professor Brian Cox and Sir Alan Sugar. Even something like the Doctor playing on the Wii would never have fit in with series 6 or the past three episodes. Overall, I prefer the tone of the Davies era and I enjoy having the Eleventh Doctor and his companions exist in this sort of world.
• The Tenth Doctor's heart stopped working in The Unicorn and the Wasp. David Tennant gave an embarrassing and excessive performance in a scene that I truly despise. I like to think that Matt Smith saw it and made sure to do it so much better.
• I don't have much to say about Brian Williams, but he's an endearing character that (as I said in my review of Dinosaurs on a Spaceship) really should have been introduced sooner. He's nothing groundbreaking and is somewhat reminiscent of Wilf but he's played very well by Arthur Weasley. A shame it's his last appearance and that we never get any closure for him after Amy and Rory disappear.
  

The Valeyard's Case:

• I was so sure that this episode was going to score an A. (I'm reluctant to give an A* to anything but Heaven Sent. How amazing is Heaven Sent?) Then it got to the final ten minutes. The Shakri are uninteresting characters with an uninteresting motivation that might have worked in another episode, but not here where they're tacked onto the end. The cubes were such a great idea and I loved the rest of the episode, so it's a massive shame that the conclusion is so disappointing with the Doctor saving the day with his sonic screwdriver (but more on that below). Whoever it was that sent the cubes should have remained anonymous and unseen. After the cubes are made harmless, the Doctor should have theorised about why someone might have sent the cubes or if they even ended up here deliberately. It should have been ambiguous.
• Well, once again everybody lives. A third of the population is killed - a third! - and then the Doctor brings them back with a buzz of his screwdriver. It's bad enough that the amount of death that happened wasn't emphasised enough when it's even more than were killed in The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords, but to have them brought back in so mundane a way is very disappointing. Fewer people should have died and then Kate and the Doctor should have found a way to stop the signal and stop further people from dying. The dead would stay dead and the cubes made harmless.
  
• Amy and Rory have had their struggle juggling their two lives and are being increasingly magnetised towards their lives on Earth. The only thing keeping them from the lives that they now want is the Doctor, who decides at the end to leave them to their ordinary lives. It's a satisfying end to their little journey this season. But then Brian says that they shouldn't give up the Doctor and should travel with him and that their lives will still be here when they want to return. That's not satisfying at all and means that their journey has had no conclusion. They decide to continue travelling with the Doctor and return to Earth between adventures? That's what they've been doing all this time. This isn't a conclusion and is deeply unsatisfying, just like the marriage troubles plotline that existed only in the confines of Asylum of the Daleks.
• Amy writes travel articles for magazines now. What was the point in us being reminded of her modelling job from Closing Time in Asylum of the Daleks? Has this writing job been thrown in to make Summer Falls and Other Stories more believable?

I'll Explain Later:

• Was Brian really in the TARDIS for four days, without food, water or knowing where the toilet is?
  
• How could Rory tell that the man on the stretcher at the far end of the corridor was his dad?
• The bad guys just happened to pick the hospital that the Doctor's companion works at?
• Did we ever get an explanation for the hospital kidnappings?
• The Doctor mentions his hovering tin dog. Did he ever see K9 hover?
• What happened to the red berets? Were they too camp? I liked them.

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor tells Brian what happened to his previous companions.
• Some left him, like Ian, Barbara, Vicki, Steven, Dodo, Ben and Polly, Victoria, Liz, Jo, Harry, Leela, Romana, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough, Hannah Bartholomew, Erimem, Evelyn, Mel, Chris Cwej, Hex, Sally Morgan, Izzy, Fitz, Mary Shelley, Mickey and Martha.
• Some got left behind, like Susan, Sarah, Thomas Brewster, Flip, Bev Tarrant, Lysandra Aristedes, Charley, Jack, Rose (in a way) and Donna.
• Some died, like Katerina, Sara Kingdom, Oliver Harper, Joshua Douglas, Adric, Kamelion, Peri (sort of), Roz Forrester, Gemma Griffin, C'rizz, Lucie, Tamsin, Molly, Sheena (well, she was erased from time) and River. Clara is the next to die.
• In addition to this, we also get a mention of K9.
• The Doctor says that he hates not knowing things. The Twelfth Doctor will later agree with and then contradict this.
• The Doctor suffered the tediousness of living life in the slow lane in Vincent and the Doctor.
• We see the Doctor, Amy and Rory in Henry VIII's bedroom, where the Doctor said that Rory left his phone charger in A Town Called Mercy.
• As already mentioned, the Tenth Doctor had a heart stop working in The Unicorn and the Wasp.
  

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Flawless is a word that I could use to describe most of The Power of Three. I've never been a big fan of Amy and Rory but they've been pretty good in the buildup to their departure and its great to feel that we're growing closer to them by seeing them living their normal lives (even if their emotional arc was organically leading towards them choosing to leave). Kate Stewart isn't only a sweet nod to the Brigadier but a lovely character in her own right who doesn't have to be sassy to be a strong woman (although this does become the case) and provides the reinvention of UNIT that we need after having them be mostly faceless throughout New Who. Until the last ten minutes, The Power of Three was well on its way to earning an A*. Unfortunately, given the villain and the resolution this story can get no higher than an A.

Update: I can't do it. I'm giving it an A*, poor ending be damned.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

A Town Called Mercy  |  The Power of Three  |  The Angels Take Manhattan

A Town Called Mercy review [Toby Whithouse]

The Doctor, Amy and Rory land in the wild west where electricity is brand new (although ten year early), a gunman is at large (and he's a cyborg) and a doctor helps keep a community alive and well (but he caused the deaths of millions on his home planet).

When and Where: Amy asked the Doctor to come back for her and Rory a few months into their future, so this is presumably a number of months after Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Tea, but the strong stuff. Leave the bag in."
• "He shoots people's hats!?"
• "Two alien doctors! We're like buses."
• "His name's Susan and he wants you to respect his life choices."
• "Oi! Get out of it."
• The Doctor leaving Solomon to die seemed very uncharacteristic, particularly of the new series Doctors. In this episode, however, he has more of a reason to because giving Jex up to the Gunslinger will save lives in addition to avenging the millions whose deaths he caused, whilst nothing was to be gained from killing Solomon other than as retribution for a few thousand Silurians. Both are understandable but the latter is entirely un-Doctorlike and here his actions present a moral quandary and are challenged rather than just being accepted as they were in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.
• The Gunslinger is a villain that feels genuinely powerful and threatening, mostly because of his appearance, his gun design and how heavy he sounds when stomping around. We only see him kill two people (and one of them was accidental) but he still manages to be a domineering presence throughout the episode. Him getting a purpose and protecting the town is an unexpected but fitting ending to the story. His self-destruction would have been far less satisfying.
  
• Jex is an interesting parallel to the Doctor, both having committed atrocities during wartime and trying to make up for it afterwards by saving people. Interesting, then, that the Doctor's first instinct is to throw Jex to be killed by the Gunslinger.
• Matt Smith's performance in this episode is absolutely stellar: the comedy, the anger, the difficulty he had watching Jex's records... By the end of series 7 he's mostly a jumble of quirks, but this is the Eleventh Doctor at his absolute finest.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "You're a mother, aren't you?" Surely women can be kind without having had children.
• "The fact that I'm both bewilders you."
• I heard that Amy and Rory were leaving in The Angels Take Manhattan, but it seems that Rory's already left. He contributed very little to the plot and wasn't given the opportunity to explain more fully why he believed that Jex deserved to die.

This Reminds Me...:

• Amy confirms that she's a mother.
• The Doctor wore a stetson in The Impossible Astronaut.
• The Doctor mentions the victims of the Master and the Daleks.

This Doesn't Remind Me... even remotely of The Gunfighters. Thank God.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: A scary villain, an ethical dilemma and an excellent performance from Matt Smith make this an episode to remember. The Doctor doesn't often get to go through any real development, so it's good to see him learn a lesson. It's sort of like Boom Town with a budget and set to eleven, pun intended, and is a highlight of the Matt Smith era. This episode is a masterpiece, and that earns it an A*.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship  |  A Town Called Mercy  |  The Power of Three

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang review [Steven Moffat]

A Steven Moffat two-parter. We've had The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead and The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, which count amongst the very best of modern Doctor Who. How will this one compare?

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "You graffitied the oldest cliff-face in the universe." / "You wouldn't answer your phone."
• "What's it short for? Roranicus?"
• "Hi, honey. I'm home." / "And what sort of time do you call this?"
• "I'm River Song. Check your records again."
• "Where's the Dalek?" / "It died."
• "Not to you?" / "He doesn't really know me yet. Now he never will."
• We've seen the Eleventh Doctor foster a friendship with a little Scottish girl. We've seen him come to the rescue of Dr River Song and begin peace talks with Silurians and move in with Craig Owens. Now we get to see him take on something grander and potentially universe-ending and Matt Smith does a very good job as usual. He seemed to struggle a little early in the series, but by this point he's definitely the Doctor. The speech at Stonehenge is wonderfully delivered (even if I can't help but wonder why he's not shot to smithereens - they won't shoot him but will lock him up and leave him unguarded?).
  
• Dr Song isn't as interesting as she was in her previous appearances, but this episode doesn't focus very much on her so this is understandable. After showing the painting to the Doctor, she's just one of his companions who happens to be able to fly the TARDIS (somewhat like Nyssa in that regard), which isn't necessarily a bad thing - we don't need to spend every one of her appearances wondering who she is. There's no hint of the smugness that would come to overtake her character and which was visible to a much smaller degree in her first two stories. Her escape from the Stormcage is a good scene and the stick-figure being held at gunpoint is funny.
• Seeking to contend with the extraordinary opening of The Time of Angels, we get a teaser that sprawls space and time. It's nice to see people from across this series (Liz Ten, Churchill and that robot scientist guy, Vincent, River) and have all these disparate worlds and stories connect in a way. It doesn't feel like it but it's seven minutes long, teasing you with what the painting is.
• It's not quite as effective as Sarah crying over the imminent death of her adoptive son in The Stolen Earth, but the reactions of the Doctor, River and Amy to the threat of the Daleks gives the thought of them makes them seem so scary that you almost forget their neutering only earlier this series in Victory of the Daleks. The presence of the Daleks should never garner a reaction any less terrified than River's.
• Amy shows fear and sorrow and amiability and you might almost forget the smug and unknowable cheat that we travelled with for most of this series. Rory is back, as a Roman, and the scenes between the couple, as Rory struggles to make Amy remember him and then Amy tries to stop him from going Auton, are probably the best scenes of the two of them together. Unless seconded by Amy's Choice. Rory shooting her is tragic. The Big Bang is her best episode since Amy's Choice. She really was very good in this one, as a companion and in the scene where she remembers the Doctor at her reception.
   
• River in an exploding TARDIS; Amy's been shot; Rory's an Auton; the Doctor's been sealed in the Pandorica by the unholiest of alliances. What a way to end an episode. This is surely one of the best Doctor Who cliff-hangers.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "I hate good wizards in fairy-tales. They always turn out to be him."
• "She is to me!"
• "You absolutely definitely may kiss the bride."
• "We haven't even had a snog in the shrubbery yet."
• As can be seen in the first of the bad quotations, Moffat indulges in a little mythologising of the Doctor. It's something Russell T. Davies was very guilty of himself and it's always a bad thing. Can't he just be a madman with a box?
• The Doctor calls in the Romans to fight the Alliance. Putting those lives in danger, risking damage to the timeline with their deaths, is a strange choice for the Doctor to make, not to mention their lack of effectiveness against a million starships.
• The Cyberman beneath Stonehenge serves a purpose but doesn't make for a particularly gripping scene. Perhaps I've just been disillusioned with the Cybermen.
  
• Did anyone else guess that the Pandorica was the Doctor's prison? When he said about the prisoner dropping from the sky and messing up your world it seemed obvious.
• Up until the final five minutes, this was a great showing for Amy, then she goes and delivers the last two quotations above. Thanks for reminding us of the terrible life choices of Amy Pond on the night before her wedding. I was in danger of liking her.
• The Big Bang, whilst not hugely difficult to understand, is needlessly over-complicated with Moffat's trademark timey-wimeyness.
• The "1,894 years later" wasn't at all necessary. The viewers are surely clever enough to work this out the moment we hear little Amelia's voice.
• We met Jackie Tyler in Rose's first episode; Francine and the other Joneses in Martha's first episode; and Sylvia and Geoffrey Noble in Donna's. It's taken this long to finally meet Amy's aunt Sharon. Amy's lack of a family has retroactively become a plot point - there was no hint of anything being wrong with Amy's family life until the Doctor mentioned the size of the house in the previous episode - but the lack of a family to teach us more about her as a person has made her more difficult to warm to than her predecessors.
• What luck that Amelia touched the Pandorica! Exactly what was the Doctor going to do if she hadn't? Lured her there a second time?
  
• There couldn't have been a less satisfying way to deal with the Doctor's predicament at the end of The Pandorica Opens. After all the drama, the Doctor is released with the flick of a screwdriver given to Rory by... his freed future-self. No. It makes no sense.

Professor Who?: River can fly the TARDIS and was taught how to by the Doctor. She has met the Daleks before. She once dated an Auton who could swap heads. This was presumably before her imprisonment. She's scary enough that a Dalek asked for mercy after checking its records on her. She's married, and the Doctor will very soon find out who she is.

The Pandorica is Opening: The Pandorica was created by the Alliance from a snapshot of Amy's memories. It's a prison based on Pandora's box, built to contain the Doctor so that he can't fly the TARDIS, meaning that it will never blow up and cause the cracks in time. However, the Alliance was apparently unaware that Dr Song can fly the TARDIS as well and it's actually her who's flying it when it explodes.

The Universe is Cracked, Silence will Fall: The TARDIS was remotely controlled and blown up with River inside it in an attempted assassination of the Doctor, as it was assumed that he would be flying it. The Silence is still out there. The Doctor wonders why they drew the TARDIS to the date of the Williams-Pond wedding and why they blew it up.

I'll Explain Later:

• The Doctor knew about this cliff-face but is only now going to look at it? Coincidentally whilst he's travelling with the mother of the woman who wrote the message? Whilst in this incarnation? After he's met Vincent? Seems awfully lucky.
• How did the Alliance form? Daleks were willing to team up with Terileptils and Sontarans and Slitheen? The Cybermen were willing to team up with Draconians and Drahviins and Zygons? It shows how dangerous the threat of the TARDIS exploding is to all of existence, but it seems something that even Mance Rayder might struggle with organising.
• River's met the Daleks before? Why haven't Big Finish shown us her first encounter with them yet? Get on it.
• When River begs the Doctor to run, he asks where he could run to. Doesn't she have a vortex manipulator that could take them anywhere and anywhen?
• River identifies some ships as Slitheen. Shouldn't she have said Raxacoricofallapatorian?
• Rory is a Roman because he was taken from a snapshot of Amy's memories on the day of her wedding, but Rory ceased to exist and Amy doesn't remember him so how is this possible and how is there a photograph of him at Amy's?
• Don't the Cybermen chop people up before dumping their brains in a metal suit? How come there's a whole skull inside the Cyberman's head? Was Yvonne Hartman still blonde and beautiful when she took down her cyber-comrades for Queen and country?
• How did the Alliance know that the TARDIS was what caused the cracks in time?
• How did River know to give Amy her diary? She must have forgotten the Doctor as everyone else had. How can she even exist given that the Doctor's existence was the reason that she was born? How does her diary exist? The timey-wimeyness doesn't make much sense.
• If the universe has been restored, does that mean Amy and Rory remember the Daleks now? If so, why doesn't Bill Potts?
  

The Inquisitor's Judgement: The Pandorica Opens has a fantastic opening sequence and a very good ending and is undoubtedly the better episode of the two. Between these two points is a decent-enough episode, even if it isn't thrill-a-minute. There's certainly some empty space that could have used filling in order to make this a great episode. In The Big Bang, some questions are answered, some questions aren't. All in all, this second half wasn't great, being unnecessarily complicated by vortex manipulators and cracks in time and rules that don't make the least bit of sense. Amy, River and Rory were all decent, as was the Doctor, but this episode was just a bit too messy when its actual story could have been so much more streamlined. In conclusion, this two-parter altogether deserves a D.

Doctor Who (Series 5)

The Lodger  |  The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang  |  A Christmas Carol

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The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood review [Chris Chibnall]

It's Doctor Who and the Silurians with better costumes.

When and Where: The (fictional) Cwmtaff, Wales in 2020.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "No, you're really not, because I'm the last of my species and I know how it sits on my heart so don't insult me."
• The new Silurian design is beautiful. It's a big change from the classic series, of course, and almost unrecognisable as the same species, but the new look allows for more emotion and subtlety than a hulking rubber suit. Alaya's silhouette in the graveyard hunting a little boy is a very scary moment, as is her sneak attack on Ambrose.
• Given that Doctor Who has been filmed in Wales since Rose, it's a surprise that we haven't had a Welshy story since Blon tried to destroy the world from Cardiff Bay in Boom Town. This story begins with some lovely views of the Welsh countryside and the even lovelier sound of a Welsh accent on the BBC. The lush setting has to be praised. 
• Amy's being lovey-dovey with Rory and even wearing her engagement ring. She risks her life to save Tony. Amy's Choice did some good for her, it would appear, although she's still not perfect.
• It's important to keep giving the lead actor new facets of the Doctor to show, and Matt Smith perfectly plays the Doctor's sinking feeling when he realises he let Elliot go out into possible danger. His excitement and positivity about the potential alliance of humans and Silurians is nice to see and gets us really behind the idea of the two races sharing the Earth. Unfortunately, we're only in 2020 so we know it's not going to happen.
• Alaya's claim that either Rory, Tony or Ambrose will kill her and that she knows which it is builds some tension, although we know it'll be Ambrose. She had those weapons in the van, after all.
• The Silurian city looks pretty decent up close in Cold Blood. A lot better than the CGI we see at the end of The Hungry Earth.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Oi, don't diss the sonic!"
• "Did you just shush me? Did you just shush me!?"
• "Yeah. And stay out."
• "You never picked a lizard man's pocket?"
• "You're so clingy."
• "We're in the centre of the Earth and there are lizard men."
• Something about the dialogue or the acting has Matt Smith playing the Tenth Doctor rather than the Eleventh in some scenes, especially during his explanation of bio-programming.
• Whilst the Silurians are an interesting creation, there isn't really that much that can be done with them. Modern human technology awakens them and then the Silurians attack - it's difficult not to simply redo the unfortunately-titled Doctor Who and the Silurians short of a political, sensitively-handled, bold story about re-homing them on the surface. All we get with regards to this is the Doctor saying that owning Earth once doesn't give them automatic rights to it now. The story that the Silurians deserve went to the Zygons.
• Child actor Samuel Davies does a decent job as Elliot, but none of the guest characters are particularly engaging or interesting and the relationship between Tony and Nasreen fails to resonate.
• Amy acts as though she didn't just suffer a traumatic experience as Malohkeh prepared to perform a vivisection on her, becoming instantly cocky and carefree. So much for a renaissance for the character after Amy's Choice.
• "She's part of your gene chain," is the excuse given why Neve McIntosh plays both Restac and Alaya. Unfortunately, when you have one actress playing every female Silurian (don't forget Vastra still to come) it makes the Silurian race feel rather small and lacking in variety.
• The Fifth Doctor wore celery because of his allergy to certain gases in the praxis range and it would turn purple if exposed to any. The Doctor asking for celery here doesn't make much sense.
• The Doctor tells Restac that the humans attacked the Silurians in Doctor Who and the Silurians. That's a massive oversimplification that would only further increase and support Restac's hatred of humans.
• Rory dies again, with any shock there might have been lost given that he died only in the last story. Amy's reaction, whilst dramatic and well-acted, doesn't feel earnt given her lack of connection with him during this story.

The Master Plan: There's another crack of time in the Silurian city below Cwmtaff, from which the Doctor pull some "shrapnel" - a smouldering piece of the TARDIS.

This Reminds Me...:

• Everything reminds me of Doctor Who and the Silurians.
• Why does Amy forget about Rory? She remembered the clerics in Flesh and Stone but because Rory is part of her own history she won't remember him? What sense does that make?

The Inquisitor's Verdict: Series 5 has had a pretty good run since The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, but here is where it ends. There's not very much to be said about this story, except that the Silurians look pretty good and it's not one I'm likely to watch again. The pacing was very slow, the characters uninteresting and it's mostly stuff we've seen before. This poor two-parter might have made an adequate single episode with a few changes. All in all it fails to really explore the subject matter that it deals with and the resolution isn't satisfying. Amy's back to her smugness and now Rory, who brings out the best in her, is gone. The Silurians' mighty return has proven mightily disappointing. This story is very bad, and that earns it an E.

Doctor Who (Series 5)

Amy's Choice  |  The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood  |  Vincent and the Doctor

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship review [Chris Chibnall]

It's all there in the title.

When and Where: A Silurian ark. For Amy and Rory, this is ten months after Asylum of the Daleks. It's been quite some time for the Doctor as well.

The Doctor's Case:

• A time-travelling nurse who collects bits of medical technology from the future to help during his adventures. It's a shame we never got to see Rory as the main or sole companion because one throwaway line made him more interesting than he's ever been. It's easy to forget that he's a nurse and it's good to see him away from his wife, teamed up with the Doctor and his father. Amy was terrible in series 5 and improved dramatically with series 6, but it's nice to see her as such a pleasant person in the build-up to her leaving.
• We've had Jackie Tyler, Wilfred Mott, Sylvia Noble and (considerably less successfully) Francine Jones, but in Moffat's era we've been missing out on the companions' family members. Amy's parents were rewritten into reality in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang and we've not seen or heard anything of Augustus or Tabetha Pond since, nor Amy's aunt and legal guardian Sharon. At last, just as Amy and Rory are about to leave, we meet Rory's father Brian, who's something of a Hobbit in that he's a normal man with a few old-man quirks who opens his eyes to the wonder of adventure. Brian Williams would have been a great part of the series if we'd met him early on. We could have learnt of Rory's feelings towards Amy through him and had a connection to Earth's invasions... Still, better late than never.
• The dinosaurs are very impressive for a BBC TV series. They're used sparingly but always look great, even when the pterodactyls attacking the Doctor and the Williamses could have looked like Birdemic.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Dad, I'm thirty-one. I don't have a Christmas list anymore." / "I DO!"
• Ancient Egypt, the ISA, the African plains, London, a spaceship... Moffat first did the jumping thing in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, where it was fresh and new and exciting. Then we saw it in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, where it effectively drew together the previous stories of the series by having a number of previous guest stars return across space and time. Then we had Day of the Moon, where it was unnecessary but quite the spectacle. Now even the other writers have started doing it. It's become quite tiresome and is no longer the awe-inspiring thing it once was.
• The Doctor's never needed a gang before. How lucky he happened to bring one made up of the perfect people for the story of the week. Brian's needed to pilot the ship because he shares genes with Rory, Riddell is a game hunter who proves to be good at shooting dinosaurs and Nefertiti is valuable and allows Solomon to move the plot along by kidnapping her. Brian allows us to see a little more of Amy and Rory's life before they depart (and until now we've only seen Amy's parents and only briefly), but the other two are entirely unnecessary.
• Ever since the Eighth Doctor and Grace Holloway, the Doctor has become more and more a romantic character. He fell in love with Rose, slept with Queen Elizabeth I and kissed (or was kissed by) Reinette, Christina de Souza, River, Joan Redfern, Donna, the TARDIS (in Idris's body), Astrid Peth, Cassandra (in Rose's body), Martha, Captain Jack and Amy. With Moffat, he's become increasingly sexual a character and here we have Queen Nefertiti lusting for him and Riddell telling us of two disappointed dancers. It's gross. Not only is it gross, but it's pointless and does absolutely nothing for the character other than confirming Clara's later claim in The Bells of Saint John that the TARDIS is his snog box.
• It's ten months later for Amy and Rory and they're living as happily as ever, in which case the divorce drama from Asylum of the Daleks was not only forced but entirely inconsequential. There was absolutely no point to that subplot.
• Solomon deserved to die, yes, but the Doctor wouldn't really leave him there knowing he'd die. He's not a Dalek, after all. He's a man. 
• The robots aren't funny.

I'll Explain Later:

• The Doctor disagrees with Solomon selling dinosaurs but is friends with a man who hunts down and kills animals?
• Why ride the triceratops? Running would probably be quicker given how slowly it seems to move.
• If the Silurians had space-travel technology as advanced as the ark, why are there small pockets of Silurians still on Earth? Why didn't they all take to the skies to wait it out?

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor had an adventure with dinosaurs in his third incarnation (Invasion of the Dinosaurs).
• Amy and Rory met Silurians early on in their travels (The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood)

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship is one of the worst Doctor Who story titles around and, whilst it's not the worst Doctor Who story, it's not very good. Nothing really lands - the robots aren't funny, Nefertiti and Riddell feel like they've both been cut from another episode so they decided to get it on this one, and Solomon is a villain who's become retroactively memorable because he's played by David Bradley (AKA, the third First Doctor). The plot isn't incompetent but it's just not very good and a big step down from Asylum of the Daleks. This episode is very bad and that earns it an E.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

Asylum of the Daleks  |  Dinosaurs on a Spaceship  |  A Town Called Mercy

Asylum of the Daleks review [Steven Moffat]

What can the Daleks do when faced with a task so terrifying that they won't dare attempt it themselves? They call the Doctor.

When and Where: The Dalek Asylum at an unknown time.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "You think hatred is beautiful." / "Perhaps that is why we have never been able to kill you."
• The main villains of this story are the insane Daleks, but the far more successful foes are the latest addition to the Dalek mythos - the puppets. The idea of Daleks mutilating a dead body without respect and turning it into a mindless drone is a gruesome idea and a frightening one given that anybody could be one without even knowing it. Why an eyestalk is needed I'm not sure but it can't be denied that it's a scary image, far more than the Robomen of The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
• Oswin Oswald proves to be an exceptionally good character that, even if Jenna Coleman didn't return, would prove memorable. She's a technological marvel and a certified genius who boarded the Alaska as junior entertainment manager so that she could see the wonders of the universe, asking the Doctor at the end to take her to see the stars. A shame, then, that she's a Dalek. In a shocking twist that I didn't see coming, Oswin was a Dalek the whole time. It makes for a tragic turn for the confident and cheery character and makes for the best sequence of the story where Oswin realises that she's no longer human. The episode's gain is the show's loss because Oswin is far more interesting and engaging than the vacuum that will fill the role of companion by the name of Clara Oswald. Had Oswin joined, we could have had a relationship similar to Second and Zoe or Fourth and Romana - two geniuses travelling the universe and butting heads. There's nothing more for the show to say about Amy and Rory, but a wealth to be gained from an adventure-deprived genius entertainment manager from the future.
  
• The Daleks haven't been scary since... probably Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, with the reason being that nobody acts as though they're frightening. The biggest offender by this point is Victory of the Daleks, in which neither the Doctor nor Amy fear them. They don't even seem to take them seriously. In this story, we get to see the Doctor scared of them again, yelling with his back to a locked door as Dalek suckers approach him.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Don't be fair to the Daleks when they're firing me at a planet."
• "Doctor... who? Doctor... who? Doctor... who?"
• The Doctor is told by the Dalek puppet at the beginning that her daughter is in a Dalek camp and that she arranged her meeting with the Doctor because the best way of getting him to help was to intrigue him. Firstly, the Doctor shows absolutely no signs of caring about her daughter or expressing any disgust at the Dalek camps like any of his predecessors would. Secondly, the Doctor shouldn't have to be intrigued in order to help someone. Sherlock Holmes, yes, but not the Doctor.
• The Parliament of the Daleks isn't just stupid. It's unnecessary, which is the worst kind of stupid. Daleks aren't a parliamentary race and nor would they elect a Prime Minister given that they don't have any individual identities. The story could have been about the Doctor, Amy and Rory landing on the asylum and trying to get back to the TARDIS - cutting out the Parliament doesn't change the plot in any way at all. The Prime Minister being a thoroughly unconvincing rubber prop doesn't help, especially not when Metaltron from series 1 looked so much better.
  
• Series 5 was about Amy's cold feet before realising that she truly did want to marry Rory, who always doted on her. Series 6 has the married couple have a child that they look for and learn that they raised all along thanks to time travel. Now Amy and Rory are a signature away from divorce and the break-up happened off-screen between seasons? It doesn't make any sense and, even worse, it has absolutely no lasting effects. The two would have had a good exit being left with a new house in The God Complex by the Doctor to keep them safe, or after learning from River that the Doctor is alive in The Wedding of River Song. Perhaps even after sharing Christmas dinner with the Doctor in The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe. The pair are outstaying their welcome at this point with absolutely nowhere new to go with these characters. Oh, and their marriage troubles which led them to divorce are resolved with one short conversation mid-episode.

I'll Explain Later:

• How is Skaro back? The Doctor destroyed it in Remembrance of the Daleks.
• The episode is called Asylum of the Daleks, but what separates the committed Daleks from the usual ones? They don't seem any more insane than those on the spaceship.
• The only way to disable the shields of the asylum planet is actually in the asylum? How daft is that?
  

This Reminds Me...:

• The intensive care Daleks come from Spiridon (Planet of the Daleks), Kembel (The Daleks' Master Plan), Aridius (The Chase), Vulcan (The Power of the Daleks) and Exxilon (Death to the Daleks).
• The Daleks turned humans into Daleks in Revelation of the Daleks and Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Asylum of the Daleks has faults. If Amy and Rory are going to have marital troubles, we should see them happen, not be reintroduced to them signing the divorce papers and then making up half an hour later. However, this episode is probably the best since The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon and was actually far better than I remember it being. Dalek Parliaments aside, the Daleks are for the most part scary once again and we have an engaging guest character who turns out to be a Dalek. Throw in some decomposed bodies with Dalek eyestalks and what more could you want from a Dalek story? A little daft in places, yes, but this episode is very good and earns itself an A.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe  |  Asylum of the Daleks  |  Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

A Christmas Carol review [Steven Moffat]

On Christmas Eve, the Doctor must convince resident miser Kazran Sardick to save a crashing spaceship with 4,003 people aboard, Amy and Rory Williams amongst them. How best to do this? Why, rewriting his entire life's history, of course.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Where's Mrs Mantovani?" / "Ah, you'll never guess. Clever old Mrs Manto. She only went and won the lottery." / "There isn't any lottery." / "I know! What a woman!"
• The title and Michael Gambon's obvious Scrooge that we meet at the beginning of the episode ("I despise Christmas") together set up a predictable and cliche Christmas special with the Doctor time-travelling around with a humbug showing him the error of his ways before he decides he loves Christmas. Fortunately, this isn't what we got. Kazran's not a complete Scrooge, having some small degree of decency that the Doctor spots and which prompts him to build Kazran into a better man to save a crashing space-ship.
  
• Kazran quickly turns out to be a far more interesting character than first expected, with all three of his actors doing superb work. Here's hoping for an Eleventh and Kazran Big Finish box set.
• The fish sound ridiculous but watching the episode they make sense. They're an obvious way to try to weave Katherine Jenkins's voice into the episode somehow but they're still a nice idea.
• The Doctor serving as the Ghost of Christmas Past is the best sequence of the episode, where we explore Kazran and follow his growing affections for Abigail. More interesting, though, is his transformation from a sweet boy to a love-struck young man to a bitter miser, even if the reason behind Abigail's countdown is obvious. Amy as the Ghost of Christmas Present is fine, although we don't have any real emotional connection to anyone on the ship but perhaps her and Rory. The Ghost of Christmas Future, however, turns out to be Kazran himself, who angrily goes to strike his past-self before remembering his father.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Father Christmas. Santa Claus. Or, as I've always known him, Jeff."
• In The Aztecs (a great story) Barbara decides to end the religion of the Sun God to protect the culture from the landing of Cortez. The Doctor says to her, "But you can't rewrite history! Not one line!" Yet here the Doctor does so, rewriting most of Kazran's biography, in fact. Not only is he going against what he said and has, more often than not, stood by but in changing the course of this man's life he's playing God. The Time Lord Victorious.
• Surely given that the Doctor is rewriting time, reality should be changing rather than old Mr Sardick remembering new things and being aware of temporal changes (e.g. the painting of his father being replaced by and then replacing one of Abigail).
• Kazran starts off as a very nasty man, yes, but his willingness to let 4,003 people die without so much as a thought does come across as cartoonish and moustache-twirling. We know that he's a bad guy but it makes him somewhat difficult to buy into.
• The Doctor learns that the Sardicks have amassed a collection of people as insurance and does nothing. He doesn't bring up how people aren't a commodity or that the lives of these people have been put on hold whilst their families suffer their absence. He doesn't release any of them but Abigail. Any other Doctor would have been disgusted by what they'd seen and freed everyone.
• There doesn't feel like there's much of a threat in this episode with regards to the crashing space-ship. We're told that there are more than 4,000 people aboard but all we see is the cockpit with Amy, Rory and a small handful of crew members. A sweeping shot or two of the people inside the ship might have helped as it feels so small.
• Katherine Jenkins's performance is fine but Abigail Pettigrew isn't much of a character. Perhaps Moffat deliberately underwrote Abigail to avoid giving Katherine Jenkins too much material given that it's her first acting job. She's happy to spend the last few days of her life with two strangers than to return to her family. Why?
  

I'll Explain Later:

• Abigail is dying. Is she really that useful as insurance when she has only a week to live?
• What space disease does Abigail have that shows no symptoms up until the very day she dies?
• Hopefully the delta wave in the fog caused by Abigail's voice isn't the same kind of delta wave the Ninth Doctor planned to use to destroy Earth in Bad Wolf.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Overall, this is a flawed but decent Christmas special - probably amongst the best of the festive specials. Occasionally the Doctor's fast-talking quirkiness irritates and Abigail isn't a fully-formed character, but the character of Kazran manages to make A Christmas Carol a touching story that avoids most of the cliches derived from its source material. B

Doctor Who (Series 6)

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang  |  A Christmas Carol  |  The Impossible Astronaut

Amy's Choice review [Simon Nye]

A quiet life in a small English village where everybody knows everybody and where people live well into their nineties. A husband with a ponytail who works as a doctor. A baby on the way.

A dangerous life in the TARDIS with the threat of destruction by a cold star. A time capsule, freezing and dead. Excitement and risk.

Rory Williams.

The Doctor.

Amy's choice.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation Basically Every Funny Line in the Episode:
• "A lot of people here live into their nineties." / "Well, don't let that get you down."
• "So, what do you do here to stave off the, you know, self-harm?"
• "Ask me what happens if you die in reality." / "What happens?" / "You die, stupid. That's why it's called reality."
• "Now, let's address the elephant in the room." / "I have to be this size. I'm delivering a baby."
• "Whack her!"
• "If we're going to die, let's die looking like a Peruvian folk band."
• [Rory cuts off his ponytail. Amy clasps her hand over her mouth] "I was starting to like it."
• Amy began as a bland companion. There wasn't very much to her and she walked around alien locations without much believable amazement beyond a little babbling, and then Flesh and Stone happened and she became actively unlikeable, forcing herself on the Doctor without regard for Rory. Then she showed absolutely no remorse for her actions in The Vampires of Venice and the show tries to retcon her urge for casual sex on her wedding night into a kiss of relief after surviving the Weeping Angels. How could the show possibly redeem her? Simon Nye somehow manages this, making her a likeable, believable, layered and conflicted character for the first time. She says she's chosen Rory but doesn't seem to want the quiet life in Upper Leadworth. She wonders why she would give up adventures in the TARDIS for that life - the answer, as we learn, is for Rory.
• Rory's stag in The Vampires of Venice was embarrassingly unfunny, but in this episode everything lands. The funny lines above under "A Good Quotation", the quick pan down as the Doctor prepares to catch Amy's baby outside the castle, Amy's mistaken bouts of labour. Amy's Choice manages to be a very funny episode (the Doctor does shove an old woman off of a porch roof with a table lamp, after all), although it's easy to forget given all the drama.
• The first of Rory's numerous deaths is a touching one, where Amy's disillusion with the Doctor ("what's the point of you?") and sorrow for Rory's death finally make her realise what she really wants. She didn't care much for getting married to him, running away on the eve of her wedding with a mysterious and handsome stranger she'd idolised since childhood, trying to have no-strings-attached sex with him in her bed (where she and Rory have no doubt done the deed in the past), not even bothering to apologise to Rory and acting as though it was no big deal, having Rory join her and the Doctor and putting off their wedding as long as they want to... But now, faced with a world where she's lost him, she's at long last able to see how important he was to her. Given how devoted to her he was, she probably never thought he would leave her regardless of what she did, but now he's been taken from her and she can't live without him.

The Valeyard's Case:

• Psychic pollen? What a dull, wave-of-the-hand explanation. Perhaps if it had been set up earlier in the episode it might not have seemed such a poorly executed idea.
• Both worlds being a dream might not have been obvious, but did anyone really think Leadworth was the real world? The last episode had Rory join the Doctor and Amy in the TARDIS where it's eternally the night before their wedding, which the Doctor found out will be the date that the cracks in time begin so the wedding will obviously be a big deal, so to skip ahead five years would make no sense.
• "Are we disagreeing or competing?" the Doctor asks. Why would the Doctor be competing for Amy? He spent the last episode trying to get the two of them back together so it makes no sense for him to claim that he and Rory are competing over her.
• Couldn't we have gotten an effects shot for the TARDIS blowing up, like we would later get in Twice Upon a Time? That would have been awesome.

The Master Plan: No sightings of the cracks in time, but the Eknodine in the Leadworth dream claim that they were driven away from their home planet, similar to how the Calvierris fled Saturnyne in The Vampires of Venice. Strange, though, that none of this fits with the Silence's M.O.

I'll Explain Later:

• How was the Doctor suddenly able to resist the call of the birdsong in the butcher's?
• Did Amy and the Doctor drive fast enough to die in that crash?

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor suggests that the dream (or "psychic episode") might have been induced by jumping a time track, which happened for his first incarnation, Vicki, Ian and Barbara in The Space Museum, although what a time track is has never (for the reviewer) been properly explained.
• The Dream Lord jokes about how he bets the Doctor is a vegetarian. The Sixth Doctor vowed to be a vegetarian at the end of The Two Doctors, but then the same incarnation indulged in Sil's minnow delicacy in Mindwarp (although the Matrix might have been lying or the Doctor's behaviour was changed by Crozier's therapy, depending on who you ask). The Ninth Doctor later ate steak in Boom Town, the Tenth ate a hot dog in The Age of Steel and the Eleventh ate fish fingers in The Eleventh Hour. In Toby Hadoke's Who's Round 54 (which can be downloaded for free here), Russell T Davies says that he had Ninth eat steak rather than a vegetarian meal to avoid Boom Town being too preachy given the subject matter of the episode. (This will probably end up on Boom Town's review page too.)
• The Doctor prepares to catch Amy's baby when she thinks she's going into labour. The Seventh Doctor previously helped deliver Raine Creevy in Thin Ice (his first time as a midwife) and delivered another in The Settling.
• The Dream Lord mentions the Tenth Doctor's relationship with Queen Elizabeth I, first hinted at in The Shakespeare Code and finally explained in The Day of the Doctor.
  

The Inquisitor's Verdict: Not a traditional episode by any means and oddly forgettable despite the excellent dialogue and character work with the previously impossibly distant Amy Pond, Amy's Choice is a good episode with a number of very funny moments which don't interrupt the plot. It's perhaps not the most exciting episode and the budget does seem relatively small, but the redemption of Amy Pond and touching on the Doctor's self-hatred (which curiously hasn't been much of an issue since) more than make up for this. Bring back Simon Nye. B

Doctor Who (Series 5)

The Vampires of Venice  |  Amy's Choice  |  The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood