The Bells of Saint John review [Steven Moffat]

Miss Kizlet is a businesswoman working at the skyline-dominating Shard. She has a client, a client who lives in the WiFi. A client who's hungry.

Clara Oswald doesn't know anything about computers. She calls a helpline. A helpline to the year 1207, where the Mad Monk sits meditating on the girl he watched die twice.

When and Where: London (again) in autumn 2013. The year comes from the official synopsis on iPlayer.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Actually, he's about to go on holiday. Kill him when he gets back. Let's not be unreasonable."
• "Also, your dad phoned. Mainly about the government, he seems very cross with them. I've got a few pages on that. I said I'd look into it."
• "Human souls trapped like flies in the World Wide Web. Stuck forever, crying out for help." / "Isn't that basically Twitter?"
• "Where are my mummy and daddy? They said they wouldn't be long. Are they coming back?"
• We were promised an urban thriller and, while we didn't really get it, we do get the very tense sequence where the lights around the Maitlands' house are all switched on whilst all others go out, telling a plane where to crash. It's an idea I haven't seen before and I really liked it.
  
  
• Richard E. Grant and Ian McKellen in the last episode and now Celia Imrie (and a Grant cameo). That's some stellar British talent we've got onboard. Miss Kizlet isn't the most memorable of villains - the script doesn't really allow her to be and we're never under the misconception that she's the one in charge here - but Imrie's performance is to be praised, as is Moffat for some of her lines. Her big moment, however, is her last, where she restores herself to how she was before the Great Intelligence involved itself in her life: a lost child. It's unexpected and heart-wrenching and could easily have been embarrassing and unconvincing in the hands of a weaker actress. If you trust The Doctor: His Lives and Times, then her parents left her at Russell Square station during the Intelligence's attack in The Web of Fear. 
• The Great Intelligence was Kizlet's client, wanting to increase his strength before The Name of the Doctor. It's good to see a recurring villain, especially one that isn't a big name like the Daleks, the Cybermen or the Master.
• Clara tracks down Kizlet by hacking her employees' webcams and finding their place of work through social media. It's an inspired idea.

 The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
  
• "Doctor who?" / "Do you know, I never realised how much I enjoy hearing that said out loud. Thank you."
• "Is it a snogging booth?"
• "Do you just crook your finger and people just jump in your snog box and fly away?"
• The episode is named after the ringing of the TARDIS phone, although I have no idea why. There are plenty of far better names that this episode could have been given relating to WiFi or the snatching of souls or something. The Bells of Saint John could apply to a number of episodes and is quite generic. The whole Cumbria 1207 thing is unnecessary anyway. In The Power of Three, the Doctor said that patience was for wimps and was completely unable to sit still in one place, as he was in Vincent and the Doctor. For some reason, though, he's chosen to sit in a 13th century monastery trying to "divine" the truth behind Clara. This is a proactive man who can't sit still - he should be out there looking rather than wasting time in a monk's robes achieving absolutely nothing.
• This is the third Oswald that we've met. We had the computer genius Oswin Oswald in Asylum of the Daleks, the governess-with-a-secret Miss Montague (AKA Clara Oswin Oswald) and here we meet a version in the modern day. As far as this episode goes, this Oswald is the most human. Oswin and Miss Montague were both fun and interesting characters but both were a little too perfect, Miss Montague in particular. Nothing really seemed to faze her too much and she took everything in her stride, although she had a great moment with the TARDIS key before she was pulled to her death. Oswin was better, having a wonderfully tear-jerking scene where she breaks down upon learning that she's a Dalek. Clara is somewhere inbetween, feeling more real than Miss Montague but failing to be as engaging as Oswin, nor does she feel like a real person like Rose, Martha, Donna or, to a lesser extent, Rory did.
  
• Series 7a went for big, blockbusting ideas whilst The Bells of Saint John is going for a genre, that genre being an urban thriller. Aside from the plane flying towards the Maitlands' street, I never got this vibe. There's some typing that goes on and the Doctor driving a motorbike up the Shard (which was silly) but it's pretty weak and definitely isn't James Bond as Moffat was going for.
• "Doctor who?" is a question that should never be answered. After Asylum of the Daleks, The Snowmen and now The Bells of Saint John, I'm thinking it should also never be asked. The scene is painful to watch, a waste of a good few seconds of screentime and isn't remotely clever or funny. It's indulgent.
• Kizlet uploads human souls into the WiFi where they're pulped and fed to the Great Intelligence. However, we've never been given any hint before that it fed on souls. In The Snowmen it wanted human form, in The Abominable Snowmen it wanted to spread across the world, in The Web of Fear it wanted the Doctor's body and in Downtime it again wanted physical form. Never has there been any implication that he feeds on human souls and nor is any reason given here for why he's suddenly on this diet. He says that it's made him become stronger, but that's all the explanation we get. 
• Clara trying to access the WiFi isn't cute or endearing. It's embarrassing and there's no way she's gotten to her age without knowing how to do it. Anyway, typing the wrong password does absolutely nothing unless you press enter and declaring the password to be wrong because she somehow managed to accidentally click the 4 instead of the 3 is stupid. It gives away the number of characters in the actual password. Why does she click on the evil WiFi anyway
• Keyboard battles are tricky to make tense and the Doctor and Alexei clickety-clacking away at their computers isn't very exciting. It looks like what it is: two people tapping keys whilst computery nonsense is typed across the screen.
• The Doctor doesn't take the TARDIS into battle? What a lie.
  

I'll Explain Later:

• Would everyone's response to being uploaded be to repeatedly say "I don't know where I am"? It wouldn't be mine.
• Why did the Doctor leave the TARDIS in a cave so far away from the monastery?
• Does the Doctor not care to find out who Miss Kizlet's client was?

This Reminds Me...:

• The Spoonheads are reminiscent of the Nodes in Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead.
• We saw the Tenth Doctor ride a motorbike in The Idiot's Lantern.
• The Doctor sent in a fake version of himself (in that case the Tesselecta) in The Wedding of River Song.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: A weak and insubstantial first half followed by a decent second half, The Bells of Saint John doesn't feel as though it's bringing anything new to the table and is definitely one of the weakest companion introductions. Clara is more human than Miss Montague, but is still rather closed-off and unknowable unlike Rose, Martha and Donna. This Clara and the Doctor have a chemistry that is (thankfully) lacking in the lust that we got in The Snowmen, although Moffat is still sexualising the Doctor, the TARDIS and the show at large. When the episode kicks in, it's rather good, with a great performance by Celia Imrie (even if her character was somewhat limited) and her creepy way of following the Doctor around by hacking people to speak through. The Bells of Saint John is okay and earns itself a C.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

The Snowmen  |  The Bells of Saint John  |  The Rings of Akhaten

The Snowmen review [Steven Moffat]

The Doctor has retired to a life of non-intervention in London 1892, assisted in his isolation by Vastra, Jenny and Strax. Then a new face approaches him, one that turns out not to be so new after all...

Snowmen are popping up around the city and inside a frozen pond grows an icy horror that the Great Intelligence has its designs on. 

When and Where: London, from the 23rd to the 25th December, 1892. A significant period has apparently passed for the Doctor since The Angels Take Manhattan. For Vastra, Jenny and Strax, it's been four years since A Good Man Goes to War. For the Great Intelligence, this is before The Abominable Snowmen.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Typical middle child of six million."
• "Is it one of your stories? Your definitely true ones?" / "Ha! All my stories are true." / "Like how you were born behind the clock face of Big Ben?" / "Accounting for my acute sense of time." / "And you invented fish." / "Because I dislike swimming alone." 
• "It's smaller on the outside."
• Moffat has chosen to make snowmen the monsters for this Christmas special, which is a gamble. If he can't justify them and explain them in an interesting way that makes sense in the Doctor Who universe then they're going to seem ridiculous. Fortunately, the explanation is one that makes sense. It's telepathic snow that can remember its previous forms and is being used by the Great Intelligence (a former-snowman who had the darkest of Dr Simeon's thoughts poured into it, granting it power and independence) to create an ice being that will give the Intelligence form and allow Dr Simeon to build an ice-army. 
  
• Clara being touched at being given a TARDIS key is a really sweet and emotional moment and has her showing more emotion in a few seconds than modern-day Clara will over the course of her run. It makes her shocking death all the more surprising and poignant, even if she isn't the first prospective companion to die. Speaking of: Moffat had the balls to kill a girl at Christmas. Davies did it with Astrid Peth, but she got a happy ending out of it and she wasn't nearly as endearing or engaging a character (nor was Kylie Minogue ever going to stay on for more than a Christmas special).
• The Great Intelligence is one of the more memorable villains from the black and white era, having appeared in The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear (two decent stories) and Downtime. It's fitting that the 50th year of Doctor Who should feature an old enemy and it's far more interesting for it to be a lesser-known but formidable one rather than the Daleks or something else we've seen dozens of times before. The Intelligence was never explained or explored in the classic series, leaving it practically begging for the origin story that it finally gets here. Ian McKellen does a great job of bringing the Intelligence to life with his menacing voice.
• Dr Simeon is an intimidating villain who Richard E. Grant plays as stoic and scowling for almost the entirety of the episode, which works. It makes his moment of vulnerability where he learns that his snowman was actually just reflecting his own personality back at him that much more powerful, leaving me wanting for more vulnerability and insight on Simeon's relationship with his snowman. It's sort of a reverse of Amy and the Doctor: Amy loses her friend, waits for his return and becomes a better person whilst Simeon stays with his friend and becomes a worse person because of it reflecting back his darkest dreams and impulses.
• The Doctor has had companions that he's had to leave behind, companions that left him and companions that died. He's sad for a time but quickly moves on, because that's who he is. He understands better than anyone that these things happen. However, after Rose died he spent all series 3 mourning for her because of how special she was to him and, here, the Doctor has full-on retired because of the loss of Rory and Amy. I began writing this for the next section where I was going to discuss how indulgent it is of the showrunner to paint the companion that they created as being so much more important to the Doctor than any of his previous ones, but then I realised that, for the Doctor, this is 300 years after The Eleventh Hour. He's known them for three centuries, so mourning does make sense.
  

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Over a thousand years of saving the universe, Strax, you know the one thing I learnt? The universe doesn't care." 
• "Spoken like a man!"
• Moffat seems to be incapable of writing a female companion who isn't obsessed with the Doctor and has unfounded faith in him. Clara's just met the man and gives chase after he leaves. Was it because of what he said about the snowman? She was a barmaid and has surely heard far more ludicrous things on the job than that. And just like Rose, Martha, Amy, River and Nefertiti, she has a thing for him, ogling him as he climbs the ladder. She gives him a snog and tells him that he likes her. The kiss adds nothing, means nothing and shouldn't be here. The Doctor can interact with females without it being so sexually-charged, Moffat.
• My only other complaint about Clara is that she's a little too perfect and wouldn't work as a long-term companion without some development. She takes things in her stride a little too easily.
• The universe doesn't care about the Doctor for his efforts? The Wedding of River Song said the exact opposite and we learnt in series 6 how famous the Doctor is (or was) across the universe. Since when has the Doctor ever asked for thanks, anyway? Didn't Martha say that he never asked to be thanked in Last of the Time Lords?
• So... the Great Intelligence was defeated because the mass of snow at the Latimers' was overpowered by the family's tears over Clara's death, meaning that the snow that the Great Intelligence existed as became tears. Why is the Intelligence so connected to the snow at the Latimers'? Why does it become tears? Why does this strip the Intelligence from Dr Simeon's body? The implication is that the snow is no longer mirroring Dr Simeon but the Latimers' tears, but hadn't the Intelligence become more than just a reflection of Dr Simeon by this time?
  
• Strax is funny but if the Sontarans are ever going to be a credible threat again he's made it very hard for the writer.
• The Sherlock Holmes thing isn't funny or clever.

I'll Explain Later:

• Why does the Doctor need a memory worm to erase Clara's memories? He managed to erase far more than an hour of Donna's memories without one.
• Did women give handshakes in 1892?
• What was the point of Dr Simeon's visit to Captain Latimer?

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor met Oswin Oswald in Asylum of the Daleks.
• The Intelligence used snowmen of a different kind in The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear.
• The Doctor has invited people to join him who've subsequently died before, like Lynda in Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: The Doctor has known and travelled with Amy and Rory for two and a half seasons and now it's time for a fresh start. He's uncharacteristically moody and not much fun to watch until Clara reawakens his sense of adventure, after which the episode properly begins. His new companion is a breath of fresh air after Amy (although she's too squeaky-clean and perfect) and her death is shocking and heart-breaking. The Intelligence's origin is presented although its relationship with Dr Simeon could have been explored more and the gimmicky snowmen are sufficiently justified. This is a very good episode and deserves an A.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

The Angels Take Manhattan  |  The Snowmen  |  The Bells of Saint John

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 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 Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone review [Steven Moffat]

"Didn't anyone every tell you there's one thing you never put in a trap? If you're smart, if you value your continued existence, if you have any plans about seeing tomorrow, there is one thing you never, ever put in a trap." - The Doctor

Answering a twelve-thousand year-old message from archaeologist Dr River Song, the Doctor and Amy Pond join an expedition into the site of a crashed space-liner; a Maze of the Dead filled with hundreds of statues and one very patient Weeping Angel.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
  
• "I didn't escape, sir. The angel killed me too."
• "I absolutely trust him." / "He's not some madman, then?" / "[Pause] I absolutely trust him."
• Whilst the Delirium Archive and the Doctor using museums to "keep score" aren't very interesting and the set too plain, the cold open of The Time of Angels is perhaps the best of series 5. We met Professor Song as a sort of "cool aunt" archaeologist in Silence in the Library and we return to her as Dr Song, a female James Bond who is more overtly sexual than in her old age. The sequence isn't entirely necessary to the story but is an exciting start to the episode, reintroducing us to River and in a light we didn't see much of in series 4. There are hints in the TARDIS of an almost Fourth/Romana I relationship between her and Eleventh, with River doing her environment check on the scanner and the Doctor simply poking his head outside.
• You would never have guessed that this was the first story of series 5 to be filmed given how comfortable Matt Smith seems to be in the role (especially given that he seems far more unsure in The Beast Below and Victory of the Daleks). He's given the chance to show off a wide range of emotion in Flesh and Stone. Where was all this certainty in Victory of the Daleks? He won't let River lie to Amy about her dying to make her feel better. Karen Gillan is fine as Amy.
• Why are the Daleks boring? Because so few new things have been tried out with them. Moffat avoids that pitfall and tells us plenty new things about the Weeping Angels, emphasising the fact that the angels we saw in Blink were starving scavengers. The Byzantium angel is the real deal. That which holds the image of an angel itself becomes an angel; you shouldn't look into an angel's eyes as it's the doorway to the soul; angels are able to communicate using the voices of the dead... These are all new powers that don't feel like they've come completely out of the blue, but instead make them more formidable and scary. 
• A Weeping Angel hiding out in a series of caves full of statues is a genius idea. The statues being angels themselves is even better. 
• Rather than continue giving us a glimpse of a crack in time at the end of every episode (as there was in The Beast Below and Victory of the Daleks) a crack becomes a significant part of the resolution to the plot and brings up more questions - like what's the significance of the date of Amy's wedding? Series 1 had the Bad Wolf meme; series 2 had Torchwood; series 3 had Mr Saxon; series 4 had the missing planets, the 2009 specials had "he will knock four times"... None of these really had much, if any, effect on the plot nor any exploration or answers given until the end of the series. Moffat has chosen to go further than that, having the mystery of the cracks revealed bit by bit. We know now that they were caused by an explosion, apparently on the day of Amy and Rory's wedding. This is a far more interesting take on a story arc than having to wait until the end of the series for any explanation.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "He thinks he's so hot when he does that." - River
• "Ooh, Doctor. You sonicked her." - Amy
• "I don't need you to die for me, Doctor. Do I look that clingy?" - Amy
• Amy stopping the angel by pausing the recording at just the right time was clever, but she's very self-satisfied and barely shaken immediately afterwards.
• "You're good," River tells Amy after she asks if she is the Doctor's wife. Is she really that good? It's obvious in the way she speaks to him and we the audience have already had major hints from Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, so complimenting Amy on her sharpness feels undeserved.
• "So you don't know who I am yet." Of course he doesn't. If the Doctor knew her then so would Amy.
• Iain Glen is a wonderful actor but, whether it's the acting or the script, Father Octavian doesn't make much of an impression. The clerics at least have function but Octavian is there to interact with the Doctor and River, yet he fails to interest.
• The final scene with Amy forcing herself on the Doctor is uncomfortable to watch and not remotely funny, especially when one considers what uproar there would have been if their genders had been reversed. Amy hasn't been the most engaging character since her debut in The Eleventh Hour, but here she proves that she isn't only a companion it's difficult to empathise with but also a morally corrupt individual. She's so undignified as to have a one night stand with a man she barely knows on the eve of her wedding, one of a number of cruel things she will do to her fiancé/husband in the course of her run. Perhaps like Gwen's affair with Owen in series 1 of Torchwood, this was supposed to show her feelings being stuck in a boring world and not being able to share her extraordinary adventures with anyone else. However, even if this was the intention it doesn't come off, with Amy not seeming to have any doubts in her mind. Wanting to get away from Rory in a moment of cold feet might make sense, but her wanting something that isn't "long-term" shows that this isn't the case.
• The fear factor with the angels is that you never see them move so, although a tense scene Amy's walk may be, it was never a good idea to show the Weeping Angels moving. 
  
• In the first part, we had the creepy Maze of the Dead and, whilst the revitalised angels aboard the Byzantium in the second part are threatening (at least until the Doctor escapes from them so easily) this episode lacks the same horror element.
• In Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, River played a considerable role. In this two-parter, however, she's somewhat superfluous. Yes, she followed the Byzantium and brought in the Doctor in the previous episode, but she had no real effect on the plot and no role in the resolution. She's something of a bookend, beginning the story in The Time of Angels with a superb scene that highlights her character and then ends Flesh and Stone by cryptically referring to events to come. Also, what happens to the sympathetic and comforting woman seen in the forest with Amy between here and the psychopath in The Husbands of River Song?
• The eeriness of the voice of one of the angels' victims speaking from beyond the grave through a walkie-talkie is one thing, but hearing the voice come from an angel is another. A far less eerie nother.

Stray Facts:

• River knows how to write Old High Gallifreyan. 
  

This Reminds Me...:

• The Tenth Doctor encountered the Weeping Angels in Blink. The Fifth Doctor fought them earlier still in Fallen Angels but already knew about them.
• The Doctor tells River that the TARDIS isn't a taxi service, something he said in his fifth incarnation to Adric in Earthshock.
• "You, me, handcuffs," River says. In Forest of the Dead the Tenth Doctor had been handcuffed whilst River sacrificed herself. "Must it always end like this."

I'll Explain Later:

• Do the Rani and the Master leave their breaks on as well? Their TARDISes make the same noise as the Doctor's during (de)materialisation.
• Surely if the clerics in the forest were wiped from existence, other clerics would have been sent in their stead? The cracks in time don't, strictly speaking, make much sense.

The Inquisitor's Verdict: Without a doubt the best story since The Eleventh Hour. Matt Smith is excellent and Alex Kingston makes a welcome return as a River Song just as good as in her debut. Amy is a loose end but the presence of River, the setting, the menace of the angels and the little twists and turns make up for her. The second episode in a two-parter always has the pressure of whether or not it can wrap the story that's been built up in a satisfying way and whether it can continue the quality of part one on the way. Flesh and Stone certainly does, being just as entertaining as The Time of Angels despite one or two missteps (the moving angels and lusty Amy). Overall, this two-parter has been a worthy successor to both Blink and, with respect to River, Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead. This is undoubtedly River's best story in the Moffat-era. A*

Doctor Who (Series 5)

Victory of the Daleks  |  The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone  |  The Vampires of Venice

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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