The Time of Angels begins with River Song getting sucked into space and being rescued by the Doctor, who received a message from her 12,000 years in the future. This is important, as it is the first of our "epic entrances".
Honestly, I don't have it in me today to write a synopsis of this episode. Though, if you're reading this blog and you haven't seen this series, then you must be really confused.
Repeat ideas:
1) Moffat's Series 3 episode was Blink. The Weeping Angels are one of the most terrifying creations ever. They were fantastic the first time around, but I don't think we need to see them again. They're not exactly a super villain like the Cybermen or the Daleks (although I think we've seen way too much of them). We especially didn't need to see them in the fourth episode; their appearance just tells me that either Moffat has run out of ideas, or he is only pulling out the Angels because they were such a hit the first time around.
2) Moffat also repeats the same gimmick that he used - brilliantly - in Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead; the deceased person communicating through some kind of device. In Silence in the Library, it was the astronauts' communication devices. While the communication was mostly just repeating the same thought over and over, they were able to kind of communicate while the person was "ghosting". In The Time of Angels, the angel communicated using the deceased cleric Bob's voice through the walkie talkie. It just seems tired to repeat another very similar idea. It really makes me doubt how many original storylines and plot devices Moffat is capable of coming up with.
Dislikes
1) Amy is too familiar with the Doctor and doesn't seem to take him seriously. There are shades of Donna Noble in her, and my biggest problem with Donna was how flippant she could be. It must be a ginger trait.
2) Amy pouts when she's not the center of attention. At one point she says something like, "doesn't anyone need me? For anything?"
3) I really hate how River knows soooo much more than the Doctor. It was cute the first time, we don't need to be hit over the head with it over and over and over. She is just so smarmy.
4) The Angels weren't as scary now as they were before. I don't know if it's the editing or what, but I didn't feel terrified at all during this episode. The original story, Blink, still gives me the heebie jeebies, but The Time of Angels? Yawn. It's very reminiscent of the Daleks and Cybermen. The first time you see them, they're petrifying. But after a while, you become desensitized.
5) The entire idea of the Doctor "keeping score" in the museum seems like such a stretch. I wonder if it's some kind of reference to an earlier Doctor.
Likes
1) When Amy thinks her hand has turned to stone, the Doctor bites her. It was totally out of character, but I did love something about that.
2) When the Doctor tells Amy not to blink, she closes only one eye at a time. Brilliant!
3) Amy freezes the tape on static, thus getting rid of the Angel. I'm still a little confused as to why that worked, but I did think it was very smart of her.
Today's wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey palette-cleanser. Enjoy!
Showing posts with label series 5. Show all posts
Showing posts with label series 5. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
S5 Episode 2: The Beast Below
The second episode of Matt Smith's Doctor is The Beast Below. Here's a sixth-grade synopsis of the plot:
The Doctor and Amy arrive on the Starship UK, whose residents have left the uninhabitable Earth to find a new planet. There are scary robot-clown "Smilers" who send children to the beast. Amy follows a little girl and finds a huge tentacle-thing sticking out of one of the streets. She is captured by some monk-looking thugs who take her to a voting booth. She learns "the truth", then is allowed to make a choice - FORGET or PROTEST. She chooses FORGET.
Meanwhile, the Doctor puts a glass of water on the floor and notices that there are no ripples in the water, which means that there are no engines running. He is then taken by monks to meet Liz 10. Her whole chamber is filled with glasses of water.
The Doctor then finds Amy, who had somehow managed to record a video saying to get the Doctor off the ship. The Doctor shows up and sees the video, and he chooses PROTEST. He and Amy land in the throat of a giant animal.
Liz 10 and the little girl rescue the Doctor and Amy. It turns out that Liz 10 is Queen Elizabeth the 10th.
So it turns out that the thing that everyone keeps choosing to forget is that the ship is on the back of a star whale, and they have hooked up electrodes to its brain to make it go faster. The creature is being tortured, but they are are afraid that if they release the whale, the ship will be torn apart and everyone will die.
The reason that Amy chose to forget about the whale was because she didn't want the Doctor to have to choose between the whale and the British people
The Doctor flies into a rage, and he decides to make the whale braindead, so that it will continue on through space but not feel the pain. Just then, Mandy's friend (who earlier in the episode we thought had been eaten by the monster) shows up unharmed, and Mandy affectionately pets one of the giant tentacles. See, it turns out that the star whale doesn't eat children, it only eats adults, and apparently the children are just enslaved or something.
Luckily, Amy brilliantly figures out that the star whale had volunteered because the children were crying (I think Liz 10 meant metaphorically, but whatever), because she sees a similarity between the star whale and the Doctor (both are the last of their kind). To me, this was a huge stretch, but the Doctor frees the whale and they actually speed up!
Things that are ridiculous:
1) Liz 10. Not only was she a boring, classless character, it turns out she was hundreds of years old. No one questioned how that happened? All I have to say is someone who acts as ghetto as Liz 10 acted has no business being Queen. Plus, the fact that she seems extremely stupid is disheartening.
2) About twenty seconds after explaining that the whale volunteered, Amy had to repeat the idea to drive home the fact that she was comparing the star whale to the Doctor. Yeah. We get it.
3) HOW did Amy record the video? How did she figure out how to use the equipment? Why is that feature even possible? (Also, the "forgetting" and "recording" thing is something to remember for Series 6.)
3a) Why did Amy make that decision? We as viewers know it would be a tough decision for him to make, but how would she know that? She knows nothing about him, why would she take matters into her own hands?
4) The Doctor choosing to make the star whale brain dead. I felt he acted so out of character. He didn't even try to find a different solution, he just thought about it for about five seconds, threw a temper tantrum, and then decided to fry the poor thing. What?
5) They never explained why the whale doesn't eat children. How it can tell the difference between child and adult when a hunk of meat is simply dropped into its esophagus is beyond me. And why are the children enslaved then? I assume that the monks are in charge of that, but what happens when they become adults? Do they just get chucked back into the mouth? It's not like they can show up back in the ship. People would ask questions.
6) The water in Liz 10's chamber: she says that it's there to remind her that there is a secret being kept from her. Really? That's ... that's why the water is there? Not because all those people figured out something was wrong and the monks brought those people to her, and now they're her spies/monks/etc? LAME.
Things I liked:
1) I did like Amy at the beginning of this episode, but when she suddenly figured it all out, she became annoying.
2) I loved Liz 10's costume, but she turned out to be so boring that I wouldn't want to cosplay her.
3) Because we've already seen in previous episodes that the Earth becomes inhabitable, it was nice to see humans on their way out to find other planets.
4) I'm going to assume that the star whale is related to the poor thing in Torchwood that had its meat harvested.
5) The whales "tentacles" were SOOOO the wrong scale. Unless each of those was a hair.
And now, here's a non-Who palette-cleanser:
The Doctor and Amy arrive on the Starship UK, whose residents have left the uninhabitable Earth to find a new planet. There are scary robot-clown "Smilers" who send children to the beast. Amy follows a little girl and finds a huge tentacle-thing sticking out of one of the streets. She is captured by some monk-looking thugs who take her to a voting booth. She learns "the truth", then is allowed to make a choice - FORGET or PROTEST. She chooses FORGET.
Meanwhile, the Doctor puts a glass of water on the floor and notices that there are no ripples in the water, which means that there are no engines running. He is then taken by monks to meet Liz 10. Her whole chamber is filled with glasses of water.
The Doctor then finds Amy, who had somehow managed to record a video saying to get the Doctor off the ship. The Doctor shows up and sees the video, and he chooses PROTEST. He and Amy land in the throat of a giant animal.
Liz 10 and the little girl rescue the Doctor and Amy. It turns out that Liz 10 is Queen Elizabeth the 10th.
So it turns out that the thing that everyone keeps choosing to forget is that the ship is on the back of a star whale, and they have hooked up electrodes to its brain to make it go faster. The creature is being tortured, but they are are afraid that if they release the whale, the ship will be torn apart and everyone will die.
The reason that Amy chose to forget about the whale was because she didn't want the Doctor to have to choose between the whale and the British people
The Doctor flies into a rage, and he decides to make the whale braindead, so that it will continue on through space but not feel the pain. Just then, Mandy's friend (who earlier in the episode we thought had been eaten by the monster) shows up unharmed, and Mandy affectionately pets one of the giant tentacles. See, it turns out that the star whale doesn't eat children, it only eats adults, and apparently the children are just enslaved or something.
Luckily, Amy brilliantly figures out that the star whale had volunteered because the children were crying (I think Liz 10 meant metaphorically, but whatever), because she sees a similarity between the star whale and the Doctor (both are the last of their kind). To me, this was a huge stretch, but the Doctor frees the whale and they actually speed up!
Things that are ridiculous:
1) Liz 10. Not only was she a boring, classless character, it turns out she was hundreds of years old. No one questioned how that happened? All I have to say is someone who acts as ghetto as Liz 10 acted has no business being Queen. Plus, the fact that she seems extremely stupid is disheartening.
2) About twenty seconds after explaining that the whale volunteered, Amy had to repeat the idea to drive home the fact that she was comparing the star whale to the Doctor. Yeah. We get it.
3) HOW did Amy record the video? How did she figure out how to use the equipment? Why is that feature even possible? (Also, the "forgetting" and "recording" thing is something to remember for Series 6.)
3a) Why did Amy make that decision? We as viewers know it would be a tough decision for him to make, but how would she know that? She knows nothing about him, why would she take matters into her own hands?
4) The Doctor choosing to make the star whale brain dead. I felt he acted so out of character. He didn't even try to find a different solution, he just thought about it for about five seconds, threw a temper tantrum, and then decided to fry the poor thing. What?
5) They never explained why the whale doesn't eat children. How it can tell the difference between child and adult when a hunk of meat is simply dropped into its esophagus is beyond me. And why are the children enslaved then? I assume that the monks are in charge of that, but what happens when they become adults? Do they just get chucked back into the mouth? It's not like they can show up back in the ship. People would ask questions.
6) The water in Liz 10's chamber: she says that it's there to remind her that there is a secret being kept from her. Really? That's ... that's why the water is there? Not because all those people figured out something was wrong and the monks brought those people to her, and now they're her spies/monks/etc? LAME.
Things I liked:
1) I did like Amy at the beginning of this episode, but when she suddenly figured it all out, she became annoying.
2) I loved Liz 10's costume, but she turned out to be so boring that I wouldn't want to cosplay her.
3) Because we've already seen in previous episodes that the Earth becomes inhabitable, it was nice to see humans on their way out to find other planets.
4) I'm going to assume that the star whale is related to the poor thing in Torchwood that had its meat harvested.
5) The whales "tentacles" were SOOOO the wrong scale. Unless each of those was a hair.
And now, here's a non-Who palette-cleanser:
Friday, May 20, 2011
S5 Episode 1: The Eleventh Hour
From the minute that Matt Smith was announced as the Eleventh Doctor, I didn't like him. My husband says that I don't like him solely because he's not David Tennant, but that's not true: when the episode The Next Doctor aired, and everyone thought that David Morrissey might be #11, I was really excited. I thought he was fantastic, and though we knew from the beginning of the episode that he couldn't be the next Doctor, I would have been so pleased with him in that role.
When Ten regenerated into Eleven at the end of The End of Time, the first thought that popped into my head was that Matt Smith looked like Lurch. However, my favorite episodes have all been Steven Moffat episodes, so while I went in thinking/knowing I wouldn't like Smith, I thought I'd still enjoy the writing. So, with the assumption that you, dear readers, have watched all of these episodes, let's examine Series 5, Episode 1: The Eleventh Hour.
We start out with little Amelia Pond praying to Santa Claus, which I thought was brilliant. The TARDIS crash-lands in her backyard, and a newly-regenerated Doctor climbs out. So far, so good.
He then proceeds to demand food, but everything that Amelia gives him, he spits out, throws out, or does something equally ridiculous. At this point, I think my husband fell in love with him, but I thought the performance was way over the top. I felt like Smith was trying to emulate Tennant, (which would make sense, since he's still regenerating), but that he went too far.
I'll pause for a moment to say that I think Amelia is amazing in every way. Not only does Caitlin Blackwood do a fantastic job, the character is intriguing and extremely likable.
So then the Doctor rushes back to his TARDIS, promising to return in five minutes, yells "Geronimo!" (yes, you just heard the sound of my teeth grinding) and disappears. He does return - twelve years later - and meets a grown-up Amelia Pond, who now goes by the name of Amy. She's very headstrong, very independent, and she doesn't listen to him. That last trait is eerily similar to Donna, and that was what I disliked most about that character. But still, Amy seems to be a worthy companion. Of course, she's dressed inappropriately, but that's only because she's a "kiss-o-gram", right?
By the way, she dresses up as a sexy cop/sexy French maid, goes to parties and kisses guys. This is her job. The first time I saw the episode I thought the "kiss-o-gram" idea was funny, but now I'm a bit disturbed by it. I don't know how things are like in England, but to me that seems like a very short step away from being a prostitute.
Amy finds Prisoner Zero, which is pretty scary, as he can take different forms and has a hard time "getting the mouths right".
So we meet Prisoner Zero, go to the village, and come to the next really annoying thing: what the Doctor sees. We see the scene in the way that the Doctor sees it - fast motion, 360°, close-ups, etc. I should mention that I would find this a really fantastic device, except that Steven Moffat has already used it - in his Sherlock series! He often shows us in this same manner how Sherlock analyzes a crime scene. I think we can classify this POV device as Moffat's first "repeat" idea of the series, which itself becomes a dominant theme in the Eleventh Doctor episodes.
Actually, I take that back. The first repeat of Moffat's is the Amelia/Amy storyline. He meets Amelia as a young girl and says he'll return in five minutes, but when he returns, she's an adult. In The Girl in the Fireplace, he also first meets Reinette as a young girl, then disappears and returns when she's a young woman. When he tells Amelia he'll be back, she immediately packs so she can travel with him, even though he doesn't invite her along. However, he does invite Madam de Pompadour, says he'll be back in five minutes, then returns in time to see her funeral carriage leaving the palace. In addition, when the Doctor looks at the crack in Amy's wall, he says that she's "got some cowboys in here", which is what he says when he reads Reinette's mind. Oh, Steven.
By this time we've met Rory, and I immediately liked him; he has an air of innocence and, while he seems a bit daft, I think he's smarter than people give him credit for.
After saving the world from both Prisoner Zero and the Atraxi, the Doctor runs back to his repaired TARDIS, leaves, and then accidentally comes back two years later. He takes Amy off for an adventure, and we close on a shot of her wedding dress hanging in the wardrobe ... and here we go again, another girl in love with the Doctor.
When Rose was in love with the Doctor, it was okay. She didn't moon over him, and she never made a big deal about it. The only time she was obvious was in Doomsday, when she confessed her love. But, pouting about how the Doctor didn't return her affection was all that Desperate Martha ever did. It was a dominant theme, and extremely tiresome. I really cannot face another character pining after the Doctor.
At the end of The Eleventh Hour, I had mixed feelings. While I loved Amelia and liked Amy, I felt like the Doctor was over-the-top.
Here's a little palette-cleanser:
When Ten regenerated into Eleven at the end of The End of Time, the first thought that popped into my head was that Matt Smith looked like Lurch. However, my favorite episodes have all been Steven Moffat episodes, so while I went in thinking/knowing I wouldn't like Smith, I thought I'd still enjoy the writing. So, with the assumption that you, dear readers, have watched all of these episodes, let's examine Series 5, Episode 1: The Eleventh Hour.
We start out with little Amelia Pond praying to Santa Claus, which I thought was brilliant. The TARDIS crash-lands in her backyard, and a newly-regenerated Doctor climbs out. So far, so good.
He then proceeds to demand food, but everything that Amelia gives him, he spits out, throws out, or does something equally ridiculous. At this point, I think my husband fell in love with him, but I thought the performance was way over the top. I felt like Smith was trying to emulate Tennant, (which would make sense, since he's still regenerating), but that he went too far.
I'll pause for a moment to say that I think Amelia is amazing in every way. Not only does Caitlin Blackwood do a fantastic job, the character is intriguing and extremely likable.
So then the Doctor rushes back to his TARDIS, promising to return in five minutes, yells "Geronimo!" (yes, you just heard the sound of my teeth grinding) and disappears. He does return - twelve years later - and meets a grown-up Amelia Pond, who now goes by the name of Amy. She's very headstrong, very independent, and she doesn't listen to him. That last trait is eerily similar to Donna, and that was what I disliked most about that character. But still, Amy seems to be a worthy companion. Of course, she's dressed inappropriately, but that's only because she's a "kiss-o-gram", right?
By the way, she dresses up as a sexy cop/sexy French maid, goes to parties and kisses guys. This is her job. The first time I saw the episode I thought the "kiss-o-gram" idea was funny, but now I'm a bit disturbed by it. I don't know how things are like in England, but to me that seems like a very short step away from being a prostitute.
Amy finds Prisoner Zero, which is pretty scary, as he can take different forms and has a hard time "getting the mouths right".
So we meet Prisoner Zero, go to the village, and come to the next really annoying thing: what the Doctor sees. We see the scene in the way that the Doctor sees it - fast motion, 360°, close-ups, etc. I should mention that I would find this a really fantastic device, except that Steven Moffat has already used it - in his Sherlock series! He often shows us in this same manner how Sherlock analyzes a crime scene. I think we can classify this POV device as Moffat's first "repeat" idea of the series, which itself becomes a dominant theme in the Eleventh Doctor episodes.
Actually, I take that back. The first repeat of Moffat's is the Amelia/Amy storyline. He meets Amelia as a young girl and says he'll return in five minutes, but when he returns, she's an adult. In The Girl in the Fireplace, he also first meets Reinette as a young girl, then disappears and returns when she's a young woman. When he tells Amelia he'll be back, she immediately packs so she can travel with him, even though he doesn't invite her along. However, he does invite Madam de Pompadour, says he'll be back in five minutes, then returns in time to see her funeral carriage leaving the palace. In addition, when the Doctor looks at the crack in Amy's wall, he says that she's "got some cowboys in here", which is what he says when he reads Reinette's mind. Oh, Steven.
By this time we've met Rory, and I immediately liked him; he has an air of innocence and, while he seems a bit daft, I think he's smarter than people give him credit for.
After saving the world from both Prisoner Zero and the Atraxi, the Doctor runs back to his repaired TARDIS, leaves, and then accidentally comes back two years later. He takes Amy off for an adventure, and we close on a shot of her wedding dress hanging in the wardrobe ... and here we go again, another girl in love with the Doctor.
When Rose was in love with the Doctor, it was okay. She didn't moon over him, and she never made a big deal about it. The only time she was obvious was in Doomsday, when she confessed her love. But, pouting about how the Doctor didn't return her affection was all that Desperate Martha ever did. It was a dominant theme, and extremely tiresome. I really cannot face another character pining after the Doctor.
At the end of The Eleventh Hour, I had mixed feelings. While I loved Amelia and liked Amy, I felt like the Doctor was over-the-top.
Here's a little palette-cleanser:
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