Doctor Who 5x09 - "Cold Blood"
For the most part I found this two-parter rather dull and trite--'tis an aspect of Chris Chibnall as a writer, I'm afraid, as IMHO this is the second potentially creepy premise he's taken and ruined by showing his hand far too early and trying to take camp too seriously. Not to say there weren't some great moments, but for the most part. =|
So I wasn't going to talk about this episode at all, and then the ending happened and I was sad! Rory, no! But not very sad because it seems clear to me that if these cracks can erase someone from having ever existed then they can restore him to existence (and life) as well, so I feel sure we'll get him back in the finale. But I did think it was rather interesting in light of having just had the dream episode in which he also died. I'm still thinking about how that correlates.
Having thought about it a bit since, however, I am actually really sad that they made the choice to kill him off, even though it's probably not permanent. I enjoyed his dynamic with Amy and with the Doctor in these past several eps, and I was looking forward to seeing more of that as the show continued. I really loved how his enthusiasm for their adventures was not incomparable to Amy's--more cautious, yes, but I think that he still would have happily travelled with them for quite some time, and enjoyed it, too. He admired the Doctor right from the get-go (and was conscious of this as a danger, which I thought was quite perceptive of him; I've found Rory to be very insightful in general, really) and by the end had a lot of genuine faith in and devotion for him. To this end he was really much more like Jack as a companion than like Mickey... and I can't help but notice that they had to "get rid" of Jack, too. DWcreators do not seem willing to have a long-term male companion on board the TARDIS, and the implications of that bother me, in large part because of what it says about the female companion. I was really pleased when it looked like the show might be returning to the Old!Who formula of the multiple-companion family, that this might be the time that there could be three in the TARDIS and they could all get along. But apparently we're still not "ready" for that.
On another note, re: this week's trailer: Van "Goff"? Is that the standard British pronunciation? I've never heard that before.
However, "The greatest artist who ever lived?" Really? I know that's is a highly subjective statement but the issue is not whether or not I agree with it but rather that IIRC the Doctor usually avoids making quite such absolute preferential judgements, and anyway I have never heard anyone refer to Van Gogh as "the greatest artist who ever lived" as opposed to, say, Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo.