Doctor Who 5/31.04 With the spoilery title
In which the Moff, as if to make up for last week's blandness, really brings it on.
First of, the 51st century really is Stephen Moffat's favourite time, seeing as Jack Harkness, River Song and the spaceship Madame de Pompadour all hail from there. Fair enough - we need something to balance all the late 20th and early 21st century visits. :) Also, his naming this week's crashed ship the "Byzantium" reminded me that he does make the 51st century sound a bit like Yeats' version of Bzyantium, no? Now complete with armed clerics. I'm not sure what to make of that yet, and whether it's going to have any significance in the second part or whether he might as well have let the soldiers be normal soldiers, since so far they come across as pretty much UNIT in yet another uniform, complete with honourable commander shooting down patronizing attitude of Doctor. Ditto as to whether the fact they all have "sacred names" will be plot relevant, though this being Stephen Moffat, I suspect it might. (So far, we have Octavian (!!!), Christian, Angelo and Bob. Hm.)
The teaser for this episode was fantastic, and finally made me go "woo, hoo" about River Song, whom I previously had mildly liked but had not loved. Talk about making an entrance. New things we've learned about River: can write and read Gallifreyan, can drive the TARDIS, recognizes the Doctor because she has pictures of all his regenerations (btw, is this the Moff covering for the otherwise logistics problem of River recognizing Ten who has not met her before at the end of her life?)... and seems to be in prison for something, which is why she's helping the clerical armed forces. Given that they're willing to let her go in exchange for her services, it can't have been something like murder, and given River's archaeological profession (also that she's Doctor Song now, and Professor Song in the future), I assume illegal aquisition of artefacts. (She should get along with Picard's friend Vash and with Christina de Souza.) Though there might be more to it. River's reply to Amy's "future wife" guess - "with the Doctor, it's always more complicated than that, though I'm not saying you're wrong" - makes me suspect Moffat won't go with the "wife" explanation, though he'll probably leave us dangling a bit longer. The Doctor's attitude towards River is interesting; upon encountering her again, he's a mixture of pleased, embarrassed and sometimes deeply uncomfortable, and I don't think solely because she's showing him up with the TARDIS breaks but because he did see her die right in front of him.
The Angels, like River, are familiar, but not. Moffat cheated a bit and changed the rules on us, because in Blink, as far as I recall, the Doctor called them the "saddest" not the most evil force in the cosmos, and said their Medusa-like affect was "the greatest defense mechanism". They did not kill, though they did take lives in a very real sense (everyone ending up in the past except for the Doctor and Martha lost the life they had and had to build a new one). Now they're suddenly actively malevolent (and also acquired the Vashta Nerada's trick of using the voices of the dead). Still, I'm going to handwave that. (Just check out the Daleks in the first episode Terry Nation ever wrote them versus later Daleks - not even the same speech patterns, and their story of origin was entirely retconned by Nation himself in Genesis of the Daleks.) The whole sequence of the Angel materializing out of the tv screen was fantastically creepy. BTW, thanks, Stephen, for adding tv screens to statues as things to be afraid of. :( I was wondering how he'd avoid coming over as repetitive of the Blink sequences with the Angels approaching, but he totally did it there, and Amy figuring out how to get rid of it at the last moment was brilliant. Incidentally, I have no idea what was up with the Doctor not congratulating her on that, other than to give River a moment where she's maternal towards Amy. (Who comes over very much as the Doctor's and River's precocious Daughter in this story. Or maybe Susan in the first Team TARDIS with Barbara and Ian...) Because that's somewhat ooc for the Doctor; even the crankier regenerations would have said something like "Well done, X" when a Companion pulled off something like this, let alone the more enthusiastic ones who'd have gone for a full hug, and Eleven otherwise strikes me as belonging in the "enthusiastic" category.
Though the Doctor and Amy scene later when she thinks her hand has turned into stone was great. Nice fake-out of the viewer, too; not a cheat, because every time Amy noticed something that felt like she was turning into stone, the sand falling out of her eye and her finger nails etc., we were in her pov only, and nobody else was seeing her.
The reveal of every statue being an Angel was great as well, and again, played fair, and moved the viewer along the same time as the Doctor and River when they drew the logical conclusion from the ingenious life form having two heads. Whereas the cliffhanger - Our Heroes surrounded by Angels - was a bit expected, but no less suspenseful for that. Can't wait till next week!
First of, the 51st century really is Stephen Moffat's favourite time, seeing as Jack Harkness, River Song and the spaceship Madame de Pompadour all hail from there. Fair enough - we need something to balance all the late 20th and early 21st century visits. :) Also, his naming this week's crashed ship the "Byzantium" reminded me that he does make the 51st century sound a bit like Yeats' version of Bzyantium, no? Now complete with armed clerics. I'm not sure what to make of that yet, and whether it's going to have any significance in the second part or whether he might as well have let the soldiers be normal soldiers, since so far they come across as pretty much UNIT in yet another uniform, complete with honourable commander shooting down patronizing attitude of Doctor. Ditto as to whether the fact they all have "sacred names" will be plot relevant, though this being Stephen Moffat, I suspect it might. (So far, we have Octavian (!!!), Christian, Angelo and Bob. Hm.)
The teaser for this episode was fantastic, and finally made me go "woo, hoo" about River Song, whom I previously had mildly liked but had not loved. Talk about making an entrance. New things we've learned about River: can write and read Gallifreyan, can drive the TARDIS, recognizes the Doctor because she has pictures of all his regenerations (btw, is this the Moff covering for the otherwise logistics problem of River recognizing Ten who has not met her before at the end of her life?)... and seems to be in prison for something, which is why she's helping the clerical armed forces. Given that they're willing to let her go in exchange for her services, it can't have been something like murder, and given River's archaeological profession (also that she's Doctor Song now, and Professor Song in the future), I assume illegal aquisition of artefacts. (She should get along with Picard's friend Vash and with Christina de Souza.) Though there might be more to it. River's reply to Amy's "future wife" guess - "with the Doctor, it's always more complicated than that, though I'm not saying you're wrong" - makes me suspect Moffat won't go with the "wife" explanation, though he'll probably leave us dangling a bit longer. The Doctor's attitude towards River is interesting; upon encountering her again, he's a mixture of pleased, embarrassed and sometimes deeply uncomfortable, and I don't think solely because she's showing him up with the TARDIS breaks but because he did see her die right in front of him.
The Angels, like River, are familiar, but not. Moffat cheated a bit and changed the rules on us, because in Blink, as far as I recall, the Doctor called them the "saddest" not the most evil force in the cosmos, and said their Medusa-like affect was "the greatest defense mechanism". They did not kill, though they did take lives in a very real sense (everyone ending up in the past except for the Doctor and Martha lost the life they had and had to build a new one). Now they're suddenly actively malevolent (and also acquired the Vashta Nerada's trick of using the voices of the dead). Still, I'm going to handwave that. (Just check out the Daleks in the first episode Terry Nation ever wrote them versus later Daleks - not even the same speech patterns, and their story of origin was entirely retconned by Nation himself in Genesis of the Daleks.) The whole sequence of the Angel materializing out of the tv screen was fantastically creepy. BTW, thanks, Stephen, for adding tv screens to statues as things to be afraid of. :( I was wondering how he'd avoid coming over as repetitive of the Blink sequences with the Angels approaching, but he totally did it there, and Amy figuring out how to get rid of it at the last moment was brilliant. Incidentally, I have no idea what was up with the Doctor not congratulating her on that, other than to give River a moment where she's maternal towards Amy. (Who comes over very much as the Doctor's and River's precocious Daughter in this story. Or maybe Susan in the first Team TARDIS with Barbara and Ian...) Because that's somewhat ooc for the Doctor; even the crankier regenerations would have said something like "Well done, X" when a Companion pulled off something like this, let alone the more enthusiastic ones who'd have gone for a full hug, and Eleven otherwise strikes me as belonging in the "enthusiastic" category.
Though the Doctor and Amy scene later when she thinks her hand has turned into stone was great. Nice fake-out of the viewer, too; not a cheat, because every time Amy noticed something that felt like she was turning into stone, the sand falling out of her eye and her finger nails etc., we were in her pov only, and nobody else was seeing her.
The reveal of every statue being an Angel was great as well, and again, played fair, and moved the viewer along the same time as the Doctor and River when they drew the logical conclusion from the ingenious life form having two heads. Whereas the cliffhanger - Our Heroes surrounded by Angels - was a bit expected, but no less suspenseful for that. Can't wait till next week!