Who
In short: liked the Four-esque stuff, didn't like the self-referential stuff. Can you say "lampshading"? That was a bit of a throwback to the Rusty eps in that the characters kept making meta comments all the time, which gets tiring quite fast if it isn't balanced right. As in, the characters keep stepping outside the narrative all the time. Not that there was much of a narrative--and I don't mind a good old-fashioned Gothic "ooh, sexy vampires" story, but "oh, Doctor, you've been through the Time War and destroyed civilisations" thing was also something we didn't need to hear again, really. Been there, done that. And I feel sorry for poor Rory. He's a good lad. (I must admit I literally fell over laughing when the Doctor jumped out of the cake. Seriously. I had to pause the video and clasp my hands to my mouth because I was shrieking with laughter way too late at night.)
Loved the scenery and the costume porn muchly. There was a lot of good Gothic horror movie stuff in there, which is always of the nom. Some of the elements were Hammeresque, down to the vampire chicks' Eighties hair and the prince's bushy eyebrows, and obviously, all the sexy stuff. When they led Amy up to the bedchambers, I kept yelling "Castle Anthrax!" and "A spanking, a spanking! Then, the oral sex!" because... c'mon.
The special effects, though... man, it looked like the Mill basically ran out of time. All the elements were there, but it looked like they didn't have time to finish them. And I know, I *know* this is Doctor Who, and Doctor Who has always meant "let's try some awesome new effects and see how they'll work out" anyway, but it was especially noticeable this week. Some bits with the lightsaber baton thingy and the torches outside the gates made it look like they'd originally planned to slap night filters on the scenes, but decided against it at the last minute. So it looked like day-for-night filming without the actual night stuff, and that was a bit odd. And the storm clouds were... well, they weren't particularily bad, but they were not to scale--the clouds looked too big. I know it takes tons of effort to get that sort of thing to scale, especially when the shots are wide and last for several minutes and require a crazy amount of detail, but... yeah. Did anyone else get a nostalgia flashback? "Hey, it's just like Eighties Who!" I don't mean this in an overly negative way, BTW. It's just that it was an ep that was really heavy on the visuals, so the moment you saw the seams, you *really* noticed them. Or then I'm just too much of a graphics nerd, IDK.
Teh Smiff continues to be wonderfully Doctorish. High point of the episode (and yes, I know it was in the trailers, but shut it):
And yes, I know. That, too, was self-referential fappage. But at least it was the sort I'm fucking cheap for.
Aaanyway. Next week is clearly going to be a LoM/A2A-esque thingy, isn't it?