In the TARDIS, Amy (Karen Gillan) ponders the wedding ring, while the Doctor (Matt Smith) hatches a plan to take her to the oldest planet in the universe to see the oldest piece of writing, which is chiseled onto a cliff face. The TARDIS doors open and the translators show the words as “Hello Sweetie.” Bam! Britain, 102 AD. The TARDIS arrives in front of a Roman army, and Amy mentions that Roman soldiers were her favorite topic in school. A soldier, whose face is smeared with lipstick, mistakes the Doctor for Caesar and takes the pair to see Cleopatra, whom River is impersonating. Finally we get to see the painting, which shares its name with this episode, and it’s a vision of the exploding TARDIS, painted exactly as we’d imagine van Gogh would paint such a vision. (Surely poster prints of this will be available for fans to hang on their walls any day now? I know I’d buy one.) Finally, seven minutes into the episode, we get the opening credits.

And thus begins what’s easily the most ambitious setup for a season finale the new series has yet done. “The Pandorica Opens” is positively cinematic in scope, direction, editing and, of course, writing. These setup installments were never this good in the Davies era, and it’s almost a shame it isn’t the season finale proper, as it would be an unbearable, months-long wait to see the resolution to everything this episode does. It would be the “Doctor Who” equivalent of Part One of “The Best of Both Worlds,” which ended the third season of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” In fact it’s somewhat strange that “Doctor Who” – a show infamous for its end of episode cliffhangers – has yet to end a season on any kind of serious hang (stuff like regenerations or Donna suddenly appearing in the TARDIS doesn’t really count). The feeling I got watching “The Pandorica Opens” is the exact same feeling I got while watching the last 20 minutes of “Utopia” from Season Three – only this thing kept up that level of intensity for nearly a whole hour.

The episode shifts into an almost “Indiana Jones” type of piece for a while, as the trio of time travelers make their way to a secret area beneath Stonehenge, to find the massive Pandorica prison, which is somehow tied to the exploding TARDIS. Whatever’s housed in it is the most feared thing in the entire universe. As with the Romans, Amy mentions that the story of Pandora’s Box was a favorite of hers as a child. This catches the Doctor’s attention, but there’s too much going on for him to focus on it. The box finally begins opening – from the inside, no less, but it’s a process that could take hours, as there are many locks and mechanisms to work through, and so the tension continues to ratchet upwards.

The Doctor: “Think of the fear that went into making this box. What could inspire that level of fear? Hello you. Have we met?”

Another nice, yet expected (provided you’ve been paying attention), flourish is that for River, these events take place before “The Time of Angels” two-parter, although I’m still confused then about River and Amy’s first meeting in that story, as River didn’t seem to recognize her. Or has she become so used to her life being out of whack with the Doctor’s that she’s learned how to play along when the time is right? Does it hurt the tension of this story knowing that no matter what happens in it, River will survive these events?

The Doctor deduces that Stonehenge itself is essentially one giant radio transmitter, sending signals out across the universe that are warning the cosmos about the opening Pandorica. All across the universe, starships begin responding to the signal: Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans and probably a dozen other races the Doctor’s encountered in his many lives are all coming to this one place and time in Earth’s history. (Draconians – really?!?) It’s just amazing how epic this thing feels. Once again, the Doctor marvels at what the box must contain; of course, by the end of the episode he probably feels quite the fool for not figuring out the puzzle ahead of time.

The Doctor: “Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely. And if something can be remembered, it can come back.”

In one of the episodes only absurd gestures, River, at the Doctor’s behest, goes off to enlist the aid of the Roman army to help fight the myriad fleet of aliens, while the Doctor and Amy battle three different pieces of a half-dead Cyberman that’s lurking around and beneath the monument. The sequence is easily the coolest thing the series has done with the Cybermen since they were first reintroduced back in Season Two. It’s funny, frightening, and intense, and a great chance for the audience to depressurize from the escalating drama. And then – surprise, surprise – Rory (Arthur Darvill) shows up as a Roman centurion to slay the silver beastie and rescue Amy. He’s short on explanations – “I died and then I came back as a Roman.” He’s pained over Amy’s failure to remember him, but he seems to have been through enough at this point to know how to handle himself in this sticky situation. Darvill is just excellent here, and this guy’s proven himself to be a worthy addition to the show.

The sequence in which the Doctor preaches the Sermon on the Mount is likely to be a divisive one, and I suspect that had David Tennant played the same material, I wouldn’t have cared for it myself, as I never thought Tennant handled those kinds of scenes very well. But Smith has his own way of doing things, and within his delivery there’s a self-deprecating sense of, “I can’t believe I’m pulling this pompous shit again.” He’s doesn’t appear to be taking it altogether seriously, and in doing so, the scene works better than if he’d been in full-on Oncoming Storm mode.

The third act of the story is a dizzying, crazy ride. Rory, as well as the rest of the Roman army, are revealed to be Autons; River takes the TARDIS to Amy’s home in 2010 only to discover a storybooks on Roman soldiers and Pandora’s Box; the TARDIS begins to explode with River in it; Amy is killed by a broken Rory who’s succumbed to his Auton nature; all of the Doctor’s enemies gather around Stonehenge to take him prisoner and place him in the Pandorica as well as explain that Amy herself was an elaborate trap laid for the Doctor, as they’ve seen the cracks in the universe, and know that the Doctor’s TARDIS is the cause of it all, and will eventually spell the end of the universe. The only way the aliens can stop it is to take the TARDIS’ operator out of the equation. This is quite the spin on previous season finales, which were always built around alien domination of one kind or another. Here, the Doctor is the threat to the universe, and his enemies have gathered together, surprisingly enough, as something of a force for good, if that’s possible. Oh, and then the entire universe disappears, for good measure.

Evil Disembodied Voice: “Silence will fall.”

“The Pandorica Opens” is quite simply one of the best episodes of “Doctor Who” ever, and freshman “Who” director Toby Haynes knocked Steven Moffat’s superb script out of the ballpark. With a setup this perfect, the mind reels as what the conclusion will offer up.
__________________________________________________

NEXT TIME: The fifth season of new “Who” concludes with the appropriately titled, “The Big Bang.”

Classic “Who” DVD Recommendation of the Week: Friends, Romans, countrymen – lend me your ears. Check out the first Doctor’s encounter with “The Romans.” It’s a lovely little story, really it is.

(Thanks as always to Sonic Biro for the screencaps.)

For starters, Curtis has no track record writing science-fiction or fantasy (at least not the type one thinks of when bandying about such terms), and while it seemed gratifying to have such a high profile writer onboard, nothing in his works indicated that, with only 45 minutes to play, he’d likely create anything more than an amusing romp. Perhaps it was less Curtis himself, and more the new series having a pretty bad track record when it comes to tackling historical figures, regardless of who’s writing them. In fact, they typically seem to end up…amusing romps. Probably the best was the first one, “The Unquiet Dead,” which featured Charles Dickens, and from there they’ve kind of incrementally gone downhill. I didn’t think the formula could get much worse than “The Unicorn and the Wasp” with Agatha Christie, but along came “Victory of the Daleks” with Winston Churchill to prove me wrong. So imagine my surprise upon discovering that Curtis trashed my expectations by creating a deep, lovely, tortured thing of beauty that reduced me to tears. I have really got to start trusting this guy. His name is a stamp of quality no matter what “they” say.

(Editor’s note: I’ll second that, having interviewed Mr. Curtis in connection with the release of “Pirate Radio.” You can check out the conversation by clicking here.)

“Vincent and the Doctor” is the new standard by which these types of stories will, or at least should be measured. I have never quite understood the point of the Doctor meeting up with famous figures from the past only so that we can laugh at them and their quaint, backwards ways, all while cramming in little in-jokes that play off of what we know about these people from today’s perspective. Curtis presents us with a fictitious riff on van Gogh that lays waste to the previous approach. His story demands that we feel for van Gogh and his problems, which in turn gives the episode a gravitas that’s lacking in stuff like “The Shakespeare Code,” in which young Will was little more than a smarmy Casanova. Curtis comes from a place that has a huge amount of respect for this artist, as well as understanding that van Gogh’s troubled history was a big part of what made him the artist he was. Curtis also wisely avoids tackling the infamous ear-cutting incident, which is something a lesser writer would’ve worked into the story by having the alien lob it off or some such nonsense.

From the very first sequence, the reality of van Gogh (Tony Curran) painting “Wheatfield with Crows” is mixed with the fantastical element of the unknown in the field, disturbing the birds, and thus giving a reason for the crows in the painting in the first place. Quickly the action moves to the present at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and before you can say Bill Nighy, there he is, as Dr. Black. At first it seems a somewhat wasted cameo, but lucky for us Nighy returns before the episode is over. The Doctor has taken Amy to see the van Gogh exhibit at the museum. It seems he’s taken her numerous places since their last adventure, and he’s got a guilty conscience about the loss of Rory, who of course Amy no longer even remembers. The painting “The Church at Auvers” catches the Doctor’s eye, as there’s something in one of the church windows that he recognizes as “evil.” And so it’s off to 1890 to get to the bottom of it all.

Now this is where things get complicated, because, as we find out later on, the alien in the window, the Krafayis, is not actually evil at all, but is really a rather pathetic creature, blind and abandoned on Earth by his race. But I think this episode is meant to work on another level entirely, and that the Krafayis is a metaphor for van Gogh’s depression. It is, after all, something only he can see, but others can not. So if that is the case, does depression equal evil? It certainly can for the person who suffers from it (and I speak with a fair amount of experience on the matter). This is a story that is in part about an invisible monster, but the Krafayis is merely a vessel for a much more important issue. I’m frankly rather stunned that “Doctor Who” found a way to tackle such a weighty topic under the guise of family entertainment. It goes to show that this can be done on this series, provided you have a writer who’s sharp enough to figure out the proper equation.

In many ways, “Vincent and the Doctor” is one of the most mature stories this series has ever seen. It’s interesting to note that when it first aired on the BBC, the following message ran over the end credits: “If you’ve been affected by the issues raised in this program, and you’d like details and information and support, go to bbc.co.uk/headroom.” The message also offered up a phone number that people could call for help if they needed it. Once Vincent kills the Krafayis, he momentarily appears to be lost without it, as if the Krafayis gave definition to his life, just as mental illnesses tend to do. But once the Krafayis is truly gone, Vincent is a new man, with a new lease on life. It may be worth mentioning that the episode title is “Vincent and the Doctor” and not “Vincent and The Doctor,” which might refer to the role of the Doctor as a healer in the story, rather than his title and/or name.

This is also a great Amy episode, maybe even the first great episode for her character, and Karen Gillan really shines here – literally; she looks radiant throughout the piece. Her reaction to Vincent is star struck only at first, and then she quickly begins seeing him as a real, flesh and blood person. There’s that great moment when the two are walking and he senses the loss of Rory in her. His desire to marry and have 12 children with her, and her desire for him to recognize the beauty of sunflowers – lovely stuff. And it’s heartbreaking when she says “I’m not really the marrying kind.” Part of this episode’s triumph is how effortlessly is seems to work through her loss despite the fact she has no memory of it. (Part of me wonders if some of those touches were Steven Moffat’s.)

“Vincent and the Doctor” concludes with two stunning sequences. In the first, the Doctor, Amy and Vincent lay beneath the stars, while Vincent orates about the night sky, and the vastness of the universe. As he does so, “The Starry Night” is painted in the sky, which is one of the most unexpected uses of CGI I’ve ever seen in this series. It’s a breathtaking, beautiful scene, full of newfound life and camaraderie. In the second, the Doctor and Amy take van Gogh to the Musée d’Orsay in 2010 to show him the exhibit featuring his work, and all the people who have gathered to partake in it. It’s perfectly scored to a hopeful pop song (“Chances” by Athlete), no less, which is a Richard Curtis trademark if ever I’ve seen one. What happens here is one of those things that the Doctor just isn’t supposed to do. We’re used to him showing off the inside of the TARDIS to unsuspecting folk – but actually taking someone on a trip to see his future? It succeeds because it breaks that rule here and now, and gives this suicidal man some hope in the final months of his life. Just the heartbreak of joy on Curran’s face is enough to justify doing this sequence, but on top of that you’ve got Bill Nighy delivering this stunning, passionate manifesto on van Gogh – in a way that maybe only Nighy can do – that takes it right up over the top. (Please find a way to bring this character back at some point.) Man oh man, it makes the heart swell. Curran, by the way, is surely the greatest guest actor we’ve had all season. What a talent. He’s someone we should all be paying much more attention to in the coming years.

The Doctor: “The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant. And we definitely added to his pile of good things.”

If it isn’t already obvious, I dearly loved “Vincent and the Doctor.” I love it so much that you risk offending me if you offer up a contrary opinion. With the new series, I’ve come to rely on, at the very least, one episode per season blowing me away. Yeah, that’s how low my standards are. As long as there’s that one installment that just changes everyone’s (or at least my) perception of what this show can be about, then it’s doing well by me. Not every single episode can rewrite the book and be brilliant, but 1 out of 13 isn’t terrible in the realm of TV produced for the masses, and make no mistake, “Doctor Who” at this point is designed to appeal to the widest audience it can snag. Of course, I know it’s foolhardy to expect everyone to enjoy this and see it as I did, but if you didn’t, I won’t understand you, and I’ll feel the same kind of slack-jawed amazement I feel when someone tells me they didn’t like “Love Actually,” or that they thought it was schmaltzy crap. I might even suggest that you go invest in a heart.

Please Mr. Curtis, come back to the “Who” fold next time you have a great idea for this show, because it needs you, as do we. And, yes, bowties are cool.

__________________________________________________

NEXT TIME: It looks as if BBC America is taking yet another weekend off due to the holiday. We started out this season two weeks behind the U.K. and now we’re going to be a month behind. Ack. The week after, the Doctor rents a room in “The Lodger,” guest-starring James Corden.

Classic “Who” DVD Recommendation of the Week: I don’t know if I’ve ever, in my history of writing these recaps, recommended “City of Death” with Tom Baker and Lalla Ward. Widely considered one the best stories from the entirety of the classic series, it’s written by Douglas Adams (using a pseudonym), involves a plot to steal the Mona Lisa, and has cameos from John Cleese and Eleanor Bron. Exquisite. Absolutely exquisite.

(Thanks as always to Sonic Biro for the screencaps.)

I’ve written before about my theories of “Who” cliffhangers, which essentially boils down to “the resolve is rarely as good as the hang.” In this case that probably still holds, but Moffat came awfully close to equaling the hang by delivering a way out of an impossible situation that was surprising and fun. I’m not sure it made a whole lot of sense – the destruction of the gravity globe gave them an updraft? They must make this shit up as they go along (of course, how else do you do it?). The shifting of the camera turning around to show the group on ceiling was gorgeous and great little reveal. But the save is short-lived, and the Angels are restoring themselves via the power of the Byzantium. Everybody follows the Doctor into the ship, and once again, the camera has a lot of fun here – the shot of the Doctor standing upright as Amy looks down the hole at him.

Octavian: “Dr. Song, I’ve lost good Clerics today. Do you trust this man?”
River: “I absolutely trust him.”
Octavian: “He’s not some kind of madman then?”
River: (beat) “I absolutely trust him.”

Then the story shifts into an action flick. The Angels attack in the dark in a thrilling, claustrophobic sequence, peppered with further tension between River (Alex Kingston) and Octavian (Iain Glen). What is this woman hiding? It’s within this sequence that we first hear Amy says the number 10. There’s really so much going on in the action arena in this section of the episode that it’d be pointlessly drab to recap it, and yet it’s amazing to watch. Once they discover the forest within the ship, the story pulls back on the action, but not the tension. It just keeps building. The gimmick of Amy counting down heightens, and during the conversation with Angel Bob, the Doctor finally snaps, and gets to the bottom of what’s going on with the countdown, and it appears Amy looks into the eyes of the videotaped Angel for a tad too long in the previous episode. And as if not enough is going on by this point, the crack from Amy’s wall makes another appearance, only this time everyone sees it. Octavian leads the group away from the crack and into the forest while the Doctor stays behind to investigate the crack. While he’s doing so, the Angels mount yet another attack, this time against the Doctor solo. Particularly effective is the shot of the Angel grabbing the Doctor’s jacket. He manages to worm his way out of his jacket while talking to the Angels about the crack and runs off into the forest.

Again, most of this stuff makes for a lousy recap, but it’s so much damn fun to watch. It’s like trying to explain why “Die Hard” is great action movie by telling someone who hasn’t seen it about John McClane tying himself to a fire hose and jumping off a building in his bare feet. There’s no substitute for the real thing, and it’s rather silly to break it all down, because it wasn’t written to be deconstructed – it was written and directed to be a thrill ride. So kudos to Steven Moffat for writing a cracking screenplay that Adam Smith then proceeded to direct the hell out of. With this two-parter, Moffat has really redeemed himself as both a writer and a showrunner. This is the kind of fare I expected from him but wasn’t getting in 5.2 and 5.3. Adding to that, if this is Moffat’s version of the action-packed two-parters that always featured early in the Davies era, then blow me down. This is scads better than stuff like “Rise of the Cybermen” and “The Sontaran Strategem.” It’s not that those stories were bad, but they always felt like the bubblegum installments of their seasons, whereas this may also be bubblegum, but it’s bubblegum that keeps its flavor for a long, long time; in the midst of all this action, there’s room for great character development, stellar acting and strong drama. Oh, you know what else is mildly noteworthy? As I understand it, these two episodes were the first of the season that were shot, so it’s fascinating to note how firm a grasp Matt Smith and Karen Gillan had on not only their roles, but also the concept of the series at this early stage in the game. I’d speculate on what it must have been like to work through the lame scripts for “The Beast Below” and “Victory of the Daleks” after shooting fare like this first, but I’d best not. Surely these two actors had the time of their lives while making this season no matter how weak any given script may have been.

The worsening of Amy’s condition is another episode highlight. The Doctor doesn’t put on the kid gloves either, which is alien to say the least. That’s a side of the Doctor we didn’t get a whole lot of with Tennant. He matter of factly tells her she dying and to shut up! Loved the moment of rage the Doctor feels when Angel Bob tells him that the countdown is for fun, and the Doctor throws the communicator at the ground. Smith has a way of flitting back and forth between comedy and drama that’s just mesmerizing. I hope I never come to predict what he’s going to do next, as that would be a huge shame. Right now, everything he does is so perfectly played it’s as if he’s not even acting. I’ve bitched a fair amount about Amy’s lack of character in recent times, but in this story she shines. She’s so vulnerable in these scenes with her eyes closed. I particularly liked her delivery of the line “You always say that,” which in its own way makes all the time they’ve spent apart onscreen so far kinda sorta OK.

One moment that’s seems to have gotten fandom all flustered involves the bit where the Doctor comes back to Amy and holds her hand after he’s already seemingly walked away. First off, it must be said that theories like this are precisely why I hate reading fan ramblings, because all too often they make a very good case, and yet they still end up being wrong, which can be very frustrating for those of us who go ahead and get in our heads that they must be right. In this instance, the theory is driven by the fact that the Doctor, in extreme close-up, appears to be wearing his jacket, when he clearly lost it several scenes back with the Angels. The idea proposed here is that this is some Doctor from a future part of the season who’s come back to help Amy through this tough time. The jacket aside, it makes a certain sort of sense what with the way the scene is shot and played. It’s very different in tone than what precedes it. Of course, there are Clerics standing around – wouldn’t they notice this second Doctor popping in? Of course if you take the jacket out of the equation, I’m not sure the theory holds up. It could just be a continuity error. Go back and check it out.

The crack, which we actually learn very little about here, seems to have the ability to swallow people up, as well as screw with the memories of those in the vicinity. I’m sure we’ll learn much more about the crack as the season progresses. Octavian’s death scene is outstanding, as is the dialogue the Doctor has with him prior to his passing. Wow. That was incredible. And then there’s the scene where Amy must navigate her way through the Angels with her eyes closed, all while pretending they’re open. Does this work or not? It contradicts everything we’ve been told about the Angels thus far. I vote for yes it does, because in order for these enemies to remain an effective foe, there are always going to have to be new angles through which they’re explored. We finally get to see the Angels moving, which is truly creepy. And in the end, they all get sucked away by the Doctor turning off the gravity, which sort of takes me back to the climax of “Doomsday.”

Actually, that’s not the ending – no, the ending sees the Doctor taking Amy back to her home so she can show him the wedding dress, and explain about her upcoming wedding to Rory, at which point she attacks him in a fit of lust! My, how “Doctor Who” has changed over the years! I loved this scene, as it puts a finer point on their relationship, and not one that I think anyone saw coming. We had loads of romance in the Davies years but here it’s just sex – sex that the Doctor wants no part of! It’s hilarious. The scene seemingly caused some controversy over in Britain where some deemed it too salty for a family series. To those people I say get a grip, or perhaps get laid. If you can’t have fun with this scene, I’ve a feeling the rest of the season may not set well with you either. I doubt this was an isolated incident as far as sexuality goes in Moffat’s vision of the show, and while I don’t think we’re ever going to see anything truly offensive or over the line, I suspect this is an angle he’s going to play around with in his era. He is, after all, the guy who wrote “Coupling.” But then again, this is also the last Moffat-written script we’re going to get this season until the two-part finale. Here’s to hoping for some great, distinctive voices coming out of the woodwork in his absence.

__________________________________________________
NEXT TIME: Take a trip with the Doctor, Amy and Rory to 15th century Italy in “Vampires in Venice” which is written by Toby Whithouse, who wrote “School Reunion” in Season Two, and is also the creator of “Being Human,” so we can assume he knows a thing or two about fangs.

Classic “Who” DVD Recommendation of the Week: Just in time to get you ready for next week’s episode is the recently released Tom Baker/Elisabeth Sladen classic, “The Masque of Mandragora,” which also takes place in 15th century Italy!

(Thanks as always to Sonic Biro for the screencaps.)

Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor, following yet another skirmish with the cockroaches from Skaro, uttered the above quote near the end of his reign as the Time Lord. If he’d known then that he’d still be dealing with them in his Eleventh incarnation, he may well have decided to forego his impending regeneration, and just gone ahead and called it a millennium. Many “Doctor Who” fans would likely have sympathized with him had he done so. Having been writing these recaps for five years now, I am exhausted by Daleks as well. What else is there for me to say about them that I haven’t already said, or hasn’t been said by countless others time and again? And yet here I am, once again backed into a corner by some angry pepperpots demanding that I find something fresh to say on the subject. Of course, if the series can’t be bothered to do so, I don’t really see why I should, either.

Surprisingly, “Victory of the Daleks,” written by Mark Gatiss, is drenched in promise at its start. Surprising not only because all ground concerning the Daleks seems so thoroughly trod at this point, but also because the last thing Gatiss wrote for the series, “The Idiot’s Lantern,” was a forgettable misfire. The idea of subservient, benevolent Daleks isn’t a new one. It was first explored in Patrick Troughton’s first story “The Power of the Daleks,” but since that serial was junked by the BBC ages ago, only the most hardcore of fans are going to care about this. For all intents and purposes the idea is new, or at least new to us. And the show has a field day with the notion for about ten minutes. Professor Bracewell’s (Bill Paterson) Ironsides are going to win the war against the Nazis, and they’ll serve you tea as well. Just the notion that the Daleks will become this story’s Inglourious Basterds is a fun one, since the Nazis are what the Daleks were based on in the first place. With “Victory of the Daleks,” on some obscure meta level, the entire concept of the Daleks has seemingly come full circle.

But the jig doesn’t last long, and after the Doctor (Matt Smith) beats the crap out of one while shouting, “I am the Doctor and you are my mortal enemy the Daleks!,” they shift gears and revert to their dastardly, Daleky ways. Something about a testimony from the Doctor, which seems like an interesting idea, but it’s so quickly glossed over that we barely have any time to register it. The episode begins unraveling and loses its way, which is too bad because I was pretty dazzled by it for the first 15 minutes, even with a grotesque caricature of Winston Churchill idling about on the periphery of these events. I’m not sure what is going on with this season so far – this season that held so much promise at its start.

So what goes wrong? For starters, once again the story splits up the Doctor and Amy (Karen Gillan), which is nothing less than frustrating. We’re being denied one of the basic tenets of the new series, which is the relationship between the Doctor and his companion. Even in previous seasons, when the stories weren’t so hot at the start, at the very least we were given a friendship to hang onto and guide and keep us interested. But these two people right now don’t seem particularly interested in one another. I guess it’s developing off-screen, but fat lot of good that does the viewer.

“One ship survived. It fell back in time.” Stop me if you’ve heard those words before. Those two phrases, either together or apart, need to be banned from any and all future “Doctor Who” stories. It’s gotten very tired. (Hell, I’m pretty sure it was tired back in the ‘80s.) Surely it needn’t be pointed out exactly how lazy this development is? And speaking of lazy, have we gotten to the point on this show where historical figures are no longer to be taken even remotely seriously? It was as if Ian McNeice’s Churchill stumbled in from some sketch comedy series. Then again, this is the same episode that features the Doctor threatening the Daleks with a Jammie Dodger for what seems to be an interminably lengthy time. Might have been cute as a quick gag, but here it’s used for so long it enters the realm of preposterous.

But where the episode really lost me was with the dogfight in the stars. Oh sure it looked pretty cool, but there was no logic to any of it whatsoever. Supposedly Bracewell had come up with the idea of the gravity bubbles just earlier that day, and then it’s somehow created and implemented in a matter of minutes! Further, it’s entirely too hard to swallow that any pilots from the time period would have the skills required to suddenly, at a second’s notice, be able to fly up into space and destroy the dish or the ship or whatever. A trip to the moon was fiction to these people, let alone what transpires here. I can buy the technology of the gravity bubbles within the world of “Doctor Who” (silly as they may be), but I cannot buy into everything that surrounds the way it was used here. If you’re going to play with history in “Who,” great, but please don’t “play” with it.

I propose, at this stage, to not solely blame Gatiss’ script, but to point a finger at the director, Andrew Gunn, who also helmed “The Beast Below.” Both episodes lack any kind of elegance that so much of the Davies era, as well as “The Eleventh Hour,” possessed. Back in the “old” days of RTD, even if an episode was clumsily written, it would typically skate by on some solid direction. Neither of the last two episodes has come close to rising above, or at least making the most of the scripts they’re based on. They’ve both felt rushed and poorly put together. I don’t believe Gunn is returning for any more episodes this season, so let’s hope this is the last of this. I don’t want to pick on the guy, as he has helmed some good stuff in the past, such as the final two episodes of “Life on Mars,” but perhaps he’s just not a good fit for this series. That happens sometimes. (Keith Boak, who directed three episodes early in the first season [including “Rose”], may be another example of such a director.) I’m loath to criticize Moffat at this stage, but it’s rather puzzling that two such subpar stories have followed his wonderful opener. The season must gain some serious momentum from here on out.

Mention must also be made of the new Daleks themselves. I don’t read a whole lot of criticism of new episodes during the two week gap between them airing in the U.K. and on BBC America, as I don’t want anything to sway my views on the material (and believe me, I can be easily swayed) before I write these recaps. But there was simply no way I could get away with not noticing how incredibly unpopular these new Daleks already are for a vocal, grumpy segment of fandom, which is fine, although I don’t share the sentiment…at least not yet. They seem influenced in their look, size and certainly their rainbow color scheme, by the Daleks that featured in the Peter Cushing Dalek movies of the ‘60s. This is unsurprising since Moffat seems to have a massive hard-on for the design of those flicks; the new TARDIS, both inside and out, is based heavily on the TARDIS from those films as well.

They could build a Dalek out of mashed potatoes and trot it across the screen and I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised because nothing really surprises me anymore about these villains. Understand, I do not hate or even dislike the Daleks, and I eagerly await the day this series finds something new and bold to do with them. I’d like to imagine these new Daleks have some new tricks that will be unveiled at a later date. It may or may not be this season, but don’t be surprised if they show up in the finale (and if it does happen, you of course won’t be). If there are no new tricks upon their return, and it’s all just business as usual, I’ll happily acknowledge that the vocal, grumpy set was correct. (Looking back over this review, I’m not entirely sure that I’m not some kind of splinter faction of them.)

Oddly, despite my little bitchfest here, I actually thought this episode was slightly better than the previous one, if only for the first fifteen minutes of it. I enjoyed the character of Bracewell – who in an RTD script would’ve probably been about three times more sympathetic – as much as possible. They tried, they really tried here to do him some justice, and yet Bill Paterson, who’s such a fine actor, could have done so much more with this had the character been given a little more care. I’d like to see him pop up again, maybe when the Daleks return. And then there’s the big question, which seems to be the only thing that really matters in this story, and that’s why Amy has no idea who the Daleks are, given that they invaded her planet not too long ago. I think we can safely assume this doesn’t fall under the obliviousness that Donna was prone to.

Once again, Matt Smith came out looking pretty good, and I’m beginning to see what Moffat was talking about when he told the press how he seems like “an old man in a young man’s body” (or words to that effect). He’s really beginning to remind me of Troughton, which is very cool. In this episode, the line that did it for me was “No, no, no! I won’t let you get away this time! I won’t!” I could totally hear Troughton saying that, inflection and all. I’ll even go so far as to say that despite how little has transpired in the season so far, Smith is already a better Doctor than either Eccleston or Tennant. Bold, fightin’ words I know, but I’m standing by it (for now anyway). If only he could sink his chops into a good script…
__________________________________________________
NEXT TIME: The return of the Weeping Angels as well as Alex Kingston’s River Song in “The Time of Angels,” which is directed by Adam Smith, who did such a splendid job helming the season opener.

Classic “Who” DVD Recommendation of the Week: I went ape over and highly recommend the recent box set entitled “Dalek War,” which contains two linked Jon Pertwee stories, “Frontier in Space” and “Planet of the Daleks.”

(Thanks as always to Sonic Biro for the screencaps.)