The Angels Take Manhattan

Synopsis

The Stone Angels make a return. The Pond's die.

Analysis

Once again Moffat promises much but delivers very little. The Angels Take Manhattan (or is it New York, I can't remember) is a confusing mass of contradictions, not only to stories that have gone before, but to things that have happened just a scene ago (The 'Babies' don't send Rory back in time, then they do on a whim???).

The whole thing served as no more than a vehicle leading up to the 'emotional' departure of the Ponds...except there was no emotion! The acting (never Karen Gillans strong point anyway) was terrible and some of the jump cutting was amateur in the extreme (watch for the position, facial expressions and stance of  characters in the background and in close up...the disparities jumped off the screen at me, at least.).

Personally I'm glad the Ponds have gone...she was annoying and Rory was just so wet (although the teenybopper girls seem to like him...'Oh, I would love a boyfriend like Rory! I wish he was on Glee!!!!') and I hope they stay gone. No returns explained away with a quick 'it's all timey-wimey' line. Stay dead!

This half season has been mostly disappointment and it's clear the Moffat isn't the man for 'Who'. He should take his self-publicising self off to concentrate full time on the love of his life 'Sherlock' and allow a Dedicated Who-er to take his place. Me, for instance.

I'll give this 'story

30 / 100

And most of that is for the flashes of River Song's rack...

And now it's onward to Christmas...is that a mince pie I smell?

The Power of Three

Synopsis

Small black cubes appear all over the world, as if they have rained down from the sky, overnight. At first they appear benign until...

Analysis

Now this is more like it! A sci-fi story which grabbed me from the get-go and kept me glued to the TV until the final credits (unlike Mrs M, who had a tummy related incident which resulted in an overlong stay in the bathroom, but that's by the by...).

As usual I'll start with the elements that didn't quite work:

Alan Sugar (Sir)

The use of 'real' BBC newreaders on the 'real' BBC set was a nice touch when it was first used back in 2005 but it's really tired now. Likewise the appearances of Prof. Brian Cox and Sir Alan Sugar in their little vignettes. It's been overused to the point of screaming 'filler!' at me. The Doctor 'timewasting' was also blatant filler (to keep a football in the air for 5,000,000 kicks would, at a conservative estimate take almost 58 days at a constant 1 second per kick...I couldn't resist doing the maths!).

What I call 'Torchwood' editing. The drop-frame / speeded-up panning effect was used a few times here, and I find it really obtrusive. As someone with considerable video editing experience myself to me the 'effect' looks like a fault! If any of my students handed in a piece to be graded with an effect like that I would ask them to take it away and do it properly.

Fred Perry (not Sir)

Finally The Doctor's constant name dropping; in this episode it was regarding Fred Perry and his shorts. I think after 49 years we've established you're a time-traveller and have met all sorts of celebs...stop rubbing it in, especially with these ridiculous (and unfunny) non-sequiteurs.

And the good stuff...

Most of the rest! Those of you who read my posts know that I'm not the biggest fan of the Ponds but they were tolerable in this episode. I like how they've aged (10 years already!), and Karen Gillan actually looks older (makeup?)...Rory's quiff is a bit tragic, mind.

UNIT returns, and not only that there is a Lethbridge-Stewart back in charge! Kate Stewart, played by Jemma Redgrave (yes, of THOSE Redgraves) is probably best known for playing the lead role in the historical medical series 'Bramwell' is a character I would like to see, along with the new UNIT, recurring in future. A science-led UNIT has such possibilities...

Mark Williams as Rory's dad always makes me laugh. His most famous role is probably that of Mr Weasley in the Potter franchise, but in the UK he was known as a comic actor prior to that. Say to anyone of a certain age 'we wanna be together' in a Black Country accent and they'll know what you mean! I hope he isn't a 'not what he seems' character though...I've read rumours that he may be The Master, The Meddling Monk, Borusa, K9 and all kinds of nonsense! Please no!

The video here is adult only!

The episode wrap-up was a small let-down, with the ship being destroyed to quickly and easily...waving the Sonic screwdriver at random pieces of business to 'fix' them is becoming overused and annoying. Personally I would like to see the thing destroyed but think of the loss of toy sales for BBC Enterprises (hands up who has their own?). And what about the other people who were on the ship...did they all get out through the lift before it exploded?

Overall this episode had a very Torchwoody feel about it, which is no surprise as it was written by Chris Chibnall. It had a substance that was lacking in the previous story which, as I said above, engaged me from beginning to end. By far the best story of the season thus far and I score it as:

88 / 100 

Can't wait until next week and bye bye Ponds!

A Town Called Mercy

Synopsis

A Borg  lookalike is trying to kill some alien Joseph Mengele with a squiggle on his face, set against a Wild West backdrop. The Doctor and the Ponds are there as well. Mengele blows himself up and the Tardis flies away.

That's about it.

Analysis

This 'story' , and I use that word in the loosest possible terms, was quite simply the worst episode of Doctor Who since Christopher Ecclestone took over the Tardis in 2005. It managed to be dull, meaningless, confused and annoying all at the same time and just...the phrase I keep coming back to is 'totally irrelevant'.

 Why the 'Wild West' setting? It seems as if someone had rang the BBC and offered them a set for a week and did they have any episodes that could be shoehorned into the OK Corral. It added nothing to the story at all.

It was so cliched that the Alien Doctor Jeck was going to turn out not to be the 'mild mannered little man' he seemed to be at first, so no surprise when he pulled the gun on Amy (would have been good if he had shot her, though).

The Doctor and the self-destruct sequence in the spaceship: there might as well have been a caption flashed up on screen saying 'Desperate Plot Device! You Know What's Going To Happen Later!!!'

You know, I'm having a hard time writing this blog as the episode it's about was so uninspiring. I feel that just by typing these few lines I've expended more effort than whoever wrote 'A Town Called Mercy' did in his whole script.

This recurring theme of the Doctor becoming 'darker' is being handled so ham-fistedly - the scriptwriting (and acting) is at the level of a spotty teenage virgin struggling to get his angsty poems to rhyme. Glee is more emotionally convincing than the current bundle of tat being peddled under the Who banner.

I'm not wrting any more of this, I can't be bothered. I wasted an hour of my life watching that crap last night and I'm not happy.

Score

3/100

(and the 3 is for the 'coming next' teaser) 

Dinosaurs On A Spaceship

Since the first few episode titles were unveiled a few months ago I was dreading this story. The fact it was also written by Chris Chibnall almost had me not watching at all to be honest but hey, it was Saturday night and there was nowt else on...

Synopsis

The Doctor and a group of miscellaneous hangers on (Amy, Rory, Rory's dad, some Indiana Jones type and Queen Nefertiti) are summoned to a spaceship that has dinosaurs on it. The group are split up and The Doctor and his mob find Solomon on board, a space-trader / Fagin type who found the Dinosaur Ship in space and wanted it's cargo to flog.

In the meantime Amy and her Merry Band have discovered from the helpful computer that the Dinosaur Ship is actually a Silurian Ark. Turns out Solomon tried to buy the dinosaurs from the Silurians, and when they refused he had them ejected into space.

I forgot to mention, the Dinosaur Ship is on collision course with Earth, and the ISA (Indian Space Agency?) aren't too happy about this so shoot some missile at it to destroy it. It's now a race against time!

Shenanigans occur, Rory and his dad take control of the Dino-Ship and steer it away from Earth, The Doctor tricks the missiles to blow up Solomon in his escaping ship instead, and everybody is home in time for tea and crumpets.

Analysis

The first ten minutes or so of this episode did nothing to make me want to watch further. Nefertiti is trying to sexually assault The Doctor (when did he turn into such a Horn-Monster???), then the Tardis is suddenly materialising around the Pond family living room, picking up Rory's dad in the process.

Last week there was consternation among Fandom that the 'Asylum of the Daleks' prequel was only available on-line when it was quite relevant to the ensuing episode. The opening of Dinosaurs On A Spaceship (DOAS) SHOULD have been an internet only offering for all the reasons AOTD shouldn't have.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who had guessed the spaceship would turn out to be some kind of 'Ark In Space' (where have I heard that before?), and with Chris Chibnall as writer it didn't take Quincy to work out that the Silurians would be in the mix somewhere. Perhaps with a different episode title the surprise could have been greater (like the appearance of the Cybermen in 'Earthshock').

Once this first section had passed the story settled down into a reasonable, if very predictable, sci-fi romp. Comic relief was provided by Solomon's two hench-bots, hulking great rusty things with effeminate voices, bitchy personalities (think of a mixture of C3-PO, Frankie Howerd and a nasty Drag Queen) and lasers. No doubt the toys will be in the shops in time for Christmas, folks!




Solomon himself was something of a disappointment; why are all merchants on TV portrayed as Fagin-esque Jews? If only Solomon had been able to rub his hands together the characterisation would have been 100%...I swear if he had called the Hench-bots his 'lovely boys' I would have kicked the TV in (that's an exaggeration BTW!).

A few elements of the story seemed to be there for no reason other than to give the characters something to do (more padding!) such as the entire scene at the beach / engine room, the stunning of the veloceraptors and the dual-piloting thing with the Silurian ship (surely any two humans could have done this, as they all share genetic material...maybe it should have been shared DNA?).

'Hoy you! Yes you, Chibnall. Outside NOW!'

 Well, that would be my normal challenge to any bloke who upset my wife so much that he made her cry. Yes, I'm talking about the death of the Triceratops. This was  the great talking point on the social media sites I visited immediately after the story had finished, and quite a few people have said it marred their overall enjoyment of the episode.

Unusually The Doctor also directly and deliberately brought about the death of a human by leaving the homing device on Solomon's ship. What happened to the man who never would?

It was these last two details that jarred with the rest of the episode. The overall tone of the story was of a jolly gambol through Jurassic Park and the deaths should have been shocking instead of upsetting. Something like this is personal perception but, to me, they were about as subtle as a speed metal solo halfway through a string quartet recital.

My final nitpick. The Silurian Ship had entered the Earth's atmosphere so the ISA launched the missile which would take 30 minutes to impact. Blimey, are they a new type of missile that walks to the target, stopping for a McDonalds on the way? When they were seen in pursuit of Solomon they looked pretty nippy...

Conclusion

The success or failure of this story hung primarily on how well the dinosaurs were rendered, and all credit to the SFX people for doing a great job. I only hope the first two episodes of the season haven't eaten up the whole budget.

All in all DOAS was the closest Doctor Who has ever been to being 'Scooby Doo'. Personally I feel the story would have been much improved by being 'darker', but this little comic burlesque was quite refreshing. I'll give it:

72 /100

Phew, I managed to write that whole blog without mentioning Father Williams's balls. Oh sh.....

Asylum of the Daleks

At long last the new season is here. Almost a year after marrying River Song on top of a pyramid and faking his own death The Doctor returns to save the universe again.

For the first time since season 25 back in 1988 we open with a Dalek story. My over-riding memory of 'Remembrance of the Daleks' is we finally saw a Dalek fly, putting paid to the cynical sneer of the non-fan who would say  'they're rubbish, to get away from them you could just run up some stairs or climb a ladder'.

Of course, that story also saw the first and only (until last night) appearance of the Special Weapons Dalek, more of which later.

Synopsis

Asylum of the Daleks (or AOTD as I'll refer to it from now on) opened with the Doctor answering a summons to Skaro from a mysterious red-head who claimed to have escaped from a Dalek prison camp. He quickly realises this is a trap at which point Ginger sprouts an eyestalk and gun and shoots him.

The Ponds (who are, for reasons unexplained at that point, are in the process of getting divorced) also fall victim to a similar scam and are collected.

The Doctor and The Ponds find themselves on a Dalek ship facing the 'Parliament of the Daleks'. who are lead by a Prime Minister, and asked to save the Daleks by destroying the 'Asylum of the Daleks' which is the planet below. A ship has crashed into the planet, you see, and the Parliament is scared of what may be released. Only The Doctor can save them!

Oh, and there is a single human survivor of the crash trapped in the wreckage of the ship.

Add caption

Blah di blah di blah, The Doctor and Ponds go to the planet, meet some Daleks, kill some Daleks, try to rescue the human survivor but, lo and behold, she is not what she seems! She has been converted into a Dalek, only she doesn't know it and uses her last vestiges of humanity to save The Doctor and Ponds and also wipe clear the Dalek collective memory so they haven't a clue who our favourite Timelord is.

The Daleks blow up the planet but in the nick of time the Doctor and Ponds have beamed back up, directly into the Tardis. The Doc pops his head out of the door, taunts the Skaroan Death Machines and then disappears off into the vortex.

In the meantime we have found out that Rory and Amy split because she couldn't have childen, but they found love again while in the Asylum so The Doctor takes them home to live happily ever after (I almost forgot, there was some McGuffin where Amy lost a wristband that made nanogenes attack her and start turning her into a human Dalek thing by 'subtracting love').

And that, in a nutshell, is AOTD!

Analysis

Despite the gorgeous production values on display here I can only say that AOTD ultimately disappoints; it is all style, very little substance and has plot holes / continuity errors you could fly the Dalek mothership through.

To start with, wasn't Skaro destroyed in the Time War? It was also supposedly destroyed in 'Remembrance' although that may have been Skaro Mk II.

And where did all these Daleks come from? From the last surviving specimen of Metaltron owned by Van Stratten (destroyed) their numbers have grown year on year, and not only have they evolved they now have a constitutional voting system! I would love to see the Skaroan Televised Election Debates, they would be an absolute hoot! maybe that's why they are now coloured...blue for Conservative, red for Labour, yellow for Liberal (I'm English so am using UK parliamentary colours here), Green for, well, Green.

Additionally the Daleks  have developed a social conscience and, by extension, a system of healthcare to look after the sick, weak and mentally infirm. What happened to the 'we hate anything that isn't pure Dalek and will just blast the hell out of it'. It's only last season we had the Power Ranger Daleks exterminating the Ironsides for being 'old'.

In civilising the Daleks Moffat is also emasculating them. At one point we even see a Dalek who has literally lost one of his balls!

Big disappointment was the blink-and-you-miss-it appearance of the Special weapons Dalek. Surely it deserved at least a small cameo scene instead of being one of a million skulking away in the background. A definite missed opportunity.

The Rory / Amy thing: do domestics belong in the Tardis? I'm not so sure, but it was interesting to see the divorce papers scene which reinforced a)what a bitch Amy is, and b) what a wet fart Rory is. Kick her to the kerb, boyfren, she no good!

Later there is a scene that explains why the marriage has failed...Amy can't have children after being fiddled with at Demons Run. Now forgive me if I'm missing something really obvious here, but haven't they already got Melody Pond / River Song, of whom there was nary a mention?

The actress who is going to play the new companion showing up was a nice touch, but I hope it's not part of some convoluted ongoing  'timey-wimey' thing Moffat has invented for his own amusement. Once her plight had been laid out I bet I wasn't the only person who guessed she was going to turn out to be a Dalek? And why was she chained down (in the weakest chains I've ever seen in a prison by the way)?

I was watching the clock as the episode drew to it's conclusion and with minutes running out I said to my wife that there was going to be a typical Moffat 'and in one bound they were free' ending, and I wasn't wrong. Being beamed off an exploding planet in the nick of time is so old hat, and The Doctor manages to deposit himself and The Ponds in the Tardis (which had been brought ever so conveniently to the Parliament Chamber) for good measure!

But it wasn't all bad. The special and visual effects were fantastic and it's always a treat to see the Daleks. There were a few dialogue gems, including the one which made me laugh out loud when Rory asked about the Daleks, in all seriousness 'What colour? (pause) Well, all the good questions had been asked.'

All in all it wasn't a bad episode, but it was far from being a good one. Too many plot holes and an oh-so-predictable central thread leaves me to rate this as a

64 / 100 

Thank you for reading and I welcome your comments, especially ones that don't agree with me. Why not sign up to the blog so you get notified of updates as I post them?

He's Back - And It's About Time!

How many blogs on the entire internet are going to be using THAT headline I wonder?


Well, it's September 1st 2012 and the wait is almost over; Season 7 is about to begin (as I write it's just finished on BBC1 in the UK...the rest of us have to wait another little while but hey, after eight months what's another few hours?) and expectations are high. Hopefully we won't be disappointed.

A slight word of warning! I take my 'Who' far too seriously (far too seriously for a 40 year old married man at any rate) and am likely to go off on one when I encounter something I don't like. I'm not a Canon Nazi per se, but I like things to fit reasonably comfortably into what has gone before. The one thing I will not tolerate however is lazy writing! At times in the last few seasons I have despaired at the quality of the some of the storylines (and I'm not just talking about 'Love And Monsters; here) which have been just dire.

But, I have also sat slack-jawed when the dialogue has reached peaks of greatness hitherto unsurpassed in science-fiction. Lines so briliant I use them every day to confuse none Who-ers.

Anyway, if you do read my stuff please leave a comment, even if it's insulting. I look forward to writing for you.