Doctor Who: The Big Bang

Last week's episode, The Pandorica Opens ended on several exciting cliffhangers . The Doctor's old enemies had teamed up against him and trapped him in the Pandorica. The Tardis had exploded. Amy had died. The Universe was destroyed. Having raised the threat level as far as it could go, Steven Moffat has no choice but to bring it back down. The cliffhangers were resolved in a fairly dull way.. How did the Doctor escape the Pandorica? Through Rory using the Sonic Screwdriver. How did Amy survive being killed? The Pandorica suddenly is a life preserving device.   How did River escape the exploding Tardis? The Doctor simply teleported in to rescue her. The one question we didn't get an answer to was the identity of the party that blew up the Doctor's Tardis.

The Big Bang  is, unusually for a finale, small in scale. The main focus is on a museum where the Doctor, Amy, Amelia, Rory and River run around, trying to find a way to reboot the universe and evade the one surviving Dalek in the universe. It wasn't a direction I was expecting Steven to take us, and I admit to being a little disappointed that we didn't find out who was pulling the strings behind this whole incident. It seems we must wait a while before we find out the identity of the mysterious voice was that drew the Tardis off course.

It was nice to see little Amelia back. The alternate universe with no stars was at least a fascinating idea. The Stone Dalek was a good look even if it was a fairly flimsy monster that had to recharge itself over time.

Matt Smith has been the best thing in this series. In many ways the show has relied on him when stories were not up to scratch. The scene where he says goodbye to little Amelia is heartbreaking as we see the old man in the Tardis.

I was disappointing that nothing was revealed about River. She is apparently scary enough to make a Dalek beg for mercy. I hope there's a good reason for this and it isn't just Moffat trying to make her look more impressive.

The other big moment in this episode was the wedding between Amy and Rory. . It is great that they will carry on travelling with the Doctor as we have never had a married couple as companions before.

Since the story focuses so much on the regular cast, other characters, such as Amy's Aunt Sharon get practically no development. Amy's parents appear briefly but they are not particularly memorable and I have no desire to see them come back. All in all, this episode was alright on its own merits but did not match up to the anticipation.

So, who is River Song? What caused the Tardis to explode on the day of Amy and Rory's wedding? And what is the mysterious Silence? These are questions that we will have to wait several months to find out.

7/10

Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens

The Pandorica Opens is almost the inverse of the previous season finale, Journey's End. The latter story featured several old companions teaming up to save the universe from the Daleks. This time around, it is the old monsters who have teamed up to face a single Doctor/Companion team. The Pandorica of the title serves as a trap, an ultimate prison for the Doctor. 'The Pandorica Opens' did not refer to something getting out but the Doctor getting locked in. It was a nice bit of wordplay from Moffat.

Matt's Doctor is brilliant. This episode afforded him some great loud moments and also some great quiet moments. The loud moment highlight was his speech to the monsters from Stonehenge like a rockstar. I can imagine fans quoting that one for years. The quieter moment was when he contemplated the idea of miracles in the universe.

Amy Pond is a bit more likeable now that she has been reunited with Rory. She gets a good encounter with the husk of a Cyberman. It is good that her memory has come back. Her death was more funny than sad though.

River Song is back again and she had a cool introduction, pretending to be Cleopatra and manipulating a group of Romans into doing her bidding. She ends the episode trapped on an exploding Tardis but there is no doubt it is not the end. Could her final line 'I'm Sorry my love' mean that she is sorry she couldn't escape or was she sorry because she set off the explosion herself?

Another character return was Rory who is great as ever as the defender of Amy. He also has great chemistry with Matt's Doctor. He is revealed to be an Auton but I really hope that nex episode is not the end for the character.

The Pandorica Opens also boasted good set design. The underhenge was a good design. Overall Toby Haynes did a good job directing this episode.

Things certainly ended in a bad way for our heroes. With Amy dead, the Tardis exploding and the universe destroyed. Is there any hope? I will certainly be watching to find out.

7/10

Doctor Who: The Lodger

Back in the original series, the Doctor's travels through time and space were brought to an end in The War Games, when he was exiled to Earth by the Time Lords. During that brief period of Earthbound adventures, the Doctor tended to visit industrial facilities, or laboratories at the behest of UNIT and the Government. We never found out where the Doctor lived or did his shopping. He gave the impression he would visit gentlemens' clubs with 'Tubby' Rowlands rather than pubs with ordinary soldiers.

Gareth Roberts' The Lodger finally shows the Doctor in an ordinary environment, as he rents a room from Craig Owens, played by James Corden. The Doctor has been stranded when the Tardis dematerialised with Amy on board. He has tracked the source of the disturbance to Craig's flat and has to go undercover to find out what it is.

The scenes that follow are some of the funniest Doctor Who has ever shown, with the Doctor taking up football, taking Craig's place at a day job and generally being strange at everything. This story really benefits from having Matt Smith as the Doctor. The Ninth or Tenth Doctors would have taken this in their stride. This episode probably shows Matt Smith's best performance to date.

With Amy stuck on the Tardis, James Corden's Craig Owens is the closest we have to a companion. I don't know very much about James Corden. Some people like him while others seem to find him annoying. Whatever the case, he puts in a pretty good performance as Craig Owens. Daisy Haggard is also quite good as Craig's friend Sophie. These are both more grounded characters than Amy.

Amy is only in the Tardis and I don't really miss her. She makes a few quirky one-liners but that is about all.

The ultimate power turns out to be a malfunctioning ship computer, luring victims to the flat to make them pilot the ship away. It's not that exciting but it's just there to facilitate the Doctor and Craig relationship.

This is mostly a feelgood episode,


9/10

Doctor Who: Cold Blood

Even though The Hungry Earth was a disappointment I still held out hope that the story as a whole could be redeemed if this episode were better. Sadly this did not turn out to be the case.Problems are present at the episode's opening when we get a CGI shot of Earth in space while a portentous voiceover talks about the way the Earth changed. This is near identical to the beginning of part one of The End of Time. There it was forgivable because that was the Tenth Doctor's farewell episode and such an event deserved portentousness. Here it is happening in a middle episode of the series and seems like it is trying to make the episode seem more impressive than it actually is.

After they were kept in the shadows last week, we get to see more of the redesigned Silurian. I'm still not keen on the more humanoid design, but I like the fact that the armour and the guns are reminiscent of the Sea Devils. The episode seems to have trouble getting to grips with the ethical issues surrounding the Silurians. In Warriors of the Deep the Doctor stupidly claimed that all the Silurians ever wanted was peace. For some reason, in this episode, when Restac asks what happened to the other colony, the Doctor replies that 'the humans destroyed them all'. That's ignoring half the story. The original Silurian story was about bigotry on both sides. You had people like the Young Silurian and Major Baker.  It's also strange that we're supposed to sympathise with the Silurians even though one of them is dissecting the humans.

Sadly, the much vaunted peace between Silurians and humans is ruined when the warrior Alaya is killed. The Doctor is suddenly able to use the sonic screwdriver like a weapon and blow up Silurian guns. So basically nothing will ever be a threat to him again. The peace plans are put on the back burner as the Nasreen and Tony are kept in stasis underground. Its annoying because this episode is meant to take place in the future, so they could have been a bit more fantastic.

The other major moment is Rory's surprise death as he is swallowed by a crack in time. It is annoying that Amy conveniently forgets him, even though she could remember the space ship crew. It's almost like Steven Moffat didn't want to deal with the emotional repurcussions of the incident. Still, the way it is unresolved makes me think that we have not seen the last of him. It is the only time that we see Amy show any kind of compassion for him.

The only other development is the Doctor's discovery that the cracks in time may have been caused by an exploding Tardis. It's probably the only interesting thing in this episode.

There's not much to say Matt Smith as he continues to be the best thing about the story despite getting some weird lines like 'squeaky bum time'. There's nothing for Smith to sink his teeth into liek the Alaya confrontation in the previous episode but he soldiers on and gives us a decent performance.

As I said in my previous article, Amy Pond continues to be a series of quips. She is made a representative of Earth but she gets bored during the Silurian conference and seems unfazed a lot of the time. The moment where she is upset by Rory's death would be more emotional if the character wasn;t forced to forget about it some time later. The fact that she's forgotten Rory's death means she won't develop anyway.

Poor Rory. It can be hoped that he will somehow reappear later in the series. It is good that he is the most morally upright people in the group of humans. He also proves he is not a coward as he is prepared to take the body of Alaya back to the Silurians even though this could put him in danger. It is a testament to Arthur Darvill that the character's absence at the end of the tale makes the Tardis feel emptier. I hope we have not seen the last of him and the ring remaining in the Tardis suggests that this is so.

This was, not a particularly great episode. Series 5 started out with a lot of promise but it has now started to dip down. The next few episodes will have to be a lot better in order to redeem this series.

5/10

Next: The Doctor and Amy meet Vincent Van Gogh. I am really trying to get the urge to care.