Amy and Rory are now the longest running companions in post-2005 Doctor Who yet I feel
I know less about them than I do with Rose, Martha or Donna from the Russell T Davies years. The problem is that without a family, friends or fixed location, there's never been anything to make the Ponds feel grounded in reality. Their lives have been rewritten and rebooted due to the many time paradoxes found in Moffat era episodes. Fortunately, writer Chris Chibnall has made use of Amy and Rory's penultimate adventure to delve deeper into the personal lives of these two characters.
Amy and Rory wake up one morning in their home to find that small black cubes have appeared in their street. The Doctor is already on Earth and they soon discover that Cubes have appeared all across the world. Everyone notices the cubes, including UNIT, led by Kate Steward. They track the Doctor so that they can get him to help them. The Doctor decides to monitor the Cubes until they show signs of action. This means he has to live at the Ponds for a year,which gives him the chance to get the Ponds better. These domestic moments become the focus of the story.
It's difficult to imagine what Amy and Rory would be like without the Doctor since so much of their lives are built around their experiences with him. Amy grew up obsessed with her "raggedy Doctor". Rory first became a nurse simply to try and become more like the Doctor to impress Amy. Their daughter was used as part of a sci-fi plot to assassinate the Doctor. Even Amy's new job as a travel journalist complements the Doctor's role as a traveler. In this episode we get to see them do normal things like throwing out rubbish, checking the fridge and receiving a message about glasses prescriptions. We also get to see them with friends and colleagues, though not long enough to really build up a picture of life without the Doctor.
Fortunately, Rory's dad, Brian is back. As a recurring character, he helps to build the sense of the Ponds having a consistent history. He's just as fun as he was in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, thinking up all sorts of possible origins of the Cubes and keeping a log to diligently records the activity of the Cubes everyday. He also gets to show some inner strength in his concern about whether the Doctor can keep his two relatives safe.
While Amy and Rory find it easy to slip into the life of the Doctor, the Doctor seems to find it much more difficult to slip in to theirs. Four days of no cube activity frustrate the Doctor. His attempts to stave off tedium, by painting the garden fence and practicing football, all in under an hour, are some of the funniest moments of the episode. He resembles a child with ADHD, to the point where he won't even stay on Earth and nips off in the Tardis. He still wants to be around the Ponds though, and drags them off on all sorts of adventures before realizing that he is making life more difficult for them as a result. His best moment is when he is chatting with Amy and tells her that he travels he is running towards things, not away for them. It's a good justification for his travelling, and also fits in with the reasons why he left Gallifrey in the first place. A normal life is nothing for him.
With the focus on the Pond family, the only other major character is Kate Stewart, leader of UNIT and daughter of former Brigadier, Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart. The reference to Sir Alistair seemed a little gratuitous and I would've preferred they stuck with Colonel Magumbo as a leader, but I still enjoyed Jemma Redgrave's performance.
After a year of being dormant, the Cubes finally activate and begin attacking people. This is where the episode starts to fall apart. Rory and Brian head to the hospital where Brian gets kidnapped by two androids posing as nurses. These androids have been running tests on the hospital staff, but it's not clear why they need to keep experimenting since they must be ready to destroy the humans by now.
Fortunately, the Doctor and Amy are able to reach a spaceship and find Rory and Brian. It is here that we see the creature behind the Cube attack. The Shakri was a bit of a disappointment. The Doctor claims that it is a legend from Gallifrey, but that seems to hold no relevance other than to make them seem like a bigger threat than they actually were. Galactic pest controllers are not really the stuff of childhood nightmares. It seemed like a waste of Steven Berkoff's acting talents to have him speaking generic dialogue with his face covered in latex. The fact that the Shakri is just a recorded image means that he doesn't even act against Matt Smith or anyone else.
The threat of the Cubes is dispatched with a quick flick of the sonic screwdriver. A simple alteration to the signals and peoples' hearts start beating again, It's a disappointing conclusion to what up to that point had been a decent tale.
The concept of exploring the lives of the companions was introduced in the Russell T Davies era, and this episode seems to pay homage to his era in more ways than one. Here we have an alien invasion which is televised around the world, celebrity cameos, and we see the way that the way that people react to the invasion. The fact that there hasn't been a story like this for ages meant that the old tropes suddenly felt fresh and exciting again.
Director Douglas MacKinnon does a good job of directing, using a lot of fast cuts and slow-mo moves. At times it felt a little distracting, like when Brian turns from the Pond's window to the street of cubes. At the same time, it helps to move the episode forward quickly, given that younger viewers might have been bored with the lack of monster.
This episode was less of a mini movie than the others, but focused much better on character. I've always had a bit of affection for the Ponds, mostly because I like Karen Gillan and Arthur Darville. But Chris Chibnall has succeeded in making me feel that their loss next week will be huge. Only the disappointing conclusion prevents this from becoming one of the great stories.
6/10
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