We would like to thank everyone who nominated our “New Who in Conversation” series for the William Atheling Jr Award again this year – it’s a great honour to be on the ballot! Voting for the annual Ditmar Awards (which the Atheling is included in) is open to all members of Continuum X (2014 Natcon – Melbourne) and Swancon 40 (2015 Natcon – Perth), and can be done online.

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 6 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all.

We are working our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, and sometimes a couple of extra episodes we love as our blogging points. Just for fun!

“A Good Man Goes to War/Let’s Kill Hitler”
Season six, episodes seven and eight
The Doctor – Matt SmithAmy Pond – Karen Gillan
Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill 
River Song – Alex Kingston
Mels – Nina Toussaint-White

DAVID:
I really enjoyed the introduction to “A Good Man Goes to War”. I do think that there are times when Amy puts the Doctor in roles that by rights are Rory’s, and it was great that he was the subject of her speech and, unless, I am way off, the “good man” of the title and the prophecy. The scene where they confront the Cybermen is quite effective, though you do have to ask about the ethics of blowing up so many of them just to get information – it’s even more casual slaughter than we are used to. I actually had already seen this scene when it was played during the Hugo ceremony, but I had managed to blank it out and it didn’t diminish my enjoyment of this.

TEHANI:
Rewatching the beginning I’m just all “RORY ROCKS”! Which is, almost certainly, the idea.

TANSY:
I love that Rory uses his Roman Legionary costume and identity when he needs to kick ass, and I do like this scene very much – of course, as soon as you start thinking about the ethics of exploding the whole army it’s a bit icky. Looking back to 2011, when this episode aired – this was the point very much at which fandom accepted Rory as officially awesome instead of complaining about him being a doormat or another Mickey. I’ve always given a bit of a side-eye to this group reaction, as it seems to me that Rory became a lot more popular as a character as soon as he became more traditionally macho – waving swords and uttering threatening lines. Which is a shame, because I love squooshy, sensitive Rory too.

I am very glad that they seem to now have dropped the whole thing with Rory feeling jealous of the Doctor – it feels like discovering Amy’s abduction has led him to finally drop that very boring narrative thread, so he can concentrate on what’s important.

PS: the ‘A good man’ of the title is the Doctor I think, but it also refers to Rory, and takes on different meanings for each of them.

DAVID:
Interesting. To me it is far better fit for Rory. But, that’s the joy of prophecies, right? Discussion fodder!

So, were these Mondasian Cybermen? I get confused by all these alternate timelines etc!

TEHANI:
That’s quite clearly a question Tansy needs to answer, because I don’t even know what you’re talking about!

TANSY:
I don’t know that it’s clear at this point – there’s one school of thought that the Mondas Cybermen have still not been officially brought back in New Who (apart from the head in Dalek), but it’s clear there are plenty of them surfing around ‘our’ universe at this point, and they have ditched the Cybus industries logo as of The Next Doctor, so… NO ONE KNOWS, GUYS. Peter Capaldi recently stated that bringing back the Mondasian Cybermen was a priority for him.

TEHANI:
On that note, Tansy, do the opening scenes make any sense at all in terms of continuity? I mean, there are characters who are familiar but not as themselves I think, and the events we see them in seem like they come from Doctor Who past, but I don’t think they all are? I think it’s all fabulous, but I don’t know it makes any sense?

TANSY:
Ah, that’s the clever part. All of these characters feel like they belong solidly to the Doctor’s past – they obviously all have a past with him, but certainly in the case of Madam Vastra, Strax and Jenny, we’ve never seen them in the show before. I love this opening, it’s like a proper heist film, with characters who have a murky past with each other.

Something Moffat has done very well, which RTD only started allowing for in his later seasons, is allowing lots of gaps and spaces between stories, including long periods in which the Doctor lives a life we don’t get to witness. In this case he’s had these friends whose lives he has completely changed, who owe him favours, and we get to walk in on the middle of the friendship.

TEHANI:
Which is super smart for the fandom side of things, because it allows lots of (authorised and non-authorised) opportunities to play in the history. Big Finish is going to have an absolute ball fiddling around in this era in ten years or so!

DAVID:
One of the things that has concerned me with New Who, especially the later seasons, is that it sometimes crosses the line with portraying the Doctor as a darker, more powerful figure into something that is far too potent. I kind of liked the Doctor when he was a mysterious wanderer, and where people did not know who they were messing with, rather than someone whose name so well known as to cause armies to panic and flee. There have been times this has been done well (such as “The Eleventh Hour” and “The Pandorica Opens”), but it can also get a bit too self congratulatory and back slappy. This episode walked that line, and came close times to stepping over.

TEHANI:
By gosh Matt Smith was marvellous in this though. I came back to rewatch after way too long and fell in love with him all over again in this. He’s pitch perfect as the madcap showman in the start of the battle, but that underlying anger, fear and sadness coming through at points (and the gorgeous “I speak baby” stuff too!), oh, so good.

TANSY:
I think this is the Eleventh Doctor at his darkest, and his most morally compromised – as is telegraphed quite heavily in the story! The theme of the Doctor as warrior is carried through, and we finally see the potential for him to be a war leader but also his deep dislike of the very idea that he might do such a thing. Now that we know (CLOSE YOUR EARS DAVID) so much more about what happened to him during the Time War, this story has extra resonance, because this is what he promised himself he would never do again.

DAVID:
I quite liked River Song’s speech at the end where she lectures the Doctor on the dangers of the legend he has created, and just like in Pandorica Opens, we can understand why races might decide the Universe would be safer without the Doctor in it – though of course their methods are inexcusable and completely reprehensible. I think that the modern incarnations of the Doctor have sometimes lost sight of his moral core, and act as if the measure of whether things are right or wrong are whether it is the Doctor doing them.

TEHANI:
It’s all about River Song though, really. Both these episodes are about solving the mystery of River, and I love the way that starts, with her lovestruck and whimsical then thrust into events that she clearly knows the outcome of. Paradoxes, they break my brain.

TANSY:
I was spoiled the morning that the episode aired (still bitter) but yes I think this is a great River Song story – if anything, the revelation is only a small part of the episode (though a huge part of the season). Some of my favourite River scenes are in this episode, particularly the one at the beginning when Rory comes to her and asks for help, and she turns him down. You can see in her face, watching this in retrospect, that she’s searching for the person she knows is her father, and that this is the last time she’ll see him before he knows who she is.

It’s a great disappointment to me that the River-Rory relationship was given so little exploration in stories afterwards, because while I think the awkward-loving vibe between her and Amy is so interesting, I think the most interesting scenes between River and Rory were basically in this episode, and back in The Impossible Astronaut.

DAVID:
I was more than a little confused about who the bad guys were in this episode. I thought at first it was the Church Militant from the last Angels episode (which would have bothered me as I thought that was a great concept). Then there was a mention of a Papal directive, as well as Anglican soldiers and the Headless Monks confusing things. The Silence’s doctrine has nothing in common with Christianity, so I will be interested to see where the threads all come together. New Who has had interesting relationship with religion, so I will await with great interest to discover the logic behind all these connections.

TANSY:
Oh, sweetie.

TEHANI:
I think I gave up entirely trying to sort out the continuity, if there is any! Without spoiling, some of this is (somewhat) explained over the next seasons, but here, nah, not so much.

TANSY:
Yes, the church militant and the Papal mainframe are heaven neutral (I love this term though no idea what it means) and I think that’s important – they are neutral, they just happen to be under orders currently from characters who are working against the Doctor.

TEHANI: That said, for my mind the only villain is Madame Kovarian – the scene where the baby turns out to be Flesh absolutely shocked me the first time, and it upsets me every single time I watch it.

DAVID:
Yes, I actually shuddered when that happened.

TANSY:
I found the baby plot incredibly stressful the first time around – this screened in 2011 when my youngest was still toddler, so the whole thing with Amy and Rory losing baby Melody was genuinely devastating – though it was actually the stress of not knowing what was going to happen that made it worse for me. In retrospect, now that tension is gone, I can watch the episode without my heart in my throat.

TEHANI:
It’s still completely awful. Too many babies in my life for this ever not to be ridiculously sad.

TANSY:
A lot of people hated the Amy abducted subplot, and there was something really horrible about the idea of her being pregnant in a box for so many months, while her mind was still cheerfully travelling around with the Doctor and Rory. I do like the strength of how Amy is portrayed here as a mother – a role that by no means comes naturally to her, and which she has had no preparation for. I like that she’s not softened by having a baby in her arms – she’s harder than ever, like when she’s so sharp to Lorna Bucket because the idea of sentiment in this situation makes her want to stab things.

DAVID:
I really enjoyed the three characters introduced here, Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint and Strax (though I assumed he was the Sontaran from a much earlier episode at first). I’ve heard that they pop up again a few times, and I will look forward to that. Strax especially appealed to me, and I thought both hilarious and believable that the Sontaran idea of penance might involve being forced to “help the weak”. His conversation with the boy was comedy gold. And, I so want to know more about that war and that time zone, it looked like a steampunk fan’s dream come true.The idea of a Sontaran breast feeding was pretty amusing too, I would love to see a cafe owner tell him to cover up!

TANSY:
I love these characters so much. Always and forever. It’s rare for a single Doctor Who story to launch so many memorable, worth-bringing-back characters – this one has four and I won’t tell you who the fourth is, yet. Spoilers!

TEHANI:
The arch looks Vastra and Jenny exchange in that scene in the control room! *dies of love* They are so awesome, and I’m still waiting for that Vastra and Jenny spin off please and thank you! They are all brilliant in this. And though I maybe felt, particularly on rewatching again, that there are perhaps a few too many characters that were really somewhat extraneous, I really genuinely loved this episode. It makes me laugh and cry and ache for them. So much good.

TANSY:
It’s amazing how epic this story feels considering that it is a one-parter – I know we’re here to talk about both stories, but you both did not have to WAIT TWO FREAKING MONTHS between episodes like those of us who were watching it live! (Or wait, Tehani, were you watching it live by this point? I lose track).

TEHANI:
I was TOTALLY watching it live by then! The pain…

TANSY:
The big cast of characters makes it feel like a big, sprawling space opera and I love that – also how well the various characters are set up, even with only a few lines.

DAVID:
I know I am a conservative fuddy duddy, and I don’t think that New Who should be completely constrained by the continuity of the old show, but I am not sure that I approve of throwing out established canon for a one liner and a minor plot point. I am sure that temporal grace has been an important part of the show and a wonderful concept that deserved better.

TANSY:
To be fair, David, the idea of temporal grace has been contradicted in Classic Who at least as often as it has been relevant to the plot! Let us not forget Susan and the scissors in Edge of Destruction. 😀 I personally think that the temporal grace idea is something a bit like the Randomiser from the Fourth Doctor’s era, or the isometric controls – something that has occasionally been active in the TARDIS, but is not a permanent, always-taken-for-granted feature.

TEHANI:
So we’re kind of cheating with this one, because it’s not really a double episode. However, the program originally aired with a two and a half month gap between the episodes, so technically, as well as “A Good Man Goes to War” being Hugo nominated, we could call them a season closer and a season opener, yes? I just think we really REALLY need to talk about “Let’s Kill Hitler”, so we’ll justify it!

DAVID:
It’s probably long overdue that a TV show about time travel needed to address the elephant in the room. If you had a time machine and a gun, why wouldn’t you travel back in time and try and kill Hitler? Of course, all know it is never going to go to plan!

TANSY:
I don’t know that it is overdue in that it’s a trope that has been referenced and discussed almost as often as the JFK shooting or the grandfather paradox. But then it is supposed to be ridiculous in this context – the whole idea is that it’s what an adrenalin junkie teenager would come up with, given a gun and a time machine.

The actual elephant in the room is that the Doctor gets hugely judgmental about all kinds of atrocities when he’s faced with them – he even brought Harriet Jones down for shooting one spaceship out of the sky. So why doesn’t he kill Hitler? Why didn’t he save Adric? How can we actually put our faith in a hero with near-unlimited power to change time, who allows himself to choose his battles?

DAVID:
Well, and a hero who has done far worse things than shoot one spaceship out of the sky!

The problem with Nazi references in a lot of movies (and in political discourse) is that there is a danger of minimising evil and of weird moral equivalences. The idea that River’s crime of killing the Doctor is somehow comparable to Hitler’s crimes made me uncomfortable and I think that they should have made it clear that there were levels of punishment/crime that they were enforcing.

TANSY:
It is uncomfortable – again I think it’s supposed to be uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay. The British have a long history of turning Hitler and the Nazis into a joke, from World War II propaganda onwards, as a way of coping with what they represented and what the potential invasion of Britain signified, but I think we’re at a point in history where a lot of that humour is pretty misguided.

DAVID:
Because I am so far behind, I don’t know whether we get the story of where the Doctor went looking, and what happened in the time between the start of his search, and meeting in the cornfield, but I am a big fan of these gaps as these can be filled with all sorts of wonders from new companions to homicidal super computers and leather clad savages.

TEHANI:
The first time I watched this, it was really weird to see newly regenerated River suddenly being a psychopath – it didn’t make sense that Rory and Amy could have known Mels so well and yet she turns into this lunatic so quickly. But rewatching, it was more palatable. The idea that the brainwashing imperative to kill him didn’t actually kick in until she encountered the Doctor makes sense, if you squint at it, so I can hand wave other stuff to make it work.

TANSY:
I like many parts of this episode – particularly Alex Kingston’s portrayal of the very young River Song/Melody coming into her new body for the first time – but I think the search part of the story is disappointing mostly because the Doctor promises he will get their baby back, and he fails. He fails terribly, and we don’t see him fail – we don’t even see him try. Instead, time travel catches up with them – but while I normally support gaps in the story, this one is pretty massive and means that all the emotional punch of “A Good Man Goes To War” is allowed to fizzle. It feels like maybe he just put his feet up in the TARDIS and had a cup of tea then came to collect them at the end of the summer.

DAVID:
River Song being Rory and Amy’s daughter certainly introduces some weird family dynamics, especially if her and the Doctor end up together. One wonders how Amy would feel about that, and the Doctor is continuing his run of entirely inappropriate relationships. Fortunately, the power dynamic between River and the Doctor is much more balanced than some of the other ones we have seen.

I wasn’t sure about the shoe-horning of Mel’s character into Rory and Amy’s past, but that conversation where Amy tells Rory he is gay made it worthwhile. I wonder if there are any expanded universe adventures of the incarnation of Mel’s floating around, whether books or Big Finish? If not, maybe there should be. They didn’t really explain why she was simultaneously wanting to kill the Doctor, and had grown up idolising him. Did the brainwashing only kick in at a certain point? Was there a trigger word? Did she come and find Amy and Rory because they were her parents or because they were a way of getting to her target. I am sure all will be revealed.

TANSY:
Oh, sweetie.

TEHANI:
I’m so ambivalent about Mels. On one hand, I think she’s awesome, and I could watch an entire spin off called The Amy, Rory and Mels Adventures played by their younger selves (with a few cameos from the “teenage” selves just for giggles). On the other, without that background, without ever seeing or hearing a single thing about Mels for the entire season and a half we’ve known Amy and Rory, unfortunately it just falls flat for me. I get why we HAVE Mels, but it’s so obviously a plot device and it’s one of the few times I’ve been disappointed by a random add-in.

I think part of the problem I have with it is the way Rory and Amy have basically got over the loss of their baby, and it’s so unfair that they basically just give up on getting baby Melody back again. Just because River was Mels and they kind of grew up together, and they know how things work out (basically), it’s not at ALL the same as being parents to a baby who they were clearly so invested in THE LAST EPISODE.

TANSY:
Yeah, I think a single line earlier in the season to say that Amy named the baby after her best friend Mels (which would make sense and actually would have distracted from the melody – song connection) would have signposted Mels a little better. But then this whole second half of the season is characterised by episodes which needed one or two lines of dialogue to FIX THEM.

By the way there was a great comic in Doctor Who Magazine – I think the December issue in the same year? Which showed a hidden adventure of Rory, Amy and Mels at Christmas. I think the three of them and their odd childhood together is absolutely a goldmine of missed storytelling opportunities.

TEHANI:
Look, in all, I think this episode is a bit over-the-top and melodramatic, but Alex Kingston is as always fabulous, there are some very good parts interspersed with the bits that don’t make complete sense, and there are some really nice callbacks to past episodes and tidbits that are picked up in later episodes.

TANSY:
Alex Kingson and Matt Smith together are amazing in this. And while I know very much that feminist Doctor Who fans all over the world were infuriated by the “I’m looking for a good man” line at the end of this episode, and the reframing of young River as someone obsessively shaping her life around the Doctor…

I actually really like this piece of their story, because the power imbalance between them with him knowing more about her and their relationship is an important bookend to the early episodes where she was all-knowing and he was innocent. Their relationship is much more fun to watch in stories when they’re both somewhere in the middle, but this piece of the puzzle is important. The fact that she is vulnerable, erratic and less confident here, in her youth, does not take away from how awesome and extraordinary she becomes, just because we’ve seen it in the wrong order so it feels like regression. If that makes sense?

DAVID:
Definitely. To me, all this is doing is showing how she became the River Song we meet when she first appears in the show, not retconning her character or diminishing it. If we went from the River Song we first met to Mels, yes that could be seen as a step backward for a great character. But that River Song hasn’t changed or gone anywhere–we are just getting an extended flashback showing us her backstory! It’s actually a pretty clever idea.

TEHANI:
Definitely! Like, you know, people (even fictional ones) can grow and change – nicely done I reckon.

Previous Episodes
“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day”, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“The Christmas Invasion”, 2005 Christmas Special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion”, S02E03
“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04
“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06
“Army of Ghosts/Doomsday”, S02E12/13
Season Two Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“Smith and Jones”, S03E01
“The Shakespeare Code/Gridlock”, S03E02/03″
“Human Nature/Family of Blood”. S03E08/09″
“Blink”. S03E10″
“Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords”, S03E12/13/14
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Spearhead from Space (1970)
Season Three Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Genesis of the Daleks (1975)
“Partners in Crime”, S04E01
“The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S04E0708”
“Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S04E0910”
Turn Left, S0411
The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End,S04E1213
Season Four Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
The Next Doctor / Planet of the Dead / The Waters of Mars
End of Time
The Eleventh Hour. S0501
The Beast Below/Victory of the Daleks,S050203
The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone,S05E0405
The Vampires of Venice/Amy’s Choice,S050607
The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood,S050809
Vincent and the Doctor/The Lodger,S05E10/11
The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang,S05E12/13
2010 Christmas Special – A Christmas Carol
Season Five Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon,S06E01/02
The Doctor’s Wife,S06E04

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 6 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all.

We are working our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, and sometimes a couple of extra episodes we love as our blogging points. Just for fun!

“The Doctor’s Wife”
Season six, episode four
The Doctor – Matt Smith
Amy Pond – Karen Gillan
Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill
Idris/The TARDIS – Suranne Jones

TEHANI:
So, much as we could happily talk all day about different episodes, we’re going back to our original remit of Hugo Award nominees, season openers and closers and specials. That means we’re skipping “Curse of the Black Spot”, which most conventional fandom wisdom will have you believe is a really rubbish episode, a condemnation I actually quite disagree with, but we’re not TALKING about that one, so that’s okay! 🙂

DAVID:
Pirates and swords and sirens, what more can you ask for? I quite liked “Curse of the Black Spot”, which just goes to show I continue to be completely out of touch with conventional fan wisdom!

TEHANI:
Say it with me: “Conventional fan wisdom can bite me”!

DAVID:
I also love that whooshing sound deadlines make as they fly past! (with apologies to Douglas Adams, of course).

TANSY:
I’ve come to appreciate the Dread Pirate Episode because it’s Raeli’s favourite of this season, and it has Kenny from Press Gang in it, but mostly because of Amy in THAT outfit.

TEHANI:
It’s a sincerely awesome outfit.

And here we are, at the episode that started it all for me. Not that it’s WHERE I started watching, but it is WHY I started watching.

TANSY:
Ah, I remember it well. Neil Gaiman has a lot to answer for 😀

TEHANI:
He does indeed…

If there is one thing Moffat does well, it’s seeding teeny pieces of narrative along the episodic arc to lead towards a climactic ending. Amy’s observation that the Doctor wants to be forgiven for what he did to the Time Lords, SO MUCH FORESHADOWING!

For me, the best part of this story has to be the performance of Suranne Jones as Idris/The TARDIS – she is astonishing, and has forever enshrined in the minds of fandom what the consciousness of the TARDIS looks and sounds like. It’s a bonus that she looks like a character from a steampunk story… Cosplay ahoy!

DAVID:
Idris is a fascinating character, and Suranne’s performance is wonderful. I love the idea of a TARDIS being a living creature, though it is not a particularly new idea. It’s certainly something I have come across in the novelisation/New Adventures (after writing that, I tried to track down what I was talking about, but I think I may have gotten the character confused with I. M. Foreman. I seem to remember the Doctor meeting a woman on a hill who had a universe in a bottle. Perhaps our Who expert, Tansy, can shed some light?).

TANSY:
I had stopped reading the New Adventures/EDAs regularly by the time the intelligent and humanoid TARDISes entered the story, though I have read one or two featuring the companion Compassion who was actually a TARDIS-in-waiting, I think. Still, getting to meet *our* TARDIS is still a pretty big deal.

DAVID:
The twist I really liked was that the TARDIS stole the Doctor, not the other way around. It really does say volumes about the Doctor that his perception of such a foundational event is completely wrong! But, we all suspect that we have never gotten the *true* story of how the Doctor came to be travelling the time-space continuum, right? But, the TARDIS being a living creature really does make sense when you look at their interactions over the years. The Doctor has always treated the TARDIS with a fondness, and always tried to cajole rather than command, that speaks of more than simply the sort of anthropomorphisation directed at ships or cars.

TANSY:
That blew my mind when I saw this episode – it’s pretty rare to watch a Doctor Who story that completely changes the way you view the stories that came before it, all the way back to 1963. (though I have to say, it’s more common than it used to be) I loved that our TARDIS became so real in this story, and that it added something so enormous to the mythology.

DAVID:
I always enjoy stories that explore the nature of the TARDIS, and its ability to reconfigure itself – sorry, herself! I think one of the reasons I fell in love with Doctor Who was this idea of such an amazing craft. More than just a spaceship, bigger on the inside than on the outside, it is the sort of thing that a young viewer finds hard to resist. The only other craft I think of that filled me with even a fraction of the same yearning was the spaceship from Flight of the Navigator!

One trick I think they missed, though, was when they go to the spare console room. That would have been a perfect moment to break out one of the Classic consoles, and the old white walls. In a show with the rich historical fabric of Doctor Who, it’s touches like that which can really “show” not “tell” those links with the past.

TANSY:
I agree with you on this one – it must have been a production decision, but the story calls so hard for the white walls with roundels, and I’m sure that’s what it will look like in the imaginary Neil Gaiman novelisation that we’re never going to get to read.

DAVID:
There were some great scenes in this episode, too. When the Doctor opens the cabinet and discovers he has been tricked, you can see the hurt and sadness and RAGE. It’s at that point I almost felt sorry for House because I knew that it was in for a world of hurt. Almost.

TANSY:
I was disappointed too! Any hint that we’re going to get Time Lords in the new show brings a frisson of excitement with it (yes even after The End of Time) and the idea that so many have been horrifically disposed of is very sad.

Worth a shout out for a couple of interesting details: previously-never-mentioned-before Time Lord the Corsair is namechecked in this episode (aww they do love their definite particles) and specifically mentioned as a Time Lord who changed gender with regeneration. This is the first mention of this possibility in TV canon. Also, the little white flying communication boxes are a thing from 1969 classic story “The War Games”. It had previously been teased that this episode would include SOMETHING we hadn’t seen since that story, and the little boxes were a bit disappointing for those of us who were peering suspiciously at the characters to figure out which one was The War Chief, or Lieutenant Carstairs.

TEHANI:
Personally, given my own connection with this story, I’m a bit surprised I don’t have more to say about it! I think it’s mostly “gleeful flail” when I think about the episode, without a lot of critical view. I always have to double check that House isn’t voiced by Neil Gaiman (it isn’t, it’s another one of those delightful sounding British (Welsh) actors).

I wonder how different the episode would have been if they had managed to get it into season five instead of this one, as was originally intended? What would that have done to that season (which we all quite like) as a whole?

“The Doctor’s Wife” won the Hugo AND the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation – how much of that do you think is the “Neil Gaiman effect” and how much is due to the episode itself, do you think?

DAVID:
That is interesting! The first thing that comes to mind is that I don’t think that it would have deserved the Hugo in Season 5, as I don’t think it is stronger than a number of episodes from that season. It’s certainly a very good episode, but I am not sure it is a GREAT episode.

Which does lead on to your next question. It is a bit hard for me to comment as I am not far enough into the season to say if this is the best episode in Season 6, and whether it deserved the Hugo (which is a very subjective call, anyway!) over any of the others. To be honest, I hope it’s not the best, because I loved Season 5 and can think of four episodes from it off the top of my head that are better than this one.

Neil Gaiman certainly does have a massive fan base, but you’d like to think people vote beyond that, and if something wins it obviously resonated with lots of people. So, maybe it’s just me! Looking at the other entries, there are two other episodes of Doctor Who and an excellent episode of Community (another show I got on very late!). With all due respect to Chris, who is a great guy, I don’t think an acceptance speech should have been nominated, let alone won. So, is this better than the other two episodes, or the Community one, or did the Gaiman Effect push it over the line? I’ll probably have a better idea by the end of the season.

TEHANI:
And I have to say something about the title – designed just to set the fannish tongues wagging?

DAVID:
Well, it doesn’t take much, does it?

TANSY:
Another piece of fannish history here – this title first got used in the 80s as a deliberate fakeout, left on a whiteboard to see if anyone on the production team was leaking info to the fanzines. So it started out as a provocative tease and is being used here in just the same way. If you haven’t seen it before, the point at which you realise that this episode isn’t about River Song but about the TARDIS is pretty awesome and brain-explodey.

Anyone have any favourite lines from this very quotable story? I think mine is still Amy with “Did you wish very hard?” but Idris has so many gorgeous things to say, like “Biting’s excellent. It’s like kissing. Only there’s a winner.”

DAVID:
That is a marvellous line. Any writer would also agree with “Oh tenses are difficult, aren’t they?” but I thought Amy showed exactly how well she knows the Doctor, summing him up perfectly when she responds to Rory saying “He’ll be fine. He’s a Time Lord.” with: “It’s just what they’re called. It doesn’t mean he actually knows what he’s doing.”

TEHANI:
I love this:

The Doctor: You didn’t always take me where I wanted to go.
Idris: No, but I always took you where you needed to go.

And this:

Idris: I’ve been looking for a word. A big, complicated word, but so sad. I found it now.
The Doctor: What word?
Idris: “Alive.” I’m alive.
The Doctor: Alive isn’t sad.
Idris: It’s sad when it’s over.

And with that, this review is over too. But we’ll be back!

Previous Episodes
“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day”, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“The Christmas Invasion”, 2005 Christmas Special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion”, S02E03
“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04
“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06
“Army of Ghosts/Doomsday”, S02E12/13
Season Two Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“Smith and Jones”, S03E01
“The Shakespeare Code/Gridlock”, S03E02/03″
“Human Nature/Family of Blood”. S03E08/09″
“Blink”. S03E10″
“Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords”, S03E12/13/14
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Spearhead from Space (1970)
Season Three Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Genesis of the Daleks (1975)
“Partners in Crime”, S04E01
“The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S04E0708”
“Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S04E0910”
Turn Left, S0411
The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End,S04E1213
Season Four Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
The Next Doctor / Planet of the Dead / The Waters of Mars
End of Time
The Eleventh Hour. S0501
The Beast Below/Victory of the Daleks,S050203
The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone,S05E0405
The Vampires of Venice/Amy’s Choice,S050607
The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood,S050809
Vincent and the Doctor/The Lodger,S05E10/11
The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang,S05E12/13
2010 Christmas Special – A Christmas Carol
Season Five Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon,S06E01/02

We are incredibly honoured to have tied for the William Atheling Jr Award, alongside Galactic Suburbia. Thank you to everyone who voted for us, and to all our readers for your support and for spreading the word. We also want to thank Lynne Thomas, Jo Anderton and Kathleen Jennings for their guest contributions. Congratulations to not only Galactic Suburbia on their well deserved win, but all the amazing nominees – you are producing some wonderful writing! We are looking forward to writing many more reviews about the show we love, and hopefully catching up with the new season soon.

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 6 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all.

We are working our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, and sometimes a couple of extra episodes we love as our blogging points. Just for fun!

“The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon”
Season six, episodes one and two
The Doctor – Matt Smith
Amy Pond – Karen Gillan
Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill
River Song – Alex Kingston
Canton Everett Delaware III – Mark Sheppard
President Richard Nixon – Stuart Milligan

DAVID:
Well, what a great setup for for an episode, and what a great start to the season! Obviously we know that the Doctor can’t really die (especially from my viewpoint of knowing there is a Season 7), but we are immediately presented with a whole heap of questions and a massive time gap to fill. I may be a little obsessed here after watching all five seasons in a few weeks, but it reminded more than a little of Breaking Bad where you would see the aftermath of some catastrophe in the intros and then be left wondering how exactly you were going to get there. It’s certainly left me very excited about this season.

TEHANI:
So that early scene, when the Doctor started regenerating, was AWFUL. I’m glad I already knew Matt Smith was the Doctor for the whole season to come, else I would have been devastated! But yes, it’s very good 🙂

TANSY:
This is a really excellent season opener – the first time we’ve had a two parter to start a season, which seems odd because it works so well. It also marks the first time they really made inroads into promoting the show substantially in the US – I really like that they chose to do a historical story using all that beautiful desert cinematography, and the 1960’s stuff around it.

This story has major knock on effects in the whole season but I really like it as a self contained piece of Doctor Who.

DAVID:
Earth must get very cluttered with all the aliens behind the scenes pulling the strings, the basic premise is hardly new even to Doctor Who, let alone science fiction.

TEHANI:
Heh. The Doctor says it: Safe? No, of course you’re not safe. There’s about a billion other things out there just waiting to burn your whole world. But if you want to pretend you’re safe just so you can sleep at night, okay. You’re safe. But you’re not really.

DAVID:
But, there aren’t many completely new ideas, it’s all about how you execute them, and I thought that this was executed wonderfully. It had a great storyline, an excellent supporting cast and a very disturbing set of monsters. I was fascinated to discover the father-son sharing of one of the roles, and I thought Richard Nixon was portrayed really well. I can imagine there was a temptation to have him as a complete villain, but instead we saw a great performance. I did enjoy the little digs, though, like the reference to Frost, and the perfectly reasonable explanation for his obsession with recording all the conversations that took place in the Oval Office! But, the real stars for me were Gillan and Darvill, however I will expand on that further a bit later on.

TANSY:
I think the Silence are officially the scariest New Who villains now – Raeli has got over her fear of Sontarans but she can’t even cope with looking at these guys. The premise behind them is so chilling, the idea of taking away memories.

I do love all the Nixon stuff (if Abigail and Kazran are companions, so is he!) and that he came across as likeable but problematic. River and the Doctor debating his legacy (“Hippy!” “Archaeologist!”) was quite charming. Stuart Milligan, who played him, is perhaps best known as the kooky magician Adam Klaus in Jonathan Creek, and he also plays an amazing Big Finish comedy villain. It’s funny the way that the Doctor reacts to having a President in his pocket by employing him a bit like a sonic screwdriver, to open doors and unlock new areas.

TEHANI:
And I like that Nixon isn’t portrayed as a monster, either, even though we know (historically) his flaws. It’s very, hrm, human?

DAVID:
The Silence could have been been a bit ridiculous if they hadn’t been handled right, but I found them very creepy. You’d think that after the Angels, a creature that you had to keep your eyes on would be a bit old hat, but the twist was more than enough to differentiate them completely. For some reason the idea that you forgot them every time you looked away made me really uncomfortable, it made the characters seem so vulnerable and manipulated. No matter how vigilant they were, seeing the Silence was not enough. The scenes in the children’s home were particularly creepy, especially when Amy is all of a sudden covered in pen marks (which was a brilliant idea). At least with the Angels you knew they were coming for you, the Silence didn’t even give you that.

TEHANI:
That awful, “As long as there’s been something in the corner of your eye, or creaking in your house or breathing under your bed or voices through a wall…” line *shudder* – I think that’s what makes them so darn scary. Also, this:

TANSY:
The horror concept of not being able to remember the monster is terribly clever and creepy. The haunted asylum is genuinely disturbing.

When I remember this story though it’s less for the effective horror stuff and more for the crunchy character material. I adore Canton as an addition to the TARDIS team, and all of the River Song stuff is great. She’s definitely on the team now, with friendship ties to both Rory and Amy as well as the Doctor.

And oh, TIME GAP. The Doctor who summons them all to witness his death is about two hundred years older than our usual model, and how interesting that Amy and Rory have been home since the Christmas Special, balancing domesticity with adventure. There are so many delicious implications to this story, not least that the Eleventh Doctor’s timeline is complicated, more complicated than we could ever understand, and that he’s going to be around for a good long time.

DAVID:
Excellent point. Certainly leaves lots of room for lots of adventures.

TEHANI:
Yay!

DAVID:
I was interested to discover that this isn’t the first major time gap in the Doctor’s chronology. The First Doctor claims to be 450 years old at one point, but that jumps up around 300 years by the time Four is travelling with Romana. Then, when we get to Six he is around the 900s! While we need to take the Doctor’s claims regarding his age with a pinch of salt, that does leave lots of room for “missing” adventures. It does make sense that a time traveller’s chronology is going to be complicated, of course!

TANSY:
Moffat has actually done a great job at leaving deliberate gaps in the chronology, for the associated media to play in whether it’s now or in 25 years time. He has said that he does it on purpose. Unlike RTD, who gave us that distressingly closed-in Series 1, so the only non-Rose adventures we can insert happen somewhere in the middle of “Rose”.

TEHANI:
The first time I watched this season I got all sorts of terribly confused. I’m still not sure I completely understand the timeline. Where’s that River Song chronology again?

TANSY:
It bears multiple rewatching! And I believe there’s a bit of retooling we need to do after the fact with later revelations in the show…

David, let’s talk about Amy and Rory! What was it you loved so much about Gillan and Darvill’s performances?

DAVID:
There are a number of scenes where they shine (like Amy in the children’s home *shivers*) but, for me, the real emotional core of this story is Rory trying hard not to be jealous as he fights against his insecurities, and Amy’s feelings for him and the Doctor. Who wouldn’t struggle with feelings of inadequacy if they felt they were competing with the Doctor? I think it is a really pivotal moment when Amy clarifies things properly, and certainly left me feeling much better about things (“Poor Rory!” punctuates most of my notes that I make while watching these episodes!).

It would be quite obvious to anyone reading this review series that I had some real issues with the Nine-Rose-Mickey dynamic, but I find the Eleven-Amy-Rory one a lot easier to deal with. Nine was quite obviously competing with Mickey for Rose, and often rather nasty about it, and I often found it hard to watch. It was such an unbalanced competition and I constantly felt sorry for Mickey, and disdain for the Doctor’s bullying of him – because that’s what it was. There is a lot more friendship and genuine affection between the current (well, current as of this episode – I am SO far behind!) trio, and the Doctor has shown much more integrity in how he deals with Rory and Amy, and is far more mindful of boundaries. Plus, I do love the banter!

TEHANI:
Plus Matt Smith’s Doctor is a less “sexual” being than Tennant’s anyway, I think. He’s far more the goof (mingled nicely with the dark weight of everything he has seen) than Tennant ever was – this shows in his interactions with River Song, even as he grows into their relationship, I think.

TANSY:
I enjoy the odd, awkward balances and imbalances that come out between this trio and I agree that the Doctor’s role in it makes him a lot more likeable than when Nine was doing something similar – most of the Doctor messing up their relationship is a blunder rather than a deliberate jibe. I think it also shows that there are different kinds of friendship and jealousy and conflict doesn’t have to be romantic. Rory is brilliant in this story, it feels like he is coming into his own. I think my favourite bit is where he gets to explain everything to Canton, and that means Rory himself isn’t the new boy any more.

This team, running around solving mysteries in an invaded Earth in the 1960s. I could watch this team forever. I could have watched a whole season that was just this. Except, of course, that’s not how Doctor Who works…

Previous Episodes
“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day”, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“The Christmas Invasion”, 2005 Christmas Special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion”, S02E03
“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04
“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06
“Army of Ghosts/Doomsday”, S02E12/13
Season Two Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“Smith and Jones”, S03E01
“The Shakespeare Code/Gridlock”, S03E02/03″
“Human Nature/Family of Blood”. S03E08/09″
“Blink”. S03E10″
“Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords”, S03E12/13/14
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Spearhead from Space (1970)
Season Three Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Genesis of the Daleks (1975)
“Partners in Crime”, S04E01
“The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S04E0708”
“Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S04E0910”
Turn Left, S0411
The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End,S04E1213
Season Four Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
The Next Doctor / Planet of the Dead / The Waters of Mars
End of Time
The Eleventh Hour. S0501
The Beast Below/Victory of the Daleks,S050203
The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone,S05E0405
The Vampires of Venice/Amy’s Choice,S050607
The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood,S050809
Vincent and the Doctor/The Lodger,S05E10/11
The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang,S05E12/13
2010 Christmas Special – A Christmas Carol
Season Five Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani

We would like to thank everyone who nominated our “New Who in Conversation” series for the William Atheling Jr Award again this year – it’s a great honour to be on the ballot! Voting for the annual Ditmar Awards (which the Atheling is included in) is open to all members of  Continuum X (2014 Natcon – Melbourne) and Conflux 9 (2013 Natcon – Canberra), and can be done online.

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 6 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all.

We are working our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, and sometimes a couple of extra episodes we love as our blogging points. Just for fun!

See Tehani’s S5 Report Card and Tansy’s S5 Report Card by following the links! (See our Season One Report Cards here, our Season Two Report Cards here, our Season Three Report Cards here, and our Season Four Report Cards here.

SEASON FIVE REPORT CARD – David

The Doctor: Matt Smith

I am not ashamed to admit it, I was wrong about Matt Smith as the Doctor. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Perhaps it was the fact that I really didn’t feel ready for an actor younger than me playing the Doctor, or maybe it was the glimpses I had caught of him during my long absence from Doctor Who had left me cold. But, he was brilliant! He managed to capture the many facets of the Doctor I remembered. One one hand there was that air of childlike innocence, the insatiable curiosity and the sense of the ridiculous. On the other, a true sense of the alien standing apart from everyone else, and the ability to summon a true sense of menace and power.

Most of all, this is the season where I felt the Doctor truly rediscovered his moral centre, and starting make the right decisions more often.

From the first time he mixed fish fingers and custard I knew that I was going to enjoy Eleven, and I was never disappointed. Smith took about ten seconds to make this role truly his own, and ran with it from strength to strength.

The Companions:

Amy Pond: Karen Gillan

Young Amelia Pond was wonderful, but Amy Pond was even better! Gillan did an incredible job of portraying one the most three dimensional companions of New Who. Scottish and red haired and wild tempered, yet deeply sensitive and compassionate, Pond really does grow as the season progresses. She is fundamentally flawed (with good reason!), but aren’t we all? The way she stumbles and make mistakes is something we can identify with and, above all, she just seems like she would be so fun to hang out with! If I had to sum her up in one word it would be “real”.

Gillan has a real talent for making us feel the same emotions as Amy is, from wide eyed wonder to wrenching sadness. Amazing.

Rory Williams: Arthur Darvill

Hands down my favourite companion since Harry Sullivan, and for many of the same reasons. The “Nice Guy” is a trope that gets done to death in pop culture, but Rory showed that nice doesn’t mean weak, devotion doesn’t mean subservience, and selflessness doesn’t mean losing your sense of self. I found Rory and Amy’s relationship one of *the* great love stories of speculative fiction. In particular, the revelation of Rory’s long vigil was truly moving and his refusal to give up  in the face of being forgotten a mark of his true strength

Of course, it was certainly not always plain sailing, and there were so many times I would think “Poor Rory!”, but I thought that the up and downs of their relationship had a genuineness often lacking in on screen romances. I also loved the inversion of some of the traditional dynamics we normally see, and how Rory took on what many might call “feminine” roles without ever acting like it made him less of a man or that it somehow diminished him. And, Rory was perfect for Amy, keeping her grounded when it was needed, but never trying to clip her wings and stop her from flying high. Because, her  free spirit was what he loved about her, and why would he try and change that?

Darvill is wonderful actor, too, combining a real gift for comedy with the ability to switch on true emotion when needed. The perfect straight man when needed, but never boring.

Recurring Characters:

River Song: Alex Kingston

Inter Galactic Secret Agent River is awesome! I am still not sold on the whole Doctor getting married thing, but if it has to be anyone I can live with it being her.

What is your favourite episode of this season?

That’s a tough one! The strength of this season was that there were so many to choose from. I enjoyed the Angel duology a great deal, as well as Victory of the Daleks, and the Christmas Special (if it counts) was perhaps the best of its type. But, if poked with a sharp stick until I named one, I would have to go with The Lodger. The episode was so much fun, but it had real heart, and a lot of tension! I was genuinely scared for some of the characters and desperately wishing for a happy ending.

Least favourite episode?

I didn’t think there were any “terrible” episodes as such, but the weakest link was definitely Cold Blood. Aside from some deeply problematic elements, it missed a real chance to link back to Classic Who. The redesign of the Silurians seemed unnecessary to me, and some of the parallels to the first Silurian story were woefully under utilised. A missed opportunity.

Favourite guest performance?

Another tough one. Iain Glen brought dignity and gravitas to Father Octavian, Ian McNeice was a wonderful cigar chomping Churchill, but I thought James Corden shone as Craig Owens. He more than held his own against Matt Smith (no easy feat!), and made us want him to find his happy ending.

Describe this season in one word!

Triumphant!

Grade: A

Previous Episodes
“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day”, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“The Christmas Invasion”, 2005 Christmas Special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion”, S02E03
“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04
“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06
“Army of Ghosts/Doomsday”, S02E12/13
Season Two Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“Smith and Jones”, S03E01
“The Shakespeare Code/Gridlock”, S03E02/03″
“Human Nature/Family of Blood”. S03E08/09″
“Blink”. S03E10″
“Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords”, S03E12/13/14
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Spearhead from Space (1970)
Season Three Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Genesis of the Daleks (1975)
“Partners in Crime”, S04E01
“The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S04E0708”
“Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S04E0910”
Turn Left, S0411
The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End,S04E1213
Season Four Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
The Next Doctor / Planet of the Dead / The Waters of Mars
End of Time
The Eleventh Hour. S0501
The Beast Below/Victory of the Daleks,S050203
The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone,S05E0405
The Vampires of Venice/Amy’s Choice,S050607
The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood,S050809
Vincent and the Doctor/The Lodger,S05E10/11
The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang,S05E12/13
2010 Christmas Special – A Christmas Carol

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 7 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all.

We are working our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, and sometimes a couple of extra episodes we love as our blogging points. Just for fun!

Tansy and Tehani love this season so much we’re making David do more work – we’re changing up our usual plan and reviewing each episode, in sets of two.

Tansy and Tehani love this season so much we’re making David do more work – we’re changing up our usual plan and reviewing each episode, in sets of two.

Merry Christmas to all our readers!

“A Christmas Carol”, 2010 Christmas Special

The Doctor – Matt Smith
Amy Pond – Karen Gillan
Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill
Kazran/Elliot Sardick – Michael Gambon 
Abigail – Katherine Jenkins
Young Kazran – Laurence Belcher
Adult Kazran – Danny Horn

DAVID:
A very interesting Christmas special, as Doctor Who riffs on Dickens. I actually think this is one of the best Christmas specials so far, and certainly the one that takes itself the most seriously (I say this because “End of Time” doesn’t really feel like a Christmas special to me, aside from the original broadcast date which I of course missed). Yes, there are lots of a nice little moments of humour, but this has far more meat to it than the others. It’s very self contained, too, and you can imagine watching this with family members who had never seen Doctor Who, and not having to explain very much – the only vital starting point being that he is a time traveller, which is rather self evident. Because of that It reminded me a little of “The Girl in the Fireplace”, a story that shares some of the same themes – the idea of the Doctor ducking in and out of someone’s life and the way time passes differently from different perspectives.

TANSY:
It’s a great Christmas special – RTD launched the crazy fake snow tradition for the show and I do enjoy his various slightly cynical takes on what constitutes Christmas telly (a grand British tradition that we don’t have here in Australia where the idea of a flagship drama premiering a new episode on Christmas Day is basically unheard of) but I like the Moffat specials more. They feel a lot more genuinely Christmassy and less self conscious. And I do have a soft spot for Victoriana.

More importantly, this is a gorgeously designed alien planet! One of my favourites, in fact. I like all the little worldbuilding details like the flying fish and the way it all feels a bit like it’s an underwater kingdom, with all the tech and architecture resembling old world diving helmets and portholes.

TEHANI:
Very steampunkish! A lot to love, and following a theme of bloody fantastic set pieces for the season!

TANSY:
I even like the flying sharks. Because, how can you not?

TEHANI:
I love flying sharks. Really really want to get me one of these…

DAVID:
We’re helped by a great cast here. For a start, the three incarnations of Kazran are perfectly cast, and each actor puts in a wonderfully convincing performance. It was a bit distracting for the first ten minutes as I tried to work out where I had seen Michael Gambon before, and I may have yelled “Dumbledore!” at the television. I’m curious as to what the reaction to the casting of Katherine Jenkins was, whether to was similar to Kylie Minogue or James Cordern, as I am not sure what her level of fame is. However, whatever preconceptions there might been I thought she was wonderful in this, and she managed to invest Abigail’s character with not only a real sense of joy, but a sense of impending tragedy. It did leave me one question though; given their travels with the Doctor should we classify Abigail and Kazran as companions?

TANSY:
Depends on how you classify companions! There’s a new semi-companion status that really only exists in New Who, which is when characters are guest stars and take the companion role for a single Special – if Christina De Souza is a companion then Abigail and Kazran certainly are! But yes, they are quite solidly part of his life for a long time, they take multiple jaunts in the TARDIS, and it’s interesting how much he basically treats them as Amy and Rory.

(Katherine Jenkins apparently = terribly famous opera singer. I do like the way that they folded her musical talents into the story though I am left with a sense that no one was really expecting her to act in this episode and her part was written accordingly).

TEHANI:
Apparently they didn’t expect her to say yes to the role! And one of the songs is an original for the show…

TANSY:
Yes, the ‘silence will fall’ Christmas carol. As if we didn’t already know those words were quite important for the show’s future…

DAVID:
This episode does raise an interesting ethical question, though. As much as it was a lot of fun, and it’s impossible to doubt the genuine affection they held for each other, the Doctor essentially manipulates Kazran into caring for him. He doesn’t just change a pivotal event in Kazran’s life, or remove a tragedy that changed who he should have been, he systematically rewrites Kazran’s memories to make the Doctor a central part of his life and it did make a me little uneasy. There is no doubt this is a redemption story, just like Dickens’ Christmas Carol, and Kazran needs to arrive at a point where he makes the right moral choices to fulfill the narrative. But, the difference between Scrooge and Kazran is that Scrooge is shown the error of his ways, realises how nasty he has been and resolves to change, but is still the same person, while Kazran is actually a different person than the original. I don’t know, perhaps I am overthinking it. Or, should we read it that all the Doctor does is reveal memories that Kazran has repressed but were there all along? This time travel stuff is confusing!

TEHANI:
I think it’s pretty clear the Doctor is rewriting Kazran’s past, and while I don’t disagree with your reading of it as a bit uncomfortable, I want to prefer the more positive reading (giving Kazran a chance to be a better man – which is why the Doctor did it, after seeing Kazran not hit the boy).

TANSY:
I agree Tehani that the Doctor only bothered at all because he saw a hint that Kazran was not irredeemable.

This use of time travel as a clever, “benign” weapon (with problematic consent/free will implications) is something that the Doctor has largely not used throughout his history, and that many fans (including a younger Steven Moffat) have evidently craved. This era has given us many examples and will give us many more! The classic example is Moffat’s first piece of Doctor Who television, the Comic Relief skit “The Curse of Fatal Death” in which the Doctor and the Master keep going back in time and bribing the architect to put more and more specific traps into the building to attack each other.

TEHANI:
I wonder what this says about us as a society these days, if it’s a trope only really used in the modern era?

TANSY:
Also, just as “Blink” was based on one of Moffat’s rare Doctor Who short stories, “What I did on my holidays by Sally Sparrow,” I believe this “A Christmas Carol”, as well as quite obviously riffing on the actual A Christmas Carol story, borrows quite heavily from another of his Moffat’s short stories, “Continuity Errors”, in which the Seventh Doctor faces off against a particularly stubborn librarian, and keeps ducking back in time to change aspects of her life in order to make her more amenable to lending him the vitally important book he needs. It’s told from the point of view of the librarian, and shows her memory of reality actually changing as he disappears and re-enters her life.

It’s creepy and manipulative but it’s important to note that the Doctor IS often creepy and manipulative. Sure, he does it in a ‘good’ cause, but his ethics are quite changeable depending on circumstance. The playing with time thing feels like a specifically Moffat thing, but it’s not out of character for the Doctor.

TEHANI:
And it’s only because the character is played by such damnably charismatic actors that we fail to call out that creepy manipulativeness more often!

TANSY:
Yeah, baby. I call this the Tennant Clause. It is kind of funny though that while the Doctor goes to all this trouble to build himself up as someone for Kazran to trust and believe in (which is actually as much the point of the exercise as making him a better person) it’s the wild card of bringing Abigail along that has the most dramatic effect. As usual the Doctor is pretty dense when it comes to the courting habits of Ladieez and Gentlemen.

Abigail’s role is somewhat passive – she’s often treated like a prop rather than a person, and Kazran’s romance with her feels like it’s 90% about him. I would have liked to see more of her input in those annual Christmas dates rather than the idea that she’s being unwrapped from the ice like a parcel every year. And of course the idea of a fatal illness that’s predictable to the point of a death date is a bit on the laughable side. But considering that this is largely based on a Charles Dickens story, we’re lucky to get any speaking roles for women at all, and Abigail is a million times more interesting than Scrooge’s lost love in the original, so I’m not going to complain too loudly.

TEHANI:
Hmmm, though that was a product of its time which means New Who should not have the same problems – Kazran could potentially have been a girl…

DAVID:
Like all Moffat’s episodes, the dialogue is wonderful throughout. When you give actors of this calibre something to work with the result is wonderful, hilarious when it is meant to be funny and moving when it is meant to be serious. There are some great throw away lines, too, that manage to stick with you for ages – I have no doubt there were plenty of people checking their cupboards for face spiders long after Christmas had been replaced by Easter eggs in the stores!

But, there is one line in particular that managed to stand out above the others.

“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. Do you know, in 900 years of time and space, I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.”

To me, that sums up the heart of Doctor Who in a few simple words.

TANSY:
Plus SINGING TO SAVE THE DAY. Why doesn’t this happen in Doctor Who more often? If I don’t get a Peter Capaldi Christmas musical episode at some point in the next four years I’m going to be very upset.

TEHANI:
PETER CAPALDI SINGS?! Has there ever BEEN a full musical Doctor Who episode?! If Buffy and Grey’s Anatomy can do it…

Previous Episodes
“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day”, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“The Christmas Invasion”, 2005 Christmas Special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion”, S02E03
“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04
“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06
“Army of Ghosts/Doomsday”, S02E12/13
Season Two Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“Smith and Jones”, S03E01
“The Shakespeare Code/Gridlock”, S03E02/03″
“Human Nature/Family of Blood”. S03E08/09″
“Blink”. S03E10″
“Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords”, S03E12/13/14
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Spearhead from Space (1970)
Season Three Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Genesis of the Daleks (1975)
“Partners in Crime”, S04E01
“The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S04E0708”
“Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S04E0910”
Turn Left, S0411
The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End,S04E1213
Season Four Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
The Next Doctor / Planet of the Dead / The Waters of Mars
End of Time
The Eleventh Hour. S0501
The Beast Below/Victory of the Daleks,S050203
The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone,S05E0405
The Vampires of Venice/Amy’s Choice,S050607
The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood,S050809
Vincent and the Doctor/The Lodger,S05E10/11
The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang,S05E12/13

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 7 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all.

We are working our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, and sometimes a couple of extra episodes we love as our blogging points. Just for fun!

Tansy and Tehani love this season so much we’re making David do more work – we’re changing up our usual plan and reviewing each episode, in sets of two.

“The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang”
Season five, episodes twelve and thirteen
The Doctor – Matt Smith
Amy Pond – Karen Gillan
Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill
River Song – Alex Kingston

THE PANDORICA OPENS

TANSY:
I always forget quite how much I love “The Pandorica Opens” until I’m watching it. The ‘cold open’ piece before the credits is especially wonderful. It’s fascinating how quickly this new mode and tone of Doctor Who has established itself in only a few months, so that the season finale is able to rely on nostalgia about the Eleventh Doctor and the friends he has made along the way.

TEHANI:
It’s quite amazing how much is packed into that beginning, and how lovely it is to revisit old friends in such a way. And they feel like old friends, even though we’ve really only just met them!

DAVID:
The whole setup of this episode is wonderfully done, not only do we get a refresher on some of the key players of the season, we barely have time to draw breath. River is wonderful, and we see her as this real James Bond type figure, absolutely dashing and fearless. And the reveal of the cliff face and the message was hilarious – It is certainly one way to get someone to return your calls!

TANSY:
The River Song of these episodes is my favourite. This is the point at which we start seeing the Doctor respond to her overtures (if not entirely crossing over into romance on his side) by being genuinely intrigued (rather than just annoyed) by this woman who knows him so well that she will deface one of the wonders of the universe just to get his attention – and of course set up a colossal scam which establishes her as Cleopatra, and him as Caesar. My favourite River quote of this episode (and there are many): “I hate wizards in fairy tales. They always turn out to be him.”

TEHANI:
I love that line. And River too. I also love in these episodes that the Doctor by now just completely expects River to be able to do the things she can, and believes her and works with her, without a blink.

TANSY:
Romans, romans romans! Is it any wonder that it’s this episode specifically that I feel so attached to?

TEHANI:
It’s terribly surprising, given your background…

TANSY:
The use of the Roman army in this story just makes my heart sing, and I appreciate especially that as the trap closes in around them, and the Doctor is overwhelmed by the sheer number of aliens fleets in the sky who are personal enemies of his, it’s the Roman army he sings the praises of. This of course leads to a fabulous reveal in the build up to the cliffhanger (people talk a LOT about the cliffhanger from “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances” but I think this one is the best use of the form in New Who because of the way it’s set up all through the first episode) that the Romans are Autons – and specifically that Rory, our Rory, who has mysteriously returned as a Roman centurion, is made of plastic.

DAVID:
I loved the way that so many of of the historical foes of the Doctor were name checked in the fleet, but I was disappointed that we didn’t get to see more of them. I would love a modern episode featuring the Draconians, they are one of the more intriguing species we’ve come across.

TEHANI:
Picture me looking blankly at you…

DAVID:
As much as I enjoyed the Doctor’s speech as he stood on the altar, I think that they need to be a bit careful that the whole “Remember who I am?” type thing doesn’t just become a get- out-of-jail-free card. Yes the Doctor is pretty awesome, but he is not omnipotent or invulnerable and some of the best stories have been about how he has triumphed against much more powerful foes who have no reason be scared of him. The whole scaring his enemies works as a great scene here, and worked even more with the Atraxi, but I think it could soon get old.

TEHANI:
Oh David, I’m so very sorry. Perhaps maybe you might not want to watch Season 7…

DAVID:
I guess it shows one of the big shifts in the portrayal of the Doctor from Classic to New Who, where he was once relatively insignificant to now being perhaps the most important being in the Universe. There is probably an essay (or a few) in examining how that might be connected to the changed status of the show – from niche to one of the hottest spec fic properties on the planet.

TEHANI:
Go forth and WRITE this thing!

This is the beauty of rewatching – I really didn’t understand the first time what was going on. Didn’t catch the Nestene references (and would have gone over my head anyway, I think). This time, though, it made a lot more sense, which was a nice surprise! I think sometimes you need to listen really really carefully to put some things together (and having someone give you the historical references is useful too!). Didn’t stop me loving the episodes first time though – I just like them even more now they make a bit more sense.

DAVID:
I’ve been really surprised about how heavily the Nestenes have featured in New Who. I certainly wouldn’t have picked them to be the first cab off the rank when it came to picking a monster for “Rose”. Saying that, they have generally worked well, and they were particularly effective in this story. Rory’s struggles to overcome his “programming” and his devastation at killing Amy are very poignant.

TANSY:
I think the Nestene/Autons work well as a monster reflecting contemporary issues/iconography – and until plastic becomes irrelevant, they will always represent modernity! The real surprise is how little we saw of them in the old days, as their original appearances in the two Pertwee stories were fabulous, and then never again. They would have been really cool in the Peter Davison era – imagine Tegan facing down killer mannequins. Or Ace blowing them up during the McCoy years!

TEHANI:
I love Tegan…

TANSY:
I love that you love Tegan.

The scene in which Rory and the Doctor meet again and the Doctor just carries on, not realising the significance of Rory’s presence, is one of my favourite Matt Smith and Arthur Darvill scenes of all time. I liked early Rory a lot, especially in “Vampires of Venice”, but this is the point at which the actor and the character levels up, and he has developed his dry, sarcastic responses to the Doctor so nicely while still being utterly vulnerable and earnest.

TEHANI:
Yay for more Rory, and more River!

DAVID:
I’m generally not a huge fan of moral relativism, but it was a great concept to see the Doctor’s enemies banding together not through some evil plan, but to try and save the Universe from him. You could understand why for them he might actually be the Bad Guy, and a threat to their existence. After all, he does have a spotty track record!

I have to admit, I did pick the Doctor as the likely contents of the Pandorica from the very start, it wasn’t that subtle. It reminded me of one of the Eighth Doctor Adventures called ”Alien Bodies”…though I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read it.

THE BIG BANG

TANSY:
This two-parter has an amazing cliffhanger, all the more amazing because the peril at the end of “The Pandorica Opens” isn’t resolved in a single line or moment, but takes a large part of the second episode to resolve. It’s wonderful to see Caitlin Blackwood back as little Amelia in this alternate version of reality where the stars don’t exist, and the museum scenes leading up to the scene of Amy in the Pandorica (including freeze dried Daleks) are full of tension.

TEHANI:
Yet another fantastic set for the show. Actually, some great sets for both episodes, what with the Romans and Stonehenge and all!

TANSY:
I like that the ‘damselling’ of Amy from the end of the last episode only takes up about five minutes or less of the narrative, and that she’s central to the action in this story for most of the episode. I don’t mind a bit of equal opportunity damselling, and given how much Rory has been damselled in this season, five minutes of Amy here and there is okay by me. For balance, you understand.

The image of her sitting in that Pandorica is so powerful.

DAVID:
I loved the scenes in the museum. The Dalek statues looked great, and really conveyed the idea that all the things we were familiar with had passed into myth or been lost in the fog of antiquity. Combined with the idea that stars had become the domain of dreamers (though I was confused whether it was accepted that there had been stars at one point), all these things pointed to a universe that had suddenly become far smaller, and was merely a remnant of what once was.

TANSY:
My favourite quote from this episode (and there are lots of good ones, many of which have been immortalised in song) is the Doctor’s ‘Come along Ponds’ when he sees big and little Amy together. It’s interesting how epic this story feels considering it has such a small cast for most of the action scenes, just our core four characters running around an empty museum with one Dalek. But the tension is constant, and no sooner are Amy and Rory back together again than everything else is on the line. River is again wonderfully strong in this story, with the hints of that dark edge to her as the Dalek looks her up and starts begging mercy. Wonderful stuff!

DAVID:
For me, the most powerful part of this episode is where Amy is watching the museum video about the mysterious centurion. The idea that Rory has spent almost 2000 thousand years guarding her is simply beautiful, and these two have to be one of the greatest romances in sci fi. There are obviously some dysfunctional elements to their relationship, but overall I find it much more healthy and meaningful than the vast majority if portrayals of love that we see in the media. It actually quite reminds me of Zoe and Wash from Firefly – even down to the faux triangle.

TANSY:
I agree! Amy’s come a long way in this season, from not wanting to admit she has a boyfriend and running away on the eve of her wedding, to embracing Rory as a fellow crew member in the TARDIS, and losing him, and now him coming back to her in such a spectacular way. The wedding at the end is most definitely earned.

TEHANI:
And meeting her family, which of course we only had the aunt of before – while we don’t see them in the same way we see Rose, Martha and Donna’s families of the previous seasons, I love that we do get them established as characters in this episode, not just background set pieces.

TANSY:
I will admit I was pretty over the whole weddings-in-Doctor-Who motif after the RTD era, but I really enjoy this scene in “The Big Bang”. Finally, after seeing Amy isolated and hurting and abandoned for most of the season (and so prickly/defensive before that), we find her happy and surrounded by a real family and friends. Her relationship with Rory, and their happiness, is such a world away from the crackly, hesitant pre-wedding Amy we originally got to know. Though it should be noted, Rory hasn’t changed at all! His effusive call to Amy and their relationship there is very reminiscent of how he called her on his stag night, unaware that she was a lot less sure of their impending marriage than he was.

TEHANI:
Wait, doesn’t she call HIM this time? Which I thought was sweet. Also, when he says “Yes” because he’s scared of her? V. cute.

TANSY:
Yeah, Rory knows his place when it comes to Amy, and while this is played for laughs and quite an old fashioned trope, it suits them both very well.

You’re right that she calls him! And that goes to show that she is an entirely different Amy. How can she not be different, with memories of being raised in a loving family overwriting the Amy who didn’t trust anyone not to abandon her? She is still very much herself in personality, but when it comes to her relationship – yes, this is a different woman. That she is confident and clever enough to stand up in front of everyone she knows and summon her imaginary friend back into existence is one of the character’s most powerful moments and I love everything about it – her performance, her demanding tone, and her reaction to the Doctor turning up in his beautiful suit to dance at her wedding. Like a giraffe.

DAVID:
I did feel a bit bad for Rory, though. Yet again he is upstaged and pushed to one side!

While Rory could easily be perceived as a “weak” character, I think that this is completely off the mark. One of the things that I admire so much about him is the fact that he is confident enough in who he is and in his love for Amy that he can continue to display such equanamity through everything. Some men would be threatened by having such a strong partner, and wouldn’t be able to handle it, but Rory really does possess such a quiet strength that is reflected in his lack of ego (though, of course, we do see some moments where even he struggles). I think it is a great inversion of the tired trope of the colourful, larger than life male and the supportive, in the background female that we see so often in fictional relationships.

Saying all that, the wedding is lovely and it is the perfect emotional payoff for the wonderful love story we have seen over the course of not just the doubleheader, but the whole season. There are two little throwaway lines that sum up the rightness of this wedding perfectly. One is that the Doctor calls Rory the “boy who waited”, and it is only right the he and the “girl who waited” are now together.

The other is this great exchange:

DOCTOR: Amelia, from now on I shall be leaving the kissing duties to the brand new Mister Pond.
RORY: No, I’m not Mister Pond. That’s not how it works.
DOCTOR: Yeah, it is.
RORY: Yeah, it is.

Yes, that is how it works here!

TANSY:
I like Rory’s general lack of jealousy (except under extreme provocation) because he does trust Amy and he’s confident in their relationship. Also he seems quite pleased to see the Doctor – I like the line “How did we forget the Doctor?” and the way that the Doctor is now no longer presented as a threat to their relationship, but a genuine friend to them both. Love triangle = resolved. Friendship continues. Nice.

TEHANI:
I need to mention the music – I really liked the music in this season, and in these two episodes it’s particularly striking. There have been times I’ve felt it gets in the way of the story, but not here.

TANSY:
I think it’s worth noting that we’ve had the same composer for the entire run of New Who, but he keeps bringing new styles in. It’s particularly striking how distinct the musical style is between the RTD & Moffat era, though it’s the same guy doing it. It feels like he threw everything out at The Eleventh Doctor and started from scratch.

David, I have to ask. The bit with Matt Smith’s jacket, when he goes back through his own timeline. Did you see it coming? Had you spotted the ‘continuity error’? Because there was a major fan discussion that year about whether the jacket was just a jacket, and only a few die-hard paranoiacs actually pushed the theory that it meant something. After this story, of course, EVERY tiny detail of the show, especially anything that looks like a continuity error or a dialogue screw up, has been scrutinised to a ridiculous degree.

TEHANI:
Wait, do *I* know about the jacket??

TANSY:
Well, in “Flesh and Stone” when Amy’s abandoned in the forest and can’t open her eyes, the Doctor after being quite careless with her feelings comes back to her suddenly & is really loving and sympathetic and happens to be wearing his jacket again when he had taken it off in that story. He comforts her and tells her to remember what he told her when she was a child. And in “The Big Bang”, we discover it’s because that was him having gone back in time, intersecting with that story from a different direction.

But when we were first watching “Flesh and Stone”, it was a slightly odd moment and a possible continuity error! Because of the jacket.

TEHANI:
Ohhhhh… Nope, didn’t get it at the time at all!

DAVID:
Haha I feel very unperceptive now. I didn’t notice the jacket until it was pointed out. And, it is not like continuity errors are unknown in TV shows! I guess it goes to show that just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean that there is never going to be some hidden conspiracy – after all, even a stopped clock is right twice a day (I thought I’d sneak in a Tegan reference of my own…).

TANSY:
Ha, it’s true! I’m pretty sure I didn’t notice it either first time around, it’s one of those things that being surrounded by fan discussion & podcasts will do for you, though when you watch it again you will certainly notice the shift in tone and the way that the Doctor is so much more kind and nurturing towards Amy.

TEHANI:
“The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang” double was the Hugo winner for the 2010 Awards, beating out “Vincent and the Doctor” and “A Christmas Carol” (as well as the fan-vid “F*ck me, Ray Bradbury” and our own Shaun Tan’s short film The Lost Thing, which won an OSCAR instead!). Do we think the win was deserved?

TANSY:
I definitely think that it deserved the win from a Doctor Who point of view – the only episodes I would put in contention with it are not on that list, as I’d suggest “The Eleventh Hour” as well, and maybe “The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone” or “The Lodger”. I like that the Hugo results reflected the delight of Who fans about finally getting such a good two part series finale – I think only “Army of Ghosts/Doomsday” can match it as far as quality goes, and that one did far less to pull together the plot of an entire series. I like to think that voting for the series finale is kind of like voting for the whole spectacular season, because this season is the most cohesive of all New Who (and it could certainly be argued, all Doctor Who ever).

DAVID:
Given the other episodes that were nominated I have to agree with Tansy and say that it probably deserved to win from a Doctor Who POV, though I wouldn’t have howled with outrage if “A Christmas Carol” had won either. I am not sure that “Vincent and the Doctor” deserved to be on there as opposed to ones Tansy mentions – I loved “the Lodger”, and thought the Angels ones were excellent.

“F*ck me, Ray Bradbury” was one of those things that was cleverly done and went viral at the time, but I don’t think it is the sort of thing that you’d look back on five years later and say it deserved a Hugo (of course, you could say that about a few things). As for The Lost Thing, I am going to hang my head in shame as I admit I haven’t seen it! So, I can’t comment on whether it deserved to win over the Who double.

TANSY:
You live in Melbourne! You could go to the exhibition at ACMI and watch it there! (sorry, digression. Carry on.)

DAVID:
I think that New Who has actually been very good at creating cohesive story arcs across whole seasons. The Bad Wolf stuff was peppered right throughout that season, and was obviously thoroughly planned. The only arcs that spring to mind in Classic Who, at least off the top of my head, are the “Key to Time” and the “Trial of a Time Lord” episodes. There is no doubt that New Who is more sophisticated in this regard.

TANSY:
Yes, and maybe the first Tom Baker season with the ‘we are wandering without the TARDIS’ theme, and the ‘Seventh Doctor is being mysterious about Ace’ material, but they simply were not usually organised enough to do such a thing. It’s something that I think is more likely to happen when the producer is also the head writer on the show, a feature of New and definitely not Classic Who, though there were some notable partnerships between producer and script editor. Story arcs were less necessary because it was an episodic show and also because the format already had self-contained stories made up of several episodes. I’d argue that we need story arc more now, not just because audiences expect a higher emotional connection to their SF drama, but also because the seasons are mostly standalone single episodes, and need something to pull them together in lieu of the old ‘story’ format.

TEHANI:
I think it’s a good point you made, about voting for the season as a whole. And everything you said there. It’s a fabulous season!

TANSY:
I do think that Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing was also pretty damn worthy of a Hugo that year. I suspect he wouldn’t swap his Oscar with Steven Moffat’s Hugo, though…

Previous Episodes
“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day”, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“The Christmas Invasion”, 2005 Christmas Special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion”, S02E03
“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04
“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06
“Army of Ghosts/Doomsday”, S02E12/13
Season Two Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“Smith and Jones”, S03E01
“The Shakespeare Code/Gridlock”, S03E02/03″
“Human Nature/Family of Blood”. S03E08/09″
“Blink”. S03E10″
“Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords”, S03E12/13/14
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Spearhead from Space (1970)
Season Three Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Genesis of the Daleks (1975)
“Partners in Crime”, S04E01
“The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S04E0708”
“Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S04E0910”
Turn Left, S0411
The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End,S04E1213
Season Four Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
The Next Doctor / Planet of the Dead / The Waters of Mars
End of Time
The Eleventh Hour. S0501
The Beast Below/Victory of the Daleks,S050203
The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone,S05E0405
The Vampires of Venice/Amy’s Choice,S050607
The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood,S050809
Vincent and the Doctor/The Lodger”,S05E10/11

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 7 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all.

We are working our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, and sometimes a couple of extra episodes we love as our blogging points. Just for fun!

Tansy and Tehani love this season so much we’re making David do more work – we’re changing up our usual plan and reviewing each episode, in sets of two.

VINCENT AND THE DOCTOR
“Vincent and the Doctor”
Season five, episode ten
The Doctor – Matt Smith
Amy Pond – Karen Gillan
Tony Curran – Vincent Van Gogh
Bill Nighy – Doctor Black

TEHANI:
This is one of my very favourite stories so far. It always ALWAYS makes me cry (sometimes in different places), and I adore it for so many reasons, the guest actors Tony Curran and Bill Nighy being two of them.

TANSY:
I have an innate fondness for this story because of what it did for my daughter. Raeli must have been six or so when she watched it. I hesitated over showing it to her at first because of the darker themes of suicide and depression, but she took to it beautifully, allowing us to have a conversation about mental illness that was very important.

She also fell in love with Vincent’s artwork through this story. I sent her outside at a party once to play with chalks on the concrete and she recreated about four different Van Gogh paintings. With the Doctor Who twist on each, of course. It was a beautiful realisation, and her interest in art progressed from there – I later found her a gorgeous picture book called Vincent’s Colours which pairs lines from his letters to his brother with images of the paintings he is discussing.

TEHANI:
That is lovely Tansy – I think there is a great capacity for this sort of thing in Doctor Who, and when you consider its origins as an educational program, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised! Personally, I have a Doctor Who Van Gogh coffee cup which is just beautiful.

I thought the mental illness aspect was sensitively handled, and it was, for me at least, a believable portrayal. I have seen criticism about the ending, with people unable to understand why Van Gogh would still have committed suicide even knowing the legacy he leaves on the world, but I don’t have that problem. It’s horribly sad, but I also think it’s something that happens when people are gripped by such devastating depression.

TANSY:

I think anyone who can’t understand that ending is pretty naive about how mental illness works!

This story is held up often as one of those great ‘introduction’ stories that stands alone (like “Blink”) and appeals greatly to people with no Doctor Who knowledge, but I also want to comment on how beautifully it contributes to the season arc. Instead of a vague, hinty type of arc like Bad Wolf or Vote Saxon where the significance is only revealed in the finale, this season is paced beautifully with shifts and character developments every few episodes. So it’s broken up into The Amy Adventures, The Amy and Rory Adventures, and here the After Rory Adventures, in which Amy is grieving her loss without remembering it. The friendship she develops with Vincent, which starts out as her usual surface ‘flirting without meaning it’ but becomes much deeper, is really a special thing to watch and the scene in which he asks why she is crying is perfect. Also the bit with the sunflowers always makes me smile.

DAVID:
I really did enjoy this story, but I have to admit that it didn’t live up to my lofty expectations. When I saw the name of Richard Curtis I was incredibly excited because I have never seen anything he was involved in that I didn’t love and that didn’t move me (combine him and Hugh Grant and I am a mess!) and when Bill Nighy turned up it looked even more promising.

But, I found this to be a very uneven episode. There were some genuinely beautiful moments, and some heart wrenchingly sad ones, but also some parts that just fell a little flat. Fortunately, there is enough gold in here to tip the balance, and the last section is particularly emotional. Bill Nighy is brilliant as he delivers his speech describing Vincent’s achievements and it is hard not to be deeply moved by the raw emotion on display (even if the claim that Van Gogh is the greatest artist in history is extremely contentious). And then Amy’s realisation of the inevitably and weight of history, and her grief at the fact that they couldn’t save Vincent – I really felt for her.

TANSY:
Regardless of the writing aspect of the story, the visual design is extraordinary – the way that the characters actually move through so many set pieces which look like Van Gogh’s paintings and are often shot at specific angles (like the scene in Vincent’s bedroom). The street outside the bar, as well.

DAVID:
Not to mention the Who versions of his paintings! No wonder I have seen them on t-shirts and desktop backgrounds, they are amazing. I agree completely, Tansy, the whole episode is suffused with the look and feel of Van Gogh’s art.

TEHANI:
It’s a gorgeous episode in so many ways, visually and in terms of heart as well; heartwrenching, funny, sad and even a little bit scary. It was actually one of the Hugo Award nominees for 2010, and though it lost out to the season finale, it definitely deserved to be there.

TANSY:
Also, anyone who has issues with the whole invisible giant chicken monster should definitely check out the corresponding episode of The Ood Cast which has a brilliant sketch about the ramifications of leaving a giant invisible monster corpse in a small country church … and of course a fabulous re-rendering of Don McClean’s ‘Vincent.’ [http://theoodcast.com/s02e14/#.Un7lWetSbEU]

THE LODGER
“Vincent and the Doctor”
Season five, episode eleven
The Doctor – Matt Smith
Amy Pond – Karen Gillan
James Corden – Craig Owens

TANSY:
It’s really odd rewatching this one now because I have just finished listening to the audiobook of James Cordern’s autobiography. His work in Doctor Who is only briefly referenced but I do feel I now have a greater sense of just how famous he was in the UK when he was cast in this episode, and why his presence caused almost as much trepidation and alarm among British fans as Billie Piper (the pop star!) and Kylie (the POP STAR).

Still, no one need have worried! Craig is a brilliant character, and Cordern plays him with so much heart. In fact, this story is all heart. Heart and football. It’s a wonderful showcase for Matt Smith’s Doctor, showing off his alienness and his humanity, and his capacity for friendship. While the Craig-Doctor friendship is the emotional core of the story, and tends to attract a lot of fan love, I don’t see nearly enough credit given to Daisy Haggard as Sophie, who works beautifully off both actors – the Debbie Reynolds to their Kelly-and-O’Connor! (I’ll leave you to figure out which one is Gene Kelly and which is Donald O’Connor).

DAVID:
This is hands down my favourite episode of the season, which is quite an achievement given how much I enjoyed the Angels two parter. This episode is just so much FUN! But, there is also a real emotional core to it. Funnily enough, if you sat me down with no prior knowledge and shown me this and “Vincent and the Doctor” and asked me which one Richard Curtis had written I wouldn’t have hesitated in picking this one.

It’s interesting you mention the trepidation surrounding Cordern’s casting, Tansy. One of the interesting effects of watching New Who so long after it actually aired is that I have been oblivious to a lot of the things people watching it at the time have experienced, whether waiting so long between episodes or the discussion of the latest rumours and news. As an example, the first I knew of Kylie being in a particular episode was when I watched it and thought, “Hang on – she looks familiar!”

So, I went into this episode with no preconceptions about who I was going to see and how they might play their role. I just sat back and enjoyed! Cordern is perfect in this, but he has an excellent foil in Haggard, who is exactly right for this and, as you say, plays perfect of both Cordern and Smith, who is also quite magnificent.

TEHANI:
I’m with you, David – I felt like I’d seen “Craig” somewhere before when I first watched the episode, but didn’t know anything else about him – happens to me a LOT with Doctor Who guest stars!

TANSY:
He’s also now the voice of Little Charley Bear, which may be more familiar to any parents reading this post…

Fun fact, this story by Gareth Roberts is adapted from an earlier comic strip in which the Tenth Doctor moves in with Mickey. Yes, really! The football stuff (which many assumed was put in due to Smith’s history as a professional footballer in his youth) was an integral part of the original story, and the gag in which Matt Smith tries to use Craig’s toothbrush as a weapon is an inversion of the original joke – where Mickey picks up what he thinks is his own electric toothbrush and accidentally sonics all his teeth out.

TEHANI:
*snort* I love your little pieces of Doctor Who production trivia 🙂

TANSY:
I do feel this is a near-perfect Doctor Who story as well as a near-perfect Eleventh Doctor story – my only quibble comes from an authorial blind spot. I don’t find all of the house’s attempts to lure its victims in is remotely credible – in the case of both of the first two victims, the situation seems  straight out of a horror movie. I especially don’t believe that a woman on her own would go into a strange house if she heard a man calling for help without more information – women are simply too attuned to potential dangers. If it was more explicit that the voice was coming from someone very old or a child (as when Sophie is lured up – the only convincing one of these scenes!) then I would find it much easier to believe.

TEHANI:
Agree! You might call triple-zero (or whatever the number is in the UK), but actually go into a house like that? Nuh-uh.

DAVID:
Of course, that is pretty much par for the course with any horror movie ever made, and still not as stupid as the behaviour of the characters in The Walking Dead!

This episode presents a master class in getting your audience to invest in a character. Within five minutes we know everything we need to know about Craig, and we are on his side. Little touches like the way in which he holds Sophie’s keys flesh Craig out more than slabs of dialogue ever could. And, this is one of the few episodes where I was made to feel genuinely concerned about what was going to happen to the characters, I really wanted a happy ending for everyone involved and I was honestly worried that Sophie wasn’t going to survive!

TEHANI:
A fairly Amy-lite episode, and her part of the story was very peripheral to what was going on. I agree with what you said before about Sophie’s role, Tansy, but this one was definitely all about the “bromance” in terms of the main players.

TANSY:
It’s lovely seeing the Eleventh Doctor build a friendship from scratch, and the way he drives Craig crazy, creates so many problems for him, and then solves what’s wrong with his life. It really is the essence of bromance – that is, a story about platonic male friendship that is given the same narrative attention that a male-female romance usually gets. The Eleventh Doctor is actually totally channelling Katharine Hepburn from Bringing Up Baby – he’s the madcap chaotic one who breezes into Craig’s life and takes it apart piece by piece.

TEHANI:
I’m a fan of the soccer scene…

TANSY:
OMG the soccer! It’s so charming and also moves forward the characterisation AND the plot of the story. A great scene. I know a lot of people (including me) assumed this was written in specifically because of Matt Smith’s brief history as a pro footballer, but the pub league bit was always in the story from the original comic.

DAVID:
A fair bit of New Who has been about the Doctor’s relationships with female characters, romantic or otherwise, so it is fascinating to see the Doctor learning how to be a bro! It’s definitely a different dynamic than with Mickey, or even Rory, and it’s a whole lot of fun. Perhaps part of that difference comes from the fact that, instead of them coming into the Doctor’s life, this is the Doctor becoming part of Craig’s. I did feel sorry for Craig a few times during the episode, because the Doctor does hog the limelight, but ultimately the Doctor learns as much from Craig as he does from the Doctor – and it is obviously that he does care for Craig’s well being.

TANSY:
I like that Craig is envious of the Doctor, but the Doctor himself displays absolutely no jealousy or even awareness that he might be a romantic threat to Craig and Sophie. It’s a far cry from Nine and Ten’s outright competitiveness with other young men and even implied sexual jealousy around Mickey, Adam, Jack etc. I love the innocence of Eleven, and how he can cause trouble and conflict simply by existing.

Craig’s constant outrage at the Doctor’s weirdness being accepted and embraced by others is quite a fascinating character trait.

DAVID:
Would it be fair to say that this episode has the most Doctor flesh since “Spearhead from Space”?

TANSY:
And no tattoo! Sad. But yes, I appreciate being able to add another Doctorish shower scene to the canon!

DAVID:
One of the things that I am not a huge fan of, but that you just have to deal with when watching New Who, is that when it comes to the Doctor’s gadgets it is definitely very soft science fiction. The sonic screwdriver may as well be a magic wand, and there a lot of things just thrown together without even paying lip service to any sort of science behind them. But, if you can’t just roll with that you are probably watching the wrong show!

TEHANI:
I like to roll with it 🙂 I might be starting to get a bit picky about some of the handwavium, but you know what? That part of the fun!

TANSY:
I agree with you, David, but it never bothers me. I’m not really a fan of technobabble for the sake of it, and most of the ‘lip service’ science of the Classic Show was rubbish any way. Let us never forget the megabyte modem.

Overall this is a clever story and it’s very nice to see the Doctor playing with characters other than his regular companion. Given how many episodes in this season provide Karen Gillan some fantastic material, I think it’s fine to give Amy a break, and helps refresh us before we leap into the finale.

Having said that, rewatching this story after Season 6 brings a whole new light to Amy’s slight subplot. What exactly is going on in that TARDIS, and could there be someone there we don’t see/remember tossing the TARDIS around like that?

TEHANI:
You mean, something rather quiet? 🙂 We’ll have to wait and see!

Previous Episodes

“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day”, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“The Christmas Invasion”, 2005 Christmas Special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion”, S02E03
“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04
“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06
“Army of Ghosts/Doomsday”, S02E12/13
Season Two Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“Smith and Jones”, S03E01
“The Shakespeare Code/Gridlock”, S03E02/03″
“Human Nature/Family of Blood”. S03E08/09″
“Blink”. S03E10″
“Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords”, S03E12/13/14
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Spearhead from Space (1970)
Season Three Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Genesis of the Daleks (1975)
“Partners in Crime”, S04E01
“The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S04E0708”
“Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S04E0910”
Turn Left, S0411
The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End,S04E1213
Season Four Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
The Next Doctor / Planet of the Dead / The Waters of Mars
End of Time
The Eleventh Hour. S0501
The Beast Below/Victory of the Daleks,S050203
The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone,S05E0405
The Vampires of Venice/Amy’s Choice,S050809
The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood.S051011

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 7 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all.

We are working our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, and sometimes a couple of extra episodes we love as our blogging points. Just for fun!

Tansy and Tehani love this season so much we’re making David do more work – we’re changing up our usual plan and reviewing each episode, in sets of two.

Tansy and Tehani love this season so much we’re making David do more work – we’re changing up our usual plan and reviewing each episode, in sets of two.

“The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood”
Season five, episodes eight and nine
The Doctor – Matt Smith
Amy Pond – Karen Gillan
Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill

TEHANI:
Well, I’d completely forgotten what this one was about until Tansy nudged me violently. And so I dove into rewatching with quiet joy, which I can’t talk at all about because of David (hurry up and CATCH UP!) 🙂

Looking back, I can’t quite tell why I would have forgotten it, because there’s some great stuff here. I have a feeling I confused it in my head with “The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People” from season six, which is silly because I like this loads better…

TANSY:
This two parter, and “Cold Blood” in particular, is my least favourite part of the season. There’s a lot to like here – and I do like many aspects, particularly the return and redesign of the Silurians, a lot of the dialogue, and the chilling bookend of Amy and Rory waving to themselves, and then Amy alone after Rory has disappeared. Acting highlights include Meera Syal as Nasreen Chaudry (blatantly auditioning for a run in the TARDIS) and the lovely Stephen Moore as the Silurian leader. Not to mention Neve McIntosh playing two distinct characters excellently beneath what could be quite unforgiving prosthetics.

However…

The character of Ambrose is a big problem for me, largely because she is written and played so harshly that she is a) deeply unlikeable and b) consistently stupid. In fact, there is a term for her role in this story – the stupid ball – which means she is forced by the script to act in a stupid way, in order to make the plot work.

This might be less grating to me if it wasn’t for the fact that the other glaring problem of the story to me is also gendered. I quite like the idea of the military caste of the Silurians being represented by the women and the science/thinky caste being men, BUT what we get in the script is the female Silurians being violent and irrational and the male Silurians being calm, sensible and charming.

TEHANI:
Darn it Tansy, I was so busy being impressed by the way the Silurian society worked I didn’t consider all that…

TANSY:
This combined with the violent and irrational Ambrose representing humans is … a bit icky to me. Even worse, the Doctor notes and condemns the irrational violence of Ambrose and the female Silurians, but embraces Dr Malokeh as a brother in science and generally finds him adorable despite the fact that Dr Malokeh has basically been quietly and gently torturing humans in the name of science.

TEHANI:
But not the children! 🙂

TANSY:
The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

TEHANI:
I’m not sure the men looked completely rosy though. Tony does suggest he’d betray humanity if Alaya cures him, and he also suggests dissecting her for defence purposes…

DAVID:
When I was making notes about this story, I wrote:

“Don’t forget Malokeh was dissecting humans!”

Admittedly I spelt his name wrong, but the point remains. He had been dissecting prisoners and, as Tansy points out, he basically gets a free pass from the Doctor.

TEHANI:
I agree that the Doctor gives him a free pass, but he also gives Ambrose a free pass, despite the fact her actions led to such a terrible outcome (for Rory at least, if not necessarily the Silurians, because I kind of think there was no way almost-present-day society would have accepted them – we can’t even accept each other 🙁 ). He wasn’t nearly so angry at her as I expected, given what happened.

TANSY:
He’s pretty scathing, I thought, and the scene at the end he appears quite contemptuous towards her, making it clear that her job is to make up for what she did by helping her son on his quest to “get humans ready” for the Silurians. So she doesn’t even get to redeem herself directly, either, only through her child!

DAVID:
Something I found interesting about this episode, though, was the many parallels between this story and the first appearance of the Silurians. You have the more moderate leader trying to rein in the younger hot head, the blinkered viewpoints of some of the key humans, the Doctor desperately trying to keep the peace, an accidental death derailing the best efforts of those trying to find common ground between the two species – and, of course, the Doctor enraged by humanity giving into its worst instincts and making his displeasure very clear. Obviously they invert some of the situations, but there are a lot of similarities.

TANSY:
Yes, I quite like that part. The actual shape of the story I don’t mind at all – even the mining set has a bit of the Pertwee vibe about it. And I haven’t forgotten that the Doctor being patronising about humans and violence and exhibiting double standards depending on how much he likes you is also a carry over from the Classic series.

Likewise, the Silurians here are given a much more complex and inclusive society than the rather dull men in rubber suits from the old days.

TEHANI:
See, I have no idea what you’re talking about! I figured Silurians had appeared in the classic series, because it’s specifically discussed, but I’ve been tricked like that before!

DAVID:
I didn’t really understand the complete redesign of the Silurians, though I do think they looked good, I would have preferred to see an update of the classic design. I did like the subtle dig at the dodgy dating of the species, though!

TEHANI:
I loved the prosthetics! Fantastic makeup and design, that’s for sure.

TANSY:
And a brilliant portrayal by Neve McIntosh as the female Silurians which, cough, will have far greater and more awesome ramifications.

TEHANI:
Indeed… 🙂 I thought Amy and Rory were both excellent in this too – Amy once more charging into danger and poking her fingers in where she probably shouldn’t, and Rory being completely the “best of humanity” the Doctor is aiming for.

TANSY:
Yep, shame they killed Rory off at this point, he had real potential as a great companion. The scene in the TARDIS with Amy trying and failing to save his memory is one of the most genuinely emotionally excellent moments of Doctor Who. Chilling stuff.

TEHANI:
Yes, a shame Rory is completely dead and gone now. Very sad. But it is absolutely a great scene, agreed.

DAVID:
I thought the scenes where you can see the couple in the distance, and then the changes, particularly effective.

TEHANI:
But completely sad, right? Cos Rory’s dead, don’t you know? I just watched a bunch of Classic Who and it’s quite amazing how quickly they get over the loss of a companion – wonder how quickly Amy and the Doctor will move on…

Previous Episodes

“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day”, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“The Christmas Invasion”, 2005 Christmas Special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion”, S02E03
“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04
“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06
“Army of Ghosts/Doomsday”, S02E12/13
Season Two Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“Smith and Jones”, S03E01
“The Shakespeare Code/Gridlock”, S03E02/03″
“Human Nature/Family of Blood”. S03E08/09″
“Blink”. S03E10″
“Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords”, S03E12/13/14
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Spearhead from Space (1970)
Season Three Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Genesis of the Daleks (1975)
“Partners in Crime”, S04E01
“The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S04E0708”
“Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S04E0910”
Turn Left, S0411
The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End,S04E1213
Season Four Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
The Next Doctor / Planet of the Dead / The Waters of Mars
End of Time
The Eleventh Hour. S0501
The Beast Below/Victory of the Daleks,S050203
The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone,S05E0405
The Vampires of Venice/Amy’s Choice,S050809

 

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 7 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all.

We are working our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, and sometimes a couple of extra episodes we love as our blogging points. Just for fun!

Tansy and Tehani love this season so much we’re making David do more work – we’re changing up our usual plan and reviewing each episode, in sets of two.

Tansy and Tehani love this season so much we’re making David do more work – we’re changing up our usual plan and reviewing each episode, in sets of two.

“The Vampires of Venice”
Season five, episode six
The Doctor – Matt Smith
Amy Pond – Karen Gillan
Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill

TEHANI:
For me, this is one of the weaker episodes of the season. The writing touch is really obvious when you’ve just watched a bunch of Steven Moffat penned stories. I’m not usually one to look at the writing/directing combinations, but this season was interesting – the first five episodes were written mostly by Moffat, and directed by one of two directors. This is the first story not to have one of those three hands involved, and I think it shows. That said, director Jonny Campbell then goes on to do one of my favourite episodes ever, in “Vincent”! So, do I blame the writer? But Toby Whithouse also penned “School Reunion”! Maybe that’s part of the problem – a little too same-ish? Mostly I think it falls down for me in the dialogue and the strange juxtaposition between attempted humour that falls flat, and a very dark (at times) Doctor, which while definitely warranted in terms of the plot, rubs wrongly in the way it’s put together.

TANSY:
Heh I really like this one. It feels like more of a guilty pleasure than say, the Angels two-parter or some of the later episodes. Very high quality this season generally! But the combination of the gorgeous scenery and the banter makes it one that I will happily rewatch, over and over.

TEHANI:
Oh there’s stuff I like, but yeah, more I don’t, I think.

DAVID:
I actually thought the aliens were almost incidental to this episode. The real story is the interactions between the Doctor, Rory and Amy and they were the bits that I enjoyed the most!

Saying that, it is a lovely looking episode, and the historical backdrop was very well done. And, there are some great performances, most notably Lucian Msamati and Helen McCrory, who are both superb.

TANSY:
Croatia is very pretty. I find it amusing that they had to go there to find something that looked like Venice, because Venice itself is too damned modern these days. They managed to capture the feel of Renaissance Venice, though, and I appreciated the dig at Casanova, and the Doctor not wanting to meet him again – Casanova will ALWAYS be David Tennant, for me.

Anyone noticed by now how many monsters in this season have some kind of scary teeth? This is indeed the scary pointy teeth season. I do in fact recall fan speculation that ‘scary pointy teeth’ was the Bad Wolf of this season. Fandom cracks me up.

TEHANI:
I did like the lush costuming (although the girls’ nightgowns were a bit of a cheap cheat!) and the lighting in this was lovely! Helen McCrory as Signora Calvierri was a highlight of the episode as well.

TANSY:
Her scenes with Matt Smith were electric.

TEHANI:
There seemed to be quite a few loose threads and hand wavey bits – if the perception filter operated as the Doctor described, then how did Signora Calvierri know when it wasn’t working? And it doesn’t make sense that the filter still worked when not attached to her, or that her “children” wouldn’t recognise her when she went into the water, despite the justifying line from Francesco earlier. What happened to the fire in the sky when Rory was fighting the fish boy? And WHY did sunlight explode him?! And what happened to the tidal wave? And boy howdy, doesn’t the Doctor get over the death of the species quickly? Another point where the balance of the episode is off.

DAVID:
I haven’t been keeping count, but the Doctor has wiped out a few species since we started this series, hasn’t he? Interesting to compare that to “Genesis of the Daleks” where Four refused to wipe out the Daleks…

TANSY:
Tehani, if you keep poking holes like that, the ship’s going to sink! To me the filter was quite clearly some kind of mechanical device in this one (the static when hers glitched suggested that) but it’s a brand new kind of handwavium that we’re going to see a lot of in this era, so mostly I just roll with it.

TEHANI:
You’re very good with the handwavium!

TANSY:
It is my superpower.

I definitely agree that the Doctor gets over the death of the species too quickly – though I was more put off by the deaths of the two human characters, the father and daughter, who are the innocents caught up in it. The fact that they both die horribly in what is otherwise painted as a romp is a bit odd, especially as it continues to be a romp after they’re gone.

TEHANI:
Yes, I think this clash of tone is part of why it leaves me a bit cold. Lots of death, lots of playing for laughs…

DAVID:
Well, the father did have a traditional Doctor Who heroic death!

TEHANI:
Can’t say too much, and of course this passed me by entirely first time around, but I think this is the first mention of the Silence, Tansy?

TANSY:
Silence will fall! Or … is it Silents will fall?

I actually think that the lady from Broadchurch let that one drop back in “The Eleventh Hour” when she was being Prisoner Zero. But yes, this is the time where it becomes quite clear that it’s a THING we should be paying attention to.

TEHANI:
*snort* Oh, the way you reference actors…

There seems to be an effort in this episode to force flirtation on the Doctor. I don’t think it works, because it kind of comes out of nowhere, a bit like Amy jumping him at the end of “Flesh and Stone” is a bit weird, given how well she and River have bonded. Not sure what the writer hoped to achieve with it.

TANSY:
I don’t know about forced – it is the first time we see the Eleventh Doctor flirt, and it’s pretty clear by now that however the Doctor feels, Matt Smith enjoys the flirting. I liked seeing the chemistry in his scenes with Helen McCrory – they bounce beautifully off each other, and it feels like a coming together of equals. It reminds me a bit of great Master stories, where the fact that the Master is the villain doesn’t matter quite so much as the fact that he and the Doctor have more in common than anyone else.

TEHANI:
It’s interesting how you say “Matt Smith enjoys the flirting” because during this rewatch, I’m seeing more and more of the actor overriding the role – a little Tom Baker-ish? As in, it’s not fundamentally bad, because he’s so adorable and we love him, but it’s not necessarily how the Doctor would behave?

TANSY:
Ah but the Doctor is so informed by whomever is playing him, it’s hard to draw that line!

I do like that when the Doctor gets into flirting (and this is very much the incarnation where he experiments in that regard) he mostly does so quite inappropriately. Because, you know, he’s been busy for the last 900 years and this is a New Thing for him. So he hasn’t figured out not to do it with the monsters…

DAVID:
Funnily enough, I got almost the opposite impression. I thought that Signora Calvierri thought that her and the Doctor were equals, and that the loss of their species put them on common ground, without really understanding that the Doctor was on a whole different level. The scene on the roof in “The Eleventh Hour” was a great reminder that the Doctor is not someone to be trifled with and the Universe is littered with those who had misunderstood who he was and underestimated him. That was her mistake, and led to her downfall.

TANSY:
This is the first time we’ve seen Rory for a while, and I think the whole storyline between him and Amy is one of the reasons I like this one so much. The fact that the Doctor responds to Amy kissing him by trying to fix things with Rory is quite interesting, as is the fact that he has finally figured out one important thing about humans: the one who travels with him will lose connections to her family and loved ones back home, coming to depend on him too much. It’s quite nice to see him trying something new as a way of admitting how much he stuffed up in the past, not just with Rose but with Martha and Donna too. He doesn’t want a companion who never wants to leave him because that always ends badly – so he’s setting Amy up with an escape route.

This is also the first story that really gives Rory something to get his teeth into, and Arthur Darvill puts a lot into it. The difference between he and Amy is shown at every point, and there are hints here of the way Mickey was tested/treated as a second class companion (this is the same writer who had Mickey point out he was the Tin Dog) but the humour is more gentle, and it doesn’t tip over into cruelty. Rory also stands up for himself more, and his sense of humour and self-deprecating wit helps to make the character feel very likeable already.

TEHANI:
I went in first time around prepared not to like Rory very much (cos REASONS) but he is wonderful. Combination of getting good scripts I think and the way Darvill plays the role.

DAVID:
This is another example of how much the Doctor has grown since the start of New Who. You have no idea how much happier I am with a Doctor who makes the right moral choice in this situation. I think that there is a lot to be taken from contrasting the Eleven-Amy-Rory situation with Nine-Rose-Mickey.

With Nine, we had a Doctor so insecure and in need of validation that he very much set himself up in competition with Mickey, who really had no way of competing at all. Almost everything Nine did, whether showing Rose the wonders of the Universe or putting Mickey down at every opportunity, seemed designed to ensure that Rose fell for him.

In this story, it seems to me that the Doctor is going out of his way to try and include Rory as if to ensure that Amy doesn’t forget who she has left behind. It’s rather cute that the Doctor is obviously a bit baffled by human interactions, and it is a lot of fun watching him trying to provide what he sees as the essentials for romance! The scene at the bachelor party was hilarious.

TANSY:
We are being shown that the Doctor is just as much at sea when it comes to making friends as he is with any kind of romantic negotiation. People are confusing!

DAVID:
I do agree that he is trying to ensure that Amy has something to fall back on when the inevitable parting of ways occurs, but I also think that he is aware of the damage he has done, first by abandoning Amy for so many years (because even though no real time passed for him, it was an abandonment that has shaped who she is) and then by sweeping in and sweeping her away. This is the Doctor doing his best to repair that damage.

TANSY
I often cite this episode as an example of the unconventional gender dynamics between Rory and Amy – that he’s the nurturing healer and she’s the bold, adventurous one. When they hear a scream, his first instinct is to run away and hers is to run towards the trouble.

TEHANI:
Oh, that is so true! Shows their characters perfectly!

TANSY:
But they both get to be brave ultimately, and we do see them working together as a team which is one of those important ways to get a believable romance across on film.

The decision to make the Doctor rather than Rory the third wheel was a clever one, and ensures that everyone complaining Rory was just Mickey Mark II could STFU. It makes the Doctor so much more likeable that he comes to appreciate Rory as a person distinct from Amy.

DAVID:
Have I mentioned how much I love Amy and Rory as companions? Rory is already one of my favourite companions of all time, and Amy is not far behind. Self deprecating was a great term to apply to Rory, Tansy, and there is something so intrinsically likeable about him. I have said in the past that my favourite dynamic is the Doctor and a female and male companion, and for some reason this one reminds me of my favourite combination ever – Four, Sarah Jane and Harry Sullivan.

In fact, there is something Harry-esque about Rory. I don’t know whether it is that self deprecating wit, their easy going nature or simply the sense of innate decency they both exude, but they do seem to have a lot in common.

TANSY:
A lot of fans get tied into knots about Amy’s willingness to cheat on Rory, which is I guess understandable, but I think it’s important to note that for Rory himself it’s not kissing the Doctor that is as much of a problem (after all he has to be used to that from her kissogram days) it’s the fact that she LEFT him and what that says about their relationship. He was looking forward to marrying her and she was trying to postpone it by running away the night before – that shows a major problem in their relationship and this is the beginning of the two of them working that out. The Doctor is giving them an opportunity to deal with a few therapy issues before going back to real life, and that turns out to be a very good thing for all of them – despite what is to come.

Ahem, and yes, Rory doesn’t actually know about the part where Amy propositioned the Doctor but either way, her behaviour was a symptom of something that is actually (hooray) going to be addressed.

“Amy’s Choice”
Season five, episode seven
The Doctor – Matt Smith
Amy Pond – Karen Gillan
Rory Williams – Arthur Darvill

TEHANI:
Now wasn’t THIS interesting to rewatch, from a more “educated” Doctor Who fan perspective! The thing I took away most from the episode was how self-critical it was – some of the Dream Lord’s dialogue could have come straight from the mouths of those critiquing the series. For example:

Dream Lord: “Friends”. Is that the right word for the people you acquire? Friends are people you stay in touch with. Your friends never see you again one they’ve grown up. The old man prefers the company of the young, does he not?

Harsh! And given it’s actually the Doctor’s own subconscious…

TANSY:
Hahaha yes, this one is totally different on rewatching. I think the Doctor’s line “there’s only one person who hates me as much as you” is pretty telling.

Toby Jones gives a fantastic performance – this is the closest thing we get to a Master for the Eleventh Doctor, and it’s very, very effective. I appreciate the layered storyline, and the final whammy that both realities are fake.

But there’s also some rather deep psychological stuff in here, such as the fantasy village which is not the life Rory wants (the idea that he would want to become a doctor is beyond insulting, actually, given that being a nurse is NOT a second best career, it’s a distinctly different profession) but the life that the Doctor THINKS Rory and ultimately Amy will want once they leave him.

Which means the ponytail is the Doctor’s fault.

TEHANI:
Well, his fashion sense IS rather questionable…

DAVID:
My first thought on that line was that it was the Master, but only for a second. I actually was more convinced that it was the Valeyard (which, of course, it kind of was if you want to get technical haha). Toby Jones was excellent in this, just the right mix of awkward and oily and dangerous.

The Dream Lord shows us that the Doctor is actually very self aware, whether he allows those thoughts to surface or not. The past few seasons have been a voyage of self discovery for him, and we’ve seen that he is actually learning, whether it is here or when he is trying to repair Amy and Rory’s relationship. Of course, these fantasies show that he doesn’t always completely *get* humans!

TANSY:
Something I found particularly interesting was Amy’s pregnancy – this is the only time ever in the entire history of Doctor Who that we’ve ever been shown even the possibility of a companion being knocked up despite the number of weddings that punctuate the RTD era – Donna’s pretendy children in the Library (MOFFAT AGAIN) is the only other case, and of course we found out eventually in The Sarah Jane Adventures that Jo Grant and Clifford Jones had a whole brood, but … it did feel odd to me.

TEHANI:
Ha, I just watched that episode with the kids!

DAVID:
But that is fairly typical of most fiction, surely? The wedding or the culmination of all the URST is seen as the finale of romantic subplot, rather than the beginning of a new chapter. You don’t always see what the “happily ever after” actually entails. That’s why I love stories that are about “what happens next”.

TEHANI:
There’s a whole genre of stories growing around the “after the happy ever” these days – as a culture we’re no longer satisfied with marriage being the end, it seems!

TANSY:
The Happy Ever After Is The End thing is absolutely true for a lot of romantic fiction and for movies, but not generally in the case of television drama – ‘family’ viewing in particularly usually means stories about families, including babies and kids. The surprise of Amy’s pregnancy (and pregnancy as a recurring motif in this era) only serves to point out how odd has been the lack of actual children (as opposed to adult women playing teenage girls who miraculously became adult the second a man showed interest in them) in the show for the first 46 years.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a pregnant heroine (though I could have done without all the boat jokes) but the character was so young at this point – 21? 22? it did feel like a weird narrative assumption, that this was what lay in her immediate future (though again, the Doctor’s dream, not hers). It was fascinating to see how Amy dealt with it, though, and I liked how much she stayed in character despite imminent motherhood.

TEHANI:
Isn’t it supposedly five years later? So Amy would be 24-ish…

DAVID:
Well, for the Doctor there probably wouldn’t appear to be much difference between a 21-22yold and a 31-32yold, or even a 41-42yold! Thinking about that, it explains a few things….

TANSY:
This is the man who felt it was appropriate to abandon various 16 year old girls across various times and places as soon as they got themselves a love interest so … yes, we can’t assume he knows anything about anything!

TEHANI:
Ooh look, Rory died! That could be interesting later on…

TANSY:
Shhh there’s no way that could be foreshadowing anything.

DAVID:
So subtle. 😛

TANSY:
Before we wind up I think perhaps worth calling attention to the title – only the second time that a companion’s name has appeared in one. A lot of people (including let’s face it, the Doctor) misread “Amy’s Choice” being about Amy choosing between Rory and the Doctor, but it’s not that at all. It’s about her choosing whether or not she really wants to be married to Rory.

And she does. She doesn’t necessarily want this marriage, this bizarrely boring future that the Doctor has so cack-handedly summoned out of his subconscious, but this is the point at which she decides completely that despite wanting adventures and everything the Doctor has to offer, and despite her severe abandonment issues and lack of trust of people, she really loves Rory and doesn’t want to lose him.

Once again, this is hugely different to the Rose/Mickey dynamic, where it’s pretty clear that seeing the universe has opened Rose’s eyes to the fact that their relationship wasn’t doing much for her, and that even if the Doctor and the TARDIS were not an option, she would not go back to her previous life choices as a default.

Amy, on the other hand, is greedy. She wants it all. Her TARDIS, her boys, love and the universe. She chooses Rory, but that doesn’t mean giving everything else up because Rory is actually too awesome to pressure her into going home before she’s ready.

DAVID:
Speaking of titles, there is a hint of irony in the fact that we had an episode called “The Runaway Bride”, which wasn’t actually about a bride trying to run away from her wedding!

I never saw Amy running away from the wedding as her running away from Rory, I always took it as her running away from what she thought marriage would mean. It seemed to me that she thought it meant the end of her independence, and being trapped in a life without adventure. One of the realisations she arrives at in this story is that she can have both – adventures AND marriage, and that, as Tansy alludes to, Rory doesn’t want to trap her. He seems quite content with the fact that Amy is a free spirit, in fact it is a big part of what he loves about her, and therefore has no desire to see that taken away from her.

TEHANI:
Just one more reason to love Rory…

TANSY:
I think that’s very true, and it’s clear that she takes Rory’s acceptance for granted, too. Amy is a bit thoughtless here in her early 20s and he clearly enables that – their relationship has revolved around Amy leading the way and Rory tagging along agreeing with her, and it mostly works for them though it was bound to lead to problems sooner or later.

It wouldn’t shock me at all if (and this is a detail never revealed to us) it was Amy who proposed and set the whole wedding thing in train in the first place, and only later began to freak out as the whole thing became a bit too real.

DAVID:
I don’t think her epiphany comes solely from the events of this episode, though. In the previous story she meets another married woman who certainly hasn’t let marriage cramp her style – River Song! I don’t think you can discount the impression River made on Amy.

It would be interesting for people with a better grasp of the topic than I do to examine Amy’s storyline in light of the debate about whether modern women can have it all (whatever society’s idea of what “it all” is), and how the changing nature and desires of the companions reflects a changing society.

TANSY:
There has certainly been a lot feminist debate about Amy Pond and her character arc – I think there are elements of her story which are incredibly positive and others which are a bit more wince-inducing (and not everyone agrees which elements are which). But at this point, it’s a very powerful story about a woman who starts to take control of her life despite being whisked away in the TARDIS – and that’s not something we’ve really seen before, even in New Who. In the RTD years, life in the TARDIS was so romanticised that the prior lives of the companions were seen as complete drudgery in comparison … and most of the positive changes that they bring to their lives after the TARDIS happen off screen.

I think it’s interesting to see how different things are now in the Moffat era – that Amy and the Doctor (and now Rory) are constantly negotiating this odd relationship of theirs, pushing and pulling against each other to create a kind of “TARDIS-life balance”. Despite Amy being a child when she first met the Doctor, and the potential uncomfortable power imbalance from  that, the whole thing feels to me like a more equal relationship than any we’ve seen in Doctor Who for a while.

Previous Episodes

“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day”, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“The Christmas Invasion”, 2005 Christmas Special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion”, S02E03
“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04
“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06
“Army of Ghosts/Doomsday”, S02E12/13
Season Two Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“Smith and Jones”, S03E01
“The Shakespeare Code/Gridlock”, S03E02/03″
“Human Nature/Family of Blood”. S03E08/09″
“Blink”. S03E10″
“Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords”, S03E12/13/14
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Spearhead from Space (1970)
Season Three Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Genesis of the Daleks (1975)
“Partners in Crime”, S04E01
“The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S04E0708”
“Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S04E0910”
Turn Left, S0411
The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End,S04E1213
Season Four Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
The Next Doctor / Planet of the Dead / The Waters of Mars
End of Time
The Eleventh Hour. S0501
The Beast Below/Victory of the Daleks,S050203
The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone,S05E0405

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 7 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all.

We are working our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, and sometimes a couple of extra episodes we love as our blogging points. Just for fun!

Tansy and Tehani love this season so much we’re making David do more work – we’re changing up our usual plan and reviewing each episode, in sets of two.

“The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone”
Season five, episodes four and five
The Doctor – Matt Smith
Amy Pond – Karen Gillan
River Song – Alex Kingston

TEHANI:
I find myself really struggling with what to say about this two-parter. So much of what is to come in the future of the show has roots here!

TANSY:
Spoilers, sweetie!

TEHANI:
But River! When I first watched these, of course I had no idea about the events of “Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead”, so River was this brand new character who apparently had a huge history with the Doctor and I was just learning about it. In light of later events (of which we shall not speak), the relationship between Amy and River in this story is FASCINATING, and her easy manner with the Doctor, the TARDIS, the past and future, well, it’s just marvellous, particularly this time around. That said, River Song’s timeline completely bewilders me. The first bit with the diary seems to imply River and the Doctor have had some intervening adventures offscreen. But then that’s later debunked! So confusing!

TANSY:
Best not to think about it, really. I think it’s great that you came in with this as your first River story – after all, we were told only in the previous story that the Doctor has also been friends with Churchill for ages. You don’t always have to have seen those adventures. One of the best things about Doctor Who (and something new people often don’t believe or understand) is that the massive weight of 50 years of continuity actually hardly matters. It’s always about new adventures, new self-contained stories – and we’re never going to see absolutely everything the Doctor gets up to.

TEHANI:
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I often assume that anytime we meet characters it seems the Doctor has a history with, I just assume there have actually BEEN adventures with them in Classic Who – works really well for newbies! 🙂

DAVID:
There have been lots of characters introduced in the show’s history who are meant to have extensive histories with the Doctor, even a companion IIRC! So, the idea of off screen adventures doesn’t faze me at all. And, with River Song there is the advantage that they don’t even have to have happened yet.

TANSY:
One of the things I like best about Amy and River in this story is that they are in no way jealous of each other’s relationship with the Doctor – Amy has given the impression that she fancies the Doctor a bit (and of course by the end of this story that has been ratcheted up to ‘quite a bit) but she’s fascinated by this other woman and what she might represent. The fact that she “might” be the Doctor’s wife (first time that thought has been vocalised on the show) is something she is amused by.

DAVID:
I much preferred the dynamic between River Song and Amy than some of the others we’ve seen. I think a big part of this is the fact that Amy looks at River and sees something she wants for herself, a life filled with adventure and travel, and someone who is very capable and good at what she does. I did get the impression that Amy didn’t feel particularly challenged by her career path. And, perhaps most importantly, she sees someone whose life hasn’t ended the day she got married.

So, perhaps it is that when she looks at River she doesn’t see a competitor, but a role model.

TANSY:
That’s a wonderful interpretation, I like it a lot. You’re absolutely right that Amy hasn’t figured out yet what she wants from life – travelling with the Doctor is about searching for that. And while Rose got caught up in the Doctor himself, I do feel that Amy’s attachment at this point is as much about where he can take her as it is to her “raggedy man” himself.

TEHANI:
So, Moffat just makes up “canon” to suit himself when the story requires it, right? ‘Cos there’s stuff happens here that seems to conflict with other stuff in other stories? Or is that just me showing my newbie status? 🙂

TANSY:
Show me your ‘broken canon’ and I will explain it!

But yes, of course he just makes it up as he goes along, he’s a writer. That’s what we do. It’s why I have no time for people fussing about the whole ‘the Doctor only has 12 regenerations and then he’s toast’ malarkey. What will happen is, we’ll get to that point, and then a writer will MAKE SOMETHING UP TO FIX IT.

Sadly of course that didn’t work for Donna. But there’s still time. I have a theory about how that’s more possible for Doctor 12’s era than Doctor 11’s but will save that until David is caught up.

TEHANI:
That totally works for Donna if you read the wonderful fanfics! Like this one, which I still adore 🙂

DAVID:
There is no way that the 12 regenerations limit is going to stop the BBC from continuing, and I can think of several ways to get around it – and, if I can, someone like Moffat or Cornell can definitely manage!

TEHANI:
Personally, I thought they had already done that in … um, but not yet, sorry David!

*changes subject quickly* I sincerely love the cave of statues set – it’s brilliant!

TANSY:
Gorgeous, as is the forest-on-a-spaceship concept as realised, and the beach shots as well. Add to that the very stylised opening sequence for River Song and the clever museum scene and this is honestly one of the best looking Doctor Who stories of all time.

DAVID:
This season really has taken the visuals up a notch, and this episode is no exception. There is so much eye candy, from the waterfall to the caverns full of angels, it looks amazing.

TEHANI:
Have to say it: Father Octavian = Ser Jorah Mormont! #geekcrossover

TANSY:
I KNOW RIGHT? It was the other way around for me because I came to Game of Thrones late, but I have a disturbing feeling that I like the character of Jorah way more than I should, simply because he is Father Octavian. Who is a really excellent supporting character in this. But of course that’s all mixed up with how I always get him confused with the comedian Bob Franklin…

DAVID:
Haha yes, I may have squeed a little.

Father Octavian was my favourite character in this. I thought that he could have very easily been a caricature, but instead was a complex and nuanced character. I liked how uncompromising he was, and how he refused to be overawed by the Doctor. But, he wasn’t one of those unthinking, bull headed military types that seem to crop in so many TV shows, who are unable to listen to or consider other viewpoints. But Iain Glen could bring dignity and gravitas to any role – what a voice.

TEHANI:
Some really great guests already this season, that’s for sure.

DAVID:
The militant Church of the future was a fascinating concept and I would love to see them again. I’ve found it interesting that Christianity has featured a few times in New Who’s portrayal of the future, though I am not sure the writers have really thought about the ramifications of that, other than that it makes a fun plot device. And the line when we learn that Bob is a Sacred Name – hilarious!

TANSY:
It’s interesting, isn’t it, considering how often Christianity (or religion generally) is just quietly “forgotten” about in so much futuristic science fiction, as if it could have disappeared completely from history despite being so integral to humanity’s recent past – in this case it certainly adds another dimension to what could otherwise be just random troops, Aliens style.

TEHANI:
I had not forgotten how bloody terrifying Amy alone in the forest was – I think I was more scared this viewing, and for goodness sake, I know what happens! The Weeping Angels really are the scariest darn monsters, especially in this episode, when they’re actually killing people, not just stealing their time.

TANSY: I like that this story isn’t just “Blink 2: the Revenge”; they are doing something quite different with the Angels. And on such a larger scale. The scene in which Amy watches the video of the angel is a fantastic piece in its own right, and the fact that the story revolves around her having to keep her eyes closed (rather than not blinking) is quite devastating.

(there’s a thing in this that I desperately want to talk about and I won’t but you know the thing right, Tehani? The thing in the forest? It does make this one an especially good rewatching episode)

TEHANI:
Yes, the thing! (sorry David…) 🙂

I’m using this rewatch to take much more notice of the resolution of episodes, and to look for pointers to overall arcs. I’m really rubbish at seeing this stuff normally, getting all caught up in the viewing, so trying to put my “critical viewer” hat on. Not sure it will be maintained, in the face of Matt Smith awesome, though…

DAVID:
While I really enjoyed “Blink”, I actually thought this two parter was superior. It’s already been mentioned, but the scene where Amy is trapped with the TV screens is as good as anything I have seen in any horror movie for years, while my flesh was creeping when the Doctor was talking with Dead Bob.

Bringing back something as popular as the Angels could have been a terrible mistake, it is hard to recapture the same magic, but by inverting their threat and ramping up the stakes Moffatt has taken them to the next level in this story.

TEHANI:
I love them both for different reasons, I think. “Blink” is something a bit special, and stands out as a Doctor-lite episode, but this is packed with all sorts of other good things…

And I’m back to River – I just love her, and the interaction with the Doctor, but I still can’t fathom the timeline. Is there a gif for that?

TANSY:
There’s a map somewhere.

TEHANI:
Oh, there’s this! (David, DON’T CLICK THAT!) – it’s out of date now though… 🙂

TANSY:
At this point, from David’s point of view, it’s easy – this is before the Library for her, and after the Library for him. She’s still technically imprisoned in the Stormcage at this point, but is obviously earning her freedom one good deed at a time. Note what she’s wearing, though, you will see it again…

TEHANI:
More zingy Moffat dialogue in this one – I’m starting to think the dialogue might be my very favouritest thing about this season…

Amy: Explain. Who is that and how did she do that museum thing?
The Doctor: It’s a long story and I don’t know most of it. Off we go.

The Doctor: I can run away from anything I like. Time is not the boss of me.

The Doctor: Didn’t anyone ever tell you? There’s one thing you never put in a trap—if you’re smart, if you value your continued existence, if you have any plans about seeing tomorrow—there’s one thing you never ever put in a trap … Me.

River: There’s a plan?
The Doctor: I don’t know yet. I haven’t finished talking.

TANSY
Moffatt’s dialogue is the best thing about all Moffatt’s writing ever. Which is why it’s quite good he went into telly, I suppose. Remind me to lend you my Press Gang DVDs some time … and I’d love to see a fanvid which compares the various Mighty Speeches we get from Matt Smith’s Doctor with the Mighty Rants Jack Davenport gets to utter in Coupling. His are mostly about things like pillows, girls being stupid, and putting the toilet seat down, but I’m sure there’s some sort of crossover potential there…

Speaking of the ‘one thing you don’t put in a trap’ line – the cliffhanger and resolution of this two parter is one of the best of all New Who even if you have to be paying very close attention to the screen to figure out what has happened. It’s certainly up there with ‘Go To Your Room’ in “The Doctor Dances”, another Moffatt script. I do feel he handles two parters (especially the second part) much better than RTD did.

TEHANI:
Yes, especially the second part, completely agree.

TANSY:
Before we finish we should totally look at the final sequence, in which Amy and the Doctor return to her room and she comes on to him. Thoughts?

(I will admit right now that my original response to this scene was to burst out laughing – but I’ve given its ramifications a lot of more serious thought since then).

TEHANI:
Laughter here too, yes, but then as you say, further consideration leading to different conclusions. And again, in light of what comes later, it changes the perspective again, I think.

DAVID:
As I think everybody is aware, I was a bit uncomfortable with some of the romantic elements we have seen, especially with Nine, and found some of the Doctor’s moral choices … questionable at best. So, I was actually a bit relieved by his reaction here. It’s another example of the growth we have seen in the Doctor since we first encountered the guilt ridden, traumatised survivor of the Time War. Here, he seems more startled than anything else.

It’s hard to decide what to think about Amy’s actions here, she is obviously have a terrible case of wedding jitters and being swept off your feet by your childhood hero, travelling around the universe and nearly being possessed by one of the most dangerous creatures in cosmos wouldn’t make for an uncluttered mind. So, it is unsurprising that all those things add up and express themselves in throwing herself at the Doctor. But, I can’t help but think of poor, devoted Rory waiting back at home.

TANSY:
Oh yes, poor old Rory. Amy gets a lot of stick for her Doctorlust in this season, but I think the important thing to note is – SHE’S TWENTY ONE. People make dumb decisions at this age, and she’s someone who has more confusion and trust issues in her background than most.

The more you learn about Amy, the more understandable it is that she does not in fact entirely believe that anyone would love her the way Rory does. What is happening right now is classic ‘testing’ how far she can go before he gives up and leaves her. It’s not nice or pretty but it is quite realistic, as is the long fallout from what she has done – and of course, running away into space the night before her wedding is part of that too.

I find Amy’s flaws quite refreshing, especially as she does have to deal with the relationship fallout that comes from her choices.

DAVID:
Upon reflection, I think that her actions are far more about a physical reaction to the events of the story than born of any real romantic feelings for the Doctor. At the risk of sounding crass, it seems far more of a “let’s get it on” than a “let’s settle down forever”. Not that I think it makes it okay, but that they are two *very* different motivations.

TANSY:
Another concern that many have raised (which made me uncomfortable about how funny I personally found this scene) is that Amy is ignoring some pretty serious consent issues – physically accosting the Doctor multiple times despite him clearly saying ‘no’ and not being interested. It is not something we would EVER see a male character do to a female character without the writer being aware they were doing something wrong – in television these days, anyway. It’s a slapstick scene that takes its comedy, like many Moffat scenes which raise feminist hackles, from a very old fashioned premise which is that a hot woman throwing herself at a bloke who isn’t interested is inherently funny.

(My excuse for finding it hilarious the first time is simply that I was raised on Carry On… movies, you can’t always shake that stuff off)

DAVID:
Now that is a very interesting point indeed. Shows how much we are conditioned to view things a certain way. I would have been very unhappy, angry even,had the roles had been reversed, but I have to confess I didn’t even blink an eye at that. I will have to think about why that would be the case.

TEHANI:
And like you, Tansy, it’s not something that crossed my mind at first. Our friend Mondy often talks about how he is always having his eyes opened to things by his podcast co-host Kirstyn, and by other media like Galactic Suburbia, and I’m a bit the same – a few years ago, I would have been oblivious as well. Growing up means things aren’t always as easy as they used to be, but I hope it makes me a more aware person!

DAVID:
There is not a “like” button on this, so I’ll just say I’ll second that!

TANSY:
Having the DVD I now always watch the version of this episode with the extra scene in the TARDIS after the kiss, which I highly recommend – it’s a fun, friendly scene which shows Amy challenging the Doctor’s supposed lack of interest in having sexy female companions around and also shows that she wasn’t actually all that invested in having sex with him. The next adventure is just as enticing…

TEHANI:
Darn it Tansy, WHY IS THERE ALL THIS CONTENT I HAVEN’T SEEN?!

TANSY:
DVD box sets, this is all I am saying…

Previous Episodes

“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day”, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“The Christmas Invasion”, 2005 Christmas Special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion”, S02E03
“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04
“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06
“Army of Ghosts/Doomsday”, S02E12/13
Season Two Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
“Smith and Jones”, S03E01
“The Shakespeare Code/Gridlock”, S03E02/03″
“Human Nature/Family of Blood”. S03E08/09″
“Blink”. S03E10″
“Utopia/The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords”, S03E12/13/14
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Spearhead from Space (1970)
Season Three Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
Classic Who Conversation podcast – Genesis of the Daleks (1975)
“Partners in Crime”, S04E01
“The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, S04E0708”
“Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, S04E0910”
Turn Left, S0411
The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End,S04E1213
Season Four Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani
The Next Doctor / Planet of the Dead / The Waters of Mars
End of Time
The Eleventh Hour. S0501
The Beast Below/Victory of the Daleks