Caves and Twins: The Big Bang
Confusing, exploding, emoting, deus ex-ing - The Big Bang was a rebooted Doctor Who end-of-series episode alright.
But was it, umm, any good, or was it as ultimately unsatisfying as all of the others?
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Smith - magical and alien and brilliant
Gillen - Sassy and scared and screwed-up. Adorable.
Rory - An excellent male companion, who's more daffy-but-resourceful Harry Sullivan now, rather than a another castrated idiot man.
Smith's bedside soliloquy - Rather sums up the Eleventh Doctor and Matt Smith's performance - both note perfect
The wedding - Good entrance
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Love saves the day - As long as you remember someone, they come back to life? Whatever.
Magic light - The light from the Pandorica brings people back to life? And jump starts the second big bang, or something.
Where is thy sting? - The Doctor dies and comes back to life. Amy dies and comes back to life. Over the course of this series Rory has died and come back to life. At least twice.
Wibbly wobbly timey wimey - Getting a bit samey wamey now
Murray Gold - Time for a regeneration
Despite all the bollocks about people coming back to life and the big fat reset switch, so beloved of RTD, and now seemingly an inescapable feature of all Doctor Who, it was pretty enjoyable.
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Matt Smith rocks Glastonbury with Orbital
Probic Vent has been lucky enough to share a DJ booth with the Brothers Hartnoll from Orbital, and very nice chaps they are too.
Their version of the Doctor Who theme tune, while not as good as everyone reckons, I still pretty good though, and much more preferable to Murray Gold's diminishing-return efforts.
Something that is as good as everyone says, by PB's reckoning, is Matt SMith, who has been a revelation as The Doctor, and seems pretty bonkers himself.
So, to have him turning up at Glasto to introduce the Doctor Who theme tune is about as good as it gets. Check this out. Vworp, and indeed, vworp!
Caves and Twins: The Pandorica Opens
The Pandorica finally opens in, er, The Pandorica opens - perhaps the most oblique season meme of the new series thus far. So, was this finale a bit War Games or totally, er, every single RTD series finale?
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Opening scene - Fanwanky fun
Name-checking old monsters - Great fanboy moment
Dangerous Cybermen - Genuinely alarming, parasitic and threatening stuff - rather than the clunky old twats they were under RTD
Regular cast - All strong, especially Smith and Darvill
The twist - A neat subversion of the crash-bang-wallop RTD series finale we've become inured to
Some moments of direction - It's a genuine novelty to see something out of the usual BBC1 drama directors textbook. The moment the Doctor was dragged towards the Pandorica was one of those moments
Nestenes - Good reveal
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Murray
GOLD!
- Never one to let a moment pass without a glut of bombastic and/or syrupy Hollywood blockbuster dross. Get rid of him FFS.
The actual monsters - The genuine paucity of quality in new series monsters - and lack of budget - was revealed by the revelation that the fucking Judoon and various other shit monsters had clubbed together to defeat the Doctor
Romans - Who gives a stuff?
Monster clusterfuck - A little bit Hinton, as a friend put it
The sonic screwdriver - Stupid magic wand-iness has crept in more and more this season
The Doctor's speech - Rather Tennanty
So, a bit Indiana Jones, a bit early-90s DWM comic strip, a bit Moffat-y - generally fun.
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Caves and Twins – The Lodger
Gareth Roberts' latest attempt to write a decent Doctor Who episode after several disappointments was a genuinely off-beat effort. So was this budget-saver a Midnight or a Fear her?
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Matt Smith - Pulls off another great performance, despite characterisation that seemed a little off.
Corden Bleu - James Corden was fairly understated and sympathetic - a well-judged performance from a frequently-annoying character.
Silent Not Golden - Murray Gold seemed either on holiday or extremely understated. I never noticed any intrusive sub-Harry Potter tripe this week, which was nice.
Day-to-day Doctor - The Doctor struggling to come to terms with everyday living was amusing, if a little overstated
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Diminished Doctor- Subverting the Doctor's character in an everyday setting was generally well done, but a little overdone and tiresome in places.
The Power of RTD - The plot was secondary, so it seems churlish to complain about it, but fixing the spaceship via the power of love was rather twee. Reeked of bad Tennant-era Who.
Empty Pond - Amy got rather lost in the mix, both insofar as the plot left her alone in the TARDIS, but poor old Pond seemed returned to a generic companion-in-distress cipher.
Overall it was an enjoyable little episode, and it was good to see Gareth Roberts finally locating his mojo, after previous episodes that ranged from underwhelming to bloody awful.
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Caves and Twins: Vincent and the Doctor
Richard Curtis' kinda long-awaited Doctor Who episode features Tony Curran as VIncent Van Gogh, in the latest 'You're brilliant you are, absolutely brilliant!' historical character ep.
So, was it totally Blackadder or s steaming pile of pretty much everything else Curtis has done?
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Set-up - The monster in the painting' thing was a nice set-up
Tony Curran - Pretty convincing, didn't ham it up and generally hit the right notes
Location - Looked nice, and gave the episode a very different look to previous series
Central performances - Curtis made Smith look foolish on occasion, but the three lead characters all did well, and made the emotional pay-off work.
Couple of funny one-liners
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Stupid Doctor - Curtis made the Eleventh Doctor into his posh idiot cypher, and Matt Smith suffered as a result. Did neither character nor actor any favours.
Another unconvincing CGI monster - Is that the third, or fourth, or fifth this season?
Plot - Admittedly not the really the point, but didn't seem to make much sense.
Athlete - Fucking hell. Made Murray Gold look like Leonard Cohen.
All in all, something of a curate's egg. A brave move to take the series into fairly unexplored territory, and generally carried off well. A dodgy plot, some iffy characterisation and treacley end didn't detract from an emotionally-satisfying ep on the whole though.
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