After a brilliant
start in The Eleventh Hour the new
team behind Doctor Who brought us the
story of the eleventh Doctor and Amy’s first trip in the Tardis. The first trip
of a new companion has always seemed to bring a rather good story with it, see The Shakespeare Code, Fires of Pompeii, Tomb
of the Cybermen, etc; although this is probably more of a coincidence than
anything else. So does this episode keep with this tradition? Well,
unfortunately not. In fact looking back on it, this might well be my least
favourite episode of Series 5. So, what went so wrong here? Let’s examine.
Visually, this story is a mixed bag. It’s clearly made by someone who knows how to place a camera for a good looking shot, but the problem is that it’s all rather, subtle shall we say. And with the rest of the story being rather boring a bit of flair in the direction would have been nice. It looks very nice and doesn’t detract from the story (except for a horrible, out of place Star Wars screen wipe) but it hardly adds a lot. The actual designs in the story are also problematic. They have good ideas behind them, but they don’t make sense. The design of the Starship UK is rather striking and the idea of it all resting on the back of the (rather cartoonish) Star Whale seemed fitting. But then you think about it and realise that if the Tardis had flow under the ship instead of above, the story would have been over in about five minutes. Also, the Whale’s mouth is free in space, which doesn’t match up with the earlier scene in the beast’s mouth. The Liz 10’s mask looks fantastic, then you realise it is the worst disguise since Clark Kent’s glasses. The Star Whale’s spiky tentacle things, although not the best CGI ever, seem like a clever idea, implying a creature that is infesting the ship with its roots all through it, until you think ‘why would the Star Whale have these?’ or ‘why couldn’t we see any of these when we saw the Whale or it’s diagram on the computer?’. These all SEEM clever, but as soon as you look at them in any kind of detail they entirely fall apart.
That seems to be the main flaw with the plot too. Take the booths for instance. If you protest, you die. So that means 1% could never protest, they’d all be dead. This means the government is evil. This means that we can hardly feel for them. So we don’t really care about the people. The whole story is leading up to a dilemma to choose between the humans and the Star Whale for the Doctor. This is a dilemma we should care about. But, we don’t care about the Star Whale. We’re told it’s beautiful and brilliant, but it never does anything in the story and we don’t even see it until the very end, so why should we care? The humans are just as bad. Liz 10 is one of those characters who are only made watchable by the performance. The actress is good, but a cockney queen who’s in a terrible disguise to spy on her subjects and never finds anything unless it helps the plot and has taken 10 years to discover stuff the Doctor worked out in the first two minutes and knows the Doctor for no reason. I like the actress, but the character is dull. Same with the little girl, she really doesn’t bring anything to the plot. So when we don’t care about the characters, why should we care about the dilemma, or the story being told at all? We shouldn’t really, and we don’t. This episode, above all its other flaws is just boring. It’s not filled with horrible ideas, it’s filled with good ideas that don’t work and end up being disappointing, making for a very dull and uninteresting story.
So, you’d think that’s my conclusion. 2/5, some good ideas, but badly executed. Well, it would be, if it wasn’t for one thing. The ending. The ending treats the audience like they’re stupid. The Doctor mentions the death of the Time Lords in the episode. Some people complained he skimmed over it, but I think it actually shows some character growth from the start of the new series that, while not wanting to talk about it a lot, can accept it instead of being as upset as the 9th and 10th Doctors were. This is good. What it leads to is bad. The dilemma I talked about leads to nothing. The Doctor doesn’t have to make a moral choice; Amy just comes up with a third cop out option. After whining a bit about how the bad thing she did wasn’t bad because she didn’t remember it. Every episode I seem to like her less, but that’s an issue for another time. She realises the Doctor and the Star Whale are similar and there are clips to show this, and they play for so long that even a really stupid child would feel they were being patronised. And then afterwards, she says it again, in case we didn’t get this really complex theory. If you’ve seen the episode you know exactly what I mean. If you’ve not, then, I would maybe skip this one. It has some good ideas, but they don’t work, we don’t care about any of the plot or characters, the Doctor and Amy act in erratic yet not very interesting ways and the ending thinks you’re an idiot. Oh and it started the stupid children singing rhymes tradition in Moffat Who which isn’t creepy or interesting, it’s just annoying. And you can’t make a character say the line “did he do the thing?”, because however mysterious you think it makes it seem, it’s actually just an awful really fake mess. Anyway, enough ranting, final verdict, it’s bad.
1/5
Visually, this story is a mixed bag. It’s clearly made by someone who knows how to place a camera for a good looking shot, but the problem is that it’s all rather, subtle shall we say. And with the rest of the story being rather boring a bit of flair in the direction would have been nice. It looks very nice and doesn’t detract from the story (except for a horrible, out of place Star Wars screen wipe) but it hardly adds a lot. The actual designs in the story are also problematic. They have good ideas behind them, but they don’t make sense. The design of the Starship UK is rather striking and the idea of it all resting on the back of the (rather cartoonish) Star Whale seemed fitting. But then you think about it and realise that if the Tardis had flow under the ship instead of above, the story would have been over in about five minutes. Also, the Whale’s mouth is free in space, which doesn’t match up with the earlier scene in the beast’s mouth. The Liz 10’s mask looks fantastic, then you realise it is the worst disguise since Clark Kent’s glasses. The Star Whale’s spiky tentacle things, although not the best CGI ever, seem like a clever idea, implying a creature that is infesting the ship with its roots all through it, until you think ‘why would the Star Whale have these?’ or ‘why couldn’t we see any of these when we saw the Whale or it’s diagram on the computer?’. These all SEEM clever, but as soon as you look at them in any kind of detail they entirely fall apart.
That seems to be the main flaw with the plot too. Take the booths for instance. If you protest, you die. So that means 1% could never protest, they’d all be dead. This means the government is evil. This means that we can hardly feel for them. So we don’t really care about the people. The whole story is leading up to a dilemma to choose between the humans and the Star Whale for the Doctor. This is a dilemma we should care about. But, we don’t care about the Star Whale. We’re told it’s beautiful and brilliant, but it never does anything in the story and we don’t even see it until the very end, so why should we care? The humans are just as bad. Liz 10 is one of those characters who are only made watchable by the performance. The actress is good, but a cockney queen who’s in a terrible disguise to spy on her subjects and never finds anything unless it helps the plot and has taken 10 years to discover stuff the Doctor worked out in the first two minutes and knows the Doctor for no reason. I like the actress, but the character is dull. Same with the little girl, she really doesn’t bring anything to the plot. So when we don’t care about the characters, why should we care about the dilemma, or the story being told at all? We shouldn’t really, and we don’t. This episode, above all its other flaws is just boring. It’s not filled with horrible ideas, it’s filled with good ideas that don’t work and end up being disappointing, making for a very dull and uninteresting story.
So, you’d think that’s my conclusion. 2/5, some good ideas, but badly executed. Well, it would be, if it wasn’t for one thing. The ending. The ending treats the audience like they’re stupid. The Doctor mentions the death of the Time Lords in the episode. Some people complained he skimmed over it, but I think it actually shows some character growth from the start of the new series that, while not wanting to talk about it a lot, can accept it instead of being as upset as the 9th and 10th Doctors were. This is good. What it leads to is bad. The dilemma I talked about leads to nothing. The Doctor doesn’t have to make a moral choice; Amy just comes up with a third cop out option. After whining a bit about how the bad thing she did wasn’t bad because she didn’t remember it. Every episode I seem to like her less, but that’s an issue for another time. She realises the Doctor and the Star Whale are similar and there are clips to show this, and they play for so long that even a really stupid child would feel they were being patronised. And then afterwards, she says it again, in case we didn’t get this really complex theory. If you’ve seen the episode you know exactly what I mean. If you’ve not, then, I would maybe skip this one. It has some good ideas, but they don’t work, we don’t care about any of the plot or characters, the Doctor and Amy act in erratic yet not very interesting ways and the ending thinks you’re an idiot. Oh and it started the stupid children singing rhymes tradition in Moffat Who which isn’t creepy or interesting, it’s just annoying. And you can’t make a character say the line “did he do the thing?”, because however mysterious you think it makes it seem, it’s actually just an awful really fake mess. Anyway, enough ranting, final verdict, it’s bad.
1/5
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| Yeah Doctor, that's how I felt too. |
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