So. That was pretty good, wasn’t it?
A long way from being perfect, obviously – the story was pretty ploddingly predictable, with the only minor suprise being the “going away is good, staying away is better” incident. It lapsed a bit into distinctly RTD-ish technobabble as the story neared an end. The whole interaction between the Doctor and the little girl didn’t quite ring true for me, although it’s entirely possible that’s just because I’ve got no soul. The “Doctor Time” stop-motion thing were we’re shown him sifting through what he’s seeing to find the telling off-key detail was a bit gimmicky, went on too long and has been done before in slightly different form by seemingly every detective drama on US telly. If there’s one thing I don’t want Doctor Who to do, it’s remind me of an episode of flippin’ CSI.
Also: remixing the theme music – good idea, absolutely Godawful execution.
More importantly though it was funny, it had just enough emotional heft (“Why did you say six months?” “Why did you say five minutes?”), Matt Smith and Karen Gillan work brilliantly together and despite being a bit disappointing in “Episodes Written By Stephen Moffat” terms it was by leaps and bounds the best season opener in the NewWho era.
Between the episode itself and the rather spiffy “Coming Soon” montage that followed, my feelings toward the new series have been upgraded from “cautious optimism” to “understated but genuine excitement”. Please adjust your watches accordingly.
Matt Smith could definitely channel Whos Past – predominantly hints of Troughton and Ecclestone with a side order of Tom Baker. Fairly obvious David Tennant in there, but the wackness saved it from a re-tread of the last 4 years.
Definitely the weakest Moffat episode I can think of. Also, his writing style is very different from Big Gay Russ in some really obvious ways – he’s happy to leave things ambiguous and unsaid. That “12 YEARS!!!” scene (with them walking up a hill) would have gone on 10 minutes longer under Russ. And would have resolved with running. Instead they stop talking and stop to have a look around… clever.
Anyway, my only 2 gripes were the starting credits (is that the best you can do?) and the new Tardis Interior – which bizarrely reminded me of the Prisoner for some reason. Not in a good way, though.
And yes, sorry to break the “no comment shall be longer that the post” rule, but it’s important, dammit!!!
The jury is still out obviously but as Steven Moffat has written six of the Series 5 episodes, I’m hopeful of more hits than misses overall. Matt & Karen seem to work well together too but I really hope that they resist going down the whole ‘Rose’ route again. I gave the revised theme music every chance by chucking it through my half decent speakers & cranking it up but it just comes across as a bit feeble…
Yeah, I’m ready for a Doctor/companion relationship that doesn’t revolve around unrequited love. That being said, I like the two of them together more than I like either seperately.
So far so good, anyway. My hopes aren’t high for the next episode, mind – Mark Gatiss isn’t one of my favourite writers and I’m pretty thoroughly Daleked out at this stage.