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.
