Posts Tagged ‘daleks’

Tonight’s Doctor Who, The Big Bang, was farce.  Not quite pure farce.  More like 90% farce.  Not bad farce.  Proper farce.  Farce in a good way.  In a The Importance of Being Earnest or Noises Off kind of way. It could take its spiritual importance from the second half of The Importance of Being Earnest’s full title: Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People.

Steven Moffat had real fun playing with the timelines this week.  Each of the characters in the story has a timeline that we dip in and out of.  The Big Bang shows the power of the point of view in a story.  We have the camera’s time line which starts out following Amelia Pond.  The Doctor keeps steering her to be in the right place at the right time for the Pandorica’s opening.   When did he put the postit on the Pandorica and when did he write it?

Then it swaps to Rory in 102AD (1894 years ago) anchoring us to the love story and to the Previously.  Then we get the first view of the farce.  One of the Noises Off sections where the Doctor gives Rory his instructions so he can escape from the Pandorica.  I’m not entirely sure there isn’t a paradox there.  Given the Doctor is trapped in the Pandorica with the sonic screw driver how did he escape the first time?  That’s really going to play with the heads of anyone who takes Who too seriously.  However he did it it was soon enough that he could still get River Song’s time travel doodad.

Then we get the Doctor’s alternative way of looking at life.  He can put Amy in the Pandorica for 1894 years to get healed.   Rory guarding Amy for 2000 years sets up his love and allows his dramatic entry to save the day.

Once the Doctor hops forward using the doodad we begin to follow him almost immediately.  We get a brief moment of Amy to set up her knowing of Rory’s 2000 year vigil that sets up their reunion and his coming to the rescue.  That lets us tie up the earlier action with Rory and Amelia.  We follow him up to the point where he is shot by the Dalek then it switches to Amy except for an excursion to River Song in the exploding TARDIS.

River Song’s time line trapped in a loop but unlike Groundhog Day or the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Cause and Effect this is an unvarying time loop of just a few seconds that she has been trapped in for an eternity.  2 billion to 10 billion times.  No wonder she says “And what sort of time do you call this?”

Amy then has to sell the sadness of the Doctor’s sacrifice.  That no one will remember him.

Then its back to the Doctor as he rewinds back through his timeline.  The moment he checks himself echos a post regeneration.  He knows he’s escaped but isn’t 100% sure he hasn’t been regenerated.  He discovers Amy can hear him and before sacrificing himself to close the crack he plants a thought in her head and reinforces it before he does.  The line in Flesh and Stone which didn’t make perfect sense at the time is explained now we see it wasn’t the Doctor from that episode but the Doctor from this episode who spoke it.  Then he sacrifices himself into the crack.

So finally to Amy again on her wedding day.   Slightly confused.  Trying to work it out.  Glad they avoided the wedding and skipped to the reception.  TV weddings have a way of feeling artificial.  The River Song, the blank diary, the bow tie and the man wearing braces.  The embarrassed guests at the reception.   All of that to set up the TARDIS makes its big entry.  Love the way the TARDIS makes its big entry.  Karen Gillan really sells her delivery of a cliché that takes on a whole new meaning.  The dramatic incidental music becomes more and more powerful each time its used.  Its almost more powerful than the main theme now.  In combination the two of them can be played as a double emotional whammy as they use it at the end.

All of this took a lot of plotting, writing and planning to make it make sense.  The camera is clever and it helps us follow the story and play some tricks on us but we’ll forgive it for that.

There are just some really fun things in the episode…

A Dalek in a Museum

Someone had fun dressing the set putting the time anomalies together leading up to the Pandorica.  Plus a certain someone as the leader of a star cult.

The Pandorica looks so cool.  It opens and closes in such a fun way.  Need Pandorica dice.  And again – one broken down DALEK scarier and cooler than an army of DALEKs.

“I dated a Nestine duplicate once swappable head, did keep things fresh.” River gets such good lines.  Then the moment, just a glance, between Amy and River when they destroy the Fez.

The writing has a wonderful knowingness without being smug.  A universe reboot not just a figurative or cynical, marketing ploy.  A character plotting one.  A literal one.  To save the universe.  It adds onto River’s work to avoid spoilers.

The Doctor dancing like a drunk giraffe.  Fun and reminding us he doesn’t entirely fit in.

The solution to the destruction of time and space has a mad logic that has been set up over thirteen episodes.  It’s crazy but it was set up.

The fez: that is going to really upset the hate the bow tie crowd.  It’s a really clever technique to let us keep track of the timeline.  If there is a Fez craze for kids next Christmas I’ll have a good laugh.

Having the Doctor have to work it out as he is going on.  Setting out each leap, no matter how fantastic, as logical.

Once its all over and we’ve had a moment to enjoy their success we have the set up for the Christmas special.  Alongside that we’ve the next series mystery – why did the TARDIS go then?

Who is River Song.  River casual high noon moment with the DALEK.  Is there a hint there when she tells the Dalek to recheck his records about her being one of the Doctor’s companions?  The Dalek’s fear moments later after, presumably, rechecking and discovering something.  Is it just that she will kill or that it finds something more?  Anyone that can scare a Dalek is emphatically someone to take seriously.  Yet on the flip side she nudges Amy to free the Doctor and her unguarded “I’m sorry my love.”  Whoever she is I don’t think she’ll do a sixth season Buffy Bad Willow on us.

And of course what is The Silence?  Is that a reference to Silence in the Library?  Is that just a red herring.

All in all both an excellent finish to the two part story and an excellent end to the series.  Do you agree?

So we got jammy dodgers, Where Eagle Dare, Asimov, Troughton and Daleks references for fun.

Nice Dalek model on the plotting table to set them up and I thought the olive drab Daleks looked really good with the little Union Jack.  The new look Daleks don’t look quite so good.  I wonder if the main idea was to make them taller and more threatening. Maybe it means they can fit taller people inside to operate them.  Nice to see the variety of colour as my first memory of Dalek’s has them in a variety of colours from the films.  The best thing about them is the eye in the eye stalk.

Lots of fun Dalek dialogue.  Really fun to see them carrying files and making a cup of tea.

Letting the Dalek’s get away was an excellent choice. We don’t have to yet another Sherlock Holmes coming back after the falls to get them back.  Leaving Bracewell in the wild nice too.   I really didn’t see the Bracewell is a machine coming – nice twist.

The War Rooms nicely put together.  Not authentic but authentic to the story.  Beautiful set design and dressing.

Churchill played nicely.  Plenty of biting one liners from him.  Nice twist by playing with the usual Doctor meeting a historical figure plot. Having them already knowing each other leaving the question of where they met.  An opening for a prequel or sequel perhaps?

This didn’t bother me during the episode but afterwards I’m trying to work out: no one blinked an eye at the length of Amy’s skirt.  It’s a miracle men around the War Room didn’t keep walking into things.

I’m starting to feel like a stuck record: for the third episode we got all the pulp goodness but with the inclusion of logic.  The Spitfires in space could have been played as someone just comes up with the idea and then they appear.  That would have been easy.  All the references needed were dropped in as throw away lines earlier on, then later starts the ball rolling and then they appear.  It makes the whole story hang together so much better.

Next week to look forward to: River Song and the return of the monsters from Blink.  Interesting to see if Steven Moffat’s excellent touch runs to a two parter.  Fingers crossed they can keep up the excellent quality of the series so far.

So the second outing for the 11^th Doctor tonight in The Beast Below.

Interesting take on future Britain as a starship.  The sets were nicely dressed and with some interesting colour.  There was a lovely mix of retro, post war, grimy Britain littered with British icons with incongruous details like the rickshaws.  Small quibble if Scotland has its own ship and presumably doing its own thing why does the Union Jack still incorporate Saint Andrew’s Cross?

The scary end of the pier head-in-a-box bad guys were excellent.  I’d like to have seen more of them but the single episode story format doesn’t really let the new bad guys get built up the way the old ones used to.  Being physical objects rather than a CGI effect helps.  The winders becoming smilers using a physical effect in combination with CG was a good choice.

There were lots of nice gags and references littered in the show.  The moment the Woman in cloak (later revealed to be the queen) said “Save us Doctor you’re our only hope”.  The noise in the rubbish dump.  Touches of The Prisoner, Star Wars, Fairy Stories and Douglas Adams.

Liz 10 worked well and was nicely played.  The ruler who is trapped in a perpetual cycle of discovery and denial.  There seems to be a deliberate move to putting children in jeopardy to build tension and both the main child  actors in this episode gave excellent performances.

Amy gets an opportunity to show the kind of companion she is.  The Doctor goes for the dark solution and Amy brings the heart and finds the better solution to the same problem.  The story telling could have just had her hit the button but it showed us the logic very quickly and solve the problem.

Once the excellent story was over they brought out the DALEKs for next week.  Since the revival of Doctor Who that’s become something I dread.  For the first time in several DALEK stories I’m not worried that it will be a disappointment.