Doctor Who 5/31.01

[selenak]

Before reading anyone else's reviews (as I spent the Easter Sunday morning being otherwise engaged): 'twas glorious fun, and I'll admit just the tiniest bit of gleeful Schadenfreude about both "the Moff will save us from all the RTD faults and will do everything differently" and the "Moffat is the downfall of the show and will take all we love from it!" factions being proven wrong, because that was a continuity feast, that was. Not just of Moffat's own previous New Who episodes (the "imaginary" childhood friend from Girl in the Fireplace, the "duck!" gag from Blink, the equivalent of "you're in a library, look me up!"), but specifically RTD's episodes as well. I mean, the man actually has Eleven quote Ten at his most hubristic and mean it - "it is defended". "Repeating the same name/sign at the same time" to save the world? Check. Not to mention that poor old Rory can join Mickey in the "dumped for the charismatic time traveller" club, the way it looks like. (I imagine these guys meet with Rhys Williams once a year and want to know how he defeated the odds, good old Rhys being the boy who was not dumped by the girl but explicitly chosen over the charismatic immortal and who managed to build and keep a successful relationship with her.) Mind you, for all we know it's not Rory whom Amy intends to marry, considering it has been two years between him being her sort-of-boyfriend and the night before her wedding. Whoever it is, though, given that she has already proof the Doctor's promises of showing up at a specific date are, err, less than reliable, her willingness to go on a trip first would indicate she's either none too eager for the marriage or really very very secure he'll be around when she gets back.

Not that I blame her. The trip of a lifetime is just that, and she missed out twice already. Introducing Amy as a child before letting us meet her grown-up self emphasizes both the fairy tale aspect of the show and the time travelling nature of it. That she's an orphan on both sides (like many an Old Who and no previous New Who companion tended to be) means whoever she intends to marry is her main (only?) tie to the present, and I'll wager that means we won't be back before the season is nearly over, especially given the wedding day set up. So, time and space, here they come! So far, Amy has the general companion attributes - curiosity, courage - and is good at improvising (the thing with the tie, which btw explains why Stephen Moffat asked RTD to make sure Ten wears his tie during regeneration). She's captivated but not overly in awe, which is good. We'll see how she gets fleshed out.

As for Eleven, he's similarly generally Doctor-ish, and I believed Matt Smith being the Doctor, without having yet specific Eleven-only attributes. But immediately post-regeneration, that's okay. Spearheads from Space has Pertwee's Third Doctor pretty close to Througton's Two, which Three otherwise isn't at all later, Peter Davison, when not being in a coma in Logopolis, and not doing that fabulous impersonation of previous Doctors to confuse Adric, wasn't more than generally Doctor-ish, either, and while I liked David Tennant from the Children in Needs special where he said in reply to Rose's "change back" that he can't, Ten specifically (as opposed to Doctor, general) didn't fully form for me until School Reunion. What I've seen so far, I like, and he's certainly good at combining that intelligence plus arrogance plus compassion mixture.

The Next Doctor's ten Doctor sequence is put to good use again - with the addition of Eleven walking through the image at the end - , and pleases me this time as much as it did in ye olde Christmas Special of 2008. Yay!

Season mystery set up: cracks in time and "the silence", huh? We'll see. Once gain, muwahahhaaa at everyone who hoped/was afraid that the Moff would do everything completely different. My evil laughter is evil.

In conclusion, the show is back, and I'm already looking forward to next week. Cheers!