Gavin WintersThe Time Of Angels / Flesh And Stone: after a bit of a wobble with the last couple of episodes, things pick up again here, as Moffat really starts to stamp his mark on the show. Inevitably both River and the Weeping Angels return, and we learn a lot more about both. #DoctorWho
The Doctor claims he’s only encountered the Angels once before. So… no incarnation before Ten met them, right?
Meanwhile, at Big Finish…
Love the slow motion chase of the statues creeping up the cave tunnels, eventually becoming the Angels climbing into the ship.
I’m still not sure if the bit where we, the audience, actually see them move is brilliant or a betrayal of how they fundamentally work. #DoctorWho
On first broadcast I noticed how, in the scene where the Doctor comes back to comfort Amy, you could see he had his coat on when it was missing before, and I thought it was a bit of a continuity error.
Should have realised it wouldn’t be that simple! #DoctorWho
Even Moffat admits now that the final scene, with Amy coming on to the Doctor so heavily, was a mistake and should have been cut. Such a bizarre character choice. #DoctorWho
The Vampires Of Venice: between the sumptuous location filming, the costumes, and the advances in using CGI to make extensions and improvements to an image, this is the most elaborate and realistic looking historical #DoctorWho’s ever done up until this point.
Rory’s such a welcome addition to the TARDIS team. Arthur Darvill is so good at reacting to the crazy goings-on as well as all the put-downs he keeps getting from both Amy and the Doctor. And I love his attempted Bruce Lee moves with a broom when fighting Francesco. 😄 #DoctorWho
Matt is honing his performance as the Doctor, bringing in a touch of quieter, darker menace during his confrontation with Rosanna. Much better than the random bursts of angry yelling he was sometimes prone to in the previous episodes. #DoctorWho
There’s a bit of an info-dump as to how the mechanics of the fish-people’s illusion works, how your brain can’t perceive them in a mirror and so on (would that really work on the Doctor, who’s seen far weirder things?). It’s all just an excuse to go “Wahey! Vampires!” #DoctorWho
The shot of Guido wearing Rory’s stag night shirt has no business being quite as funny as it is. 😆 #DoctorWho
Amy’s Choice: like RTD before him, Moffat had his first season structured and plotted to within an inch of it’s life, so now Rory’s joined the team this is the appropriate point to do a story where Amy has to choose between the two ‘lives’ she’s dithering between. #DoctorWho
The scenes of possessed old-age pensioners shuffling along like zombies (some with zimmer frames!) makes for one of the funniest threats ever. Lol at Rory’s reluctance to wallop an old woman. 😄 #DoctorWho
Sometimes Moffat lets his desire for a quirky, witty quip override realism and character - Amy’s line about ‘looking like a Peruvian folk band’ is one such example. #DoctorWho
Amy deliberately crashing the van (choosing to kill herself and her unborn baby) is a pretty dark concept to suddenly throw in, given that the tone’s been fairly light and comedic up till that point. #DoctorWho
It’s mostly other writers in Moffat’s era that give us proper villains, as he prefers to use malfunctioning tech or alien races. Toby Jones is a standout as the Dream Lord.
Headcanon: He was a pre-Hartnell Doctor, whose image still lurks in the Doctor’s subconscious… #DoctorWho
The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood: the far-off futuristic year of 2020… yet strangely no one’s worried about Covid.
I always wonder if they chose that year because in 1970 (UNIT dating notwithstanding) the Silurians went back into hibernation for 50 years… 🤔 #DoctorWho
In fact with the giant drill burrowing into the Earth… the Silurians underground… a domed energy barrier covering a village… this couldn’t be more Pertwee-like if someone ripped off their face to reveal Roger Delgado. #DoctorWho
I understand the reasoning for the Silurian redesign, to make them more relatable and ‘human’, but I still think it’s a shame they couldn’t have looked a bit more like the originals. #DoctorWho
Meera Syal makes for a very good temporary companion-substitute alongside Matt’s Doctor. Almost makes you wish she’d joined the TARDIS team at the end. #DoctorWho
The script (and narration) is aiming for deep and epic and significant but god, those “diplomatic negotiations” scenes are boring as hell and utterly devoid of any drama. Amy slumped half-asleep over the table must be how most viewers felt. #DoctorWho
But at least it suddenly gets interesting again at the end as poor Rory dies (for the second episode in a row!) and the simmering season arc comes out of nowhere and slaps the Doctor round the face with a piece of exploding TARDIS. #DoctorWho
Vincent And The Doctor: hmm, I’m afraid I’m always a bit ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ about this one. It’s undoubtedly a decent episode, but I don’t find it anywhere near as affecting as everyone else seems to. #DoctorWho
Tony Curran does make an excellent Vincent, and it’s always a plus in any kind of biographical drama when the actor really does look a lot like the subject. #DoctorWho
It’s only in the emotionally charged scene near the end, where they take Vincent to the museum, where I feel it lives up to the reputation that the rest of the episode has. #DoctorWho
So, Bill Nighy’s character… what do we reckon? Another Timeless Child incarnation or a far-future ‘Curator’ version like Tom? 🤡 #DoctorWho
The Lodger: easily the funniest Eleventh Doctor story so far. The plot about the alien upstairs is almost incidental as it’s just so much fun watching Matt’s incarnation trying to act like a normal human being. #DoctorWho
I never thought I’d enjoy a #DoctorWho episode so much that has a lengthy segment focusing on the Doctor playing football. 😄
This episode also manages to pull off some kind of miracle by making James Corden come across as funny and likeable. #DoctorWho
The scenes of the Doctor clumsily getting in the way of Craig and Sophie’s romance wouldn’t have worked half as well with most other incarnations, despite this originating from a comic strip with Tennant. Only Jodie’s Doctor could I imagine being similarly awkward. #DoctorWho
The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang: I don’t think Moffat ever topped this as a season finale, a brilliant expression of all his favourite timey-wimey tricks and familiar writing quirks. This whole season has been planned out immaculately to lead to here. #DoctorWho
As epic and iconic as Matt’s speech at Stonehenge may be, it’s… yep… another example of the Doctor cheating his way out of a tricky situation by quoting his notoriety to the assembled aliens, and telling them all to “let somebody else try first”. Hmmm. 😐 #DoctorWho
I love how the Hoix from Love & Monsters is randomly there amongst the massed ranks of the Doctor’ greatest enemies. “Yeah, you embarrassed me by chucking a bucket of foamy water over me. Into the Pandorica with you, you bastard!” #DoctorWho
You can’t deny they went big with the cliffhanger - the companion dead, the Doctor imprisoned, and the entire universe erased from existence. Crikey. #DoctorWho
The Fez-and-mop timehopping is Moffat at his most bonkers, but deftly done so that it’s clear what’s happening.
It does raise the question though of why the Doctor doesn’t always do this. I guess we can infer the normal rules don’t apply with the universe collapsing. #DoctorWho
Did we ever find out who exactly that voice was in the TARDIS saying ‘Silence will fall’? #DoctorWho
A Christmas Carol: from the off we get a very different type of Christmas special under Moffat. RTD’s tended to be bright, cheerful, daylight affairs, often with Slade playing in the background somewhere. Moffat prefers dark, gothic, Victorian-style Christmas settings. #DoctorWho
And it’s very much in keeping with the whole ‘fairytale’ theme of the previous season, with the Doctor being an almost magical figure in the way he drops into young Kazran’s life. Moffat’s usual trick of the Doctor zipping back & forth in time is used to great effect. #DoctorWho
Shame Amy and Rory are reduced to just a few brief appearances, but the story of Kazran is good enough that you don’t really miss them.
And given how much they travel with the Doctor, shouldn’t Kazran and Abigail really be added to the roster of ‘official’ companions? #DoctorWho
The Doctor thinks ‘isomorphic controls’ is something that’s completely made up. Um, did he forget about how he wasn’t able to operate the Master’s laser screwdriver for that very reason? #DoctorWho
And to bring in another bit of classic series technobabble, there’s no sign of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect when the two Kazrans meet at the end, despite the *previous episode* showing the two versions of the sonic screwdriver creating sparks when they touch. #DoctorWho
Space / Time: yikes, these minisodes have aged badly. 😬The whole TARDIS-inside-itself stuff is fun, but Christ I’d forgotten how much of this is crude jokes about seeing up Amy’s skirt. Oh, and her fancying herself. Calm the hell down Moffat.
Right, moving on! 🫤#DoctorWho
The Impossible Astronaut / Day Of The Moon: love this two-parter, a contender for my favourite season opener ever. Peak Moffat, with the show looking better than ever and really revelling in the American location filming. #DoctorWho
The Silence are a fantastic creation, both in concept and appearance, and I wish we could have seen a lot more done with them afterwards. #DoctorWho
So the Tenth Doctor’s incarnation only lasted a few years then, but Eleven’s will be around for at least 200 years according to this story alone, with a lot more to come on Trenzalore. Must make him one of the longest lasting of them all. #DoctorWho
The Doctor and River going in *exactly* opposite directions to each other doesn’t make sense when you think about it, as they’d have no shared experiences and ‘syncing their diaries’ would be pointless.
Moffat soon realised this and did backtrack a lot afterwards! #DoctorWho
Lucky for Amy and Rory that it was Canton who fake-shoots them, not any of the other agents. And that nobody checked them too thoroughly when putting them in the body bags or transporting them, to notice they were still alive… #DoctorWho
Moffat was at the height of his ‘puzzle box’ writing this season. We’re left with the dangling threads of the Doctor’s death, the regenerating girl, and the random first appearance of Madame Kovarian. The closest #DoctorWho’s come to Twin Peaks or Lost at their most opaque.
The Curse Of The Black Spot: I always feel this one suffers from being a distinctly average episode trying to follow that blockbuster opening two-parter. Still, it all looks very glossy and the Siren is well-realised. #DoctorWho
Amazingly, it’s another ‘it all turns out to be a piece of malfunctioning technology’ episode but one that’s not written by Moffat himself. #DoctorWho
The point where Toby is apparently killed by the Siren is when you go “Oh well, *nobody’s* dead then. They all have to be alive somewhere.” because they’re obviously not gonna kill off a kid like that. #DoctorWho
And Rory’s “death” is really just one too far for him. Absolutely nobody was going to buy it after all the previous times. No wonder this was the source of so much mickey-taking in fandom at the time. “Oh my God they killed Rory! You Bastards!” #DoctorWho
Is it really a good idea to let this ruthless bunch of pirates loose on the galaxy at the end in a stolen spaceship? #DoctorWho
The Doctor’s Wife: justice at last for JNT’s joke episode title! This is very interesting to see Moffat and Gaiman’s take on the whole area of the Time Lords and post-Time War guilt. Something the Eleventh Doctor seems to have been consciously running away from so far. #DoctorWho
The main Time Lord voice we hear coming from the white cubes sounds very like Paul McGann, which had a lot of people’s heads spinning when this was first broadcast! #DoctorWho
Suzanne Jones is very good as Idris (Gaiman out-Moffats Moffat with her non-linear, timey-wimey dialogue that jumps about all over the place) but her whole look and character is a bit of a giveaway that they were really aiming to get Helena Bonham-Carter for the role. #DoctorWho
Finally the modern series gives us an extensive look at the TARDIS interior… and it’s just a bunch of boring repetitive corridors… 🫤
And Rory really should’ve been able to keep up with Amy and not pointlessly fall behind and get separated by a sliding door… twice! #DoctorWho
Idris’ death scene and the Doctor’s final moments talking to her is one of the strongest performances from Matt in his time in the show. #DoctorWho
“The only water in the foreshadowing is the River… sorry, I meant forest…” #DoctorWho
The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People: a different take on the ‘base under siege’ story where they’re under siege from… themselves. Sort of. Plus this was clearly intended as a bit of misdirection to make people think a Ganger Doctor had died in the season opener. #DoctorWho
I think the audience is meant to be shocked to see Buzzer die at the start then appear in the corridor seconds later, but there hasn’t been enough time to establish characters/faces so you think it’s a separate guy until the dialogue clarifies what’s happened. #DoctorWho
It’s quite funny to see poor Rory so easily manipulated by Jennifer making him feel manly and masculine, and by showing him some appreciation. Something he doesn’t seem to get very often from Amy! #DoctorWho