When Matt Smith looks in the mirror, this is what he sees.Two for the price of one Who review today (and an even bigger bargain when you consider that the price of one is currently "free") (love how I'm trying to sell this as a good thing rather than 'I am neglecting my blog until my book is finished and handed in', but hey.)
First up, Amy's Choice, which I absolutely loved. This was the one, if you can think back that far, where a mysterious Dream Lord (a stupendous performance by Toby Jones) sets up two alternative worlds, one on a Tardis heading fast into an Ice Sun, and one back in Amy's home village where Amy and Rory have got married and Amy is heavily pregnant and VERY grumpy about it. I love grumpy Amy. Anyway, the crew have to choose which is the real reality before they are frozen to death (on the Tardis) or killed by hordes of marauding zombie alien-infested OAPs (in the village, though suddenly I want to see the Tardis invaded by hordes of marauding zombie alien-infested OAPs. But I digress.) The writing by Simon Nye (he of Men Behaving Badly fame, so I owe him) was smart and funny, the performances were all great, and best of all this was the episode which made me fall in love not only with Amy - I was halfway there already - but with the Doctor. Yay! He's certainly kept me waiting. Matt Smith's absent-minded-professor schtick was perfect for this episode, and it was the first time that not only could I not imagine David Tennant having done it better, but I couldn't imagine David Tennant having done it at all. Who writers take note: it is MUCH better when you write for Smith, not Tennant. Incidentally, as it turns out that the Dream Lord - SPOILER - is in fact a projection of the Doctor's own subconscious, not only do we now know what Matt Smith's Doc looks like inside his own head (and boy does it make sense), but it does raise the outside possibility that Toby Jones could be a future incarnation. Which would be AMAZING. The campaign starts here.
The Hungry Earth - hmmm - not as good. The Doctor, Amy and Rory pitch up in barely-future Wales, where an old bloke and an oddly unconvincing Meera Syal have been drilling deep into the earth and have disturbed some very angry Silurians. Silurians, apparently, are Who villains of old, but being no expert I didn't recognise them. Basically, they are dance school students dressed in scaly green leotards who like running around graveyards at night. It's a two-parter, so nothing is yet resolved, but the key element of peril is that Amy has been captured and taken underground where she is tied up and threatened with being dissected while wide awake. It's a very old school Who predicament, particularly as Amy has dressed for the occasion in miniscule hotpants (excuse: "I thought we were going to Rio.") It does seem that the trope for this series is "put Amy in a sexy outfit and tie her to something." Are any women writing scripts for Doctor Who this year? Anyway, while by no means terrible, this episode was full of clunks (Rory telling Amy off for wearing her engagement ring because she's going to lose it - in a *Welsh mining village*? A small boy running out into monster-infested darkness to retrieve a pair of headphones, and the Doctor letting him go?) and I wasn't particularly excited by any of it.
What the two eps have in common - aside from being, y'know, both Doctor Who - is that they came with an almost overpowering wave of nostalgia for the TV for my childhood. Amy's Choice with its rural setting and funny/scary oldsters was pure Two Ronnies / The Goodies, and The Hungry Earth, with ITS rural setting (far more villages than urban settings in Moffat's Who, which I like) and companion-in-peril-from-alien-dissection storyline was as close as it gets to the Doctor Who of my childhood, what I remember of it (mostly: quarries, and my girl-crush on Ace.) Which is all to the good.
Looking forward to the concluding eps of this series (how many more are there?) where all the hints of timeline crossing (the latest being Amy and Rory seen in the distance of T.H.E.) will be resolved. Excellent work, Mr Moffat.
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My review of The Hungry Earth, complete with song, back here.
Silurians: you won't have recognised them because
a) they only appeared in two stories
b) one of those stories aired 40 years ago
c) the other one was a Peter Davison story but had the pantomime horse… sorry, Myrka in it and that likely would have overshadowed your memory of the Silurians
d) they used to look like this anyway
As for Toby Jones, well, you probably blanked out the Valeyard as well. That's understandable, too.
Hi Marie,
You'll be pleased to hear Toby Jones is a top bloke. He used to buy books in Waterloo.
We've been having trouble downloading Doctor Who lately. (Elder daughter blames it on our recently updated security system.) Anyway, we didn't see "Amy's Choice" until this past weekend, so I wasn't one bit upset by the delay in your review.
I am in total agreement about your sense of this finally being an episode written for Matt Smith's Doctor. I simply could not visualize David Tennant doing this one.
What bowled me over about "Amy's Choice" (which may turn out to be in my top ten for DW) is the sophistication of the underlying ideas. After all, aren't we all really our own worst enemies? It is ourselves who know the very worst about us, and can use it against us. Isn't it ironic (don't you think?) that the Doctor, one of the oldest beings around, surrounds himself with beautiful young people, and creates for himself a nightmare vision where old people are monsters? It's self-loathing gone mad. Even more ironic: this nightmare world (sans the psychopathic seniors) is Rory's dream-come-true.
It's this nightmare that wakes Amy up to how important Rory is. After all, the people who matter to us are often the people who know us best, know the worst about us --- and love us anyway.
I'm ignoring the second half of your review until elder daughter tricks our fire wall (or whatever the obstacle is) into letting us see "The Hungry Earth". But it's Chris Chibnall, so I'm not that fussed...
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