I’m off to Inverness in a bit, but before I go, a quick post on my thoughts on the latest episode of Doctor Who: “The Eleventh Hour”.
- Karen as Amy Pond is lovely. The “Scottish girl in an English village” thing was a nice piece of characterization. Her younger actor was brilliant as well.
- Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor doesn’t create good first impressions, being a whinge about the food not being good enough and then lying about being back in five minutes. He’s okay apart from that, though, but it’ll probably take another episode to properly get used to him.
- The inevitable Amy/11 romance is a bit creepy, considering he started off knowing her as a wee girl.
- “Why can’t you give me some decent food? You’re Scottish, fry something.” Way-hey. I can’t believe 11 doesn’t like bacon, though.
- The whole script was very quotable, Steven Moffat did brilliantly there. “Beans! Bad, bad beans.”
- He did comedy brilliantly, as well. Praying to Santa!
- The ‘she wrote comics about him’ idea was a bit awkwardly implemented (probably because we never actually saw any of these items until the end), but a good idea in theory. It was nice to have something new.
- When I heard the TARDIS cloister bell (the chiming as the Doctor ran from Amy’s to the on-fire TARDIS), my face dropped. The TARDIS is my favorite character!
- The new opening theme is awfully quiet and meek compared to the old one. It’ll grow on me, I guess. The new title sequence is good, though.
- The entire episode was basically just an introduction to the story, with a whole chunk of foreshadowing in the middle.
- …A seriously huge chunk of foreshadowing. I miss the Bad Wolf style of foreshadowing, which was very subtle in comparison.
- The snowflake ship design was quite creative.
- The alien design (the translucent thing that looked a lot like the “chestburster” from Alien) wasn’t as good, it just seemed to be hanging there without anything to be hanging down from. The whole yellow glowing thing just seemed like a way to get past it’s lack of logical anatomy. It’s human disguises were great, though.
- The brief clips of all the Doctors made me grin. :D
- I get the feeling all the Shadow Proclamation actually says is “Oi, leave Earth alone.”
- When the TARDIS started heading off before we got to see the redesign, I shouted at the TV.
- The redesign is actually really great. The obvious second floor adds a bit more depth, the typewriter is great, and all the various spinning things are visually very fun. I’m not sure what was going on with the oscilloscope-looking thing on the screen, though.
From the ‘Coming Soon’ end clip:
- The upcoming wedding story feels a bit too similar to Donna’s.
- I’m confused about the Star Wars lookalike clips from the future episodes. Obvious homage, maybe?
- The TARDIS seems to have some sort of space-proof bubble around it (From the ‘coming soon’ clips: Amy being dangled by her converse, the woman diving from a space ship to the TARDIS)
So all in all, a very fun episode.
Off I go! Have a good night, everyone.