As a child I still fondly recall afternoons spent at my paternal Grandparent's home watching Star Wars: A New Hope on VHS.  I was captivated by the combination of fun dialog, mystery, excitement, "magic" (The Force), space ships, the cool Han Solo, the mysterious Ben Kenobi and the terrifying Lord Darth Vader.  It was a film that dominated my childhood - along with the David Jason animated version of The Wind in the Willows, The Neverending Story and The Shawshank Redemption it remains one of the most watched movies of my life.  I watched that VHS copy until the tape wore out in multiple sections and I can still recite many lines from memory with great accuracy.

Flash forward to 2005 and I'm walking out of the cinema after watching Revenge of the Sith, the prequel trilogy for me wasn't a total deal breaker at the time - there was a lot in them I found pretty boring and from faintly ridiculous to absurd - but it was clear that they were far from the level of quality that the first three were created to.  However, in hindsight I know that it was the prequel trilogy that made me fall out of love with Star Wars and science fiction in general.  I can still vividly recall the moment where it happened, where even the original trilogy broke... forever?

A day or so after watching Revenge of the Sith my friends gathered together and we started to watch A New Hope again.  Things went fine until Vader's first appearance, at which point everything came crashing down for me, the connection between the snot-rag whiny Anakin Skywalker from the second and third prequel movie (ignoring the annoying little boy from the first one for the moment) and this menace from my childhood came together.  That final cliched scene where Anakin stumbles from the table as Vader and yells 'NOOOooooo!' was the straw that broke the camel's back.  As such, when Vader made his menacing appearance on Leia's ship in A New Hope; a moment that used to terrify me as a child, I was forced to permanently make the connection between Anakin and Vader.  No longer was this figure a terrifying menace, the magic had been broken - I could see the strings (I figured out the magic trick, if you like).  I stood up from my chair, fell to my knees and yelled 'NOOoooooo!' in my very best James Earl Jones impression then walked out of the room and never watched any Star Wars movie again.

Recently my better half; Datura, discovered that The One Man Star Wars Trilogy was playing in Cardiff, Wales.  In exchange for booking tickets to see Dave Gorman's Powerpoint Presentation I agreed to go and see it.  Needless to say, thanks to the history I briefed you on up there I wasn't that excited about going. (It's also needless to say that due to Datura being my wife I wasn't going to complain... much).

We arrived at the show and outside there were already one of my greatest pet peeves, cos-players.  They were dressed mostly as clone troopers, which felt extra ridiculous - because this was for the original trilogy there were no clone troopers in those movies (and about 99% less shit overall).  My observations about the ridiculous nature of the fan(atic) however did not go down well, we narrowly avoided a huge argument that would have spoiled the entire evening.  My bad.

The opening act, John Cooper as Danny Pensive, was a lot more subversive than you'd initially think.  Danny Pensive is Cooper's alter ego - a semi simple, duffle coat wearing man with a goatee and a bad hair cut.  His main traits are writing things down, making observations about them and then talking about it in an abrupt fashion.  It's an act that took us both a little while to gel with his delivery, where the punchline often comes about a line or so sooner than you'd expect - but once you click it works and it works well (check some out here).  "Danny" had to deal with the issue that the Cardiff audience tends to be unresponsive to any participation type comedy, but he did very well and had the audience well warmed up by the end of it.  It was an odd, but welcome act.

After Danny had shuffled his way off the stage it was time for the main act, all three movies back to back in the space of an hour courtesy of Chris Ross.  It was an experience I wasn't completely prepared for, I'd not done any reading or preparation for the show and I was caught completely off guard by Chris's delivery.  The most notable surprise for me was the fact that he does not only all the characters but he also performs the music.  With exceptional talent and accuracy I might add.

Chris manages to fit each film into about a 15 minute performance, it's a high energy show with lots of laughs containing the very best parts of each film.  Some scenes pass by with barely a mention while others are covered in detail.  But most of all, the spirit of what makes each film great, all the classic and fun moments, are present in spades.  Chris embraces the films with a professionalism and enthusiasm that showcases a great deal of love, pride and polish.  This is a man who has come to love what he's doing and had many years to perfect it.

Sections of note include his performance as an AT-AT falling on Hoth, superb impressions of Luke, Obi-Wan, Admiral Akbar and most of all, a star turn as Yoda.  He really gets to the heart of each character and highlights the things that make them great, while also lampooning their flaws.  The prequel trilogy's are touched on in moments as well, especially the way in which they've impacted on the first three movies and diluted some of the more potent scenes.  It's impossible to look at the original trilogy in isolation any more (shame), but Chris remained entertaining in his performance even when touching on the prequels.

I have to write that Chris was a pro throughout this performance, he had two major problems (apart from Cardiff's lack of audience participation) and both of them were dealt with in a way that did not detract from the experience at all.  The first was a series of technical issues, it started with the stage crew missing Chris's cues, repeatedly, Chris was professional enough not to make a deal of it and re-cue them, but once I'd noticed this was happening it was hard to ignore.  This is, of course, not Chris's fault, rather it's the fault of the staff at Cardiff's St David's Hall - and I hope they apologised to him afterwards.  Technical issues did not end there as Chris's mic started giving up the ghost towards the climax of Return of the Jedi, cutting out during his more vigorous scenes and requiring adjustment.  Chris was obviously frustrated with this, but he should feel reassured that it did not detract from the experience one iota.

The second issue occurred with young lad in the front row, he held up his phone to snap a couple of pictures and Chris spotted him doing it.  Fortunately for the boy Chris thought he was texting, something that he took up making fun of, mentioning that 'lad in the front row texting' by bringing it into the act several times.  However, part way through the show, when doing a quick bit of Q&A he discovered that the boy wasn't texting, he had in fact taken pictures.  Sure enough, at the end of the show Chris stopped to talk to the lad and ask him to delete the pictures.  The boy just did not get the seriousness of the request and sat there in mute refusal, I assume at first he thought it was a joke, then he became embarrassed.  Not even an offer of an autograph and official pictures was enough to get the boy to come up on stage and delete them, instead he was escorted to one side by an usher (at which point I think the reality of the situation hit him).  Chris smoothed this over by chatting with the audience as it happened, distracting people from the awkward scene occurring to one side.  In short, he dealt with an problem in the best fashion he could, as a professional.  (I have no idea if the lad got his picture and autograph afterwards, but I was sat a row behind and to the right of him and I think I saw him just get up and hurriedly leave at the end of the show.  So I guess not).

So, can I recommend the One Man Star Wars Trilogy?

I think I can sum it up as such, despite my opening story about how Star Wars lost it's magic, at the end of Chris Ross's show I wanted to watch the original trilogy again.  And I think that's all you need to know about how good it was, he restored my faith in the films and showed me that you could enjoy them despite what came afterwards.

See more about The One Man Star Wars Trilogy at it's site here.
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Whelp, that's another series over and done with for Doctor Who and while I land firmly in the 'bored with Alex Kingston/River Song/Melody Pond' camp (mostly because of Kingston's performance lacking any consistency or likability) I do have to say that it was pretty darn good.


The Doctor has decided that running away is enough and it's time to die, but instead of picking up where we left off last episode we're treated to a fantastical story told by a bearded Soothsayer/The Doctor to Caesar/Churchill in a reality where dinosaurs are alive, the Roman Empire hasn't reformed into the Catholic Church and is instead also the British Empire.  It's a world that's a compete mess and apparently a world where time never changes because it's dying.


The story was pretty darn good, there were plot holes, fallible events and huge leaps of faith/logic to deal with; but by the end of it it hung together pretty well.  The Doctor Who finales historically have been a mixed bag, under Rusty they were emotional triumphs that were let down by his inability to write science fiction without resorting to Deus Ex Machina to resolve everything (or in one case, a wonderful coffee shop conversation, surrounded by a terrible flying John Simm, and followed by an overly long death that felt 50% Opera swansong and 50% RTD swansong.  


This one was one of the better ones, there was a lot to follow and a lot to get your head around but it made sense, it was clever and it wiped clean a lot of the "damage" Rusty had caused over the time he was in charge of Doctor Who.  I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but Moffat's work has gradually been cleaning away the dramatic changes Rusty put into place when he regenerated the series.  The Daleks have returned to a more familiar form (as opposed to the loose analogs for religion they became) - even if they do now look like iPods and now The Doctor is due to return to the shadows and become a figure of mystery again - much like he was in the original series, where he could wander about and people often thought he was a harmless traveler.  That's pretty good, and all you have to do now Mr Moffat, is bring back the Time Lords, thank you very much.


I would be amiss if I didn't at least touch on the hanging threads left to tease future events.  In essence we've been told that the Eleventh Doctor will die (and regenerate) at Tranzalor - however it's worded as the 'fall of eleven' so there's still a little room for wiggle room - mind you it's not worth bothering too much about how it'll pan out, the Internet has created such a forum for speculation that it's impossible for any writer to surprise viewers when dropping hints like that.  People are very wise to foreshadowing unless it's done in a subtle fashion (see Arrested Development's second season and The Wire for the definition of subtle foreshadowing).  Moffat took a pop at this during the episode with a fun jibe about the speculation around River Song.


I do hope that this means the end of River Song in the series, as I have written before many times - I just don't like the character, she's rubbish - and I'm concerned about what it means for Amy and Rory going ahead (Amy's in essence a killer, that's something The Doctor doesn't tolerate in companions - even if it "hasn't happened" because it took place in an alternative time stream.


I think I'm very contented with "The Wedding of River Song", it was a well crafted piece that hung together brilliantly.  It was fast paced, exciting and faintly ridiculous - but it makes sense when you look at the overall picture, there wasn't a big button labelled 'reset to normal' here, instead there was a brilliant man coming up with a brilliant plan for his own survival - saving the universe and himself at the same time.  It's... to quote Ace... "Well devious".


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Image from here

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Image from here

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Standing as the longest season of Futurama so far, with a whale sized serving of twenty six episodes it's rather difficult to review the entire of the sixth season without missing out some elements, however I'm going to do my best by looking at the high points and low points of the season.

I have to be honest, around the first two episodes of the show I was left thinking 'Maybe they shouldn't have brought the show back...'  The first episode, Rebirth is a middling affair with little good to recall about it, it's not terrible - but the jokes are pretty flat and there's a little too much time spent on pointless exposition.  This is Futurama, we don't need exposition or explanation, we need jokes and episodes that make us cry without warning.

The second episode, In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela is in my mind one of the worst episodes I've seen - it could have been a middle of the road episode with some good jokes, but the throwaway gag at the end of the episode - having Leela engage in sex with Zap - was the writing equivalent of taking a dump on the viewers, in their open mouths, while telling them to enjoy it.  Now I will skip That's Lobstertainment nine times out of ten, but I'm never watching In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela again, it has nothing worth going through that.  Proposition Infinity is a similar piece of fecal matter, this time breaking Amy and Kiff up for the purpose of the story, before 'returning everything back to normal' in that old sitcom cliched manner that I thought comedy writing was starting to grow out of.

There are other terrible episodes in this season, The Futurama Holiday Special is boring and fails completely to live up to the 'Tales of Interest' heights that occurred in seasons two and three; Attack of the Killer App seems like little more than a pointless shot at Apple and Consumerism and Yo Leela Leela turns from a fun episode into a preachy rant at reality shows and the quality of television writing in general - don't get me wrong, I'm not for reality shows as a whole, however Yo Leela Leela really doesn't have anything new to contribute to the discussion.

That's the awful taste of Futurama poop in your mouth there, and this is one of the problems with the season, there's a lot of episodes that are just not, not good enough - it didn't need to be twenty six episodes, twenty would have resulted in a superb season, but there are six turds floating around in the soup and that's a problem.

Fortunately there are also some real gems in the sixth season, Lethal Inspection is one of those beautiful tearjerker episodes that can hit you out of nowhere; Law and Oracle and Benderama are also personal favourites.  In fact most of the episodes that are Bender-centric tend to be a cut above the rest.

There is also one episode that stands up above the rest, stands head and shoulders above all else and ranks as possibly one of the best episodes of Futurama all time, if not the best.  I refer to, of course, 'The Late Philip J. Fry' the episode is exactly what makes Futurama great; it's funny, thought provoking, true to character and plays beautifully with mainstay science fiction concepts - in this case time travel and the big bang.  It's such a great episode that I can't help wish they'd used it to close out the season.  Overclockwise and Reincarnation are OK, the first one being a nice end to the 'cannon' storyline and the second being... well... just Futurama filler. But The Late Philip J. Fry should have been the last episode in the season, it's just that... right.  It's what Futurama always should be.

On the whole the sixth season of Futurama is great, the show is still among the best shows still airing at the moment, something we need in an increasingly stale world of television (is it a coincidence that the number of good shows going down coincides with a reduction in the number of female television writers?)  However the season has rough patches and really could have done with some objective quality control.

It does leave me hopeful for the seventh season, I expect some great episodes.  But I also have my sewer diving suit at the ready, because I'm expecting a few stinkers.
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Image from here.

Last week's episode "Let's Kill Hitler" was not my favourite cup of Doctor tea, in fact it was the latest in a run of episodes that I've found to be substandard (everything since "The Doctor's Wife" I've found to be kind of sucky if you're interested), in fact I was reaching the point where I was getting tired of The Silence and River Song, well more tired than usual.

Fortunately the preview for "Night Terrors" outlined an episode that looked like it was going to be old school Doctor Who, a monster, scary stuff and fun lines.  Unfortunately it was written by Mark Gatiss, writer of "The Unquiet Dead" (genuinely good), "The Idiot's Lantern" (pretty poor) and "Victory of the Daleks" (awful with a few moments of brilliance).  So the quality of writing was not ensured - Datura summed it up well when she commented at the start of the episode "Mark Gatiss, his writing is always a mess."

I sound like I'm going to open up another round of episode bashing don't I?  Well I'm not, because "Night Terrors" was actually quite a decent standalone story that ticked most of the boxes a Doctor Who needs to.  At it's core it was a retelling of "Fear Her", but this time the story was told in a stronger fashion.  In fact, looking back on the episode it hangs together exceptionally well - creating a piece that's about adoption, childhood fears and the love of a parent.  Daniel Mays, as Alex the father of George was given the bulk of the story to carry on his shoulders, this episode was about Alex and George, with The Doctor supporting them while Amy and Rory provided a little classic 'companion peril'.  Daniel delivers; he's very, very good in the role and more than capable of carrying the acting burden, this is always a risk in an episode that is focused around a one off character, how can you manage to round out their personality without ham-handed exposition and what happens if the actor miss-sells the character in some fashion?  We're in good hands here as Daniel takes the character of Alex and fills out the dialog and plot with some superb character acting.  I'm buying him as the concerned father, I'm buying him in bulk.

If I had any criticisms (which I inevitably do), I would say that the story wobbles only on a few points, first of all it moves away from being scary and into being funny a little too quickly (oversized lantern & wooden pan), the CGI is weak at all times in the episode (carpet and doll landlord in particular) and the 'monsters' (as such they were) look awful, not scary, not creepy, just awful.

But these are minor complaints in an episode that was a breath of fresh air to a stale cupboard.  I'm happy with "Night Terrors", it was classic Doctor Who with fun dialog, peril, a plot that hangs together and touching scenes between a father and his son and that's exactly what the show needed at this point in time.

A second successful Doctor Who story for Mark Gatiss me thinks.
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Image From here

I'm writing the first paragraph for this prior to watching the episode.  This is because I'm not entirely certain that 'Let's Kill Hitler' is going to be a classic piece that I'll recall fondly for the years to come.  The previous half series of Doctor Who was a wildly inefficient piece that paled compared to the series before it.  There was a great deal of effort expended in making sure that the metaplot hung together, but instead of being subtle and mysterious like the scene from 'Forest of the Dead' it came across as forced and ham-fisted - the very traits that cause me to have an issue with 'Bad Wolf'.  As a consequence I'm not completely certain that the remaining part of the series is going to hold up well.  Mix in the title of this episode, a tired trope if there ever was one, and it doesn't look good.


On the other hand...  Steven Moffat must know that people would fear the title as being old hackneyed ground.  So maybe he has something special planned.


Lets come back after watching the episode.


...


Sigh.  No.


While the episode did indeed sidestep the tired trope of time travelling to kill Hitler, by virtue of stashing the dictator in a cupboard and then forgetting about him. (Just as well considering his accent that threatened to dismantle the illusion of reality - yes, yes I know the TARDIS translates, but come on).  It really wasn't what it should have been.


I wanted to like the episode, I wanted to enjoy it as much as Dan Owen clearly did (http://danowen.blogspot.com/2011/08/doctor-who-68-lets-kill-hitler.html).  However I find myself leaning more towards Myle's take on the episode (http://cultural-learnings.com/2011/08/27/fall-premiere-doctor-who-lets-kill-hitler/).  Except a bit more brutal in my thoughts and feelings.


Some of the good points first. Most of the good moments, revolve around Rory.  I'm pleased he's evolved beyond the Moffat-Man-Child archtype that most leading men he writes fall under.  In fact I'm sold on (Arthur Darvill) as the reluctant hero, I'd go to see an action film just on the strength that he was in the leading role.  His Nazi sucker punches channeled pure (pre-Nuke) Indiana Jones and his Miniaturisation Ray observation was spot on and hilarious.


Matt Smith also had his fair share of strong moments, the Doctor stopping off to change into top hat and tails, complete with Sonic Cane was a wonderful touch.  However it was impossible to feel any real sense of danger for him, we've already got the Sword of Damocles hanging over us in the spaceman shooting.  Threatening his existence even further doesn't really ramp up the tension, it instead makes me feel frustrated and worn out.


Speaking of which, the show is in vast danger of becoming overwhelmed by this series's mystery.  I, for one, am getting more than a little tired with it.  It's sucking the fun out of the show.  Please, I want more of 'The Doctor's Wife' and less of 'The Doctor's Death'.


Karen Gillan was relegated a little to the sidelines here, yes she got to play a robot simulacrum of herself.  Run around a bit, look in danger and then act in a way that would have murdered several hundred people if they hadn't had an escape button (is it OK for a companion to intend to murder people but fail through no fault of her own?  I'm not sure...)  This is no bad thing, it's nice to have focus on other characters at times, Amy Pond is a cracking character, but so is Rory and The Doctor.


On to the elephant in the room.  Melody, Amy's friend (Ret-conned into the plot a little ham-fistedly, but I'll over look that) - aka Melody Pond, Amy's Daughter - aka after a gut shot regeneration Melody Pond II (Pre-River Song).


I'm sorry, I really am, but I am tired of Alex Kingston, sick and tired of her performance and her character as a whole.  Once it was interesting and sweet, but her delivery of lines has grated on me to the point that I'm tempted to watch Silence in the Library again just so I can see her die once and for all.  The concept is fun, the character is well written, but at the end of it - it just does nothing but tire me.  If there were more Doctor Who episodes per series I'd probably be pressing the 'Skip' button the moment I see her on screen.  Datura (the lovely wife) agrees with me, she's also sick of River Song.  I'm hoping that this half series wraps things up and we get to move on from her.


The problem from here on in is this, there's not much else to the episode - it was an episode that started out as a cheeky time travelling trope that should really be left alone (but could be fun) and degenerated into little more than a vehicle for River Song and more mysterious hints.  Outside of the Justice department (which made me think of Red Dwarf's Inquisitor) there was little else to the episode - apart from Rory punching Hitler.  That was pretty fun.


So, 'Let's Kill Hitler' was not the episode I hoped it would be, it hasn't moved the series away from the rather awful end of the first half and at this point Doctor Who is in serious danger of drowning in its own mythos.  That's almost ironic, because I've always wanted more ongoing story lines in the show, I just wanted them to be more like Murder One or The Shield (interesting, balanced with other items) not murky and frustrating (like Lost became in the second season).


Where's the show I loved gone?
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Will I ever get tired of this logo?

It's slightly old news at this point - but I thought I'd write a little about what I've read on Red Dwarf's return to the small screen, something which has become official at this point after Craig Charles let it slip on Real Radio last week.

From what I've gathered we're looking at a return of the core cast - sans Kochanski and with Holly played by someone other than Norman Lovett.  Of course, as filming isn't due to occur until the latter part of 2011 this is probably still up in the air - but I would be disappointed with the lack of Chloë Annett - who I really came to appreciate as time passed - and of course Norman's brilliance as Holly.  I guess I could live with a return of Hattie, but a third actor as Holly would be disappointing to say the least.

The run will most likely be six episodes, and that's a fine length, but as Craig himself said it's only worth doing if it is "as funny as it used to be" he went on to say "we've got to recapture the highlights like series 5, series 6, that kind of stuff. If we can hit that mark, then brilliant. There's no point doing it if it's a bit so-so."

That's a spot on observation, because series 7, 8 and the mini-series Back to Earth really missed the mark at times, both on the comedy front and the plotting.  I'd welcome the show returning if it could hit the quality of the series 3-6 run (yes, I'm very fond of series 6 despite the loss of Red Dwarf and Holly, it was an interesting experiment, but it should have only run for one series without the small rouge one).


Six episodes seems the right amount to provide quality, but I can't feel confident until I read that Rob Grant and Doug Naylor are onboard in some aspect, when it was just Doug by himself the rhythm of the show went off.  It still had some excellent moments, but they were not the norm.

I'm excited, but apprehensive.

You can read a bit about Robert Llewellyn's thoughts on this at his blog here
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So Futurama has managed to pull a 'Family Guy' completely now, it's brought itself back from extinction and onto our screens through the four made for TV DVD movies and is now airing it's sixth season. The movies - Bender's Big Score, The Beast With a Billion Backs, Bender's Game and Into the Wide Green Yonder were a mixed bag overall. Alternatively great and then quite awful with no real consistency. Watching the DVDs with commentary revealed that the cast and writers were quite unaware of the weaker parts of their baby - they found great entertainment and pride in even the most juvenile and unoriginal of their jokes.

On a few rewatches my opinions of the four movies have changed a little - My estimation of 'Bender's Big Score' has gone up further, it's certainly the best of the quadrology; but 'Into the Wide Green Yonder' has plummeted in it's stock and I now only marginally prefer it over 'The Beast with a Billion Backs' - Bender's Game sort of hovers around the middle, some parts of it are brilliant, but others sort of fall flat.

Anyway, what I have been hoping is that the four movies which consist of the fifth "season" of Futurama were not the symptoms of diminishing returns for the series (something that Family Guy has begun to suffer from and that The Simpsons has been accelerating off towards the event horizon of since season ten). But in truth it's only through the watching of the now airing sixth season that we can get an idea if the quality of the original series (especially in the last two seasons) has been maintained.

Well, I'm going to quickly run through the first seven episodes with a short review on each:

Rebirth:
A moderately touching story that alternates between being good and being pretty lame. It was a rather lacklustre start to the new series, still when it was good it was rather good indeed and the twists in the plot were fun.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela:
Out and out the worst, yes that's right - worst, episode of Futurama of all time. There was a great premesis here to be played with but instead what we got was a torid venting of sewage that seemed to dump all over both the show and the viewers. I don't think I'll ever watch this episode again - it's even worse than That's Lobstertainment.

Attack of the Killer App:
The first of the great episodes in the season. Attack manages to lampoon current culture trends and as such feels both fresh and funny. The release of the iPad in particular (and the still continuing froth about the iPhone) really gave this episode some teeth. The race between Bender and Fry for followers and the uploading of the embarrasing video of Leela all came together to create something that just worked perfectly.

Proposition Infinity:
While not as bad as In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela, Proposition Infinity dumps all over one of the better established relationships in the show - Amy and Kiff for very little pay off. In fact you get so little pay off that at the end of the episode 'everything returns back to normal'. I've always appreciated that Futurama is one of the few mainstream cartoon sitcom shows that seems to have a progressive plot that builds on previous events. This was a huge step in the wrong direction.

The Duh-Vinci Code:
While the episode was a little late in taking full advantage of the buzz around Dan Brown's book (this wasn't the first time this happened with Futurama, see the Titanic episode), The Duh-Vinci Code was the first genuinely good episode of the season. It was fast paced, fun and filled with a balance of good gags and thoughtful moments - classic Futurama.

Lethal Inspection:
Yes, the ending to the episode was predicatble, but that did not reduce its impact. Lethal Inspection builds on the improvement in writing that The Duh-Vinci Code offered and gives us the first really emotional episode since Bender's Big Game.

The Late Philip J. Fry:
Fry and Leela's relationship has been exceptionally hard to follow in this season, and at this point I'm still hesitant to say that it's settled down into a pattern that can be followed. But The Late Philip J. Fry did feel like an episode that addresses this and moves the pair forward - I don't mind the ultimate destination for the pair, but I don't want to see more of the exceptional nonsense In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela voided at us.

Overall thoughts:
The sixth season has had a few rough episodes and weak moments, but there has been marked signs that the show is returning to its original stride. While I really, really cannot stand In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela in the least bit and will not be watching that particular turd ever again, the rest of the season so far has enough parts to make it an enjoyable proposition. It's just not quite back to the status of "all-time classic" yet.
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[Mirrored, as always, from the original review over at tvgeekarmy.com]

Billions of blue blistering barnacles in a thundering typhoon, can you believe we’re over halfway through the series already? It seems like only yesterday that we were just being introduced to the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond (of course, if you just started watching the latest series yesterday then that would explain the feeling completely).

We’ve seen Amy and the Doctor face the Weeping Angels, the Daleks, fish from space (like pigs in space, but not as cool), a space whale (who wasn’t really a bad guy, just misunderstood and fed humans in a point which was rather glossed over in the episode) and flying snowflakes with eyeballs. We also come to learn about the ball of crazy that is Amy Pond, the newest incarnation of The Doctor and in the last episode – Amy’s fiancé Rory.

"Amy's Choice" is a character piece; it’s an exploration of all three current cast members with a focus on Miss Pond in particular. The episode opens “five years later” with the Doctor stumbling back into Amy and Rory’s blissful married life in a sleepy English village. Amy is now pregnant and Rory has a terrible ponytail. What’s happened?

The story takes a rapid left turn by having the trio fall asleep on a bench and wake up back on the TARDIS, convinced that everything was a dream. Until they fall asleep again and wake up back in the village of the future. It quickly transpires that an individual named ‘The Dream Lord’ is manipulating them, giving our travelling time jockey’s a simple choice. Two scenarios, one real, one a dream – choose to die in one of them – if it’s the dream you wake up, if it’s reality... Well I think everyone (except Rory) can figure that one out immediately.

In the village all of the old people turn out to be inhabited by aliens that can see by sticking an eyestalk out of pensioner mouths and spit a gas that turns people into sand. On the TARDIS everything has failed and they’re falling towards a cold star, an impossible stellar body even in the world of Doctor Who.

From here the story flips back and forth between the two ‘realities’ with increasing danger and urgency. Our three chronologically advantaged heroes know they have to choose one ‘reality’ to die in but they’re divided over which – until events choose for them.

Amy’s Choice isn’t the strongest of episodes where its plot is concerned – the resolution of the episode is somewhat predictable and the explanation of events at the end smells suspiciously of the science fiction equivalent of “magic”; but like last week the episode isn’t designed with the story at the forefront. Instead it’s an episode that is meant to give us an insight into the timey-wimey Doctor and his latest companions; it’s unsurprising for an episode named "Amy’s Choice" to provide an examination of Amy and her relationships with ‘her pancho boys’, but it does do an excellent job.

The surprise comes in the form of The Dream Lord, who is revealed to be a facet of The Doctor’s darker side; it’s not an original concept for the series (see The Valeyard – who shares many characteristics), but it is always an interesting one to experience, a being as long lived and almost perpetually steeped in violence as The Doctor would be hard pressed to not carry some baggage. The Dream Lord was quite an enjoyable creation for a one off story and was one of the strongest elements – funny, creepy and thought provoking, just about right for the episode’s tone.

Amy’s Choice was a solid episode that held a lot of tension in it, but I suspect that it won’t hold up as well on repeated viewings as there’s not a lot of depth to it once you know the important outcomes of the story. But it is a vital piece of the season and has added an extra layer of complexity to the already vibrant character of Amy and that’s something to be welcomed.

Other Observations:

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[As always this is mirrored from my original post over at tvgeekarmy.com (located here).]

In recent times vampires have become something of a joke in the media. As this is about Doctor Who I shall not go into the subject here, but suffice to say I could write thousands of derogatory words about the current state of the modern vampire and not even breach the tip of that particular iceberg.

Fortunately "The Vampires of Venice" is not about vampires, except in the vaguest of terms; instead the villains of the piece are something quite different, if rather forgettable.

Let’s get the important bit out of the way first: was The Vampires of Venice any good? Well, that’s not actually an easy question to answer, because on one level it was a fantastic piece filled with enjoyable moments and fun banter. But on other levels it was a weakly plotted story, containing sub-par enemies, uneven character development and a conclusion that I can only hope was a deliberate parody of the Rusty years (more on that later on).

Last week ended with a rather saucy scene that had the pulses of a whole generation of Doctor/Amy writers racing so fast that they probably fell over in the rush to get to their keyboards. This week’s episode? It follows on from that scene with the Doctor popping out of Rory’s stag-do stripper cake and telling the lad he’s been snogged by his fiancé Amy.

What’s the Doctor’s solution to this dilemma? Take the happy (if lacking in chemistry) couple to be to Venice, 'cause everyone knows Venice is dead romantic - second most romantic city in the world is Venice, don’t you know. They’re going to enjoy a romantic get-away together at the Doctor’s expense, and we all know that means we’re going to see the pair engage in long walks, midnight supper in an alleyway (spaghetti al la nose!) and gondola rides with the Doctor punting whilst singing in Italian. That’s exactly what’s going to happen!

Of course it isn’t, you’d think after spending even thirty minutes with the Doctor that both Amy and Rory would be prepared for a situation that doesn’t even involve the least bit of romance. You’d think that instead they’d be prepared for running around, being attacked and nasty monsters. Because that’s all that happens when the Doctor is about; he’s like a walking lightning-rod for trouble he is, and sure enough they’re soon embroiled in the local events, helping a father try and rescue his daughter from a school of vampires who aren’t really vampires and are in fact fish people from the stars (how very Lovecraftian!).

So what about Rory? Is he any good as a companion? Well yes and no. The bad news is that he has very little chemistry with Amy at all. This might be the intention, as after all Amy has effectively ‘run’ away from her marriage to him. But you do want to believe that the two are at least attracted enough to each other to be engaged, and I’m not sold on that.

On the other hand Rory’s personality was a great fit for the series, able to be both serious and amusing he reminded me of Mickey - the one character from the Rose companion arc that I really came to change my opinion of (originally I disliked Mickey, but he became a favourite after his ‘I’m the tin dog’ observation, it’s where the character grew a pair). So I honestly hope Rory is around for a while to come as his presence has added a lot to the show, returning the feeling of a team to the Doctor’s adventures, providing light relief and allowing us to experience Amy’s personality separate from the Doctor’s presence.

Unfortunately, for every bit of success on the character front the episode failed on the plotting. The story was about fish from space pretending to be vampires with the plan of flooding Venice and providing brides for the sons of the ‘mother-fish’ in order to save their race from extinction. They’d come to Earth in order to flee ‘the silence in the cracks’ another nice piece of natural meta-plotting, but unfortunately that’s about it. The rest of the episode isn’t exactly bad, but it’s not memorable at all - a genuine filler episode with a few nice ideas, but ultimately forgettable.

Onto the bit I’m not sure about, the space-fish’s weather device. The first device was pretty decent, a chair filled with glowing lights that was pulled to pieces by Amy and Rory. But the main device had me feeling a little, let down. It turned out to be a globe on top of steeple filled with cogs, balls and whirly bits - and an on/off switch.

An on/off switch...

Either that’s some remarkably lazy “crikey we need something to end this episode and we’re running out of time” writing, or it’s a direct dig at one of the major complaints about Russell T. Davies’ writing. To whit, old Rusty was very reliant on the magic button / deus ex machina solution to problems. Dropping a simple, forced solution into the story in order to wrap things up - and on one occasion (Doomsday) actually having a button that undid everything (I still recall throwing the remote at the screen when that happened). As a consequence I’m not sure if this was lazy writing or it was a machine, on top of a steeple with an on/off switch as an inside joke about Rusty’s science fiction writing methods. Even if it was, it wasn’t a very good joke - so either way I wasn’t that impressed with the resolution of the episode.

"The Vampires of Venice" was pretty much the definition of a filler episode; a fun, romp of an episode with dialog that sparkled that was ultimately let down by a weak main plot and forgettable villains.

The first forgettable episode of Eleven’s tour, but thank goodness they weren’t vampires that sparkled in the sunlight.

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As I mentioned last week, it’s difficult to judge a two part story on a show like Doctor Who until you’ve seen the second part. This is in part because nu-Who tends to use the second episode to shift gears and drive the narrative in a different direction and in part because some of the ‘second parts’ have been pretty disappointing (“Daleks in Manhattan” anyone?).

I did feel quite confident that “Flesh and Stone” would be handled well; Moffat does seem to have a strong handle on the various tropes that work together well in order to produce a solid and enjoyable tale. “Flesh and Stone” continues this trend, delivering an episode that closes up “The Time of Angels” well and expands the storyline for the season by bringing certain key facts into focus for both the characters in the show and the audience.

First up, I guess that my concerns about ‘the cracks in time and space’ turning out to be a weakly designed plot device in the vein of the Russell T. Davies era have turned out to be unfounded. I’m a huge fan of shows doing something unexpected, and Doctor Who has delivered by having the crack become a major part of “Flesh and Stone”, both by bringing the Doctor more aware of their nature and by involving the crack in the resolution of the episode in quite a natural fashion.

I still feel that the break between the two episodes wasn’t handled quite right, there’s no real sense of danger between last week’s and this weeks. The pre-2000 Doctor Who series would have had everyone standing, huddled together and panicking about their fate - with only the Doctor looking calm and measured. I do miss that week of anticipation, it was far more tantalising than the ‘next week on Doctor Who’ teasers we’re getting now.

That said, the start of “Flesh and Stone” was superb, providing a believable (in the context of the show’s history) escape, some fun moments and a change in the feel of the story. Gone was the claustrophobic feel of the surrounding Angels in a cave and instead we’re treated to a classic ‘flight from the gribbly monsters’ scenario that then opens up into a two-fold story. The first of these continuing to deal with the Weeping Angels and the second with the crack in time and space and its relationship with Amy Pond - a story that has opened up the rest of the season and started to set the future, but also gave us some exceptionally subtle moments that will pay off later on.

That said, the episode was also a little uneven, there’s an awful lot going on in the story. You have the Angels, the clerics, River, Amy, The Doctor and the crack in the wall and they’re all competing with each other for time on screen. I know I’ve said it before quite a few times, but I really believe that Doctor Who would be better off moving back to a half hour show format with longer stories. Despite being involved in a two part story “Flesh and Stone” was very much it’s own narrative and it did suffer because some of the story elements had to be either drawn back from the forefront or underdeveloped.

The clerics were one of the things left mostly undeveloped, there wasn’t much to tie them in as clerics really - they were mostly generic soldiers who existed to be killed off (or written out of existence). Now in my opinion that was a real missed opportunity - one of the things that made Aliens such a success is the shear accessibility of the marines. True this was achieved by creating stereotyped personalities that were loud and instantly identifiable, but doing this gave us some big characters that confidently walked into a fall - it made the situation where the brown stuff hit the fan stronger because we felt like we knew these people and had always known them. The clerics on the other hand were little more than the usual Doctor Who soldiers, they could have been members of UNIT, or any British armed forces for all the personality they had outside of the bishop. I did like the symbolism of the clerics (and later Angels) “going into the light”, but that’s not enough - bumping off nameless mooks is just not as potent as killing a character that people have had time to identify with. The bishop’s end at the hands of an Angel did work, but it also felt like he had extra characterisation that ended up on the cutting room floor.

The Angels also became victims of this ‘overstuffed’ effect, they turned from a terrifying threat into the secondary minor threat and finally they ended up something that (if I’m honest) evoked pity. I think it was the combination of giving them a voice (through Angel Bob) and as such having them essentially plead with the Doctor, asking him to throw himself into the crack in order to save them. It had the effect of humanising them and then lowering their status from something that was alien and terrifying into something to be pitied. As great as the Angels falling into the light was to see, it wasn’t worth the price they paid as villains. I think that Moffat has made a decision to not use the Weeping Angels again in the future and that’s why he did this.

I’m also not sure about actually seeing the Angels move, I think I preferred it when they just suddenly changed poses when the camera wasn’t looking at them. That made the Angels seem more threatening to the viewer because the camera was functioning as an eye itself. Once we could see them move we were divorced from the situation and the perceived threat the Angels posed to the audience was almost removed - in fact I’ve read more than a few people’s comments elsewhere expressing a feeling of pity for the Angels by the end of the episode - not sure about that, I preferred the Angels as an object of terror.

I do have to congratulate Moffat on the method he used when dealing with the Doctor defeating the Angels mind you. It was a completely natural and understandable moment that did feel made sense and most importantly did not feel forced at all. We knew that the Angels were feeding off the ship’s power source, we knew that everyone was standing on a vertical plane thanks to the artificial gravity - so when it failed and the Angels plummeted into the bright light (bright light!), it all just worked.

Last of all we have the aftermath to look at - the bit that’s going to have the romance seekers (and those terrible slash fiction writers) dribbling all over the upholstery in excitement. I am of course referring to Amy’s reaction towards the Doctor and the addressing of the inevitable sexual tension (on her part at least) between them. It was, frankly, hilarious. Matt Smith is able to play the role of an uncomfortable man fending off advances exceptionally well, and Karen’s delivery of her lines ensured that the sauciest scene in Doctor Who’s history didn’t get too far away from ‘child friendly’. It was something that played well for laughs, provided plot advancement and wasn’t so overtly sexual that it could cause offence (it was like one of the tamer Carry On films). It gave us a great end to the episode and more importantly an early introduction towards the construction of the series finale.

(Even if it does mean that some people are going to interpret the ending as being ‘The Doctor and Amy doing it in the TARDIS.)

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