Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour

[skywaterblue]

OOH SHINY. No seriously, it was exactly all I had ever hoped for and a little more.



The Good:

I had kind of decided that I thought Matt Smith would be good in this role after "Party Animals". I am relieved to see that I was not wrong. His physical acting is really weird and simultaneously appealing. I'm not sure I really know what makes his Doctor tick yet. Nine was damaged but sweet at heart. Ten was outwardly cheery but inwardly a bitter depressive. It's probably far too early to say what Eleven's deal is anyway, since in episode terms he's only been regenerated for half an hour.

There are bits where I found him attractive. Though he does look like Odo. It's entirely the lack of eyebrows. This is no slam on him, as I love Odo.

I thought the real revelation was Karen as Amy Pond. What an appealingly gifted actress she is - I'm so relieved because from the spoilers I thought she had all the potential to be one of the greatest companions but I'm wary of model-turned-actresses. Actually, Tricia Helfer is the only other model-actress that immediately comes to mind, and they may have more in common than you would think. There's something about the way she plays Amy which is just a bit calculating, a companion who would bend the rules a little, tell a lie, if it got her what she wanted. She'll hit a guy on the head with a cricket bat, and not apologize. She's all guile, and the Doctor at this point seems guileless.

It would be nice if the Companion got to be the mysterious enigmatic one for once.

I also found the monster in this episode really creepy - I even screamed a little. Fish teeth freak my shit out, okay? The dislocated voices also disturb. And the giant eye! Ugh, I have paranoia about things like eye damage, I was so convinced they were going to blow it up and get eye good everywhere, and I would have screamed fucking louder.

I hated the new TARDIS interior from the pictures, but on film she's quite lovely! The cinematography in the outside scenes seemed to really push the ambers and reds, so stepping into the golden reddish TARDIS interior feels homey and appropriate. I love that the Moff is clearly in love with the idea of her - suddenly the show remembers that TARDIS is a fantastic world of its own with a library and a swimming pool and a wardrobe. And it looks like we'll even get to see them!

And he ships Doctor/TARDIS possibly more than any other writer ever. The Doctor called her dear AND sexy. Doctor/TARDIS: the only canon ship.

Thing I am undecided about:

Rory. In his solo scenes he seems quite awesome. In his scenes with Amy he turns into that schlubby dude from 'Blink'. You know, the one you never quite buy that Sally is going to settle down with? Still, given his introduction is as plucky nurse-investigator, I think he'll turn around. None of the boyfriends are that good at the start.

The Bad:

Okay, so the first five minutes or so are really pretty rubbish. The scene where Matt Smith hangs off the TARDIS is seemingly unconnected to anything else that happens. Moffat uses a lot of old lines - possibly the intent was to remind you he's still becoming Eleven after Ten, but what it really felt like was 'Hullo, I'm Steven Moffat, the new headwriter. You may remember me from such fan favorites as 'Blink' and 'The Girl in the Fireplace...'

In fact, baby!Amy reminds a lot of baby!Reinette, except that we end up spending more time with her, and halfway through she becomes even at eight a fully-realized character. So it's not totally rubbish, because Moffat's written young girls before but baby!Amy is the first who feels human and not plot device. (I'm not in the Moffat is a sexist camp, at least not in the writing. Baby!Reinette is a clever scene to give adult!Reinette more depth, while the girl in the Library LITERALLY is a plot device.)

Although the plot is solidly constructed - seriously, the man does tight work and it is a skill to be admired, it isn't anything new. It's basically the plot of 'Smith and Jones' with added timey-wimey. I think it's okay because Moffat set an ambitious goal for himself in this of introducing a new Doctor, new Companion, and a whole world for Amy Pond. And the character work is quite stunning. All the same, now that we have a start it will become more noticeable.

There was also an annoying tendency for the Moffat to make every line a zinger - this episode is crammed with quotable moments. Except I think between the zingers and Murray Gold's still too loud score they run a little rough over moments where he could have gotten a bit more with a pause.

Oh, and the new theme music sucks, but not as bad as everyone claims. It's just awkwardly mediocre.

Comments

[fashionbeast.livejournal.com]

Actually I thought the plot was a bit of an unintended nod back to Spearhead from space, but I say that about every episode where the Doctor takes off his clothes in a hospital.

And you forgot the other Moffat trope: Nobody died. Or rather, nobody was killed.

(And yes people did get eaten by the Vashta Narada in the library two-parter. I will concede that if you believe in a soul they are dead, but if you are a secular atheist they are still alive. They are in a sense Schrodinger's Gedeankenexpriment.)

[stuwest.livejournal.com]

The staff in the coma ward were supposed to have been killed, although it happened off-camera. There was a BBC radio interview with Moffat a few months ago where he declared that he'll be putting a lot of effort into upping the bodycount in his new episodes.