So completing my Doctor Who series reviews of the revived series, I now give you my review of series 5. Series 5 started a new era for the show with a new logo, executive producer, title sequence, main theme, Tardis, Doctor, companions and even Daleks, but with all the usual stuff in there as well. Matt Smith is the new Doctor who takes over from David Tennant and is joined by his new companions, Amy Pond (played by Karen Gillian) and later on, her boyfriend and future husband, Rory Williams (played by Arthur Darvill) with a few others here and there as well. So let's begin:
The Eleventh Hour
Following from the epilogue of The End of Time, the Tardis crash lands in Leadworth, 1996. The newly regenerated Doctor, comes to terms with his new look and meets a girl called Amelia. She takes him to her room where there is a crack in the wall and The Doctor deduces that it's a crack in Space and Time. Inside the hole, a large eyeball (presumably the alien in the episode) tells the Doctor that someone known as "Prisoner 0 has escaped". Hearing the Tardis, the Doctor returns to his ship and promises Amelia that he will return in 5 minutes, but instead he returns 12 years later where Amelia is now a grown woman and is now referred to as Amy. As Prisoner Zero is on the loose, The Doctor teams up with Amy to find and capture him before the alien he met earlier, destroys Earth. Now considering that this was a very different first adventure compared to the 10th Doctor, I find this one to be the better of them. It wastes no time with a lot of humour, one liners and of course, action. However I do feel that it can be a bit rushed at times, but is a great story, nevertheless. 9/10
The Beast Below
So on Amy's first adventure in the Tardis, The Doctor takes her to the Starship UK in the distant future, a colony spaceship that contains the population of the UK who fled Earth to escape deadly solar flares. The Doctor notices that the ship doesn't have an engine and goes to investigate while Amy follows a girl called Mandy, who is crying and everyone seems to ignore her. The Doctor then meets a masked woman called Liz 10 who is aware of the oddness that the ship has, as well as The Doctor's identity. Amy finds out from Mandy that she lost a friend of hers, who was disobeying the rules of the ship and was sent to the beast below by the Smilers who are basically the future police and are the ones that watch over the ship. In the end, The Doctor has to make a difficult choice, to save mankind or save the beast below. Overall, this is a very dark episode that shows The Doctor's darker side greatly and it's one of the best episodes of the series so far, in my opinion any way. 9/10
Victory of the Daleks
The Doctor is summoned by an old friend of his, Winston Churchill, to assist in England's war effort in the Blitz. As the Doctor has arrived late, Churchill has turned to Professor Edwin Bracewell who apparently has created some machines called Ironsides, which The Doctor immediately recognises as his arch enemies, The Daleks. As the story progresses, we find that these Daleks were working undercover to create a new breed of Daleks to further increase the race's life cycle and have preparations to destroy Earth, using the robotic features of Bracewell, as he is apparently an android that they created. Overall, its good to see the Daleks again, but I hate their new designs. They look bigger, bulkier and at times, they remind me of the Power Rangers, but despite that, I like the story and the whole Dalek survival thing makes sense because it wouldn't be Doctor Who without the Daleks. 8/10
The Time of Angels + Flesh and Stone
The Doctor and Amy, receive a message from River Song to go and get her, which they do and under her orders, they land on a planet called Alfava Metraxis. There Amy finds out that The Doctor and River have a unique way of seeing each other which apparently has The Doctor seeing her past and River seeing his future (but as the 6th series explains, their encounters could happen at any point in their respective timelines). Anyway, the trio team up with some armed forces hired by River and go to find a cargo that contains a Weeping Angel, but to get to it, they must travel through a maze of the dead that contains billions of Weeping Angels, which makes things more difficult for the team and with Amy experiencing some sort of infection that a single angle puts on her, its a race against time to save her and get rid of the angels, but something else has appeared which is causing the angels to get power from. Overall, its a great 2 part story with 2 of Steven Moffatt's creations together at last, which for the most part, works quite well and the acting is great too. 9/10
The Vampires of Venice
Having seen Amy kiss him and presumably wanting to have sex with him (I don't know, It looked that way from the last episode's epilogue), The Doctor finds Rory and takes both of them on a romantic trip to Venice in 1580. There the trio discover a girls school that seems to have all it's students as vampires, which The Doctor questions about, before discovering that the members of the school (both staff and students) are actually alien refugees who intend to make Venice their new home, so like before, its up to the Doctor to stop that from happening. Overall, the idea of vampires hasn't been used yet and the whole episode is great and scary, which as I keep saying, is something that the show is known for and I enjoyed it. But there are some ideas here that have already been used before and I fear that if the creators choose to go down that road, it may go the same way that Ice Age did, but the ideas work well for the most part, which is a good thing. 8/10
Amy's Choice
This episode is kinda confusing at times, but is otherwise great. The Doctor, Amy and Rory seem to be stuck in 2 realities set up by a Dream Lord who is like The Doctor, but has the power to control dreams as it were. In one reality, Amy and Rory are happily married and are having a baby and the Doctor sees them on occasions, but a gang of old people possessed by aliens, are after them and intend to kill them. In the other reality, the trio are on the Tardis which is being powered down and will cause the 3 of them to freeze to death if the power isn't restored. The trio must decide which is the real reality and must die in the phony one, and will switch between realities via a bird noise that sends them to sleep. Overall, this is another one of those intense but weird episodes that is just OK. The acting is good, the story is good (although the epilogue of it is strange and odd) and even the main antagonist in this one is good. A good episode overall. 8/10
The Hungry Earth + Cold Blood
The Doctor and his companions arrive in Wales in the year 2020, which again is another miscalculation of the Doctor's. There, they see a drill that is drilling to the centre of the Earth and go to investigate. According to the person overseeing this project, Nasreen Chaudhry, she is drilling to find rare materials that haven't been seen for many years, but little do they know, that the drill is disrupting a underground Silurian civilisation (who by the way, is an alien race that the Doctor has encountered previously) and have the intend to create holes to capture those responsible and do experiments on them. Amy becomes one of those victims and The Doctor and Co then start a plan to find out what's going on and to rescue her and a boy who is related to a family that live locally. Overall, while I never actually seen the original design of the aliens in this 2 part story, they look kinda weird and human like, but otherwise are OK. The story however is one that annoys me, especially as the family are very hostile to the aliens and it makes me think that with all these other invasions that have happened, surely you could show a little bit of gratitude on meeting an alien because it is a once in a lifetime opportunity that won't ever happen again. Despite that, it's still a good story. 8/10
Vincent and The Doctor
When they go into a present day museum and see a painting that looks kinda odd with a shadowy figure in it, The Doctor and Amy (Rory by the way, has left for reasons that I won't go into as they contain spoilers) go back in time to meet famous art painter, Vincent Van Gogh and help him with this particular painting. Unfortunately, Vincent is the only one that can see this shadowy monster, and so The Doctor and Amy work with him to defeat it, which ends on a happy note and one that I like. Overall, I like this episode as it sees a different side to Amy who we all know is most of the time, mad and bubbly, but in this episode, she experiences mood swings where one minute she's sad and the other minute, she's happy. It's got some great acting yet again, but the monster should have some more screen time, as we only see it once or twice in the whole episode. Despite that, it's another great episode that I like. 8/10
The Lodger
When the Tardis (with Amy inside) gets prevented from landing by unknown forces, The Doctor must live the life of a human (this time, without the need to transfer his time lord configuration to a fob watch like before) and moves into the flat that is owned by one Craig Owen (played by James Corden and I only say that because we see him in a later episode). There he plays matchmaker to him and his female flatmate who he fancies, while also investigating the mysterious flat up the stairs where things go in, but nothing comes out. Now I in particular love the double act that Smith and Corden do in this episode and after having watched this (and it's continuation in series 6), I think that they should have their own sketch show, but that's unlikely to happen right now, so instead, this will do. Its a great episode that's filled with humour throughout. 9/10
The Pandorica Opens + The Big Bang
The Doctor and Amy are summoned to the time of the Romans by River Song (again, we see her past). There they meet River (disguised as Cleopatra) who shows them a painting by Vincent, that shows the Tardis exploding. River managed to acquire this painting in the 52nd century and travelled to the time and space coordinates on the painting using a time agent's vortex manipulator. The trio then travel to Stonehenge using the coordinates on the map, where they find the Pandora box (said to be a prison of some kind) underneath it, but just as things are going according to plan, the trio discover that a trap has been set by an alliance of the majority of the Doctor's greatest enemies, which they use to save the universe from any more cracks in time that were apparently caused by the Tardis and seal what they believe to be the only person that can fly it, The Doctor, inside, believing that he was the one responsible despite his pleas that it's the Tardis, not him. However, little do they know, that River can also fly it and it isn't long before all the companions face near death at the hands of this alliance, and someone will have to sacrifice themselves to save and in some way, restart the universe. Overall, while I myself felt a bit tearful towards the end of this 2 part finale, It's a great ending to a great series that starts a new era for the Whoverse and seeing nearly all of the Doctor's enemies together, will be a moment to remember for a very long time to come. 9/10
So that ends this series and I must say that this new era for Doctor Who, has started off quite well and has retained some elements from the previous era, which I like. I look forward to seeing more of this new era. 9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment