I liked it. I was of course quite tentative after the brilliance of Tennant, and after the odd looking photos of the new guy, and the change of show runners. But new Doctor doesn’t look quite as weird on ‘film’ as in photos, I love his portrayal, and I’m quite keen on the ‘fairy tale’ angle.
Not fond of: the predilection of the the bad guy repeating the same obnoxious statement over and over again. Although granted, this was a common theme of other Who episodes. The theme of the season as a mysterious phrase (“Silence will Fall” - “Bad Wolf” previously) - fine, but it was executed just a little too over the top this time. The aliens were particularly bad CGI in ship form. And… I didn’t quite get why they had Dr Who bring the aliens back just to have an ego shit all over them. Granted, they were willing to take extreme measures with regards to the planet, but OTOH they were just pursuing a criminal and not out to destroy the Earth per se. And wasn’t the previous Doctor’s hubris the reason for his downfall? It’d be nice for the next Doc to have some humility.
I hated, hated Donna in the Christmas special and was so furious when she came back for good later in the series. But then I actually started liking her. She came off less shrewish and more just confident.
I actually quite liked Mickey and wish he had been brought on board Torchwood. But I agree that Rory is annoying, mostly as her love interest. And I suppose the guy she’s marrying in the morning?
I was confused about the other guy though, the ‘more handsome’ guy. He seemed to live with her aunt? Was he her cousin?
I like the new theme. I appreciate what they tried to do with making the time travel wormhole more dangerous. So lightning, fine. But making them cloudy was a mistake. That didn’t work.
That seemed to go somewhat overboard, usually that’s reserved for a season finale. I was curious though, about the timeline, especially since his visits were 12? and then 2? years apart. When does this take place? While in the past the Dr has been relatively undercover, with the tenth Doc and Torchwood we finally reached the point where the Dr and aliens in general were common knowledge. Why did Amy’s friends not believe that the ‘raggedy doctor’ was real if the world knows about the Dr? Why Didn’t the VIPs take the Dr’s direction based on his reputation alone? Or was this in the past?
It had to be very recently as the Doctor was mentioning Twitter, Facebook, and other social media.
I’m going to have to disagree on that. He STRONGLY reminded me of Tennant’s Doctor. Of course that was only the first episode, so I expect that he’ll expand the role, but in this episode I kept thinking that the only thing different about the Doctor was his looks.
Seriously - it’s established canon that for a little while after regeneration, The Doctor’s neurons will still be rearranging themselves, so he will behave erratically. That also explains why his personality shifts between between incarnations.
She’s strong - no doubt about it.
I think Smith nailed it during the fish custard scene, when he leaned in close to young Amy, and told her that must be one hell of a crack in her wall.
He reminded me of Tigger in the kitchen scene, too, and said so to my husband.
Put me in the leary of his looks category (too young and plain). I was happily surprised by how much I enjoyed it and him. I’m looking forward to the interaction between The Doctor and Amy. Great chemistry.
Just saw it. I guess it’s going to take some getting used to, but I didn’t think this was a great episode. The sampling food scene was not easy to get through, for one.
And here’s something I thought was kinda lame: Amy remembers The Doctor’s first visit so fondly that she drew him in cartoons that were accurate enough for everyone else in town to recognize him on sight when he showed up later. Then why didn’t she recognize him right away, rather than hit him and handcuff him? At the very least once he came to and asked about Amelia she should have recognized him at that point - he was even wearing the same clothes.
I wouldn’t think Amy is quite talented enough to recognize him after twelve years, from the back, after he’s broken into her house yelling like a madman.
Nine to Ten was also a bit traumatic but not as much as the others mentioned. For a smooth regeneration you need to watch Two to Three or Romana One to Romana Two.
Even D2 to D3 wasn’t that smooth. He spent a couple of episodes in that hospital bed.
Someone had taken quite a bit of time and complied all the regeneration scenes available from 1 to 10 on youtube. If you search for Doctor Who Regeneration, you should be able to find it. The pop-up captions are very informative.
That was a brilliant shot, the way he’s shown essentially stepping in as part of the lineage of those who defend humanity.
As to the barging in on the teleconference, I take it that it’s pretty much established in that continuity that by now (the references to social media mean it happens in the last half-decade) people are aware of some alien activity and the folks at that high level know of the Doctor (in turn he has the knowledge to plug into their teleconference from some regular bloke’s Wi-Fi ro 3G; still he had to provide some examples of alien knowledge in order to establish his bona fides.
You must be. Past seasons aired on SciFi, not BBCA, other than as reruns. They did air the post-season 4 Tennant movies, I don’t know if those had DWC or not.
The Doctor’s been working with UNIT at least since the 70s. (Er…possibly.)
And Torchwood was created by Queen Victoria after an encounter with the Doctor.
And there’s the fact that large swaths of the English government was replaced by the Slitheen several years back (during which the Doctor aided the British military, who knew who he was), and the Prime Minster who followed had dealt with the Doctor during the situation. Her replacement’s replacement was the Master, who almost started a war with the US by having ‘aliens’ assassinate the President, and, after returning from the dead (with the same face), turned every man, woman, and child on Earth (except Wilf) into a clone of himself.
So, yeah, the boat has LONG since sailed on both the Doctor being unknown to those in power and aliens being a secret to everyone else. Even if the latter was the case before the new series started (I can’t remember to say conclusively), the former ended with Three, not Eleven. (Although the canon first encounter for non-time-travellers was Ten’s.)
He reminded me of Tigger in the kitchen scene, too, and said so to my husband.