It was interesting that one of the humans suggested that they should “dissect the alien to find out it’s weaknesses” or something similar just before we see the same thing about to be done to Amy. They’re not so different after all eh ?
Aaaargh. I’m attempting to hold off on watching The Hungry Earth until Saturday so I can do the double-bill all at once. It’s not so easy, resolution fading rapidly…
Hmm. I can usually take or leave Doctor Who these days but in the episodes I’ve seen there is something quite compelling and watchable about either the acting, or the actress, of the Amy character.
Hard to pin down, pretty face but I don’t find her particularly physically attractive even with the attempt to “sex” it up in the first episode but for me I think she convincingly acts The Doctor off the screen. Every time.
Talking of sex, that female Silurian was rather feisty. I’ve not had such alien desires since the soft spoken cat nurse…
Captain Jack functioned as a companion in several episodes, but John Barrowman only began being billed before the title after he became the star of his own series. The Master was certainly not a companion, but John Simm was billed before the title (and before Bernard Cribbin, who played the only character that could reasonably be considered a companion) in “The End of Time.”
Billing on any TV show is a function of an actor’s role in the show, their value as a recognizable name or face, the negotiation skill of the actors representative, and the whim of the show-runner.
Blogtor Who has posted some clips from the next episode.[spoiler]http://blogtorwho.blogspot.com/
I like how they’ve split up the terrific trio. At first it looked like they were getting Rory out of the way to make it a Doctor-Amy story. Then Amy was gone and it was Doctor-Rory. Now it looks like we have (at least briefly) the Doctor with Nasmeen as a companion, Amy using leadership skills with Mo as her companion, and Rory trying to be a leader with his group of companions.
Good old Rory, spokesman for the human race. That’s his role this series, isn’t? Representing us apes.
That last clip would certainly lead us to believe that the Silurian hostage’s prophecy that a human would kill her came true, which leads me to suspect that that’s not what happened. I see Tony Mack has not died or turned into a lizard.
Will there be any payoff in this episode to Amy and Rory’s self-sighting, the attention that was drawn to the engagement ring, or the time that was spent setting up the cameras? Time will tell.[/spoiler]
Last weekend I actually forgot about the show completely and only got around to watching it by Monday. Which is a pity, as last week’s episode was pretty good. I still love Matt Smith’s Doctor but I agree with other dopers in regarding Amy as erratic. The actress does know how to act, but she keeps ricocheting between all these disparate emotional states so fast it makes the character seem mental. Rory just gets on my nerves and I really wish he’d go away.
On an unrelated note, I watched Victory of The Daleks again and enjoyed it a lot. The sentimental gibberish with professor Bomb is still unforgivable and I’m still angry with their portrayal of Winston Churchill but overall it’s a fun episode, fake dilemma or not. Vampires of Venice, I’m sad to say, doesn’t hold up nearly as well a second time around, mainly due to gratuitous Rory and, again, misplaced sentimentality.
Well, I wasn’t expecting “Cold Blood” to end with RORY BEING KILLED AND THEN ERASED FROM EXISTENCE. Aaaaugh!
Awesome episode- but do you know what’s really annoying? If you’ve subscribed to a thread and then when you check you email there’s a massive spoiler RIGHT THERE!
It was a pretty cool cliff hanger at the very end, can’t wait to see where it leads.
Crikey O’Reilly, I didn’t expect that!
Interesting that it turns out neither humans or reptiles are evolved enough to coexist. I wonder if a 1000 years is enough time for much to change?
I’m a little disappointed that they are already setting up another doomsday for the Doctor. We just spent 2009 with the 10th Doctor facing a countdown to his death. Now we see a chunk of blown up Tardis? Can’t they give us even one season without him facing his own doomsday? This plot twist sucks.
I seriously doubt Matt Smith is quitting the role of a lifetime. So, I’m not too worried about the Doctor. Man, they need to give these doomsday plots a rest.
Poor Rory. I just started liking him as a companion. Wait! Who’s Rory anyway??? 
Oh yeah, shouldn’t there be some consequences for murdering an alien? Just because she’s pissed off, she gets away with it?
The prisoner was chained up. It bothers me that woman gets away with murder. Shouldn’t there be an intergalactic court or something for her to face?
I didn’t expect that. I liked him, boo.
I just think it’s strange that a good-looking girl like Amy has never had a boyfriend. I mean, I don’t think she’s supposed to be a lesbian, is she? Maybe she’ll hook up with somebody in the season finale.
Rory getting erased from existence came as a surprise, for sure.
However… this is Dr Who, and things like that aren’t always permanent. There will obviously be plenty of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey shenanigans in the last two episodes of this season, and I’d say it’s possible that what just happened can be, in some way, undone.
My prediction is: (Possible MAJOR spoilers, or possible wildly inaccurate speculation)
[spoiler]Quite a lot of what happened during this season will end up not having happened at all. If they bring Rory back from being erased, I expect that Amy will have to “pay for it” by having herself erased from his past, so that Rory and the rest of the village will have never heard of Amy.
I’m quite sure that the conclusion of the season will involve some major history erasure involving the Doctor’s relationship with River Song, which is a pity because I really like her character and the way she’s ahead of the Doctor’s time line. I hope they don’t erase her past with the Doc, because I’d really enjoy her character popping up again in the Doctor’s future every now and then, but I strongly suspect that they will make it all never have happened. [/spoiler]
My fanwank: She’s been too obsessed with the Doctor, and only Rory was willing to put up with it. That, and characters on TV are not as pretty as they appear. I mean, if everyone else around you is pretty, what we consider pretty could be plain in that universe.
Oh yeah, more speculation:
[spoiler]I noticed during the Doctor’s speech to Amy and Nasreen he mentioned “different time lines” splitting off, and how some things are “fixed points” and some aren’t - that’s a pretty obvious tip-off that the TARDIS will be destroyed and the Doctor killed in a separate time-line to the one we’re seeing.
Quite possibly the other Doctor/TARDIS have to sacrifice themselves in that other time-line to save this one by preventing the crack from ever having happened. Or something.[/spoiler]
I don’t know who this “Rory” is – something from fan fiction or a book? Only characters that have been on TV are canon.
[spoiler]…someone noticed this on another forum. This clip compares the “Two Parts in Space and Time” speech from the Eleventh Hour and the flashback scene from Cold Blood.
They are different. Different words, the reversal of the fingers.
Something hinkey is going on in Doctor Who land. Along with the Doctor getting distracted, letting Rory and Octavian die and forgetting about Elliot, the repeated elements like “remember” (Beast Below the button, the Doctor always telling Amy to remember, the dream episode) the reappearance of the Doctor with the jacket in Flesh and Stone, the bird sounds that happen at either odd times or the switch of reality (Eleventh Hour, Amy’s Choice) and prisoner Zero and prisoner Song, I make a single prediction:
this series of Dr Who will a great big ball of timey wimey stuff that will come together as a really really cool coherent story in the end. We are only seeing bits and pieces of the narrative and at times the stories aren’t completely holding together for me: but in the end the bigger story will make up for it. And it will blow our minds. Damm you Moffatt!
[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Yep, that’d all tie in with my theories. Definitely some major series arc stuff will happen in the last two episodes.
I’m guessing that River Song doing time for murder will be the result of her role in the death of alterna-Doctor in the universe next door. And that the two Doctors have been crossing into each other’s time lines/universes because of the crack, which could mean that the jacket-wearing Doctor in Flesh and Stone was in fact the other Doctor…
[/spoiler]
I read elsewhere another interesting observation that probably doesn’t hold up.
[ul]
[li]The first episode was called “The Eleventh Hour”.[/li][li]The Beast Below featured “Liz 10”.[/li][li]?[/li][li]The Time Of Angels, had a character called “Father Octavian”.[/li][li]?[/li][li]The Vampires of Venice were from “Saturnyne”. Saturn is the sixth planet in our solar system.[/li][li]One of the dreams in Amy’s Choice took place “five years later”.[/li][li]Hungry Earth/Cold Blood = 4[/li][li]Vincent and the Doctor = 3[/li][li]The Lodger = 2[/li][li]Pandorica Opens = 1[/li][li]The Big Bang = 0, as in “Prisoner Zero”.[/li][/ul]
If anyone can uncover a consistent numbering reference for each episode, the theory might hold more water.