Entertaining bit of fluff. Some witty dialogue, but I have to admit I laughed more at the physical comedy. Wasn’t expecting the head butt at all.
Didn’t seem to make any difference to the rest of the series until the very end, and that was a bit ambiguous. The previous producers probably would have shown us exactly what was going on in Amy’s head, but this left it open.
A shame about all those good Samaritans. If they’d just kept walking they’d be OK.
The Doctor talks to cats now. And they talk back. And I don’t mean the Sisters of Plenitude.
I’m glad to see that fat slobs with skinny girlfriends aren’t just limited to American TV. Of course she also called the Doctor gorgeous, so it’s safe to say she’s got eclectic tastes.
Didn’t really get an explanation of the toxic stain on the ceiling, did we?
I can do without another bow tie comment for a while.
This is hard for a Tom Baker fan to say, but I actually think Matt Smith is doing a great job as the current regen of the Doctor, each episode as Smith becomes more at home with the character, I’m seeing Smith’s take on our favourite Time Lord
My first DW series was the Tom Baker years, and Tom will always be THE Doctor as far as I’m concerned, Eccelston did a great take on an emotionally scarred and damaged Doctor, reeling from the Time War, Tennant, great Doctor though he was, got a bit grating with his constant manic yammering and constant insistance of “'cause I’m brilliant!”
Smith’s Doctor seems a tad quieter and more introspective, more cerebral, and far less manic than Tennant
I admit it, I was one of the ones rejecting Smith as soon as I saw him, largely because I thought he was too young to play a 900+ year old Galifreyan, and also because I HATE his choice of clothing (no, Doctor, no matter how many times you insist on saying it, bow ties are most emphatically NOT cool, I think you keep repeating this statement to try to convince yourself that they are, because, you know at your most primal core, that bow ties (actually any ties for that matter) are NOT cool…)
It’d be a pity if Smith’s Doctor catchphrase ended up being “bow ties are cool”
Hmm, catchphrases of the NuWho Doctors?..
Eccelston; “Fantastic!”
Tennant; “I’m Brilliant!!!one!!!one!”
Smith “Bow ties are cool” (Me; NO, they’re not!)
Eleven’s catchphrase seems rather…lacking, compared to Nine and Ten
It’s nice seeing a story with some comedy. It’s been a long time since a Doctor Who story made me laugh this hard. I even got a little choked up with the romance and snogging at the end.
Anyone else think the chubby guy was Andy Richter from Conan O’Brien’s show?
I really liked the fast paced comedy of this episode, it’s an extended stretch of the kind of character stuff I’ve enjoyed most throughout the series.
This week’s DW Confidential, on the other hand, was the worst ever, of a really dodgy season.
Yes, a lot of fun little jokes and gags in this one, the Doctor being good at soccer…err…football, when they were setting you up to expect to see him fail, the “Galifreyan Mind Meld”, the Doctor holding a phillips head screwdriver and wondering “where’s the on switch for this thing”, actually being able to communicate with cats…
If by chubby guy you mean the main character who the Doctor was living with, that would be James Corden who is extremely well known in the UK. His face was in the “coming up this series” montage and I recognised him instantly.
I liked this episode, was definitely fun, and I laughed out loud when they walked through the upper flat doorway and into a… spaceship. Nitpicking, there’s no such building as a one floor house like that. Once the ship had gone and the “real” house was revealed it looked profoundly wrong on the grounds that virtually all houses in the UK are either two or three storey (and often converted into single floor flats). Having a one storey, one flat arrangement with its own separate front door to the exterior and inside door to the flat makes no sense.
I didn’t watch the old doctors much, so can’t say anything about Tom Baker, but I was noticing this ep that Smith really does a good job of seeming old sometimes. It’s in his eyes, and the way he touches people.
It’s handy that Amy is learning some Tardis controls. I wonder if she’s the one who crashes the Tardis?
That also brings up another point, you would think the Doctor would give his companions at least a passing knowledge of TARDIS piloting/driving/flying/whatever the proper term is for being in control of a time/space machine, y’know a basic kind of “TARDIS-ED”
In the event the Doctor is incapacitated, unconscious, or otherwise unable to control the TARDIS, it’d be handy to have the companion be able to pilot/fly/drive/etc… instead of running about in a panic calling for him…
y’know, give them a kind of self-reliant self-sufficency (or is that frowned upon in Great Britan? i know they’re fond of “nannystate” policies, but still… 
)
TWDuke, the toxic stain was the residue of the people frying when the tried the controls.
MacTech Better than “Geronimo!” which is what it started out looking like it was going to be.
Any explanation for a non-Time Lord Tardis like device crash landed with an autopilot hologram?
Good basic Who.
It’s old Who but two companions had to work out how to navigate the TARDIS once, Nissa and Teegan. Saying that it mainly consisted of them trying to work out where to start and saying that what you really need is an index file, but where would you find that index file? In the index file of course (leading to a nice discussion about recursion).
Well, there was that chap in The Next Doctor – where the whole gimmick was that the Doctor mistakenly figured the guy was a future version of the Doctor!
I got that the stain was a side effect of the pilot testing going on upstairs, but there was no explanation of why that would create a stain that immediately soaked through to the flat below and was lethal to the touch. Not that I expect sensible explanations for everything in Doctor Who, but I thought there would at least be a “jibber-jabber-reverse-the-polarity-blah-blah” line about it.
As far as I could see, there was no hint of who or what built the alien craft. Some have noted that the domed pilot interface was the right shape for a Dalek [del]plunger[/del] manipulator, but as it’s also the right shape for just about anything with a hand, that may not mean much. I suspect that the stranded time machine was about as significant as psychic pollen from the Candle Meadows, but I’d be happy to be proved wrong.
As far Tardis training, I think the series (old+new) has been somewhat inconsistent about the possibility of others flying it. At one point it was said to have “isomorphic controls” that would only respond to the Doctor. But in “Utopia,” the Master is able to fly it (despite never having seen that particular console configuration before). At one point in series 4, Donna is tentatively trying it out under the Doctor’s close and somewhat nervous supervision. At the end of that series we see 5 1/2 humans at the console, while the Doctor explains that it’s designed for 6 people to operate, which is why it’s often lurching about violently through time and space. Yet in the classic series, it usually traveled quite smoothly and quietly unless acted on by outside forces.
Memorable quotes from this episode:
“I’m The Doctor. Well, they call me the Doctor. I don’t know why. I call me The Doctor too. Still don’t know why.”
“I’ll fix it. I’m good at fixing rot. Call me the Rotmeister. No, I’m the Doctor. Don’t call me the Rotmeister.”
“Sorry, what’s happening? Are you going to live with monkeys now?”
“Hello, Mr Jorgensen? Can you hold, I have to eat a biscuit.”
“Hello I’m Captain Troy Handsome of International Rescue. Please state the nature of your emergency.”
And my favorite (entirely dependent on context, of course): “I wasn’t expecting this.” Actually, more like, “I WASN’T EXPECTING THIS!”
Soon to be someone’s user name around here, I’m sure. I hope!
I always thought that the Tardis also had to kinda want to be flown. Sorta like a not so tame horse; it has its own mind too. In this case anyway it wasn’t that Amy didn’t know what to do, but that the Tardis-like ship was creating some kind of local time-loop interference that was preventing its materialization.
Yeah, some funny lines.
100% pure win, awesome awesome line. Matt Smith is a fucking fantastic Doctor, he’s genuinely great. He is an alien, Tennant was very good too, but he was always an actor playing a part, but Smith is a convincing mentalist, I think playing himself. I like Pond too, when she was sitting in Vincent’s garden surrounded by sunflowers, that’s a vision of gorgeousness right there. Her hair..
Well, if you really can’t avoid comparative nationalism when talking about a TV show, not - at least! - to the extent that we have a “Patriot Act”. 
I thought perhaps the Doctor took some sort of pleasure in seeming to be the only one capable of flying it and doing so with some drama. Just remembering how he looked a little put down when River landed it silently and smoothly (with some sort of admonishment about the brakes IIRC).
The blue stabilizers.
Now it’s just boring; they’re blue boring-ers.
Leaving the brakes on accounts for the wheezing noise it makes taking off and landing.
Yes, but it makes a brilliant noise when he leaves the brake on
He’s not alone in loving that “vwrrrm-vwrrrm” noise…