In what was virtually the last (and very brief ) scene didn’t I see a crack in something lying on the ground? It looked similar to the one in Amelia’s bedroom in the first episode. If so, is this a recurring theme for this series?
I think Amy set a new companion record for getting into trouble. 
She wasn’t out of the Tardis more than a few minutes. Why was she running around in her nightie? Didn’t the Doctor say there were clothes on board in the last episode?
This story reminded me of New Earth. That was Roses’ first adventure with David Tennant. It also dealt with a somewhat bleak future for humans.
One minor nit pick. It bugged me seeing Amy transform from filthy clothes and hair to all neat and tidy. That would have actually been a chance to get her in real clothes. The queen could have given her something to wear.
I’m not sure I like seeing a companion take charge and over ride the Doctor. The Doctor is supposed to be thousands of years old and has advanced knowledge. Seeing him pushed aside like that diminishes his character.
The whale was eating the adults? What is it going to eat now that the torture has stopped? Isn’t it still going to get hungry? :eek:
I enjoyed this episode a lot better than the first. It had a much tighter story.
You did. It also appeared on the oscilloscope thing in the Tardis console at the end of the last episode.
Amy in her (wet) nightgown seems weird. The Doctor is a guy and he’s bound to find that distracting.
Any opinions on the Doctor and sex? Is he supposed to always be celibate for 10 thousand years? 
The early Doctors were elderly granddad types. Sex wasn’t much of an issue. Since the Doctor is getting younger, it’s going to be harder to ignore.
There is sex in the Doctor Who universe. Captain Jack got his share of anything that moved.
I’m not sure if the Doctor should basically be an eunuch or not.
I don’t think it was eating only the adults. There seemed to be a lot of other stuff in its mouth.
I liked the episode overall. The ‘old, kind, last of his race’ bit may have been a little overdone, but I still found it moving. The smilers were spooky (Could have been onscreen a bit longer, though) and there were more Scottish jokes.
My favourite line: “There’s an escaped fish.”
Next week Daleks in Spitfires… Daleks in Spitfires. Wo-Hoo!
Well, we’ve seen the time he first meets her. That’s different to the time she first meets him.
Do we need to spoiler the Daleks? They were in the end of show trailer after all.
I remember that some of the older stories with other Doctors meandered quite a bit and this brisker nu-Who does away with that. But when the Doctor was deciding whether to kill the whale or the humans, I just couldn’t help compare it to “Genesis of the Daleks” and wish that they had dwelt on it a little more. Actually no, “Dalek” was able to make it seem like a weightier decision in its own 45 minute time slot.
Aside from that, what sort of Scottish accent does Amy have, is it genuine?
And thinking back to the episodes of old, the next episode seems vaguely reminiscent of The Power of the Daleks, what with a human thinking that they’re producing servile robots and all that.
She sounds Aberdonian (that is, from Aberdeen) or therabouts. ETA: Not a million miles away, just checked and she’s from Inverness.
When they said the Scots wanted their own ship my response would have been “Huh, fucking typical”.
When I heard that Northern Ireland was still around in the 29th century, my response was Beat that Star Trek!
Heck of a lot better than Peter Hamilton’s view of the Irish at least…
He does seem to have sex. Most recently with Elizabeth I, apparently.
No, he’s getting older: he just looks younger. Plus, of course, he’s an alien. Might make it difficult to judge what he would find a turn-on. A skinny redhead in a sewage-soaked nightie wouldn’t necessarily do it for him, even discounting the obvious age difference.
I’m not sure if I liked that one.
It felt really old school, and a little bit Sarah Jane Adventures to me.
There was only one star whale. Therefore only one ship. And therefore, no Scotland.
Sorry about that.
If it’s any consolation, no any other countries other than England either. Bit of a shame, I really liked Scotland.
The other nations including Scotland had already built real working ships and left the Earth. When the star whale came, the english were the only ones left, as for some reason they couldn’t get a ship working.
Right. They never explained why England was the only nation who couldn’t get their shit together (or why nobody was able to aid England).
I liked it, but the “smilies” felt way too gratuitous to me. I actually hope we don’t have standard Moffat creepy monsters every episode.
They had a working engine. But riding the space whale moved them faster.
The Doctor Who Confidential was better this time. They showed the slide tube the actors used dropping into the creature. It was almost like a carnival slide. Karen Gillan is a very funny and wacky personality. Matt Smith and her get on really well.
I didn’t like it.
I’m still happy with Matt Smith and the companion but the story was really poor, in my opinion. I felt that it lacked rhythm, was too emotionally manipulative and wasn’t all that well thought out.[ul][li]Why did the UK need the whale if the other nations didn’t?[/li][li]Why did they have to keep it a secret?[/li][li]How does a police state follow from keeping the whale a secret?[/li][li]Why feed people to the whale?[/li][li]Why try to feed it children if it won’t eat them?[/li][li]Why try to scare the children before trying to kill them?[/li][li]Why torture the creature to go faster if they weren’t going anywhere in particular? What’s the rush, even if they were?[/li][li]Were they going anywhere in particular? If so, where?[/li][li]In fact, if the ship is already moving, why keep the engines running? The ship didn’t seem to be accelerating, so why would the Doctor find it strange the engines weren’t vibrating?[/li][li]How fast were they going?[/li][li]What’s up with the smilers? (other than gratuitous creepiness) Why not just have cops or something?[/li][li]Why were they emulating 20th century Britain?[/li][li]Are we really supposed to believe no one chose to protest and remember?[/li][li]Why was that kid acting like a zombie near the end?[/li][li]Why would the Doctor kill the whale instead of seeing if he could fix or build engines or even evacuating all the people on the TARDIS?[/li][li]Are we supposed to believe everybody had had their lives extended?[/li][li]Why did the whale have teeth? Why were they so small? Why wasn’t there a vacuum in its mouth? Why weren’t the Doctor and Amy vomited into space?[/li][/ul]
Maybe I missed the answers to some of these questions in the episode, but not to all of them, yet they all seem like pretty basic questions to me. Also, I didn’t like the Queen, found the smiler design stupid and also that the whole thing was way too rushed. The Queen was needlessly mysterious and secretive and her gun-slinging was ludicrous. The parallel between the Doctor and the space whale was so heavy handed it brought to mind the worst excesses of Russel and the climax was cheaply sentimental.
On the other hand, I also liked “basically, I rule”, “looking for an escaped fish”, “this isn’t going to be big on dignity” and the phone call at the end. The trailer for the next episode was awesome (though I have to say: Daleks again?). Plus, I sympathize with the Doctor’s anger at Amy; if she didn’t even remember what she had done it was only because she had consciously chosen to forget and to withhold information from him.
I have to agree with vdg881. Most of his points occurred to me too.
And: the Ninth Doctor’s second story was set on a spaceship in the future orbiting the Earth.
The Tenth Doctor’s second story was on a future second Earth.
And now the Eleventh Doctor’s second story was set on a UK Spaceship in the future.
Isn’t that just the series set-up? Beginning ep, future, past, two parter? Or something?
Thoughts on the episode when I feel more coherent.
It’s her native Inverness accent - a lot of Highlanders have similar soft accents.