By ^o^CORVUS^o^

“Meet me back here in half an hour.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“What I always do, stay out of trouble…badly.”
“So is this how it works, Doctor? You never interfere in the affairs of other peoples or planets, unless there’s children crying?”
“Yes.”

So, thanks to “The Eleventh Hour” we’ve gotten all the key introductory items out of the way. We’ve met the new Doctor and his new companion, Amy Pond. We’ve met the “new” TARDIS, established that Amy is possibly running from her pending wedding, and that there’s a vague menace lurking in the background that is heralded by a “crack” in the universe.

Now can move onwards, with the focus more firmly on storytelling. So let’s see how it goes his time out, shall we?

The Story…

In “The Eleventh Hour”, the Eleventh Doctor was “still cooking” through most of the adventure, and it was displayed in both his ragged appearance, and his uncertainty, and this persisted until he had exposed Prisoner Zero and faced down the Atraxi with renewed confidence and fresh clothes. This time out, he’s done baking and he’s rip-roaringly ready for a new adventure.

The opener establishes a nice sense of menace, as we zoom in on the Starship UK just as a bell sounds the end of the school day, and a very calm but flat voice tells each child that they’ve done well before leaving the classroom. However, one boy, Timmy, sits it his desk looking pensive, while his friend Mandy looks back at him with concern. Reluctantly, Timmy gets up and as Mandy leaves, the flat voice is revealed to come from a wooden figure sitting inside a booth by the door. It announces that Timmy had been a “bad boy”, because he scored a zero for the day (on an exam, or an assignment, it’s not made clear but it really doesn’t matter). Its carved head displays a beatific smile, but the head then rotates to reveal a disapproving frown.

Mandy tells Timmy that because he got a zero he’d have to walk home, and that he knows he can’t take the ‘vator or else he’d “get sent below”, and that she’d wait for him. Timmy doesn’t heed this advice, and instead boards the next available “vator”. This is soon revealed to be a bad idea, as it contains a booth with another “smiler” inside, which soon signals its displeasure as a little girl appears upon a screen within the vator, and starts to recite a rather ominous rhyme. The vator suddenly surges down, the floor opens up to reveal a chasm beneath, glowing red and hot, and as Timmy screams and pitches forward, the smiler turns again to reveal an enraged, snarling visage.

Once again, Moffat takes something rather mundane and makes it frightening. Granted, it doesn’t take much to make a school-day upsetting for a child: a bad grade and disapproving adults are something pretty much every child can identify with, and in this fashion its a very good hook. Soon, the Doctor and Amy arrive, and it doesn’t take the Doctor long to realize that there’s something rotten behind the civil facade of the 29th century Starship UK, and its not some alien menace. No, its what may be the single, greatest enemy we humans face every day, and one we seem unable to beat: willful blindness.

We also get a nice continuity reference that hearkens back to season 12, when Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor finds an Earth that had been abandoned due to solar flares, and humanity stored away within the Space Station Nerva. Here’ we find another group of human beings who also fled the Earth in the wake of the Solar Flares. A very nice way to reference established events from the classic series, without beating the viewer over the head with it.

The plot is stronger this time around, and we get to see the new Doctor get to work, and we also get to see how Amy handles things away from his influence. As such, we get to know more about them both, and in this way it hearkens back a bit to “The End of the World“, when the Doctor and Rose got separated and had their own mini-adventures that were a part of the overall narrative. Once separated from the Doctor, Amy finds out the truth behind the facade, within a voting booth of all things. She is told beforehand that she’ll do so, and that she will likely choose to forget in the end. This hints at a particularly unsettling answer to the mystery, and Amy does indeed choose to forget what she had learned. Spooky. For his part, the Doctor meets a mysterious woman hiding behind a porcelain mask, and discovers that the massive vessel has no engines at all, and yet is still fully powered and traveling through space.

It doesn’t take them long to rejoin one-another, and then tackle the mystery as a team, getting rather sticky and messy (literally) in the process. The Doctor, naturally, susses out the mystery and is appalled by it. Worse, he’s faced with an impossible choice, and is very cross with Amy because she had chosen to protect him by forgetting what she had learned in an attempt to keep him from having to make said choice. Resigned and disheartened, he decides to do “the worst thing” he’ll ever do, and wonders what he’ll become when he’s done with it. Amy, however, soon displays her remarkable insight, and makes another choice independent of the Doctor’s own actions. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, I don’t wish to spoil it for you, but in that case you probably shouldn’t be reading this review anyway, should you?

The resolution to the dilemma pleased me, and the whole thing made me a bit misty-eyed, but then I’m a big softie. I still get misty when the Ant dies in “Honey, I Shrunk The Kids“, so I don’t know how much weight that statement holds.

Another thing that pleased me was a reference to the Last Great Time War, specifically the stated intent to move past that event and leave it in the past. Amy finds out, in a rather organic fashion really, that the Doctor may look human, but that he’s actually a Time Lord. When asked about others of his kind, he mentions that there were, but now there’s just him. He goes on to say that he’d rather forget about it, but that he doesn’t and never will. Amy respects his feelings on the matter and lets the issue drop, but she doesn’t forget it either, nor what it says about him as a person.

This was something many of us were hoping for: putting the Time War behind us in the form of the Doctor putting it behind HIM. It shows that its not forgotten, but that we probably won’t hear about it again anytime soon, and we don’t need to. Everything that ever needed to be said about that horrific conflict was said during the RTD era, and that its time to move on and leave it buried in the past. Bravo.

The Performances…

Once again, very, very solid. Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor is becoming very much his own man, and its become very clear just exactly why Moffat was sold on him, and why the initial trepidation about his age was crumpled up and tossed in the bin. Sure, he sold me in his initial outing last week, but that trust could have been undermined if he seemed too much like Tennant’s Doctor. Fortunately, Matt didn’t disappoint, and I enjoyed his performance even more this time around.

There were some moments were he reminded me of Patrick Troughton, specifically when he was in the TARDIS, describing the Starship UK to Amy, and his hands were clasped together, and his intertwined fingers were anything but completely still. That said, it didn’t seem forced at all, and I’ve noticed him doing the same thing in a few of his interviews and it seems to be an offshoot of something he sometimes does naturally when he’s talking. Even if it wasn’t, its so subtle that it doesn’t detract, and made for a warm reminder of that that beloved, kooky old-uncle of a Second Doctor that the Mighty Trout played so very well.

Oh yes, I also liked the neat little nod to the late Steve Irwin. Gorgeous!

Karen Gillan was once again very good as Amy Pond, and I’m really starting to like her a lot. We see more of her strong-willed nature and her ability to make choices on her own, and we also see just how insightful she is, and how connected she is to the Doctor already. But then “already” is misleading, since she first met him 14 years before, and a second time 2 years before the current events, and as such they have a rather profound connection as it is. Still, her insight into his nature was the catalyst for her choice in the episode’s climax, and she played it in a very honest, heartfelt manner. I’m really looking forward to seeing her continue to develop, and I really hope she stays with the Doctor for more than one series, because she’s a great character, and because she and Matt really work well together.

As for the guest stars, Hannah Sharp made for a sympathetic and brave child as Mandy, a girl who was sad and worried for her friend Timmy, and because of that she got caught up in the larger scheme of events. Terrance Hardiman was also good as Hawthorne, a man who was burdened by the truth and yet dedicated to his duty. And the big guest-role of Elizabeth the Tenth (aka Liz 10), was ably played by the lovely Sophie Okonedo. Liz was a big key to the goings-on in ways she didn’t suspect, and also a woman of action and principles, one who always acted in accordance to her nature, again and again (you’ll see what I mean if you haven’t already).

Getting Technical…

This episode was more effects-laden that the previous outing, and once again I felt the effects were strong, and really cemented the setting. Effects are only an issue for me when they detract from the story, and there were no such issues in that regard as far as I was concerned. I also liked the overall look and feel of the sets. The worn and aged appearance of the environment within the Starship UK was well-realized, and the design of the menacing, creepy Smilers was well done. I’m sure they had more than just a few kids seeking shelter between their fingers or behind the sofa.

Once again, I was impressed with Murray Gold’s scoring restraint, and the subtle differences between this season’s work and what he’d cooked up before. The music in the opening sequence segued into a bit of his old bombast, and would probably have had as much impact if he’d toned it down a touch, but it wasn’t bad. If he keeps this up, he may sway some former detractors. I was never one myself, as I mentioned in my last review, but I do indeed appreciate his slight change in approach.

Also, since last week, the new title sequence has grown on me. Its different, its fun, it has a bit of that “fairy-tale” air that Moffat wishes to convey, and I absolutely love the deep, vocal tones in the new theme that sounds just as the new logo flashes onto the screen. I hum along with that part every single time.

The Verdict…

The Verdict: Great!

A very good episode. While it was better, plot-wise, than the opener, it wasn’t so much better overall that I could rate it higher, since “The Eleventh Hour” was so very strong for a regeneration episode. That said, if this is the level of storytelling we can expect, then this is going to be a very fine season indeed. We had thrills, a mystery, a little action, and an ending that appeared to be heading towards tragedy and instead became heartwarming. That’s the stuff of some of the finest hours this show has produced, and as such, this one ranks very highly.