Written By: Neil Cross
Directed By: Farren Blackburn
The Story: The Doctor takes Clara “somewhere awesome” – an alien culture situated upon the rings of Akhaten, a culture that worships a powerful mummified god…
The Verdict: LUTHER creator and writer Neil Cross makes his DOCTOR WHO debut this week, with a big and bold space opera that just happens to be full of…ahem…opera!
OK, it actually isn’t opera. But boy, there’s a lot of singing this week! And a heck of a lot of aliens too. In fact, a lot of the strength of this week’s episode lies in the marvellous alien market scenes, which showcase some fine work from Neill Gorton and the team at Millennium FX. The Mummified ‘Grandfather’ and the Vigil in particular are visually superb creations, and will hopefully have younger viewers scurrying for a sofa to hide behind.
But for a story about the power of stories, memories and songs, sadly the main plot this week is a bit flat. It takes 20 minutes before anything much actually happens, and even then, we don’t get a many explanations as we’d like (for example, what happened to the guy who teleported out of the pyramid? Why was he suddenly a villain?). There’s plenty of fun to be had exploring a totally alien culture for once (this week is probably the most ‘alien’ story the rebooted series has done since it returned in 2005), but the main threat of the episode takes way too long to even turn up, making for a very slow and painfully padded episode. The sheer amount of singing also grates after a while, to the point that it almost looks like the Doctor himself is about to burst into a verse or two. The climax of the episode is a super song filled cheese fest, complete with singing aliens, which is…erm…different, we guess
Still, if you’ve been waiting for the show to do a BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and go all West End musical, this one will satisfy your cravings…at least until next week, which will probably have dancing Ice Warriors and a breakdancing contest between the Doctor and Liam Cunningham (actually, that sounds great)!
Best Bit: The Alien Market scenes, as mentioned earlier, are just wonderful to look at, and a sheer triumph for the prosthetics team. Look closely – you won’t spot a single recycled alien in the bunch. Not even a Hoix!
Star Performance: Matt Smith delivers a powerful and heart wrenching speech this week, as he takes on the parasite by sacrificing his memories! A simply stunning scene, and one of the Eleventh Doctor’s finest moments in our opinion!
Best Line(s):
The Doctor: “There’s one thing you need to know about travelling with me. We never walk away”.
THN’s Doctor Who Series Blog returns next Saturday.
Dan Bullock
Apr 7, 2013 at 9:33 pm
Think I liked this a bit more than you, sir!
Found it quite a beautiful episode, with lots of revolving undertones of story.
I’ve also noticed that the Doctor always leaves his new assistant on their first proper full episodes as he did in the market in this one. One more thing, no reviews have mentioned the ‘granddaughter’ line!
Matthew Dennis
Apr 8, 2013 at 1:35 am
Loved the Grandaughter line!