(780) The Girl Who Waited

The Girl Who Waited is one of the strongest stories of the series in my opinion and easily the strongest story of this half of the series. When I saw this episode on September 10^th 2011, I came to the immediate conclusion that this was the best episode that Karen Gillan had been in. The Doctor doesn’t feature in the episode very much so this allows Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill to shine. I have commented on how Rory has felt like a spare part in recent episodes but this is corrected in this episode.

The Doctor and Rory are separated from Amy before the titles have even played. Even by Doctor Who standards this is quick and its slightly eye rolling because it does seem a bit silly. That is perhaps the only aspect of the episode that doesn’t work. The rest of it is light on special effects but heavy on character development. Amy is literally the girl who waited as her time stream is faster than the Doctor’s and Rory’s.

Rory has to search for Amy and after a while finds older Amy. I was really impressed with the older Amy. Older Amy has become quite the aggressive individual and Gillan does a good job in making older Amy seem very different from the Amy at the beginning of the episode, she doesn’t like the Doctor and has become bitter because of the 36 years she was on her own. One of the best scenes for Gillan is Younger Amy is talking to Older Amy and Younger Amy is trying to convince the older version to help change her history. This episode should really have been called Rory’s Choice because he is the one that makes the decision.

I never realised that Imelda Staunton played the voice of the Interface. It’s a shame that she didn’t get a physical role for the story but it’s the same thing as with Michael Sheen in The Doctor’s Wife. Even though he isn’t in the story that much, I thought that Matt Smith was still quite good and the Doctor deals with Amy’s anger quite well. It seemed the Doctor and Rory got on better in this episode than ever before.

This is the first story from Tom McRae since 2006’s Cyberman two-parter and I think that this is far better because it’s tighter in narrative terms and also doesn’t carry the burden of having a classic monster in it. McRae deals with the three strong characters really well and seems to thrive from the lack of supporting characters. The direction was also something that worked quite well and Nick Hurran used the sets quite well.

This was a superb episode that had some superb performances and this shows how good the show can be and bearing in mind that it’s a cheap episode it makes the story even more impressive. The NEXT TIME trailer reminds me that there is another great episode coming up. This is one of the best Matt Smith stories and the dark tone of the series continues but I must admit that I would like the serious tone of the series to subside a bit but not too much.

(716) The Age of Steel

Todays episode pretty much hits the ground running with the Doctor, Rose, Mickey, Ricky and the bloke from Blue Peter run into the getaway van. The scene that follows show that Pete Tyler has been feeding information to Ricky. Ricky’s death was somewhat inevitable and this means that Mickey has to step into his shoes which bearing in mind what he has done since his first appearance

Lumic goes from being in his chair to being the Cyber Controller. His reluctance is perhaps ironic. When the Cyber Controller appears the chair is something that doesn’t look dissimilar to the throne in Game of Thrones. It’s over the top and just looks a little bit naff. The design of the Controller is rather good because you can see its brain and also its eyes are lit up.

I found Mrs Moore to be quite nice in this episode and thought that she could easily have become a companion. Her death is one that I didn’t see coming and her best scene comes when she and the Doctor examine the Cyberman that the just killed. The Cyberman’s name is Sally and she was getting married which just made the horror of what was going on even worse. This slant of the character is something that had never really been examined before.

The way that the Cybermen are defeated is having their emotional inhibiters disabled and can see what they have become thus causing them to feel pain. It’s a great way of defeating the Cybermen because it forces them to deal with the thing that they can’t deal with. The Cyber Controller tries to catch the Doctor after he has climbed up a ladder on a zeppelin. Only in Doctor Who would you have a scene that involves a Cyber Controller and a Zeppelin.  

What makes the Cybermen’s plan seem plausible is because there are so many Cybermen on screen. The best thing about new Who is that there isn’t three Cybermen or three Daleks to invade somewhere. In this story there are hundreds of them and it really adds to the effect. The visual effects to realise the machines used to convert people is very good and again this adds to the effect of something truly horrible being created.

The performances from the regulars have been mixed. I haven’t found Billie Piper to be as annoying as she was in yesterdays episode but this selfish streak that there seems to be in the Rose character is something that has only now come to my attention or at least becoming something that has bothered me. David Tennant has run around these two episodes in his usual manner but his big scene with the Cyber Controller was arguably his strongest. Noel Clarke’s final scene is really good. He decides to stay because his Nan is alive and he thinks that he is more useful than he would be back home. He knows that he will never be able to compete with the Doctor for Rose’s affection. I think that Mickey would have been better served if this had been his last story because this scene was just right in terms of performance and dialogue.

These two episodes have shown that despite it being 21 years since he last directed a Doctor Who, Graeme Harper has lost any of his ability to direct a great story. The Cybermen’s return has been a good one with a story that has restore some of the shine to the Cybermen after some of the rust that has affected the steel monsters. This is one of the strongest Cybermen stories since Attack of the Cybermen and in the ratings I give these stories this comes out better than The Invasion with this two parter getting an average score of 7.78 and Invasion getting 7.74. In reality I would say that Invasion is slightly better but that average score is over eight episodes whereas Rise of the Cybermen and Age of Steel are just two episodes so its not fair to compare them. Now the Cybermen and Mickey are out of the way, the series can settle back down and go back to 1952.

(715) Rise of the Cybermen

Rise of the Cybermen marks the return of the Zygons. Of course it doesn’t but if I have ended that sentence with Cybermen then you would have been thinking duh!!. This episode was originally aired in the 40^th anniversary year since they made their first appearance on the show. It’s fair to say that the Cybermen have often been the unwanted child of Doctor Who. Whilst everyone was obsessed with the Daleks, the Cybermen were often overlooked and it’s bizarre when you think of the stories that they appeared in during the Troughton era. Ok so there were a couple of dodgy stories, but on the whole they have been very good. This story also sees Graeme Harper return to the show making him the only writer/director from the classic era to have contributed to the new series.

John Lumic is the creator of the Cybermen in this story and like Davros he is in a wheelchair although this was due to an accident that Roger Lloyd-Pack had just before filming. It is a bit of serendipity.  The pre-title scene shows how he has the same scruples that Davros has.

Mickey’s poor treatment really shows why he wasn’t long for this show. The Doctor and Rose are giggling to themselves at the fact that Mickey has been pressing a button for 29 minutes longer than he needed to. The Doctor, Mickey and Rose arrive on a parallel world and within a minute I was starting to get irritated. The moment when Rose realises that her dad is alive she goes into selfish mode. Even though its not really her dad it doesn’t stop her at all and I just wish that she had run off into the distance and never come back. The Doctor says to her that Jackie and Pete might have their own Rose and they do but it’s a dog and that dog is less annoying than Rose the human.

There is a nice bit of continuity in this episode. The lorry that Mr Crane collects people up in is from International Electromatics which is the company that Tobias Vaughn was using a front in The Invasion.

Mickey’s exit starts when he goes to try and find his Nan who died in the real world. He goes off on his own little adventure when he is mistaken for Ricky. It’s quite fun when the two Noel Clarkes meet up. If you didn’t know what was going to happen when this happened then you really aren’t trying. Even I knew what was going to happen.

The design of the new Cybermen is very good. I like them because they look modern and the fact that they make a noise when they walk is something that should really have been done a long time ago. The big reveal is held off until the very end and it’s done in great style. I think that it’s one of the best build ups that the show has had since it returned. The Cybermen smashing through the glasses is a fantastic sight and Graeme Harper has done a great job in making the final few minutes of this episode some of the best since the show returned. The best thing about the design is the tear drop design on the eyes but I also like the voice and the blue light that appears when they talk.

This has been a really good episode with only Rose ruining it. The build up to the Cybermen making their first appearance in the episode is done well and the final few minutes are as I said before really good. I am looking to tomorrows episode because if it goes as well as todays then I think that this might be the best two parter since the show returned in 2005.