Doctor Who Episodes

Maybe I'm spoiled with Moffats great episodes, where the intrigue is clever and solid, but Steve Thompsons The Curse of the Black Spot made me question why I was watching Doctor Who at all (so naturally I come to 4chan to whine, because I know that you all care very much). It was clear that it was a filler episode even before Wikipedia confirmed it (as it was previous scheduled as the ninth episode, but later easily moved) but very sloppily(?) done.

There was nothing wrong with the basic premise, but the line is crossed when the Doctor "invents" that parallell universes can be linked through reflective surfaces. I'm not a nerd boy expecting everything to be canon, but this was handwaving a solution: "X can be a portal to alien spaceships sometimes."

The Doctor previously mentioned that the myth about sirens was persistent for a valid reason, so this implies that derelict spaceships ROUTINELY seeks out ships at sea with reflective surfaces to project their holographic medical AIs through. The alternative is that... ...the ships somehow crashed into eachother for some reason? ...and the boy infected them with typhoid fever? This is never explained, and yet this is most likely an obvious filler that will never be referred back to or explained further.

...but all these insane things doesn't compare to the finale, where they find Rory strapped to a medical table, because he's been kept alive so that he doesn't drown. His condition is easy to cure: His lungs are filled with water. I can understand that the ship doesn't know how to cure him, but the Doctor is known for his TREMENDOUS skills with alien computers, so this is where he should point his sonic screwdriver to the ships medical bank and explain to it that fluid doesn't belong in human lungs. Alternatively they could manually resusitate his heart and lungs while he's being kept alive.

Instead we have yet another cliché lifesaving scene where Rory magically gets better once Amy has stopped breaking his ribs, all because the series wants to explain to the viewers that she loves him and that he matters. It's so cliché and horribly contrived that what this scene does, is making Rory into an annoying burden.

The Girl Who Waited

While the basic premise of this episode - that one character is trapped in a time-stream moving at another speed - was good, the rest consisted of the stereotypical running from the weekly monster (although this monster wasn't entirely thoughtless), completely unbelievable technobabble handwaving, and strungout emotional scenes (where Amy and Rory loves eachother so much that they can even break time). The latter two was completely put in charge of the episode, resulting in a complete mess of a plot.

This is the second time with this doctor that we see that growing old makes you spiteful and resentful (if not crazy and homocidal) towards the one you used to love, which is kind of weird, because before these two times Amy was introduced as (quote) "the girl who waited" for the doctor most of her life, and Rory even waited for THOUSANDS of years, fuel by his timeless love for Amy.

The worst was probably the blatant technobabble which explained nothing except for the "sleep touch" of the weekly monster, who was paradoxically humanoid in shape, yet still inhuman in function, with hands for eyes and eyes for hands for no apparent reason, as its main alien feature.

Other bizarre features was an alien planet never having encountered human viruses, but still having Disneyland amusement rides, a virus that could kill with 24 hours OUTSIDE of compressed time (If you want to slow down a virus, put the infected in a SLOWER timestream, to PRESERVE them.) and a disease that would survive without any infected (prior to Amys arrival there).

In the end the doctor makes the choice to KILL somebody (although exactly WHO he leaves to another), which is something that he in a previous incarnation said would not make him "The Doctor" anymore. The value of this persons life was the very core of the episode, but the doctor still couldn't figure out a solution other than murder, and this for somebody who managed to give River Song a decent future in a virtual world.

The episode might have been a mess, but it still had more depth and maturity than the previous episode, and the special effects were never lacking.

What is a little disturbing is that it is declared that a person who is devious and unpredictable enough can pretty easily change his own fate just through wishing it and some random technobabble, which gives the doctor a free ticket out of his own death scene at the future season finale.

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No sense would make that post.

The God Complex

I know that I've reserved this comment for Moffat episodes only, but I liked this episode. It even went as far as furthering the overarching plot toward the end, which is extraordinary for non-Moffat episodes.
The mechanics for the episode is simple: The monster of the week feeds on people, the protagonists misunderstand it, and when the Doctor finally understands it, he can prevent it.

There are so many things I liked about this episode: The Doctor meets a replacement, the Doctor gets really upset when she dies, there's an angel cameo, the friendly alien has some intriguing beliefs, and the drama is being kept sweet but still short and to the point.

There are some problems, though:
- Out of every environment in the whole universe, the aliens set it to an 80s HUMAN hotel lobby (no doubt to meet the budget cuts enforced by the previous expensive episodes scenery).
- Out of everyone there, only ONE person is an alien, despite it hovering over that aliens home planet.
- This is also the second time in a row where the Doctor kills (starves to death) an alien even though he claims to feel sorry for it. Surely there's some fish somewhere in the universe full of sustenance for the creature, but no, it turns into a euthenasia scene instead.
- I also think it's weird that Amy let the Doctor go that easily, as the reason they embarked with him in the first place was to save him from his own death.
- Also, I kind of don't buy that Amy would lose faith in the Doctor that easily and that quickly. It was necessary but contrived.

...but overall I enjoyed this episode none the less.