River Song’s identity is finally revealed as ‘A Good Man Goes To War’! The Doctor and the Last Centurion, otherwise known as Rory Williams, husband to a kidnapped wife, father to an abducted daughter, go chasing after Amy and Melody Pond.
Find out what we thought of the latest developments in the Moffat Master Plan in our commentary!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:18 — 33.5MB)
Join us as we discuss ‘The Almost People’s’ many twists and turns, as the Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory attempt to escape the island and bring peace between humans and flesh, and face some startling discoveries of their own. We discuss everything from Roman Rory through to Moffat’s alleged sexism, and of course, that cliffhanger!
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James Willetts reviews the twists and turns of ‘The Almost People’. Let us know what you think in the comments below. Don’t forget to download our commentary!
Cliffhangers seems to be the Doctor Who stock in trade these days, being dropped into episodes whether they make sense or not. Gone are the days when a cliffhanger ending meant an impending disaster to be resolved though, because these are more about setting up the next episode.
I’ve got mixed feelings about this week’s episode. On the one hand, I wasn’t at all a fan. It felt more like a slight miss than a big one and it never felt like a total disaster along the lines of ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’. It’s a big drop off from the greatness of the last few episodes. Yet at the same time this episode lives on unfairly thanks to another game-changing coda, presumably written by Moffat, that undoes much of what we thought we knew about the series so far and completely rewrites the Doctor’s motivation for this two-parter. Continue reading
Join us as we discuss ‘The Rebel Flesh’, in which the Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory encounter a solar tsunami, acid mining, programmable matter and renegade dopplegangers!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:57 — 38.4MB)
What did you think of the episode? Double delight or pale imitation? Don’t forget to check out James’s review, and let us know what you think in the comments below!
James Willetts shares his thoughts on ‘The Rebel Flesh’ – our commentary will follow shortly is now online. Let us know what you think in the comments!
As we kick off the second of this season’s two-parters, it’s great to be able to say that this was a good episode. I feel it’s necessary because the last time we got to this point in the season, last year’s Silurian double-feature The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, I ended up giving up on what had been to that point an uneven start to the series. To say this has been the strongest New Who run ever is now surely a moot point. Further than that though, this episode means we’re now in the almost unprecedented position of having five straight episodes without a single stinker is more contentious but no less of an achievement. For the first time it feels like this is the programme that I have been waiting for Doctor Who to become.
Post-Industrial, low paid workers in peril is a recurring Doctor Who theme, as seen in Waters of Mars, 42 and The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit. Matthew Graham, this week’s writer, has fortunately managed to remove the majority of what made those episodes uniformly terrible, and in their place has crafted an excellent storyline with an interesting new monster.
Wasn’t that astonishingly, astoundingly fab?
It must be noted, before I continue, that I have long been an ardent admirer of Neil Gaiman’s work. That’s not because I’m worried about the Johnny-Come-Latelies hijacking the Gaiman bandwagon. He’s too big for this to be a break out piece of work. Instead, I need to say that because this review will be so gushing, so enthusiastic and so pro-Gaiman that anyone would think I had gone into this with low expectations and been surprised by an unknown and unexpected quantity.
So let it be noted that this is not the case. I am well aware of Neil Gaiman’s talent. He can be directly credited with my love of comics (in the same way that without A New Hope I wouldn’t love Film, without Sandman I would never have discovered, or grown to love, comics). His writing, especially his children’s books and short story collections, is wonderful and his blog is brilliant. I love the films he has been involved with, whether as writer (Mirrormask), translator (Princess Mononoke) or as creator (Coraline, Stardust). He is one of my favourite authors, and I would purchase anything and everything he puts out.