He looks like a slimmed down Robbie Coltrane in Cracker, and talks like Mike Myers’ Shrek.

I never realised quite how Scottish Moffat actually is.

I watched Dr Who Confidential for the first time tonight. It is HILARIOUS! The first time he spoke, I thought it was a joke. He’s the most Scottish man I’ve ever heard. Even stereotypical Soctsmen have less Burr than that. Amy Pond’s accent is the sexy Scottish Edith Bowman style Scotland, the Scotland of Lochs and mist, and Edinburgh castle. Moffat, good Lord, he’s William Wallace and MacBeth. And the Loch Ness Monster, and Burns Night. Gosh. He’s so very Scottish.

If that threatens to overshadow this episode so be it, but I don’t think that it will. I can already imagine what will overshadow everything else here though. I can hear the screaming reaction to it. Right now, the Internet is ablaze with vitriolic fire. Fandom is tearing itself in two. Welcome, to Kissgate.

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This week we see the return of one of the best things to have come out of Season Two with the reappearance of the Gravity Globes, previously seen in ‘Impossible Planet’ and ‘Satan Pit’.

I for one was disappointed. Disappointed at the lack of merchandising opportunities, and disappointed that there was only a single new type of villain, instead of a range of plausibly primary-colour-coded ones.

This episode was rubbish, wasn’t it? All that build up and suspense. This wasn’t the Doctor Who I enjoy. Where was all the bad CGI? Almost nothing exploded. Nobody really got a chance to shoot anything. It was all about building character, and frankly, who wants that nonsense. No, it’s just too bad. I want more explosions. This episode needed at least 34 more, and it needed to be faster.

Where was Murray Gold? Was he out of the studio when the soundtrack was recorded? Too quiet this was, no brass bands at all. And it needed to cut around more. Drop all the talking, shoot something. Make River Song into a 100 foot robot of death, and make the Angels fly. And give them laser eyes, and an axe that’s also chainsaw, and the soldiers should have the Holy Grail and be super soldiers, who kill you with fire breath.

Now turn all this into a sugar rich energy drink and inject it into my eyeballs because it took too long for me to get to the end and then the only thing that got shot and blew up was a light that looked like a watermelon, and it looks like it won’t cover everything in napalm goo, just blue paint.*

Oh Doctor Who. Sometimes you can be so surprising. You’re a fickle show. One week you’re ‘Victory of the Daleks’. And the next you’re … well, ‘Time of Angels’.

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‘In front of you are two buttons. One is marked ‘Remember’ and the other ‘forget’’.

This is an episode of Dr Who which I spent the majority of reminding myself wasn’t actually a ‘choose your own adventure’ book. I felt like at any moment I might have to turn to page 131. Worse, at one point I tried to roll for initiative to see if the Doctor was taken captive by a smiler, or whether i failed my skills check on pressing remember (I did).

Indeed, it may as well have started with “This episode of Doctor Who was brought to you by the letters C, H and OICE”.

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What did the team think of “The Eleventh Hour”? Caleb and Swithun’s opinions are currently in the podcast editing suite, but first, our very own James Willetts clocks in with his review!

I’ve rechristened it. From now on I will only be referring to Doctor Who as Doctor WOW.

So, the Doctor is back, and with it comes a whole new cast and mindset. To the hardcore fans it was always going to be either a solid hit or a total let down. It seems like years since we found out that Moffat, for most people the best writer of New Who, would be taking the reins for the 5th Season. With great expectation can come great disappointment, with the outcome being a deflated script and the usual fare, a soggy insubstantial wafer, the water biscuit of television.

So it comes as a real pleasure to be presented with an effulgent feast, a bacchanalian celebration of the Doctor and the best set up to a relaunched series for an age.

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