Doctor Who - The Eleventh Hour review

Written by Paul Cryer Sunday, 04 April 2010 14:58

"No TARDIS, No Screwdriver and 2 minutes to spare. Who da man!"

Doctor Who returned to our screens on April 3rd under the much anticipated control of Stephen Moffat, writer of many of the previous 4 seasons best episodes, plus a new Doctor and assistant. How does the first episode pan out then, as Moffat moves from writing a couple of episodes a season to doing the bulk of the work, can the quality hold up and will Matt Smith be at ease with the role and take over from the very popular David Tennant?

After a worrying sequence in which music bombastically screeches out of the screen and the Doctor hangs onto the TARDIS as it careers out of control over London, it settles into a very positive introduction, setup and post regeneration episode. The first segment of the episode is set 12 years prior to the bulk, with a young Amelia Pond who wakes up in the night and finds the TARDIS crashed in the garden. While a bit zany (all the food tasting), the scenes are very well acted by the young girl playing Amelia and Matt Smith already starts to grab you as the Doctor. You can tell immediately the direction of the episode, the writing and the music are less over the top and more structured and subtle.

We return to the episode 12 years later, the Doctor returning to Amelia as he has realised that there is an alien hiding in her house. He thinks it has been 5 minutes though and instead of a young girl he finds a twenty-something Amy, the older Ameila. The plot now unravels as your standard alien of Earth, Earth in serious danger plot with the Doctor to save the day. Luckily Moffat concerns himself primarily with introducing his new Doctor, a seemingly more confident, less up himself, less human race worshipping character with a god-complex he'd seemingly become over the last couple of seasons. Thankfully Smith is totally up to the job and the characters, right from the main leads to the bit part players are well written people, not caricatures. Amy Pond is shown to be a confident character herself, but thankfully she doesn't immediately worship at the feet of the Doctor, instead not believing him at the start and not being pushed round by him at all. I'm interested to see how Moffat and the writing team, plus Karen Gillan plan to evolve the character over the season, she is an interesting character with room for growth and room for the relationship to expand into one of the best Doctor/Assistant pair ups as they immediately seem to compliment each other in this episode.

So what doesn't work in the episode. First up the new titles and theme music are terrible. Really, really terrible. Perhaps they'll grow on us but my initial thoughts were what the hell were they thinking! The CG budget seems to have disappeared, it really was a poor looking CG creature.I expect it has been held over the bigger episodes later in the season if the extended trailer is anything to go by.

However, it appears the show has had a behind the scenes upgrade, new camera and digital editing gear? The shows cinematography and colourisation/grading was brilliant and looked beautiful. The new TARDIS interior looks extremely cool (baring the giant glass dildo central column!) and retro as well.

Now, admittedly, I've tried to wipe End Of Time from my memory, but did they wipe out humans knowing about aliens. In this episode there seems to be a bit of an 'aliens, what?' and 'never heard of the Doctor' vibe, though it is never pointed out directly. Also, no U.N.I.T in the meeting of the minds about the alien threat and again, no one seemingly knowing of the Doctor. By the end of RTD reign, everyone seemed to know about him and aliens.

Oh and finally, I loved the little end scene with the 'ragidy Doctor and Ameila' dolls, cartoons and drawings, superb!

Overall then the episode may not have the greatest plot, but it suffices and at least isn't an OTT, campy, clunky mess. The episodes main role, to introduce a new Doctor and Assistant is spot on and the two leads show some great chemistry together already. Matts portrayal of the Doctor is already extremely good, while looking and being young, he portrays a wise and older head on the shoulders type. I also loved the humour in the episode, it was genuinely funny, unforced and fit the episode. Can't wait for the rest of the season.

Rating - 8/10

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