My Favourite Peruvian Folk Band

Okay, okay, I know that I have missed a week and failed to post up a review of the Vampires of Venice. It is coming soon I promise, but first I wanted to get my thoughts about the latest episode that aired at the weekend, Amy’s Choice. And in the words of the Doctor himself… this is going to be a tricky one. Events kicked off with a very Jam and Jerusalem opening. There was rolling countryside, picture postcard cottages, free-range geese and sit-up-and-beg push bikes. There was even a distracting Miss Ellie-style soft focus shot of the very pregnant Amy, while she baked her cakes (which sounds like a euphamism but isn’t). It was

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Tags: Amy's choice, Arthur Darvill, Doctor Who, Dream Lord, Karen Gillan, Leadworth, Matt Smith, Simon Nye, TARDIS, Time-Lord, Toby Jones

Someone Looking At You

So, where were we again? Oh, yes, everybody jump. The art of the cliffhanger in new Doctor Who is always a challenge but Steven Moffat has had a couple of cracks at it already (cracks… geddit?!). Firstly, in 2005’s Empty Child and secondly in the Silence In The Library, so it was with some anticipation that I tried to work out what the gun-firing thing was all about as I looked forward to last night’s Flesh And Stone. I have to admit the resolution was a really nice touch, even the little bit of technobabble about the updraft can be easily forgiven. It was the first of many nice touches in what might well become one of my favourite Who stories. It turned out that

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Tags: Amy Pond, Flesh and Stone, Karen Gillan, Matt Smith, Steven-Moffat, The-Doctor, Weeping Angels

Angels With Dirty Faces

Well, if last week’s return of the Daleks wasn’t quite the unmitigated success that everyone had hoped for, then this week’s installment saw two returns for the price of one but the question was, could they live up to the hype? The answer: a resounding “Yes” and the pre-credit sequence alone was worth the price of admission. First up, and making the most memorable of returns was Alex Kingston, clearly having a whale of a time repising her role as the Doctor’s bickering future “love interest”, River Song. Not qualified as a professor yet, this version of Song was obviously younger than the one we saw at the end of her real-world life in The Forest of the Dead two years ago. Devising an ingenious escape from a starliner

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Tags: Alex Kingston, Doctor Who, Karen Gillan, Matt Smith, River Song, Steven-Moffat, TARDIS, Time Of The Angels

Prime Minister In His Sights

Our heroes are summoned to blitz-torn London by none other than Winston Churchill who, concerned about his new found “Ironsides” that were helping the war effort, decided to call upon his old friend, the Doctor to give a little support. I loved the way that Churchill and the Doctor had the bond formed already off-screen and the way that the PM had the ability to call the TARDIS directly. It was a clever little device that allowed the rather wonderful Ian McNiece and Matt Smith to side-step a whole bunch of exposition and get straight down to buiness. However, after the phone call and in another example of the Doctor not quite getting his timing right, he arrives a whole month later, by which time Churchill

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Tags: Churchill, Daleks, Karen Gillan, Mark-Gatiss, Matt Smith, Steven-Moffat, Victory of the Daleks, WWII

Basically, I Rule!

So, The Beast Below should have been The Moff’s difficult second album. We appear superficially at any rate to be following a familiar formula. Like “Rose”, “End Of The World” and “The Unquiet Dead” at the start of the RTD era, here we get “Eleventh Hour” as the contemporary companion introduction, “The Beast Below” as the trip in to the far future, and next week’s “Victory of the Daleks” as the trip in to the past, this time set in WWII (and, I think coincidentally, penned by Mark Gatiss too). On the principles that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery coupled with the fact that if ain’t broke don’t fix it, I think it’s a perfectly fine path to tread. However, other than a gentle nod to the penultimate scene in The End of the World,

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Tags: Beast Below, Doctor Who, Karen Gillan, Modern Drama, Sophie Okenedo, Starship UK, Steven-Moffat, The-Doctor

In Case You Missed My Radio Debut

Thanks to Martin for providing the file. An excerpt from the mighty Victoria Derbyshire’s BBC Radio 5Live show, in which I phone in to give them my two cents about the debut of Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Steven Moffat’s “Eleventh Hour”. [P.S. Hope this works, never uploaded an audio file before]

Reviewing Doctor Who

As if you needed reminding, episode 2, “Beast Below”, is on in a couple of hour’s time.

Tags: 5live, BBC, Victoria Wood