April 26: "The Time of Angels"

What's particularly impressive about "The Time of Angels" is that this is Matt Smith's first performance as the Doctor, production-wise, as like Christopher Eccleston he got a chance to simply play the Doctor before having to be introduced as him.  This is impressive because there's nothing here to suggest that Smith is in any way unsure of what he's doing or how to approach the character -- he is emphatically the Doctor, fully formed and ready to step in and save the day.

It helps, of course, that he's been given such a good script to work with.  This episode might strike Steven Moffat's best balance yet between flashy, quick-fire moments and longer scenes of slowly mounting dread, as both are on equal display here.  And so we get the bravado opening, with River trusting that the Doctor will rescue her from the Byzantium²¹⁵ (albeit after getting the message 12,000 years in the future) as she ejects herself into space -- but we also get the quiet moments in the Maze of the Dead, as the small exploration party nervously checks the shadows and all the statues for the Weeping Angel.  This leads to the frankly marvellous realization that all the statues are Weeping Angels that are slowly waking up, thanks to the radiation leaking from the crashed spaceship.

"The image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel." ("The Time of
Angels") ©BBC

But then this episode is full of clever moments like this.  There's the idea of how the image of an Angel becomes an Angel, which means that you can't even take a picture of them without it trying to kill you, and the related idea that Angels can essentially reproduce by placing the idea of themselves in your mind, done by looking into their eyes.  There's the fantastic throwaway mention of the last time the Doctor faced down the Angels, but "those were scavengers, barely surviving"; if the Angels in "Blink" were on the verge of death and able to do what they did, then what must an Angel in its prime be like?  The thought is terrifying.  And there's the horrifying yet fascinating use of Scared Bob's voice by the Angels to taunt the Doctor, to make it clear that the Doctor couldn't save him and therefore he won't be able to save the rest.

And we can't talk about this episode without mentioning River Song.  Alex Kingston turns in another fabulous job here, and the moments in the TARDIS are particularly fun, as they show a cheekier side to her before she has to join up with the Church's army and become the River we already know from her debut story.  There are some lovely gags about her knowing how to fly the TARDIS better than the Doctor and how museums are his way of keeping score, but what's particularly great is the chemistry between Alex Kingston and Matt Smith.  Smith chooses to play the Doctor as grumpy and bad-tempered, while Kingston goes for flirtatious.  It shouldn't really work, but it does because these are two actors who clearly already respect each other and are willing to give the scenes space.  It's also great how well they work together when things become serious (such as when Amy is trapped with the image of the Angel), putting aside any differences they might have to work as a well-oiled team.

There's frankly tons to adore about this episode (and it's only the first part!) -- it's put together so well that it remains compelling viewing even when you know the twists that are coming.  This is full of fabulous performances and wonderful imagery, with just the right amount of tension to keep you worried.  The final opinion will partially hinge on how well they can wrap this up next time, but as of right now it would be hard to find a better or more effective episode than what "The Time of Angels" accomplishes in its 45 minutes.







²¹⁵ This therefore being the crash of the Byzantium River mentions in "Silence in the Library".

April 25: "The Fall of the House of Gryffen" / "Jaws of Orthrus" / "Dream-Eaters" (K-9)

Three episodes of K-9 today, as I'm trying to maintain both series order and broadcast order.  For whatever reason "The Fall of the House of Gryffen" didn't air until 12 June 2009 (the same day as "The Lodger"), so I'm squeezing it in before the two episodes that did air the weekend of 17 April.

These three episodes continue the trend of being middling, mildly entertaining kid's fare.  "The Fall of the House of Gryffen" does a nice job of building up an effective, creepy atmosphere, as Gryffen's house is visited by the ghosts of his wife and children.  Only they're not ghosts, they're actually some sort of non-corporeal beings trying to take on physical form by leeching off of Jorjie and Darius, and who've taken on the form of Gryffen's family.  There's some surprisingly nifty work in this story -- the way the children fade out of existence, leaving an outline behind that also fades, is really nice, and the makeup on the "ghostly" family is genuinely impressive.  Countering that, however, is a plot which does spend a bit too much time having Jorjie and Darius being "helplessly" sucked into the portal created by the space-time manipulator while Gryffen comes to terms with the fact that this isn't actually his family, and that our three heroes in fact are his family now.  But this is a minor quibble, and despite the "laughing" end, this is a decent episode.

The Department deals with opposition to their plan to put
microchips in everyone. ("Jaws of Orthrus") ©Screen Australia,
Pacific Film and Television Commission Pty Limited, Park
Entertainment Limited, Cutting Edge Post Pty Limited, and Metal
Mutt Productions Pty Limited

The second episode of the day, "Jaws of Orthrus", is more interesting because it focuses more on K-9 and how Drake is a slimeball.  For some reason the Department seems surprised at the opposition to their plan to put chips in everyone (well, June seems surprised), although it's somewhat surprising that we don't see the CCPCs trying to shut the protest down.  Some of the signs are hilarious though -- my favorite is "We are human not humachine!"

But the actual focus of the episode is on K-9, who's seen trying to assassinate Drake.  They actually do a nice job with the question of whether K-9 did in fact go on the attack, and while there's not really any doubt in the audience's mind, they do keep the door open on the possibility, which is a nice touch.  The only issue is that the target of the attack was Drake, and while we probably all want to see him go, it's a pretty big hint that shenanigans are afoot.

Of course, the title is the clue: Drake's made a K-9 clone (under the codename "Operation Orthrus" -- Orthrus being the brother of Cerberus, hence the clue) so that he can get a warrant for the real K-9 and take him apart.  It's actually a clever idea, and leads to the hilarious moment of the fake K-9 shooting up Darius's beloved car Mariah and writing K9 WOZ 'ERE on the windscreen.  Sadly, we don't get the full K-9 vs K-9 shootout we should've, but there's a brief clash and I suppose that'll have to do.  So overall it's a reasonably entertaining episode, complete with Drake trying to sweet-talk Darius over to his side, and while it won't win any awards or anything, it's fun while it lasts.  Even Connor Van Vuuren's reined in his performance -- things must really be looking up.

Darius, Starkey, and Gryffen, wearing tinfoil hats to shield
themselves from psychic energy. ("Dream-Eaters") ©Screen
Australia, Pacific Film and Television Commission Pty Limited,
Park Entertainment Limited, Cutting Edge Post Pty Limited,
and Metal Mutt Productions Pty Limited

It's the last episode of the day, "Dream-Eaters", that might be the best, however.  This is almost like an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures, concerned as it is not with Drake's latest villainous scheme but instead with an alien artifact that's putting all of London (and possibly the world) to sleep.  Other than the really obvious studio backlot (with a shot of the London skyline stuck in the background), this looks pretty impressive as well, with the Bodach being a nice design.  Oh, and that's another parallel with The Sarah Jane Adventures/Doctor Who: the main villain, the Bodach, appears to be an old legend, the Celtic equivalent of the Bogeyman (and is sort of the male equivalent of the Cailleach -- see The Stones of Blood).  But in fine Who tradition, the Bodach is an alien entity that feeds off of people's dreams -- but it needs a focal point, and when the Department recently unearthed a structure with two special red gems, this was enough to awaken the Bodach.  So we get scenes with people sleepwalking, under the Bodach's control, while the Prof tries to enter the dreamworld to confront the Bodach.  It's great fun, and it's a nice move to make June the physical host for the Bodach -- it keeps the Bodach suitably mysterious, and it isn't Drake under the mask (like I half-suspected), which is welcome.

The introduction of ancient legends and mysticism into this show is a smart move.  It's sort of hard to see them going down this road again, just because of the nature of what we've seen thus far on K-9, but if they did it's clear, based on "Dream-Eaters", that they could get quite a bit of mileage out of this approach.  This is probably the best episode this show has yet produced.

April 24: "Victory of the Daleks"

Despite the fact that what we've gotten onscreen so far has seemed to be largely business as usual, despite the change-over, there have been signs that the new production team want to be seen as a bold new beginning.  Part of this was the (frankly bizarre) insistence that Matt Smith's first series would be known as series 1, rather than series 5 (although almost no one, including the BBC marketing people, took them up on this), but now we're presented with another change: that of the Daleks.

The Doctor confronts the new Dalek paradigm. ("Victory of the
Daleks") ©BBC

This isn't necessarily a disaster in the making -- after all, the new titles, sonic screwdriver, and TARDIS interior (and exterior, a bit) are all similar reenvisionings without too much trouble -- but the problem with "Victory of the Daleks" is that it ultimately feels like that's all there is to this episode.  They give us a story set during the Blitz with Winston Churchill (played admirably by Ian McNeice), and instead of exploring this at all, we get a remake of The Power of the Daleks instead.  I mean, I suppose if you're going to remake old Who stories, start with the best, but while it's effectively surreal to hear Daleks saying things like, "Would you care for some tea?", and they look surprisingly good in their olive khaki paintjob, we don't get the same payoff here as we did in the Troughton story.  Instead of holding back the Daleks only to unleash them at the end while the humans are busy infighting, here their big plan is to, er... get the Doctor to confirm that they're actually Daleks.  It's not the most exciting thing ever, and the new Daleks we get as a result are problematic.  Even setting aside the designer color scheme (which I don't really mind), the new design just seems clunkier.  I think they were probably going for "more powerful", but what they actually ended up with is "fat".  I doubt that they were actually designed purely to sell more toys, but it does rather look that way, with the bright colors and the overt plastic look.

But again, just because they've come up with a crap design for their brand-new Daleks, that doesn't mean the episode is bad.  No, that comes as a result of what looks like the result of too few drafts for the script.  Why else would we get Spitfires retrofitted with fancy new technology in the space of a few minutes (that itself seems to be purely theoretical twenty minutes earlier) just so they can dogfight with the Dalek saucer?  Why do we get a bomb that is literally defused by the power of love?  As with much of the rest of the script, this seems to have been thrown together with an eye toward "what would look cool?", rather than "what would make any bit of sense?"  It also doesn't help that there's a distinct sense of unresolved business at the end of this; rather than the Daleks being defeated -- or even the Doctor being defeated, which, despite what he says, doesn't seem to be the case -- they head off at the end, leaving the sense that they're going to show up in a major way down the line.  If they actually had this might be OK, but while we've had subsequent Dalek stories, none of them have remotely felt like the follow-up to this.

Any good things?  Matt Smith continues to impress, with the Jammie Dodger bit being a nice highlight that contrasts well with his attack on the Dalek soldier -- "Kill me!" he yells at the Dalek, and while it's not quite on the same level as David Tennant's similar performance in "Evolution of the Daleks", it's still very good.  Ian McNeice, as I said before, is well-suited to the role of Churchill, and Bill Paterson does an excellent job in the rather thankless role of Professor Bracewell.  The curiosity of how Amy has no memory of the events of "The Stolen Earth" / "Journey's End" is handled well, and the appearance of another crack ties in nicely with that.

But if they wanted to update the Daleks with a bang, they've failed rather miserably.  It's telling that, while these new Paradigm Daleks don't disappear completely, they fade into the background in favor of the RTD-era design -- suggesting that even the production team realized this was a mistake.  If they'd had a story that hadn't had that reveal as its centerpiece, "Victory of the Daleks" might have been OK.  If they'd actually gone further down the road of remaking The Power of the Daleks, it might have been OK.  If they'd done anything risky and clever, such as exploring Churchill's character or the Doctor's hatred of the Daleks, instead of merely opting for things that look good, it might have been OK.  But they didn't, and so it's not.

April 23: "Sirens of Ceres" / "Fear Itself" (K-9)

Sadly, I think we just have to resign ourselves to the fact that K-9 is overtly intended to be a children's show and is pitching itself accordingly.  If you're willing to do that, though, then there's some fun to be had here.

The first episode today, "Sirens of Ceres" (which, like "The Korven" and "The Eleventh Hour", technically aired before "The Beast Below"), is probably the better of the two just because it feels like it fits in with everything we've seen so far.  Starkey and the rest are living in an oppressive system, and here we just get more evidence of this oppression, as Inspector Drake is his usual slimy self with his latest plan, to turn people into obedient servants with the help of an alien mineral.  Connor Van Vuuren is often somewhat painfully overacting as Drake, as if he knows he's in a kid's show and is adjusting his performance accordingly; as a result, there are lots of clenched fists and intense emoting as his plan goes right or wrong (depending on the scene) that's sort of mesmerizing to watch.

Melaina is flanked by two girls in her study group. ("Sirens of Ceres")
©Screen Australia, Pacific Film and Television Commission Pty
Limited, Park Entertainment Limited, Cutting Edge Post Pty
Limited, and Metal Mutt Productions Pty Limited

One of the nice things about K-9 so far has been the fact that, despite the oppressive regime controlling things, we see signs that life goes on -- this isn't one of those dystopias where everyone's living in caves as slaves, but instead people still live their lives, just in a police state.  "Sirens of Ceres" continues this trend; while attacking the robot police officers (called CCPCs) is obviously an offense, the punishment doesn't appear to be execution or anything like that, but simply reeducation.  This is Jorjie's fate, and it's what leads to the main plot, as Drake tries his mind control bracelets on the pupils at the reeducation academy.  They do a good job with their Midwich Cuckoos-esque students, as the affected become perfect little angels.  It's not super-creepy, but it is sufficiently effective -- and it gives K-9 a chance to be the hero, as he swoops in and destroys all the bracelets, thus foiling Drake's plot.  It's a nice little story, and the only weird thing is how they make Starkey fall head-over-heels in love with a girl who he must know is being mind-controlled but nevertheless assumes that she's sincere in her affections.  It doesn't really fit with anything we've seen thus far regarding Starkey, so it sticks out like a sore thumb.

But other than that, and allowing for the children's television factors, this is a decent episode.  If they did more like this it wouldn't be a bad thing.

On the other hand, the second episode I watched today, "Fear Itself", borders on incoherency.  There are moments where it seems to be about some sort of shadowy alien that exists to help breed fear in the populace, and others where it's just about conquering one's irrational fears, but it never feels like these two plot lines connect up in a meaningful way.  It certainly doesn't help that we get people behaving out of character -- in particular, Drake seems oddly unfazed by the presence of Starkey, Jorjie, and Darius at the weird cupboard and far more concerned about the possibility of an alien inside the cupboard.  But then it turns into a discussion about emotions and what they mean, as K-9 seeks to learn about fear and then somehow succumbs to it, and the resolution appears to be that there was nothing to be afraid of after all -- except for the impossible wardrobe with a huge pit inside in it (that's strangely reminiscent of parts of Mark Z. Danielewski's book House of Leaves, where an impossible dark space is found inside a house that seems to drive the people exploring it mad, despite the fact that there's nothing actually in that space.  This is almost certainly coincidental, though).  Oddly, this doesn't seem to remotely interest June Turner when she examines the wardrobe at Drake's request.

The resolution leaves things unclear: was there anything alien regarding the wardrobe?  Was it causing the riots and things?  Or was it really all in the mind?  We never find out, and while it might be pleasing in a different context to have this ambiguity, here it just feels unfinished.  A few more explanations (or even gestures towards explanation) would have helped, but as it is we have two storylines that are closely related but seem to be working at cross-purposes to each other and no clear way to resolve the conflict.  The final result is thus something of a mess.

April 22: "Meanwhile in the TARDIS" [Additional Scene #1] / "The Beast Below"

We start out with a scene designed to link "The Eleventh Hour" with "The Beast Below" (which technically wasn't released until the DVD/Blu-Ray box set was released, but as it's meant to go here we'll watch it here).  It's sort of cute, I guess, but it also seems completely unnecessary; we get more babbling from Amy as she tries to process what she's seeing, as well as a slight continuity hiccup (as the Doctor tells her here that he's an alien, yet she seems surprised by this in "The Beast Below"), and while it's nice to see her reaction to being in space, there's not much beyond this.  But I suppose there's only so much they can do, inserting a scene where one didn't need to go, and as long as you weren't buying the box set solely for this scene, it's probably all right.

The Doctor and Amy explore Starship UK. ("The Beast Below")
©BBC

"The Beast Below", on the other hand, is much more interesting.  The UK (minus Scotland) evacuated the planet after solar storms threatened the place in the 29th century (in what's almost certainly a reference to The Ark in Space²¹⁴), and we get a chance to see this new Doctor in his element, flexing his muscles and learning the dark secret behind Starship UK.

Except this is the Matt Smith story that it's probably easiest to imagine David Tennant in. All the things writer Steven Moffat's given the eleventh Doctor are the sorts of things you would expect the tenth Doctor to do (with the possible exception of comforting a crying child, and even then it's more a matter of emphasis than new personality).  It's easy to picture David Tennant gently pointing out to Liz 10 how old her mask is, or him raging against humanity for what they've done to the star whale.  This doesn't make it a bad story or anything like that, but it does make it slightly harder for Matt Smith to really set himself apart from his immediate predecessor.  He turns in a great performance, and if you were worried about the new boy you can rest easy, but they're not exactly going out of their way to give us a uniquely eleventh Doctor story (the way, say, Paradise Towers seems like a story designed for Sylvester McCoy).

Fortunately the central storyline is a good one, so it's not like they're selling Matt Smith short, as we're presented with an odd conspiracy that everyone is complicit in, although they can't remember that they are.  But we get the spirit of democracy, as everyone gets to either protest the treatment of the star whale or forget about the whole thing.  It's a nice little conceit, particularly as even the people who are investigating the truth behind Starship UK -- namely Liz 10 (and look, it's Sophie Okonedo, who you might remember was Alison Cheney in Scream of the Shalka) -- are going through the same motions as before, choosing to forget when they finally discover the truth.  There are also nice little touches that add to the feeling of a coherent world, from the bunting everywhere to the offhand reference to Scotland having set off on their own to the Starship UK logo that's designed to resemble one of the old BBC logos.  Thought and care has gone into this, to the point where it's very hard to actually poke holes in any of it, either in story terms or in visual terms.

Of course, another reason why it doesn't really matter that we don't get a showcase for the new Doctor is that this is a showcase for the new companion instead.  We see Amy not as the perfect companion but instead as a human one, one who's both made a mistake -- who's seen the history of Starship UK and has chosen not only to forget but also to try and keep the Doctor from discovering the truth, so that he doesn't have to make a decision about what to do -- and who's done what the Doctor said earlier, to observe.  It's this that brings her to (it turns out) the right conclusion, to stop forcing the star whale to fly Starship UK because the star whale wanted to help in the first place.  Amy makes the right decision, just by observing not just Starship UK but also the Doctor:

DOCTOR: Amy, you could have killed everyone on this ship.
AMY: You could have killed a star whale.
DOCTOR: And you saved it.  I know, I know.
AMY: Amazing though, don't you think?  The star whale.  All that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made it kind.
DOCTOR: But you couldn't have known how it would react.
AMY: You couldn't.  But I've seen it before.  Very old and very kind, and the very, very last.  Sound a bit familiar?

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Beast Below)

"The Beast Below" isn't a flashy story, and we don't get much of an insight into what makes the eleventh Doctor different from the tenth, but what we do get is a solid, well-thought-out tale designed to appeal to our sense of wonder as it shows that Amy Pond has the right stuff to be the Doctor's companion.  It's a story that can make us both ashamed and proud to be human.  Not bad for only their second outing.

(Oh, and look... another crack, shaped just like the one in Amelia's bedroom...)







²¹⁴ Thus complicating Earth's history enormously for anyone trying to work these things out, as, while the Doctor thinks the Ark was built in the late 29th/early 30th century, fandom had generally assumed that either a) the Doctor is just way off-base with his guess, or b) the Ark was in service as Nerva Beacon (Revenge of the Cybermen) for a long time before it was converted into an ark to avoid the solar flares and that the beacon was built in the 29th century, as placing the solar flare event in the late 29th century tends to cause massive problems for anyone trying to square this with all the other things we know about this time period (such as The Mutants, which is set in the late 30th century and explicitly describes the Earth as "Land and sea alike, all grey.  Grey cities linked by grey highways across grey deserts").  But now that they've reinforced the date, I suppose we're stuck with it, and we just have to explain why they're still on Starship UK in the 34th century, despite things like The Mutants and Terror of the Vervoids seeming to contradict this.

April 21: "The Korven" / "The Bounty Hunter" (K-9)

After a brief airing of the first episode six months earlier, K-9 finally makes its series debut in the UK with the third episode, "The Korven".  And strictly speaking, this aired two hours earlier than "The Eleventh Hour" did (were they capitalizing on Doctor Who's publicity?  Perish the thought!), but as they're airing two episodes a week at this point, it's easier to lump them together than try to do it strictly chronologically.  I'm sure you care deeply about this.

The Korven arrives to take Professor Gryffen. ("The Korven")
©Screen Australia, Pacific Film and Television Commission Pty
Limited, Park Entertainment Limited, Cutting Edge Post Pty
Limited, and Metal Mutt Productions Pty Limited

There's little here to distinguish these two episodes from the last two that aired, though.  Both "The Korven" and "The Bounty Hunter" seem to follow the same basic pattern: an alien comes through Professor Gryffen's space-time manipulator in order to try and capture one of our heroes: Professor Gryffen in the first case, K-9 in the second.  And while the stakes are allegedly high, as it's our heroes who are in trouble, it's somewhat difficult to get particularly worked up about it, as these episodes don't raise the stakes high enough for us to really think these characters are in real danger.

All right, that's not fair; both episodes do actually do a decent job of making Gryffen and K-9 seem like they should definitely be worried about their chances.  The problem is more that it's still hard at this point to really care about the other characters: the teenagers have already been reduced to basic characteristics (Darius likes Jorjie and dislikes Starkey, Starkey's the rebel with a heart of gold, etc.), acting more as ciphers than real people.  Far and away the best character is Professor Gryffen; this might be because Robert Moloney is a more experienced actor than the others, but it's also because they've actually given him characteristics to distinguish himself as an actual person (his agoraphobia, but also his calm behavior in the presence of Ahab the bounty hunter, offering him tea and casually chatting with him).  There's also an effort to introduce a recurring villain in the form of the Department Head of Security, Inspector Drake, but he's portrayed as such a slimy git that while it's easy to loathe him, it doesn't do much for their efforts to flesh this show out.  (Although placing a fake bomb as a publicity stunt?  That is pretty slimy...)

Ultimately the problem with both of these episodes is that they're too straightforward; we don't get much in the way of nooks and crannies in the plot to explore, and subtlety isn't K-9's strong point.  Even something like making K-9 initially appear to have been a killer pre-amnesia in "The Bounty Hunter" falls flat, because we know that something will happen to vindicate K-9, and we're right.  These two episodes aren't actually bad, but they are rather unsophisticated.  This is a format that seems like they could actually do something with, but thus far they've been content to play it safe -- but playing it safe isn't really going to cut it for the whole series.

April 20: "The Eleventh Hour"

DVD and Blu-ray releases

So.  A new producer and a new cast, but the same show as ever, as "The Eleventh Hour" makes clear in its opening moments, as the TARDIS is crashing towards Earth after the events at the end of The End of Time.  Even in this scene you get the sense that things will be OK with this new Doctor, as he struggles back inside the TARDIS and then relaxes for a moment, until the TARDIS goes out of control again.

And then it's straight into the brand-new title sequence, with a new arrangement of the theme tune (although, other than being in a higher key, it's not actually that much different from the last one) and a new logo.  The sequence looks oddly retro, with the cloud time vortex and the lightning bolts -- it's not hard to imagine this being the sort of titles Doctor Who might have had in the '90s.  The DW TARDIS logo is kind of cheesy, though.

But as I said, other than such overt changes, this largely looks like business as usual for the show. Visually this isn't much different from the previous stories -- we're not talking about a sea change as large as the one between The Horns of Nimon/Shada and The Leisure Hive, and with Murray Gold still providing the music, the sense of continuity between the two eras is reinforced.  No, where the differences happen is in the details, the emphasis.  Russell T Davies, in some respects, pitched Doctor Who toward teenage girls; Steven Moffat, by contrast, is explicitly targeting children, with the expectation that everyone else will happily go along for the ride.

The most obvious occurrence of this is Amelia Pond, the little girl who encounters the newly-regenerated Doctor after he crash-lands in her garden.  We learn almost immediately that this Doctor is incredibly comfortable with children and that children are comfortable with him, and that there's a sense of magic at hand.  It's this sense of magic and wonder that sustains "The Eleventh Hour" -- it's only the first episode for the new team (well, all right, first broadcast -- it's actually the fourth episode they made), and already that sense of supreme confidence that pervaded David Tennant's final hours is here in full force.  Steven Moffat's given us a great script to latch on to, one that plays with time travel a bit but makes it firmly about the effect of the Doctor on a little girl's life, as this crazy man whirls into her life and then disappears for twelve years.  "The Eleventh Hour" is never worried that the audience will have a tough time with any of this, and it's right not to: this makes perfect sense.

One other contrast that's clear fairly early is that Matt Smith is a huge presence in this episode.  "The Christmas Invasion" had David Tennant removed from much of the action, but here they know that we're getting a brand new cast, so they wisely make the Doctor front and center and have everything revolving around him -- and while he's "still cooking", he seems more or less settled early on.  ("Well, that's much better," the Doctor says at one point, after Amy's hit him with a cricket bat.  "Brand new me.  Whack on the head, just what I needed.")  In this regard it's a lot like Tom Baker's debut, which established the fourth Doctor pretty quickly and then let him get on with it.  We get a similar thing here.

"Hello.  I'm the Doctor.  Basically... run."  The new Doctor warns
the Atraxi away. ("The Eleventh Hour") ©BBC

And let's be clear: Matt Smith is amazing in this -- he's absolutely the Doctor almost from the word go, and his ability to play both drama and comedy (sometimes at the same time) is perfectly attuned to the show.  It's not hard to see why they cast him, but he's incredibly watchable in every scene.  It helps that he's been given some good material -- discussing the crack in Amelia's wall, convincing Jeff that he has to be great to help save the world, being incredibly dismissive of Prisoner Zero's attempt to disguise itself as him ("Well, that's rubbish.  Who's that supposed to be?" he says.  "It's you," Rory replies bemusedly.  "Me?  Is that what I look like?" the Doctor asks surprisedly), and calling the Atraxi back just so he can tell them to clear off... Matt Smith does it all and makes it look easy.

None of this is to denigrate the other cast members -- Karen Gillan more than holds her own as Amy Pond, and Arthur Darvill is wonderfully grounded as Rory ("Did he just bring them back?" he asks no one in particular.  "Did he just save the world from aliens and then bring all the aliens back again?") -- but "The Eleventh Hour" is wholeheartedly about this new Doctor, about the effect he had on a little girl and how he's definitely still the same man he was.  The sequence at the end, with all the Doctors in sequence followed by the eleventh, merely confirms what we already know.  It's hard to think of a better debut than this one, in terms of doing everything they need to do and doing it with such style.  This episode is an absolute knockout -- and it's only the first one!