May 10: "The Big Bang"

One of the things people at the time commented on about this episode was that it required you to pay attention -- the time travel shenanigans with the vortex manipulator apparently had some people scratching their heads, trying to keep up.  Yet it becomes clear that Steven Moffat and company are working extra hard to make this aspect easy to follow -- all the business with fezzes and mops and conversations broken off before they're over is to make it clear what bits are happening when, and it's a clever way of handling this.  What's instead far harder to wrap your head around is how exactly the Doctor saves everything.

Part of this, I suspect, is a result of what we're shown on screen; the Doctor flies the Pandorica into the heart of the exploding TARDIS, which then causes the Pandorica to explode -- but then we start to see things rewinding.  This is meant to be the start of the Doctor travelling back up his own time stream, but how many of those viewers who were confused by the vortex manipulator jumps thought that time itself was rewinding, I wonder?

Rory, Amy, and the Doctor look at the exploding TARDIS in the
sky. ("The Big Bang") ©BBC

But then that's one of the wonderful things about "The Pandorica Opens" / "The Big Bang" -- this is a story that expects you to have been paying close attention.  So much of what we need to understand the ending is set up cleverly in other ways (such as the Doctor's conversation with Amy after she finds the engagement ring: "Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely.  And if something can be remembered, it can come back" -- a line important enough to show up in the "previously..." section at the start of "The Big Bang"), rather than just being outright stated, that this is a story that almost demands repeated viewings, with more revealing itself every time.  This is not a story that will hold your hand; instead it races along and encourages you to keep up, confident in the belief that you will.

This is doubly pleasing because even without the time-hopping, "The Big Bang" isn't remotely straightforward.  There's an awful lot of stuff to work through, what with the time stuff, the Cracks in Time, "Silence will fall" (and note that this is the first series of the BBC Wales version not to answer all the questions by the finale; we still don't know why the TARDIS blew up or what exactly "silence will fall" means -- those answers will have to wait for later)... but you never get the sense that it's too much.  This is Doctor Who at its most fearless, playing a game with myths and legends both ancient and modern and utterly self-assured as it does so.  It's full of striking imagery (Rory preparing to guard the Pandorica for 1000 years, the fossilized Dalek trundling down corridors) and wonderful big ideas (the sun is the TARDIS, the Pandorica contains pieces of the old universe that can be extrapolated) that spark the imagination.  But the best bits are the small moments, the quiet scenes: the Doctor trying to determine if the Auton Rory is still Rory, his conversation with Amy inside the Pandorica, and, perhaps best of all, his little speech to the seven-year-old Amelia Pond:

When you wake up, you'll have a mum and dad, and you won't even remember me.  Well, you'll remember me a little.  I'll be a story in your head.  But that's okay.  We're all stories in the end.  Just make it a good one, eh?  Because it was, you know.  It was the best.  The daft old man who stole a magic box and ran away.  Did I ever tell you that I stole it?  Well, I borrowed it.  I was always going to take it back.  Oh, that box.  Amy, you'll dream about that box.  It'll never leave you.  Big and little at the same time.  Brand new and ancient, and the bluest blue ever.  And the times we had, eh?  Would have had.  Never...  In your dreams, they'll still be there.  The Doctor and Amy Pond, and the days that never came.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Big Bang)

But then that's one of the great things about Doctor Who in general, and this story in particular: the gigantic and the intimate can exist side-by-side, each enhancing the other.  "The Pandorica Opens" / "The Big Bang" is about huge events, but it never gets so wrapped up in being epic that it forgets to be personal as well.  It strikes the perfect balance, and the final result is impressive.

It also marks the end of series 5, the first series with Matt Smith as the Doctor and Steven Moffat as the showrunner, and it's been a very strong run.  As I noted before, we get the sense that Steven Moffat has been thinking about this for a long time and so has had a lot of time to work it out.  This means that we get an impressively coherent and balanced series this year, with only one real disappointment ("Victory of the Daleks") in the whole run.  Part of this success is because Moffat has (either by accident or design) given us a varied series that feels naturally polished, as if it were always meant to be this way.  The emphasis has shifted subtly from Davies' era (Eccleston and Tennant in particular often felt like the romantic hero, while Smith is more like a mad uncle), but it hasn't shifted so far as to be unrecognizable to fans of the previous era -- this is still definitely the same show.

But another part of the success of series 5 is the performances from Matt Smith and Karen Gillan.  Matt Smith impresses from the start, with a timeless quality about his performance that suggests that he's both very young and very old at the same time, but nevertheless constantly experiencing things with a sense of child-like wonder.  Karen Gillan, meanwhile, provides a feisty companion in Amy Pond -- occasionally too brash and shouty, but always complementing Smith's Doctor extremely well.  And while Arthur Darvill isn't in this series the entire time as Rory, when he is he provides the balance between these two extremes.  The result is a genuine pleasure to watch.

A great set of stories, a fabulous new TARDIS team, and a show brimming with confidence in both the audience and itself: where will they head next?

May 9: "The Pandorica Opens"

Throughout series 5 there's been a sense that Steven Moffat has been doing his own take on the debut album, much like Russell T Davies did with series 1.  You get the sense that he's had an awful lot of time to think about what he would do when he was put in charge of the show, and now that he's finally gotten the chance he's not going to waste it.

Nowhere is that clearer than in the series 5 finale: we travel to 19th century France to 20th century London to three different locations in the 52nd century to 2nd century Britain, and that's all in the cold open.  Steven Moffat is flexing his muscles and seeing how much he can get away with -- the answer is quite a bit.  They even travel to see the oldest message in the entire universe, only to find it says "Hello sweetie" (complete with a theta sigma for the older fans).  "You graffitied the oldest cliff face in the universe," the Doctor admonishes River.  "You wouldn't answer your phone," she replies airily.

This is the sort of fun that Moffat knows he can get away with, in the service of possibly the most overtly epically-minded story to date.  This episode is concerned with the opening of an elaborate prison cell beneath Stonehenge known as the Pandorica, which contains "the most feared thing in all the universe."  The Doctor tells us the legend: "There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior.  A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies.  The most feared being in all the cosmos.  And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it.  One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world."  When you don't know what's coming this is intriguing; when you do know what's coming this legend takes on a fascinating new twist, and one can easily imagine Moffat chuckling to himself as he wrote it.

The alliance formed to trap the Doctor. ("The Pandorica Opens")
©BBC

"The Pandorica Opens" is emphatically a series finale (well, the first half of one), and so we get a boatload of cameos of characters from earlier in series 5, but the biggest one is the (initially inexplicable) return of Rory.  It's a return that's played for laughs (the Doctor's reaction) and pathos (Amy's non-reaction), but it's unreservedly welcome.  It's also confusing, but the eventual explanation is horrifying -- all of the Doctor's old enemies have formed an alliance and basically raided Amy's mind (all right, the psychic residue she left in her house) just to create an elaborate trap, one that the Doctor would believe and walk into.  It's a clever piece of writing, even if it takes a bit to wrap your head around, and it provides a satisfying explanation for Rory's reappearance: he's really just an Auton.

The end of the episode sees the Pandorica opened, and the Doctor finally realizes it's a trap when he sees it's empty -- it's been waiting for him, as all his greatest enemies (Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Silurians, Sycorax, and, er, Hoix) force him into the Pandorica, to stop the TARDIS from exploding and destroying the universe.  "Only the Doctor can pilot the TARDIS," the Supreme Dalek grates, and while the logic is sound we realize how wrong the Dalek is.  It's a hell of a cliffhanger: the Doctor locked away inside the Pandorica, River trapped in a TARDIS that's about to explode, and Amy dead by the hand of Rory, who was unable to completely suppress his Auton side.  It's a huge, ballsy cliffhanger, appropriate for an episode that has been just as huge in its execution, daring the audience to not keep up.  "The Pandorica Opens" sees a supremely confident production flexing its muscles and pushing things into new areas, and it leaves us eager to see what they come up with next.

May 8: "The Lodger"

If you're only familiar with Gareth Roberts' works from his earlier Doctor Who and Sarah Jane Adventures episodes, you might not realize how funny he can be.  There are jokes scattered throughout his television work, but nothing more than other episodes by different authors.  If, however, you are familiar with some of his Doctor Who works in other media (such as his Big Finish audio The One Doctor or his season 17 Missing Adventures), then you may have been wondering when that Gareth Roberts would show up on the TV version.  With "The Lodger", he's finally arrived.

Craig is slightly exasperated by the Doctor's appearance while
Sophie is over. ("The Lodger") ©BBC

It's a simple idea: force the Doctor to have to pretend to be a normal 21st-century person for a few days and see what happens.  (It's so simple, in fact, that Roberts had actually used it before: this is technically a remake of a Doctor Who Magazine strip with the tenth Doctor and Mickey instead of the eleventh and Craig, although Roberts basically wrote this episode from scratch.)  The result, however, is pure joy -- Matt Smith is clearly having a ball with this, and he's been given the perfect foil in James Corden (perhaps best known to American audiences now as Craig Ferguson's successor on CBS's The Late Late Show).  Ostensibly this is about the Doctor trying to deal with an alien spaceship that's preventing the TARDIS from landing, but really it's about his relationship with his new flatmate Craig.  The Doctor, bless him, does try, but because he's currently the eleventh Doctor, a persona that often seems more child-like than just about any of the other Doctors (the only other real comparison would be the second), he's wonderfully uncomprehending of all the social cues he's being given.  So we get some really great dialogue from the Doctor as he tries to work out on the fly the best things to say and do to avoid arousing suspicion, usually getting it slightly wrong.  The most obvious one is the Doctor's repeated la bise greetings (the cheek kissing) to people (something, one suspects, he picked up from Vincent van Gogh last time, as Vincent does it to Doctor Black), which seems to slightly throw everyone he does it to, but there are also lots of magical little lines, like his explanation of where he learned to cook ("Paris, in the eighteenth century.  No, hang on, that's not recent, is it?  Seventeenth?  No, no, no.  Twentieth.  Sorry, I'm not used to doing them in the right order") or his outrage at Sean's assertion that their pub football team would "annihilate" the next team ("Annihilate?  No.  No violence, do you understand me?  Not while I'm around.  Not today, not ever.  I'm the Doctor, the Oncoming Storm, and you basically meant beat them in a football match, didn't you?").

Of course, the Doctor being the Doctor, he can't help but stand out, even when he's trying to blend in.  He seems to naturally excel at everything: he can cook, play football (which must have pleased Matt Smith no end, as he wanted to be a professional footballer until a back injury diverted him into acting), and work at a call center better than Craig can, seemingly without trying.  He also inspires Sophie to travel the world and chase her dreams, rather than spend the rest of her life stuck in Colchester.  These actions are the sort of thing we expect from the Doctor, honestly, but it drives Craig mad, which leads to even more wonderful Doctor-Craig sparring, culminating in another mind-meld-like thing à la various Tennant episodes, albeit this time delivered via headbutt.  (And look, another brief look at all the Doctors -- this new production team seems significantly less reticent about dropping in quick references to the past than the previous regime.  We also get Smith singing "La donna è mobile", much like Pertwee did in Inferno, but it's not a total capitulation to older fans -- Roberts didn't follow through with his initial idea to make the villain of the piece Meglos from the eponymous story, with the joke being that the Doctor doesn't remember Meglos at all.)

Yes, there's a plot involving an alien ship on the roof, luring people to their doom, and while it's driving a decent amount of the story (and will become retroactively important next series), it's not really the point of the story.  The point of "The Lodger" is to show the Doctor as a fish-out-of-water tale without realizing he's a fish-out-of-water, and it's to provide a double act between Smith and Corden, and at these two things it's terribly successful.  The only thing that's slightly odd is that the message seems to be that it's OK to stay at home as long as you're with someone, which is rather the opposite of the show's usual message of "go and experience new things", but even this isn't terribly out of place, as the primary conceit is "love conquers all".  This is an extremely entertaining and very funny episode with some outstanding comedic acting from Matt Smith and James Corden, and a strong contender for best episode of series 5.

May 7: "Vincent and the Doctor"

"You're being so nice to me," Amy says at the beginning.  "Why are you being so nice to me? ... These places you're taking me.  Arcadia, the Trojan Gardens, now this.  I think it's suspicious."  "What? It's not," the Doctor replies defensively.  "There's nothing to be suspicious about."  "Okay, I was joking.  Why aren't you?" Amy asks, but the Doctor has no response.

So here we are in our first post-Rory episode, and it's also a celebrity historical, as we get to meet Vincent van Gogh, thanks to the Doctor spotting an alien in the window of one of van Gogh's paintings.  But what writer Richard Curtis (yes, that Richard Curtis, the one behind things such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually, and various Rowan Atkinson projects like Mr. Bean) cleverly does is contrast Vincent van Gogh's moments of depression and insight with the loss Amy has suffered:

AMY: I'm sorry you're so sad.
VINCENT: But I'm not.  Sometimes these moods torture me for weeks, for months.  But I'm good now.  If Amy Pond can soldier on, then so can Vincent Van Gogh.
AMY: I'm not soldiering on.  I'm fine.
VINCENT: Oh, Amy.  I hear the song of your sadness.  You've lost someone, I think.
AMY: I'm not sad.
VINCENT: They why are you crying?  It's all right.  I understand.
AMY: I'm not sure I do.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Vincent and the Doctor)

But because Amy doesn't remember Rory, this isn't a road they can travel very far down -- yet this means that they have to be far subtler, which works tremendously in this episode's favor.  Because what this does is focus the episode in favor of Vincent van Gogh, presenting us with a character who's incredibly in tune with his surroundings, who sees more than the average person can see but who's also tormented by his own personal demons.  Everything else serves this purpose -- even the presence of the Krafayis, a creature that only Vincent can see unaided, is ultimately there to reinforce the theme of loss and misunderstanding.  The Krafayis isn't inherently evil (despite the Doctor's (oddly prejudiced) comment during the cold open), it's just frightened and confused and alone, a victim of its circumstances.  The episode invites us to make the comparison but, pleasingly, doesn't feel the need to underline it.

Vincent shows the Doctor and Amy the night sky. ("Vincent and
the Doctor") ©BBC

The best moments, however, come after the Krafayis has died, when the three of them are reveling in the feeling of being alive.  Vincent points out how the night sky isn't dark and empty but full of color and light and beauty, and the effects shot, as the night sky is turned into something that looks like van Gogh's The Starry Night but isn't a slavish representation of it, is possibly one of the Mill's finest ever on the show.  It also leads to the most obviously emotional moment, as the Doctor wants to give Vincent a gift in return, and so he takes him to the present day, to see just how highly regarded his works have become.  The entire production is unabashedly going straight for the heartstrings here, as Vincent looks at his works on display, all the paintings he's dismissed as being not very good, and listens to Doctor Black (Bill Nighy, in an uncredited role) describe van Gogh:

To me, van Gogh is the finest painter of them all.  Certainly, the most popular great painter of all time.  The most beloved.  His command of colour, the most magnificent.  He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty.  Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world.  No one had ever done it before.  Perhaps no one ever will again.  To my mind, that strange, wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world's greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Vincent and the Doctor)

It's a beautiful moment, as Vincent sees how his memory lives on, but to my mind the best part is the payoff, where Amy learns that that knowledge wasn't enough to stop him from committing suicide.  It's a touching, bittersweet scene: van Gogh may have learned how much he would be loved, but that wasn't enough to help him through what he was experiencing that moment.  It's a smart and brave decision to end on this note, and it makes perfect sense; just as van Gogh's works display the full gamut of emotions, of sadness tinged with joy and happiness mixed with melancholy, so too does "Vincent and the Doctor".  As the Doctor says, "every life is a pile of good things and bad things.  The good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant.  And we definitely added to his pile of good things."

In the end, "Vincent and the Doctor" is a brief look into the life of Vincent van Gogh, with an exquisite performance from Tony Curran and the alien monster almost irrelevant in some ways.  This is instead about beauty and sadness and light and dark and color and loneliness and everything in between, and this is a theme that runs through the entire piece.  It's one of the most gorgeous and emotional episodes of Doctor Who ever, and it's also one of the best.

May 6: "Cold Blood"

So the resolution of this two-parter isn't quite as magnificent as it perhaps could have been, but it's not exactly a disappointment either.  Chris Chibnall's turned in a hodgepodge of old Who and turned it into something solid rather than spectacular.

Broadly, this is little more than a remake of Doctor Who and the Silurians, with human activities underground inadvertently awakening a dormant group of Silurians, who decide they want the planet back.  We get the same sort of infighting among the Silurian factions, and the problem is ultimately solved by sealing the tunnels back up.  But where it differs is in the emphasis, and in some of the human characters.  The biggest difference is probably represented by the character of Ambrose, who's terrified at the thought of losing her grandfather after having lost her husband and son to these strange creatures.  She's a desperate woman, and as a result she is, as the Doctor puts it, "so much less than the best of humanity".  Her actions, however, are carefully calculated so as not to appear ruthless or (sorry) cold-blooded, but rather as a situation that escalated too quickly and went terribly wrong in the death of Alaya (who, let's be honest, was probably looking for an excuse to be a martyr and thus provoke a war), and which she now has to try and make the best of.  It's not pleasant or comfortable, and I doubt anyone watching is on Ambrose's side, but you can see how she got to this point.

The Doctor asks the representatives of the Silurians and
humanity to negotiate a peace. ("Cold Blood") ©BBC

On the opposing side, the character of Restac (played by the same actress as Alaya, Neve McIntosh) fulfills the role of the young Silurian from the Pertwee serial, and she seems just as willing to wipe out the ape infestation on the surface -- albeit with a show of force rather than a deadly virus.  She even goes so far as to gun down the scientist Malohkeh, much how the young Silurian killed the old Silurian.  One does get the impression that, regardless of whether or not Alaya had survived and the Silurian elder Eldane (as played by Stephen Moore, the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android from the radio and TV versions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) had been able to broker a peace, the result would have largely been the same, thanks to Restac's actions.  It does mean, however, that both sides, humans and Silurians, have differing factions that represent the best and worst of both -- which, one suspects, was the point of the exercise, that humanity can be just as much a monster as the "monsters" seen on the show.

So it's not a letdown, and as far as remakes go it does manage to provide some interesting new elements to make this story seem not wholly derivative (and it's streets ahead of the other remake this series, "Victory of the Daleks").  It also introduces the Silurians into the modern era, even if no one else to date has taken them up on this (save for the character of Madame Vastra, who pops up periodically after this).  For anyone who hadn't seen the stories this is based on, this likely had some interesting twists and turns along the way, and the revelation that there were dinosaur people on the planet before humanity evolved may have been intriguing to those viewers.  But for those who had, there's a sense of inevitability about the proceedings, and we never really believe the Doctor's claim that "this is an opportunity.  A temporal tipping point.  Whatever happens today, will change future events, create its own timeline, its own reality.  The future pivots around you, here, now."

It's perhaps not surprising then that this episode will likely be best remembered as the one where they killed Rory again, but this time for good (it seemed at the time), and then erased him from history just to add insult to the injury.  It's a testament to Arthur Darvill's performance that even after only five episodes people were upset by his death.  It's these contributions to the overarching plot of series 5 that "Cold Blood" in particular tends to be remembered for, rather than for the Silurian plot that took up the previous forty minutes.  That right there sums this episode up better than anything else.

May 5: "Mutant Copper" / "The Custodians" (K-9)

You get the feeling, watching K-9, that the only real problems faced by 2050s London are those created by the Department's Security Division.

Take "Mutant Copper", for instance.  While the rogue CCPC of the title isn't actually a danger to London, it is the result of an experiment that Inspector Thorne authorized, and none of this would have happened if he hadn't stuck human brain cells into the robot brain to see what would happen.  Of course, what did happen is that the CCPC became more interested in the world around it than in maintaining the Department's brand of justice, and it's only thanks to our heroes that Thorne doesn't simply kill this new lifeform.

Or take "The Custodians".²²¹  Here we have almost 20 million children being hospitalized due to some new virtual reality game that's shutting down kids' minds, and it's all sponsored by the Department in order to create a placid, unquestioning populace.  The fact that it might backfire because their eager alien volunteer might have other plans doesn't seem to have occurred to Thorne.

I'll say this about Thorne, though, he's certainly good at being sinister.  Even when he's stomping around Gryffen's home, looking for evidence that the mutant CCPC is there and failing to find any, he's still quite threatening -- he doesn't have any proof of wrongdoing, but he still seems quite formidable.  It's a wonder he's willing to back down in "The Custodians" in the face of June's appeals.

I'm focusing on Thorne and Department Security because the rest of these two episodes aren't particularly interesting.  To their credit, there's an effort to explore what it means to be human in "Mutant Copper", and more importantly, what it's like to be alone.  Birdie, the mutant CCPC, is neither fully human nor fully cyborg²²², and thus seems hopelessly confused -- or, more accurately, like a child who simply doesn't understand how the world works.  And rather than nurture this new creation, their solution is to turn him into a full cyborg again -- K-9 in particular seems distressed at the thought of Birdie not fitting in.  It's only because Thorne enters Gryffen's place, forcing Darius to take Birdie away and set him free, that stops him from being turned back into a full cyborg.  But that's about it for interesting things -- even their efforts to introduce another teenager named Marcus, to present as a potential rival for Starkey and/or Darius, fall flat because it's pretty clear that he's going to sell them out somehow, and so we're just waiting for that moment to happen rather than being surprised by it.

Starkey, Thorne, June, and K-9 watch as the Etydion dies. ("The
Custodians") ©Screen Australia, Pacific Film and Television
Commission Pty Limited, Park Entertainment Limited, Cutting
Edge Post Pty Limited, and Metal Mutt Productions Pty Limited

"The Custodians", meanwhile, has a potentially interesting idea in their alien race the Etydion, who have powerful telepathy that can transmit emotions (so "empathy", in the Star Trek sense) and can apparently slowly convert other beings into fellow Etydions, given the right conditions.  But because they have to wrap things up in 23 minutes and have their twist midway of "it's the Department who's behind the 'Little Green Men' game", this idea is given somewhat short shrift.  It's presented instead as a problem concerning Darius and Jorjie that needs to be solved, instead of something more interesting.  The way they solve the crisis, by June turning her full emotions on the Etydion regarding her daughter, is a good move, however.  And K-9's "Armageddon mode" is pretty wonderful:

JUNE: Thirty seconds before I order this lethal cyborg to level this place down to its foundations.  (quietly to K-9) Help us out here.
K-9:  Doomsday weapon online.  Armageddon mode activated.  (in a lower, doom-laden voice) These are the end of days.

That's the best part of a couple of episodes that are pretty middling by K-9's standards.  Everything else here is largely by-the-numbers, with little in the way of surprises or intriguing moments -- and those times we do get something beyond the norm, they have to quickly move on to get to the next moment without exploring the concepts much further.  These aren't bad episodes, but sadly they aren't particularly challenging or exciting either.








²²¹ Public service announcement: the Shout! Factory region 1 release of K-9: The Complete Series has a technical fault with the default audio of "The Custodians", dropping out completely at roughly 21:45 and lasting for the remainder of the episode.  The other audio track doesn't have this problem, however; you can switch to that one without any issues.
²²² It's never quite clear if the programme makers actually realize that "cyborg" isn't simply another word for "robot".  The way the argument about Birdie is framed, it's as if introducing this human element into his mind has completely changed everything -- nobody says anything like, "Hang on, he's already part-human, what's the problem?"  This is slightly worrying coming from an SF show, even a kids' one.

May 4: "The Hungry Earth"

This episode, more than any other in recent memory, may be the hardest to judge, simply because it's emphatically the first part of a 2-part story.  Other Part One's have tended to go for setting up a story and then exploring the setting along the way, electing to either change things or increase the stakes at the cliffhanger.  Even something like "The Stolen Earth", which is almost pure set-up for their climactic series 4 finale and thus probably the closest relative to "The Hungry Earth", has action sequences and loads of familiar characters for the audience to latch on to.

"The Hungry Earth", by contrast, is going for the slow burn.  It clearly has a lot of old Doctor Who in its DNA -- most obviously Doctor Who and the Silurians, but also stories like Inferno, Frontios and, to a lesser extent, The Dæmons and Warriors of the Deep.  There's nothing wrong with mixing and matching old stories to see what comes out, but because writer Chris Chibnall is delaying much of the action until the next episode, it's somewhat hard to judge how successful this remix is.

One thing that's a tad disappointing is the new look of the Silurians (or whatever we're calling them now²²⁰), as they look incredibly human.  I sort of understand why they did it (so that the actors under the makeup can use their faces to act), but it's frankly rather jarring to see a race that we've previously seen as looking only vaguely humanoid to go to almost full homo sapiens.  They don't even give us a third eye anymore, instead providing a long venomous tongue instead.  I'm sure this probably falls more under "grumpy fan" than an actual independent problem, but it's still a bit of a disappointment.

The Doctor and Nasreen gaze upon the Silurian settlement. ("The
Hungry Earth") ©BBC

Of course, countering this, the moments in the caves near the end of the episode are really good -- the caves themselves look good, and the cliffhanger reveal of the size of the Silurian settlement ("We're looking for a small tribal settlement," the Doctor says optimistically before he's confronted by the actual thing.  "Ah.  Maybe more than a dozen," he remarks) is cool, even if it's not exactly the most exciting cliffhanger ever.  The way Amy is sucked into the ground is also really well done, even if it's incredibly reminiscent of Frontios (but they do a better job here), and there's some lovely interplay among all the characters -- particularly the Doctor, as he chats with Elliot, speaks with Alaya the captured Silurian warrior ("I'm not going to let you provoke a war, Alaya," he tells her; "there'll be no battle here today" (so there's a touch of Battlefield here too)), and later exhorts Ambrose, Tony, and Rory to be "the best of humanity".  "No dissecting!  No examining!" he tells them.  "We return their hostage, they return ours.  Nobody gets harmed.  We can land this, together, if you are the best you can be.  You are decent, brilliant people.  Nobody dies today.  Understand?"

But ultimately, "The Hungry Earth" puts a lot of pressure on its follow-up to really deliver.  We can see a lot of homages to old stories and a lot of buildup for the second half, but there's not much else there.  That's not really a bad thing (after all, we don't judge, say, The Caves of Androzani based solely on its first (two) episode(s)), but it does mean that the pay-off needs to be worthwhile.  What is there isn't bad, so there's promise for "Cold Blood", but we'll have to wait to know for certain.







²²⁰ The Doctor here describes them as Homo reptilia, which on the one hand simply means "reptile man", but on the other hand suggests the actual genus Homo, of which humans are a part.  Of course, this would mean that this group of Silurians are descended from primates rather than reptiles (which are a different class from mammals), and thus the "primitive apes" are their distant relatives.  While it would explain why the new Silurians' faces look so human, it throws up so many other awkward questions (such as the cold-blooded thing) that it's probably best to assume the Doctor simply meant the "reptile man" meaning.