An Hour of Who a Day

June 13: Sky Parts One & Two (SJA)

As you may recall, Elisabeth Sladen passed away on 19 April 2011, just before "The Impossible Astronaut" aired. She'd been more or less in the middle of filming the fifth series when she died; they'd completed the first half, and then postponed filming of the second half due to Sladen's illness -- but she succumbed to cancer, leaving that second block unfilmed. So what we get is an abbreviated fifth series, consisting of those first six episodes comprising three stories, and the first story, Sky, is as solid as ever.

This story is essentially a game of two halves. The first half (part one) is about Sarah Jane receiving a mysterious baby on her doorstep -- coincidentally(...?) on the same night as something crashed to Earth. This is clearly not a human baby, as its cries have the ability to blow out light bulbs and short out car alarms, which leads to some rather wonderful moments of Sarah Jane, Clyde, and Rani trying desperately to stop the baby from crying, while Haresh and Gita deal with the fallout of when she does. (Oh, and incidentally, this happens to be Mina Anwar's last story as Gita Chandra; one by one we're having to say goodbye to some beloved characters.) In particular, Clyde's efforts to stop Sky (named on the spur of the moment, as she basically fell out of the sky) from crying are imbued with great charm and fun -- Daniel Anthony continues to excel as Clyde Langer. (And it's also fun how Mr. Smith refuses to open up in her presence and be accidentally shorted out.) This leaves Sarah Jane and Rani free to investigate the site of the crash -- which is already being investigated by Professor Celeste Rivers (thus marking her fourth return to the show), although it's an interview with a local tramp, who talks about a man made of metal, that ends up being the most helpful. These scenes are interesting, but as they're concerned with advancing the storyline they're not as much fun as Clyde's scenes.

Sarah Jane, Sky, Rani, and Clyde. (Sky Part Two) ©BBC

The second half (so part two) is a little different. The cliffhanger of part one involved the baby Sky being taken into a nuclear power station by Clyde and someone claiming to be Sky's mother, only for Sky to be surrounded by energy and age twelve years in as many seconds. So that means now we have a twelve-year-old girl running around, still with the same electrical powers but with a bit more control over them. Part two isn't quite as much fun, just because it's much more heavily plot-oriented, but it's still entertaining. Sky is some sort of living weapon designed to kill the metal man's people (the Metalkind, who are boron-based lifeforms -- hey, why not? It makes as much sense as silicon-based life), but it's not a destiny Sky is particular happy about. Sinead Michael seems rather awkward and hesitant as Sky, but that might be a deliberate performance choice (as Sky is meant to be completely unknowledgeable about the world), so I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt for now.

Because yes, Sky manages to thwart her mother's plans for her, leaving her no longer a weapon and free to live with Sarah Jane -- thus making her a series regular. (And thus the youngest series regular to date on any of the Doctor Who-related shows, as Sinead Michael actually was twelve at the time of filming -- thus making her younger than the Paul McGann movie. Blimey.) It seems she was dropped off at Sarah Jane's door by the Captain and the Shopkeeper (who you might remember from last series' Lost in Time). "I'd still like to know who you are," Sarah Jane asks. "Both of you." "Consider us servants of the universe," the Shopkeeper replies. "... Sometimes things can't be left to chance. Sometimes a breeze must blow from east to west, not north to south. Sometimes a sky should be blue, not laden with cloud. And sometimes, a child must find her way home. Which is my task, Miss Smith. To put things in the right place." "But who are you?" Sarah Jane repeats. "All in good time," the Shopkeeper replies, and you get a sudden pang of sadness at the thought that that mystery will go unrevealed.²³⁷ But yeah, looks like Luke's got a little sister now. I wonder if they'll get the chance to play with that at all.

In many ways this story feels like an excuse to introduce a new cast member, to replace Tommy Knight as Luke (now only sporadically appearing on the show), but while there's nothing too surprising or compelling here, what we get is another solid, well done tale. It's still a nice job, even if it's not the greatest thing ever.

²³⁷ My guess is that he's meant to be a sort of opposite of the Trickster (who's basically the Black Guardian anyway, so that makes the Shopkeeper essentially the White Guardian -- although the original version of the story actually had the Doctor drop Sky off, but Matt Smith was too busy with "A Christmas Carol"). He was supposedly going to reappear in the sixth story of series 5, The Battle of Bannerman Road, which would have also seen the return of the Trickster. So I'm willing to bet I'm not far off.

June 12: "The Wedding of River Song" Prequel / "The Wedding of River Song" / "Death is the Only Answer"

And so here we are at last: the conclusion of series 6. The prequel to this episode is, it must be said, terribly unexciting: there seems to be something wrong with time (or their clocks, at least), there are Silents trapped in water tanks, and everyone is wearing an eye patch like Madame Kovarian -- including River Song. Gasp, I guess.

That leads us into the main event, which is... interesting. "The Wedding of River Song" is one of those episodes that feels big and exciting and fun, but when you actually stop to look at it, it becomes increasingly more difficult to make any sense out of it. Actually, I'm not sure that's true. I think it does make a sort of sense, but it requires the viewer to bring a lot of their own explanations to the table, to fill in the gaps in the narrative.

The big one is the nature of what's happening. We're told that all of time is happening simultaneously -- so Winston Churchill is Caesar, Charles Dickens is preparing Christmas specials for television (hooray, it's Simon Callow again, back for a quick cameo!), and pteranodons²³⁶ are flying around Hyde Park, harassing children. But we're also told that time doesn't move, that's it's 5:02pm and that it's always been 5:02pm. Except people can walk around and have conversations and something an awful lot like time seems to be happening, even if the clocks aren't moving. The explanation (based on a couple quick lines) is that this is in fact a bubble timeline where all of history is happening at once but remains 5:02pm in relation to the rest of the universe. But it would have been nice of them to have made that clearer.

But because everything's happening all at once but in a parallel world, it does make it somewhat difficult to work out who should know what at any given moment. So Amy only has vague feelings of memories and dreams of the Doctor and her travels, rather than anything concrete, and Rory doesn't even have that. Fair enough that the Doctor and River remember everything (since they were at the epicenter of the time explosion), but why does Madame Kovarian seem to still know exactly what's going on?

The Doctor and River spar while Amy and Madame Kovarian look
on. ("The Wedding of River Song") ©BBC

However, these are the sorts of things that come from looking too closely at this episode. "The Wedding of River Song" is more an episode that invites you to play along, not to scrutinize -- which is a bit of a problem, given that much of Doctor Who's message over the past 48 years has been to ask questions, but I suppose we can let it go. Because there's quite a bit about this story that's quite clever. The use of the Doctor telling Churchill what happened to time as a way to flashback to the events between the end of "Closing Time" and the beginning of this episode is a nice touch, with some fun callbacks (the Teselecta and Dorium Maldovar's head) and an entertaining sequence with a heavily disguised Mark Gatiss as Gantok the chess player. (Oh, and I love the way he's reading Knitting for Girls for fun as he waits for Gideon Vandaleur to show up -- it's been a long time since we've seen the Doctor read anything for pleasure.) There's also the touching moment of the Doctor learning that Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart has passed away (Nicholas Courtney having died earlier in the year), which is what convinces him that it's time to stop running. It's also a nice touch, having the Silents all locked up in the pyramid but actually simply waiting for the right moment to strike. And the eyepatches are explained away as "eyedrives" that allow you to remember the Silents after you've stopped looking at them. As I said, clever. And we finally get an acknowledgement from Amy about having Melody taken from her: "You took my baby from me and hurt her. And now she's all grown up and she's fine, but I'll never see my baby again." It's a long overdue moment, even if it leads to Amy killing Madame Kovarian. ("I killed someone," she reflects afterwards to River. "Madame Kovarian, in cold blood." "In an aborted time line, in a world that never was," River points out. But Amy is unpersuaded: "Yeah, but I can remember it, so it happened, so I did it." It's at least recognizing the issue, even if -- as far as I can remember -- it never comes up again.)

The cleverest bit of all is probably the way the Doctor avoids dying at the fixed point that the Silence have set up, by using the Teselecta. It's one of those things that feels almost obvious in retrospect, but everything is handled adeptly to not make it obvious until right before the revelation. It also means that the universe thinks the Doctor is dead, so he can now recede into the background. "I got too big, Dorium," he says at the end. "Too noisy. Time to step back into the shadows." Of course, this still means that the Doctor is heading for Trenzalore, where silence will fall when the question is asked, but that's still in the future.

So I dunno. There are some lovely clever moments in this episode, but it's all built upon a premise that rather requires you not to think too hard about it. I suppose that's the definition of a qualified success. One does wonder what a casual viewer would make out of it all though.

But then, series 6 has seen a more concerted move away from casual viewers in favor of a (more) dedicated audience. It's not the same feel as during the mid-1980s, when it sometimes seemed like Doctor Who was only targeting its fanbase, but it's still a shift away from Russell T Davies' approach. Then, there were ongoing references to an overarching series-long plot, but they were kept strictly in the background until episode 12 or so -- a little extra something for fans, but not something that casual viewers had to keep up on. Now (presumably emboldened by the success of shows like Lost), Steven Moffat is shifting toward a more detailed narrative, in which whole episodes are given over to advancing that longer storyline. It's not totally successful, though, because he's trying to have it both ways, with episodes that are accessible for more casual viewers still mixed in -- but that makes the dropping of the bigger arc more obvious.

It is something of a first for Doctor Who to go even this far with a storyline, and the time travel nature of the series makes it a less-than-straightforward thread to follow, which is probably why series 6 developed a reputation for being confusing and overcomplicated. I don't think that's necessarily true. It is a storyline that requires you to actively participate and think about what you're seeing (another reason elements of "The Wedding of River Song" are problematic), to mentally slot all the pieces together, which does mean that there are fewer "lightbulb" moments where you suddenly understand what's going on, and more dawning realizations instead. But it's a worrying kind of criticism that says that your audience isn't clever enough to work out what's going on and that you should dumb it down instead. No, if there's a problem with the big storyline, it's that the nature of the individual episodes make it hard to sustain things like characterization. Amy and Rory suffer a big, traumatic event that they seem perfectly OK with in the next episode. If the production team was going to go for this important storyline, then they should have gone for it. What we get instead is a halfway house between two competing philosophies of television.

Yet even with that caveat, series 6 was a success. They had some truly exceptional episodes, and the big storyline (the Doctor's death) was handled well on the whole. Matt Smith cemented his place as one of the best actors to play the Doctor, while Karen Gillan took the chance to make her character more nuanced; series 5 Amy sometimes felt like she was just shouting at the world for no obvious reason, but series 6 Amy (modulo reactions to the kidnapping of her baby) is more like an actual person, with all the pluses and minuses that encapsulates. And Arthur Darvill is so wonderful as Rory, sardonic and fun and frequently deferring to Amy -- not out of weakness but out of love -- that it's no wonder he's a fan favorite. All this means that even after 48 years, Doctor Who is still running strong.

Oh! But we're not quite done with series 6. Immediately after "The Wedding of River Song" aired, Doctor Who Confidential (the BBC Three documentary series going behind-the-scenes of the episode that had just aired) presented the winner of BBC Learning's "Script-to-Screen" competition, in which schoolchildren competed to have a short three-minute sketch featuring the Doctor and a returning enemy filmed and broadcast. "Death is the Only Answer", by the Children of Oakley Junior School (as the credits officially state), is a quick story involving Albert Einstein popping into the TARDIS, temporarily turning into an Ood, and then just as quickly being turned back into himself. It's a fun, lightweight little scene, with some really lovely lines ("Nice hair. You should keep it, it looks more sciencey") and a charming turn from Nickolas Grace as Einstein. What more do you need?

²³⁶ The sign in the park calls them "pterodactyls", but they're clearly pteranodons. (The crest on the head gives them away.) But we can blame that on the Royal Parks Agency (or whoever it was that put up the sign).

June 11: "Closing Time"

Maybe I'm wrong, but the general impression I've gotten from fandom is that "Closing Time" isn't a terribly well-loved story. It didn't rate highly on Doctor Who Magazine's recent 50 Years Poll (165 out of 241, with an average score of 65.59% -- although three other stories from series 6 are even lower on the list), and much of the fan commentary I've seen online has been dismissive. That's a shame, because I think "Closing Time" is a really sweet and funny piece.

Craig and the Doctor examine a Cybermat. ("Closing Time") ©BBC

I might be biased, since I thoroughly enjoyed last series' "The Lodger" and so I'm very welcoming of a sequel, but even so, "Closing Time" is fun and enjoyable. Certainly the chemistry is still there between Matt Smith and James Corden -- in fact, it might even be stronger than last time -- and the addition of Alfie/Stormageddon, Craig and Sophie's baby that the Doctor can talk to, makes for some lovely moments as well. "No, he's your dad," the Doctor tells Stormageddon, referring to Craig. "You can't just call him 'Not Mum.' ... 'Also Not Mum', that's me. And everybody else is... 'peasants'. That's a bit unfortunate." There are lines like this scattered throughout the piece, as the Doctor goes about trying to thwart a Cyberman invasion in Colchester from inside a department store. This seriously leads to all sorts of fun, as Craig tries to help him out and finds that he can't really be as charming as the Doctor -- when he tries it almost gets him thrown out of the store. "How do you do that?" Craig demands afterwards. "It's a power, isn't it? Some sort of weird alien hypnotic power. I bet you excrete some sort of gas that makes people love you." There's also the stuff with the Cybermat (a Cybermat! How cool is that? And looking a lot better since their last appearance in Revenge of the Cybermen), with its genuinely worrying teeth and its later efforts to attack the Doctor and Craig, having apparently been playing dormant and waiting for the right moment to strike. All this matched with more moments, as in "The Lodger", of the Doctor temporarily taking on menial jobs and being surprisingly good at them -- here as a sales clerk for the toy department, beloved by all the staff (including Val, as played by Lynda Baron -- last seen on the show as Captain Wrack in Enlightenment).

But one of the best things about "Closing Time" is by virtue of its placement in this run of episodes. First, it's not another "trapped in a structure and on the run" story, so that's welcome. But more importantly... Throughout this series we've been getting little digs at the Doctor, suggestions that he's not as good and morally upright as we like to think. That he'll lie to people, or get them killed, or both, and that he's "drenched in the blood of the innocent" (as the previous episode implied). Which I'm not saying isn't an interesting conversation to have (and Toby Whithouse in particular seems quite intrigued by this), but it does come as something of a relief to have Craig in this definitively say that the Doctor is amazing and wonderful and generally gets it right, and the Doctor shouldn't worry about it so much:

CRAIG: The Cybermat came after us?
DOCTOR: No, after me.
CRAIG: They sent it after us.
DOCTOR: After me. Because of me, you and Alfie nearly died. Do you still feel safe with me, Craig?
CRAIG: You can't help who your mates are.
DOCTOR: No. I am a stupid, selfish man. Always have been. I should have made you go. I should never have come here.
CRAIG: What would have happened if you hadn't come? Who else knows about the Cybermen and teleports?
DOCTOR: I put people in danger.
CRAIG: Stop beating yourself up. If it weren't for you, this whole planet would be an absolute ruin.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Closing Time)

"Closing Time" is a story that loves the Doctor, that shows that he is in fact a good and decent man. And yes, the resolution is a bit rubbish (Craig stops the Cybermen with the power of love -- yeeaahhhhh... Although, to be fair, it does make thematic sense in the context of the episode), but this isn't really about the Cybermen; it's about relationships and friendships and how sometimes your friends know you better than you know yourself. Yes, that means it's not a "heavy" story, but it's definitely a charming one, with some genuinely funny moments. (The last one, that Alfie's first word is "Doctor" (after Craig's been denying to Sophie that anything exciting happened while she was away), is particularly glorious.)

Of course, this does mean that the last few minutes (starting with the Doctor walking back to the TARDIS) feel somewhat divorced from the previous 41. Now we're actively setting up the series 6 finale next week, as River Song (now a doctor herself) is recaptured by Madame Kovarian and the Silence and stuck inside an astronaut's suit. So she was indeed the person inside the suit, albeit older than we may have been initially led to believe. Still, it's a much more serious tone than what came before, so it does jar ever so slightly, even though Gareth Roberts spent time setting up the Doctor's impending death throughout the episode. But maybe that's because the moment has finally arrived...

June 10: "The God Complex"

Oh look, another episode with our heroes trapped in a structure while something malevolent stalks them. After things like "The Curse of the Black Spot", "The Rebel Flesh" / "The Almost People", and everything after "Let's Kill Hitler" this is turning into quite the theme. Was there something in the air in 2011 Cardiff?

"The God Complex" is more of the same, but this time we're stuck in a generic hotel that has no exits, while a giant nameless minotaur stalks the halls, looking for people to psychically feast upon. Where this episode stands out is in its guest cast. Everyone is perfectly chosen to provide a realistic (albeit slightly generic) cast of characters. There's Daniel Pirrie as Joe in the room of ventriloquist dummies, Dimitri Leonidas as the somewhat nerdy Howie, David Walliams as the cowardly Gibbis, and Amara Karan as the self-assured Rita, who does seem to have a particular chemistry with Matt Smith. She's clearly being set up as prime companion material, handling everything that's been going on reasonably well -- down to making tea. "All hotels should have a well stocked kitchen, even alien fake ones," Rita says in response to the Doctor's question. "I heard you talking when you arrived. Look, it's no more ridiculous than Howie's CIA theory, or mine." "Which is?" the Doctor asks. "This is Jahannam," she replies. "You're a Muslim," the Doctor notes. "Don't be frightened," Rita responds, with the air of someone who's had to deflect that fact more than once. "Ha! You think this is Hell," the Doctor says. "The whole '80s hotel thing took me by surprise, though," Rita replies dryly. And of course, the regulars are in fine form -- Arthur Darvill continues to shine as the slightly sardonic Rory ("Every time the Doctor gets pally with someone, I have this overwhelming urge to notify their next of kin"), while Karen Gillan is as strong as ever as Amy. And Matt Smith continues to make the Doctor completely his own, offbeat and awkward and confident and generally amazing; watch his reaction to the minotaur and his efforts to talk to it, or to what he sees in his room ("Of course. Who else?"²³⁵), if you don't believe me.

Rory recoils as the minotaur breaks free of the salon. ("The God
Complex") ©BBC

It's a good thing the cast is strong, because while the situation is suitably bizarre (and is aided by lots of lovely direction from Nick Hurran), and the idea of rooms that contain everyone's fears is an intriguing one, it's not quite engaging enough to sustain interest. That means that "The God Complex" has to rely quite heavily on its players to make things work, rather than their simply adding to a strong script. It's like Toby Whithouse decided he wanted something off-beat, but he couldn't quite get it to cohere the way he wanted it to. Why else does the resolution steal so shamelessly from The Curse of Fenric's resolution? (Albeit by pulling the punch such that the Doctor doesn't call Amy an "emotional cripple".) The realization that the minotaur feeds off faith, rather than fear, is presumably meant to be clever, but it never quite feels justified in story terms. (And what's with the idea that Rory is safe because he doesn't believe strongly in anything? What, nothing? Not even Amy?)

The fear idea is nice, and the direction really is lovely, but this story just never quite clicks. There's another dig at the idea of the Doctor as hero, which would be OK if we hadn't just had the previous episode demonstrating that point rather more effectively. And I'm still not quite sure what the actual message is meant to be. Fear and faith are closely intertwined? Not all monsters want to be evil? Even things as dull as '80s hotels can be terrifying? It's not clear. The final scene almost makes up for all this (and if this had been Amy and Rory's final story, it would have been a fitting departure -- but alas, they don't get that neat an ending), but even that feels occasionally at a disconnect. It's a good effort, and there's certainly a lot here that can entertain you, but "The God Complex" simply doesn't gel as well as it should have.

²³⁵ All we hear is the TARDIS's Cloister Bell, and we don't actually get to see what's inside. At least not until "The Time of the Doctor", when we learn that what he saw was a Crack in Time. Which seems like a strange thing to refer to as "who", but oh well. (I still think it should have been the War Doctor.)

June 9: "The Blood Line" (TW)

Hmm. Something of a damp squib, this one. "The Gathering" ended with a number of key questions unanswered, and "The Blood Line" generally refuses to answer any of them. What exactly is the Blessing? Dunno. How did the Families find it, or even know it existed? No clue (other than some waffling about average life expectancies in Shanghai). What is the Families' actual plan? Something about tearing down the old society and replacing it with their own, although the details are left vague. (And surely there are easier ways of destroying the world's economy -- but I guess they wanted the immortality as well.)

Jack and Gwen gaze upon the Blessing. ("The Blood Line") ©BBC
Worldwide, Limited

So we've got this deus ex machina running through the planet, without even a fig leaf of an explanation, and when Torchwood finally gets there it takes them forever to do anything about it. Instead we get all sorts of speeches from everybody which go on forever and don't actually tell us anything, and we even get the Families' representatives laughing at Jack's foolishness of thinking his mortal blood in Shanghai could fix things, which leads to even more speeches from Jack and Rex. And while, to be fair, the shooting of Esther is a shocking moment, Torchwood still takes forever to end the Miracle. Seriously, Gwen, just shoot Jack and be done with it.

Look, that's not to say that there aren't good moments in this. The standoff between the Families and Torchwood is still rather entertaining, despite its length, and the scenes inside the CIA are genuinely compelling. (And I'm still mad at Charlotte Wills' duplicitousness, but at least she gets a comeuppance of a sort at the end.) There are also some exciting action moments mixed with quiet, touching scenes (Andy Davison holding the hand of the unidentified Category 1 girl is really sweet) that add to the balance. It's just that this is the finale of the whole story -- they've been building to this for the previous nine weeks, and the final result isn't the impressive climax it should have been. Miracle Day needed this episode to deliver in a big way, and it just doesn't. It's an OK episode, but it falls short of the mark that it really needed to hit.

But that rather sums up Miracle Day as well. It's an interesting concept and a fantastic opener, but the goodwill that "The New World" engendered ends up being squandered as they spend too much time dealing with side issues instead of the main event. Ten episodes was simply too long, and while the slack was often picked up in somewhat interesting ways, it still was evidently slack. All that matched with a finale that fails to truly deliver means that Miracle Day isn't the strong installment of Torchwood that it initially seemed it would be.

Of course, part of the issue might be that "The Blood Line" ends with some unresolved issues. Yes, the Miracle was reversed, but the Families are still out there plotting (with Jilly Kitzinger working for them), while Rex apparently also has the same immortality that Jack has. ("You, World War II, what did you do to me?" Rex demands in the final line of the episode.) However, to date we haven't gotten another series of Torchwood -- apparently Starz was satisfied with ratings and amenable to doing more, but Russell T Davies' return to the UK put Torchwood's future on hold. It's therefore somewhat ironic how definitely Children of Earth ended, and yet we got another series, but Miracle Day's open-ended finale hasn't been followed up on. (Maybe Big Finish will explore it, now that they've announced they'll be doing Torchwood audios, with Davies' blessing.)

So that was Torchwood -- a show that started out very shakily but slowly got better and better, to the point where Children of Earth was must-see television, and while Miracle Day didn't quite reach those heights, they still did a decent job. Torchwood was frequently a difficult show to love, but in their efforts to make a more "adult" companion to Doctor Who they largely succeeded (once they recalibrated their ideas of "adult" to not simply be lots of sex and violence). I can see how it's not to everyone's tastes, but if you can get through that first series (so maybe just skip it altogether) then there's a fair amount to enjoy. Not bad for Doctor Who's first ongoing spinoff.

(Oh, and it should be noted that after "The Blood Line" I watched "Web of Lies", which was a 10-part "motion comic" with puzzles available online to accompany Miracle Day. The DVD presents it minus the puzzles, but unless you're a huge Eliza Dushku fan, don't bother -- it doesn't add anything to the Miracle Day storyline, and it's not interesting enough in its own right to warrant your attention.)

June 8: "The Girl Who Waited"

It's a fairly simple idea at the heart of "The Girl Who Waited", that of two different time streams running at the same time, with one person trapped in one stream, away from the others, and yet from this Tom MacRae has created something beautiful and astonishing.

I have to confess, I'm not familiar with Tom MacRae's work beyond the Cybermen two-parter he wrote for David Tennant back in series 2, and that's not exactly a story to sing the praises of. Based on that I wouldn't have thought he had something like "The Girl Who Waited" in him, but this is unabashedly one of the best episodes of this series. As I said, it's a simple idea, but the way it plays out on screen is gorgeous -- touching and tragic and the sort of thing that feels both right at home on Doctor Who and boldly going to places the show only occasionally flirts with.

It certainly helps that everyone's contributing to the finished product. MacRae reportedly specified lots of all-white rooms to save on production costs, but it's still a striking image, nicely antiseptic and perfectly suited for a TV screen -- but the other locations on Apalapucia (the gardens, the "engine room") are also lovely to look at. Meanwhile, director Nick Hurran makes a superb Doctor Who debut, keeping the camera moving but also providing some marvelous superimposed shots as well. The two Amys looking at each other through the time glass is impressive enough, but the scenes of the older Amy and Rory, separated by the TARDIS door but blended together in the same shot, are really something else.

But the best thing about this are the actors. This is essentially a three-hander, as there are no other major guest appearances and the Doctor is restricted to the TARDIS (this being the "Doctor-lite" episode) -- and two of those hands are Karen Gillan. The makeup department has done a fantastic job aging Amy, but what's also impressive is Gillan. She's a marvel in the role, brittle yet strong and full of bitterness for being abandoned. "Why are we still here?" the younger Amy asks the older one through the time glass. "Because they leave you," the older one replies. "Because they get in their TARDIS and they fly away." That's what the older Amy feels: abandoned and angry. And because she doesn't want these past thirty-six years to be meaningless, she doesn't want to help Rory rescue her younger self -- initially at all, and then not without taking her too. Not to travel with the Doctor, as she now says she hates him, but just so that she can continue to live her life without being trapped. "Two Amys together. Can that work?" Rory wonders. "Maybe," the Doctor lies, spewing some technobabble to cover himself.

And that's really the biggest tearjerker moment of the episode. The Doctor deliberately lies to get Amy to help her younger self, knowing that there's no way to sustain the paradox of Amy leaving in the TARDIS and being trapped in Twostreams at the same time. The older Amy helps bring her younger self into this time stream and then helps fight their way to the TARDIS, only for the Doctor to shut the door in her face. "She's not real," the Doctor insists. "Look, we take this Amy, we leave ours. Only one Amy in the TARDIS. Which one do you want? It's your choice." "This isn't fair," Rory says bitterly. "You're turning me into you." "Your choice, Rory," the Doctor repeats. But it's not his choice. Amy and Rory are separated by the TARDIS door, having a wretched conversation that is clearly wrecking both of them, but it's Amy who makes the decision. "If you love me, don't let me in," she tells him. "Open that door, I will, I'll come in. I don't want to die. ... Tell Amy, your Amy, I'm giving her the days. The days with you. The days to come. ... The days I can't have. Take them, please. I'm giving you my days." And so Amy is saved, and thus never spent those 36 years alone, but that seems to be small comfort to Rory. And the Doctor is hardly unaffected, either: the last shot, after "our" Amy wakes up and asks, "Where is she?", is a guilty, uncomfortable look from the Doctor.

"The Girl Who Waited" is a gorgeous tale about love and loss and betrayal, and while it unabashedly goes for the gut it does so with considerable style. I don't know that I'd want many more episodes like this -- I'm not sure I could handle it -- but this is a beautiful tragedy with a melancholy ending that ultimately tells us that the most important thing in the universe can be just two people.

June 7: "The Gathering" (TW)

It's been two months since the last episode, and the world has gone to hell since then. Which begs a larger question for Doctor Who -- how is it that we never hear about these events outside of Miracle Day itself? Even allowing that there seems to be about a year's gap between "The Big Bang" and "The Impossible Astronaut", the Miracle lasts for something like three months starting in March 2011 (Rex's bank transfer text in "Rendition" is dated 22-MAR-11), with the Western world collapsing and China closing its borders and things generally going to hell -- and yet in the midst of this, on 22 April 2011, Amy and Rory meet the Doctor at Lake Silencio in Utah. And not once do we see them mention this to the Doctor, or wonder how he could be dead in the midst of the Miracle, or anything like this. At least in the past, there were token efforts to keep all the spin-offs more or less lined up (even allowing for things like no one mentioning to the Doctor that a giant devil materialized over Cardiff for an hour or so) -- but now that Torchwood and Doctor Who don't really share a production office (even if much of the UK crew still overlaps), it seems the same efforts aren't being made.

And while it's sort of interesting to see how society has begun its slow collapse into a depression, as the Miracle carries on and the overflow camps are reopened ("It's funny, isn't it?" Gwen remarks. "When they first opened the camps, we all protested. Second time we're all too busy looking after ourselves"), it doesn't make for the most thrilling television ever. We see that Rex and Shapiro have spent two months chasing down the Families, only to come up with nothing, while Gwen is trying to keep her father hidden from the authorities -- and Esther and Jack are hiding out in Scotland, doing little better. I suppose we should be thankful they skipped over those two months, but really, other than showing that things have gotten really bad little has changed since last time. Jilly Kitzinger's storyline hasn't even advanced yet.

But the nice thing about "The Gathering" is that we do finally start to get some answers. Torchwood works out where the Blessing is, thanks to a tip-off from Oswald Danes of all people (nice that he's finally being integrated into the story; despite Jack's claims that Oswald needed watching, he hadn't really been relevant to the conspiracy storyline), and we're starting to see people moved into position to deal with it. Plus we finally get to actually see the Blessing, although it's not very clear what it is: some sort of fissure that sucks in stuff and runs all the way through the Earth that makes people feel weird when they look at it, but that's it. We still don't know exactly how it was used to make everyone immortal, or what the hell Phicorp or the Families' endgame actually is, but we're getting closer. Of course there's still Charlotte Wills in the CIA to deal with, along with the fact that it looks like she'll be able to warn the Families that Torchwood has discovered them, in Buenos Aires at least, so we're not out of the woods yet.

I probably could have done without the jump forward in time, but at least "The Gathering" starts to finally bring everything together in a satisfying way. The final episode next time has a lot of questions to answer satisfactorily, but some of those answers start to appear here, rather than simply leaving us hanging until the very end. That said, they still have a long way to go and not much time left...