That. Was. Insane.
And this review will be a mismatched compilation of vague observations before I depart to watch the episode again on iPlayer.
From the off I was saying ‘wow’. William Hartnell (the First Doctor) interacting with Jenna Louise Coleman (Clara Oswald). I could write a whole essay purely on the pre-credits sequence. Which may just be the best the show has ever seen. It disappointed me that (as far as I recall) we still don’t know how Strax (Dan Starkey) survived A Good Man Goes to War and that Angie (Eve de Leon Allen) and Artie (Kassius Carey Johnson) Maitland made a brief appearance. But Coleman was brilliant. Matt Smith (the Eleventh Doctor) was absolutely spectacular. The emotional Doctor seen as Clara speaks to him in the living room is a very rare occurrence and Smith does it absolutely phenomenally. Steven Moffat’s script was brilliant and the whole idea was superbly original and well constructed, whilst still making sense. That is becoming a very rare treat. The ‘conference call’ scene was a very good idea and looked brilliant, though it struck me as odd that if that technology exists the Doctor would have used it many times before. The whispering man at the beginning (Paul Kasey) was very odd and it did not sit comfortably with me at all that he knew so much about the Doctor, though admittedly he was a decent actor. The explosions within the T.A.R.D.I.S were unnecessary and unoriginal but did look good and the idea of bigger-on-the-inside technology leaking out on point of a T.A.R.D.I.S’ death appealed greatly to me. Moffat is excellent at installing emotion into characters and thus his audience but did toe the line of putting in too much humour. The paternoster gang are decent though did get distracting at times and I do hope that is the last we will see of them in this show. Though I would not complain about a spin-off to replace The Sarah Jane Adventures. Catrin Stewart (Jenny Flint) was brilliant though it irritated me that she was so easily resurrected. Trenzalore looked excellent and the mention of the Valeyard excited me greatly. I was also flooded with genuine fear and more importantly intrigue about the inside of the tomb. I was glad Moffat avoided giving the Doctor a corpse, though he seemed to spoil it by inserting Clara’s line “I’ve seen all eleven versions of you” when she has supposedly helped all past and future incarnations, suggesting after all Moffat’s efforts to suggest otherwise, that Smith is the last. It was very predictable that River Song (Alex Kingston) would open the tomb and that Clara would enter the ‘corpse’ of the Doctor, but her use of ‘Run you clever boy, and remember me’ almost made me as nostalgic as the Valeyard reference oddly. It was irritating that, as ever, the Doctor went to extreme lengths to save one person but I let that pass. I was also finally convinced of the romance between the Doctor and River, and I do eventually accept their relationship, though as soon as he begins flirting with somebody else I shall be furious. If this was indeed Kingston’s eventual exeunt it was brilliantly executed, especially with the line “Goodbye, sweetie”, which Moffat has no doubt had planned for years. The vague passing of each incarnation of the Doctor was also nice, particularly with how much the Ninth looked like Christopher Eccleston, though it was clear the first was not Hartnell. The insertion of the leaf at the end was irritating and unnecessary but the ending of the entire episode made up for it. Purely his one line showed off John Hurt (the Doctor)’s insane talent, and I was not expecting to see his face at all. This could take the 50th Anniversary special either way. It could ruin the whole show, or it could enhance it a million times. Either way, what with Hurt and David Tennant, the episode itself is sure to be brilliant.
Acerbically Analytical Adolescence 