Review: Doctor Who - Flesh and Stone

[angelophile]

The Weeping Angels returned last week, leaving us with a cliffhangery cliffhanger. This episode Amy's miniskirt got some prominent screentime. Don't blink.

First up - another great episode which I thoroughly enjoyed. Not without flaws, but with some major strong points.

The first of which - Iain Glen. I mentioned how much I loved Father Octavian last episode, but weirdly, I hadn't even realized he was played by Iain Glen, my favorite Hamlet ever. How did I miss that? His voice was a million miles from how he normally sounds, but even so, it didn't even click until I saw the titles. Although the Doctor didn't seem able to decide whether he was a Father or a Bishop, Octavian was the stand out character for me in both episodes and his ultimate sacrifice made for the full-on lip wobble moment.

Anyway, the cliffhanger was resolved in a way that reminded me of those 80s cartoons, where between episodes suddenly something will have happened off camera to help. In this case, suddenly opening seconds after the cliffhanger's sorted itself instead of actually showing anything. Cheating bastards.

Some fantastic dialogue this week, including a shout out to Monty Python and the "I trust him with my life!" hilarity. There was also the lovely moment when Amy thought the Doctor had left her and the shot lingered an he then suddenly popped back on-screen. BUT WAIT! He was wearing the jacket he lost previously in the episode. Could it be a different Doctor? Continuity error or plot point? You decide! "I need you to trust me. It's never been more important..." Hmmm!

It did seem to be a fairly important moment for the Doctor and Amy's relationship though, bringing up the matter of trust as faith. I thought we were done with the lonely god angle. But Matt Smith was fantastic this week, alternating between snappy and raging when he knows everything's going horribly wrong, to comforting and thoughtful, to cocky and almost Captain Kirk-esque in the conversations with Angel Bob.

One problem with the plot - previously, if the Angels were seen by any living thing, including each other, they were frozen in place. Here we saw multiple angels working together, apparently looking at each other all the time with no apparent ill-effects. I'm going to assume that was forgotten about or fluffed over, because there certainly seemed to be no in-episode explanation for it. Maybe it's all tied into the whole "time can be rewritten" schtick brought up this episode, which, so far, seems to have been used purely as a plot device to wipe out the more irritating RTD excesses from everyone's memories. (No one remembers the giant robot Cyber-king stomping London? I wish I didn't either.)

My only reservation with the pacing was that the revelations and worrying about the crack (yes, the Doctor's big enemy this series is the crack. Scans_Daily will be proud) kinda detracted from the damn scariness of the hundreds of Angels running around everywhere. They got forgotten about entirely for a good ten minutes or so there. Worrying.

And wait, if the Angels fell into the crack and never existed, how come everyone continued to remember them and those they'd killed didn't spontaneously start existing again? Given Moffat's distaste for actually killing off people in his episodes and having them live on in some form or another (cured gas mask peeps, River Song and friends downloaded to VR), I was surprised Father Octavian, Bob and the others didn't suddenly spring back into existence. For that matter, why were the Angels just snapping necks and not shifting people back in time and living off their life force like previously? Hmm, a few missing explanations there.

And now onto the big part of the episode, which seems to have made the press - Amy trying to jump the Doctor's bones. I'm kinda at a loss with this because it literally came from nowhere. Did River slip her some aphrodisiac or something? It ddn't seem to be a logical character jump at all and while I'm not unhappy to see a female character who's entirely comfortable with a guilt-free sex life and just out for a bit of fun and not long term true-love-forever, but my reaction was much the same as The Doctor's - um, what the heck are you doing? And doesn't Amy have any concept of faithfulness to Rory? I hope so, and this moment of madness gets some explanation or justification, especially as Rory appears to be from the same mold of awesome normality as Rhys, Mickey or Larry Nightingale. (An opinion enforced by the trail for next week's episode.)

Oh, and Amy's the most important person in the universe. Wait, wasn't that Donna? Are they going to have to fight over it?

So, a great episode, with snappy dialogue and great performances, but rather let down, again, but some distracting plot holes. Although we're not in RTD territory yet, it does appear to be becoming a repeated pattern.

And now, theories. The man River Song kills? The one who was a good man, River even says "the best"? Totally The Doctor himself. I'm not sure if it was meant to be signposted as obviously as it was, but there certainly seemed to be a lot of heavy hints after Octavian's initial reveal, which seemed obvious enough in itself. I was mildly surprised to see River survive this episode intact, but now there's a nice neat plot device to wipe her from existence, I foresee that looming in her future too.

Comments

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

I'm kinda at a loss with this because it literally came from nowhere. Did River slip her some aphrodisiac or something?

I'm not sure it came out of NOWHERE per se, because in Victory of the Daleks she had that "ever fancy somebody you know you shouldn't" speech, and her ogling him in the very first episode, but it did seem pretty sudden, yeah. Your mention of an aphrodesiac is interesting though... they DID make a point of having River inject her with something in the first part of the two parter. Sure, there was a perfectly good in-story explanation for it (cure for all the radiation flowing around), but all the best hidden teases do too.

It would kind of be awesome if the Big Bad of the season wasn't the crack, but actually River Song, changed somewhat due to the timeslips.

[angelophile.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a big step between finding someone attractive and trying to jump their bones, so, in that respect, it did seem to be a big leap.