tresjolie9

Watched the newest Doctor Who last night, as was watching I felt compelled to keep a word processing application open and give a play by play on my thoughts about the episode. On a scale of 1-10, I would give it a 4.75, bad but not totally ridiculously over the top horrible. So far I don't like Amy Pond as a companion. Overall I felt I was watching Lost, meets Farscape, meets Dark City.

Did Moffat really have to go and create a totally new companion for Eleven? How about for the first few episodes, sticking to already established characters. Say what you want about Gwen, but I would take her over Amy Pond. Rani or Maria from The Sarah Jane Adventures?

Onto my play by play of the episode:

Eerie sculptures, and mysterious children in a scary dark place? Please think of something more original Moffat, we've seen this before. Reminds Dark City, and that pretentious Ron Pearlman film where French children are being taken "for their imaginations." Will this episode have more "Cat People"? Cat humanoids are just so lovely and artsy.

Cut to the intro, this is the Moffat era of Who, and things are going to be scary, lookee, the TARDIS is getting struck by lightening.

"My name is Amy Pond, when I was 7 I had a quirky fun imaginary friend. Last night before my wedding he, and now seem to be in love." I haven't even seen this episode yet, but I'm already having flashbacks to Drop Dead Friend, with the idea of the quirky imaginary friend from childhood returning to a woman's life, when her life is in turmoil in terms of career and love.

Oh lovely, Big Brother not the reality show, the idea of a future where everyone is being monitored.

Also this is repeating the formula of the second New Who episode, "The End of the World," new companion is taken to the bizarre future. Feels too much like I'm watching a reboot, and if a TV show is barely five years old, it does not need to be rebooted.

Ah yes, the "are you a parent anvil," couldn't they have waited on this one? It makes for "Emo Doctor," something that we don't quite need yet.

These two actors are both too close in their relatively young ages and too pretty for these roles. Not that they are bad actors, but they just aren't believable as Doctor and Companion, where to me it was always more of a "teacher student relationship. I tend to view The Doctor as asexual, and prefer there not be too much chemistry between him and the latest companion. It throws off his authority a bit. Instead of being genius teacher he is genius potential love interest.
There isn't really anything compelling about Amy Pond, she is Rose 2.0, the pretty companion who isn't all that successful in life, but we love her just the same. Rose was a girl who was bright, had loads of potential, but because she wasn't from the best of circumstances never went to college, and was stuck living her mother and working below her capacity. New companion is an orphan, and from what we know about her, never managed to achieve her true brilliant potential to be a cop, or a nurse, and instead was stuck living in the house of her aunt, and working as a "Kiss-O-Gram." I hate to say it, but crying twelve year old from the future might have made a more compelling new companion than Amy. Can we swap them out?

New companion is about to do something stupid? At the end of this episode, will we find out that she was once an excellent gymnast, and will save the day via gymnastics? Apparently not, but would I have been surprised if that had happend? No!

The sculpture/carnival head thing rolls around, has an evil face? How very Moffat! Scary sculptures, just like in Blink!

Is England now "The Island" from Lost? I was wondering when other sci fi shows would start ripping it off. More possibly ripped from Lost, the idea of a modern place being run on retro 60s-early 80s technology. They aren't doing it to quite the degree it was used on Lost, but that element is certainly there.
Oh god, not Ten's angry "I'm the last of my kind," refrain.
I know this is the second episode, but so far Matt Smith has failed to make the character his own. When we went from Christopher Eccleston, to David Tennant, I didn't get a distinct feeling Tennant was trying to be Christopher Eccleston. There were some differences in the performances, but Ten was a softer, gentler, more whimsical guy than Nine. Ten would do domestic, and come to tea with a family, Nine would not. The same isn't happening with Matt Smith. Instead of feeling like a totally new and different Doctor, he feels l ike a recast, a good recast, but still a recast and not a new character. Maybe over time he will make more of an effort to make this character his own. If he is the actor that TPTB are bragging about, he certainly has that potential.

So this is what happened after "The Judgment of Veruka Salt," in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory!

Overall this is just trying a bit to hard to be "artsy pretentious sci fi," as opposed to fun sci fi! And I hate things that take place at night, and in the dark, feels too much like a Burton Batman film.

"Poor sentient creature who humanity is taking advantage of," didn't work on the Torchwood episode Meat, and isn't working here!
This episode is Lost merged with Farscape, merged with Dark City!

Its called a Star Whale......"And evil humanity hunted the poor, innocent, all good, star whales into extinction!"
I'm sick of this type of sci fi, "the Earth is bad, we've ruined it, so now we are going to exploit poor innocent aliens."

Does this take place in the same verse as Avatar?
The ending was ridiculous, "It volunteered to help all of ~~the~~ ~~UK,~~ whoops England. it is the perfect star whale!"All kinds of silly over the top references can be made to the world which is now the "Kingdom of the Magical Star Whale. How will this effect religion on Strarship UK England