The Space Museum, Part 3

The episode picks up where we left off, with the Doctor being taken to the preparation room and the museum staff gathering around the TARDIS.  Ian and Barbara discuss the relative merits of making changes to the future.  They listen at the door as the soldiers discuss their capture outside and they are found by a soldier who approaches them from behind.  Ian confronts the soldier and attacks him and Barbara and Vicki run.  Ian overcomes the soldier and another soldier who tried to help capture him as Barbara and Vicki get separated while running from their pursuers.  Vicki is grabbed by the rebels as Barbara is inadvertently locked in a storage room.  One of the rebels finds Barbara and the two of them encounter a gas released into the building to flush them out.  Vicki goes to the armory with the rebels and tries to help them overcome the electronic lock. Barbara and her companion are overcome by the gas.  Ian captures the governor and forces them to take him to the Doctor.  The episode end with us seeing Ian's reaction when he sees the Doctor, but we don't see the Doctor ... yet.

The Space Museum, Part 2

It has been a while since I watched part 1 of this story, and sitting down to part 2 was a welcome diversion from my hectic days.

The second episode starts with two staff persons discussing their jobs, when they are told of the arrival of the TARDIS.  A group of rebels discusses the arrival of the TARDIS travelers.  The Travelers discuss their course of action, and they start trying to find their way out of the museum.  The Doctor is grabbed by the rebels and taken away from the others.  Barbara, Vicki and Ian argue what to do in the Doctor's absence, and the Doctor escapes from the rebels by hiding inside a Dalek display, but is captured by the museum staff.  He is questioned by the governor who uses thought projection device to read the Doctor's mind.  The Doctor resists the questioning and the governor decides that he would be more useful as an exhibit.  As the episode ends, the guards arrive to take the Doctor to the preparation room ...

I will continue watching and blogging on this episode in the not too far future.

The Space Museum, Part 1

Since there will be such a long wait for more new Doctor Who, I have decided to watch the odd classic episode here and there and then watch and comment on the odd new series eisode as well. In that vein, I am watching an episode I have never seen before, The Space Museum. The DVD restoration of this episode is phenominal. The video and sound quality are great, approaching modern digital quality.

The TARDIS materializes and Ian is concerned because they are n longer in the clothes that they dematerialized in. Vicki gets a glass of water for the Doctor and drops it, and the glass returns to her hand intact. The travelers realize they are at museum, and they are baffled by the fact that they are not leaving any footprints in the dust. They are further baffled by a lack of soounds, and a pair of guards walk within a few feet of them and don't take notice of them despite Vicki sneezing loudly as they walked by.

Inside the museum two museum staff walk by talking, but the travelers did not hear any sound. Vicki discovers that they can't touch any of the displays, and a cuple more museum staff walk by and look right at the travelers but don't see them. They find a display containing the TARDIS and their bodies. Vicki realizes that they are out of time, ahead of their own time track. The Doctor deduces that they should wait for themselves to arrive, and then they will be back in synch. Once they are in synch, they need to prevent whatever occurance end with them as a museum display. Suddenly, the display vanishes, and they are back on track with the time stream...

The Wedding of River Song

Time for a new episode, and I am actually going to watch it live.  Woohoo!  I am watching the final few minutes of Closing Time, and something just hit me, when River sees the Silence, she says who are they and eye-patch lady tells her that they are "her owners."

Wow, what is with time being all mixed up?  WTF?????  The Doctor?  OK, this will be an interesting trip!  OK, so the Doctor goes on a quest to find out why the Silence want him dead.  OK, talking to Dorium Maldovar's head ...  weird.

OK, the mention of the Brig dying ... that was great, kind of a tribute to Nicholas Courtney.  Amy with the eyepatch?  And she shoots the Doctor in the head??? Moffatt is starting to piss me off.  OK, stun gun!  I am not that pissed any more .... The eyepatch is actually a time filter (?) ... interesting.  And the Doctor REALLY needs a haircut!  OK, so it is an eye-drive.

So the Doctor is trying to fix time by getting back to the moment where River kills him and make it happen.  Looks like the Silence are about to break free ... and the eye-drives start to zap the hell out of people.  The Doctor and River get married!  Booyah!

Then my screen froze and I missed everything until Rivere and Amy are drinking wine.  The Doctor Lives!

OK, waiting for Christmas!  Maybe I will go back to my idea of watchign classic Who until it comes back in the Fall (less the specials).  Christmas and from what I hear, an Easter special, then new Who in the fall of 2012.

"Closing Time"

So today I am doing a Doctor Who double feature to get caught up and hopefully be able to stay live to wind up the season.  The flickering lights are never a good sign, and the Doctor showing up at Craig's house and finds that Craig is now a stressed out father.  Meanwhile, a shop girl discovers a Cyberman in the dressing room ... I wasn't aware that they were known for their keen fashion sense.

The Doctor starts working in a shop to investigate the strange power fluctuations, and he and Craig end up in the Cyber-ship via a teleport hidden in a shop elevator.  The Doctor and Craig get mistaken for "partners."  The Doctor is doing well investigating, but Craig ... not so good at it.  I like the alien "shhh power."  They are looking for a "silver rat," in actuality, a cybernate (another nod to the old series).  In the shop, the Doctor sees Amy and Rory shopping and sees a little girl ask Amy for her autograph.  He turns around and discovers that Amy has become a model.

The Doctor captures a Cybermat, and whoa, I have never seen a Cybermat with teeth before.  While the Doctor is talking to the baby, the Cybermat reactivates and starts stalking the Doctor.  Craig gets attacked, and the Doctor manages to deactivate it again.  The Doctor is feeling alone and melancholy.  He feels like his life is coming to a close and he is questioning wether or not having companions is a wise choice.  He goes off on his own to face the Cybermen, and Craig hurries off to help him, because the Doctor NEEDS his companions (Think back to "Turn Left" in series four).

The Doctor discovers that the Cybermen were on a ship that crashes centuries ago, and they were trying to rebuild.  They are defeated by the power of a father's love and instinct to protect his crying baby.  The Doctor swans off tidys up the house for Craig before Sophie returns and he takes some TARDIS blue envelopes from Craig's house, and as a partaking gift, Craig gives him a stetson hat.  This leads me to wonder how much time has passed in-between "The God Complex" and "Closing Time" because remember that the Doctor who died in "The Impossible Astronaut" was 200 years older than the current Doctor.

The Episode ends with the eye-patch lady and the Silence coming for River Song and encase her in the astronaut suit to set up the events of "The Impossible Astronaut."  The Season Finale is next week, and I can't wait!  Of course, then we have to wait until autumn 2012 before the next season begins.

"The God Complex"

I am still a little behind.  I am finally watching last week's episode, "The God Complex."  The opening  promises that this will be an amazing episode, scary and creepy.  After all, who hasn't had nightmares about a haunted hotel?  Each room has something someone fears, and everyone goes form room to room until they find their worst fears.  All of the pictures feature people and what their worst fear was.  The Sontaran's greatest fear was defeat, and the young lady cop was that horrible gorilla from the pre-credits sequence.

Apparently , the blogger's greatest fear is a room full of attractive females.  Heck, that is my wildest dream!  I loved his theory about the CIA and underground cities in Norway.  Rory get's a great line here, saying that he came up with an explanation more bizarre than what was actually happening.  Of course, Joe gets taken, and all of the repetitions of "praise him" are slightly disconcerting.

Personally, I think that Rita would make a great companion.  She has a confidence that would make the Doctor's travels slightly more interesting.  The Doctor works out that the hotel is the hunting grounds of an alien monster that feeds on fear.  Of course thinking of a basket of kittens banishes all of my fears too!

The Doctor faces the monster and tries to reason with it, but the geeky blogger (I'm terrible with names) gets in the way and the creature is on the rampage again.  I like that Rita isn't automatically impressed by the Doctor and it will be sad if she buys it!  The Doctor found his room, and while we don't see his greatest fear, we hear the TARDIS cloister bell ringing.  The Doctor finally works it out, that it isn't fear that the monster feeds not on fear, but on faith, and in order to save Amy, he has to break her faith in him. While it works and the monster backs off and eventually dies, we get our first possible glimpse of Amy and Rory leaving the Doctor.

The monster turns out to be another look back at the old series as the Doctor tells us that the creature was related to Nimon from the Fourth Doctor Story "The Horns of Nimon."  I think one of the great things that Moffat has done is he has incorporated references to the old series several times now.  It really makes old-school fans like myself feel like we are appreciated for sticking with it.  I haven't seen "The Horns of Nimon" in several years, so maybe I will have to watch it.  I wonder if it is on my DVD library?

The episode ends with the Doctor dropping Amy and Rory back off at their house and heading out on his own.  At least Rory gets a car out of the deal.  It is kind of a sad ending with the Doctor alone in the TARDIS.

The Girl Who Waited

Wow, it has been a while!  Somehow I managed to miss two weeks worth of Doctor Who and am finally watching "The Girl Who Waited" from my DVR.  Thinking of Amy as a companion, this episode is obviously intended to shine a light on her and develop her character some more.  The companion-centered episode is a peculiar development of the new series, starting with "Turn Left."  In the old series, there really wasn't much need to develop the characters of the companions (or the Doctor for that matter).

In the early years of the series, when there were 42 episodes per year, different episodes would be written in order to allow the principal actors to take a week off here and there.  Now they write an episode with minimal involvement of the primary characters, or rather different primary characters at different times.

Amy being trapped in a separate time stream as a method of quarantine is almost genius.  Moffat is, if nothing else, able to create a great story, even if he tends to write a very confusing season.  Karen Gilliam really shone in this episode, showing her versatility in showing us an older, harder, less innocent Amy Pond.  An Amy who was abandoned and used the things she learned from the Doctor in order to survive.

Rory forces Amy to face herself, and we see the image of Amy the way that Steven Moffat sees her.  She starts out as an innocent scottish girl, left behind and waiting for the raggedy doctor, to being the fulcrum which pivots the Doctor's life and travels, to being the mother of the person who murders the Doctor (according to the little dudes in the person-ship during "Let's Kill Hitler," but  I still have my doubts).  Of course, seeing older Amy swinging away with a sword and stick ... hmmm ... makes me wanna be more manly.

Rory being forced to make a choice was a great moment, especially when he told the Doctor "you're turning me into you."  After all, that is what the Doctor does ... he makes decisions.  It was fun to watch him force someone else to make the decision for once.  But what was with him sticking his tongue out at Amy?