Doctor Who Reviews and Theories: Series 5 Episodes 4 and 5
The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone
It’s nearly this season’s half-way point and time for me to start theorizing on what the hell is going on!
Wow…just wow. I have been very much looking forward to this story even more so than the return of the Daleks or the Silurians (Spoliers!) and it did not disappoint. I honestly loved every minute, but I did have a couple of parts that stood out for me more than others.
Firstly, despite it being implied that he doesn’t know how to fly his own ship, I loved the “you leave the brakes on” exchange between the Doctor and his companions. Matt’s impersonation of the TARDIS sound has me rolling every time I watch it. The look on his face as he looks back and forth at Amy and River is priceless.
“But it didn’t make the noise…”
From the second episode there were two moments that really stood out for me. The first was the brief conversation between the Doctor and Amy before he sets out back out of the forest/oxygen factory, more on that later. The second bit is when the lights went out and came back on and the bishop had been caught in a headlock by one of the Angels. I really loved the conversation between the bishop and the Doctor when the bishop knows he is about to die. It reminded me so much of classic Doctor Who (as did most of this story to be honest). I think it says a lot about an episode that can be so creepy, scary, funny and action packed but the best bits are still the quieter conversations between the characters.
I agree. We saw him on his best day
Watching these episodes I was smiling right from River Song’s timey-whimey lady James Bond adventure on the Byzantium in the first minutes of the episode and through to Amy Pond’s advances on the Doctor in her bedroom at the very end. I could go on and on about what I love and what worked in these two stories (pretty much everything), but that article would basically turn into a recap of pretty much every minute and quite frankly I would bore myself. As we move into the middle of the season I thought I’d take a few minutes to speculate on where the season is in its big story arc.
If you want to avoid spoilers I would read no further my friends…
River Song being around seemed to kick things off quite nicely. I for one love the mystery of River Song. Despite my better half’s urgings, I still haven’t read “The Time Traveller’s Wife,” but the idea of continually meeting someone out of order never gets old. It is especially so with the Doctor. His future is his only unknown and I believe he takes solace in that. He pretty much knows how everything is going to turn out all the time, so not knowing exactly how it’s going to turn out for him gives him a reason to keep going and keep adventuring. River’s mere presence clouds that fact. Her existence makes it clear that there are particular events in his future that will absolutely happen. That obviously does not sit well with the Doctor and his no spoilers policy. By the end of the story though the Doctor seems resolved that “no spoilers” might not be that big of a problem because, contrary to what he learned in “Waters of Mars,” time can be re-written.
Seems that wink was more to the Doctor
It’s in this respect that my theory of Moffatt moving his series past the RTD era is again upheld. Events that most definitely happened are being erased. Amy doesn’t remember the Daleks. No one remembers the giant Cyber-King trampling London (some of us wish we didn’t remember either). Time is being re-written. We don’t know how or why. What we do know that it has to do with Amy, the crack in her wall and a briefly mentioned explosion that is happening somewhere in time. Thus the Doctor ends this story with the thought that if the crack can re-write time, then he can re-write time to stop the crack. Amazingly it seems that he may have been doing it since “The Eleventh Hour.”
Whatever am I on about? Let me explain. In the scene in the oxygen factory there is a brilliant exchange between the Doctor and Amy while she has her eyes closed. The Doctor walks away and then suddenly he comes back and takes Amy’s hands and pleads with her to remember what he told her when she was seven. He then gives her a tender kiss on the forehead. Watching this scene the first time it felt off and unnatural the way that he left and came back. There was something about the timing and his tone of voice that I couldn’t put my finger on. Watching it a couple times more I think I know why.
You can see the jacket in this picture!
The Doctor that returns is not the same Doctor that left. Moffatt is a very clever cluck. It is so very subtle, but when the Doctor and Amy are having that conversation and the camera shows the Doctor he is wearing his jacket. The Doctor very clearly lost his jacket when the Weeping Angels had their hands on him in the master control room. Most people would quickly brush this off as a continuity error, but the thing is the jacket he is wearing in this scene is a different jacket from the one that the angels were left holding. That is way too much of a mistake to be simply unnoticed. I believe that it was intentional and it is starting to make other things add up as well.
In several interviews both Moffatt and Matt Smith have stated that once people have seen the finale they’re going to be going back over all the rest of the episodes of the season and start seeing how things that they hadn’t originally noticed are there and make it all come together. They were talking about normal viewers of course and not fans like myself who will analyze every detail of every episode. So thinking of this I started to wonder about other bits of previous episodes that struck me as odd, but I couldn’t explain in any way. I think I have it now though…The Doctor from the finale is traveling back through his own timeline and trying to fix whatever it is that causes the Pandorica to open.
It started at the end of “The Eleventh Hour” and 7 year old Amy hearing the TARDIS. The editing and juxtaposition of adult Amy waking up after young Amy hearing the TARDIS makes it seem like she was waking from a dream, but what if she wasn’t. I may be off on a ledge here, but what if this is the 7 year-old Amy that the Doctor is referring to in the oxygen factory. This is the version of Amy that he said something to that he is trying to get adult Amy to remember.
The Doctor is a little old to be travelling with someone so young
The theme continues in “The Beast Below.” There is a scene where right after Liz X meets the Doctor for the first time and is walking away the ship rumbles and there is a noise that sounds very much like the TARDIS materializing. Then Liz X disappears. Could this have been the Doctor plucking her out of time for some unknown reason?
The Doctor hears it too! I am not crazy!
“Victory of the Daleks” appears to be mostly free of the Doctor returning theme, but I have faith in Moffatt that by the time the Pandorica closes we’ll get an “Ah-ha!” moment out of that one too.
Is the Doctor traveling back in time and if he is why is he doing it? What is the significance of Amy’s wedding date of June 26th, 2010? (which if all goes well should actually be the air date of the season finale) Was Rory’s ID badge just another continuity error? We don’t have any of these answers yet, but at the rate things are moving along we will soon.I could be a crazy person and I could be grasping at straws, but I know now that I will be hyper-vigilant when watching next weeks episode “Vampires of Venice” written by Toby Whithouse. (Jonathan actually interviewed Toby at SDCC last year and that interview is currently featured on the Geekscape.net homepage)
They vant to suck your blood
