![\"panlogo\"](\"http:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/panlogo.jpg\" "\\"panlogo\\"")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Spoilers, sweetie…”
\n
\nAnd so to our concluding two-parter. In lieu of reviews fellow ZB-reviewers Peter and Al have carried on a conversation about each episode. Feel free to pitch in at any time!<\/p>\n
P:<\/strong> After a pretty good year despite the challenges of a reduced budget, a year off and a new team to usher in, surely you can forgive Steven Moffat a little indulgence \u2013 and here it is, the longest pre-credits sequence of the entire series. It\u2019s a quickfire surprise second lap around a lot of the earlier stories courtesy of some sneaky extra scenes, and of course the expected return (one of a couple) of River Song in her most Harkness-like performance. It\u2019s all build-up, and what a build-up! Stonehenge, eh?<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> I remember reading a report in a copy of Starburst<\/em> magazine, back in the late 1980s about the \u2018upcoming\u2019 Doctor Who<\/em> movie. It excitedly mentions the script featuring \u2018strange explosions and lights at Stonehenge, and alludes to comparisons with \u2018another adventurous Doctor, with the surname of \u2018Jones\u2019. You have to wonder if a younger Steven Moffat might have read this with as much excitement as we did, and remembered\u2026<\/p>\n P:<\/strong> Stonehenge is an idea so iconic it’s amazing it never got used.<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> Agreed \u2013maybe it\u2019s because Quatermass <\/em>nicked it? P:<\/strong> Oh, there would have been blood. You wouldn’t expect any of that lot to settle for doing away with the Doctor and then heading for home. The idea was a nice rug-pull moment, especially so for the bravura performance by the Doctor and his handy mic on the stage stone. Fancy bluffing his way out of a confrontation he couldn’t hope to win, then to not only discover that there was to be no confrontation (well, not of the sort he’d imagined), but that the prison box he’d hoped to defend was in fact a trap for him? That’s clever, and a clever inversion of course of the original myth, with, literally, all the evils in the world sealing Hope (in the form of the Doctor) into Pandora’s empty box.<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> Inversion is a good word to use. I liked the idea that the Doctor hadn\u2019t heard of the \u2018warrior-trickster with the blood of whole races on his hands\u2019 whom the Pandorica was built to imprison, because from his many enemies point of view \u2013it was him.<\/p>\n The various monsters appearances were well handled, and thankfully managed to avoid bearing any resemblance to Dimensions in Time<\/em>. Perhaps it was a logical step, having already had a \u2018league of companions\u2019 in Journey\u2019s End<\/em>, but having the \u2018big three bads\u2019 and supporting nuisances from the past five years was still a fan dream well-realised.<\/p>\n P:<\/strong> The choice of aliens strikes me as simultaneously sensible (recent, recognisable monsters) and a little strange (Weevils? the Hoix? Pilot Fish?) I’ve read comparisons to Dimensions in Time,<\/em> but the main thing surely is the brevity of the whole bit. They’re simply a shorthand for ‘all the Doctor’s enemies’ rather than a literal depiction. I’m glad the Weeping Angels weren’t there, and ecstatic that the Slitheen weren’t bobbing their heads away like dashboard ornaments. Oh, and how good was it that Christopher Ryan was on hand to play Strak, only the second actor after Kevin Lindsay to play two different clones! Plus it saved Nick Briggs having a three-way conversation with himself.<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> Yes, and wasn\u2019t it gratifying that the Sontarans were by far the most charismatic of the assembled villains \u2013 but we\u2019ve always known that!<\/p>\n P:<\/strong> I see those Daleks were being filmed very judiciously again though – once more from head-on angles only. It stings to have such an obviously bad profile, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> Wasn\u2019t the earlier \u2018Bedknobs and Broomsticks<\/em> meets The Thing<\/em>\u2019 Cyberman sequence absolutely fantastic? I\u2019m loathe to admit that the Cybermen could quite easily appear a little dull by comparison to some of the other, more emotional creatures in \u2018Ep 12\u2019 \u2013 but Amy\u2019s encounter achieves what Dalek did for a lone specimen of that race back in 1995 – and shows how terrifyingly relentless a single Cyberman can be.<\/p>\n P:<\/strong> Not before time, I thought, with The Next Doctor<\/em> having been such a damp squib for them. I really enjoyed the Cyberman scene, and it’s worth noting that I didn’t even bat an eyelid when a headless Cyber-body was walking around \u2013 I\u2019d have freaked as a teenager! I also took note of the Invasion-style Cybership in the sky too – a good decision given the range of vehicles on offer (saucers are now definitely a Dalek thing, while the 80s Cyberships are just too blocky for the Deco-revised Cybermen).<\/p>\n A:<\/strong> Well spotted.\u00a0 I\u2019d love to take a bit of time over screen-grabs of that scene \u2013 the astonishing detail is so briefly glimpsed; making me think of enormous, bioluminescent deep-sea creatures.\u00a0 It was a carefully saved \u2013up for \u2018money shot\u2019 which the previous team might have killed for.\u00a0 Speaking of them, Russell T Davies was never shy to depict all types of sexuality in his stories. With Moffat taking over I\u2019ve wondered what agenda he might choose to pursue – and now I think I\u2019ve discovered it. The Doctor wastes no time in attributing the Cyberman\u2019s battered state to an encounter with one of the Producer\u2019s early ancestors: \u201cNever under-estimate a Celt!\u201d Pro-Scottish propaganda can be found throughout this series if you know where to look \u2013 and why not indeed?<\/p>\n P:<\/strong> That Cyberman of course came to grief at the hands of another important element to this episode \u2013 namely Amy\u2019s literal knight in shining armour, Rory. His return must be oe of the least surprising elements of this year, yet I like the way it\u2019s been handled, and in an episode of big surprise reveals, his actually comes across as a quiet one, despite the heroism. God I like Rory \u2013 I can even forgive his Mickey-like reinvention as a hero here because Arthur Darville\u2019s made what is still quite a sketchy character wonderfully rounded.<\/p>\n So much going on, and we\u2019ve not yet got to the triple-header climax. The Doctor trapped, Amy dead, Rory a plastic\u00a0killer! Now that’s how you end an episode…\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Spoilers, sweetie…”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-series-5-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1676"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1688,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676\/revisions\/1688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAnyway, surely the highlight was the \u2018monster mash\u2019 at the end of the episode.\u00a0 I\u2019m relieved that episode 13 immediately took a different direction because I just can\u2019t imagine what the assembled alliance of enemies would have done next. Stood around in little cliques, perhaps, balancing wine glasses and hors d’ourves<\/em> while chatting about what they\u2019re going to do now that he\u2019s out of the way?<\/p>\n