Category: Episode by Episode
The Sarah Jane Adventures episode 38: The Vault of Secrets – Part One (18/10/2010)
‘Prepare to be incinerated.’ Probably Phil Ford’s best opening episode so far, managing to balance the CBBC comedy of BURPSS (British UFO Research and Paranormal Studies Society) with some interesting moments of reflection and moral complexity. There are a couple of scenes where Sarah Jane’s self-assumed responsibility for hiding the existence of aliens bumps up against the reality of members of the public who have had their own close encounters. In Gita’s case it’s played for laughs, but Ocean Waters has lived her life haunted by what happened to her in 1972, and Elisabeth Sladen has the savvy to make Sarah squirm in the face of it, having been almost smugly sassy during their first meeting.
The Sarah Jane Adventures episode 37: The Nightmare Man – Part Two (12/10/2010)
‘Don’t forget me, will you.’ This effectively explores the worst fears of Rani and Clyde. Rani’s nightmare is to be a gutter journalist, forced to present the news without knowing what she’s doing or going to say. Clyde’s is to be left behind, in a dead-end job. Meanwhile, Sarah Jane pulls on all her resources, and Mr Smith and K9 join forces to contact Luke in the dreamworld. In a genius stroke, without needing to banish Sarah Jane to the realm of nightmares, we get a glimpse of what her worst fear – a senile, bitter, lonely old woman – might look like.
The Sarah Jane Adventures episode 36: The Nightmare Man – Part One (11/10/2010)
‘Get ready for the end of the world, Luke. An eternal sleep of nightmares.’ The Scary Jane Adventures launches with its most grownup episode to date. It’s the first one that could pretty much play out as an episode of Torchwood (complete with the presence of Julian Bleach as a sinister, dreamlike figure). Quite what the CBBC audience made of it I don’t know (although I expect by this stage a chunk of viewers had grown up with the show). I love it.
Doctor Who episode 785: The Big Bang (26/6/2010)
‘Amy Pond, all alone. The girl who didn’t make sense. How could I resist?’ The Curse of Fatal Death done with a budget. Moffat pulls his favourite trick of opening the episode 1894 years after the previous one, cycling back to little Amelia from The Eleventh Hour before opening the Pandorica for a surprise reveal. The rest of the first half involves a series of time jumps that are as funny (if less flatulent) as Fatal Death’s, before the second half focuses on the dying Doctor saving the universe and sacrificing himself.
Doctor Who episode 784: The Pandorica Opens (19/6/2010)
‘If something can be remembered, it can come back.’ On one level, this out-does most of RTD’s series finales, with a long pre-titles sequence that includes extra scenes of Vincent, Churchill and Liz 10, and gifts River her all-important vortex manipulator all in the service of getting the Doctor and Amy to Britain in 102 AD. It tops this with an episode including not only the Daleks and Cybermen, but Sontarans, Autons, Judoon and Sycorax, and a cliffhanger featuring the death of Amy and the end of the universe.
Doctor Who episode 783: The Lodger (12/6/2010)
‘It’s art. A statement on modern society: “Ooh, ain’t modern society awful?”’ The episode that probably did the most to fix the eleventh Doctor’s characterisation. Earlier on in the series, he’s been fairly tenth Doctorish, with Matt Smith’s quirky awkwardness imposed over Tennant’s invincible swagger. There’s still more of that to come (I’m thinking of the Stonehenge speech), but in later seasons, I think we see more of this take on the eleventh Doctor than the “basically, run” iteration – the “Season 17” Smith as opposed to the “Season 12”.
Doctor Who episode 782: Vincent and the Doctor (5/6/2010)
‘We have fought monsters together and we have won. On my own, I fear I may not do as well.’ This is consciously a prestige episode, most obviously because it’s by Richard Curtis and Bill Nighy is in it, uncredited. It looks as good as The Vampires of Venice (also directed by Johnny Campbell), with some efficient visual storytelling (Vincent’s easel stabbing into the soil outside the church at Auvers signals the fate of the Krafayis) it’s well performed and has a more serious approach to suicide than Amy’s Choice.
Doctor Who episode 781: Cold Blood (29/5/2010)
‘Amy Pond and Nasreen Chaudhry, speaking for the planet.’ This one’s about the failure to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Homos Sapiens and Reptilia because individuals on both sides can’t be the best of their species, can’t be extraordinary, only see their own worst motives in the motives and others, and pre-empt them. This is the constant theme of Silurian stories, and it makes sense to revisit it in their new series relaunch.
Doctor Who episode 780: The Hungry Earth (22/5/2010)
‘Onwards and downwards.’ Linking to the unfolding story of Series Five, this begins with Amy and Rory spotting their future selves – a slightly odd scene that initially seems there to reinforce the outcome of Amy’s Choice, but whose true purpose becomes clearer at the end of the next episode. For the rest, it’s Frontios done as an episode of Torchwood, with the hungry earth swallowing up its victims and transporting them for dissection in an underground colony.
Doctor Who episode 779: Amy’s Choice (15/5/2010)
‘Which one of these men would you really choose? Look at them. You ran away with a handsome hero. Would you really give him up for a bumbling country doctor who thinks the only thing he needs to be interesting is a ponytail?’ Everyone knows how Moffat carefully constructs his episodes, with Post-It notes and whatnot. But this entire series is just as carefully structured.
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