Torchwood episode 35: Escape to L.A. (4/8/2011)

‘I don’t want to live forever, especially like this.’ Exchanging the dark, rainswept streets of D.C. for the broad, sunlit vistas of California, and having the team bedding down in a cosy beach house rather than a grim apartment gives this episode a fresh feel heading into the middle of the series. Perhaps it’s a coincidence that it has a fresh impetus and sense of purpose as the new Torchwood team effectively works together to infiltrate a PhiCorp facility, following a smart operation to get the biometrics of the one man able to break through PhiCorp security.

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Torchwood episode 34: Dead of Night (28/7/2011)

‘Rex doesn’t like men in their forties acting like they’re twenty.’ The first proper indication that this was going to be a slow burn compared to Children of Earth. Luckily, it’s by Jane Espenson, who’s good enough to make something of an episode which, in itself, is a shapeless connector between the first two episodes and the rest of the series. It suffers in the same way as many later Buffy episodes: you can’t simply Friends-title it “The One With…”. After “The One With Torchwood Reuniting” and “The One With the Plane” this is… the one where everyone wanders about chatting, or hides in a derelict building and uses the video contact lenses like in Children of Earth.

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Torchwood episode 33: Rendition (21/7/2011)

‘I’m Welsh.’ Less consciously epic than the first episode, but still a step up from much earlier Torchwood. This focuses on Jack and Gwen’s eventful extradition to the USA, where released child-killer Danes is now becoming a media darling following a dramatic TV apology. Like a lot of Torchwood, there’s a studied edginess to some of this – can a paedophile be rehabilitated and transcend his crimes? But so far it’s interesting.

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Torchwood episode 32: The New World (14/7/2011)

‘He’s the second one tonight. DOAs who just won’t die.’ Torchwood’s transfer to the US Starz network comes with a visibly increased budget (and Bill Pullman) which not only leads to better effects (the grisly aftermath of the suicide assassin) and action sequences (the helicopter battle on a Welsh beach), but an international flavour and a greatly increased sense of scale. Amusingly, given Doctor Who’s own experience of becoming a US co-production, it also begins with a character being rushed into ER and miraculously surviving death.

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Doctor Who episode 793: A Good Man Goes to War (4/6/2011)

‘This is the Battle of Demon’s Run. The Doctor’s darkest hour. He’ll rise higher than ever before and then fall so much further.’ I really disliked this when it broadcast. Moffat keeps coming back to the idea of whether the Doctor is a good man: ‘Good men don’t need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.’ Fresh from having killed Flesh-Amy to prove a point he massacres a fleet of Cybermen then puts together a hit squad to raid Demon’s Run and rescue Human-Amy and her new baby. All because he’s very, very angry.

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Doctor Who episode 792: The Almost People (28/5/2011)

‘I needed to see the Flesh in its early days. That’s why I scanned it. That’s why we were there in the first place.’ Might as well acknowledge up front that the end of the episode is darker than anything the seventh Doctor did to Ace. In the previous scene the Doctor made it clear that ‘The energy from the TARDIS will stabilise the Gangers for good. They’re people now.’ So, the Doctor murders a person that is perfectly capable of living as Amy to prove a point. Once again, somehow, there’s a lack of judgement on the part of the production team. I guess it’s meant to be set-up for the Doctor, in his fury, becoming a villain, an idea that is strong in the next episode and that they keep flirting with through the rest of Matt Smith’s run and Capaldi’s first series. Here, it’s about as good as Old Sixie throttling Peri.

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Doctor Who episode 791: The Rebel Flesh (21/5/2011)

‘I feel everything she has ever felt and more. I’m not a monster. I am me.’ This channels Season 22 complete with a horror movie setting and aesthetics, acid baths, inappropriate period music and an interest in body horror that encompasses references to Frankenstein, The Thing and Aliens. It also plugs into Moffat’s fascination with memories making the man, and ‘What if we had ideas that could think for themselves? What if one day our dreams no longer needed us?’

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Doctor Who episode 790: The Doctor’s Wife (14/5/2011)

‘I always took you where you needed to go.’ This explores the show’s history in a very safe way, casting fresh light on events fans have known about for years by telling the story of the Doctor’s “borrowing” a TARDIS and fleeing Gallifrey from a different perspective. Making the TARDIS an active participant in the event (in her view, ‘I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord, and I ran away’) is lovely. Finally giving her a voice and an adventure side by side with her thief is beautiful. Suranne Jones is compellingly odd as the TARDIS, trying to work out how to be a human. Matt Smith responds with his best performance to date: his grief when the TARDIS is restored, and their adventure ends is heart-breaking.

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Doctor Who episode 789: The Curse of the Black Spot (7/5/2011)

‘I have my good days and my bad days.’ I took an intense dislike to this one the first time I saw it and hadn’t rewatched it since 2011. I don’t remember why: on a second viewing it’s poor, but inoffensive. Its main flaws are a plot that relies on the Doctor repeatedly guessing incorrectly to string out a thin story, and a sense that some explanations are missing.

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Doctor Who episode 788: Day of the Moon (30/4/2011)

‘So, this little girl. It’s all about her. Who was she? Or we could just go off and have some adventures.’ I don’t think this really follows from The Impossible Astronaut. The first part was about the Doctor investigating his own murder. This is about a revolution to overthrow the malign influence of the Silence. By the end, for inattentive viewers, it might not be entirely clear whether in foiling the Silence the Doctor has averted his future death (it’s not confirmed until Amy mentions it in The Doctor’s Wife). For me, this is the problem with this opener: it’s full of spectacle and clever moments, but the thrust of the story is weak and it lacks Moffat’s previous flair for neat, tie-it-all-together endings.

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