Sunday, April 24, 2011

This Week in Doctor Who - 4/23/11

The Doctor is back! And for the first time a new season is starting the same day in the US and UK (granted there's still a 6-9 hour difference depending on your time zone, but still). I almost got to see the first 2 episodes of Series 6 a couple weeks ago, but apparently arriving 10 hours in advance doesn't cut it like it did last year.

Episode 1 - "The Impossible Astronaut"

The episode seems to open some time after the previous specials "A Christmas Carol" and "Time and Space," as we see Amy and Rory have settled into a home of their own and it looks like the Doctor has been trying to get in contact with them throughout varies moments in time. But alas, none of this works until they receive a TARDIS-blue envelope with a specific date and time. Turns out River Song and two other mystery invitees also received these letters as well.

But what this all lead to? An astronaut emerging from a lake in Utah which shoots the Doctor, causing him to regenerate, only to shoot him again mid-regeneration, killing him. Yeah, that just happened; or did it? It turns out to be a Doctor from 200 years in the future, but as the Doctor says, time can be rewritten. Which somehow brings us to Washington DC with a run in with Nixon, and yadda yadda yadda. Oh and there's new monsters that look like gray aliens with skinny ties, the Silence, and in a oddly similar fashion to Weeping Angels, you have to keep looking at them because as soon as you turn around you forget you ever saw them. Point being, there's something big developing, and I really don't want to summarize, especially with there being a cliffhanger that I'll ultimately have to cover next week.

But overall, this was a fantastic season opener. I'm still a bit particular to "The Eleventh Hour," last years opening and Matt Smith's first episode, but I think that's because it was a completed story. Where as this episode is a two-parter, but split over 2 weeks, and I hate when a cliffhanger is actually one that wants to make me see the next one right away; another reason to get upset about not getting into the premiere two weeks ago.... Can't wait for next week I guess!

Overall Score: 8.5/10

1 comment:

Atlanta Roofing said...

I think it’s either River, the girl, Amy, or the Doctor himself. That’s in order of my opinion of likelihood. All in all it was a fantastic mind blowing episode. I do think the beginning of the episode will end up being undone. As a fan I don’t want that to be a “fixed point in time.”