This Week in Doctor Who - 6/19/10

Following last week's episode, "The Hungry Earth," comes the second part of Chris Chibnall's thrilling and ridiculously dark story that marks the return of the Silurians. And, you thought weeping angels were scary?

Episode 9 - "Cold Blood"

Following where "The Hungry Earth" left off, Amy and that other woman's husband (I forgot her name already.. whoops) are still trapped and ready for unwanted dissecting. That is until a distress beacon is alarmed after The Doctor and Nasreen are caught walking about the Silurian civilation, and if the kidnapping wasn't a sign enough, the Silurians, or at least their feisty general, don't think very highly of us humans er... "apes" as they call us.

As for the Silurian captive at the digging site from the last episode, she's got quite the vile of hate to spread around. So much so that she drives that other lady.. (I seriously don't remember her name!) to kill her, after constant hateful speech and lacking to cooperate with the woman in regards to the safety of her family. Of course, the Silurian death has its consequences, but this is unbeknownst to The Doctor, Amy and Nasreen, who are currently below the surface, trying to convince the Silurians that the people of Earth are good people and are more than willing to share the planet with its former inhabitants... Yeah, lady whose name I can't remember, you screwed up, you REALLY screwed up.

Soon after, Rory and the above-ground party come down to the Silurian world, dead Silurian in hand, and all peace talks are broken, and it's time to run! But after a bit of negotiating and techno-babble talking that I can't seem to recall at all, the unthinkable happens... While everyone else runs to safety in the TARDIS, the Doctor sees the infamous "crack," and can't help but stick his hand inside to see what's there... silly Doctor, you just made everyone in the future cry. Why? Because his carelessness for everyone else's safety leaves the dying general Silurian to take one last shot at the Doctor, but Rory shoves him out of the way in a valiant move, and sacrifices himself. But he doesn't die, no, he gets taken in by the crack, erasing his entire existence from all of time; perhaps a fate even worse than death....

I have to say, this was honestly the most emotionally invested I've ever been in a Doctor Who episode. Not only did I feel truly worried for the fate of the characters, but, I had a sense of true genuine hatred every time that Silurian general woman spoke out, and an ever bigger sense of hatred when that woman killed the Silurian captive, knowing what the consequences may be. And despite my interest in many TV and movie dramas, I'm never one to get mad at the screen, but I really just wanted to yell. And with the unexpected twist of Rory's death and erasure from existence... well, the episode made me feel like I just lost a really good friend. That's got to say something right?

Overall Score: 9.3/10

This Week in Doctor Who - 6/12/10

I'm sticking to this ridiculous three-week delayed schedule. Thanks for nothing BBC America.

After two strange, one-off episodes, we're back to another two-parter this season. But unlike the first two-parter ("The Time of Angels" and "Flesh and Stone") and the season finale, these next two episodes aren't written by Steven Moffat. Instead, they were penned by Chris Chibnall, who wrote the Series 3 episode, "42," as well as numerous episode of the Doctor Who spin-off, Torchwood, and I think it shows.

Episode 8 - "The Hungry Earth"

Thanks to Chibnall's work on Torchwood, I found this first episode to be excessively darker than the last couple episodes of the show, possibly even darker than "Flesh and Stone," and that's saying something. It's not all creepy and suspense though, I mean, Rory is around, and it's hard to not be amused when he tries to act like an alpha male around The Doctor. Anyways...

"The Hungry Earth" opens with our trio arriving in what they thought was Rio, but it turns out to be a mining area somewhere in the quiet hills of England (they film everything near Whales, so I can assume it's supposed to be there), and right away The Doctor feels something wrong with the ground under his feet... which probably isn't a good sign. He and Amy go to check the mining facility, while Rory gets held up, returning Amy's engagement ring back to the TARDIS for safe keeping, and soon a woman mistakes him for a plain-clothes police officer, which puts Rory a bit on the spot and is pretty amusing.

But while Rory stands in as the comic relief, things are a bit darker down at the mining facility, where a pair of researchers are drilling to record-breaking depths in the Earth's crust, and the Earth is happy, or so it seems, and Amy is dragged beneath the soil against her will in probably the most dramatic scene in Doctor Who since David Tennant was in tears about regenerating. Really gripping, and as said earlier, dark stuff. The rest of the episode deals with trying to find out what is there below the Earth's surface and their motivation, and it may be a race of people that The Doctor hasn't seen since his third incarnation, which makes this a nice use of Doctor Who lore without relying on the Daleks and Cybermen for the bajillionth time. And the way this episode ends, consider me excited; for a non-Moffat episode this season, it was pretty damn good. More of this please.

Overall Score: 9.2/10