In the UK: Saturday 21st May, 6.45pm, BBC1/BBC1 HD. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: Saturday 21st May, 9pm/8c, BBC America
Erm, yes. Doctor Who. It’s running up and down corridors, while threatened by a bad special effects enemy generated through odd science and with poor motivation, isn’t it?
Sigh. I wasn’t expecting much from Matthew Graham after Fear Her, and given the last non-Moffat Moffat-years two-parter was the dreadful The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, I wasn’t expecting too much from this either. And there were some nicely creepy bits, some decent direction, some decent acting and some good ideas underneath it all. Unsurprisingly, given this was Matthew Graham (co-creator of Life On Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus So I Won’t Have Any Good Ones In My Show), Rory actually came out of this quite well and didn’t come across as a total sponge for once – he didn’t even die once – while Amy got precisely bugger all to do except scream.
But largely, this was an extremely boring episode where not much happened except people running up and down corridors in a slight homage to The Thing/The Clonus Horror. Worse still, come 20 minutes, I’m not just looking at the clock thinking "Oh, God, we’ve got another 25 minutes of this", I’m looking at it thinking "Oh, God, we’ve got another one of these next week as well."
Expectations: met.
However, your mileage may vary, so leave a comment or a link to a review on your own blog.
PS Is it just me or if you’re going to have a story arc that runs across an entire season, it doesn’t count having the same reference in every single week: yes, Amy is both pregnant and not pregnant; there’s a woman with an eye-patch behind every wall; and the Doctor’s going to die and Rory and Amy are wondering whether to tell him. We remember that from episodes 2, 3 and 4. Is anything else going to happen?
