Previously: Goodbye, Ten. Goodbye.
—
The Eleventh Hour
Marines: I remember portions of this episode very vividly. I think I took a break between the end of Ten’s tenure and the beginning of Eleven; enough of one that watching this episode felt like jumping into a new experience in more ways than just the changes that came with it. I stopped watching Doctor Who with Matt Smith because we started this recapping project, and I figured I’d catch up to more recent seasons when we got there to recap. I was young and optimistic and thought that would be sooner rather than later. lol.
Kirsti: I mean, it was a fair assessment. Buffy had twice the number of episodes per season, and that took us just over 2 years. In contrast, series 4 of Doctor Who took us a year on its own. Whoops?
Mari: WHOOPS!
Anyhow, the point is that: 1- getting here feels like a milestone honestly and 2- I remember loving this and 3- I’m really scared of revisiting Matt Smith with my critical glasses on.
But as an old friend would say: Allons-y!
K: *grumbles repeatedly under her breath* I… .do not like Matt Smith’s run. At all. There are, like, two episodes that I would rewatch regularly. There are maybe four other episodes that I enjoyed. The rest of it I spent eye rolling and hating the script writing, so… this is going to be a barrel of laughs? I’ll try and contain myself, I really will.
Mari: I mean, you do what you gotta, but this episode is great LA LA LA LA.
Space. Moon. Pan to Earth. Zoom in on the TARDIS still hurtling. The Doctor is hanging out of the TARDIS and he comes very close to crashing into Big Ben. He misses it and pulls himself back into the TARDIS, but only to have something else bang into it. More hurtling and then we’re off to…
NEW DOO WEE OOOH.
I honestly remember being v upset about the new credit sequence on first watch, but it only took a few episodes before I was on board (pun not intended). I also love the upgrade to the logo and the way the DW spins out into a TARDIS. I don’t know if that’s a super unpopular opinion? I’m just generally a fan of how the modifications while still keeping the spirit of the thing is par for the course. (Though those early ones with the cut-outs of the Doctors’ faces? WEIRD.)
The swirling vortex of the credits cuts to a whirling pin-wheel, a quiet night, and empty backyard. Everything is fine until we see a creaking swing and we all know that means shit is going DOWN. (Thanks Are You Afraid of the Dark for that life lesson…!)
Inside the house, a cute little ginger girl is praying to Santa Claus, even though it’s Easter now. It seems desperate times are calling for desperate prayers to Santa Claus. There is a crack in the girl’s wall and even though her aunt tells her it’s an ordinary crack, she can hear voices coming from it every night. She asks Santa to send a policeman or…
Before she can finish the thought, we hear the TARDIS and then a big crash. She pauses her prayer and heads to the window to investigate. The TARDIS has crashed. The girl examines what appears to be a police box appeared out of nowhere and thanks Santa.
K: My niece asked her parents for a skateboard for Christmas. When they said no, she asked Santa. When they pointed out to her that they’re Santa, she went “FINE. I’LL ASK JESUS!” Jesus has not yet delivered. Maybe I’ll suggest praying to Santa instead…
Mari: All I’m saying is that if she gets a TARDIS crashed in her backyard, CALL ME.
Outside, Ginger Girl approaches the police box very carefully. Suddenly, the doors fly open, smoke pours out and a grappling hook shoots out. After a moment, we see the Doctor pull himself out. He and Ginger Girl stare at each other like WTF for a moment before the Doctor asks for an apple. It seems he’s craving them but he’s never had cravings before.
Before the Doctor can respond, he doubles over in pain, falling from where he’s been perched on the TARDIS. He coughs up a little bit of regeneration dust and his hands glow. Ginger Girl asks who he even is and the Doctor says he doesn’t know. He’s still cooking. He asks if it scares the girl, and she gamely says no. It’s just a little weird. The Doctor was talking about the crack in the wall, though, not his glow-in-the-dark hands. The crack does definitely scare her, which makes the Doctor smile a bit as he jumps up into action. He introduces himself as the Doctor, saying she should do as he says and not ask any stupid questions, but then he promptly walks into a tree.
K: Welcome to the Matt Smith era, friends. Get used to it.
Mari: I feel kind of like a Snow because I remember so little about his extended run (except feeling like I didn’t understand S7 AT ALL) And because of that, I feel like I’m judging this episode on this episode instead of on the overall effect, be that Matt Smith’s Moffat’s or the scriptwriters’. Mostly, I’m setting up excuses for myself for later in case I get this fed up with him too, but I’m also kind of documenting this here: this doesn’t feel so different from Tenant, especially early in his run and during some more of his Barty Crouch moments.
Inside, Ginger Girl hands the Doctor an apple while asking why a doctor has a police box. The Doctor takes a bite of the apple and spits it back out, calling it rubbish, because apparently he doesn’t like apples. He asks for yogurt (yoghurt…) next but promptly decides that is also terrible as it’s just “stuff with bits in it.” Ginger Girl is increasingly confused, but the Doctor half explains that he’s got a new mouth and everything is new and it’s kind of like eating after brushing your teeth. He points at the girl, demanding that she fry something seeing as she’s Scottish.
K: This was clearly meant to be funny, but the condescending way he says it is just cringeworthy. Like, I know Scotland is the country that gave the world the deep fried Mars Bar, but oof.
Mari: What follows is a super silly but very endearing montage of Ginger Girl making several things for the Doctor (bacon, beans, bread and butter) and him reacting more and more violently toward them and also wasting a lot of food. The girl suggest carrots finally, but the Doctor has other ideas. He needs fish sticks and custard. We cut to what I think is one of the most iconic images of the series for me: Eleven dipping fish sticks in custard very happily as Ginger Girl watches him while eating ice cream.
K: In contrast, I can’t stand this scene and I wish they’d left it on the cutting room floor. I think it’s because I hate food going to waste?? IDK.
Mari: I mean no one likes food going to waste, but REALLY? You HATE this scene??
This is going to be a long few seasons, huh? Okay. Okay.
Ginger Girl pronounces the Doctor funny, which he thinks is a good thing. He finally asks her name and she introduces herself as Amelia Pond. The Doctor likes that name– thinks it’s out of a fairy tale. He next asks if they are in Scotland and Amelia takes a deep sigh. They are actually in England where she had to move with her aunt. She hasn’t got a mom and dad. The Doctor one-ups with him not even having an aunt, which Amelia thinks is lucky. The Doctor says he knows and even though he doesn’t betray much emotion, I STILL HAVE FEELINGS FOR HIM. (K: Meanwhile, #TeamHeartlessCow returns…)
It turns out that Amelia’s aunt is out and has left her alone, though she’s quick to say that she isn’t afraid. The Doctor knows she isn’t, on account of she isn’t afraid of anything, proven by the fact that’s she’s all tra la la la la about a box that fell out of the sky and a man that fell out of a box and that man is now eating fish custard. Because of all this, the Doctor concludes that it must be one hell of a scary crack in her wall.
Upstairs, the Doctor examines the crack. Precious Amelia Pond is still trying on the food front, as she tells him that she used to hate apples too, so her mom would cut faces into them. It’s sweet but adding faces to food to make kids eat is is a weird thing humans do. The Doctor takes the apple and promises to save it for later.
K: Yeah, the faces on food thing is weird. I haven’t eaten lunch meat since I was served that bologna with a face in it on a plane once. I also haven’t eaten eggs since my mum made us green eggs and ham, but that’s besides the point.
Mari: His attention goes back to the crack, though, because it’s a solid wall and the crack doesn’t go all the way through and yet there’s a draft. The funny bit is that if you knocked down the wall, the crack would remain because the crack isn’t in the wall, it’s everywhere. It’s a piece of space and time that shouldn’t have touched, pressing up against each other. The Doctor presses his ear against the wall and starts to ask Amelia if she can hear and she finishes that yes, she can hear a voice. A deep rumbling comes from the crack.
The Doctor snaps around and finds a glass, rudely chucking the water right on the floor and using it to listen to the crack in the wall. Amelia already knows what he’ll hear though: “Prisoner Zero has escaped.” She asks what it means and the Doctor gives the obvious (I guess) answer: there is a prison on the other side of that wall and a prisoner has escaped. It also means that Amelia needs a better wall. The Doctor’s plan is to open the crack wider and hope that the force of it will snap it shut. That or…
Amelia asks or what. The Doctor asks if she knows that thing where grown-ups lie and say everything will be alright in order to make kids feel better. Amelia knows. The Doctor gives a small smile as he says everything will be alright. He extends his hand, Amelia grabs it and he uses his Sonic Screwdriver to open the crack.
K: This is a Master level kind of stupid plan, you guys.
Mari: I refuse to believe that anything comes close to turning everyone into yourself OR jumping off a space ship with no parachute into a glass window OR being a Time Lord with no time around. This at least had some timey-wimey bullshit explanation about the forces that would snap it shut.
We hear the warning that Prisoner Zero has escaped and look at a prison cell. The Doctor calls out and a giant eye looks out from the crack. (Giant eye, sorry Kirsti!) (K: NOPE.) Something shoots out of the crack before it closes again, still leaving the crack, but the Doctor calls it good as new. That thing we saw shoot out was apparently a message that landed on the Doctor’s psychic paper: Prisoner Zero has escaped. The Doctor wonders why the eye, which he assumes belongs to a guard, would tell them. Unless… unless Prisoner Zero escaped through the crack. But that couldn’t be possible because they’d know, right?
The Doctor runs out into the hall, but everything is still new and he isn’t working right. He’s missing something… in the corner of his eye… He turns to look at a door at the end of the hall. Before he can do anything, though, we hear some bells chime. The Doctor takes off running, saying he’s got to go because the TARDIS engines are phasing and the whole thing is going to burn.
Amelia runs behind the Doctor on her short legs and it’s so cute I’m dying. (K: It doesn’t help that she’s wearing wellies. It’s bloody hard to run in wellies and look like you understand how legs work.) She asks how a box can have engines, so the Doctor explains that it’s actually a time machine. All he has to do is hop five minutes into the future to stabilize the engines. Amelia wants to come, but he says it isn’t safe for her. He’s just going to go five minutes and he’ll be right back. She says that people always say that.
She heads back to the spot in the backyard where the TARDIS disappeared and parks it on her suitcase to wait. In the house, a shadowy figure crosses in front of the camera as we pan back and over to a clock. It jumps forward many hours.
In the backyard, it’s daylight and the TARDIS materializes. The Doctor runs out, yelling that he’s figured it out. He knows what he was missing. He tries to sonic the door, but his Sonic Screwdriver is on the fritz. It works after a second try so he runs inside and yells that Prisoner Zero is here, in the house. He tries to sonic his way into the bedroom but it doesn’t work. He just keeps yelling about Prisoner Zero until someone hits him IN THE FACE.
K: With a cricket bat, nonetheless.
Mari: Cut to a hospital. A young guy in scrubs follows behind a stern, very official looking lady. They enter a room full of coma patients because, according to Young Scrub, they all called out at the same time. Official Lady is like, “uh, you know what a coma is right? Why are you wasting my time?” Young Scrub says it’s ’cause they were all calling out for her. On cue, the coma patients start saying “doctor” over and over. (K: NOOOOOPE)
Their voices fade and SEGUE MAGIC us to the Doctor coming to in the Pond house. He looks up to see a woman, presumably an officer, calling for back-up on a breaking and entering situation. The Doctor tries to get up, but he’s hand-cuffed to the radiator. He asks where Amelia is and the Policewoman gets BIG EYES. The Doctor says he promised her five minutes but the engines were phasing and he went too far. Policewoman says that Amelia Pond hasn’t lived in this house for a long time. For six months.
The Doctor freaks out because he promised her five minutes. Policewoman turns away and calls for back-up to hurry up because the B-and-E-er knows something about Amelia Pond. The zoomy cameraman earns his check by zooming in on the Suspicious Door.
K: Doctors comes and go, the Zoomy Cameraman is with us forever. Thank you for easing the blow, old friend.
Mari: Coma Ward. Dr. Official is still really disbelieving of all this weird coma nonsense and especially of Young Scrub’s new claim that he’s seen the coma patients wandering around the village. Young Scrub wants to give Dr. Official photographic evidence but that would be too easy and also she gets a page. She tells Young Scrub (Rory) to take a lot of time off starting now.
K: Aaah, 2010. A time when you had to EXPLAIN that your phone had a camera in it and that’s why you’re giving it to someone…
Simpler times.
Mari: Pond House. The Doctor wants to speak to whoever is living in this house and Policewoman says that’s her. The Doctor’s like, “fine, so how many rooms are on this floor.” She counts out five, except the Doctor tells her to look behind her, at the corner where she never wants to look. She turns slowly and realizes there’s a sixth door that she’s never noticed. The Doctor explains that there is a perception filter. Something has been hiding there. He wants Policewoman to let him go, but instead she just goes toward the door herself.
Despite the fact that the Doctor keeps yelling at her to get out, Policewoman lingers and behind her, a slimey, wormy, snake-y thing with too many teeth drops down. (K: Honestly, it reminds me of the old lady with the penis monster coming out of her head in Buffy season 6… At least the special effects are SLIGHTLY better??) (M: There seems to be an overall uptick in visual quality with this new season.) She can sense it’s there, but she can’t see it. The Doctor keeps up his advice (namely: GTFO), but instead Policewoman keeps looking around until she spots the thing. She screams and runs out, though she does manage to bring the Sonic Screwdriver with her.
The Doctor uses it to lock the door from afar. Policewoman asks if the door will hold it and the Doctor snarks that yeah aliens hate wood. From behind the Suspicious Door, something glows. The Doctor tells Policewoman to run since her backup is coming but she fesses up: she’s not a policewoman at all. She’s a kiss-o-gram. She takes off her hat and surprise! She’s a ginger! The Doctor takes that in for a moment, but there’s no time because the Suspicious Door gets busted down by a balding man in a coveralls with a large dog. Not!Policewoman asks WTF and the Doctor explains that it’s just the creature disgusting itself as two things, except it was rushing and now it can’t speak.
K: I just want to be a fly on the wall on the day balding man’s agent told him “We’ve got a role for you on Doctor Who! You have to bark like a dog.”
Mari: He knew he had to take it, I’m sure, and yet…
The Doctor wants to know how the alien is doing this thing because it needs a psychic link. We jump to the coma ward. The balding coma patient surrounded by pictures of his dog twitches.
Back at the Pond House, Prisoner Zero as Balding Man + Dog growls and we see his too many teeth. (K: It makes me glad I rage quit recapping Supernatural, because it’s way too similar to the Supernatural vampires…) From his handcuffed position, the Doctor says they are safe because Not!Policewoman called for backup. She messes up his clever lie by saying that she didn’t. The Doctor changes track and says that they are safe because they didn’t call for backup, so it’s just them all alone and no threat to the alien. From outside, we hear a voice call for Prisoner Zero to vacate the human residence before it’s incinerated. The Doctor goes back and is all, “we do have back-up! That’s why we’re safe.” He’s really ace-ing the whole on the fly thing.
Prisoner Zero as Balding Man + Dog gets distracted by being surrounded and stuff. The Doctor whacks the Sonic Screwdriver until it starts working and gets himself out of the handcuffs. He grabs Not!Policewoman and runs.
Outside, the Doctor expresses some disbelief at the whole kiss-o-gram thing. Not!Policewoman is like “so what” and also explains that she picked the policewoman outfit because he was breaking and entering duh. The Doctor gives Not!Policewoman a cliff notes version of the fact that an alien was hiding in her house as he’s trying to get into the TARDIS, but it won’t let him in. It’s in repair mode. Not!Policewoman grabs his hand and tries to pull him away, but the Doctor notices something: the shed he destroyed last time he was here has been rebuilt. But it’s twelve years old meaning that he’s not six months late, he’s twelve years late. He asks Not!Policewoman why she said six months and she snaps back, “why did you say five minutes?”
And so we can all stop pretending that we don’t know that this ginger lady is Amelia Pond. And also the casting of Young Amelia was brilliant because the actresses really favor each other. Amelia grabs the Doctor and pulls him away.
K: Maaaaaybe if Amelia weren’t ginger the “big” reveal would have been more… reveal-y?? Or not. They do look impressively alike.
Mari: Yeah, that was not a big reveal to anyone besides the Doctor and it was just a big reveal to him because he was so sure he came right back.
As they run, the Doctor states the “you’re Amelia!” obvious, kind of questioning at the same time why he’d hit him (IN THE FACE) with a cricket bat. She’s like “yeah, it’s been TWELVE YEARS.” Their brief catch-up is interrupted because the Prisoner Zero warning is now playing from the ice cream truck and from people’s cell phones and through headphones, etc.
The Doctor lets himself into someone else’s house. It’s a little old lady super confused because her TV is playing a giant eye and a Prisoner Zero warning on every channel. The Doctor pretends he’s here for official TV business. The old lady recognizes Amelia (“Amy”) and wonders at her policewoman outfit. She also think she recognizes the Doctor.
K: There’s a lot about Eleven that comes across as judgey and kind of shamey as far as I’m concerned.
Mari: The Doctor looks up at the sky after determining that the Prisoner Zero message is broadcasting all over the world. He does his typical Doctor babble that’s supposed to be an explanation of what’s happening but the long and short of it is that he has twenty minutes to do a thing. A tall man walks in while the Doctor is babbling and asks if this is the Doctor. Old Lady is like, “that’s it! That’s him! The Raggedy Doctor.” Amy looks mortified and tells them both to shut up. He’s not paying much attention, though, because he’s just figured out that by “human residence” these guard aliens mean “Earth” and so if Prisoner Zero doesn’t leave soon, they are going to blow Earth up. That seems like quite the escalation of events.
Space. There’s a glass snowflake looking spaceship WITH A GIANT EYEBALL ON THE BOTTOM. Wow.
K: Again, NOPE.
Mari: Outside, the Doctor and Amy walk and plot. He asks where he even is. Amy says it’s Leadworth, a small town with no airport, no nuclear power plant, but it does have a duck pond that never has any ducks. The Doctor stumbles and doubles over because he’s still having regeneration pains. He says this is happening too soon. He’s not done yet.
The sky goes dark. The Guard Aliens have put a force field around the Earth in preparation for boiling it. Amy thinks the Doctor is winding her up and he asks her why he would do that.
Mari: People are flocking outside to take pictures of the weird sun and the Doctor gets down on them for that, but then he realizes that he saw something and missed it. We do a very un-Doctor Who like zoomy, choppy play back of the screen as we go from person to person, watching them take pictures of the sky. Except one person. It’s Rory, in his scrubs, and he’s taking a picture of Balding Alien + Dog.
The Doctor turns toward Amy and tells her that they have 20 minutes until the world burns, but he can do this. He tells that she can use her 20 minutes to run to her loved ones, or she can stick around and help him. She’s like, “nah bro” and none of the aboves him by shoving him toward a car, slamming the door shut on his tie and locking it. I really like that they took this moment and that whole put your hand in the Doctor’s and run trope and let her press pause on it and ask some questions.
She demands to know who he is. The Doctor tells her she knows. He’s the Doctor. He’s a time traveler. And everything he told her 12 years ago was true. He tosses her the happy face apple as proof. It takes her a while and lots of sappy lighting and music to come around, but she does. She unlocks the car and asks what they do. The Doctor tells her they have to stop that nurse.
The Doctor runs after Rory, hopping very enthusiastically over one of those shin high chain link dividers. Amy is behind him and she jumps over it gingerly and then pulls her skirt down. It happens almost out of the frame but it made me giggle because that would 100% be me on any adventure that required running.
K: Saaaaaame. Except I wouldn’t be wearing a skirt because skirts are the worst.
Mari: Not when you have short legs and pants don’t fit, duh.
Anyhow, the Doctor catches up to Rory and grabs his phone. He asks why he would be taking a picture of a man and his dog when there’s weird stuff in the sky. Amy catches up and says hi to Rory. She introduces him as her friend. Rory’s like “boyfriend,” though Amy still amends to “kind of boyfriend.”
Rory looks at the Doctor and recognizes him as the Raggedy Doctor, but he’s supposed to just be a story. The Doctor gets them back on task by grabbing Rory by the jacket and asking again why he took those pictures. The Doctor can guess though: that man shouldn’t be walking around because he’s a coma patient. Prisoner Zero can transform but needs a psychic link with a dormant mind to do so.
From behind him, Prisoner Zero as Balding Alien + Dog starts barking at them. In the sky, the Eyeball Ship appears. It’s scanning the Earth. The Doctor grandstands that they are searching for alien tech and nothing says alien tech like a Sonic Screwdriver. He uses the Sonic to make things explode and a fire truck run away (?) but then it totally burns out and the Eyeball Ship goes away. Prisoner Zero disappears into the sewer. Now, the gang needs to figure out how to get it out in the open again.
K: Moment of silence for the Sonic Screwdriver.
Mari: Silence.
Coma Ward. Dr. Official is shaking Coma Balding Guy because apparently she read Sweet Valley High for all her knowledge on how to get people out of comas IDK. Prisoner Zero, in snake-ish teeth form, comes out of a vent and screeches.
Back outside, the Doctor explains that multi-forms can live a long time so hiding out in Amy’s house for 12 years was no big. The Guard Aliens probably followed the Doctor here after they saw him in the crack, that’s how come they arrived just when he did. The Doctor snaps for Rory to hand over his phone and looks at the other pictures of the coma patients.
Just then the Doctor remembers that Amy’s friend (who he rudely calls the good looking one when Rory is right there) had a big laptop bag and he needs a laptop. He sends Amy and Rory to the hospital to clear the coma floor. Amy runs towards Rory’s car and this time she jumps over the little chain link divider with ease. Look at our baby growing up.
The Doctor runs back to Old Lady’s house and busts in on Jeff using his laptop to presumably look at porn. I… let’s just move on. (K: It’s for the best.) The Doctor grabs the laptop, figuring that some very important people must be on a very important phone call right now. He says names but all I catch is Patrick Moore. He hacks into the phone call and convinces them all he’s a genius and they need his help, all in about one minute.
K: Honestly, I’m slightly sad that UNIT aren’t involved…
Mari: SAME. I really expected it.
The Doctor writes a computer virus from a phone and sends it to the other geniuses so they can help him spread it. It’s meant to set every clock and counter ever back to zero. The geniuses are still a little hesitant, so the Doctor turns the job of convincing them over to Jeff. He gives Jeff a little pep talk about saving the world and landing any job he wants after this, all because this happens to be happening in his bedroom. The Doctor leaves him to it and Jeff steels himself to get down to business. A beat later, the Doctor runs back into tell Jeff to delete his Internet history.
Hospital. Some thing has happened on the coma floor and they can’t get through. Amy phones the Doctor and he reminds her that she’s in a police uniform. Meanwhile, the Doctor has commandeered the run away firetruck.
Up on the coma floor, Amy and Rory come across a lady holding the hand of two little girls. She too-calmly says that everyone is probably dead so Amy phones the Doctor again to tell him that Prisoner Zero made it to the hospital. The little girl speaks up to continue the story, but she’s got the same voice as her mother. Amy and Rory realize they are talking to Prisoner Zero and run.
K: The mother is OLIVIA FREAKING COLMAN, who’s been so Everywhere of late that it’s hard to believe that only seven years ago, she was doing bit parts in Doctor Who. Too bad we can’t pretend it’s Broadchurch crossover magic (if you’re not watching Broadchurch, GO WATCH BROADCHURCH.)
Mari: I almost made a comment about how phenomenal this guest star is but then my recap suddenly was many thousands of words. I’m not sure I’ve seen her in other things, but she rocked the creepy alien mother…
Amy and Rory manage to lock themselves in with the coma patients as Amy tells the Doctor what’s happening. He asks her what window she’s standing by and she quickly counts it out just as Prisoner Zero breaks in. It talks to Amy, saying it’s watched her grow up and wait around for her Doctor, but he won’t show up this time.
The Doctor shows up, driving the fire rescue ladder into the window. He climbs up it quickly and comes to the actual rescue. Prisoner Zero address the Doctor as Time Lord. It seems the guards after it are called Atraxi and if it’s going to die, it wants to go down in flames. The Doctor tells it to just open another crack and get out of here, but Prisoner Zero didn’t open the crack. In the little girl’s voice, the multiform taunts the Doctor for not knowing who opened the crack. It says the universe is cracked, the Pandorica will open, and silence will fall.
Just then, the clock above Prisoner Zero’s head resets back at zero. The Doctor gets real happy as he explains that everywhere, the message is out and that message is zero. I mean if you had a giant eyeball in the sky you would probably notice that, right? And since giant eyeballs are also very smart, they can track the source of the virus to the phone in the Doctors pocket. He gives an enthusiastic “who da man.”
But! as long as Prisoner Zero is wearing coma patients (or whatever) the Atraxi can’t track it. But! The Doctor has the phone, which has pictures of all the coma skins and somehow sending that as a text message to the aliens (true story) is going to help them. (K: Oh hai, contrivance!) But! Prisoner Zero can take on another form. But! It takes a long time to form a psychic link. But! Prisoner Zero has had years with Amy Pond. Amy collapses. But! When the Doctor looks up, it’s a copy of him that’s standing before him. But! It’s him AND child Amy, because in her coma mind, Amy’s hanging out with the Doctor again, just as she was on that first night.
But! NOT. The Doctor thinks Amy is probably just thinking about him because she can hear him. So, he talks to her and tells her to think about the Suspicious Door and what she saw inside of it. Amy calls up the memories and since she’s dreaming about the multiform, the multiform has no choice but to turn into itself. The Atraxi spot it and restrain it, but not before it can threaten the Doctor again that silence will fall.
K: Damn those villains. They always have to get the last word in…
Mari: The Doctor runs to the window and looks up. Amy wakes up. The Doctor uses Rory’s phone to place a space call and demand the Atraxi come back because they were just about to burn up a whole planet protected by the Shadow Proclamation.
The Doctor power walks away as Rory asks really no one if the Doctor really just saved the Earth from aliens and then called all the aliens back.
Rory and Amy follow the Doctor, who makes a pit stop in a locker room to get himself some decent clothes. No more raggedy Doctor. Rory is still very put out by… everything. (K: SAME, BRO.) Amy watches as the Doctor changes. It’s like the exact opposite reaction of when Donna saw Time Lord peen and was like NOPE. (K: Excuse me while I pine for Donna…)
Roof. The Doctor is wearing suspenders and like 3 ties, all untied. He tells his companions that while leaving aliens are good, never coming back aliens are better. The Atraxi eyeball detaches and comes down, level to the Doctor. It scans him and proclaims that he is not of this world.
As he talks, he pulls up his suspenders and decides on a tie, throwing the rejects back at Amy and Rory. He asks the Eyeball if the Earth is a threat to the Atraxi or guilty of any Atraxi crimes. We see in the scan a bunch of images pop up, but each time the Atraxi determines no, not a threat, not guilty. Next, the Doctor asks if the Earth is protected. The eyeball scan shows a montage of Doctor Who villains– Cybermen and Daleks and Ood and other ones I don’t recognize from Classic Who. As the Eyeball scans, the Doctor says the question to ask is what happened to those threats.
The scan now turns into a series of images of all the Doctors, finishing with Nine, Ten (K: TOO SOOOOOON) and Eleven walking through the scan to say, “Hello. I’m the Doctor.” He’s now fully dressed. High-watered pants, little boots, suspenders, a bow-tie and a jacket. I’m sorry but I am a SUCK.ER. for any time there is a Doctor montage or any reminder at all of past Doctors. I LOVE IT. GIVE ME MORE. It helps that “I Am The Doctor” is playing in the background and it’s so beautiful and my favorite.
K: As much as I dislike Eleven’s era, I do love that Murray Gold upped his epicness when composing during these seasons. So… there’s that.
Mari: Eleven looks at the eyeball and tells it, “basically? Run.”
The Doctor runs off that roof and straight back to the Pond house to check in on the TARDIS. He braces himself to see what the TARDIS has in store for him this time. He looks inside, and smiles, calling it sexy. Amy and Rory show up just in time to see the TARDIS dematerialize. Amy is crushed.
We flash back to little Amy on her suitcase, still waiting for the Doctor to show up. She hears the whooshing, looks up and smiles. Big Amy wakes up to the same sound and runs to her window. The TARDIS is in her backyard again.
Amy runs out there. The Doctor apologizes for running off, as the new TARDIS was too exciting and he just took it for a quick spin to the moon. The Doctor asks what she thinks about that, going to other planets, traveling with him. Prisoner Zero and the Atraxi and all that were just the beginning. Amy’s like, “cool, THAT WAS TWO YEARS AGO.” It’s been 14 years since fish custard. Amy is the girl who waited, but she’s been waited long enough.
The Doctor asks again if she wants to come and she says no. She grew up. The Doctor says he’ll so fix that. He snaps and the TARDIS opens. Amy’s face is illuminated by the wonder inside. She steps in and we only see her reaction for a bit. We only see the Doctor’s smugness as he shows off his TARDIS.
The shot finally pulls back and we see the new TARDIS, definitely a bit less grody and intestinal looking than the last iteration.
K: Aaah, yes. Series 5, otherwise known as “that one time the BBC props department got an actual budget.”
Mari: The Doctor asks where in all of time and space Amy wants to go, and she tells him he’s awful sure that she’s going with. He is, he says, because she’s the Scottish girl in the English village and he knows how that feels. She wants to make sure that he can get her back in time for tomorrow morning and the Doctor says it’s a time machine so duh. I wouldn’t take his word for it though, seeing as how he keeps being years late, girl. (K: SERIOUSLY.) The Doctor asks what she needs to be back for but she won’t say.
The TARDIS gives the Doctor a new Sonic Screwdriver, this one a little chunkier, bronzier and with a green light at the end.
Amy asks why her. The Doctor wants to know why he has to have a reason, and Amy insists because people always have a reason. “Do I look like people?” he asks. This time, 14 years later Amy says yes. The Doctor says he’s been on his own for a bit by his own choice but he’s getting tired of talking to himself. So, it’s loneliness and only that.
K: In the background, we see one of the control panels as he talks, and the pattern on it matches the crack in Amy’s wall. It’s a tiny detail, but significant.
Mari: The Doctor asks if she’s doing okay, seeing as how the TARDIS can be overwhelming. Amy says that she’s okay, it’s just that she started to convince herself that maybe the Doctor was just a madman with a box. The Doctor very seriously tells her that there is something she must know that may one day save her life: he is definitely a madman with a box. He laughs and they take off.
We watch the TARDIS disappear from the Pond backyard once again.
Back in Amy’s room, there are drawings and dolls, all of her raggedy Doctor. And then we pan across and up a wedding dress.
I’ve gushed about this episode to the tune of like 7,000 words so far so I’ll spare you much more. But you know. I love this episode. It can be rough after a regeneration, but I think Matt Smith jumps right into the role with this energetic and enthusiastic portrayal that endeared me to him pretty immediately. I also think the episode is well paced, doing a swell job of introducing new Doctor and new companion, complete with some backstory and an alien (or two) of the week.
K: I didn’t hate this episode on rewatch, but I also didn’t love it. I like Rory and his scepticism. I quite like Amy and her continued faith that the Doctor is real and will save the day. But I also had the same problems here that I have for the whole of the Eleventh Doctor’s run, which we may as well get out the way now:
1. I don’t like Matt Smith. He’s certainly enthusiastic, but I don’t find him endearing. I find him smug and slightly creepy. This applies not only to him playing the Eleventh Doctor, but him in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, him in The Crown, and him in real life (or in the interviews I’ve seen, at least). It’s not, as many people have accused me over the years, a Tenth Doctor fangirl thing. I just don’t like Matt Smith or his acting.
2. I don’t like the way the Eleventh Doctor is written. It’s VERY Steven Moffat, there’s a lot of “oh look! A big red button that fixes everything!” (which is characteristic of Moffat’s writing even in series 1-4), and the Doctor often comes across as condescending and LOOK HOW CLEVER I AM.
So while this wasn’t a terrible episode for me, it also felt incredibly long and there were half a dozen scenes that could easily have been cut without impacting the narrative flow.
Mari: Perhaps without impacting the narrative flow, but they are the scenes I’d wager were the ones that endeared him as a character to me. The wouldn’t feel significant to the story, especially if you didn’t buy them. Again, I don’t know how I’ll feel in the long run, but the benefit (or curse) of being an almost-Snow is that you can see things in a very one-at-a-time manner. Are Moffat’s convenient writing and Smith’s smugness going to annoy me? Possibly! (Though I’ve never seen Smith in anything else, including interviews…) But I won’t judge this episode by that eventuality. I think this episode was a fantastic introduction to a Doctor and one of the more memorable series openers.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
