1
Revie-Who: 'The Beast Below'
All right, here we are again! Time-traveling Austin writing again from 4/10, but since regular BBCA doesn't get the new Doctor Who episodes until two weeks later, I'm post-dating this! Hello future world!
So this week's episode was 'The Beast Below'. From the beginning of the episode, it had one thing going for it:
Those Smilers are very, very creepy.
Anyway, this adventure sees The Doctor and Amy in space, in the future, aboard Starship UK. What mysteries hide in the ship? Well, a giant space whale. It's sorta meh, I guess. But I digress! Let's do some episode notes!
AWESOME: Amy is fantastic. It seemed like, for the Tennant companions, it took a few episodes to adjust to them. Even two or three episodes in to the first season of the relaunch, you didn't have a steady bead on who Rose was. Was she a working-class girl on an adventure? Did she like anything, other than her mum? There was a definite learning curve. Not so with Amy. Already in the second episode, the writers have made it clear that Amy is designed to play off The Doctor, and act as both support and foil. Amy in this episode was great, and even ended up saving the day with her own 'zoom in the eye' thing (which I'm hoping doesn't become a recurring thing, because come on, twice has been enough).
NOT SO AWESOME: More Moffat tricks. This isn't a huge complaint, but it does raise a couple concerns that I had hoped we could ignore. Like I had mentioned in the previous week's review, it seems like Moffat is interested in replaying a few themes over and over. Again, his love of children as driving forces is in effect, but this time he's taken another story element from a previous episode. An entire colony/planet supported by a thankless, childlike creature hooked up to a machine? Are we talking about the daughter from the 'Library' episode, or the space whale from this episode? It's not huge, and it is kind of a stretch, but it still seems like a Moffat motif. Not really troublesome, but it doesn't bode well for future episodes being 100% original.
ON THE FENCE: There seemed to be some very sloppy plot elements in this episode. I'm pretty sure I was paying close attention, but there are a few things I couldn't figure out. Where did the Smilers come from? Further than that, why did the Smilers arbitrarily try to kill kids with 'zero' marks by throwing them into the space whale? I guess the Smilers were working for the good guys, but there didn't seem to be a ton of explanation regarding them (at least, that I picked up on). And the half-Smiler, half-people people? Who knows. It just seemed like it was playing fast enough with the story that some sidelines got dropped (like, how did Amy leave a recording for herself to tell The Doctor to leave). Maybe I should watch it again or something.
AWESOME: The Doctor is a dick again! One of the things that the writers did with Tennant, that I don't know how successful they were, was play with the idea that The Doctor can be a real dick. It was flirted with during Tennant's run, but it often got pushed to the side to make The Doctor super awesome. Not so with Smith; here The Doctor is brash, a little arrogant, and impatient. Telling a room full of humans that no human has anything to say to him today? Awesome. It's delightfully curmudgeon-y, and it's definitely very interesting. This is the second time The Doctor's been a bit of a dick, so I hope they keep the trend going.
NOT SO AWESOME: Some of the dialogue was awful. I watched with four other people, and absolutely every one of them predicted the "Help us, Doctor, you're our only hope" line. When delivered by a member of a royal family cloaked in a robe? Come on, a little too Star Wars. You're Doctor Who, stand on your own laurels. That, and repeating the "HEY LOOK THE DOCTOR IS LIKE THE SPACE WHALE LAST OF HIS KIND HURRR" thing three times? A bit much. This is redeemed slightly by the fact that some of the dialogue (the 'missing fish' joke) was awesome.
ON THE FENCE: Guns. Why did the ninja assassin Queen of Space England wield a gun? Hell, why did she wield two guns, arms akimbo, to shoot some aliens? Doctor Who of the past has always shied away from guns (except when absolutely convenient), so a bullet-shootin' space Queen seemed a little out of place. Cool excuse for an action scene, maybe?
AWESOME: Another solid episode. I mean, it was probably Moffat's weakest thus far, but it was still leagues ahead of some of the awful Russell T. Davies episodes we had to endure.
Overall, the episode was pretty good. It wasn't stellar, but it was still pretty solid, and it did a good job of entertaining. See you next week for some awesome Nazi Dalek action!
|
So this week's episode was 'The Beast Below'. From the beginning of the episode, it had one thing going for it:
Those Smilers are very, very creepy.
Anyway, this adventure sees The Doctor and Amy in space, in the future, aboard Starship UK. What mysteries hide in the ship? Well, a giant space whale. It's sorta meh, I guess. But I digress! Let's do some episode notes!
AWESOME: Amy is fantastic. It seemed like, for the Tennant companions, it took a few episodes to adjust to them. Even two or three episodes in to the first season of the relaunch, you didn't have a steady bead on who Rose was. Was she a working-class girl on an adventure? Did she like anything, other than her mum? There was a definite learning curve. Not so with Amy. Already in the second episode, the writers have made it clear that Amy is designed to play off The Doctor, and act as both support and foil. Amy in this episode was great, and even ended up saving the day with her own 'zoom in the eye' thing (which I'm hoping doesn't become a recurring thing, because come on, twice has been enough).
NOT SO AWESOME: More Moffat tricks. This isn't a huge complaint, but it does raise a couple concerns that I had hoped we could ignore. Like I had mentioned in the previous week's review, it seems like Moffat is interested in replaying a few themes over and over. Again, his love of children as driving forces is in effect, but this time he's taken another story element from a previous episode. An entire colony/planet supported by a thankless, childlike creature hooked up to a machine? Are we talking about the daughter from the 'Library' episode, or the space whale from this episode? It's not huge, and it is kind of a stretch, but it still seems like a Moffat motif. Not really troublesome, but it doesn't bode well for future episodes being 100% original.
ON THE FENCE: There seemed to be some very sloppy plot elements in this episode. I'm pretty sure I was paying close attention, but there are a few things I couldn't figure out. Where did the Smilers come from? Further than that, why did the Smilers arbitrarily try to kill kids with 'zero' marks by throwing them into the space whale? I guess the Smilers were working for the good guys, but there didn't seem to be a ton of explanation regarding them (at least, that I picked up on). And the half-Smiler, half-people people? Who knows. It just seemed like it was playing fast enough with the story that some sidelines got dropped (like, how did Amy leave a recording for herself to tell The Doctor to leave). Maybe I should watch it again or something.
AWESOME: The Doctor is a dick again! One of the things that the writers did with Tennant, that I don't know how successful they were, was play with the idea that The Doctor can be a real dick. It was flirted with during Tennant's run, but it often got pushed to the side to make The Doctor super awesome. Not so with Smith; here The Doctor is brash, a little arrogant, and impatient. Telling a room full of humans that no human has anything to say to him today? Awesome. It's delightfully curmudgeon-y, and it's definitely very interesting. This is the second time The Doctor's been a bit of a dick, so I hope they keep the trend going.
NOT SO AWESOME: Some of the dialogue was awful. I watched with four other people, and absolutely every one of them predicted the "Help us, Doctor, you're our only hope" line. When delivered by a member of a royal family cloaked in a robe? Come on, a little too Star Wars. You're Doctor Who, stand on your own laurels. That, and repeating the "HEY LOOK THE DOCTOR IS LIKE THE SPACE WHALE LAST OF HIS KIND HURRR" thing three times? A bit much. This is redeemed slightly by the fact that some of the dialogue (the 'missing fish' joke) was awesome.
ON THE FENCE: Guns. Why did the ninja assassin Queen of Space England wield a gun? Hell, why did she wield two guns, arms akimbo, to shoot some aliens? Doctor Who of the past has always shied away from guns (except when absolutely convenient), so a bullet-shootin' space Queen seemed a little out of place. Cool excuse for an action scene, maybe?
AWESOME: Another solid episode. I mean, it was probably Moffat's weakest thus far, but it was still leagues ahead of some of the awful Russell T. Davies episodes we had to endure.
Overall, the episode was pretty good. It wasn't stellar, but it was still pretty solid, and it did a good job of entertaining. See you next week for some awesome Nazi Dalek action!
|
