Doctor Who Series 7 Part 1

The run up to the 50^th anniversary is on but to tide us over we are given these meager five episodes this year. I guess otherwise there would be no Doctor Who this year at all. This dry assortment does very much feel like leftover scripts and reheated ideas.  And whilst some people are more gushing than I. I don’t know anyone who’s lining up to say this is the best season yet. So lets see what Stephen Moffat has left in the oven for us eh?  

Asylum of the Daleks:  

Lets try to make Daleks scary again! That’s actually a good idea. A Dalek asylum that’s actually a good idea too…. What’s more frightening than a regular Dalek? An insane Dalek or is it, after all a Daleks automatic response to any given new situation is to exterminate it, what would an insane Dalek do? Exterminate it and laugh? Try to give you a bunch of flowers? Also it contradicts the Daleks creed, the sick and lame would be exterminated surely?

In almost every way this episode is a lost opportunity, if anyone didn’t see the plot twist coming hand your brain in, you’re not using it properly.  

Dinosars on a spaceship:  

So there are these dinosaurs, on this spaceship and Queen Nefertiti is along for the ride as well as an 19^th centaury big game hunter. Both characters are totally superfluous to the plot and would not have been missed had they been left out.  It is still an enjoyable romp however and the addition of Mitchell and Webb as two bickering robots only makes it better. The fact that the doctor loses his temper makes it one of the more believable stores in this series despite the premise.  

A town called Mercy:  

Er….yeah…how would you like some subtext shoved down your throat? No? Don’t watch this one. Cause the Doctor is no longer remembered by the universe and in case you missed that there is no way you could miss it after this episode. In Dinosars on the spaceship the doctor got mistaken for another doctor, in this episode there actually is another doctor. Also unless you’re making Firefly the old west and sci-fi don’t’ mix.  

The Power of Three:  

What would a season of Doctor who be without an alien invasion or Earth, every aliens favorite planet? Also has an alien invasion been this cool and also so easily defeated? Mysterious cubes…Love the mysterious cubes; I also really love Rory’s Dad, not so hot on just being able to press a few buttons on a computer and reversing everything that’s happened in an adventure. It’s like the aliens installed  a big red reset button just in case they changed their mind. And yes..a cube is the power of three..but maths puns are the lamest puns ever.  

The Angles take Manhattnen:  

Not cool, not ok. Suicide should never be portrayed as the solution to any problem. Yet it has happened twice this series. Not cool. Maybe Steven Moffat is very depressed.

Still he promised us that Amy and Rory would leave this episode and they did, he also promised us that this would be a tear jerker and…well it’s not. Cause no matter what you can say about the Angels it’s been drummed into us that they don’t actually kill people. Sure the Doctor might be sad but the fact is that they lived a good life somewhere out there. Also there’s the nagging feeling that since the Doctor ignores the laws of time whenever he wants he could go and see them but he’s a bit over Rory.  

Audio:

Audio quality is 5.1 Dolby digital surround. Quite a good mix actually.  

Video:

Video quality of the releases of the new episodes has been uniformly excellent. No complaints here.  

Special Features:  

Pond Life: Which is the internet prequels for this season and basically sets up the marital problems that Rory and Amy have in episode one. And get resolved in episode one. So much for tension.

Asylum Of The Daleks Prequel: A short where we see how the Doctor got lured into the trap that was sprung at the start of asylum of the Daleks, pretty cool actually, should have been part of the episode.

The Making Of The Gunslinger: Guess what this is about.

The Science Of Doctor Who:  Another one of those annoying documentaries where Americans are telling me what Doctor Who is about….yes I know I’ve seen it before. And if you own this disc so have you. How many people watch the special features before they watch the series?

Then you have some scientists using spurious logic to tell us that one day everything we see on Doctor who will be possible. Uh..huh. In-between this, we have more Americans telling us what happened in specific episodes. Why??!?!  Can’t anyone making a special feature assume that I’m not a frothing idiot?

Seems not.