I enjoyed the slower pacing of this episode. One of the very few gripes I have with nuWho is that they sometimes try and stuff too much into the allotted time.
I have to agree with everybody. Since it was mostly setup, it can't rate higher than good. Still I think I would have liked it better if I didn't read spoilers and found out it was the Silurians. 1. The Silurian redesigns is a little too human. I missed the third eye, fish like appearance and the head bobbing. Since these Silurians weren't in stasis and have been evolving for the past 30 million years you really can't argue about their appearance. The all female maybe a conscious decision (females work better in close quarters) or perhaps has something to do with parthenogenesis. 2. Why they attacked is simple? They've been isolated for 30 million and had no way to determine the status of the Earth until the drill hit them. 3. I'm surprise no one got the inside joke of the Doctor only encountering a remanent and then Bang there is an entire city. The whole Silurians were the original masters of the Earth (with the Sea Devils supposedly) and humans are unwanted pests has been part of Doctor Who since the Pertwee era and is not a commentary on the Middle East
^ Got the joke just didn't think it was worth mentioning and the Doctor did say that these Silurans were a different branch from the ones he encountered before.
The moment the Doctor said its Future-Amy and Future-Rory, my over-sensitive gut instinct kicked in. The Future-Doctor may have visited Young-Amy and mind-wiped her. He has visited Present-Amy on the crashed Byzantium ship, asking her to remember. And now he knows where to find Future-Amy. Anyone taking bets that the Doctor will give Future-Amy a visit in the series finale?
I thought it was lousy. Bored by visits to pretty British villages; bored by the big "don't leave me" moments. Thought the guest stars were weak, the setting uninspiring, the story lacklustre, the alien of the week so poor the actress made me refer to an honourable (and previously favourite race of mine) as alien-of-the-week. The kid and his mother irritated me, and why did we have to have another dip into the future of Rory and Amy? On the upside, I still like Matt Smith a great deal, he is turning into the Doctor for me. Observtions: last week they filmed on through snow, this week it was teaming it down during the night/dome scenes. Made me want to go and watch The Sea Devils.
I thought it was pretty good. They ramped up the tension slowly throughout the episode, which is a very efficient way to use the first part of a two-parter. At the end of the episode, they managed to establish the Silurians as a credible threat. They were quite scary, in fact. As for the alleged Israel-Palestine analogy, come on, it's not the only disputed territory in history! Considering that the episode took place in Wales, that one of the main characters is Scottish and one of the guest stars was Indian, I'd say there are more obvious parallels to be made. Smith was brilliant, as usual.
Well, to be honest, i sat through it and was rolling my eyes on occasions however, after 20 or so minutes, it improved and i kinda enjoyed it. It was just the whole RTD-esque opening 10-15 mins that was just boring. The sickly sweet opening with the guy and a bike and his son etc was just crappy. All we needed was them to scrap that wasted scene, have the Tardis land at the drilling platform and the Doctor investigate the blue grass, and the scene in the confidential that they deleted, which looked great by the way, of Amy and the Doctor walking down the lane to the drilling platform describing it all couldve been left in. Also, get rid of that god awful scene of Amy and Rory waving at themselves 20 years in the future. Yeah, it was a nice little wibbly wobbly timey wimey touch that we could discuss forever, but it was a few minutes of crap that we didnt need. Godd ep though. although some rolleye parts, but Smiths Doctor is still great though. Even though his support cast wasnt that strong in this, i thought he was great, especially when he figured out who they were. And the kid in the graveyard with the Silaurian was just damn creepy. And i like the new design, as they said in the Confidential, they wanted to see more of the performer/actor than just a mask. Yeah, they do look a little too humanoid, breasts and all, but i thought they did a good job, they still had classic design traits aswel, also, its a different species from that of the classic show so they can do what they want.
It's interesting to note in the trailer for next week that there are some other Silurians with less human faces - they look more like the masks the first one was wearing, but are faces, not masks - and that the speaking roles are all female, which suggests to me that the males have the more lizard-like faces with the wide reptile mouths.
Remember Marla Singer in Planet of the Apes? She dated outside her species. These Silurians have been around for a bit, do we think thousands of years or hundreds of centuries? They eat people. They must raid the surface for stock perhaps, farm their own humans undergrouind, but they don't taste the same... Did they put their cattle into hibernation too? or at least dna banks that they could make protohumans? "Human" husbandry? Forced breeding might have to aoccurr that cave men and cave women might be given modern peopel to ravish to make happymeals for their lizard masters? Soldier girl must be a turk off mission, off statement. Everyone with any real political/military power would have recognized that drill for what it was, and ignored it or had a long game to play against it... Is ths a slightly rewritten script of STRIPES?
I thought it was ok. Though I'm still a tad concerned over how this drilling thing fits in with Inferno, set fifty years earlier. The episode said they'd dug down to 21 kilometres, the deepest man has ever been before. How far down did the Inferno Project go? Oh, did I imagine it, or did the Doctor at one point say the Homo Reptilia had been hiding underground for 30 million years, and at another point give the duration as 300 million years? Either way, the reptiles couldn't have encountered humanity's distant ancestors that far back as hominids hadn't evolved back then. I always assumed that the date of the Silurian's decline was only on the order of at most a few hundred thousand years ago (with the arrival of Earth's moon pushing Mondas out of orbit?)
You have to think UNIt and the british govt slapped a security blackout on the whole incident after that near disaster. Though you have to wonder how Chaudhry managed to get a government license for the same thing. Obviously someone at the mining office wasn't paying attention.
What part of "I've given mostly positive opinion" for this series coincides with your view that I've been consistently negative? What's more, everything I said had been views shared by others eariler the thread. So why just attack me for it? I'm not sure I've done much of that, and even when I have it's been valid. I wouldn't have thought describing Victory as being RTD-like would draw too much objection, and saying that the Moffat episodes have been superior to their RTD equivalents is hardly an unfair criticism either. I'm happy to argue the points about the episode all you want, but responding to a valid opinion (which I'm not alone in holding) with a facile attack intended to dismiss any point I may have made isn't really on.
It was pretty by-the-numbers, but I enjoyed it. The lizard people were a definite step up from the shitty rubber masks of yesteryear.
Wow, couldn't disagree more about the setting. For me that's what really MADE the episode. From the English countryside to the cemetery to the (fake-ish looking) underground caves, the Classic Series vibe was coming through strong as hell in this episode, and really gave it a nice atmosphere. The story wasn't all that bad either. Yeah it may have just been all setup, but it was fairly well done setup I thought. You couldn't help but feel for the Doctor over losing both Amy and then the kid, and I loved his little interrogation scene with the Silurian. And the way he felt it necessary to appeal so strongly to the human's better natures before leaving was fascinating to see-- perhaps remembering how events got out of hand in Midnight? As for the Silurians themselves, I guess I'm one of the few who's glad they DIDN'T go for the original, laughable design, but I agree they could have come up with something more interesting and original than they did. This felt too much like something we've seen thousands of times on Trek or Stargate, and just wasn't really worth the big buildup.
Not brilliant but not terrible, and the trailer for next week makes part 2 look like it could be a cracker! Slow moving, which isn't a terrible thing but this was a bit too languid. The new Silurian look is ok, they're better on screen than photos would have suggested. Love the masks though. Played very much as implacable cold blooded warriors...works for me. Couple of friends of mine were annoyed that the announcer basically gave away it was the Silurians. They really didn't know they were coming! As for future Rory and Amy...well that can't just be scenery, there must be a point to it. I also wonder about the boy's dyslexia? anyway, in the final analysis, ok, bt of fluff but if nothing else I am very eager to see part 2 and also to figure out which one of the three will kill her. (My money's on Rory!)
I really liked it. Admittedly it would have to have been appalling not to appeal to me after events at Wembley earlier in the afternoon, but it was good on its own merits. The interrogation scene was great. Cannot believe people - particularly classic Who fans - are complaining about it being slow. I mean, really? And the Silurian look as well - why worry about it? It's explicitly stated this is a different branch of the species to those previously seen, and weren't the old Silurians in hibernation meaning they wouldn't evolve over the 30 million years, whereas these have clearly been active throughout and so change has occurred. Oh, and people bored of rural villages? What, all two of them (Cwmtaff and Leadworth)? As opposed to every other episode being on a London council estate or, in Torchwood's case, Cardiff Bay? Please. It looked great and was refreshing. I also liked the 'low-key' cliffhanger, compared to the usual DEATH IS IMMINENT/EARTH HAS BEEN CONQUERED MWAHAHAHA ones this show uses. Tension has been built, threat established... see you next week.
Every planet has a Scotland As for the episode thanks to I Player I caught up and it was your standard 1st part of a 2 parter set up and overall I thought it was good enough though next week looks bloody brilliant and action packed. Amy skirt seem shorter than normal cue Daily Mail.