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| The Doctor and his "gang" investigate a derelict spaceship. |
1 episode. Approx. 45 minutes. Written by: Chris Chibnall. Directed by: Saul Metzstein. Produced by: Marcus Wilson.
THE PLOT
In the year 2367, a giant spaceship is approaching Earth. This isn't an invasion - The ship is on a collision course, and the Doctor is told that it will be destroyed by missiles if he cannot turn the ship around within six hours.
The Doctor decides, largely to try out something new, that he will assemble a team: Egyptian Queen Nefertiti (Riann Steele), game hunter John Riddell (Rupert Graves), and also Amy and Rory. His haste in picking up the last two results in one additional, accidental inclusion: Brian Williams (Mark Williams), Rory's father.
His team gathered, the Doctor materializes on the spaceship. Within minutes of landing, the unlikely group makes an impossible discovery: There are dinosaurs on the spaceship! The ship is an ark, designed by the Silurians long before humanity evolved to carry them to a new planet along with Earth's indigenous life forms. But something went wrong. The Silurians are all gone, and only the plants and dinosaurs remain - along with Solomon (David Bradley), a man who knows what happened to the ship and why it is hurtling toward Earth.
But finding those answers may just cost the Doctor and his new friends their lives!
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: His reaction to finding dinosaurs on the ship is twofold. First, he advises his companions to run. Then he stands and gapes at the dinosaurs, enjoying the way the universe still finds ways to surprise him. Matt Smith's best scenes come late in the story, as the Doctor helplessly watches Solomon's robots murder a triceraptops he and his companions had befriended. He exacts an icy revenge on the evil man later, in a scene that was perhaps more ruthless than I'm comfortable with. James Bond? John McClane? Sure, they could play that scene. The Doctor? Even when confronting an evil man, I expect less cold-bloodedness.
Amy: Separated with the two one-shot companions, Amy gets to play the Doctor to Nefertiti and Riddell. Which is exactly what she does, striding into rooms, pressing random buttons until she gets answers, and generally acting as if she is certain she can do no wrong. Amazingly, her self-confidence doesn't come back to haunt her at any point, and she actually does a good job of being "in charge" of the other two.
Rory: Spends the bulk of the story with the Doctor and his father, which creates an amusing dynamic. We once again get to see the usefulness of Rory's nursing skills, as he patches a wound his father suffers at one point. The interaction with his father is enoyable, too, with the old man growling about Rory not carrying a trowel while Rory grumbles about his father never going anywhere "except the store and the golf." The Doctor happily points out the similarities between the two, particularly their penchant for stating the obvious.
THOUGHTS
The second episode of Series Seven doesn't match the first, but it's not bad. It tries for the "big action movie" feel that Asylum of the Daleks achieved, with more high concept elements: dinosaurs, giant robots, an Allan Quatermain-like game hunter, an Egyptian queen, an engine room that's a beach... And it does achieve a fairly "big" feel, with some quite good special effects.
What holds the episode back is the lack of cohesion. A lot of these elements don't really feel like they belong together. The giant robots, a combination of physical threat and comedy relief, fall particularly flat. They aren't very far removed from the comedy relief robots of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, only without the racist overtones. Much like those robots, there's too much of them in the episode and almost none of their bits are amusing in the slightest.
Chris Chibnall does keep the pace moving, and finds good moments for the overly-large cast as the Doctor experiments with having "a team." But the script is shallow, succeeding only a set piece-for-set piece basis. Any moment that falls flat grounds the momentum to a halt until the next moment that works. Solomon, the thinly-scripted villain of the piece, fails to engage at all, and he doesn't really feel worthy of the Doctor's icy contempt of him at the story's close.
Fast-paced enough to entertain, with a handful of strong set pieces and a few good character moments, there's enough good here that I enjoyed it more than not. I left the episode having enjoyed it well enough... but also having recognized that this really should have been better.
Overall Rating: 6/10.
Previous Story: Asylum of the Daleks
Next Story: A Town Called Mercy
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