Doctor Who 'Terror of the Zygons' Review

The villainous Zygons capture the Doctor.

In ‘Terror of the Zygons’ the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry are called in to help investigate the destruction of several oil rigs off the coast of Scotland by the Brigadier and Unit.  Assisting Unit in their investigations Harry is shot, receiving a glancing blow to the head that leaves him unconscious.  Meanwhile the Doctor investigates parts of the ruins of one of the rigs, finding what appears to be giant teeth marks.

It soon becomes apparent that not everyone is trying to assist the Unit investigation, with several members of the local population being evasive, and an attempt on the life of both Sarah Jane and the Doctor.

Investigating further the Doctor discovers that the destruction of the oil rigs has been caused by the alien race, the Zygons, who have the ability to imitate human beings and have used their advances technology to enslave and control the Loch Ness Monster.

The Zygons use the Loch Ness Monster to acomplish their plans.

‘Terror of the Zygons’ is the one and only appearance of the Zygons on screen to date, though they have been referenced in several episodes and appeared in a number of Doctor Who novels and comics.  They’re brilliant looking monsters that are used to great effect in this story, with their intelligence and technology used to great effect.

Compared to some of the one-off creatures used in the show the Zygons have successfully captured people’s imaginations to the degree that many fans of the show are clamouring for their return.  Tenth Doctor David Tennant has even said that the Zygons are his favourite classic series aliens.

The episodes here are some great earthbound episodes that would feel right at home in the Pertwee era, with Tom Baker and his companions working well with Nicholas Courtney’s Brigadier and John Levene’s Benton.  The term ‘Unit Family’ is used a lot in Doctor Who, and here it is easy to see that they are indeed a family.  The characters are at ease with each other, they banter together and have fun and really do feel like a group of close friends.

The last adventure of Harry, Sarah Jane and the Doctor

This story also marks the end of Harry Sullivan’s time as a traveller in the Tardis, though he would appear once again later in that series.  The dynamic between the Doctor, Harry and Sarah Jane is another fan favourite time in the show, with current show runner Stephen Moffat having stated that he is a fan of this particular trio, and that he modelled the eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory dynamic around them (the Doctor travelling with a journalist and a nurse).

‘Terror of the Zygons’ is a great earth based episode that uses the Unit family to great effect and has some truly iconic monsters. 7/10

Amy.
xx

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Doctor Who 'The Angels Take Manhattan' Review

Amy and Rory are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice.

‘The Angels Take Manhattan’ starts with the Doctor, Amy and Rory having a picnic together in Central Park in modern day New York.  Whilst the Doctor is reading a pulp novel about the detective Melody Malone to Amy, Rory goes to get the three of them some coffee.  The Doctor stops reading suddenly as Rory appears in the book, talking about the Doctor and Amy.  Rory, now in 1938, meets his daughter Melody Pond/River Song, who he discovers is Melody Malone from the Doctors book.

The Doctor and Amy rush to the Tardis and try to reach Rory and River, who have been taken to meet with the crime boss Mr Grayle.  Melody explains to Rory that he was sent back in time by a Weeping Angel, and that they are swarming all over New York, causing a number of time distortions that will prevent the Tardis from landing.

Using the information provided by River in the book, Amy and the Doctor manage to break their way through the time distortions in time to rescue River from Grayle and the Weeping Angel he has locked up in his home, unfortunately tough Rory has been given over to a group of Weeping Angel young kept in the basement and is displaced across New York to a building beside Battery Park.

The Doctor, Amy and River must find Rory before he falls victim to the Weeping Angels and stop the deadly creatures from completing their dastardly plans.

The Angels deal the Doctor a heart breaking blow.

‘The Angels Take Manhattan’ is the final episode of the first half of series seven of the revived series and the final appearance of Amy Pond and Rory Williams as main cast members.  It also sees the first appearance of River Song in series seven.

There are one or two little things wrong with this episode, things that detract slightly from the enjoyment as a whole, but are not major enough to affect the overall feelings of the episode.  My biggest gripe with the story is the use of the Statue of Liberty as a giant Weeping Angel. 

When I first heard rumours of this happening I was shocked and impressed, I thought that it could be an amazing concept, unfortunately though I felt that it was not used to its best potential in the episode.  The simple fact of the matter is that I find it hard to believe that the Statue of Liberty could move around the way it does without someone seeing it.  And it does this not once, but twice in the episode.  I thought that the Angel’s main plan was going to be to do something huge to free the Statue of Liberty Angel, to draw all of the eyes in New York away from it so that it could return to life.  Instead it was just another ordinary Weeping Angel that was able to move around at will.

The slightly over the top Statue of Liberty Weeping Angel.

 Fortunately the Statue of Liberty Weeping Angel does not take up a lot of screen time and is not the main focus of the story.  Instead this is a story that looks at the relationship of the Doctor and his family, how they love each other.  This makes the loss of Amy and Rory particularly poignant as we get a sense of the loss that the Doctor and River feel once they loose them.

The Angels once again prove to be a very creepy foe and help to ramp up the tension as they stalk our heroes.  We are also introduced to two other types of Weeping Angels.  We see two Angels that do not even look like Angels, but just normal statues.  These ‘undercover angels’ are particularly creeps as it builds upon the idea that the Weeping Angels can be any statue, not just statues of angels.  We also see young Weeping Angels, cherub like statues that scurry around in the dark and giggle creepily. 

The final scenes of the episode are where the story really shines though, as we loose Amy and Rory to the Weeping Angels.  It begins with the sudden loss of Rory, who’s gone before you realise it.  But then we’re forced to watch as Amy says her goodbyes to her best friend and her daughter, all the while the Doctor begging and pleading with her not to go.  In one final tear filled moment she allows the Weeping Angel to touch her, sending her back through time to her husband, and forever from the Doctors reach.

The Doctor tries to stop Amy from leaving him forever.

This episode has one of the most emotion filled  goodbyes to a companion we’ve had in the new series, and we can plainly see the pain of the Doctors face when he looses people that have literally become family to him.

I can’t wait to see the Weeping Angels come back yet again, to see how the Doctor and River will react to them now that they are responsible for the loss of Amy and Rory.  I am sure this is something that will carry on for a while in the series to come and that the Doctor will be feeling the pain of loosing two of his most beloved companions for a long while.  8/10

Amy.
xx

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Doctor Who 'Delta and the Bannermen' Review

The villainous Bannermen

The story begins on the planet Chimeron, where the merciless Bannermen, led by the evil Gavrok, have all but wiped out the Chimeron people.  The lone survivor of the entire race, Queen Delta, manages to flee the genocide with the egg containing her unborn daughter and last hope for her species.  Delta manages to make her way to a spaceport where the shape changing Navarinos are planning to visit Earth as tourists on a spaceship disguised as an old bus. 

Meanwhile the Tardis lands at the spaceport and the Doctor and Mel are congratulated for being the ten billionth customers, there prize being allowed on the trip to earth.  Mel gets onto the ship and meets Delta whilst the doctor follows behind them in the Tardis.

Unfortunately whilst on route the ship collides with an American satellite and is forced to set down at a holiday camp in South Wales instead of their intended destination of Disneyland.  Unfortunately the Bannermen are not far behind and track Delta to the holiday camp where they intend to finish the genocide of the Chimeron. 

Delta and her daughter

‘Delta and the Bannermen’ has to be without a doubt one of the worst episodes of Doctor Who that I have ever seen.  The show feels incredibly cheap, and it’s easy to imagine a tiny budget being the reasons for a number of the ludicrous inclusions to the story, such as the central location being a run down holiday camp in South Wales and the spaceship being ‘disguised’ as an old bus.

The story wanders around all over the place and is populated by people who are, frankly, idiots.  The villains are very incompetent and run around the Welsh countryside with no apparent tactic and continuously loose Delta, where it could have been very simple to capture her if they used their brains.  The villains are also easily dispatched by the Doctor, at one point he uses honey to get a swarm of bees to sting them.  I can’t help but question how awful the Chimeron must have been in order to be wiped out by a bunch of idiots like the Bannermen.

Another factor of the story that comes across as ridiculous is the love story between Delta and one of the humans she befriends at the holiday camp.  In the space of twenty four hours Billy goes from not knowing Delta to falling madly in love and injecting a bunch of alien chemicals that will cause him to mutate, possibly horribly as the Doctor warns him, and subsequently leaves earth with Delta.  Some people might enjoy this love story, but I can’t help to find it so ridiculously stupid to the point of being unbelievable. 

At only three episodes long this is a short serial, but one that took extremely long to watch as I found no real desire to continue watching.  A real chore to watch and has a story that is baffling and stupid beyond belief.  1/10

Amy.
xx

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Doctor Who 'Curse of the Fatal Death' Review

The five Doctors featured in 'Curse of the Fatal Death'.

‘Curse of the Fatal Death’ is a special comic relief episode of Doctor Who aired in 1999.  It is notable amongst other non-cannon comic relief specials as it features many of the crew that would later go on to work on the revived series of Doctor Who, including Stephen Moffat, special effects company The Mill and Richard Curtis.

The story begins with the Master pursuing the Doctor in his Tardis, gloating over his latest plot to kill the Doctor, unfortunately for him however he is accidentally transmitting to the Doctors Tardis, informing the Doctor of his plans.  The Doctor in returns asks the Master to meet him on the planet Tersurus as he has something important to tell him.

On Tersurus the Master attempts to kill the Doctor several times, though the Doctor easily manages to avoid these traps.  Once he manages to convince the Master to stop trying to kill him and let him talk he informs the Master of his intention to retire, instead opting for a quiet married life with his companion Emma.  The Master, finding such an idea disgusting, continues with his attempts to kill the Doctor and is in turn sent into the sewer system of Tersurus, which takes him over three hundred years to find his way out of.

Jonathan Pryce plays an excellent Master.

Using his Tardis to return to just after the point he fell into the trap an elderly Master returns with a group of Daleks, intent on destroying the Doctor.  Now a prisoner of the Daleks and the Master, the Doctor must stop the destruction of them all from an exploding Zektronic energy weapon.  The Doctor is injured and forced to regenerate, three times.

The Doctor finally manages to disable the machine but is hit by a burst of Zektronic energy that kills him, stopping him from using his twelfth and final regeneration.  Believing the Doctor dead the Master and the Daleks, whom he saved, renounce their evil ways and vow to honour his memory by protecting the universe in his place.

The Doctor plans to retire and marry his companion Emma.

Suddenly the Doctor begins to regenerate, his twelfth form being that of a beautiful woman.  Emma is stunned by the change and confesses that she can no longer marry the Doctor.  The Doctor and the Master however begin to feel a mutual attraction to each other and leave together, arm in arm.

‘Curse of the Fatal Death’ is a quick twenty minute skit that pokes fun at Doctor Who but is made by people that love the show.  This results in a nice little comedy episode that is respectful to the legacy of the show and fans will enjoy.

The twelfth Doctor discovers the vibrate function on the Sonic Screwdriver....

The five Doctors featured in the episode are great, each bringing something new to their own versions of the Doctor, even though most are only the Doctor for less than a minute.  Jonathan Pryce makes a wonderful Master, one that brilliantly carries on the legacy left by Rodger Delgado and Anthony Ainley and feels more like the Master than the later Jon Simm.  The part of Emma, the Doctors companion in this story, is played by Julia Sawalha, who was planned on being a cat-burglar like companion in the cancelled twenty seventh season of the show and would have replaced Ace alongside Sylvester McCoy.

A fun little episode that is made by people who love the show for people who love the show.  Respects the source material but isn’t afraid to point out some of its funnier faults.  An entertaining watch for any fans of Doctor Who.  7/10

Amy.
xx

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Doctor Who 'Dalek' Review

The Doctor must come face to face with his oldest and deadliest foe.

The Tardis is drawn to an unidentified distress signal, landing in a massive underground facility near Salt Lake City in Utah, in the year 2012.  They find themselves inside a private collection of alien artefacts owned by the wealthy Henry van Statten, who has made his billions by secretly owning the internet and creating amazing new technology based on alien artefacts.

Impressed by the Doctor’s knowledge of the artefacts on display van Staten takes the Doctor to ‘the cage’, where he keeps his one living specimen.  Realising that this must be the source of the distress call the Doctor enters ‘the cage’ and tries to help the life form within.  However, the Doctor comes face to face with his greatest enemy, a Dalek.

The Dalek learns from the Doctor that they are both the last of their races, the other Daleks and Time Lords killed in the last days of the Time War.  The Dalek escapes from its confines and hunts for the Doctor through the facility, intent on killing the last of the Time Lords before escaping to the surface to continue with its default mission of exterminating all non-Dalek life.

The Dalek uses Rose to manipulate the Doctor.

‘Dalek’ is the sixth episode of series one of the revived show and features Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper as the Doctor and Rose respectively.  It marked the first appearance of the Daleks in the new series and offered an insight into the events of the Time War, to this point only mentioned in brief. 

During the course of the episode we learn that the two factions in the Time War were the Time Lords and the Daleks, though other races were drawn into the fighting and suffered along side them.  We also discover that the Time War was ended by the Doctor himself when he destroyed both sides, killing not only his oldest enemies but his own people. 

These revelations let us see more of the damaged Doctor that had thus far only been hinted at, a man that has been through terrible physical and emotional damage.  We see the pain and anger that normally bubbles beneath he surface, allowing the Doctor in this story to embrace those emotions and show a new side of himself.  A Doctor that is full of rage and is more than willing to kill.

The Dalek in this episode is also a thing of beauty, a bronze death machine.  In the past the Daleks have often looked frail and unthreatening, but here the Dalek looks like a big, heavy and dangerous piece of machinery.  It is much easier to accept this version of the Dalek as one of the supreme races in the universe.  Especially as this one single Dalek goes on to kill over two hundred people by itself. 

The Dalek feels the pain of being the last of its kind.

Whilst the episode is initially set up as a chase/action oriented story we are given a great deal of emotion too, and not only from the Doctor.  Having used the DNA of Rose, due to her being a time traveller, to repair itself the Dalek begins to experience some negative side effects.  It begins to feel.

By the end of the episode the Dalek almost become a thing to pity, a sad and lonely creature left all alone in the universe.  We see it and the Doctor both recognise that they have lost their races, and the pain that it has caused them.  Unable to continue living with such emotions the Dalek chooses to kill itself rather than carry on, showing us a side to the Daleks that we have never seen before.

‘Dalek’ is a great episode, not only does it successfully establish the Daleks and their role within Doctor Who to new audience members, but it also gives long term fans something new and interesting.  An episode full of action and killings, as well as deep emotions that give Christopher Eccleston a great chance to show the deep emotions that he brings to his version of the Doctor.  One of the best episodes of his time on the show.  8/10

Amy.
xx

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