PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 735

Doctor Who Series 6 Episodes 11 - 13

 

The God Complex September 17 2011 Written by Toby Whithouse and directed by Nick Hurran.

 

The Tardis lands in a hotel which is really a construct by some aliens. A creature in the building has been feeding on people's faith. The alien spotted Amy's faith in the doctor. The Doctor will need to break that down to defeat the creature. The Doctor buys Amy and Rory a house and car as a goodbye present.

 

Closing Time September 24 2011 Written by Gareth Roberts and directed by Steve Hughes.

 

The Doctor goes to visit Craig from the Christmas Special. There's something odd interrupting the electrical grid. Turns out it was Cybermen.

 

The Wedding Of River Song October 1 2011 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Jeremy Webb.

 

The Doctor is due to die at that lake. He'll have to do something about that.

Mostly pretty good stories. There's a commentary, some featurettes and the 13 short episodes of Doctor Who Confidential. It took a while to get through.

Science Fiction Sunday 734

Doctor Who 2 Series 6 Episodes 7 - 10

 

A Good Man Goes To War June 4 2011 Written by Steven Moffatt and directed by Peter Hoar.

 

The Doctor gathers some old acquaintances and they sneak into the base where Amy Pond is being held. She's had her baby, called Melody, and the baby turns out to have some Time Lord DNA. The baby turns out to be a doppelganger but Amy and Rory have known her in two different identities. One's River Song and the other is Mels, Amy's childhood friend whom she named her baby after.

 

Let's Kill Hitler August 27 2011 Written by Steven Moffatt and directed by Richard Senior.

 

Amy and Rory call the Doctor, he meets them in the cornfield. Amy's pal Mels turns up in a stolen car. None of them know Mels is Melody Pond yet. They give Mels a ride in the Tardis to escape the police and she shoots the Tardis.

 

It takes them to Hitler's office in 1938. Instead of killing Hitler like Mels wanted they wind up saving him from a robot bent on killing him. Mels gets shot and regenerates into River Song. River poisons the Doctor and then later gives up all her regenerations to save him.

 

Night Terrors September 3 2011 Written by Mark Gatiss and directed by Richard Clark.

 

The Doctor gets a call for help from a small boy who fears everything. Turns out he's an alien who took the form of a child to make a young couple happy. They couldn't have children. The child had gotten fearful of everything and he was sure if they would keep him because of his fears. A hug from dad helps sets things right and the Tardis gang take off.

 

The Girl Who Waited September 2011 Written by Tom MacRae and directed by Nick Hurran.

 

The Tardis arrives on the planet Apalapucia where Amy gets trapped in an accelerated time stream and ages 36 years before they don't rescue her.

I thought the episodes were a mixed bag, I liked Night Terrors the best. I didn't like the complicated life of Melody Pond much. I'm less and less interested in Amy and Rory. I enjoyed Series 5 much more.

There's one commentary, a couple of prequels and a monster featurette. Nothing much exciting.

Science Fiction Sunday 733

Doctor Who 2 Series 6 Episode 4 - 6

 

The Doctor's Wife May 14 2011 Written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Richard Clark.

 

The Tardis takes the Doctor, Amy and Rory out of the Universe to a little asteroid. An intelligent being called House lives there. He's been making companions out of whatever bodies come by, some of which were Time Lords.

 

House has been snacking on the Time Lords time machines and he's developed a taste for them. House is going to be sad when he finds the Doctor has the last Tardis. While on the asteroid the personality of the Tardis get extracted and put into the body of a young woman. The Doctor has to get her back into the Tardis before the body dies.

 

The Rebel Flesh May 21 2011 Written by Matthew Graham and directed by Julian Simpson. First of 2 parts.

 

The Tardis, caught in a solar storm, lands on an island on Earth in the 23rd century. There are few people there, the island is dangerous, and they're pumping an acid found on the island to the mainland.

 

In order to stay safe handling the powerful acid the company uses doppelgangers created out of a substance called The Flesh. They use a human for the template and the human sits in a machine that's used to control the doppelganger. No one cares that the doppelgangers are disposable.

 

The Doctor tells the woman in charge of the operation that there's a second solar storm coming. He tries to disconnect the solar connector but he isn't in time. The solar storm knocks out the power and turns the doppelgangers sentient. There's even a Flesh version of the Doctor.

 

The Almost People May 28 2011 Written by Matthew Graham and directed by Julian Simpson. Second of 2 parts.

 

The doppelgangers want to kill the humans and Amy is having a hard time trusting the Flesh version of the Doctor. There's some fighting and few people and doppelgangers die. Eventually the Doctor manages to get them working together to save themselves.

 

It's revealed that Amy was a doppelganger all the time, she's trapped somewhere where an evil looking lady with an eye patch is watching over her pregnant body. It's always something with these characters.

Night And The Doctor is a 5 part series of shorts written by Steve Moffat and Richard Senior. They were made for the DVD box sets, there are 4 parts on this disc, in them Amy discovers that the Doctor sneaks out at night to have more adventures and visit people. There are a couple of commentaries as well as a featurette on the doppelgangers. 

Science Fiction Sunday 732

Doctor Who 2 Series 6 Christmas Special +  1 - 3

 

A Christmas Carol December 25 2010 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Toby Haynes.

 

Amy and Rory are on a space liner having some honeymoon time when it gets caught in an electrified cloud around a planet. The ship is falling to the ground, the crew is fighting a hopeless battle in landing it. Amy sends an SOS to the Doctor. He arrives on the planet to find one man, a rich monster of a man called Kazran Sardick, has the controls for the cloud. Sardick refuses to help land the ship safely because he doesn't care. The Doctor has to dig into the monster's life and change it to save his friends.

 

The Doctor changes Sardick's life be befriending him each Christmas for several years. There's a sad part to the story, a young woman has a limited number of days left in her life. A pretty good Christmas story.

 

The Impossible Astronaut April 23 2011 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Toby Haynes. First of two parts.

 

Someone sends Amy, Rory and River Song an invite to meet in the middle of the desert in Utah. They meet the Doctor and have a bit of a picnic by a lake. While eating the Doctor mentions he's 1100 years old. An astronaut comes out of the water and kills the Doctor. During regeneration the astronaut kills the Doctor again, the companions burn the body in a boat.

 

W Morgan Sheppard plays Canton Everett Delaware III, he arrives with a can of gasoline, helps burn the Doctor's body, and says he'll be seeing them soon but they won't recognize them. I've been a fan of Sheppard's since he played Blank Reg on Max Headroom. He died in 2019 at age 86, his career started in 1961 and continued through 2017.

 

Amy, Rory and River stop at a diner and run into a younger version of the Doctor who says he's only 900 plus years old. He takes them on a trip to meet Richard Nixon in 1969. The Tardis puts down in the Oval Office where they meet Nixon and a younger version of Canton Everett Delaware III. He's played by Mark Sheppard, H Morgan's real life son.

 

Nixon has been getting phone calls from a frightened girl. After the President discovers the Doctor in his office, Canton sees the advantage of having a smart alley. The audience sees people encounter tall alien men who have the ability to cloud human minds into forgetting them the second they turn away from the aliens. The Doctor figures out that they've been there for thousands of years and are called the Silence. Amy claims to be pregnant.

 

Day Of The Moon April 30 2011 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Toby Haynes. First of two parts.

 

Amy and Rory search for the Silence for three months. The Doctor has been captured by the government and held in Area 51 for that same time period. Canton is secretly working with the Doctor, he rounds up Amy and Rory and they all sneak off in the Tardis. They discover the astronaut has a little girl inside the suit. Amy gets kidnapped by the Silence.

 

The Doctor figures out what to do about The Silence, it's pretty nasty but well deserved. The story gets wrapped up and in an epilogue the little girl from the suit is shown regenerating. Who knows what that means? Not me.

 

The Curse Of The Black Spot May 7 2011 Written by Stephen Thompson and directed by Jeremy Webb.

 

The Tardis parks itself in the hold of a pirate ship in the 17th century. The ship is becalmed and under attack from an ethereal woman who makes hypnotic sounds. Anyone cut or hurt is spirited away quite willingly.

 

The Doctor figures out that the pirate's ship is in a weak spot between dimensions. The pirate ship shares the space with an abandoned spaceship in the other dimension. The ethereal woman is a hologram who's been able to move the injured to the spaceship's sickbay. The pirates, wanted men on Earth, take control of the spaceship and set off to the stars.

I enjoyed all 4 episodes. I liked the scenes set in Utah, they actually took the cast there. There's the usual extras and other short bits plus a commentary. Nothing overly special.

Science Fiction Sunday 731

Doctor Who 2 Series 5 Episodes 11 - 13

 

The Lodger June 12 2010 Written by Gareth Roberts and directed by Catherine Morshead.

 

The Doctor gets stranded in present day Colchester while the Tardis carries Amy off in a time vortex. It turns out there's something going on in the 2nd floor apartment of Craig Owens. The Doctor sets that right and helps Craig declare his love for his best friend Sophie.

 

The Pandorica Opens June 19 2010 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Toby Haynes. First of two parts.

 

All the baddies in the Universe gang up on the Doctor and trick him into a prison cube. The Tardis blows up and the Universe starts erasing itself.

 

The Big Bang June 26 2010 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Toby Haynes. Second of two parts.

 

The Doctor from the future comes to help and the Universe is saved. They even bring Rory back to life. Amy and Rory get married and the Doctor invents a new dance. At the end of the episode Rory and Amy join the Doctor for some more adventures.

A good wrap up to the series. There was a video commentary on this disc and a couple of featurettes. The last disc in the set is as usual the Doctor Who Confidential episodes, three solid hours of behind the scenes. Near the end I was finding I was less interested in that sort of thing. It's a lot of Doctor Who of an evening. I'm thinking I should watch the Confidential episodes with each weekly show. We'll see.

Science Fiction Sunday 730

Doctor Who 2 Series 5 Episodes 8 - 10

 

The Hungry Earth May 22 2010 Written by Chris Chibnall and directed by Ashley Way. First of two parts.

 

Deep drilling in Wales disturbs the Silurians. They send some soldiers to take a look at what's going on. The Doctor, Rory and Amy arrive just time time to get stuck in the middle of the conflict. Amy gets sucked into the ground along with some locals. The Doctor captures a soldier and tries to contact the Silurians to do a prisoner exchange and broker peace. Things  don't go so well on that end.

 

Cold Blood May 29 2010 Written by Chris Chibnall and directed by Ashley Way. Second of two parts.

 

One of the locals kills the Silurian prisoner and ruins the peace negotiation. The Doctor manages to get the Silurians to hibernate for another 1000 years. Sadly Rory is killed and his existence erased by the crack from previous episodes. Amy and the Doctor leave.

 

Vincent And The Doctor June 5 2010 Written by Richard Curtis and directed by Jonny Campbell.

 

The Doctor and Amy visit a Van Gogh exhibit at the Musée d'Orsay in 2020. They see an evil creature in the window of a church and go visit the artist. Turns out the creature is a Krafayis warrior that's been blinded and left behind by his warrior pals.

 

Vincent is the only one who can see the creature. He kills the beast with his easel. The Doctor takes Vincent into the future to see how much the world still loves his paintings.

The Silurians story was pretty good but but I really liked the van Gogh story a whole lot.

There was a video commentary  for episode 9, a featurette on the Silurians and a video diary.

Science Fiction Sunday 729

Doctor Who 2 Series 5 Episodes 3 - 8

 

Victory Of The Daleks April 17 2010 Written by Mark Gatiss and directed by Andrew Gunn.

 

Winston Churchill calls the Doctor for some help. The Doctor and Amy show up to find Dalek's in the British Army. Churchill believes that they were created by Professor Bracewell but it turns out he's a robot created by the Daleks.

 

It's all part of a trick to get the Doctor to trigger their Progenitor Chamber. It opens up and reveals 5 new bigger Daleks. The new Daleks blast the old Daleks for being corrupted.

 

The Daleks put the Doctor in a situation where he has to choose between saving the Earth or destroying the Daleks. He saves the Earth and the Daleks run off.
 

Good bit of humor and some nice action scenes. Entertaining.

 

The Time Of The Angels April 24 2010 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Adam Smith. First of two parts.

 

River Song calls the Doctor for some help. She's working with some militarized clerics to destroy a Weeping Angel in a crashed spaceship. Turns out there are dozens of Weeping Angels. What a place to be.

 

Flesh And Stone May 1 2010 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by  Adam Smith. Second of two parts.

 

The crack returns and eventually sucks up all the Weeping Angels. The Doctor and Amy return to her flat. She tries to kiss the Doctor.

 

The Vampires Of Venice May 8 2010 Written by Toby Whithouse and directed by Jonny Campbell.

 

The Doctor tells Amy's fiance Rory about her trying to kiss him at the worst possible time and in the worst possible place. The Doctor and Amy take Rory to Venice in 1580 where they get mixed up with some aquatic alien creatures. 

 

Amy's Choice May 15 2010 Written by Simon Nye and directed by Catherine Morshead.

 

The Dream Lord puts the Doctor, Amy and Rory into two different dream states and asks them which is the real world. It turns out to be some psychic pollen that had gotten into the Tardis.

 

Mostly a good lot of stories. There were some video commentaries on three episodes, a video diary and a deleted scene.

Science Fiction Sunday 728

Doctor Who 2 Series 5 Episodes 1-2

Steven Moffat took over as executive producer and head writer from Russell T Davies moved on from the show. Moffat wrote 6 of the 13 episodes this series. In the commentary for the first episode he said he wanted to make the show more fun.

Matt Smith takes over as the 11th Doctor and Karen Gillian takes on the role of the Doctor's first companion Amy Pond. We meet her fiance Rory Williams, played by Arthur Darvill, who also gets involved with some of the Doctor's adventures.

 

There's a new logo on the show, new title sequence, a new sonic screwdriver, new theme music and a new Tardis.

 

The Eleventh Hour April 3 2010 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Adam Smith.

 

After the Doctor regenerates the Tardis falls through space and time, ending up in a garden in England. He meets 7 year old Amelia Pond who lives in a house with a crack in the wall. That crack leads to an alien prison and Prisoner Zero has just escaped. He sneaks into our world and takes residence in one of the rooms on the second floor. He stays there for 12 years.

 

Amelia was expecting the Doctor to come right back but he fails to arrive for 12 more years.He disappears again and rives back 2 years later.

 

Amy is grown up and she lives by herself in the same house. The house with the alien hiding in that missing room. The escaped alien becomes a problem, the aliens chasing him have figured out he's on Earth and they will blow the planet up if PZ isn't returned to them. The Earth has 20 mins to live.

 

Things work out pretty much and Amy decides to leave with the Doctor. She's hoping he'll get her back in time for her wedding tomorrow. She should know better.

 

Entertaining first episode, I'm liking Matt Smith's Doctor.

 

The Beast Below April 10 2010 Written by Steven Moffat and directed by Andrew Gunn. I can't say I like the orange/yellow credit color. The white title lettering stands out poorly.

 

The Tardis take the Doctor and Amy to the future and a strange spaceship with all of England on it. It's a weird place that needs sorting out to save a nice space creature. The Doctor will save the Star Whale and the ship will continue it's journey.

All in all a good start to the series. Plenty more Matt Smith ahead.

Science Fiction Sunday 727

Doctor Who 2 Series 4 Specials

 

The End Of Time Part 1 & 2 Two part story that aired December 25 2009 and January 1 2010. Written by Russell T Davies and directed by Euros Lyn. The last of the series with David Tennant. I'll miss him but I'm looking forward to Matt Smith.

 
 

The Doctor gets a visit from Ood Sigma warning him about the Master. The Master returns with the help of some of his acolytes but his wife nearly ruins it, releasing the Master with a ferocious appetite and great powers. The Doctor finds him in an industrial area eating hobos. The Doctor gets found by Donna's grandfather Wilfred.

 

Joshua Naismith is a maniac billionaire, he's got some alien tech that he glommed onto when Torchwood fell. It's some sort of healing machine that he wants to use to make his daughter immortal. The Doctor and Wilfred break into his mansion and meet up with two aliens. They get noticed and use a teleporter to escape to the aliens ship.

 

Naismith captures the Master, hoping to use him to make the machine work. That doesn't go well and the Master turns everyone on Earth into himself. Only the Doctor, Wilfred and Donna remain unchanged.

 

The Time Lords are planning to escape from the time bubble that holds them. The Doctor put them there at the end of the time war. The Time Lords implant the drumming into the Master's head, the sound that has been driving him insane for hundreds of years, in order  to bring Gallifrey to Earth and escape the time bubble.

 

The Doctor, the Master and the Time Lords have a bit of a dust up. The Time Lords and Gallifrey are sent back into the time bubble, the Master escapes and the Doctor sacrifices himself to save Wilfred. The Doctor doesn't want to die but he can't save himself. He visits all his old pals for one last time and regenerates into Matt Smith.

 

It was a humdinger of an ending and I was sad to see David Tennant go.

 

There's a couple of commentaries and a lot of making of material. It took hours to go through.

Dreamland November 21 - 26 2009 Written by Phil Ford and directed by Gary Russell. There were 6 episodes, the first 12 mins, the rest 6 mins each. The parts were broadcast daily on BBC's Red Button, the official Doctor Who site and BBC iPlayer.

 

The Doctor visits Dry Springs Nevada and has an adventure with aliens. He stops at a diner to get some chili. He meets Cassie Rice and Jimmy Stalkingwolf and finds an alien artifact on display. His sonic screwdriver activates the artifact.

 

Shortly after a couple of Men in Black arrive and try to take the alien artifact. The Doctor escapes with Cassie and Jimmy. They encounter a big bug like alien and some American soldiers. They are taken to Area 51, the Doctor calls it Dreamland.

 

The Colonel in charge puts them in a room and gases them with an amnesia gas. The Doctor gets them out of that before they lose their memories. The encounter an alien and an alien spaceship. They steal the later.

 

The spend the rest of the story running about the desert. The bug like aliens are looking for the grey type aliens, there's a second one that was secretly hidden by the local natives. Jimmy didn't even know.

 

Eventually the Doctor sorts it out like he wants it to be and moves along.

It was a fun story but I wasn't sold on the drawing style. The animation is fairly limited. There are no extras for the animation. A separate disc has three hour long programs titled Doctor Who Greatest Moments. The three programs are The Doctor, The Companions and The Enemies. Lots of clips and short interviews with cast and crew.

Science Fiction Sunday 726

Doctor Who 2 Series 4 Specials

The Next Doctor December 25 2008 Written by Russel T Davies and directed by Andy Goddard.

 

In Victorian London the Doctor runs into a man called The Doctor. The Tenth Doctor thinks this is a future version of himself but it turns out to be a regular old human who got screwed up by malfunctioning Cyberman technology and the murder of his wife.

 

A horrible woman makes a deal with the Cybermen and gets turned into the Cyberking. The Doctor helps the fake Doctor regain his memory and together they blow up the Cyberking and the Cybermen.

  

A good story and a nice musical program with music from the show played by an orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall. There was some original content in the music program with the Doctor appearing on video because David Tennant was working and couldn't appear live.

Planet Of The Dead April 11 2009 Written by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts, directed by James Strong.

 

A thief steals a gold chalice and escapes with the police on her trail. She boards a bus just before the Doctor does. The bus is chased by the police but a chance wormhole puts them on a desert planet somewhere across the galaxy.

 

The Doctor gets a plan going to return. They also find they're in danger from a horde of destructive stingray like creatures that destroy everything and turn it to dust. The aliens are headed for the wormhole and Earth. They meet some humanoid flies who are also stranded on the planet.

 

The flies don't survive the stingrays but their ship gives the Doctor the ability to make the bus fly. The bus makes it back to Earth. The Doctor has some help from a brilliant UNIT scientist who closes the wormhole.

 

An entertaining story with some fun bits. There's an hour long Doctor Who Confidential for an extra.

The Waters Of Mars November 15 2009 Written by Russell T Davies and Phil Ford, directed by Graeme Harper.

 

In 2059 the Doctor arrives on Mars the day that the tiny colony of humans blows up. He knows he can't change that bit of history but with a bit of megalomania he interferes and it ends with him fearing he's gone too far.

 

It's a sad story. The disc has a Doctor Who Confidential that was entertaining.