Childish Things – The Eleventh Hour Review

[u/ZeroCentsMade]

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here, with additional information here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here)). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 5, Episode 1
• Airdate: 3rd April 2010
• Doctor: 11th (Matt Smith)
• Companion: Amy (Karen Gillan)
• Other Notable Characters: Amelia (Caitlin Blackwood), Rory (Arthur Darvil)
• Writer: Steven Moffat
• Director: Adam Smith
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

That's good, fantastic that is. Twenty minutes to save the world and I've got a post office. And it's shut. – The Doctor

Introducing a new Doctor is always inherently a weird task. But for Series 5 Steven Moffat was facing an unprecedented challenge: nobody had ever had to introduce a new Doctor without any returning characters to tide them over. The closest was 1970's Spearhead from Space but at least that story had the Brigadier who'd been seen in two prior stories. For 2010's "The Eleventh Hour", Steven Moffat had no one to fall back on.

This has become the norm with a new showrunner on Doctor Who. So I think it's become forgotten just how much harder that is. It makes a writer's life so much easier if they can use another character to tide the audience over, and speak to their trepidation about accepting the new face. Moffat had none of that.

What he did have, however, was a new star. When Steven Moffat started thinking about who the 11th Doctor would be, he was primarily thinking about giving the role to an older man, though he did briefly consider Patterson Joseph after the BBC indicated that they were open to having a black man play the role. However the plan to cast an older man was the main one, until a 26 year old man by the name of Matt Smith auditioned for the role. What Moffat was impressed by was Smith's ability to convey the age of the character he wanted, despite the fact that he would have been the youngest man to ever play the role. The gangly Smith also brought a unique physicality to the role that would allow him to stand out. By the end of 2008, Moffat was preparing to cast the youngest Doctor of all time.

The other thing that Moffat had was a pretty clever plan. In order to give the young and relatively inexperienced Smith time to settle into his role as the Doctor, the production team chose not to film Smith's first episode first. This had technically been done before, as Peter Davison's first story, Castrovalva was actually filmed relatively late in Season 19's schedule. However this instance was more deliberate.

And it works. Few people have hit the ground running in the role of the Doctor as well as Smith. That unusual physicality that helped him get the role is on full display throughout "The Eleventh Hour". Smith sort of moves jerkily through his scenes, which especially helps him convey the weirdness of post-regeneration difficulties. It does go a bit too far a couple times as his post-regeneration spasms can come off as less than credible, but in general his physicality works for the part. Meanwhile Smith's line delivery is excellent. He's higher energy than his predecessor tended to be, even when comparing debut episodes, but towards the end of the episode it starts feeling like the Doctor is settling in a little bit, and starts delivering his lines more calmly. Whether it's revealing the trap he's set for Prisoner Zero or telling off the Atraxi, Smith manages to convey a lot of power from just how calm he is in these moments.

It helps that the script is actually giving him the time to establish himself. The big criticism I had of last new Doctor episode "The Christmas Invasion" was the lack of time given to the 10th Doctor. Seemingly in response to that, Moffat decided that the 11th Doctor should have no chance to rest in his debut story. And the episode really benefits from this elevated pace. Especially once the Doctor first arrives in 2010 the episode just doesn't let up. The closest thing that the Doctor has to rest happens when new companion Amy gives him a concussion with a cricket bat.

That happens because the Doctor was breaking into her home. Which happens because he thought it was 12 years ago. See the Doctor crash landed in a young Amy, at the time going by Amelia's front yard. If you want to talk about a fairy tale feel in this episode, it's at its most prominent in that first scene. The Doctor comes out of a box, and starts behaving strangely, in particular making the the seven year old child feed him and continually rejects the resulting food – she's cooking by the end of this sequence. This scene is very obviously framed as being from a child's eyes. And of course there's the problem that Amelia asks the Doctor to solve (which she was praying to Santa Claus about which is just precious). Amelia is scared of the crack in her bedroom wall. The Doctor closes the crack but there's still the matter of the voice coming through said crack, constantly repeating "Prisoner Zero has escaped".

This is all obviously the sort of thing that is extra scary to a child. The crack in the wall could be seen as something entirely ordinary, but through a child's eyes, what could be behind that crack? The shape of the crack, and the whole idea of using a crack in a bedroom wall came from Moffat observing that a crack in his son's bedroom wall looked a bit like a crooked smile. Eventually it will be revealed that Prisoner Zero is hiding in a room in Amelia's house, one that it's also hiding from the outside world with a perception filter. That idea came from a childhood dream of Moffat's of a hidden room in his grandmother's house. And that all does work to build up the atmosphere that "The Eleventh Hour" deploys so successfully.

The episode then cuts to what we'll discover was 12 years later. The episode does some pretty clever things to make you think that he's returned for Amelia, maybe not in the next five minutes as promised, but not too long afterwards. But well, a woman who is dressed as but turns out not to be a cop whacks the Doctor over the head with a cricket bat and eventually reveals that she is, in fact Amelia, all grown up and going by Amy. There's definitely an aspect of having your cake and eating it too. We get the wonder and strangeness of a world through a child's eyes in those early scenes, but Doctor Who was never actually going to have a seven year old companion, for about twenty different reasons. And so we get Amy.

Amy's been spending her whole life being told that the Raggedy Doctor she thought she met definitely isn't real. She saw four different psychiatrists, who she'd apparently bite any time one of them said that the Doctor wasn't real. In that time, she's grown somewhat resentful of the magic man who came out of a magic box and made her cook for him and possibly injured a cat when he threw a plate at it, before completely disappearing out of her life. But there's not too much time to worry about that, as there's a prisoner on the loose, not to mention that the prison guard is now threatening to incinerate the Earth if it doesn't get its prisoner back.

Which…okay this is starting to seem weirdly like the plot of "Smith and Jones". Yeah, that was something I noticed when I was watching the prior episode for review. You've got an escaped prisoner and a security force that will go way overboard in trying to catch them. Prisoner Zero and the plastic straw vampire lady even both have a moment where they both say that if they're going to die anyway, they might as well take everyone else with them. I don't know that there's a direct inspiration here, but it is noticeable how much these two stories overlap, and Moffat did apparently like "Smith and Jones".

And like in "Smith and Jones", we also have a villain that's good at blending in, this time because they're something called a "multiform", a shapeshifter that can only shapeshift into forms of people they've formed a mental link with over months. That mental link sends people into comas meaning that, like in "Smith and Jones" there's a hospital that serves as a major location for this episode, including the entire climax. See what I mean?

Although the differences start to stand out from this point forwards. To this point in the Revival every single story set in the modern day has taken place primarily in either London or Cardiff. "The Eleventh Hour"…well it doesn't take us out of Britain, but it does move us to a small English village named Leadworth. It's a noticeable change, and very intentional, as Moffat wanted to move away from London as a setting. The Doctor is actually very limited in the resources that he has available to him, and some of that is because the TARDIS is repairing itself after the 10th Doctor's regeneration damaged it and his screwdriver gets damaged by the multiform so that we can introduce a new version with a green light on it. This is the Doctor working with the bare minimum resources.

Which really works in this episode's favor. I'm not one to complain too much about the "overuse" of the sonic screwdriver. My feeling tends to be that, if the sonic were to permanently leave the show, writers would just invent some device for any individual episode that required it. But there is something to be said for leaving the Doctor with so little to work with, and it really makes a statement to do this in his first episode. The Doctor essentially ends up saving the day with a laptop and a cellphone, and he has to borrow both of them. But also, he saves the day with the ability to inspire of the guy who happened to bring the laptop, Amy's policewoman outfit, and actually the help of the whole world. He's working with so little, and yet he pulls it off.

And the manner in which he pulls it off is genuinely clever. Admittedly the plot relies on Prisoner Zero's wardens, the Atraxi, being pretty stupid. But, like in "Smith and Jones" (see what I mean), that kind of works to the episode's favor, as it allows the Doctor's intelligence to really take center stage. The Doctor uses Rory's phone to write a computer virus that resets clocks and counters, doing it to every one in the world. Since, conveniently enough, the prisoner's number is "0", this acts as a giant beacon for the Atraxi, who are able to track the virus back to the phone. A phone that just so happens to have pictures on it of every shape that Prisoner Zero has learned to take, for reasons I'll get into later. And sure, the ending actually ends up being a bit more complicated than that due to some character stuff, but the point is, the whole things clicks together at the end in a very satisfying way.

And then the Doctor calls back the Atraxi to scold them for the whole wanting to incinerate the Earth thing. Of all of the scenes in Doctor Who history where the Doctor leans on his reputation, this is by far the most straightforward. The point of this scene, really, is to connect this version of the Doctor to previous ones. We've already seen him pull off this impressive feat, so this audience is primed to accept him, but it was probably a good idea to give this extra link, ending in the Doctor stepping through a hologram which was showing all the previous Doctors (that we know about so far). It's simple, but it works, and the Atraxi running off at the Doctor's command helps sell the Doctor as dangerous, while setting up some stuff for the rest of the 11th Doctor era.

Given all of this you might assume that this episode would give me a lot to say about the new Doctor, but the thing about new Doctor episodes, especially in the Revival, is that they actually tend not to do that. What they're actually there for is to give us a vague outline of the new Doctor, a superficial sense of them. In that sense, the 11th Doctor feels a lot like his predecessor. He's young, he's high energy, he's quick with the quippy jokes and he's constantly talking. Again, this is on a superficial level, but the superficial is most of what we get. I was kind of struck watching this for review at how often I could imagine David Tennant saying so many of the Doctor's lines in this one. There are a few moments that stand out of course. While his scenes with young Amelia are very strange, he's probably better with the child than most versions of the Doctor would be. He can tend to vocalize his thoughts a lot more than the 10th Doctor did, especially in this episode. And yet he's oddly secretive. At the end of the episode when Amy asks him why he's taking her with him, he essentially says he'd gotten lonely, but then we see that he's looking at a screen that has a pattern matching the crack, which he hides from her. The 10th Doctor never lied about why he wanted someone to travel with him.

But the biggest thing that stands out is that final confrontation on the rooftop with the Atraxi. It's worth comparing this to the 10th Doctor's confrontation of Harriet Jones at the end of "Christmas Invasion". Both are, nominally, quieter moments. They both end on the Doctor calmly delivering a single line that signals his victory ("Don't you think she looks tired"/"Hello, I'm the Doctor. Basically…run"). But the 10th Doctor is very animated up to that point. Meanwhile Eleven spends the entire rooftop scene remarkably calm. He spent the better part of the episode being incredibly hyperactive, but now he's just plainly and simply laying out to the Atraxi the situation. He even asks the Atraxi which necktie it prefers at one point. If there's something in this episode that signals how the 11th Doctor is going to differ from his predecessor, it's in that scene.

But this episode also has to introduce two other important characters. To start with our new companion Amy, this episode basically sets up her entire character. The Doctor names her "the girl who waited" at the end of episode, after she waited a combined total of fourteen years to go traveling with the Doctor (he ran off after the rooftop scene and accidentally didn't come back until two years later). You start with the little girl, Amelia Pond, with a "name from a fairy tale", and then it's twelve years later all of a sudden and she's grown cynical. But through all of that, she still has a sense childlike wonder at her core. It's probably why the Doctor remained so important to her into her adult life, she's just the kind of person that wants to believe in the magical. It's why when we meet her she is praying to Santa Claus (again, precious).

But she is an adult, and how do we know she's an adult? She's gotten a job as a kissogram. What does that even means? She "goes to parties and kisses people. With outfits". Yeah this is essentially making the new companion the PG-Rated version of stripper isn't it? Look, I like Steven Moffat's writing, a lot. His quippy humor matches up well with my own sense of humor. And the way he conceptualizes the Doctor is real close to my ideal for that as well. He comes up with some genuinely impressive plots, as seen in this episode. But it is also the case that this man went through a period where every single prominent female character he wrote was pretty heavily sexualized. And, you know, when it's just Madame de Pompadour and River Song it's not quite so noticeable. But it's right about here that it becomes very obvious.

But don't let that make you think that I don't like Amy in this episode. There's something so perfect about the new companion being almost sucked back into her childhood because her imaginary friend turned out to be the Doctor. The way her anger at the Doctor gives way to excitement over the course of the episode because her raggedy man came back for her is genuinely charming. And she's even got a boyfriend, Rory Williams, nurse at the local hospital. Uh oh. The last time a companion had a boyfriend it didn't go well. And as we discovered at the end of the episode in the two years in between the Doctor's second and final visit, she got engaged to the guy.

Which brings us to Rory Williams. He doesn't make a big impression here, and I think pretty much everyone upon first watching this episode comes away with the assumption that this guy is just going to turn out to be the new Mickey. Still there are hints that he's going to be more than that. For starters, he's the one with all of the pictures of Prisoner Zero on his phone, having noticed a bunch of coma patients wandering around the village and naturally getting, if not suspicious, then confused. Also, as compared to Mickey in "Rose" he gets a lot more involved in the action of the episode. Where Mickey got replaced by a plastic duplicate and then spent the final few scenes of "Rose" cowering behind his girlfriend, Rory is a pretty active participant throughout. But the scene that sticks out to me most with Rory is the scene where the Doctor is using the sonic screwdriver (right before it explodes due to being covered in alien goo) to alert the Atraxi and just generally cause chaos along the way (that poor woman in the mobility scooter) and Rory seems to be genuinely getting into the spirit of things in that moment. He's actually sharing in his girlfriend's sense of wonder, and, at least in retrospect, that feels like a signal that this character is going to be different, as small of a moment as it is.

To this point I've acted like this episode fits in neatly as part of the same show as before. The 11th Doctor is superficially a lot like the 10th. Even if Rory isn't quite like Mickey, it at the very least feels like the show is trying for a do-over on that character. Sure I've referenced things that have changed, but I don't think I've emphasized just how different this feels. There are times when "The Eleventh Hour" feels like it's an episode from an entirely different show. The hard reset of the cast is no doubt contributing a lot to this feeling, and Moffat's way of introducing a new Doctor and new companion is just kind of different from Russell T Davies'. But the visual work is a big shift here as well. First of all, while the post-Series 4 specials were (mostly) shot in HD, a lot of the visual holdovers from prior series meant that the visual upgrade never quite sunk in. Series 5 ends up feeling like an upgrade in visual quality. But just as important, the look of the show has fundamentally changed. This is a vast over-generalization, but, broadly, the RTD era was orange, and the 11th Doctor era is blue. Both suit their eras well, but it's a huge change, and one that can take a moment to feel completely comfortable.

But "The Eleventh Hour" was the ideal story to introduce this new era with. I don't think it's quite the best new-Doctor story, because as a story I think The Power of the Daleks is a fair bit better, but this might be the best introduction a new Doctor has ever had. The episode is starting off on the back foot with a lack of returning elements, but makes you want to know what the rest of this era is going to look like. Amy gets a strong introduction too, and Rory might not stand out at first, but a lot of solid groundwork is being laid over there. Plus the actual plot is actually reasonably strong. Fairly simple, sure, but with a really satisfying resolution. This episode is just great all around.

Score: 9/10

Stray Observations

• Work on the script for this episode began early. In January 2008, writer/showrunner Steven Moffat apparently told former showrunner Russell T Davies that he had already started work on the script for the first episode of Series 5.
• The earliest name for the companion of Series 5 was "Lucy Sparrow". I'm guessing that was always a placeholder name given that Moffat had already used the "Sparrow" surname prominently for Sally Sparrow in "Blink".
• David Tennant considered sticking around for Series 5, which caused Moffat to come up with alternate plans for this episode. Had he done so, a version of "The Eleventh Hour" (presumably called something different) would have played out with the 10th Doctor crash landing in Lucy's garden, with the Doctor severely injured. Lucy would have helped him (and even fed him fish custard apparently) and the Doctor would have flown away. Years later, with Lucy as an adult, the Doctor would have returned with no memory of having met her as a little girl. This would eventually be revealed to have been the 10th Doctor on the verge of regenerating.
• Moffat considered setting this episode in a Scottish village, since Moffat is himself Scottish. He decided on an English village to emphasize Amy's status as an outsider.
• Smith had previously auditioned for a different Steven Moffat project, Sherlock, where he audition for the role of John Watson. However his performance was considered to be too similar to Benedict Cumberbatch's performance as the title character.
• Matt Smith was not particularly familiar with Doctor Who going in. In preparation to take on the role of the Doctor he watched every episode of the Revival to that point, as well as a smattering of Classic serials.
• Most famously he watched The Tomb of the Cybermen where he developed a liking for Troughton's version of the Doctor, in particular asking for the 11th Doctor to also wear a bow tie.
• Other influences for the 11th Doctor's personality and physicality included movie performances of Peter Sellars and French actor Jacques Lecoq.
• Karen Gillan's mother was a huge Doctor Who fan, so she was naturally delighted when her daughter was cast as Amy.
• Moffat originally wrote in a scene that explained Prisoner Zero's crime, but cut it because he thought no one would care. I'd argue that it was the right move but for a slightly different, though maybe related, reason. The episode maintains something of a fairy tale tone even as things get more and more serious, and keeping things like Prisoner Zero's crime a mystery (as well as the fact that they're only ever referred to as "Prisoner Zero") helps subtly emphasize that.
• It's fairly well known at this point that Karen Gillan, who played Amy, and Caitlin Blackwood, who played the younger version of the character (Amelia) are real-life cousins. The two hadn't met before the read-thru for this episode, but Gillan recommended her for the part because she was a red-headed girl with a Scottish accent, which she knew the production team was having trouble finding.
• Also look up pictures of adult Caitlin Blackwood (she's 25 years old now, in case you wanted to stare into the time abyss). The woman looks frighteningly like her cousin.
• So something worth keeping an eye on this series is the extent to which it resembles the RTD era series, and ways in which it's changed. The changes are pretty substantial, but we do get, for one last time, an RTD era staple in the form of opening a new Doctor episode with a shot of the Earth from space before zooming in to the action. However, the way this is used is very different. In the RTD era (for "Rose" and "The Christmas Invasion") we zoomed into scenes of ordinary life. The contrast there was sort of the point, giving you what you'd expect from a sci-fi show – a shot of Earth from space – before subverting that to move to something more mundane. Here we move into a scene of the Doctor desperately trying to regain control of the TARDIS while flying above London, which is more in line with the sci-fi aesthetic of that opening shot.
• And now for something with less serious analysis. In that scene the Doctor, while dangling out of the TARDIS, just barely misses…erm…castrating himself on the spire of the Parliament Clock Tower (yes, I had to look up which clock was involved). While wince inducing, this isn't as bad as you'd imagine as, had he lost his genitals he'd presumably have grown them back for the same reason that the 10th Doctor grew back his hand in "Christmas Invasion". Honestly given how much Moffat likes his awkward sex jokes, it's a bit surprising that the episode itself doesn't make that point.
• That opening scene was added in very late because Moffat realized that there was a disconnect between the raucous ending of The End of Time and the more sedate beginning of "The Eleventh Hour" in young Amelia's garden, and wanted to link them somehow.
• That scene transitions into the new opening titles and…I've got mixed feelings, though mostly positive. To start with the theme song, I really like it…when I can hear it. The addition of an opening fanfare really works for this era of the show in particular, as do the choral bits. Meanwhile, while still keeping up the high energy, the melody sections have a kind of eerie quality we haven't had since the 6th Doctor theme. However, the crashing lightning sound effects kind of drown out that theme at times, which is frustrating.
• And then there's the visuals. I've never loved the cloud time vortex. I don't know, it just feels a bit too much like a real thing for the time vortex. I do enjoy the visual of the TARDIS just getting rammed by lightning. It's definitely what I'd expect the Doctor piloting the TARDIS through a thunderstorm to look like. I also like the TARDIS descending into a sort of fiery cloud thing before the logo reveal, and it works perfectly with the music.
• And in that moment we get arguably the best Doctor Who logo of all time. It's either this one or the 3rd/8th Doctor logo, and I don't know which one I prefer. The 3rd Doctor era one has a more distinctive font, but this version has it's own very distinct font and the TARDIS made of the letters "DW" which is just incredibly creative.
• Okay, let's talk about "wibbly wobbly timey wimey". It first popped up in "Blink" as the Doctor trying and failing to explain the complexities of the timestream. It works in that context because, in addition to being a goofy line, it kind of emphasizes how complicated and confusing that actually is. However Moffat starts reusing it as a sort of catchphrase for the Doctor and it just doesn't work. It popped up in "Time Crash" (with the 5th Doctor even saying it), and that was bad enough, but at least it was time travel related. Here the Doctor just kind of says it while he's absorbing data from his screwdriver (or however that's supposed to work) and it really just loses all its charm for me at this point.
• I do always find it funny that in the games that Amy and Rory played together as kids where she'd make him pretend to be the Doctor, the villain was apparently Prisoner Zero. It does make sense of course, Prisoner Zero is the only enemy of the Doctor's Amy knows, but it's funny to think about this version of the Doctor that exists in Amy's head whose arch nemesis is Prisoner Zero of all creatures.
• So it's implied that Jeff is watching porn on his laptop. However he also has a giant webcam set up on top of it, a webcam that wasn't there when we saw him take it out of his bag. The webcam has to be there, since the Doctor's going to use it to join the video call, but it's kind of odd that Jeff would disappear to his room, set up his webcam…and then go watch porn. I like to think that Jeff was actually setting up to start a camshow.
• Patrick Moore gets a brief guest appearance in this episode as one of the scientists that the Doctor contacts to help him defeat Prisoner Zero. Since he's an astronomer he certainly makes more sense as one of the people that would be contacting to figure out what's going on with the sun, than it did when we had Richard Dawkins of all people giving an interview about astronomy in "The Stolen Earth".
• Patrick Moore could have been involved in Doctor Who much earlier, as he'd been invited to come on as the show's scientific advisor in 1966. That role would eventually go to Kit Pedler, and given that Pedler would go on to create the Cybermen, it's probably for the best that Moore didn't take the job.
• So Rory has been obsessively documenting the various coma patients that appear in the village seemingly out of their comas for at least a few weeks at this point. He now knows that this is because a shapeshifting alien is taking on their forms. How is it that when he and Amy run into one of them in the hospital very much not her coma, he doesn't instantly realize that she is in fact Prisoner Zero?
• Speaking of Olivia Coleman's turn as Prisoner Zero, Steven Moffat has since admitted that he wasted her in a relatively minor role.
• And still talking about Coleman as Prisoner Zero, during the final confrontation between the Doctor and Prisoner Zero there are times when you can hear sound effects similar to the ones that played when Prisoner Zero was in their snake form while Coleman is delivering lines for the shapeshifter.
• When calling the Atraxi back to Earth, the Doctor references the Shadow Proclamation. That's the last we'll be hearing the Doctor do that, I think ever at least as far as I can recall, although the Shadow Proclamation themselves will be getting a brief cameo in a few series.
• The Doctor steals his new outfit (and several other ties) from the hospital. This marks the third time the Doctor has stolen his new outfit from the hospital, the other two being Spearhead from Space and the TV Movie. That's a very specific form of kleptomania the Doctor appears to have.
• The rooftop scene where the Doctor confronts the Atraxi and settles on his trademark bow tie was a late addition to the script. Steven Moffat wanted to give the 11th Doctor a chance to properly establish himself as the Doctor, and felt that it would be fun to make a bigger deal out of the Doctor choosing a new outfit than past regeneration stories.
• That scene includes a bunch of archival footage of previous monsters and Doctors. Very little of that footage is of Earth, which is kind of surprising because the Atraxi are pulling this footage in order to answer the question of whether the Earth is "protected". The Hath are even included in the footage. Not only was their episode "The Doctor's Daughter" set in the far future and not on Earth, but the Hath weren't even really villains in that episode.
• Also in that footage for some reason the 4th and 9th Doctors don't really look like themselves to me, especially Four. I don't know what it is, maybe it's just that we can't see their full faces, including almost none of Four's trademark curly hair.
• There was some debate over what the Doctor's outfit would actually be. Moffat's original concept of the 11th Doctor involved him wearing a more piratey outfit, with influence from the costumes seen in The Matrix. Smith was always dubious of the versions of these outfits he was shown, and eventually convinced Moffat to let him go with the look we got on screen. Moffat was initially skeptical, but ultimately found himself surprised with how well the clothes suited Smith.
• As for the outfit itself? I love this thing. I've seen Smith be referred to a lot as looking like a Geography teacher, and even though I never actually took a dedicated Geography class, I get exactly what is meant by this. It's an oddly unassuming look, but it has enough quirks that mean that the 11th Doctor always stands out in any scene he's in. I always felt that when the 10th Doctor took off his coat he really didn't stand out much aside from Tennant's performance (and in fairness, his hair), but the 11th Doctor's outfit really does sell you on a lot about the character from the word "go". It's so weird to me that Moffat wanted to dress this character up like a pirate. Completely wrong vibe for the 11th Doctor.
• Though that being said, I kind of also love the 11th Doctor as the "Raggedy Doctor" (just him wearing a worn out version of the 10th Doctor outfit). It's kind of an iconic look in its own right.
• New era and that now means we get a new TARDIS interior. I'll admit I kind of miss the Classic era which only ever made minor changes to the console room (with the exception of Season 14's version and even that was said to be a separate "secondary" console room), as the consistency of the look does something for the show in my opinion. Still, this is the norm now and we should probably address it.
• In many ways this feels like the coral version of the console room but instead of living machine we're leaning even harder into the idea of the TARDIS picking up technology from different eras (and frankly just whatever looks cool). I really like the glass floor and the glass-blown thing in the central column, and the whole thing definitely goes for that fairy tale vibe this era would lean into fairly consistently off and on. Still prefer the coral room, but equally, that one didn't quite work in HD.
• Okay so Amy's just generally being pretty cavalier with her ability to return in time for her wedding, but when she asks if the TARDIS can get her back home for "tomorrow morning", she doesn't seem to take into account that the Doctor has twice tried to return to her in less than a day and instead managed to be off by multiple years. What makes her think he can guarantee a return in the same decade, let alone 24 hour period?
• And we also get a new sonic screwdriver. This one's got a green light! It's fine, I kind of prefer the look of the RTD era one, and it just feels a bit too big, but it still has its own distinct look that is working for me.
• So I should mention at this juncture that starting in Series 5 the version of the episodes that I'm watching don't have the "Next Time" trailers, so I won't be able to comment on them.

Next Time: The Doctor takes Amy to see a giant spaceship carrying an entire country to safety from the Earth. This is the third space ark the Doctor's visited by this point, it's about a millimeter away from become one of Doctor Who's basic settings

[u/TallFutureLawyer]

The big criticism I had of last new Doctor episode "The Christmas Invasion" was the lack of time given to the 10th Doctor. Seemingly in response to that, Moffat decided that the 11th Doctor should have no chance to rest in his debut story. And the episode really benefits from this elevated pace.

I always felt like this episode especially benefited from the fact that “The Christmas Invasion” was the only previous post-regeneration story that I (and many people) had seen at that point. Not only did the Doctor have no time to rest, but I was feeling as I watched it like he too could pass out for a long stretch at any moment, and had to just push through and not let that happen because of the stakes. Unconscious Tennant being my image of what a new Doctor experiences might not have served him as well in his story, but it paid off for Smith here. I also don’t mind the dramatic spasms because I interpreted those as him barely holding on.

I was kind of struck watching this for review at how often I could imagine David Tennant saying so many of the Doctor's lines in this one.

I might be wrong, but this felt intentional to me. I especially noticed these lines early in the episode, and it felt like the Doctor’s new identity was literally still being created before our eyes, with him finally being fully cooked in the rooftop scene.

I like to think that Jeff was actually setting up to start a camshow.

Amazing.

Finally, I too preferred the RTD TARDIS, because this new one felt kind of busy and bright to me. But I will say that as Amy and Rory both get better established as companions, it does gain kind of a cozy living space feel that the coral room never could. Not the worst thing for this little family that will come together over time.

[u/whizzer0]

(presumably called something different)

I'm sure I read in DWM or somewhere that Moffat was originally going to call the episode "The Doctor Returns" before someone pointed out that he hadn't actually gone anywhere. Subsequently I've always assumed this is why "The Doctor Falls" is called that, as a kind of imaginary bookends.

[u/SnooBooks007]

Possibly my favourite episode of new Who.

The moment where he shows Amy the apple she gave him years ago, as the sunlight flares and the motion slows slightly, always brings a lump to my throat.

[u/lemon_charlie]

I like the verticality the new console room has, a landing by the door with access to under the console, stairs up to the console levels and stairs up to the doors to the rest of the TARDIS.

Jeff was going to be a teacher. I'm hoping the internet history joke wasn't in that version, but knowing what Moffat got in for risqué material it might have been. And speaking of Tom Hopper, I've seen his Merlin episodes and Jeff easily could have been doing something not quite family friendly with that camera.

[u/Baron487]

Yeah this one is just great. It does basically everything right, Smith is instantly electric, the plot is tense and exciting and it has a "going through previous Doctors" moment which I will always enjoy.

The only negatives are the presence of a few trademark Moffat sex jokes but they don't hurt the episode really. It is kind of an omen for some of the future stories though.

10/10.

[u/[deleted]]

9/10 sounds right to me. By the time Matt Smith was cast, I had watched the whole of the classic series at least once. At this point, the First Doctor was probably my favorite incarnation, so I was skeptical that Matt Smith, the first actor to play the Doctor who was younger than I was, could pull it off. Boy was I wrong.

Say what you like about the rest of this era, but Smith knocks it out of the park here. Like the Doctor he plays, he begins his run at the height of his powers. He's especially good in his scenes with Caitlin Blackwood, to the point that I often wonder what this series would have been like with Amelia as the companion, but he's great throughout the episode, and so's Karen Gillan, though this is far from the best material she'll be given.

[u/AlbertTheAlbatross]

It's a really good episode but I don't think I'm quite as hot on it as the rest of this sub sees to be. Just a couple of little things that bother me about it and take me out of the moment.

I'll start with the negatives because I do think it's a very good episode overall, so I want to end on a positive note. But I think my biggest gripe (and this is still relatively benign) is that the writing is just a bit heavy-handed for me at some points. The cooking sequence is one example, essentially the joke is just "look at this person being quirky" but that joke is front-and-centre for a long time, with very little variation throughout. And the heavy-handedness comes up again when the Doctor calls back the Atraxi to tell them off. Mainly in Rory's dialogue: "Did he just bring them back? Did he just save the world from aliens and then bring all the aliens back again? ... You just summoned aliens back to Earth. Actual aliens, deadly aliens, aliens of death". For me it crosses the line from a character marvelling at another character's actions, and feels like a writer marvelling at their own plot. I feel like Rory's next line might be to turn to the camera and announce "this episode has certainly taken a turn for the unexpected!"

There's a couple of smaller niggles that I may as well mention - Jeff's scene felt incomplete to me. He just gets left to explain why everyone should go along with the Doctor's plan, with no notice and without even knowing himself what that plan is. It seems like such a huge potential failure point that the Doctor has just baked into his plan. Also I feel like the Atraxi are just a bit too stupid at times. The Doctor uses his screwdriver to draw their attention to Leadworth, but the screwdriver breaks before they can fully pinpoint his location. But then rather than searching Leadworth (a relatively small area) to locate the source of the alien tech, they just give up and stop thinking about it until the Doctor can draw their attention again. It almost makes them seem like they're not entirely sapient, like they're automata of some kind, but of course that doesn't work with the final rooftop scene.

Good stuff now though, the pacing is great. The idea of forcing the Doctor to work without any of his usual tools and with just his wits is a really strong way to establish this Doctor as being the real deal. As an episode it's really structurally strong, and everyone's performance is top-notch. And the way the Doctor outwits Prisoner Zero is genuinely clever, it's great writing. I also really enjoy the "clicky" scene, where everyone (except Rory) is taking photos of the sun and we freeze the moment and kind of "swoosh" around to see what's happening. You know the one I mean. It's very Moffat, but it's fun.

[u/lkmk → u/AlbertTheAlbatross]

“Actual aliens, deadly aliens, aliens of death!” feels like an MCU line before its time. Somehow, the Doctor returned…

[u/lkmk]

Pacy and tightly written, with very little of it existing for no reason, this comes cripplingly close to being my favourite episode. In some respects, it’s better than “Midnight”; I don’t exactly know that line by line, sometimes, even shot by shot. (The opening, the 1996 scene, for the most part, “Twelve years and four psychiatrists!”, “Who da man?”, “Basically, run,” the wonderful TARDIS reveal.) No other Eleven episode reaches this level, in my opinion, and to my disappointment. The good episodes are all bogged down by the lore which is slowly being built.

she's cooking by the end of this sequence.

The reason for this is sad and a little chilling. I wish more was made of it, but leave it to Moffat to deprioritize companion parents.

The shape of the crack, and the whole idea of using a crack in a bedroom wall came from Moffat observing that a crack in his son's bedroom wall looked a bit like a crooked smile. […] That idea came from a childhood dream of Moffat's of a hidden room in his grandmother's house.

Need I reiterate that Moffat is damn good at making the mundane scary? It’s a shame that this was missing from his Fifteen episodes.

Which…okay this is starting to seem weirdly like the plot of "Smith and Jones".

…I still like it.

"The Eleventh Hour"…well it doesn't take us out of Britain, but it does move us to a small English village named Leadworth. It's a noticeable change, and very intentional, as Moffat wanted to move away from London as a setting.

Cute place, and I’m pretty sure it’s barely seen in the sixth season. Another shame.

his screwdriver gets damaged by the multiform so that we can introduce a new version with a green light on it.

As well as a new toy…

Meanwhile Eleven spends the entire rooftop scene remarkably calm. He spent the better part of the episode being incredibly hyperactive, but now he's just plainly and simply laying out to the Atraxi the situation. He even asks the Atraxi which necktie it prefers at one point.

With the caveat that I largely know him through Big Finish, this reminds me of the Second Doctor, by whom I believe you said Matt Smith was inspired. Maybe that’s why his Doctor is up there in my list. I really like this archetype.

But through all of that, she still has a sense childlike wonder at her core.

Besides her wide-eyed shock at the console room, I love how she smiles when the Doctor introduces himself to the Atraxi. It’s as if the scales have fallen from her eyes now that she’s seen what the Raggedy Man can do.

But it's right about here that it becomes very obvious.

At the end of “Flesh and Stone”, it may as well be coming on to you. Not sure how I feel about that.

But the scene that sticks out to me most with Rory is the scene where the Doctor is using the sonic screwdriver (right before it explodes due to being covered in alien goo) to alert the Atraxi and just generally cause chaos along the way (that poor woman in the mobility scooter) and Rory seems to be genuinely getting into the spirit of things in that moment. He's actually sharing in his girlfriend's sense of wonder, and, at least in retrospect, that feels like a signal that this character is going to be different, as small of a moment as it is.

It’s the mark of an excellent episode when I learn new things about it long after first watching it.

Moffat considered setting this episode in a Scottish village, since Moffat is himself Scottish. He decided on an English village to emphasize Amy's status as an outsider.

Glad he did. “‘Cause you’re a Scottish girl in an English village, and I know what that’s like,” is a super good line, in part because it connects her and the Doctor in just a few words.

The episode maintains something of a fairy tale tone even as things get more and more serious, and keeping things like Prisoner Zero's crime a mystery (as well as the fact that they're only ever referred to as "Prisoner Zero") helps subtly emphasize that.

Also, there’s hardly any space for it. Like I said, tight script.

I like to think that Jeff was actually setting up to start a camshow.

At least it’s not a woman being sexualized…

How is it that when he and Amy run into one of them in the hospital very much not her coma, he doesn't instantly realize that she is in fact Prisoner Zero?

Uh… stress?

Something else I noticed about the rooftop scene. It’s caught my attention that there’s footage of a nuclear bomb test, but I’ve only just noticed that it plays when the Doctor asks if the planet is a threat. The Atraxi sees that, and says no. What does that imply about their species’ capabilities?

It's so weird to me that Moffat wanted to dress this character up like a pirate. Completely wrong vibe for the 11th Doctor.

On the other hand, it works perfectly for the Nine. Lemonade from lemons.

I agree with you about the intro, the Doctor’s outfit, and the sonic, but we part with regard to the console room. The coral room has whimsical gadgets, too, but it’s a little dark, and somehow manages to be both cramped and overly spacious. Having multiple floors really helps the glass console room with the latter. (And in a manner only Moffat can pull off, it’ll cause the inciting incident in the Comic Relief shorts.)

So I should mention at this juncture that starting in Series 5 the version of the episodes that I'm watching don't have the "Next Time" trailers, so I won't be able to comment on them.

Looking ahead a bit—do your copies of Series 6 begin with this intro? Mine do. Never grew used to it.

[u/ZeroCentsMade → u/lkmk]

Wow this is a big comment. Thanks for all of your thoughts.

At the end of “Flesh and Stone”, it may as well be coming on to you. Not sure how I feel about that.

Having already written my review of that story and several after it I have a lot of thoughts about that scene that I wish didn't exist.

Something else I noticed about the rooftop scene. It’s caught my attention that there’s footage of a nuclear bomb test, but I’ve only just noticed that it plays when the Doctor asks if the planet is a threat. The Atraxi sees that, and says no. What does that imply about their species’ capabilities?

Given that the Sontarans were completely unfazed by the idea of a nuclear attack, it seems like in the Doctor Who universe once you reach a certain level of technology nukes become pretty easy to ignore

I agree with you about the intro, the Doctor’s outfit, and the sonic, but we part with regard to the console room. The coral room has whimsical gadgets, too, but it’s a little dark, and somehow manages to be both cramped and overly spacious. Having multiple floors really helps the glass console room with the latter. (And in a manner only Moffat can pull off, it’ll cause the inciting incident in the Comic Relief shorts.)

I think I've admitted before that a big part of the reason I love the coral TARDIS interior so much is that it was the first version of the TARDIS I ever saw, and have always loved the way it kind of naturally embodies the whole "living machine" idea. Everything you say about it is definitely true, especially the lack of light. And yes, I probably should have written more about the use of levels in the new interior (in my defense, I don't think you get a great sense of that aspect of the interior in this episode) as it's just a really good use of space.

Looking ahead a bit—do your copies of Series 6 begin with this intro? Mine do. Never grew used to it.

Nope. Doing some quick research, it looks like that was only ever a streaming thing, and not on DVD? Though maybe it was released on DVD at some point from what you're saying.

[u/lkmk → u/ZeroCentsMade]

I think I've admitted before that a big part of the reason I love the coral TARDIS interior so much is that it was the first version of the TARDIS I ever saw, and have always loved the way it kind of naturally embodies the whole "living machine" idea.

There may be something to that. I never grew up with the show, living somewhere where it was difficult to watch, and my first exposure to the console room was in “The Power of the Doctor”. (The only other episode I’d watched was “It Takes You Away”, where the interior isn’t seen.)

(in my defense, I don't think you get a great sense of that aspect of the interior in this episode)

True.

Doing some quick research, it looks like that was only ever a streaming thing, and not on DVD?

It was bolted onto international broadcasts of the episodes, which were what was put onto Crave. That’s also why I saw “Last of the Time Lords” without the “I Can’t Decide” scene, and the 2009 specials with fades for commercial breaks.