Doctor Who

The season 6 finale, the Wedding of River Song, was an amazing story but within five minutes of finishing the first watching I an anger over the episode erupted. I recorded some of that anger in audio feedback for The Doctor Who Podcast, hopefully they'll play it. Anyway... it was an excellent story with lots of depth, as we've come to expect from Stephen Moffatt, but there's a bit at the end that is just griping me out to no end.

Hilarious retrospective of the entirety of Doctor Who from 1963 up until late 2011 Matt Smith.

The next season of Doctor Who is coming up - and the BBC has released this bit of a video to tease our appetite. The first half of season 6 left us with lots of questions.. like, why was that little girl regenerating? The trailers they released also leave lots of questions and tantalize with many new things. The entrance into Hitler's office is - well - fitting. It's clear the arc here is about The Doctor actually dying, or not. And clearly we're gonna see more of Eye Patch Lady, and somehow River Song has an Eye Patch at some time? Why would that be.

What happens when Doctor Who meets a twisted version of Frankenstein? What we get (this time) is Rebel Flesh, that is Flesh that goes on a rebellion. What happens when the creations of our technology take on a life of its own, starts running around making its own decisions, having its own offspring, and engaging in rebellion or perhaps what they might think of as a war of liberation? That's what we have in this story, a technology which can program "Flesh" to be "anything" hence create life, and what happens when it takes on a life of its own?

After the screwball tightly interwoven story arc laden season opener (Review: Doctor Who S06E02: The Day of the Moon and Review: Doctor Who S06E03: The Curse of the Black Spot), the powers that be must have realized we needed another "straight adventure" story with not a lot more than the episode in mind. That's more or less what we have - except the topic turns out to be something which fans for decades have pondered.

Okay, why are the black spots on the palm of the right hand, and in the episode before the recording gizmo thingies were punched into the palm of the right hand? Yeah, you noticed that too, eh? What do you think is the reason? I haven't a clue. Leave a comment below. Anyway, I want to write about the episode, The Curse of the Black Spot. First thing is - it's not a deeply twisted story arc thing, it's an adventure.

In Matt Smith's first season it was the Cracks in Time which was the puzzle. They appeared in every episode and we were told that "Silence Will Fall" the "Pandorica Will Open" etc. Part of the Pandorica/Big Bang episode was the destruction of the Universe and silence (as in no noise) throughout the Universe. Indeed the ending of Vampires of Venice had the Doctor go "shhh" and ask Rory to listen to the silence (no noise). It was fair then to assume when they talked about Silence Will Fall that they meant no noise silence.

Okay, that was a rubbish prediction on my part (Connections between Silence in the Library and Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon (Doctor Who)) so let's just try and forget about that. And it seemed like such a great idea. That's why The Doctor Who Podcast has that segment for Kooky Theory of the Week, eh?

Season 6 of "new Who" opened last weekend with an enigmatic story (the Doctor dies!) containing an enigmatic murderer and many references back to prior Doctor Who episodes (see: Review: Doctor Who S06E01: The Impossible Astronaut). To me the contents of An Impossible Astronaut point strongly to Silence in the Library. Inside the astronaut's facemask is the face of a little girl who we briefly see who, to me, looks like the little girl from Silence in the Library.

We were rewarded for our long wait since the end of Doctor Who's last season with an inscrutable episode title: The Impossible Astronaut. The episode does feature a strange astronaut character but leaves us with a zillion questions. Of course that's to be expected for the first part of a two-part story, because we are clearly in the throes of "all h__l breaking loose". It was an excellent episode that's also a huge departure from the norms of Doctor Who.