DW 509: Cold Blood

[For the blog, I have some span code to hide away the spoiler text, but the rss shows all, and the buzz account shows the first few lines anyway. Can't please everyone.]

So I take it that blood is a dish best served cold?

This was pretty much a "by the numbers" episode. The Doctor tries to broker a peace, check. Ambroise kills Aleila (and it was obviously going to be Ambroise), check. Said death causes the peace negotiations to fail, check. Silurians get all killery, check. And then everything is reset and the Silurians are put back to sleep, double check with a potential for a follow up episode in a thousand years. (Although there was no sign of the Silurians in the future episodes, not in The Beast Below, for example, let alone others.) And... there you go, episode done, no-one but Silurians dying in the entire episode.

And featuring Stephen Moore! With a voice-over narration that just reminds me of Timothy Dalton. Frankly the whole peace deal bit was a complete waste of time, even at the time. We, the audience, knew it was going to fail, so it was just making time (with the same solution the Doctor already proposed, re desert areas of Earth, coming up). The only poignant reason for it was to emphasize the last few minutes with the Doctor's crack. The TARDIS explodes... only we know the Doctor will solve it, unless Moffat is really looking at shaking up the Christmas episode/next series (I presume there'll be a Christmas episode). Only a few episodes to go before we find out!

The confidential shows that Matt isn't entirely over his "why not use a gun?" phase, with pointedly pointing out that the Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to defend them, not point it like a gun. Although clearly the confidential didn't have that much to say as it sent the episode talking about a tour that was featuring episode one!

So the second two-parter ends without any particular amazement. Still, it gave the Silurians more focus that a one-shot would have done.

Next week: another overly long trailer that gives away too much. And, it's pronounced "Van Gokhk".

[END]