Alrighty, story two of season five and the short version is - SOOOOOOOOO much better than "The Eleventh Hour". Not perfect (though brilliantly charming in its own way) with only one real criticism and a performance from Mr Smith that could almost have been the Doctor...
Firstly we get a cold opener that's actually relevant to the whole story. As you may have gathered from the previous episode, there was a certain amount of showing off (some of which gets repeated in this one) but this is a classy opener which has relevance later on. It also has, sadly, a continuity error in that in the upwards looking shot just before the floor opens you can clearly see the smiler with its teeth showing and THEN the head rotates to show the teeth. Sadly, on the DVD release, this is then followed by the more traditional rendition of the theme music complete with crappy sounding lightning effects. Oh so tempting to lift one of the versions off YouTube where someone with talent and/or too much time on their hands has put better music to the visuals. Or indeed, put better music to better visuals. Anything other than the candy floss tunnel of fear.
Matt Smith plays the Doctor in an almost Sylvester McCoy like professorial manner with Amy very much as his protege. The relationship between them is quite watchable in this one (because Amy spends most of it in a state of shock and doesn't get irritatingly bossy at any point) and the opening where she's floating around outside the TARDIS really is quite sweet. It's just as well that Starship UK is very much based on the twentieth century model of England otherwise who knows how badly shocked she would have been. The starship idea is a brilliant one, utterly Doctor Who in its ridiculousness but played brilliantly straight by everyone concerned and it's realised superbly on the screen. The smilers are a well realised menace (even if the third face appearing out of nowhere doesn't work in my mind but ho hum, that's just my mind for you) but you do have to wonder just how crap the next few hundred years of living are if the 1950s are seen as the golden age. Amy gets attacked by a tendril (again) and we get closeups of eyes as people have flashbacks (again). At least it's not the Doctor this time but it's weird how we've now had two stories with very similar themes in a row (things being masked by perception). One big question that gets raised though (and I don't recall ever being answered) is about Amy's marital status. Is this supposed to foreshadow Rory's disappearance from time later in the season because surely, if Rory goes, then she either marries someone else or just remains a kissogram for the rest of her life?
It's not the most subtle of stories (with the Doctor's line about voting every five years and forgetting everything you've learned) but that's not my main problem. My main issue is with the ending. The Doctor comes VERY close to making a monumental cockup and Amy is the one who saves the day. Now, if I'm being charitable then I could put this down to the Doctor only having regenerated a day or so previously and thus not being fully functional but it still seems very odd for the Doctor to get it so categorically wrong. If someone wants to tell me other times he's been quite so incorrect I'd love to know because I can't think of many times he's been this close to catastrophe.
So, if I'm being charitable (and I'm having a good day today so I will be) then I'll put the Doctor's error down to post regenerative stress syndrome and say that this is a story that's almost infinitely better than Eleventh Hour. It still has a gross out scene involving food but this time it's relevant to the plot. It's well acted by everyone, it doesn't have quite such cheap looking CGI and it has a cliffhanger ending that makes the next story look really good. See, it's amazing how much crap you can disguise if you really want as, of course, it's Victory of the Daleks next... still, The Beast Below was good whilst it lasted :)
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