The Eleventh Hour - A Review

Dear Santa...
...a review of The Eleventh Hour. WARNING - one very bad word, and thpoilers.



"Remember what I told you when you were seven..."


The Eleventh Hour, apart from anything else, is a showcase of brilliant moments in which Matt Smith becomes the Doctor. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when it happens; I just know it's somewhere between him landing in Amelia Pond's back garden in that ancient, brand new, impossibly blue box and him standing on the roof of a hospital telling the Atraxi to 'Basically, run.' He becomes that old/young, awkward/over confident man we have been waiting for all this time. Fourteen years, in fact, since some of us (ahem....) fell in love with the eighth Doctor and had him snatched away before he was even fully born. Or at the very least four months, since David Tennant said he didn't want to go. Or two years, since the last proper series of Doctor who. Or just since we were seven.  


"Like a name in a fairytale..."

I have seen the Eleventh Hour 5 times (at the time of writing) and still it manages to captivate me every time. It, and the new Doctor, and even his companion, are a barrel of contradictions. The series seems a little more mature and yet filled with childlike magic, triumphant yet humble, fun and heartbreaking at the same time. The Doctor is at once an old man and a young boy, a genius and an idiot, kind and intolerant, ugly and beautiful (seriously, how does he do that? One second I'm like 'ooh, yes' and the next I'm like 'Ew, no. He's got a head shaped like a wotsit (yes, a wotsit)'). He's a history teacher trapped inside the body of a schoolboy. Even Amy is a child pretending to be grown up. 
So far (for me, anyway) this season of Doctor Who has proved infinitely rewatchable and shows you something new each time. Some people have complained this has been a largely 'tell, not show' series but I disagree. The Van Gogh story came over so well because we can see how good a painter Van Gogh was instead of being told how wonderful Agatha Christie was without giving us any evidence to back it up with. And this series has made me cry (twice; during Vincent and the Doctor, and the end of the Big Bang, which made me cry and punch the air in triumph at the same time), not because I felt obliged to, but because I was genuinely moved.  
I think I like the Eleventh Hour so much because I went in with such low expectations and was totally blown away by how good it was.
The pre credits scene, in which the Doctor hangs from the free falling TARDIS and narrowly avoids having his brand new manhood amputated by Big Ben, seems strangely disjointed from the rest of the story. It's a sequence which I now believe to be one of Steven Moffat's ironic final nods to the Rusty Davies era (and this episode is peppered with them. I'm not sure if it is a final salute to the man who, for all his faults, brought Doctor Who back home, or a piss take). 
After this, the episode starts with a little girl sitting in her bedroom praying to Santa for someone to come and fix the crack in her wall, and lo and behold, here he is. It takes him a while, but he fixes it.  
I start to love this new Doctor when he walks into a tree. 
"Are you alright?" 
"Early days... steering's a bit off..."
I love him even more when he starts spitting food all over little Amelia's kitchen: 
"Give me yogurt. I love yogurt" (eats yogurt). "What's this?" 
"Yogurt."
"It's fucking disgusting."
It's a lovely ice breaker, and allows us to meet the Doctor and Amelia Pond properly in relatively safe, comforting surroundings eating fish custard and ice cream. They discover the Doctor's first meal together (I really want to try 'fish custard' now. Although I feel a bit cheated as apparently Matt Smith didn't actually eat fish fingers but a sort of coconut slice thing dipped in custard*), and the Doctor shares Amelia's fear over the crack in her wall. Like no other Doctor/Companion pairing ever, they are both children when they meet. 
The Doctor certainly seems 'newborn' to start with: he uses his new limbs awkwardly, and is surprised at the very world he finds himself in - just look at his reaction when he tips the water out of Amelia's drinking glass. 
Just one thing; why does Amy's house have two flights of stairs when it is a two storey building... and how come the Doctor doesn't notice? Or does he?

"Twelve years and four psychiatrists..." 

I know Caitlyn Blackwood is Karen Gillan's cousin, but my God, the resemblence betwen them is eerie, even more so when Caitlyn returns later in the series a few months older and with longer hair. As another aside, I think I know why a few people have had trouble empathising with/liking Amy Pond. Little Amelia is adorable. She's the first character we meet in the Eleventh Hour and we like her even before the Doctor crash lands in her garden. Amelia is such a sweet, lonely, quirky little girl - in the first scene we see her praying to Santa, she's scared of nothing except a crack in her bedroom wall, and packs her teddy bear before she runs off with the Doctor. And then suddenly she's this grown up, scowly girl in a short skirt. In addition she has an adorable boyfriend whom she treats almost like he doesn't exist, and she's a kissagram = every parents worst nightmare. Even the Doctor is stunned. 
"You were a little girl five minutes ago!" 
"You're worse than my aunt."
"I'm the Doctor. I'm worse than everybody's aunt." 
Come to think of it, I think that line was the moment I thought 'Hello Doctor'. But then this entire episode is an exercise in 'Hello, Doctor'. 
That sentence also sets the tone for the Doctor's relationship with Amy. To the Doctor, she will always be a little girl - he calls her 'Amelia' in Victory of the Daleks, in the same tone a parent might use to snap at a child. He also has a habit of kissing her on the forehead, and he's absolutely horrified when she tries to make a move on him. The way he comforts her in Vincent and the Doctor is like a father comforting his daughter - "Life is a pile of good things and bad things, and the good things don't always cancel out the bad, but vice versa, the bad things don't always spoil the good things and make them less important." (perhaps the best quote in the entire series, ever, except possibly the Doctor's speech to Susan at the end of the Dalek Invasion of Earth)
I do like the older Amy, but I would love little Amelia to have one proper adventure, just once. 

"Just trust me for 20 minutes..."

The scene where the Doctor asks Amy to trust him is another beautiful character moment, this time between him and grown up Amy. I get the feeling he is also asking the entire audience to give him 20 minutes in which to prove he is the Doctor.  
But what is with the blue light that flashes over the Doctor and Amy in this scene? It might be there to add poignancy to the moment, but I find it annoying. Or is it something else? Because you learn that when watching a Stpehen Moffat episode, nothing is quite as simple as it seems. Or it is as simple as it seems, but with a twist that not so much a twist as wrenching the simple right out of its socket and giving it a Chinese burn until it squeals. 
As the story starts to roll on its own momentum, the Doctor employs several RTD style tactics to set up a trap for Prisoner Zero. A borrowed laptop, the number '0' transmitted across the world via Facebook and Bebo as a message for the Atraxi, texting instructions for Amy to 'DUCK!', although, to be fair, that one harkens back to 'Blink' and Sally Sparrow finding a 40 year old message on a wall telling her to do just that. 
I read in another review (probably at Behind the Sofa) that Steven Moffat ironically laid the RTD era to rest using his predecessor's own methods, resetting the clock back to zero and literally rewriting the last five years of time, chips, and Rose Tyler.    
It's true that the story rattles along almost like Smith and Jones or Rose for the first 40 odd minutes, a light companion focused story in which we meet a cross section of the future companion's friends and significant others, as well as get a feel for the new Doctor, with a few comedic turns thrown in to keep people interested. And then suddenly, when the clock changes from 11:50 to 0:00, everything changes, just a little bit. It's a subtle change of pace, but it is there, and it is Steven Moffat saying, "This is my show now, Russell. Mitts off." 


"A perfect impersonation of yourself..."

"And we're off..." says the Doctor, before he explains the wonderous trick he has played on Prisoner Zero, in leading the Atraxi to the hospital where their prisoner is. Not only that, but he has a phone full of pictures of the accused that he can show to the Atraxi. He's done it, saved the world in 20 minutes, proved that he is the Doctor. And to do it with such extraordinary style and knobs on is a bonus. "Who da man!?" is one bit of self congratulary nonsense that I will allow. 
But Prisoner Zero has another card up its sleeve. When it decides to turn on Amy, we realise that things are going to be a little different from here on in. No Sonic Screwdrivers, no fancy gadgets, just the Doctor talking to Amy from within her dream, manipulating her thoughts to get her to dream about Prisoner Zero in its true form. Brilliant. 
This scene also introduces one of the big themes of the series - the impact that dreams/the human mind have upon reality, and the power of words and their superiority over weapons. This theme recurs time and time again throughout the series: 

Amy asking Professor Bracewell about his first love stops him from detonating. 

Amy links the Doctor and the Star Whale in her mind, and this enables her to save it.

The phrase River uses in 'The Time of Angels' - "When our dreams no longer need us, the time will be upon us, the time of angels".

Amy's Choice. Nuff said. 

The way we see some scenes through Van Gogh's eyes in Vincent and the Doctor. 

The Doctor using Craig's contentment to destroy the ship in his attic in the Lodger, after it has sucked out its victims dreams of escape and freedom.

Amy's memories being used to trick the Doctor into visiting Stonehenge. 

And the obvious one in the Big Bang, the seed planted in the head of little Amelia Pond when she was seven, ready to bloom on her wedding day and bring the Doctor back from the brink of unreality. 

Oddly, the three episodes which don't fit in this theme are the weakest of the series - Vampires of Venice, and the Silurian two parter. 
At the end of all this, the Doctor emerges fully fledged and victorious, having used only a mobile phone, his own genius, and a little's girl's dreams. 
I love the phonecall where the Doctor tells the Atraxi to get "back 'ere. NOW." It echoes Rusty again, but I don't care.


"You've summoned the aliens back again. Aliens of death. And now you're taking your clothes off..." 

Rory is fantastic from the word go. He is both similar to the Doctor and yet the perfect antidote - he's bumbling, understatedly intelligent, curious, utterly devoted to Amy despite the way she treats him, and all he wants is a safe, comfortable life with the girl he loves. He doesn't want adventure, but he'll take it, if it means he gets to be with Amy. There is something about him right from the start - he isn't just the companion's boyfriend, he is a companion in his own right. In light of what happened in the finale, perhaps there really is more to Rory than meets the eye. Especially as his nurses badge says he qualified in 1990, when reason says he would have been about four. But you don't want to listen to reason, any more than you want to grow up. 


"I've put a lot of work into it..." 

What is so important about the phrase 'Twenty minutes'? The Doctor asks Amy to trust him for 20 minutes in this episode, Amy loses 20 minutes of her memory in The Beast Below, and the Doctor says 20 minutes until the Pandorica opens at one point in that episode. In the same episode, he then waxes lyrical about a life form that has a 20 minute life span, even saying afterwards that there was no point to him mentioning it. And 20 minutes after the Doctor begs Amy to trust him, Matt Smith bursts through the image of Tennant's face and stands proudly in front of the Atraxi in his new outfit. The message could not be more clear. "I'm the Doctor. Basically, run." And they do. 
I don't tend to like those "I'm the Doctor. Don't mess with me." scenes, except the one in the Pandorica Opens, and this one was definitely a bit OTT. Yes, we can all see Matt Smith is the Doctor. Shut up about it now. However, I do like that the Atraxi never once takes its eye off the Doctor until it is safely out of reach as it flees. 
 

"I am definitely a mad man in a box..."

As a final note, am I the only person who actually likes the new theme tune and title sequence? 
As a final final note, I have another unanswered question. when we flash back to little Amelia sitting in her garden waiting for the Doctor, she hears the sound of the TARDIS and looks up, smiling. And yet, a second later we see grown up Amy waking up, two years after Prisoner Zero and fourteen years since fish custard. What happened? Either the little version of Amy really hears the TARDIS and is whisked off for an adventure with her magic Doctor, or grown up Amy was having a dream about her hero when her dream was interrupted by the sound of the real TARDIS. Perhaps the Doctor didn't go to the Moon at all after he left Amy and Rory to try out his new TARDIS. But if he did pick up little Amelia for one adventure, why doesn't grown up Amy remember it? I think I'll pass this one over to the hard core theorists, before my head explodes. The same theorists who realised there were two Doctors running about on board the Byzantium. 
By the way, I started out not liking the new TARDIS design - On the first glance, you half expect everlasting gobstoppers to start popping out of the time rotor, or at the very least Johnny Depp in a mad hat and wig, but it has slowly grown on me. It's a TARDIS of dreams and ideas and connections, not just 'knobs that do stuff'. The typewriter, the glass dildo thing, the hot and cold taps, the weird thing that looks like a 'jack' (you remember that game...), and the gramophone. I'm only surprised it isn't steam powered. 


"Thank you, Santa." 

Thank you for Karen Gillan, and Caitlyn Blackwood and Steven Moffat. But especially thank you for Matt Smith. I take back all the horrible things I said about him. He's wonderful. He may be only 5 years older than me, but what does age matter to a man who can cure you of being grown up? 


"What did you tell me when I was seven?"

"That's not the point. You have to remember it." 




*Having now tried fish custard, I can honestly say that it is entirely and utterly wrong, and you should definitely try it.

And yippee doodle, I got through the entire review without using the phrase 'Amy's crack'... 

By Rose Ghost