DOCTOR WHO-THE PANDORICA OPENS

 

DOCTOR WHO-the Matt Smith/Moffat re-watch

THE PANDORICA OPENS

Okay, buckle in, this is going to be a hard ride. Moffat lover may not want to read ahead or read this at all so maybe, check out. As painful as I remember the show from here on, mostly….I’ll have to stick to my rule, that I broke for two great episodes (VINCENT AND THE DOCTOR, VAMPIRES OF VENICE and even the Silurians remake…I call it that because I can never remember the titles of the two episodes  like I can for almost every Classic DW story). I must stay to my half an episode rule so if the story is 40 minutes, I’ll stop at 20, and often I find it’s at a cliffhanger moment or what would be the cliffhanger moment if the New Series actually did half hour or so episodes. They don’t but to save my sanity from the insanity, banality, and awfulness of the Moffat seasons, mostly starting from now (okay, we’ve had some bad episodes this season, like BEAST BELOW and VICTORY OF THE DALEKS, but here, it gets REALLY bad), I have to stick to the half an episode rule. There’ll be a lot of me stopping here and commenting on the asinine Moffat plot developments, unfunny comedy, jokes in that fly in the face of the way characters have acted in the past, and poor, overlong exposition.

 

Gosh. Here we go…it looks great, visually but it’s really a poor, downward slide for the series here…

 

Hang on! GERONIMO! BTW I love Geronimo in a way that I hate bowties and fezzes in DW.

 

In rapid succession we get a return to Vincent (which we don’t need), and then to the worst story other than BEAST BELOW when we see Churchill and the android doctor who have a picture from behind a wall in France (reminds me of CITY OF DEATH and how much better THAT is), and then to River Song in a jail in the future (she must be in jail for some crime, right? So instantly I’m not liking her again).

 

From here, everything Moffat writes is intended to make us see how “cool” River is and how “sexy” she is and how funny but it doesn’t work at all. Her leaving a message on the wall of the jail cell might be funny to some but given that she should have been in a rush, it was silly for her to do. Never mind. This is why a fan wrote that Moffat’s characters don’t really believe in their world and neither do I. He or she. Me, too. Whatever. The actors all play this out with a wink at the audience as if DW is just a joke they’re all having on or having fun with. Trouble is: this doesn’t make for fun stories or interesting, believable, world building sci fi stories either. It’s mostly trash. And not MST fun trash either. And the slide goes way down from BEAST BELOW and VICTORY OF THE DALEKS. The more Moffat tries to force a liking for River on me and the worse the stories get…and mind you, they really do get worse here and next season, the less likely I’m to like River and the more I’m going to loathe her. Only BF redeems her, usually.

 

As if that is not bad enough, we get River running into the blood Queen from BEAST BELOW (and the Queen was one of the major things I had issues with from that VERY flawed story). HOW does River know that the Queen knows the Doctor? Look, I’m not nit picking. If I’m going to suspend disbelief, I need some things to be explained in DW and not just thrown at us as if it does not matter. Moffat does this shit time and time again. And it’s bad writing. And unlike RTD, Moffat takes hours and many minutes to say what would have taken RTD seconds to convey with a look or a brief line of dialog. Moffat can’t make a point without boring.

 

And the music during scenes are telling us how to feel. We see River and the Queen together, the music is screaming at us so it’s great and grand and momentous. Only, it’s not. Murray Gold: great but over stated here and while he was good up to around season 7, he overstayed his welcome in seasons 8 and 9.

 

Now we get a big fat blue guy and River doing things to him and more ha ha unfunny lines and things: a quite interesting alien has a box with a vortex manipulator still on the hand of a handsome Time Agent (Jack? Probably not as he still has both hands). I guess this might be Dorian, another character I couldn’t believe in and didn’t find funny or likable. It feels like we’re watching the adventure of River Song and not DW and btw what do all of these scenes lead up to? Why are they there?

 

The Doctor arrives in the far past to find a  message from River and then goes to the coordinates on the rock face that read Hello Sweetie. River is there in 1AD or so and posing as Cleopatra and kissing Roman soldiers. The Doctor and Amy seem flippant about being in 1AD and facing Roman soldiers, making jokes. SO…does this ring true? Any of it? Is it funny? Realistic? Interesting? Dangerous? No to all of those questions. River balks that the Doctor wouldn’t answer his phone. The painting is by Vincent of an exploding TARDIS.

 

Gerry Anderson and especially Irwin Allen would told those seven minutes in under one, no doubt. RTD would have done the same thing. This is just slow moving, jokey, and boring. None of it seems real and even if none of that were true, the story being told is…just not good. Gosh, I may have to do this in ten min increments. It’s that bad.

 

How did Vincent know about the exploding TARDIS? Maybe telepathically it reached out to him through time? Are we ever told? Maybe? So more talk and then cinematic (and it looks great) horse riding to Stonehenge to find the thing that the Doctor claims is just legend…but he’s had legends and myths in the past turn out to be true so he shouldn’t be that skeptical. Does this Doctor have an open mind? Not really.

 

Okay, so…I can accept an underhenge and River knows about it. Sure. BUT a Cyber Head just lying there NOT ONE OF THE TRIO saw? No. Just no. Bad writing. Again. Later we’ll get more of this nonsense as the ads for season six show a skeletal hand holding the sonic screwdriver at the bottom of a lake…and it never happens in the show. BUT I’m getting ahead of myself to an even worse story.

 

Okay, so does this make sense? The telepathic signals to Vincent were went out to everyone. Everyone? Then why didn’t the cranky lady in Vincent’s home and the doc there hear them? And did the aliens that came to Earth in 1AD travel through time or space or just space or just some of them? A huge list of alien enemies are knocked off, read off by River who has a device. Nice idea to unite the alien races. How will he get out of that one? He chooses the greatest fighting force in the history of the universe: the Romans? Really?

 

No. Just no.

 

Okay, I can accept that there is some warrior, some grand disturber in the Pandorica and that these alien races want him. WHY would the prison or was it the rocks only, send out warnings about the explosion or even know about the explosion? If the prison sent it, that would make no sense. And what would the purpose be if the thing inside is slowly getting out anyway?

 

With all of these questions and shaky answers, the real question is DO I CARE? At this point? Barely.

 

Sigh.

 

Okay so Amy found the ring Rory was going to give her in the Doc’s jacket. As they start to talk about this, I must admit the CYBERMAN arm attacking the Doctor and electrifying him, as well as the head attacking Amy and opening with a horrid skull inside and metallic tendrils was WAY COOL. One of the best set pieces of the new series so far among many great ones (usually in RTD’s time). WHY the head stops is not clear but then the body attacks and Amy finds herself locked in somewhere behind doors. She’s saved by …a Roman soldier that is…Rory. Who puts a sword through a Cyberman? How is he that strong? In any case, Amy faints when Rory says, “Hello, Amy.”

 

Okay, that’s about all I can take for now and we’re almost at 25 min. More next time!

 

Okay, subtitles back on so I can catch WTF Matt Smith is saying. Needed plot points rambled by so fast. So Celts did in the Cyber Sentry. Sure. Moffat isn’t exactly known for believability. Plus, why would Cybermen leave a Cyberman there and not…say, convert the planet? This is almost as dumb as the crack in time making Rory a Roman with knowledge of Amy and the Doctor intact. Wow. Not to mention the ha ha (unfunny) moment of Rory trying to get the dumbo Doc to notice him as the Doc rambles on, saying he’s not blind to the obvious. The Doc’s missing the point goes on far too long and makes him…just dumb, not funny.

 

I’m thinking like I do for DARK SHADOWS I need to start noting when someone says, I Don’t Know for this era/error of DW.

 

Okay, I don’t mean to be …nasty or anything but were there African Roman soldiers? I am genuinely asking. Is that historical? I feel it might be?

 

Now comes the bone chillingly awful worst moment in NEW WHO up to now (Capaldi’s error will have more of them, many more of them and so will Matt’s but for now… up to now…). This entire speech that everyone celebrates…well, most everyone is horrible.

 

First why: the Doctor, we find out, is bluffing. So…NONE of the species above is brave enough to just, well, shoot the Doctor out of existence? Not one? Drahvins? Sontarans? Leads to second…

 

Second why: …in the past the Doctor was on adventures. Now, he is the center of …well, we can be kind and call this an adventure but it’s really not…not really. I don’t know what it is. In those wonderful stories of ideas, he was a character who could be killed and wasn’t all that well known by his enemies. Here, he’s the all powerful feared super hero GOD known as the Doctor which is supposedly so powerful these many alien races and 100s of spaceships don’t even try to call his bluff and blast him out of existence. It’s the BATMAN 66-68 factor: villains will leave the trap (getting ahead of myself) and the heroes in said trap thinking that will do the trick. These races even team up like BATMAN villains. It’s very comic booky, which would be fine if it were exciting or fantastical or well scripted…it’s really not.

 

Third why: Matt’s delivery. I don’t know what happened but this pivotal moment is where Matt becomes…bad…as the Doctor. I want to smack him here. I want to turn off the chills from bad acting delivered to my ears. He can’t really do forceful well or certainly he doesn’t do it here. I’ve seen Matt in other things and he’s not bad at all, in fact, he’s  a high caliber actor…but as the Doctor, here is where he starts NOT to convince. Maybe it’s because he really doesn’t believe in the scripts at this point or certainly not this script. I was willing to forgive this part but then there’s part two. I was even open minded going into the excellent CHRISTMAS CAROL, which I loved. It was when Season Six started with two mediocre and confusing episodes that I STILL had an open mind…but then the rest followed and it was decidedly poor as we will see…(guess I still have to try to keep an open mind, maybe season six is good?) but I don’t think Smith was convinced by the scripts and thus he becomes the first and only Doctor who fails at making me believe he believes every word he is saying (McCoy came close at being awful forever in TIME AND THE RANI but improved by the next story and no matter how awful Capaldi’s scripts were, he was utterly convincing despite bad dialog and situations). Smith is GREAT again in certain stories, mostly early season seven and THE DOCTOR’S WIFE but he is never consistently good as he was from THE 11^TH HOUR to THE LODGER or even the first half of this POS.

 

Fourth: I wanted…really wanted one of the ships to shut him up and blast him away, killing his Doctor forever.

 

We now resume the pain.

 

Press unpause and listen to this horrible speech…

 

“Guess who?” Cringe. God? Moffat?

“I’m talking here!” Cringe. Who cares? Shoot his ass!

 

 

So was that voice that said, “Silence will fall!” Davros?

 

Okay, this cliffhanger goes on for five minutes. Autons. Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans. An empty Pandorica. The Doctor is, not for the first time, wrong about all of this. Nothing is in the Pandorica but his enemies want to put him into it. River is stuck in the TARDIS which is going wild. WHAT or WHO were the marks at Amy’s house that made the Autons and the situation from her memories? Does that make sense? It’s all a  trap for the Doctor (again like BATMAN) to be put inside the Pandorica.

 

I have mixed feelings this time out. Separated from my disappointment as such a convoluted mess that I didn’t expect or like back in 2010, I’m looking at this with a more open mind. Is it that bad?

 

Not sure. It feels wrong, even now. The enemies should just shoot the Doctor.

 

Auton Rory does shoot Amy so…

 

AMY DEATH 1: Rory shoots her.

 

River seems to die? The TARDIS is in stone? Every sun goes supernova and the Earth seems to go dark.

 

Okay, so it’s over and it was less painful than I remember but also less eventful. There were some positives about it. I’ve detailed those above. I think that Karen’s acting was a notch above what it’s been and Matt wasn’t that bad other than the speech he made, the bluff. I’m still not convinced by the plot.

 

By doing the trap they are doing, the races, the alliances cause the Doctor to not be in the TARDIS…what causes the TARDIS to explode anyway? Maybe we will find out. Maybe I was just too unphazed by most of this to really listen anymore as I found I didn’t care by the time this ended. This time it was different. I found that maybe there was some merit in this. If the explanations come next time and if the deaths are reversed…as we KNOW they will be…which is part of the problem. Do it once or twice, okay but do it for the entire universe and every character? It’s…hokey and lessens any threat the stories will have in future.

 

So, this was maybe a 7 out of 10 at best; a 4/10 at worst. Part two will determine the outcome. WHO made Amy’s stuff come to life? The Silence? What are they? Will we ever find out? Why was Rory made an Auton Roman? I’m not sure I like this as an adventure as it’s not adventurous to be honest but convoluted. Still, it might be far better than I felt it was at first airing.