New Doctor Who mini-episodes reviewed
The Doctor Who series six box set includes five short “Night And The Doctor” adventures written by Steven Moffat, and we’ve seen ‘em! (Minor spoilers ahead)
The UK Doctor Who season six box set is released by 2entertain on 21 November, and we’ve just got our hands on a set of review discs.
The most exciting bonus on there is a series of five short “mini-episodes”. Written by Steven Moffat and collectively referred to as “Night And The Doctor”, they feature Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Alex Kingston, with brief appearances by Arthur Darvill and James Corden too. WARNING: there are some spoilers ahead, but we’ve kept the big discoveries under wraps, okay?
The first four episodes are all connected, and set pretty much entirely in the TARDIS. Totalling twelve minutes, they collectively address the question: what does the Doctor get up to while Rory and Amy are asleep? Well, given that he doesn’t need as much sleep as we humans, he has adventures, of course – adventures with a certain flame-haired lady friend…
“Night And The Doctor” kicks things off in madcap fashion, as Amy answers a phone call from a British royal, and the Doctor dashes in from a party, dressed in top hat and tails, carrying a goldfish in a bowl – a very important goldfish. Well, so he thinks, anyway… It’s inconsequential fare, but good fun. Arthur Darvill also pops up briefly in this segment, after the Doctor wakes him with a cry of “Rory, she’s having an emotion!”
“Good Night” is this reviewer’s favourite of the bunch (and, at nearly five minutes, the longest). A rather touching two-hander between Smith and Gillan, it sees Amy trying to talk to the Doctor about the fact that “her life makes no sense” (about time too!), and the Doctor taking her to “the saddest moment in her life” to meet… well, that would be telling. One neat idea expressed here is that our misremembered memories and feelings of déjà vu are actually side-effects of time being rewritten.
In “First Night” the Doctor lands in River’s cell during her first night in jail, to take her out for an adventure. Ending on a cliffhanger, it’s really the first part of a two-parter, which concludes in “Last Night”.
This tale sees Moffat making characteristic use of the possibilities of time travel, and putting them to the services of a timey-wimey miniature farce: at one point, there are three River Songs in the TARDIS… One interesting point we learn is that it was the Doctor who suggested that River keep a diary of their adventures together, and who introduced her to the term “spoilers”. As for the meaning of that title? Well, we won’t spoil it for you, but let’s just say it has a very poignant significance…
Finally, “Up All Night” is stuck on a separate disc from the other mini-episodes, which is initially rather mystifying. All becomes clear when you watch it, as it has absolutely no connection to them. Only a minute long, it was clearly written with the intention of using it as one of the “episode prequels” used to promote the series online. Featuring Craig, Sophie and, er, Stormageddon, it’s set shortly before the events of “Closing Time” and basically establishes the set-up for the episode. Viewed after you’ve seen Gareth Roberts’s episode it is, to be honest, pretty pointless.
The other extras?
- Episode commentaries on five episodes (not four, as the publicity materials would have you believe). Steven Moffat features on only one of these: the track for “The Wedding Of River Song”. Arthur Darvill is on two. Matt Smith and Karen Gillan are nowhere to be found.
- Four “Monster Files” featurettes on The Silence, the Gangers, the Tessalecta’s “antibodies” and the Cybermat (between nine and 13 minutes long).
- Five short episode prequels.
- Cut-down versions of Doctor Who Confidential.
- Trailers for the two halves of the season.
- 2010′s Christmas special is also described as “bonus material”.
Ian Berriman
This is not my video but Here are the lyrics to this song. It’s incredibly clever and funny….
Wake up in the morning feeling like Stormageddon
Grab my Stetson and my sonic, don’t know where I’m headin’
Before I leave, grab invites in the color of blue,
Teselecta hands’em out, can’t cross my time line, dude.
I made my friends all watch me die, die
Then sent them to eat some pie, pie
they all sat down and cried, cried
Jaw-droppin’, appears a younger me, me
Knowin’ nothin’ bout my death scene.
That’s when things get a little bit tricky
Tick tock goes the clock
Until River kills the Doc’
Tonight, I’mma fight
All the Silence in sight
Tick tock goes the clock
You know fixed points can’t be stopped, no
Tick tock goes the clock
Until River kills the Doc’
Tonight, I’mma fight
All the Silence in sight
Tick tock goes the clock
You know fixed points can’t be stopped, no
Ain’t got a care in world, don’t know Amy’s not here
Then we find out that she’s preggo, and the Flesh disappears
And now the Cybermen are spillin’ cause they hear we got Rory
Then we head to Demon’s Run to start act two of our story.
We find that River is Amy’s kid, kid
Eye patch tricked us again, ‘gain
I leave’em as if I were Ten, Ten
Now, now I circle back to the lake, lake
Time for me to meet my fate, fate
River sends me to my fate, fate
But River doesn’t…
(Hello, Sweetie!)
Tick tock goes the clock
Until River kills the Doc’
Tonight, I’mma fight
All the Silence in sight
Tick tock goes the clock
You know fixed points can’t be stopped, no
Tick tock goes the clock
Until River kills the Doc’
Tonight, I’mma fight
All the Silence in sight
Tick tock goes the clock
You know fixed points can’t be stopped, no
River,
You messed time up
Not puttin’ me down
You fix this now
or We all die
Fine, I give up
You got me now
Hold your hand out,
Grab my bow tie
River,
You messed time up
Now hear me out,
Look in my eye.
And trust me
I wave my hands,
Out of my eye,
My robot eye.
Now, the TARDIS don’t start ‘til I walk in
Tick tock goes the clock
Until River kills the Doc’
Tonight, I’mma fight
All the Silence in sight
Tick tock goes the clock
But the Doctor can’t be stopped, no
Tick tock goes the clock
Until River kills the Doc’
Tonight, I’mma fight
All the Silence in sight
Tick tock goes the clock
But the Doctor can’t be stopped, no
The Wedding of River Song Explained (ish)
Spoilers: Series 6, obviously
I have been getting a lot of questions about the Wedding of River Song, and I realized they were all pretty much boiling down to the same types of questions. So, instead of answering the same question 20 times, I decided to write this, and answer the major questions from that episode in a single sitting. Of course, this is in no way official and most of these answers are my best guesses.
1. If The Doctor on the beach was a Teselecta the whole time, how did it regenerate?
It’s a shape-shifting, time traveling, vigilante robot powered by tiny people inside. The ability to glow and shoot light out of its hands seems pretty simple after all of the other stuff. If Pink Floyd has the technology, I bet they do, too. Even if they didn’t, The Doctor, with the TARDIS, is with them, I’m sure he could figure out how to make the Teselecta shine some light.
2. If The Doctor’s death is a fixed point, how did faking it resolve everything?
Because The Doctor’s death wasn’t a fixed point. The Doctor faking his death was the actual fixed point. This is because of the massive ripple around the fake death rather than the death itself. Everyone believes The Doctor is dead at that moment. The only people who talked about it being fixed were The Doctor (who wants people to believe it was fixed) and The Teselecta (who helped The Doctor fake his death, which explains why their records indicated that he died and it was fixed, it helps the Doctor in the cover up).
Some people think that if The Silence learn that he faked his death that the universe will unravel again, but this isn’t the case. All that matters is that the fake death was carried out and at that moment everyone believed him to be dead.
