Amy's Choice is a sneaky, sneaky beast.  Quite likely not tilting towards the populist end of Doctor Who stories and instead into more of the esoteric, the first viewing of this story with it's laconic pacing and lack of the "monster" per se was merely "whelming."  A second, and it has to be said, more alert viewing, brought all sorts of revelations, most notably the nifty plotting and the amazing performances of Toby Jones and Karen Gillan.  Perhaps what satisfied most wholly was the revelation that Dream Lord was in fact the Doctor himself, admittedly under the influence of "psychic pollen."  Since this is becoming a season for callbacks, both obvious and oblique, we loved this variation on The Ultimate Foe, Robert Holmes' last contribution to the series was the idea that the Valeyard was a dark distillation of the Doctor, somewhere between the last and next to last incarnation.

The joy in this story, owing to Toby Jones' performance, is what a mean-spirited imp the Dream Lord is, always being derogatory and yet playful as well to the Doctor at the same time.  The story also advanced, in a much more satisfying way, the Doctor-Rory-Amy triangle, begun in The Vampires of Venice.  Last week we said Rory was fairing better than the Tin Dog, and he's certainly no Adam either, this is a threesome that has the dynamics that, at least for this fan, go back to Season 12 and Sarah Jane and Harry.  High praise indeed.

As a result of all this we've put this episode at the top of the 2010 Dynamic Ratings Table.  How 'bout you?

Images and caps for Amy's Choice are now online.

It's a syndrome I-tells-ya.  Let's call it OFS or Old Fan Syndrome.  It's an affliction borne of too many years watching and more importantly remembering all too well our favorite TV program. When you begin spotting elements from other stories, too many other stories, within the story you're watching, it could well be the onset of OFS, or it could be The Vampires of Venice.  The THT Brain Trust have been struggling with what to think of this story and have delayed putting forward our remarks for this very reason.  In the Dynamic Ratings we have originally put this story 4th out of 6th but have now reluctantly moved it down below The Beast Below because whereas the latter was trying to do something different and had elements which recalled earlier stories in some degree, The Vampires of Venice ramped this up to a distracting degree. 

The whole of the story exceeds the sum of it's parts, but ask yourself if you also saw elements of The Idiot's Lantern, School Reunion, Tooth and Claw, to name just a few.  Matt Smith was his usual excellent self and the addition of Rory showed he was certainly no Tin Dog.  It should also be noted that the slightly longer running time was used well to let the story breathe in a well that The Beast Below and Victory of the Daleks simply couldn't. 

This proved to be a sumptuous story to cap so there's a larger set to move through this time.  Images and caps for The Vampires of Venice are now online.  Next up the surreal Amy's Choice.  Can't wait!

It's a curious thing, this continuation of The Time of Angels is. While it certainly provided the back half of this story, the pacing and segmentation of the story (Escape, Forest w/Dr, Forest w/o Dr, bridge, and coda) made it feel, at least in the minds of the THT Brain Trust, to be equally interested in setting up the season-long storyline as resolving the plot involving the Weeping Angels.  There's been a fair amount of discussion out there (you know… THERE) about the parallels between this season and the Eccleston season in 2005 in terms of story choice and underlying running story. But whereas the clues planted in 2005 were quite, quite subtle (for those who even knew to be looking for such things at the time) there's no subtlety this time around. 

It's a bit of a surprise to see the "crack" motif taken on head-on, though not unwelcome it has to be said…  But one wonders if this will begin to exclude casual viewers should it feature too prominently from here on out.  We suspect Moffat is too canny for that.  As for Amy, Moffat seems determined to put this character through the ringer, but it should also be noted that half of the Moffat scripted episodes are now out of the way.  Will other writers be as determined to put Amy through her paces? 

Paces and pulses also quickened at the end of the episode with the Smoochie, Smoochie Time (as described by Smith and Gillan).  At the risk of sounding die-hard traditionalist, we 're always a but discomfited by overt sexuality in Doctor Who.  Amy seems to switch into this mode in odd ways and odd times–but it also seems this ties back to the overall theme for the season.  As for timing–she's getting married during the World Cup!  But because June 26th, 2010 is also a Saturday, what will be the schedule implications for the rest of the Season?  Should the season run uninterrupted, June 26th would be when episode 13 airs.  Hmmm.

Images and caps for Flesh and Stone are now online

This is what we as fans expected the Moffat era to be, whereas The Eleventh Hour split the difference between styles for himself and RTD and The Beast Below honored the notions of many stories–including those of RTD–into a pastiche that worked for the most part, The Time of Angels carried forward not only some of his previous themes and characters, River Song from Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead and the Weeping Angels from Blink, but also the hopes of many fans and non-fans alike. 

This was the first story into production so we here at THT Worldwide, and we'll wager you too, were wondering if we'd see a Four to Doomsday / Castrovalva situation regarding Matt Smith getting to grips with character.  Our observation is that he succeeded quite, quite well, as does everything else with this story.  Now experienced Who fans are thoroughly acquainted with two-part story syndrome in which back halves of two-part stories fall well short of the promise of the first half.  While that remains to be seen as of this writing, do you have that underlying sense that this will happen again?  We don't.

Lots of images this time around… many of them stemming from first days filming on the series.  Those images will stay up in their special gallery until after next week after which it will disappear.  We've also held some back for Flesh and Stone based on pure guess work, but don't be surprised if at least some of the images for The Time of Angels shift around after the concluding chapter.  Caps and images for The Time of Angels are now online.

A couple of housekeeping items.  Our RSS feed problems of the past few weeks are resolved so please adjust your readers to from here forward.  Also we're happy to announce the return of the dynamic ratings table.  Each season we rank the stories against each other.  Do our ratings tally with yours?

Ahem.  It's probably worth restating for those unfamiliar with the THT Brain Trust that we are not , not have we ever been, ga-ga about our favorite little pepperpots from Skaro.  Nevertheless it must be daunting for any production team to do something inventive with the Daleks, and given their recent history on the program, and perhaps their overexposure, this hesitation to use them would be all the more daunting.  Still, especially after watching Confidential, it felt a little bit like it was filling in the checkboxes of a tight brief given by Moffat et.al.  Now sometimes this works, our favorite example of this being Planet of Fire, but this was also the second straight story which felt like it underran to a degree (was the coda for Bracewell really necessary?). 

Still despite it all, a re-watch went down better than the primary viewing, and once again the Doctor-Companion interaction shone throughout.  It's no longer a trend but a fact that this Doctor, despite his wisdom, makes mistakes, has time slippages, etc.  Why Amy couldn't remember the Daleks was superbly handled as a parallel mystery to run through the season.

Images and caps for Victory of the Daleks are now online.