I missed that, was that Rory after meeting the Doctor?

I'm a little worried the Doctor has taken his own stalker traveling, I'm not sure I'd trust someone who had homemade action figures of me.

Nice, how special their relationship is though, he being her imaginary friend, she the first person he met on regenerating. A very clever way of creating an instant and very real bond - I wouldn't expect less from Moffat.

Yep, the indication is quite obviously that this was the way when they were kids, and presumably not something that crossed over into their bedroom antics.

I would be well up for Doctor roleplay

I mean, er... nothing.

I've already been villified for quite fancying the new Doctor, this evening.
Better hair than Tennant™

maybe it did... And she made him raggedy




Too far...

I don't fancy him, yet.

I've been playing Doctor Who with boys for as long as I can remember.

Just watched it on iPlayer (I was at work when it aired. Boo!) and it is a rare and exhilarating experience to have high expectations matched and surpassed. Apart from the scream-heavy cold open, I enjoyed the hell out of the whole thing. An admittedly light and silly episode crammed full of creepy little moments (I jumped with Prisoner Zero appeared behind Amy in the hidden room, and the image of the man barking was weirdly disconcerting), thought that the music was a nice change, more 50s sci-fi than modern bombast, and thought that Smith and Gillan had brilliant chemistry.

I had a massive grin on my face when all the previous Doctors' faces appeared. That was the moment that clinched it for me.

I would write more, but I'm going out drinking and I've already delayed so I could watch the episode.

In short, I bloody loved it and I am really looking forward to the rest of this series.

He has floppy/side parting-y hair and wears braces.
Perfect.
On the other hand, some of the clothes he was wearing on Confidential were... worrying. That diamante studded denim jacket for one.

And the black straw porkpie hat - yikes.

Oh yes, the hat.
Truly worrying, let us never speak of it again.

Worthy of submission to Look at this fucking hipster.com

Aaaaaaaaaaaargh.

Oh god.

What does that actually say?
Something Hell New York?

One thing that's niggling me is Amy being a Kissagram - how much call for one of those is there in a small village with few amenities?

I'm just hoping she stopped off for all the other costumes she mentioned.

Just watched it as I had recorded last night.

Where to start? Wow might do. Smith makes a pretty awesome doctor. I liked Tennant but the end of time and it's long drawn out moping conclusion killed his doctor for me.

Smith's Doctor is nutty and eccentric without being slapstick or wacky. He channelled a few doctors of old too. Troughton, Davison, and just a dash of Tennant. He's going to be (or already starting to be) brilliant.

As for Amy, she's a fantastic companion. Sexy, funny, and has just a bit of nuttiness about her to work well with Smith's Doctor (well I say nutty, bit of a psychological thing after being abandoned by the doctor, the dolls, drawings, making Rory dress as him and the fact her wedding dress is a bit 'raggedy'). Most of all, she's not annoying.

Also the way the Doctor finds out what he looks like, rather than just a mirror.

This series shall be spectacular, I can feel it.

I just remembered - someone had geeked up sufficiently to dress as The Doctor's current incarnation yesterday.

He was not un-cute either.

The 'Alterna-WWII' episode is on the week after next, the brief synopsis says "An old friend calls the Doctor back to help". Every one of my extremities is crossed that it's Nancy, even if she's not on the cast list.

The Bill Nighy episode is written by Richard Curtis! Not sure whether I want it to be more Love Actually than Mr Bean, or vice versa.

I think I preferred the old days when you didn't get a trailer. Or not one within the episode.... I'd like the episode to end, the credits role and then next weeks promo after the music's finished.

Other than that small quibble, ...and the fact that I wasn't too keen on the new music... or that the new Tardis interior looks like a steam-punk teletubby house... I liked it.

A rather marvellous start for all concerned I think. Matt Smith was ace, and I heart Karen Gillan. Really looking forward to the rest of the season now, some intriguing little snippets in the trailer.

It'll be River Song, won't it?

Yeah, said return doesn't excite me though.

That relationship will be a bit pervy on her part now I think.

Indeed.

Oh, and I'm slightly miffed from the season teaser that this Doctor will end up snogging his assistant. I expected better of you, Moffat.

The episode of Doctor Who Confidential that accompanies The Eleventh Hour is good fun. I particularly like the revelation that Karen Gillan is the cousin of the girl who plays her younger self, but she didn't meet her until the first read-through.

The stop-motion sequence is really very impressive. Must have taken absolutely ages.

I liked that, just the right level of creepy weirdness, not too "Ooh! Look at me I'm mental!" with the Doctor's oddness (like it was towards the end of Tennants run) and an actual, decent plot that didn't rely on "magic fixed it" like all of Russell Davies' seemed to. I didn't even mind the self-referencing from Moffat with "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey" and the finger-snap opening of the TARDIS as they didn't feel shoehorned in as a "look at how clever we are" nudge to the audience which they could have.

I think I might make a point of watching this series a bit more regularly than previously.


Actually Mr Love Bean?

Just watched it, and like everyone else, loved it.
We were about 20 minutes in before my wife suggested we should get Smiths action figure. Put in on the wall next to Tennant. That's how good it was.

I love the new titles and music. The stormy time tunnel with it's thunder and lightning is loads more convincing than whatever it was they had before. The new Tardis wasn't different enough for me to feel that excited about. Perhaps as they go around it more I'll get more excited. I was quite excited when they showed the wardrobe in Christmas Invasion, and that was just a wardrobe.
The way the Doctor defeated Prison Zero was aces, and I'm hoping that we'll see a notable reduction in deus ex machina now RTDs gone. Alright, a computer virus probably shouldn't have reset an analogue clock on the hospital wall, but whatever, it generally made sense. At least he didn't set the worlds computers to zero by psychically tuning himself into the worlds satellites or some other such cobblers.
The New Companion, I'm still to be convinced on. She's trouble, going off into rooms against saner judgement, or restraining the Doctor when he's clearly trying to sort stuff out. Why would you pick a companion who's trouble? I'd pick one that just did whatever I told them, and was good at saying jokes. I guess they wouldn't even have to do everything I told them, just be able to think ahead 20 minutes past what was happening right now - Be able to play the long game.
She is funny when she does that worried looking double thumbs up in the trailer though. I guess I can look forward to that bit.

Also, I smell a season finale with the whole silence coming through unexplained cracks in the universe thing that was briefly mentioned.
If it's silent, and if they're in episode 3, then it can't be Daleks again. Or Cybermen. Those two things aren't silent. They make noises. Noises that can be put on sound chips and inserted into toys and full head masks and probably keyrings. So it won't be them again, will it? WILL IT?

Big Thumbs up from the Krinkle Penthouse all round then. I'm actually looking forward to the episodes now, rather than looking forward to the inevitable frustration and clock watching that came with the 2009 specials that I seemed to be watching out of some misplaced sense of duty.

This "Pandorica" that Prisoner Zero said would open.. Sounds a bit like Pandora, Pandora's box..

This box called a Pandorica will open and bring silence. Exciting.

Or it could be a 'Pandoras box' of everything, Cybermen, etc flying out. I saw roman soldiers in the trailer too.

The skin of the universe is cracking too, maybe that's the pandorica, and how Daleks and Cybermen can exist again after being obliterated. The crack still exists somewhere, because you saw it on the Doctor's scanner at the end, he looks at it and he's hiding an ulterior motive for having Amy in the TARDIS I bet, like if she stays home she'd end up dead.

Jesus, I hope not.



Yeah, maybe that's why he's keeping her as a companion. Not just because he messed her up a bit by failing to take five minutes to go five minutes into the future. Maybe he needs her for further investigations into the crack.

MY Doctor (my wife, who is actually a scientist, who I'm going to start calling "Doctor" now Doctor Who is good again, so I can pretend she's the Doctor and I'm her annoying companion) did point out that this whole crack thing does sound a lot like the stuff that rounded out series 2.
I'd really like a season finale that doesn't end with a returning villain. I'd like a villain that is new, and previously un-bested, and a genuine threat.

And 'DUCK!'

Oh, I get it. The text message.
I wondered what you were banging on about earlier with Duck.
I thought you meant a duck. Something to do with the duck pond. Something I definitely couldn't fit into a Blink reference. Didn't want to say. Thought it might make it look like I missed a reference, and the other massive nerds would laugh at me.

I just thought everyone was ignoring me. For a couple of pages back there I felt like Arabella Weir in that Fast Show sketch.

That was just fantastic. The new theme will take some getting used to, but other than that, brilliant. The stop motion sequence was one of my favorite parts--Moffat giving genuine insight into how little the doctor misses, even in a field full of people; how truly thunderously intelligent he is. Smith was great, after years of Tennant shouting and whinging it's great to see someone having (or allowed to have) FUN with the part like Eccleston and Baker did. This is going to be a madcap wild ride and my hope is that they chain Moffat to his desk so he can never leave the show.

My review of The Eleventh Hour on my blog

Some slight spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen the episode, but they are very slight.

It's not worth posting pretty much what's already been said. So just some brief points.


New Doctor. Good.

New assistant (and younger version). Good.

New music. Alright.

New TARDIS (outside). A touch too neon blue. And where's that ambulance sticker come from? Otherwise, nice as ever.

New TARDIS (inside). Fabulous.

First episode. Very good.

The look and feel of the series ahead going by the end of opening episode trailer. Bloody fantastic.

Well, 3 for 3 with me owning the Doctors* Jackets (and Captain Jack's) since my late teens - not too shabby.

I was thoroughly impressed with this opener - comedic gold (the eating part at the beginning), sexiness (There was no way she was a police woman - I gave her a good look at to make sure), mystery (the cracks), some zaniness (The imaginary friend Doctor who everyone knew about) and of course some rubbish looking baddies (Haven't seen confidential but I take it that the FX team were ejaculating into the camera about how great they are and not seeing what people are doing on Youtube, by themselves, with no budget and far superior to their efforts).

I like the whole rugger bugger Cambridge professor thing the Doctor has going on and am looking forward to Amy's transformation from psycho bitch from hell into cause for the meta-multiverse's collapse scared ginger from the hypothalamus.

Good stuff!

Now these cracks that appear, the one on Amy's wall and the shape of one on the Tardis' oscilloscope - what are they? I think it'll be a long drawn out subplot which will hopefully leave the Whovian universe pre RTD by its end. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that The Doctors meddling with time has caused time itself to repair...er... itself (wipe out existence sort of thing).

Amy or Amelia "There's no ducks in this" Pond. Has the Doctor (or his darling Tardis) picked her out specifically for a reason? Amelia is a birth defect which results in deformed or missing limbs. Pond keeps the water thing going on (River Song). What is her thing and why is she so nuts about the Doc? (Obviously she is the Rani).

Rory - we get to see his ID badge during the rather decent still shot brainstorm by the Doctor. Why does it say issued 30/11/1990?:



Also he's in at least 6 more of this seasons episodes (including the next one - he was photographed on set during filming). Is he a time traveller too? Is he the link between Amy's house and the coma patients? Has the crack spend or slowed time in the village making the Doctor late and perhaps giving rise to the Ood's hugely accelerated development last time we saw them?

And that village - it's almost Hot Fuzzesque. As mentioned previously, how does everyone know who Amy is and yet she has a job as a kissogram? Where are all these people who'd phone her for a party, also why so many coma patients?

Mysteries galore and with nothing but a beach front house in Thailand and shed loads of time I'm looking forward to seeing how it all unfolds. I'm going barmier out here!!

Hats off to the entire production team (FX guys too - c'mon Doctor Who is meant to have rubbish looking baddies).

RTD is dead, long live the Moff!

-m0r

* C'mon LATS et al. He is the same man but also different - do have have his jacket or theirs?

Interesting. I didn't notice the date on his badge. Could be a mistake but then the amount of people looking at that in post production, must be deliberate.

Didn't the doctor say something about two time zones converging when examining amy's crack? (arf). Plus the other crack on his screen, which he blatantly noticed because he acted oddly.

Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey.

I like your thinking m0r, and your painstaking analysis.

I thought it was just set a few years ago, and the village looking stylised and timeless was part of the whole 'look of Harry Potter' stuff they were adopting this time, but now you mention it...

Wouldn't internet conferences put it in the last couple of years? My guess is that this is something the Doctor has caused, could it be due to the broken TARDIS?

Anyway, Alex Kingston thinks Matt Smith is sexier than David Tennant.

Cue the screaming fan girls . . .

I think unwittingly when he crashed the TARDIS, Leadworth shunted forward in time. So say when he meets Amy it's the mid-70s, he lands, the whole place zips forward into the 90s, just in time for the big technological boom with the internet and high performance PCs etc etc, and progresses naturally from there with new phones and all, Only the people of leadworth think it's 1990 or thereabouts.

I don't know, I'm not sure any of us can second guess this, it's Steven Moffat we're talking about here!

EDIT: As for the 'who is sexier?' thing, heehee, fangirls go nuts..

^ But the guy in Ledworth had a laptop and webcam that didn't look very mid-ninties!

Oops, I meant when Amy, Rory etc are kids, it's the 70s or something (I'm going on the fact Rory must have been in his early 20s in 1990).

Then The Doctor crashes, the whole place gets moved out of time into the 90s (1996 if the last scene with the '14 years since fish fingers and custard' thing takes place 2010). Then when he turns up again it's around 2008, then his third landing 2010.

But to everyone there, they just think it's 1990-ish, and think that's how advanced it is in the 90s, they just don't know any better. But in reality it's 2010.

I've confused myself.

^ And me!

I'm starting to think I didn't really pay much attention to that episode. I get very confused by time travel things anyway. I watched Primer once and my brain nearly exploded.

I really like the new Doctor. His sense of fun makes a refreshing change from the angstiness and sense of melancholy that the later Tennant episodes had. Matt Smith seems to have a 'wise beyond his years' thing going on which fits the character really well. I like the bright sunny village with the sense of something sinister underneath and thought that for a primetime show, it was actually quite scary. The locked room that you can only see out of the corner of your eye gave me the creeps. I felt it was slightly let down by actually showing the weird snakey monster thing as leaving it to the audience's imagination could have made it even scarier.

I'd have liked to see Olivia Colman do more in it, but that's just because I think she's ace.

Well the hospital administrator not knowing what a camera-phone is as well as the Doctor writing a virus from Leadworth which defaults all the digital clocks (and the analogue ones as Henry pointed out [Hi Krinklebum!]) in the world to zero doesn't make sense either if there is a time difference between there and elsewhere.

Having Facebook, Bebo and Twitter all listed on the fancy phone Rory also has some bells ringing (pun intended).

And finally prisoner Zero seems to know where the cracks in time have come from (or at least bluff it well enough against a Time Lord to fool them into questioning their own knowledge) which leads me to believe there are matters beyond the observable at work, and talked about by certain people within that potential conspiracy.

Stephen Moffat isn't known for his loose ends (I'd like to see how WWII turns out and whether Captain Jack is there) and so I'd imagine (or hope to) that this is a ridicuosly brilliant set of affairs being spun. Add to this that we know River Song is going to be in more than a few of the series' episodes and we have a veritable buffet of fanboism (now can I get a whoop, whoop [non-rhetorical]).

I can't wait to see tomorrows episode and furthermore it has reinspired me to join you guys again as I have something to talk about with you now as well as listen to your tips (Sorry Sean, I should have listened to your Flight of the Conchords musings when they arose - love them now).

-m0r

I watched most of it, having had major problems with all of the torrent sites I watched it in sections on YouTube (except the middle where he saves the world...annoying). I thought it was a fantastic start to the series and Matt did a fantastic job, as I was sure he would. He has a lovely old-fashioned style to his Doctor that creates an interesting contrast to his youth - he has that ability to seem older than his years, which is crucial for this role. Karen was ace as well, just barmy enough to go along with everything.

My favourite part of the whole episode was the beginning though with the young Amelia. I thought that actress was astoundingly good and she and Matt had great comedy in their scene with the fish and the custard. I'm really gutted I can't go to the special screening next week and see if I can say hello to him, I'm recording with my band.

On a side note - Matt did used to dress a bit pretentiously even at university, so don't be surprised if you see more weird clothing choices.

She'd never acted before. And Matt was very cute with her on set, telling her she was brilliant and clever.