Basic social interaction makes me want to die

Me and Glee; Me and small talk. Yeah, that's a twofer.

So the Gleecap of the Super Bowl episode is to come. Really. I'm working on it. It's already way to freaking long and I'm roughly a quarter way through the episode. I got a bit burned out on it, since I don't love Glee the same way I love Doctor Who and I got burned out on Doctor Who too so... yeah.

But I want to talk to you about banal conversations and how they are completely useless.

Many topics, one post

So super blog post made me think super date which made this necessary. 

I have a reasonable number of small things to blog about, so I thought I would combine them into one, not necessarily super, but multi-topic post.

1. New Year's Resolutions

My resolutions are pretty simple. Quit smoking and quit drinking soda. So at 11:59 on December 31st I had a cigarette in one hand and a Bacardi and Coke in the other. Both of those were cast aside once the countdown was done. I've done pretty well. I broke on both yesterday, but fuck the lot of you if you think that's not doing well. I've decided quitting soda altogether is probably a little stupid, as when I had some yesterday it turned my entire shift around due to the energy it provided, so I'm thinking it'll be an emergency pick-me-up thing. Cigarettes are... whatever. I'm not smoking anymore. I'll slip up, because I will, but yeah.

Emotions are weird

I have always been fairly fascinated by emotions, in the weird meta way that I view my life sometimes. I have to say that contentment is my absolute favorite thing to feel. I think that's why I'm so fascinated with Daoism, since that seems to be the general goal of the philosophy.

I feel like happiness gets way to much attention. Happiness is nice and all, but it's sort of volatile. It's contingent on what's happening at the moment and a slight change can knock it completely out of your system. It's fleeting, not meant to last. All the "intense" emotions seem bad to me. Well, not bad, but sort of the same and not all that awesome. Happiness and anger are big things that fill you and leave you feeling empty when they run out. Depression or just regular sad are sort of the same. It's all very exhausting and even the most positive things hardly seem enjoyable. And of course when I'm happy it only takes about five seconds for my brain to start questioning why I am and if I really should be and telling me I'm a terrible person who needs to be sad all the time!

Because my brain doesn't shut up. Meditating is super hard for me, because even if I can get it to stop running full speed, it'll at least play a song in the background (There's no place on Earth like Australia! No island as wide! No land as diverse!), but when I'm content it just all stops. Completely. I am actually in the moment, and the moment is good.

So I started this blog post way earlier today and sort of should've started it over, but that would mean deleting everything above and that just doesn't sound fun. Really I just wanted to gloat about the fact that I get to be content now and it's awesome. And mind-blowing, but not so mind-blowing it stops. I wish I could communicate better in the conversational tone I prefer to use on here, but I hope you're getting this. I just can't approach the blog in my academic writing way, because that isn't fun! And now I'm just sort of rambling.

Aaaand I've decided that Doctor Who recaps are way too much work and I didn't give myself enough time to do them, so I'll be stretching them out until the new season actually starts in the spring. I'll do the Christmas special when it airs, but then I'll go back to wherever I am in the previous season. That'll give me an excuse to stretch the Who-watching all year as well.

I am terribly concerned about this

So Josh has pointed out to me that my recaps are a little on the verbose side. I am absolutely addicted to Television Without Pity, which is probably why they tend to be this way. I will watch a show and read a recap there, even though they are sort of written for people who have missed an episode.

I am also writing these as an excuse to rewatch this season before the Christmas special. I am bad at blogging, as I've already said, so this allows me to sort of kill two birds with one stone. I will be rewatching the episodes, so I might as well get some posts out of it.

However, I'm a little worried that no one is interested. I will definitely post my recap of The Beast Below, but I might just skip around the series and pick out the good episodes that I feel deserve/need proper recaps. It's a lot of work and if no one cares I'd rather not invest the time. So are you interested?

(This basically boils down to my basic blogging fear, which is that no one really cares what I have to say and it's very wrong of me to assume that they do. I am trying to make my Beast Below recap a little less straight recappy and more commentary-y, but we'll see how that goes.)

Doctor Who: The Beast Below

Before I start my recap, I'd like to share some of my thoughts on this episode. It's pretty bad. It's easily the worst episode Steven Moffat has written for the series, which does not sound like much since he's other episodes are pretty much mind-blowingly amazing, but hear me out. It's bad in the worst way, because it seems like it's going to be great. It's got a lot of really interesting concepts that draw you in, but then most of them just don't go anywhere. And, you know, space whale. There are definitely bits I like, but, taken on a whole it's pretty much shit. But every show has their bad episodes and this is basically as bad as Who gets. The season started out strong, went a little shaky with this and the next episode, but it gets pretty awesome as it continues.

Previously: I recapped The Eleventh Hour here.

Now:

Moving on.

We open on a shot of a spaceship, seen above. It's a little derelict, but it has a giant union jack so its okay. We're given a closer shot and we see that the building looking things are emblazoned with various UK city names.

We then cut to a classroom, presumably on board this ship. We hear a computer-y voice telling various students "Well done" and so on as they leave the class. One student is still sitting at his desk and doesn't seem to want to go. Another student encourages the first one, Timmy, to get the hell on already and leave. When he gets up to a booth at the front of the class, we see what was talking.

Kind of friendly looking, but creepy. Instead of the positive feedback it was giving the rest of the students, it informs Timmy that he's a bad boy and received a zero. Its face starts to turn during this sentence and once it reaches the word zero it sounds absolutely demonic.

But Timmy gets to leave the class at least. He meets his friend from earlier, Mandy, at a "vator," which is their hip future term for elevator. Maybe that seems cooler in the UK since they call them lifts? I don't know. She informs us that he cannot ride on the vator if he got a zero, lest he be sent below, and he'll have to walk all 20 decks back to London, but she'll wait for him. Timmy, being a lazy bitch, gets on the next elevator. There's another smiler (those face guys) on the elevator and a screen showing a rather toothy girl reciting a poem ending in "Expect no love from the beast below!" as the elevator quickly drops to floor zero. The floor opens and Timmy screams, falling through. And the smiler reveals a third, SCARY face to us all.

And then it's time for the theme song!

Our next shot is the Doctor holding on to Amy's leg as she floats outside the TARDIS. She reminds us that she's Amy Pond, she had an imaginary friend, and he came back the night before her wedding. The Doctor brings her back in and apparently this was all to prove that the TARDIS is, in fact, a spaceship and not to give us a pretty space shot and inform us that the Doctor can extend the air shell outside the TARDIS, because that won't come up in a few episodes or anything.

Anyway! They happen to be floating by the Starship UK. He gives her the history of the ship, which boils down to the human race fleeing the Earth for the stars after solar flares roasted it. He waxes on about how it's not just a ship, it's an idea, an entire country full of people living and laughing and searching the stars for a new home. Through this Amy has been yelling for him, because she's slipped out of the TARDIS and is hanging on by the door frame. He drags her back in and fills her in on his (totally fake, just made up for this episode so Amy can save the day in the end) agenda. Namely, "We are observers only. That's the one rule I've always stuck to in all my travels. I never get involved in the affairs of other people or planets." She relates this to making a nature documentary, having to leave injured cubs to die, and happens to turn on a screen showing Timmy's friend crying. She says it must be hard being so detached and cold. The Doctor has, of course, already batman'd out of there and pops up on screen bumping into the girl. He gestures for Pond (which is what he calls her by the way) to come on already.

And so she enters the ship and finds the Doctor. She realizes that she's really in the future and her immediate thought is that she's been dead for centuries. Good on her, usually takes them a little bit longer to get to that conclusion. He asks her to find what's unusual around them. She points out bikes, thinking that's weird, but he counters by pointing out that she's in her nightie. Which she forgot about. The Doctor informs her that it's a police state on the brink of collapse and then gets distracted by a cup of water, which he borrows from someone's table and sets on the floor, citing a search for an escaped fish.





Amy asks what the fuck that cup thing was about, but he says he doesn't know because he thinks a lot and it's hard to keep track. They run off and an ominous looking dude in a robe (seriously, all the other guys are wearing like old time-y suits and bowler caps. I feel like if I were an ominous sneaky person, I'd probably don the normal attire) shows up behind them.

So this episode has been sort of outrageous thus far, but interesting stuff right? But right here is where I started to be apprehensive. The robe guy calls another guy, who is watching the Doctor on a screen. Robe guy says that he saw it for himself and asks if the other guy is going to tell "her." Apparently other guy is under orders to do so, so he calls someone else after telling robe guy to keep an eye on the Doctor.

And we cut to this bit of over the top, Phantom of the Opera bullshit.

Yep. That's a lady in a dramatically splayed robe, sitting in front of way too many water cups (for the purpose she's using them for, one would probably do), with a porcelain mask and A FALLEN CHANDELIER. Are you kidding me? Anyway, this is the "her" they referred to a second ago. She asks if he (the Doctor) "did the thing." And this is where my head explodes. It's one thing to be mysterious in a way that makes sense. Preserve the story and all that. But "Did he do the thing?" is a sentence that belongs in something penned by Joss Whedon, not Steven Moffat. No Buffy speak (not matter how much I love it) on my Who please. Anyway, when she finds out he apparently did do this thing (which is totally the water glass thing anyway, so come on), she sweeps herself off the floor and puts on the mask. Okay.

So we go back to the market area, where the Doctor points out that the strange thing is a child crying silently, which means she doesn't just want attention or something, she just can't stop. And none of the other people are stopping to see what's wrong, which means it's a VAST CONSPIRACY and they all already know there is something wrong but they can't do shit about it. Basically they're carrying on, which is surprising for somewhere called Starship UK, I know.

Okay so the Doctor informs Amy that her task is to talk to Mandy (who has disappeared, but the Doctor stole her wallet so he has her name and address to give to Amy), that crying girl/Timmy's friend, and find out what's going on and why everyone is scared of the booths (which he determines by noticing that the booths are clean while the rest of the ship is pretty dirty). She doesn't want to do this, because she's in her goddamned nightie, but he says her choice is this or Leadworth and he knows what she's going to do.

While she's taking care of that, he'll be doing what he always does: Staying out of trouble. Badly. She asks if this is how it always is, never interfering unless there's a crying child. He says yes. What he should really say is no, it's always interfering because I'm the goddamned Doctor and I have a TV show and it's nobody likes documentaries. But instead he lies and hops over the bench they're sitting on for no real reason other than his fabulousness.

So Amy goes to begin her task. She finds herself sort of lost in the ghetto of Starship UK. And then Mandy shows up and says she knows Amy is following her. Amy returns Mandy's wallet and Mandy knows that the Doctor stole it. Oh you street smart little scamp.

They stumble across a hole, covered in a large tent. Mandy informs her they'll have to turn round and take another path, because you can't go through there. Amy, being a companion and therefore being able to sniff out danger, decides to ignore the sage advice of her new street smart friend who has been (presumably) living here her entire life and go in. Or as she puts it, she can't resist a keep out sign. Mandy informs her they are not supposed to talk about what's below. Amy cements her self as a loose-cannon companion who lives by her own rules and chastises her for not breaking the rules, when there are fucking creepy as shit smilers that will send you basically to hell. Speaking of which, there's one watching all this go down and it doesn't seem happy.

That's the face Amy makes when thinking about the fact that she's getting married "a long time ago tomorrow morning" while simultaneously picking a lock on a mysterious tent thing on a spaceship in the future by the way. I thought you'd want to know.

So there's a big stinger tentacle thing under the tent and it starts trying to stab Amy. She makes it out of the tent fine though. Only to be surrounded by more of those mysterious robe guys, who knock her out with some gas from a ring.

I'm getting a little blah about this episode so I think I'll just hit the important bits. Which is what I should be doing anyway.

Oh wait, we're back to the Doctor. Maybe my indifference will pass. Yeah I'm basically live-blogging this now by the way, otherwise I won't get it done tonight. Plus my notes get increasingly nonsensical the longer the episode goes on, so I'm trying to force myself to write in complete sentences.

Anyway! The Doctor comes across a random glass of water, apparently placed their by the phantom lady, who confronts him and has a chat about the impossible truth in the water. Apparently he came straight to the engine room, because the water doesn't move which it would if there were an engine running the ship. All the power stuff isn't connected. So there isn't an engine.

Phantom lady is Liz X/Ten. So yeah. She says Amy is safe and gives the Doctor something that will help him find her.

We cut to Amy who is in a voting cubicle. She sees 3 buttons: protest, record, or forget. She is informed she will see a short history of Starship UK. The computer pulls her up, and because she was a citizen back in the day and the computer doesn't think it's word that she's impossibly old, she's allowed to vote.


Okay! I'd like to time out again. What's going on here is that they are going to show her the truth about the Starship UK, because she got too curious and checked out what was under the tent. She will be given the option to protest what's going on or forget what she saw. This is one of the better fleshed out concepts in this episode and I actually find the idea really interesting. If you protest you are sent below, but they don't tell you that (what they do say is that if 1% of the population does the same, shit is going to get real). The whole voting thing just makes the whole "we don't talk about what's going on" thing make a lot more sense. Every one (over 16) knows that they can find out, or they already have, and most elect to forget because the truth is terrible (but they accept the fact that it's necessary to survive). Basically it's a great way to suppress dissent. But back to the show!

Anyway, Amy is very upset by what she sees and elects to forget. She also left a message for herself telling her to get the Doctor off the ship so he cannot interfere.

The Doctor finds Amy and gets the lowdown on the whole voting thing from Mandy. Amy also hides the message she sent herself from the Doctor. Oh snap! "Once every five years everyone chooses to forget what they've learned. Democracy in action." Damn Doctor, that's cold.

Also: "You look human." "No. You look Time Lord. We came first."

Once again, ANYWAY! The Doctor decides to hit the "protest" button and, as I mentioned, they get sent below. The Doctor is pretty excited, but Amy is freaked.

Liz X comes up to Mandy outside the voting booth, and they apparently know each other. So that's nice.

The Doctor and Amy go down a chute and end up in a big old mouth. Amy's nightie is officially gross.


The Doctor is, of course, excited by this giant beasty. It starts swallowing, so the Doctor makes it throw up. It's... unpleasant and, as the Doctor puts it, not big on dignity. And he yells Geronimo again. I'm sorry that I keep bringing that up, but I do not become okay with it until the season finale.

They end up in an overflow pipe and the government is apparently super prepared for this type of thing, because the only way out is to hit a "forget" button to open up a door.

The Doctor questions the smilers that are down there, and they just put their angry faces on and, it turns out they can get out of their booths. Liz X comes up and shoots them.

Turns out Liz X has not voted, because she isn't a British subject. She's also aware that he's the Doctor. Because she's the queen. Of course she is. Okay she's also hilarious, because she reveals this information like so:

"I'm the bloody queen mate, basically, I rule."

God I love puns. Shut up.

They find more of the stinger things. They come from the same creature they were in. Liz is very upset that they're feeding her subjects to it.

The guy that the original robe guy reported to sees that Liz has investigated the lower levels and tells someone to start the protocol.

The robe guy shows up and it turns out that he's a smiler too. So that's weird. He tells her she has to go to the tower, under the highest authority, which is clearly her, so she's given orders concerning this.

In the tower/dungeon we find out that the beast will not eat children and the Doctor and Amy were the first adults to escape.

Turns out the beast is allowing the ship to move, not an engine. They shock the exposed pain center of it's brain to keep it going.

The Doctor figures all of this out and explains it all to a very confused Liz X. She is stuck on the idea that it's an infestation, but really it's what is keeping them going and alive.

The Doctor does something so they can hear the cries of what turns out to be a starwhale (SPACE WHALE!). It's pretty awful and he quickly stops it.

It turns out, shockingly, that Liz X gave the orders to use the creature. Because instead of having ruled for 10 years, as she thought, she has actually ruled for over 200 years. Which the Doctor figures out by the age of her mask, which was made to perfectly fit her face. She's been living roughly the same ten years over and over again, always ending up learning the truth and voting to forget or abdicate.

Her video shows that the starwhale, apparently the last of its kind, came to the UK when it's children were screaming because the UK couldn't get its shit together (unlike every other country INCLUDING SCOTLAND) and build a ship that worked. They trapped it and built their ship around it. If she forgets she will start over and if she abdicates the starwhale will be released and (according to her video) their ship will fall apart.

The Doctor is mad that Amy tried to save him from the choice of saving humanity (really just the UK) or the starwhale. He says she's going home after this, because she decided what he needed to know. He's being kind of a bitch.

He decides that the right choice is to pass a huge charge through the starwhale's brain, leaving it brain dead, letting the ship continue moving without the whale having to be in pain. He's pretty pissed at people.

Timmy shows up again, and Mandy pets one of the giant stinger things. So she has a realization that the starwhale was offering itself to save the UK's children and they didn't need to trap it anyway. She uses Liz X's hand to hit the abdicate button, releasing the starwhale. Something akin to an earthquake happens, but the starwhale doesn't book it. I would have booked it since they fucking tortured me for 200 years.

"If you were that old and that kind and the very last of your kind, you couldn't just stand there and watch children cry." She's talking about the Doctor too, obviously. Since he revealed to her that he's the last of the Time Lords too.

The Doctor chastises Amy for putting everyone at risk, but then they have a really sweet moment where she shows she gets him. Despite my bitching about the whole "children crying" thing earlier, it still works. She understands that all of the shittiness he's had to deal with leads to him wanting to save everyone and always do the right thing. I'm a sucker for Amy and the Doctor's interactions, so even in this awful episode, it still gets me.

Oh and Amy goes "Hey, gotcha" while they're having this sweet hug thing. Remember that for the finale, because I sure as hell didn't until just now. Guess skipping this episode a lot leads to forgetting bits, who knew?

Amy thinks they should say goodbye, because she doesn't get the Doctor as well as she thought. She tells him she's running from something. He says he ran away once a long time ago, and she wonders what happened. He's still running obviously. But all of that discussion is going to have to wait, because Winston Churchill is on the phone for the Doctor.


So it's Dalek and Winston Churchill time, but first we need our arc thing. So they give us a shot of the starwhale, starship UK, and the crack from Amy's wall. Which, screw getting a screen cap of that. If you want to know what it looks like check out my Eleventh Hour recap. And trust me when I say you'll have plenty of opportunities to see it again.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour

Previously on Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor sacrificed himself to save Wilfred Mott, absorbing way too much radiation in the process. He proceeds to regenerate, spewing the radiation through the TARDIS and basically destroying it. Eleven comes into being as the TARDIS is crashing, obnoxiously yelling "GERONIMO" and making me hate him a little bit.

Now:

We open on the TARDIS barreling towards Earth. Eleven is hanging out the doors, still rocking Ten's suit and tie, and pulling it off far better than Ten pulled off Nine's jumper and jacket. And... that's about that for this scene.

Theme song!


And now we cut to a sort of creepy, desolate exterior shot of a house. We see a young girl kneeling by her bed, in that classic prayer position, with a ... slight subversion. She begins "Dear Santa..." and that's the moment I decided I love Amelia/Amy Pond. She asks Santa to please do something about the creepy ass crack in her wall. She can here voices through it. So if he could send the police or something, that'd be sweet. She hears a crash outside, tells Santa she'll BRB (for real), and runs to the window to check it out. She sees "Police" written on the crash landed TARDIS, thanks Santa, and runs out to investigate.

The TARDIS has landed on its back, which causes a bit of the problem for the Doctor. He has to repel out. Which is when I forgave Eleven his geronimo related sins and started high fiving him with my brain. What a way to play with the shows quirks. Anyway, he emerges soaking wet, with triumphant music backing him. Amelia is incredulous. He explains that he had to climb up from the library, but was in the pool, because the pool was in the library.

She asks if he's there about the crack in her wall, which he will see to, but first he wants an apple. Which he then spits out. This bit continues through a number of different food items (highlights: "I hate yogurt, it's just stuff with bits in it!" and the chucking of bread and butter out the front door while yelling "And stay out!"), until he realizes what he really needs is fish sticks dipped in custard.

As they adorably sit across the table from each other enjoying their treats (Amelia is eating some ice cream straight off the scoop), they get to know each other a little bit. Well, Amelia helps the Doctor get to know himself, by informing him that he's funny. He in turn tells her Amelia Pond is a brilliant name, like in a fairy tale. We also learn that Amelia does not have parents, just an aunt. The Doctor underlines his loneliness by saying he doesn't even have that.

The Doctor smoothly brings us back to the subject at hand, namely the crack, by saying since she wasn't scared of him or the crash, it "must be a hell of a scary crack in [her] wall." They head up to Amelia's room to investigate.

While he's going on about the crack, how it was probably caused by two pieces of time or space that were never meant to touch doing so, she gives him an apple with a smiley face carved out of the skin, just like her mum used to. It's sweet and he keeps it for later.

The Doctor chucks some water out of a cup and uses it to listen to the crack. The voices are saying "Prisoner Zero has escaped," which Amelia already knows.

Anyway! Eleven decides that opening the crack up all the way is the best way to close it. He's a little nervous about this, seeing as the last time he tried something like this Rose got trapped in a parallel dimension, and he voices his concern with this exchange:

"You know when grown-ups say everything's going to be fine and you think they're probably lying to make you feel better?"

"Yes," says Amelia with an exasperated tone indicating she knows this feeling very well.

"Everything's going to be fine," says the Doctor with an amazing manic smile.

The Doctor holds Amelia's hand (which is almost as sure a sign of companion status as riding in the TARDIS is) and opens the crack. A giant eyeball appears.

It shoots some light at Eleven and the crack closes. Turns out it was sending a message to his psychic paper (yeah. He has psychic paper. It's pretty sweet.) which says... Prisoner Zero has escaped. They wonder why they would tell them that, but obviously it's because Prisoner Zero has escaped through the crack and into Amelia's house.

Eleven's trying to figure out where the hell this prisoner could be and feels like he's missing something in the corner of his eye. It's made clear that what he's talking about is that weird door on the right behind them, which they cannot see.

But that shit is going to have to wait because the goddamned cloister bell is ringing, which is to say things are getting real with the TARDIS. The bell only rings when something has gone horribly wrong.

So the Doctor runs to the TARDIS and realizes that the engines are phasing and if he doesn't do a quick hop to the future (five minutes ought to do), the whole thing will burn. Amy asks if she can come with, but he says she can't right now because it isn't safe, but he'll be back. She doesn't believe him, because people always lie when they say that. He says he isn't people, he's the Doctor, and she can trust him. Wonder if that'll bite him in the ass? But she believes him.



So the Doctor attaches a rope to himself and the TARDIS doors, hops in shouting Geronimo!, and takes off. Amelia runs inside and packs up her suitcase, but when she runs by the invisible door from earlier... it's open.

I have to break from the recap here and mention the music. Dear god the music here is amazing. The song is "Can I Come With You?" and it's brilliantly employed. It has a very hopeful feel to it, but the second that door is shown open it becomes very ominous and I genuinely feared that they were going to kill off Amelia, despite knowing that she was the official companion for the season. That's how you do a score for TV people!

Back to business. Amelia goes back out to the garden, sits on her suitcase, and waits, while the camera cuts back inside to show someone running through the empty house. (And I think little Amelia waiting for the Doctor while "Can I Come With You?" plays beats Brittany from Glee pushing the meatball across her plate. I forgot to mention this, so this is just being added right now, but FOR REAL!)

Much later the TARDIS reappears in the garden, during the day, sans Amelia. The inside still seems to be burning. The Doctor comes out shouting for Amelia, telling her he figured it out and he knows where Prisoner Zero is.

He runs into the house, using his sonic screwdriver to open the locked door. He gets to the floor with the invisible door and is whacked in the head with a cricket bat.

We cut to a hospital where a nurse (Rory) is trying to convince a doctor (not important) to listen to him. Apparently the coma patients all called for her (well they said Doctor, but who else could they be talking about, right?). She's a complete bitch and doesn't believe him really, then one of the patients does it right there. He says he also has pictures of the patients wandering around the village, but she elects to tell him to GTFO and not come back for a long time, instead of just looking at his damn camera phone. It's not like he was right about something you didn't believe just a second ago doctor lady! I'm so glad she dies. Oops, spoilers. Sort of.

So we cut back to the house, and it appears that the cricket bat culprit is a rather sexily dressed English policewoman who has handcuffed the Doctor to a thing. It's actually Amy, faking an English accent, and I am telling you this because it's important. This really makes it clear that Amy is not really an audience expy, unlike many past companions. Her first appearance as a full grown person involves her deceiving the Doctor and withholding information from him. It's pretty amazing. It's the first of many Doctor-like behaviors exhibited by her.

But anyway! She says that Amelia Pond hasn't lived there for six months and insinuates that it is due to some unfortunate circumstances (DEATH!). The Doctor is very upset at this revelation (I said I'd be five minutes! I promised!)

She says that she lives there and he asks her how many rooms are on this floor, and when she gives the wrong answer he tells her to look where she doesn't want to, the corner of her eye.

She now sees the door, and over the Doctor's protests (Do I just have a face no one listens to?... Again?) she decides to investigate. Really it's the perception filter making her believe that she always knew the door was there (I don't have the key. I lost it.) When she enters, she finds the sonic screwdriver on a table covered in some gross looking stuff. He tells her to leave it, but she grabs it anyway. And then a creepy thing (Prisoner Zero) descends from the ceiling!

The Doctor tells her not to try and see it, because it will kill her if she does, but she ends up looking it square in the face anyway, and high tails it out the door. The Doctor locks it from across the hall with his screwdriver. She wonders if that will hold it and his response is priceless: Yeah of course. It's an interdimensional multiform from outerspace. They're all terrified of wood! Which I took to mean YOU SUCK M. NIGHT HOWEVER YOU SPELL YOUR LAST NAME, but maybe that's just me. Amy's response is an epic bitchface.

She admits that she is not a policewoman and has no back up coming. She's actually a kissogram and pulled on the outfit because he broke into her house and it was that or French maid.

A man (one of the coma patients in the hospital) emerges from the room with a door. Amy thinks maybe it's okay because it's just a man (which come on! You were just in that room! It would be bad even if it were just a man and a dog because they came out of a room that they weren't in!), but the Doctor explains that Zero can take on different forms.

He has the same fascination with the bad things as he always has, because they're novel. He can't disguise it. He questions Zero, calling it a "clever old multiform." Of course, it has a little trouble working with two faces and ends up making the man growl and bark like a dog (Amy: What? I'm sorry, what?!") Eventually it just gives up on the pretense and makes SCARY FACE!


There's a bit of a dance about whether or not they have back-up, but when they finally land on "if we had back-up you'd have to kill us" they hear "Attention Prisoner Zero, the human residence is surrounded." which Eleven decides to say means they are safe. "Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated." Aside from incineration anyway.

So the Doctor grabs her hand and goes "Run!" like we needed another cue that she's the companion, and they book it. The Doctor explains what's going on to Amy again. He also discovers that the TARDIS has locked him out, because it's repairing itself. Then he licks her shed (what a terrible euphemism that would be) and realizes that he isn't six months late, he's twelve years late (the shed was originally destroyed when the TARDIS crashed and the new shed has become old again). He asks why she said it six months and she just screams "WHY DID YOU SAY FIVE MINUTES?!" completely dropping her faked English accent in favor of her Scottish one. This sort of continues for a while. "You hit me with a cricket bat!" "12 YEARS!" is a highlight. Amy is just delighting in finally being able to let out all of this frustration on someone either than the four psychiatrists she went to and kept biting for saying he wasn't real.

They hear the message about the human residence coming from an ice cream truck, and look at this fucking ice cream guy you guys.

It turns out the message is broadcasting everywhere. They run into an old lady's house and see that it's being broadcast on international television stations as well. The old lady also asks Amy if she's with the police now, because it seems like she was just a maid. And a nun. The Doctor says she was a little girl five minutes ago, clearly squicked at the kissogram thing, and she calls him worse than her aunt. But "[he's] The Doctor. [He's] worse than everybody's aunt!" but that's not how he's introducing myself. The name rings a bell with the lady, who realizes it's Amy's imaginary friend, "The Raggedy Doctor," who she used to draw stories about. We also hear about this from Jeff, who lives with the old lady and is fairly attractive.

Oh and the aliens are going to blow up the whole planet. He figures he's got about 20 minutes about 20 minutes to save the world. Unfortunately Leadworth, the village, is pretty crap and the only thing at his disposal is a post office. Which is shut.

And then things got worse. The sun went wibbly, blocked by a force field from the Atraxi (those giant eye things that are going to blow up the world). Everyone starts taking pictures of it, but the Doctor notices Rory standing there, not taking a picture of the sun, but rather the man with a dog from earlier. He is going to go talk to him, telling Amy that he can do it, he can save the world. 20 minutes, run to your loved ones and say goodbye or stay and help me. She screams NO! and proceeds to trap him in a car door using his tie.

She demands an explanation from him. He says he's the Doctor and he's a time traveler. He tosses her the apple from earlier, telling her she knows it's the same apple and asking her to just believe him for twenty minutes.

She agrees to and they stop Rory, who is Amy's boyfriend. He explains about the coma patients (which the Doctor figures out at the same time Rory is telling him). Rory is freaking out about the Doctor's existence (You made me dress up as him!), but Prisoner Zero realizes their presence and starts to be freaky again. An Atraxi ship comes down to scan for non-terrestrial tech, so the Doctor uses his screwdriver to make a bunch of hooplah, because nothing says non-terrestrial like a sonic screwdriver. Unfortunately, the screwdriver has had a rough day and decides to die before Prisoner Zero is found. This really pisses the Doctor off.

So now he has 17 minutes, no TARDIS, and no screwdriver. We also find out that the Atraxi took 12 years to get here because they followed the Doctor, so that's convenient.

So he sends Amy and Rory to the hospital because that's where Prisoner Zero probably went, since he disappeared down a storm drain, and heads back to the old lady's house to use Jeff's laptop. He hacks into a video chat with the foremost minds of our day who are trying to figure out the whole fucked up sun things, gives them some brilliant stuff (like the secret to faster than light travel with 2 diagrams and a joke) so that they'll listen to him, which is a nice change from 10 who usually just went "I AM THE DOCTOR! *STOMP STOMP STOMP* LISTEN TO ME! *POUT POUT POUT*" He writes a virus on the phone he stole from Rory and sends it to everyone, so that they can send it to everyone. It resets counters to zero. He gets ready to take off, leaving Jeff to make them do what he wants them to do. He sort of forces Jeff into being extraordinary ("Today's the day you save the world!" "Why me?" "It's your bedroom.")



Rory and Amy can't get in to the coma patients, due to Patient Zero killing a bunch of bitches, but when they call the Doctor he reminds them that Amy is currently passing as an officer of the law, so they get in. They encounter a lady with 2 children, who explain to them that all the doctors and nurses are dead. And then one of the children starts talking with the woman's voice. It's Prisoner Zero, fucking shit up again! So it's time for the scary face and then running.

They end up in the coma ward, once again using the complicated piece of technology that is a door to stop the alien. They call the Doctor and inform him of what's going on, and he tells them his on his way, having stolen a fire truck. He also asks what window they are at. After Zero breaks down the door and tells Amy that the Doctor will not be coming for her this time, they get a text message that says DUCK (The Doctor texts and drives. For shame!) and the ladder of the fire truck crashes through the window.

The Doctor scurries up the ladder and inside and has a nice little chat with Zero. He asks Zero to give itself up to save the planet, but Zero says it will be killed and it might as well take a planet out with it. Can't fault it there really. The Doctor asks why Zero doesn't just open up another crack, and Zero gives the Doctor some shit about not knowing where the cracks in the universe come from. It also says "The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall." which are our arc words for the season, but they leave Rory quite confused and gift us with his epic "...the fuck?" face.

But now it's the set time for the Doctor's virus to kick in. All the counters in all the world reset to Zero, putting the word out. The Atraxi will be able to track the virus to its source, which happens to be the phone that the Doctor has on him. Zero says that the Atraxi cannot recognize it in this form, but the Doctor points out that the phone has pictures of all the forms it can take and, oh yeah, he just sent all those to the Atraxi. He's pretty proud of himself for this one, exclaiming "Who da man?!" and making some pretty hood arm movements. Of course, this goes over poorly (because the Doctor is a nerd) and he declares he's never saying that again (a little sadly).

But it turns out Zero can take one other form, because it's had years to form a link with Amy. It does so, causing Amy to lose consciousness. Instead of turning into Amy though, Zero first appears to be the Doctor. Little Amelia is quickly shown to be there as well, holding the Doctor's hand. Zero, as Amelia, says that poor Amy never grew up or out of her dream of the Doctor. (It's also interesting that the Doctor's first look at himself is through Amy's psyche pretty much. He doesn't even recognize himself at first, Rory has to point it out to him.)

The Doctor says Amy is dreaming of him because she can hear him. He tells her to dream about what she saw in the room all those years ago, when she got a look at Zero's true form. It works and Zero changes back into itself. The Atraxi snatch him up and book it.

This will simply not do, so the Doctor calls them and yells about the Shadow Proclamation and how Earth is a fully established level five planet and they were just going to core it? Did they think no one was watching? He tells them to get back her right the hell now.

But first, Eleven doesn't even have his own outfit yet, so he goes to a locker room and steals a bunch of clothes, saying "I need a decent shirt. To hell with the raggedy, time to put on a show" with a fabulous flourish that could not be captured in a screen cap. He changes and Amy watches, with Rory chastising her for doing so.

The Doctor explains that he called the Atraxi back because leaving is good, but never coming back is better. So they head up to the roof with the Doctor rocking some new duds, without having settled on a tie yet.

He addresses the Atraxi while tossing aside tie after tie. He asks them if this world is a threat? Have the people broken any laws of the Atraxi? The Atraxi show some bits of terrible things from the world, but decide that the Earth is not a threat. Then the Doctor asks if they think they're the first to try this kind of thing. So the Atraxi pull up videos of some of the Doctor's rogues gallery. He asks if this world is protected, and the Atraxi pull up images of each of the ten previous Doctors (I specify that they show all ten, because there are still some people who believe that the Eighth Doctor doesn't count). Eleven walks through the final image of the Tenth Doctor, newly clad in his bow tie, and says cheerily, "Hello. I'm the Doctor. Basically, run." And you bet your ass the Atraxi take the fuck off, because when the Doctor starts badass boasting to you it's time to get the hell out of there.

As the Atraxi are leaving you can hear the sound of the TARDIS engines, and Eleven feels something hot in his pocket. It's the TARDIS key, telling him it's ready to go.

When Amy and Rory look round, they see that the Doctor has Batman'd his ass out of there. He's booking it for the TARDIS. We finally get a glimpse at the new TARDIS design when he makes it back to Amy's house.

The Doctor opens the door, excited to see what the TARDIS has in store for him this time. He looks absolutely happy and says "Oh, you sexy thing" which I loved because Doctor/TARDIS OTP.


And he leaves, just as Amy and Rory show up. Amy is depressed, because fucking seriously Doctor? Not that I can really be mad it him because of my aforementioned one true pairing on this show, but that's pretty shitty.

When she closes her eyes it cuts to little Amelia waiting atop her suitcase, this time in the light of day. She hears the TARDIS engines and looks up.

It turns out, however, that this is just a dream that Amy is having. The TARDIS engines are real though. She absolutely bolts out of bed and runs to the window. She sees the TARDIS outside and heads out the door.

She gives the Doctor some crap for the clothes and the fact that he stole them. He thinks it's okay since he just saved the world for the millionth time. She does not approve of the bow tie, but he insists bow ties are cool (and I must agree).

After this banter, he asks her to come with him. She starts to talk about all of the crazy things that have happened over the course of the episode, sounding like she's apprehensive to go because of the danger. He starts to say that it's not all terrible, but she finishes her thought by saying that was all 2 years ago. 14 years since fish custard. He gives her a title (Amy Pond, the girl who waited). She says she grew up, but he tells her not worry and that he'll soon fix that.

He snaps to open the TARDIS doors (which I am not a fan of being a thing, but think it is well employed here because he's trying to convince her that he's awesome and that's a pretty cool touch from the presentation stand point. He's showing off for her.) She enters and looks about as shocked as anyone would upon entering a blue box to find it has a whole world inside (just like he said).



He starts baiting her, asking if she has anything she'd like to say. Any passing remarks. He really does love it when they say it's bigger on the inside. He also makes a terrifying creeper face while doing this. Not really, but my pausing happened to catch such a creeper face anyway.

Her passing remark is "I'm in my nightie," but he informs her that there is plenty of stuff for her to wear in the wardrobe. She doesn't understand how he's so sure she's coming, but he says that she's a Scottish girl in an English village and he knows what that's like. She scoffs at the idea, but he points out that despite having lived in England practically her whole life, she has retained her accent. He knows she's coming.

The TARDIS has made him a new sonic screwdriver. He says "Thanks, dear." This is when he is fully a new Doctor, really. He's got a new outfit, a new TARDIS, and a brand new screwdriver with a light that better compliments his new outfit.

She asks why he wants her to come with him. He says that he's been by himself for a while and has developed the annoying habit of talking to himself and it's hurting his ears. She gets that he's lonely, and asks if that's it. He says it is. Of course, during this they are standing in front of a oscilloscope thingy, which also happens to be showing the crack from Amy's wall (which is our arc-image for the season). The Doctor pointedly shuts it off after saying the only he wants her around is to ease his loneliness, making it clear that he knows something else is up.


She tells him that she spent all these years thinking he was just a mad man with a box. He gets very serious, telling her to pay attention because what he's about to say may save her life one day, "I am definitely a mad man with a box." He really lights up while saying this.


Amy verifies that she can be back by tomorrow for some unspecified stuff, and the Doctor tells her she can be back five minutes ago, it's a goddamned time machine! Speaking of which, they have the whole of space and time awaiting them, so it's about time to get adventuring!

We stick around Amy's house for the end though. The camera pans through her room, revealing her collection of drawings and homemade dolls featuring her younger self and the Doctor, and then dramatically sweeps up... a wedding dress hanging on her closet door. So now we know her unspecified plans for the next day are actually her wedding and she's basically running away with another man, who she has been obsessed with since childhood.

THE END

And now my thoughts, really quickly since I've managed to write a crap ton already. I really like this episode a lot. I think that, while the whole Atraxi/Prisoner Zero thing is sort of crap, it is okay, because this episode is about the characters. Its purpose was to introduce us to the Eleventh Doctor and Amy (and Rory). The monster of the week plot doesn't have to be spectacular in a character driven episode. Crap might've been too strong of a word for it anyway, since it was sort of interesting. But yeah, I enjoyed the millionth rewatch that was required for this post and I'm sure I'll watch it again in the future.

Expect my new recap sometime soon. Hopefully it'll be shorter.