New Who wiped the floor with Old Who last week thanks to a wonderful script from Richard Curtis. The week though Old Who has a secret weapon: James Cordon is appearing in New Who.
The Lodger (S31Ep11)
Despite the presence of the aforementioned Mr. Corden and an extended football game montage, I really enjoyed this episode. His appearance at award ceremonies to the side, Cordon is a very good actor, bringing the right mix of hidden yearning, charm, innocence and joy to the role of flatmate Craig.
Matt Smith is magnificently alien, creating advanced tech from brooms and rakes, whipping up tea based antidotes and lecturing his new fellow football players on why he won't allow the other team to be annihilated.
It's certainly the cheapest episode of Who in a long time, brilliant Tardis like spacecraft interior aside, and yet it works because of the charm of the story. The fact Amy Pond isn't in it much helps enormously. There's something off in the way Karen Gillan delivers her lines, putting over-dramatic emphasis in all the wrong places. Go watch the live action intro video to the new free to download Doctor Who game to see what I mean.
A couple of minor niggles: the house being only 1 story tall looks very odd and unbelievable when seen next to it's neighbours, the fact the ship needed someone who wanted to leave was a little thrown in considering we didn't get that from the victims, and why would the doctor touching the panel have been so dangerous? As I said, minor niggles in an otherwise enjoyable episode.
4/5
Terminus (S20Eps13-16)
Let's start with the good.
Right then, on to the bad.
Oh, okay, the Vanir costumes look great even if they don't clank like metal and this design seems both pointless and ineffective. I also really like the Garm's outfit and headpiece though the lack of animatronics back then is all too apparent. Nyssa gets a decent enough reason to leave the Tardis, putting her knowledge to use helping cure people, if it is all rather rushed and sudden.
The biggest problems with the episode are that it's dull and directionless. The cast spend much of their time wandering aimlessly down corridors or through vents, with little in the way of motivation. Yeh okay, this happens most week's with Old Who, just like New Who features pointless running and cries of "brilliant!", but this story is particularly bad. Every set is a different shade of grey, half the cast are silent lepers and the other half downtrodden guards with a giant talking dog doing all the real work. There's plenty of great ideas mixed in here, from the cause of the big bang to curing dangerous diseases on a mass scale and controlling workers through medication. Too bad they never really go anywhere.
Turlough is isolated from the Doctor the whole time, a dramatic necessity given that we've in only part 2 of his trilogy, but it also makes the character and the Black Guardian's demands rather impotent. "Kill the Doctor!" "I can't, he's out there and I'm locked in here" "Oh, well try electrocuting yourself, see if that works". Muppet
Oh, the new CGI effects are quite nice too.
1.5/5
