A Christmas Carol Review

Posted on December 3, 2021 by guardion

A Christmas Carol

Story 213, Episode 770, 2010 Christmas Special

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: Amy Pond, Rory Williams

Doctor Who has never felt more magical than in a sci-fi retelling of the Dickens classic, which makes you feel transported to a wonderland.

The Review

I am willing to say that this is the greatest Christmas special in show history. It literally, and figuratively, sings. Here, the old miser is Michael Gambon’s Kazran Sardick, a man who literally controls the clouds of an entire planet. Amy and Rory’s ship is going to crash into it, and he refuses to part the clouds. Why should he care? The Doctor drops in for a visit, and sees Kazran fail to slap a boy, and realizes he was beaten by his father. So, the Doctor goes into the past to turn Kazran into a better person. In most stories, this would be unacceptable levels of meddling with someone’s personal timeline, but because we all know the basic story, we allow it. Just this once. The Eleventh Doctor fits perfectly in Christmas stories, because his whimsy is just perfectly suited for them. I could watch a hundred of these.

Kazran was a normal child, and the Doctor tries to set him on a good path, but Kazran drags him into a scheme where they visit a frozen woman, Abigail, and un-freeze her every Christmas Eve. (She’s frozen as collateral on a loan from Kazran’s evil father). Over the years Abigail and Kazran fall in love, but then Kazran learns she only had a week left to live when she went into the ice, and now just a day. Blaming the Doctor for cursing him, he turns into the awful man again, and Amy fails to convince him to save the ship. Finally, what does it is the Doctor shows young Kazran the bitter old man he becomes, and Kazran breaks. There are very valid complaints that Abigail is not really a character, and more of a device, but Katherine Jenkins does just enough to make her believable in the fairy tale.

Of course, only Abigail’s singing can save the day, so Kazran finally has to let her out to live her last day. The final magical touch is the clouds of the planet Sardicktown are inhabited by schools of fish, a delightfully bizarre sci-fi touch. The hero is an old shark that swallows half of the Sonic Screwdriver, and at the end returns to fly Kazran and Abigail around on a sleigh. As future Christmas specials in the Capaldi era will show us, every Christmas is last Christmas and they’ll not live happily forever, but live happily while they have the time. For once, I think the rules of normal criticism and critique do not apply. The magic sweeps you away, and leaves you breathless, anchored by incredible performances.

The most magical story in show history, and a tried and true Christmas classic. A sense of wonder almost unparalleled in the show. How can you not be romantic about Christmas?

10/10 Criticism be damned, this is a classic

The Empty Planet Review

Posted on December 1, 2021 by guardion

The Empty Planet

The Sarah Jane Adventures Season 4 Episodes 6-7

In a pitch-perfect story, Rani and Clyde’s relationship deepens as they are the last two humans left standing.

The Review

The best episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures have deepened the relationships of the cast and had serious emotional stakes. In this episode, Sarah Jane can’t save them now as Rani and Clyde wake up as the last two humans. Well, two of the last three as they meet a 13 year old named Gavin. Rani and Clyde have to use their own wits to sort out what’s going on, with several intelligent observations: all the cars and planes are gone too, so it’s like Earth wanted to be preserved. They struggle to think of something they’ve done but Sarah Jane hasn’t and realize it was getting grounded by the Judoon. The scenes of a completely deserted London are appropriately haunting, and it’s a great mystery.

It turns out Gavin, who thought himself completely normal, is half-alien, conceived Peter Quill style by his mom and an alien king. Said king has now died, so two brightly colored robots have arrived to deport Gavin on the throne. The real quality comes from Rani and Clyde coming closer to voicing their love for each other. The two compliment each other perfectly, Clyde’s creativity with Rani’s genius, and Rani’s self-confidence with Clyde’s underlying insecurity. Not to mention that as Rani and Clyde apparently vanish to their parents, we see her dad and his mom worrying about them. It’s a great mystery with some great character building. It’s no secret how Anjli Mohindra has had the best post-SJA career, her talent is clear.

No Sarah Jane turns out to be no problem for the show in an all-time classic outing. This is great children’s sci-fi!

10/10 The growth off Clyde and Rani has been great to watch

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang Review

Posted on November 5, 2021November 5, 2021 by guardion

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang

The end of the universe in a girl’s bedroom

Story 212, Episode 768-769, Series 5 Episodes 12-13

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: River Song, Amy Pond, Rory Williams

Never has Doctor Who burst with so much possibility and excitement as in the best season finale in show history, an epic adventure that narratively wraps up Series 5 and leaves tantalizing questions unresolved.

The Review

One of the most sensational speeches in show history

The ‘season finale’ of new Doctor Who is a funny thing. Usually (hopefully) there is some arc going throughout the season, be it as simple as the name ‘Bad Wolf’, or random appearances of Missy. Never before though has every episode in a season felt as completely essential as in Series 5. Everything is paid off. From the start we see Van Gogh, then Churchill, then Liz X. From there the Doctor joins River at Stonehenge in year 102, as the Pandorica, a box containing supposedly the worst monster in the universe is opening. All of the Doctor’s enemies descend on England, but the Doctor (seemingly) tells them all off with just a speech warning them about all the times he’s beaten them before…and wouldn’t they want to see someone else try first? Meanwhile, Rory is back, as a Roman centurion, but Amy doesn’t remember him. It seriously a thrill to see Rory again, and the Doctor not clocking that Rory shouldn’t be here for a full minute is great.

It all quickly goes wrong. River gets in the TARDIS which takes her to 2010 where she sees an alien broke into Amy’s house, and the whole Stonehenge scenario is dreamed from her mind. Rory, and all the Romans, are Autons, and the enemies were actually here to trap the Doctor in the Pandorica to try and prevent the TARDIS from blowing up the universe. River fails to stop the TARDIS blowing up, the Doctor is imprisoned, Amy remembers Rory just in time for his Auton conditioning to take over and kill her as every star explodes at once leaving only Earth. When we return it’s with young Amelia in 1996 who still imagines stars even though they’ve all gone out. She gets a message to visit the Pandorica in the National Museum, and inside is…herself from the future. The tiny glimpses we get of the 1850 years of Earth without stars are quite fun.

The Doctor escapes by his future self returning to give Rory his sonic screwdriver. Is it a cheap cop-out? Yeah it kind of is, but it’s done so stylishly we don’t mind. He takes young Amelia’s drink early in her wait at the museum and she later says she’s thirsty so the Doctor goes back and returns her that same drink. It’s Moffat time travel genius at its absolute best. The exploding TARDIS has served as Earth’s sun, and River was stuck within it so the Doctor busts her out. After some shenanigans with him getting nearly killed by a stone Dalek’s gun, the plan becomes clear. The Doctor can ride the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS, which will explode its restoring light across the universe, sealing up the cracks in time. Oh, and I didn’t even mention Rory staying behind those 1850 years to guard the Pandorica, waiting for the Doctor and Amy. The Lone Centurion. It’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done on this show.

The Doctor then winds back through the history of Series 5, showing us The Lodger, and then we get the famous scene where the future Doctor tells Amy to trust him in Flesh and Stone. Finally, we’re back at the beginning, with young Amelia having fallen asleep waiting for the Doctor to return in her house. That house turns out to be the key to Amy’s tragedy: why no ducks in the duck pond, where are her parents, why does she live alone in that big house? Because the crack in the wall took them. Now, she’ll have her family, and not need the Doctor. So it goes. Amy and Rory get married, and Amy is overjoyed to meet her parents. With one last little push by River, she remembers the Doctor, and angrily wills him back into existence. Still, what does ‘Silence Will Fall’ mean? Who blew up the TARDIS? Who is River really? Series 5 ties every last episode (yes even Vampires of Venice) into one perfect arc showing how Amy discovered herself and the universe. It’s ambitious, manic, genius, and the show has never felt bigger.

It’s ambitious, incredible, and rip-roaring entertaining. It’s no secret why this season kickstarted the show into an international phenomenon. No finale before or sense has felt quite as satisfying, and left quite as much tantalizingly to explore.

10/10 A true epic of restarting the universe

More River to come. (And the fez was always stupid, the wife is always right)

Vincent and the Doctor Review

Posted on October 21, 2021 by guardion

Vincent and the Doctor

Story 210, Episode 766, Series 5 Episode 10

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: Amy Pond

The greatest historical of all time has the Doctor and Amy, truly, make a difference.

The Review

There isn’t another story quite like Vincent and the Doctor, one of the most remarkable in all of Doctor Who. Generally the best Doctor Who stories are sci-fi bonanzas but in this story all the Doctor does is meet Van Gogh. We’ve had celebrity historicals before, and none have been knock-outs because there’s only so little you can do with a known historical character. We already know what their character arc has to be. The genius in this episode is breaking the mold. There is an enemy, the giant invisible chicken known as the Krafayis, which is relatively incidental to the story, just there to provide conflict. It being invisible means we don’t have to see it’s dodgy CGI much, and does provide some pathos when he learn its rampage of terror is because it is blind and scared.

Of course, Van Gogh can see it, because he can see what others can’t. He’s not just a famous person, he is truly different and special in ways we can’t image. Tony Curran is the spitting image of Van Gogh, a performance so incredible you genuinely believe it’s the man himself. He is mercurial, difficult, believes his art is awful, but keeps trying because he knows he sees things others can’t. The set design is astonishing, re-creating a cafe from his paintings, and the genuine shock of seeing his bedroom perfectly recreated. He’s not a perfect man (and tries to convince Amy to have lots of kids together), but you can tell that he is special. So special, there’s no doubt about what the Doctor and Amy must show him.

The story started seeing Van Gogh’s paintings on display in Paris, and so Van Gogh himself is brought there. His whole life he’s been a failure, and thought his art was terrible. Seeing him burst into tears seeing people admiring his art, and especially as Bill Nighy’s pitch-perfect Mr. Black describes Van Gogh as one of the greatest men who ever lived. It’s incredibly powerful, and emotional. The true ending ends up being even more so. Van Gogh is returned home and vows to be a new man, and Amy takes the Doctor back to the gallery convinced he wouldn’t kill himself now. He still did. Even knowing that he wasn’t a failure, Van Gogh’s demons were still too much. It’s a heartbreaking, bold ending, as the Doctor assures Amy that if they made his life just a little bit better, it was worth all the while. And on his painting of sunflowers, it’s dedicated ‘to Amy’.

Maybe the most emotional story of all time, Vincent and the Doctor is the definitive celebrity historical, a true masterpiece.

10/10 This has to be the best Eleventh Doctor story. Incredible

I think Van Gogh is more remarkable than the Doctor any day

The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone Review

Posted on October 17, 2021October 20, 2021 by guardion

The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

Story 206, Episodes 760-761, Series 5 Episodes 4-5

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: River Song, Amy Pond

One of the best Doctor Who stories of all time brings back the Weeping Angels and River Song in a tense, dramatic, scary story.

The Review

It’s easy to forget the opening of this classic story. The Doctor and Amy are in a museum, and he finds an ancient box with ‘hello sweetie’ carved on it. Plugging it into the TARDIS, he sees a recording of River Song leaving the message and ejecting herself out into space and sure enough, one of the Doctors shows up to save her. River is just as fantastic in this story as her debut last series, and establishing that she’s not a professor plus her slightly less mature behavior emphasizes this is a younger version of the character. She’s nearly as capable as the Doctor, and also great at pushing his buttons. Amy has no trouble figuring out that she is the Doctor’s future wife, because River is just that great. She is here on release from prison with ‘the Church’ who are now soldiers led by Father Octavian, played by Iain Glen as the perfect straight man in the story. So, the episode’s supporting characters are great. Let’s get to the villains.

Some people think the Weeping Angels are ruined in this story. Those people are wrong. They are even more terrifying, starting with ‘an image of angel is an angel’ with an angel lurching out of a tv recording toward Amy. Next, one of the best ‘oh shit’ moments in show history, as they realize despite the planet’s inhabitants having two heads…all the statues only have one. Then, an angel uses the voice of a dead soldier, Bob, to communicate, which is incredibly unsettling. The final bit of scariness comes when we learn Amy has an angel hidden in her mind itself, which she only keeps at bay by closing her eyes. The most controversial is the brief look at the angels moving, but it is built up so beautifully. I can’t think of another story in the new series that so expertly handles a monster with increasing terror. This is the gold standard of scary.

Finally, the main cast. You’d never know this was the first story Matt Smith filmed as the Doctor because he knocks it out of the park. He looks super young, but has all the intelligence and fierceness you’d expect from the Doctor. It’s almost a knock on him that his performance never lived up to his first attempt. Amy is the emotional heart of the story, and tries to get the Doctor to let her die several times, but he won’t let her. After confessing about her wedding, we see a companion finally try and seduce the Doctor then and there. Steven Moffat regrets the scene, but I feel it is very in character for Amy and I love the Doctor’s horrified reactions (separates him from Tennant’s Doctor for sure). The bonus scene of Amy seeing all the previous women in the TARDIS is pretty funny. Still, it’s unfair to Rory, and we’ll get to that.

This story is a complete classic filled with tension throughout up to the finale where the Weeping Angels all fall through a crack in time. Might be in my top 5 of all time, I could watch this story again and again.

10/10 Truly a PERFECT story. Haven’t gotten there yet, but probably the best of the Matt Smith era.

The Eleventh Doctor sans coat in these suspenders is the perfect look

The Eleventh Hour Review

Posted on October 15, 2021 by guardion

The Eleventh Hour

“I’m the Doctor. I’m worse than everyone’s aunt.”

Story 203, Episode 757, Series 5 Episode 1

Doctor: The Eleventh Doctor

Companions: Amy Pond, Rory Williams

In a nearly perfect episode, the fairytale journey of the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond bursts onto the scene with a smash.

The Review

It’s almost difficult for me to review this episode because I know it so well, and love it so much. What can I possibly say? It starts out with the Doctor crashing in a little girl’s yard, and Matt Smith just all over the place in the best way possible as a gangly mess of limbs. While David Tennant always had an air of cool, Matt Smith is anything but, he’s a complete dork. His interactions with Caitlin Blackwood’s Amelia are iconic for good reason, and it’s easy to see how enamored she becomes with the Doctor. Then, the twist, the TARDIS engines phase, and boom, it’s twelve years in the future, and now Amelia is the gorgeous Amy Pond who smacks the Doctor with a cricket bat and locks him up. Throughout the episode, Amy says she grew up and outgrew the Doctor, and he promises he’ll fix that. Oh will he ever. Once we see the mediocre CGI rendering of the crazy eel shapeshifter of Prisoner Zero, we’re off to the races.

The Doctor quickly meets Amy’s ‘sort of’ boyfriend, the nurse Rory who in a fun sequence he notices in the only one not filming the sun when it goes weird because Prisoner Zero’s guards the Atraxi are planning to incinerate the planet. What this story nails is pace, it’s an hour that starts with whimsy and then it’s just non-stop action. Not only that, but the Doctor is at his most vulnerable, no TARDIS and the sonic screwdriver breaks. Nothing but his wit. It’s genuinely thrilling to see this on the fly Doctor, along with the fiery Amy who has a very reasonable grudge against him but can’t help being in love with him. Everyone in Leadworth knows about Amy’s childhood obsession with ‘the raggedy Doctor’, and is shocked to see him in the flesh. With a fun interlude of the Doctor catching her friend Jeff looking at porn before using his laptop to tune into experts, the climax is in the hospital.

Prisoner Zero takes the form of future Academy Award winning actress Olivia Coleman, and we get the killer reveal: every clock in the world strikes zero (tying in with the title, see), and Prisoner Zero is located. The Doctor’s not done yet though, he wasn’t going to let the Atraxi get away with their plan to roast all of Earth. He calls them back, chooses his clothes from the changing room at the hospital, and in a pitch-perfect moment walks through images of all the ten previous Doctors. “Basically, run.” The Doctor then vanishes, and reappears two years later and welcomes Amy into a delightfully orange TARDIS interior. He convinces her to come with him, and off they go. It’s a killer debut. The added Meanwhile in the TARDIS scene doesn’t do much, mainly Amy word vomiting some questions about the Doctor. Steven Moffat in his debut story gets that Doctor Who should be fun and exciting, but also expertly develops characters in a way the Chibnall era will completely fail at despite the plots being almost as good. It’s a killer story.

It’s the perfect story that never lets up and introduces two (and a half) exciting characters. Couldn’t ask for a better opener.

10/10 Jeff, delete your browser history!

The Caves of Androzani Review

Posted on October 9, 2021 by guardion

The Caves of Androzani

Story 135, Episodes 619-622, Season 21 Episodes 17-20

Doctor: The Fifth Doctor

Companions: Peri Brown

It all comes crashing down for the Fifth Doctor, but no matter the horrors, nothing is going to stop him now.

The Review

Morgus, the richest man in the five planets, and the President

When it comes to the pinnacle of the classic series, two stories are always listed as a cut above the rest, The City of Death for it striking the rare perfect satirical notes, and The Caves of Androzani for its pulse-pounding excitement and dramatics. I feel it’s difficult for me to judge with so many expectations going in, but the Fifth Doctor’s regeneration delivered. Two show legends collaborate here, the legendary writer Robert Holmes and the soon to be legendary director Graeme Harper. 95% of the classic series is just directed extremely straightforwardly, but not this story. The two dueling forces, Sharaz Jek and Morgus both soliloquize dramatically, Morgus especially staring into the fourth wall letting us know his thoughts. While many classic stories can feel lazy and languid, this one isn’t, bursting with pace and energy at every move. The underlying plot, a fight over a resource, is standard, but the vivid characterization and action very much isn’t.

The Doctor and Peri land on Androzani Minor, a desert planet, and are quickly caught up in a war. The world of Androzani Major demands spectrox, a rare substance that can prolong life. Morgus, the head of the Conglomerate, is essentially controlling the government soldiers fighting the rogue Jek, betrayed by Morgus and living deep in the caves with his android army. The android bit doesn’t get too much play, save for a cliffhanger where the Doctor and Peri are shot but it turns out to be android duplicates. Jek feels like an operatic villain, dressed in his black and white suit, obsessed with revenge, and with Peri. He is extremely creepy around her, desiring her beauty. There are so many fantastic characters I don’t really have time to get into them all, but Jek is the most memorable.

Finally, this leaves us with Peter Davison in his final regular turn as the Fifth Doctor. Davison is simply stupendous, and is so perfectly the Doctor we forget it could’ve been anyone else. What finally brings down this incarnation in the end? Simply, he was just too good for this universe. The whole season the stories got darker and more brutal, challenging the personable nature of the Doctor. Here, it reaches its limits, him and Peri are captured and immediately ordered to be executed without a second thought. Not only that, but the Doctor and Peri are both poisoned, and the Doctor has to go through hell to get the antidote. As it all unravels, Morgus deposed by his secretary in a delicious scene, his gun-runners killed, Jek’s death imminent, the army all dead, the Doctor hauls Peri back to the TARDIS. There was only enough of the antidote for her, and the Doctor doesn’t even know if he’ll regenerate. When he does, it’s to a very different man, but somehow, still, the Doctor.

In a story that is electric and exciting and everything the classic series usually isn’t, we can look to Davison’s final cliffhanger to see the mettle of his Doctor. They weren’t going to stop him now.

10/10 High drama provides an incredible ending to the Fifth Doctor

Time Crash Review

Posted on October 8, 2021May 25, 2022 by guardion

Time Crash

Story 187.5

Doctor: Fifth Doctor, Tenth Doctor

A delightful 2007 charity mini-episode that will leave you grinning from ear to ear.

The Review

How can you not have a big smile on your face watching Time Crash? It has everything to do with David Tennant’s performance, featuring him at the height of his powers as one of the finest actors ever to take the part. Peter Davison is visibly older and almost can’t quite pull off being the famously youthful Fifth Doctor, but he does an admirable job. It’s just a blast to see these two at it, as their Doctors, doing Doctor things. Knowing that Tennant got Davison because he was his favorite Doctor growing up is just perfect, and then the next year he’d meet Davison’s daughter and marry her! How about that? It’s a perfect little love letter to the Fifth Doctor, and incarnation that deserves a lot more love than he gets. What fun!

Wish we’d gotten a few more of these, but we did get Matt Smith and Tom Baker together six years later. Still kind of can’t believe that one.

10/10 Come on, what did you think?

Earthshock Review

Posted on September 18, 2021 by guardion

Earthshock

Story 121, Episodes 572-575, Season 19 Episodes 19-22

Doctor: The Fifth Doctor

Companions: Adric, Nyssa, Tegan Jovanka

In a complete whopper of a story, Earthshock delivers two of the most shocking twists in Doctor Who history.

The Review

Despite ruling the Second Doctor era, by the 80s the Cybermen had to have become the stuff of legends: most of their appearances wiped from BBC archives and only appearing for a mediocre story in the 70s. Here they are back with a jaw-dropping first episode cliffhanger. The first episode is one of the best in show history, it is a tightly directed tense affair with a crew of humans encountering the Doctor and evil androids in a subterranean cave. The fact that the three following episodes take place on a freighter is a bit of a let-down, but the pace is kept up all the same. The Cybermen look good, but there is too much emotion in their voices for supposed creatures of logic and logic alone. While that may become a bigger problem later, there’s no such issue here as the Cybermen are clearly a deadly serious threat.

The other big twist is: Adric dies. It’s by far the both significant on-screen death in show history, and it is a whopper. The episode starts with the Doctor blowing up at Adric who wants to return to E-Space, but turns out Adric was just bluffing to prove to the Doctor how valuable he is so people stop making fun of him. Davison’s portrayal of the Doctor continues to grow, and he is firing on all cylinders here: he is utterly and completely the Doctor. Their plan to destroy Earth with a bomb failed, the Cybermen now plan to fly the freighter into Earth. In a perfect scenario to use Adric’s math skills, he tries to break through three ‘logic locks’ placed by the Cybermen on the ship. He gets through two, enough to send the ship back in time for some reason, but one last Cyberman stops him from getting the final one after everyone else evacuates. The freighter now becoming the dinosaur-killing asteroid, Adric realizes he’ll never know if he was right as the ship explodes. Having just used his dumb golden math star to kill the Cyber-Leader, the Doctor has no words as he watches Adric die. There’s no bouncy music on the credits, just silence and the shattered star of Adric.

Classic Who almost never reaches the heights of Earthshock‘s ambition. Bringing back a classic enemy in shock fashion, a tensely directly story, and concluding it with a shocking death.

10/10. You know, this story isn’t perfect but it still gets a 10. Why? Because I could watch it again and again, it is a classic in every sense of the word.

Adric’s death was unnecessary, but perfectly in character: and that’s what makes it disquietingly perfect

Black Orchid Review

Posted on September 17, 2021 by guardion

Black Orchid

Story 120, Episodes 570-571, Season 19 Episodes 17-18

Doctor: The Fifth Doctor

Companions: Adric, Nyssa, Tegan Jovanka

It’s 1920s perfection in a story that is completely out of place, and somehow completely Doctor Who.

The Review

The Fifth Doctor doing what he does best: cricket

Is there a more absolutely delightful episode in all of Doctor Who than part one of Black Orchid? I think not. The Doctor and company land at a railway station and a car is there waiting for ‘the Doctor’ to take him to join the Cranleigh cricketing game. We get a solid two minutes of the Doctor, who already looks like a cricketer, absolutely kicking ass on the cricket field. Then we are taken to a large rural English manor which is obviously a great on-location shoot, one of the best in show history thus far. We learn Nyssa is the spitting image of Anne, fiancé of Charles Cranleigh, and Anne decides to have them both wear the same costume for a fancy dress party. There’s several minutes of just this silly rich party with people eating and dancing with music playing. Adric looks great in his outfit, but the real show-stopper is Janet Fielding. Allow me just the briefest of moments to say that Fielding looks damn good in this story. The Doctor investigates around and finds a dead body, and someone else wears his costume and goes and kills a servant and abducts Anne.

What makes the second part work is just how quickly it all falls apart for the Doctor, he puts on the costume after it’s returned by the murderer and is implicated for it. Lady Cranleigh, the witness to his alibi, refuses to help him. The Doctor is grilled about his identity (hilariously in part one another doctor is called ‘the master’ causing momentary panic) but can’t answer. It all comes undone though, as it turns out the elder Cranleigh was mutilated by ‘Indians’ in South America and was being hidden away in the house, assumed missing to the world. The Doctor goes for the jugular by showing everybody the TARDIS, and warps to the Cranleigh estate as George breaks free, starting a fire and kidnapping Nyssa. In the end, he falls off the roof on accident, and a solemn off-screen funeral is had for him. (Why Anne, who was engaged to George, still is going to marry Charles after all this is beyond me). It’s a very fun diversion that briefly turns into a very sticky situation for the Doctor. Oh, and did I mention it’s in and out in only two episodes?

Black Orchid is famously the last ‘pure historical’, and the only one since 1966. Though, with such an engaging mystery as this one, it doesn’t need it.

10/10. Feels like lightyears since I’ve given this score out, but I was just so delighted by the whole thing!

Perfect 10s

A Christmas Carol

The Review

The Empty Planet

The Review

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang

The Review

Vincent and the Doctor

The Review

The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone

The Review

The Eleventh Hour

The Review

The Caves of Androzani

The Review

Time Crash

The Review

Earthshock

The Review

Black Orchid

The Review