i complained that the 1st episode was a bit rushed, shouldn't have.
the pace in this episode was rubbish!

It was a little off, wasn't it?
It took too long to establish everything (there was possibly too much to establish) and then the ending just felt rushed because of that.
I loved the bit of dialogue regarding the lock on the door of the temple and how The Doctor couldn't open it with the Sonic Screwdriver, and then still proceeds to give it a go anyway. That was typical Doctor behaviour. (8+)
Hated the reliance on the Sonic Screwdriver overall though. (8+(
Quite liked the fact that Clara thinks the TARDIS doesn't like her.

Bit of a disappointing episode overall though, which is a shame.
Roll on next week when hopefully the balance can be redressed.

Mark

What if he used a phased Plasma rifle in the 40 Watt range?

I thought it was visually rather good. Very pretty. I rather liked the star god soul parasite thing's evil cheesy grin

I liked the story line centring around the frightened little girl finding trust in our travellers, feeling betrayed and losing that trust, then being reassured and finding it again. That often takes an entire novel, but here it progressed naturally within the scope of the episode.

However, I am a little tired of dæmon gods that feed on human emotion. It was original the first time, however many centuries ago that was. It requires some kind of twist or pseudo-scientific explanation to be interesting now. All we know is that this flaming big head dude was old, liked stories and disappeared when it was "full". Presumably leaving a huge gravitational imbalance in it's wake.

Where did it go? A vague mumbling of returning to a Hell dimension would have been suitably cheesy at the very least.

Moffat described Doctor Who as a fairy tale rather than as pure science fiction, so gravitation eddies are not always going to feature. You will get emotion-feeding creatures from time to time.

It was not what I expected - in what is being referred to as “classic Who”, you’ll find that behind some apparent god-like creature or religion is something more mundane - a out of control computer, a madman, or both. We’ve certainly seen this in Tom Baker stories, and it’s been a theme in wider science fiction narratives too. Certainly if Terry Nation had been the writer of that story, the bad guys would be heavily militaristic. He seemed to go for the whimsy vs dictatorship rather a lot.

Anyway, what we did get was some Clara character building - something I feel will be much needed to be established early on before we find out who she is or isn’t.

Read what Waris Hussein has to say about the rebooted Who:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22062350

I have to say he has a point about the snogging.

Via a friend on Facebook:
"So if I meet a girl and then follow her in secret, watch her every move, watch her parents etc its called stalking but when Dr Who does it that's fine. Once again it's one rule for Gallifreyan time lords and another for the rest of us."
Edit:
See also: 'When I walk down the street pointing at ethnic groups and shouting their names it's consider racist but when The Doctor does it, it's considered showing Clara around the new planet' etc.

That did make me cringe a bit. Especially the woofing. A bit like me saying "wong tong yong, that's what you say it is lol" to a Chinaman.


Yeah. She's very lovable and very cute. Even my non-who-fan friends agree on that.

Liked the references to Douglas Adams and Blade Runner.

Bit of a bonkers story all round, but enjoyable in many ways.

I miss River.

She's back before the end of the year.

Mark

Both of these eps felt very short to me. Also, this was the first time I actually fell asleep mid-ep. I was very tired - but still...

Sadly, Sarah Jane won’t be.

This got me to thinking … why didn't the TARDIS translate for Clara?

Mark

it don't like her!
OR
there is more than meets the eye