Deck the halls with red aliens!
Season two of Dr.Who starts off with a slightly strange episode, that doesn’t hesitate to revisit a lot of the previous episode’s ideas and characters. For example, we get another (very welcome) return of one of my favorite guest stars from season one, Harriet Jones. This time, her role is that of the Prime Minister who is very proactive and smart. This is fantastic, finally we get a character that isn’t either related or with Rose, and isn’t the villain… until the end.
At the end of the episode, the writers decide to make Harriet attack the leaving alien ship, and killing thousands… I’m honestly not sure how I feel about this. She’s now hated by the Doctor, and is having a mental breakdown. This was unfortunate because I would have loved to see her in future episodes.
But anyway, this entire episode was fairly solid, however had a few missteps. The pacing was slightly off, the aliens weren’t too intimidating, and there was a sorry lack of the ACTUAL Doctor, which was unfortunate. Let me take this moment to say that I’m not sure on Tennant right now, I’m aware the fans adore him, so I’m sure he gets better. But as of right now, he is decent at best.
The alien threat was assessed, and the plot thickened very quickly, but still felt somewhat disjointed and slow in areas. Everything about this episode felt just slightly off… from the not-so-threatening alien, to the odd final battle involving swords… I was just not too sure about the entire episode in general.
However, I must say that Tennant does a good job delivering his lines, as he seems to have quite a bit of energy to his words, just like Eccleston did. Although the Doctor may be different, their personalities are still somewhat the same. Using slapstick humor to lighten a dark situation, and have some really badass moments.
But overall, it was a fairly unremarkable episode, it didn’t do anything totally wrong, but it did have a few glaring issues that speckled the entirety of it. I do hope this show gets back into shape quicker than season 1 did, because it does finally seem like the writers know how to utilize all the characters in the episode without going overboard. Let’s see what the first proper episode of season 2 brings, let’s go!
P.S- Seems that the catchphrase is here to stay! Fantastic!
Grade: B-
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