The Angels Take Manhattan

Goodbye to Amy. I didn’t cry at all, or feel close to doing so. I have been an Amy fan from the start, so am not one of those who are only too pleased to see the last of her.

But not only had we been warned Amy and Rory were going, and in which episode, but I do feel there are only so many adventures the Doctor – any Doctor – can have with an assistant. Any assistant. We were getting close with Amy, and she went before she became an embarrassment.

Also, seeing as Matt Smith’s days are counted, it all seems for the best.

One bonus with Amy was that she brought Rory along. Sometimes it seems tempting to have just the pair of Tardis travellers, but occasionally I feel the more the merrier. Rory’s Dad has been an asset; useful and not easily fazed.

What was bad were the angels. I’m sure DW scriptwriters are responsible for loads of new phobias around the world, and surely being afraid of statues of angels is one of the weirder ones?

As for the vertigo, well. I don’t want to stand on the edge like that again.

And correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought we ended with a long and happy life for the Ponds. Just not the one everyone was expecting. Amy disappeared in front of the Doctor, but she was there to write the last page in River’s book.

Eleven, soufflé, dead

Those were the three words I was able to say well before anyone said it on screen in Asylum of the Daleks. I must be wired in, or something. Are they simply getting too predictable?

And, I have a confession to make. I don’t understand what is so scary about the Daleks. The weeping angels are scary, and so is ‘are you my mummy?’ Daleks, no. Perhaps I had a deprived childhood, growing up in a Dalek-free zone?

But it was all right, this Dalek episode, as the beginning to an end. It was good thinking to include the Doctor’s new friend. This way we’ll be more used to her when she pops up for real.

And just when I thought we were meant to be thinking it won’t matter when whatever happens to Amy and Rory, actually happens, because they are embittered and out of love, they go and move those goal posts again. It has to be said, most men don’t wait 2000 years for their loved ones.

We’ll wait and see what soufflé-girl will do about her predicament.

The Doctor, Downton, a Dover bound Poirot and Dolly. Some Cash.

Along with too much food comes too much television. I wouldn’t mind having it spread out more. At least the entertainment. The food might be healthier to get over and done with, and we can go back to porridge and salad. But since I’m in a minority, I’m guessing my careful consumption of television over Christmas will not be noticed at all. Or missed.

Although, since we’re on one of those things that keeps track of who watches what and when, I have to own up to being so technically incompetent that I had the Grandmother watch Dolly Parton last night. She didn’t, but there was no way I could delete her after she went to bed.

So, it was just me and Dolly and most of the O2 arena. Nice blue dress, although having heard that she looks totally different without make-up and wig, I kept wondering what she looks like. Really. Concert was good, but I’d go mad if I had to have those bodyguards escort me everywhere.

I did actually watch a little Johnny Cash afterwards, but found it so painfully embarrassing I had to turn it off. As Roger Whittaker would say, he didn’t have Dolly’s two advantages.

Before the country greats we sat down to Poirot. Couldn’t remember much about The Clocks except for the clocks. Could have sworn that I saw bits of Brighton, and I wonder where the crescent-shaped street can be found? Possibly in Dover. Doesn’t matter. It always looks good, and this time the plot wasn’t too outrageous, either. Watched parts of it twice to allow the Grandmother to catch up with the bits she slept through.

After Christmas dinner and two lots of dishwasher on Sunday, I was more than ready to sit down with the Doctor. Despite its Narnia theme I liked it. How like a childless man to take children through a snowy landscape wearing only their dressing gowns and slippers. The only thing that grated somewhat was Matt Smith smirking ‘I know’ each time the children discovered something they liked.

A good cry was had by all at the end. Nice tree. Nice trees, in fact.

In my next life I will come back as the good Dowager at Downton. Those one-liners are a dream. (In my life as a witch I’m much too kind to utter anything like that. Naturally.)

Didn’t expect Matthew and Mary to get their act together quite so soon. And I still want to know what happened to Patrick from Canada. My hopes for Edith and her beau with the trembling smile have grown a little. Might be a case for the ouija board. Shame about Nigel Havers. He’d have been a good addition to this upperclass zoo.

I’m one of those who didn’t mind all that much about the slipping standards of season two, but it was certainly noticeable how much better the Christmas episode was. We’ll have more of the same for next year, please.

The End

It’s quite lonely, being the only one who didn’t watch the last Who live. Especially as I ended up delaying by five days, due to a busy life. At least I have a life. I’m no slave to the Doctor.

You know, they could end it all now. If they needed to. But they won’t. The Christmas episode is a slight giveaway to the Doctor’s continued state of being more alive than dead. Matt Smith signing up for the next season is another one. So I didn’t expect too much in the way of final death.

The way they paraded a good number of former characters around, was reminiscent of farewell programmes and that kind of thing. A ‘lets get everyone together one last time’ sort of idea.

River Song didn’t get much of a wedding, did she? And risking sounding a little anti-Doctor, she didn’t get much of a husband, either. Did she?

I quite liked the ‘new’ Amy, and Rory did really well as a(nother) military character. Churchill was fun and so was Blue Face, but if they let Matt Smith put on another fake beard I’m going to scream.

Who’s dying?

Is he? Dying? The Doctor? Really?

It’s what he keeps saying. Looking upset about it. Tomorrow. Which I guess is next week.

I find it easy enough to dismiss these things as hype to get us all worked up, and more interested. But then I found myself thinking that maybe, really, perhaps? After all, we’ve seen it already.

But then there is the Christmas episode, and it’d be a shame if they had to cancel it due to plot inconsistencies.

I suppose there is always time travel. It could be one he made earlier.

Craig did well this week, and baby Stormageddon was lovely and quite wise. And the Doctor was unusually aware about normal things like the need to clear up a house that looks like a bomb went off.

Who’s River?

It’s not applying myself enough that caused me not to ‘see it coming’. I just wasn’t speculating, reckoning – quite rightly – that if I watched A Good Man Goes To War I’d find out a thing or two.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have spent a considerable time under the impression that River Song is the Doctor’s wife. Maybe she isn’t, or perhaps she is. Was. Will be. It’s not important. I just watch for the temporary fun of it.

This was a good Moffat-y episode and an acceptable cliffhanger for the summer. The headless things barely registered, but according to sources close to me, they are capable of causing sleeplessness. I suppose the tied-up sacks instead of heads is a little yucky.

I have a childish fondness for the kinds of script that call for lots of people to get together, re-uniting against some shared enemy or other. This was a good one in that respect. Lots of people. Trouble is I didn’t remember half of them. This probably means I’ve just proved myself an absolutely useless Doctor Who fan.

Pulverising people is not terribly scary, though. ‘Are you my mummy’ type things do it so much better.

And I maintain that Rory is an asset. Especially as an old Roman. Move over, Amy!

The Doctor’s Wife

Am I the only one who doesn’t feel that the Doctor can have the Tardis for his wife? Even if she is sexy? That said, it was a good episode, and maybe they should ask Neil Gaiman to write some more.

And preferably they should gag the Times who reputedly provided the full plot in today’s paper. Bad enough when they do that in a review after the programme’s been on.

Great to have Rory as ‘the pretty one’. No reason he shouldn’t be. Amy can’t have it all. Fun with the Doctor building himself a new old Tardis. Looked a bit half-built to me, though. And a well spoken baddie is always charming.

The Impossible Astronaut

As Daughter said, she hates Steven Moffat sometimes. When he gets scary. And The Impossible Astronaut did have a flavour of ‘are you my mummy?’, although I’m not sure it was the child so much as the ‘creatures’. Those that look so awful that you want to scream, but that you forget as soon as you don’t see them.

The Doctor described himself as the King of OK, which even he realised was bad. But he is looking forward to whatever it was he will do/have done that made River slap him. It’s hard with time travel and you don’t know where you are.

1969, for most of it. Spacemen, but not the Apollo ones, I’d say. One of those deliciously named Americans, Canton Everett Delaware III. He was President Nixon’s second ex-FBI choice, but by happy coincidence so was Nixon. Delaware number III’s second presidential choice, that is.

Tardis coloured envelopes were nice, and the fishfingers and custard surfaced briefly. Amy is pregnant. So it had better not be her who gets killed off. It would be a shame for it to be Rory, now that he has matured so nicely. Which leaves River.

It was an OK, if not King of, first episode.

The big shark in the sky

It lost a little bit of momentum some time around the third quarter. Otherwise Doctor Who was pretty refreshing after too much Christmas food. Was it just that we’ve been missing him, or did they try harder this time? The Christmas Carol theme was hardly original, but worked quite well.

Amy in her police uniform and Rory as an old Roman was slightly odd, especially on board a spaceship, but seeing them in ‘clothes past’ almost made sense. And Michael Gambon is always good.

Matt Smith continues to put a smile on our faces, and his instant time travelling was fun and at times almost impossible to keep up with. Dashing back for the pin code was a good one.

If they are going to cast singers in the Christmas episodes, Katherine Jenkins was a much better choice than many, and her singing (it was ‘bleak midwinter’, wasn’t it?) was magical. The first song in particular worked so well, both for the shark and for us. Slightly strange to have her use the screwdriver as a microphone, but odder things have been known to happen.

Suitably romantic, suitably sweet little boy, and suitably literary Dickensian plot. According to Son it was a better Christmas Who than most. I agree.

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Pudsey has a girlfriend! I’m shocked. But she looked sweet, so might be good for our charitable bear. Terry Wogan seemed to have two. Lady presenters. Maybe they weren’t up to the seven hour slog? Neither was I, but that’s beside the point. Tess Daly’s outfit for the Strictly Come Dancing thing looked a little too much like a Sainsbury’s carrier bag for my liking.

But what do I know? I gathered that the woman who had hair which matched her dress was the famous Cheryl Cole. And I reckon that if I had ever watched the soaps properly I’d have enjoyed – not to mention understood – East Street so much more. It was reasonably fun even while not quite getting the hang of who was out of place and where. The boasting about whose husband was the most murderous was amusing enough.

The clothes were among the more fun points for Children In Need. Alexandra Burke – who’s totally new to me – sang well, but had come out in her underwear. The ever sweet Wogan claimed his underwear was on fire, but it might not have been such pretty underwear. Daughter gasped when she saw airborne-knicker-recipient Tom Jones’s hair. Has she never seen a grey-haired sex bomb before?

I am so tempted to describe John Barrowman’s spotty suit in Swedish, but I daren’t in case Daughter disowns me totally. It’s for sale, apparently, and one hopes it’s unwashed. Well, not me personally, but you know. She, Daughter, used the Take That song for a comfort break. It was the one thing on the programme she felt she could do without. I can’t help but feel that Take That could do without that ‘new’ singer of theirs.

Listening to A Perfect Day as sung by Susan Boyle, however, I received a report of goosebumps, and I have to admit that it was pretty good, and those angelic choir boys were really very angelic. Bet that Susan didn’t foresee a few years ago that she’d be kissed by Wogan on live television.

Our McFly fan, Miss Vet, is about to receive the McFly snippets from last night, as Daughter had the foresight to hit the record button at the right moment. She also didn’t have the foresight to ignore my suggestion she stop it, which was unfortunate. But most of the McFly shenanigans should be there. I can’t say I think much of their music, but the drummer who danced was rather nice looking. I’m assuming he drew the short straw. And I loved the grumpy judge.

The interval of CIN Mastermind was a masterstroke of genius. So was having three contestants who knew and cared about their specialist subjects as opposed to Tony Hawks who knows nothing about fridges other than how to cart one round Ireland. He must have thought, or been made to think, that it was not serious. Lovely to see John Humphrys has a sense of humour.

Next time the clever-clogs at the BBC do tea for young children, in need or otherwise, they should offer Ribena. Not cloudy lemonade. It looked delicious, and that’s exactly what it shouldn’t do. The treat of tea with Amy and the Doctor left the poor brothers eating dry biscuits.

We (Daughter and I) already know that Matt Smith can’t catch a train and talk on his mobile, so no surprise that he doesn’t know the difference between a teapot and a kettle. Just remind me never to ask him to make tea for me. (On second thoughts, I’ll have the cloudy lemonade.) But it’s his ineptness that we love.

Speaking of kettles, we refuelled mid-show with some Kettle crisps. Ridged spicy chilli. Very nice.