About this blog

This is the official blog of Phoenix Roleplaying, a multi-genre simming site, created in August 2010.

Run by the players, we hope to achieve great things.

Where our journey takes us, who knows.

Monday 17 September 2012

Too many robots spoil the broth (Review: 'Doctor Who' 33.2, "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship")

Chris Chibnall has acquired a bit of a bad reputation among DW fans, mostly for two atrocious Torchwood episodes. While he’s improved recently – this one’s not going to help with his reputation at all with some people.

 

I’m going to do these reviews a little differently from my Eleven Faces of Who series: I’ll just point out ten things worthy of comment on this episode:

 

·         Matt Smith again is superb – his portrayal of the Doctor is self-aware, really alien and great fun.

·         Amy was pretty much a second Doctor in this episode – she’s clearly learned a lot travelling with the Doctor.

·         Didn’t see the point of Queen Nefertiti in this at all. While she was amusing, she didn’t really add anything to this.

·         Riddell was fun, but Rupert Graves is getting typecast these days. Does he do anything except posh?

·         David Bradley and Mark Williams did a good job with not entirely brilliant material.

·         There was some adult stuff in this – particularly the comment about ‘breaking in’ Nefertiti.

·         Mitchell and Webb as a pair of silly robots? Worst thing about this episode without a doubt.

·         Was that ‘Bad Wolf Bay’ in the beach scene? It looked like it.

·         The dinosaurs weren’t awful, but they really were just a gimmick for an otherwise limited (but reasonably good) plot.

·         Interesting choice with the Indian Space Agency. Not good or bad, just interesting.

 

Conclusion

 

This started off with such promise, but despite a batch of good performances, I found myself getting bored by the end. It’s trying to do too much and not doing a lot of it well.

 

It just avoids being a clunker, but this is likely to be the worst one of these first five.

 

4/10

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