Doctor Who Catch up

Alright I've been meaning to keep up with the Doctor Who reviews, but work and a massive new fan Fiction project has gotten in the way. So here's a quick catch up

Vampires of Venise
This really was the first time everything came together this serise. Editing, acting, direction and script all fit, I can't pick holes in any of them. Some of the set pieces were fantasic and with Vampires we were back to the old horror idea.
Recently Terry Pratchett wrote an artical pointing out that while Doctor Who is fun it's not Sci-Fi. I agree, and the best episodes prove that. Doctor Who is Horror / fantasy with Sci-Fi eliments. This is why Russel Davis missed the point and Steven Moffat has hit it.
Doctor Who is victorian horror stories carried on to the twenty first century. The Doctor is very much a Sherlock Homes charicter, taking the outlandish and fantastical and braking it down into the explainable. His assistant is, of course, the Watson. The Proxy for the audiance so that we can keep up with him.
Vampires of Venise took that and brought it back to the front, while I would have liked more historical villians (Vampires have been kicking around Doctor Who for decades) there's always room for a nice bit of development.
Five out of Five

Amy's Choice
Again an amazing episode. This proves that good drama comes from good charicters. The relationship between Rory and Amy, up until now, felt like one of convinence. Here, for the first time, we really the impression that Rory is not only a good guy but fantastic for Amy. The team comes together a lot stronger than before.
The acting here deserves special note, these people are going to clean up at the awards this year, and they deserve to! Matt Smith brings a lot to the Doctor this episode and now he's made the charicter his own he's haveing a lot more fun. Up until now he's been playing it over the top and very Tennent like. Now he's bringing some more sublty into the role it's getting a lot more intersting.
The villian is the truly evil Dream Lord, I can't say too much about him without spoilers but what a bad guy. Knowing that even defeated he's still going to be haunting the Doctor for years is a wonderful thought.
Five out of Five

Cold Earth
Once again we dive into the underground world of the unhappy Silurians, and once again it's the Humans that are the villains here. The Silurians and the Sea Devils are amongst the most well balanced of all Doctor Who aliens. A race of evolved Dinosaurs that went into hiding against a cataclism that never happend. This is litteray like leaving home beacuse you think there's going to be a flood and coming back to find the cats have taken over and made a right mess of the place.
You have to love the Silurians beacuse they make us address our own actions a hell of a lot better than BSG and SGU. Put simply they are us, but look different. You've got racism, alienation and all the grubby little bits of ourselves highlighted in our actions against them and theirs against us.
That's what we get is this awesome two parter. While the more balanced and better angels of our nature grope towards a promising and posive future fear and ignorance ON BOTH SIDES push us into confict. From this alone we get the five out of five
Then Rory dies. I'm sorry but straight after Amy's Choice he dies, not as a cop out but as an important development. That's right the Arc plot once again rears it's head and gives us a slap across the face. Not only is Rory dead but technicaly he doesn't exist and this is because of the Doctor's curiosity. This is how develop stories, actions having repocusions leading to further actions. All reasonable and in charicter.
Six out of five

Vincent and the Doctor
How do you follow up what is possibly the most intelligent and well thought out two parter in recent Doctor Who? Why take a gimmick filler episode and turn it into a indepth an frank examiantion of abstract depression and mental illness. Urm, hang on, what? Yep after four years of gimmick episodes with people like Agatha Cristie, Charles Dickings and Shakespere we move on to Vincent VanGogh and instead of using it to just fill up the episode count we have a tightly written and well exicuted story that, while a little heavy handed, is worth every emotional twist and turn. VanGogh was a fantastic artist, who's work is a lot more impressive when you see it in person rather than some tiny photo in a book.
The reprocusions from the last episode are still being felt (ahh continuity keep it away, that might reward views with consistancy and god forbid development!) and the Doctor's guilt (once again a hold over from Amy's Choice) is a wonderful touch. You can see it in his eyes, a subtle bit of acting that almost makes you hurt in sympathy.
Five out of five

All in all these last few episodes had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to me that while the early season was shaky (victory of the Daleks annoyed me so much I went and designed my own Daleks for god's sake) the show is just going from strength to strength. I can't wait for more

Coming soon:- City of the Daleks review. Just as soon as it comes out for my Mac I'm downloading it!